The Utah author, naturalist and activist - speaking Thursday at Utah State University - said that is how she once responded to a Utah politician.
A packed audience in the crowded Eccles Conference Center in this northern Utah community gave her a standing ovation. On Friday, Williams conducted a writing workshop at USU as part of the USU Moyle Q. Rice Speakers Series.
Williams told her audience that she was working in Washington across from the White House on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the Pentagon and World Trade Center and a hijacked plane crashed in Pennsylvania.
She watched as the White House was evacuated and chaos ensued throughout the city and nation.
"Nothing in our American psyche prepared us for that," Williams said.
"Since that time I've done nothing but write in response to place."
Her latest book, The Open Space of Democracy, was developed after Williams gave a controversial commencement speech last year at the University of Utah. She received equal amounts of booing and cheering for her stand against the war in that address.
Republican Sen. Bob Bennett, who was in the audience, responded to her comments with a "provocative and thoughtful" four-page letter to Williams in which he strongly disagreed with her and posed a question, "What would you be willing to die for?"
"After much thought, what I would be willing to die for . . . is the freedom of speech. It is the open door to all other freedoms," Williams said.
For the past year, Williams said she was inspired to offer something to the conversation about what it means to be an American and a patriot. Not everyone has been willing to listen.
An invitation to speak at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers in late October was canceled after the university's president, William Merwin, said he feared she would be critical of President Bush's environmental policies.
A group of faculty and students, including the college Republicans, responded to Merwin's actions by bringing Williams Fort Myers anyway.
That meeting was a "very powerful ceremony," Williams said, and Merwin vowed not to unilaterally make decisions like that again.
Since the election, Willliams said, the context of her ongoing discussions about the work of conservation and democracy has changed.
"I think it's time that we move beyond the political rhetoric to really think about what it means to live in a democracy," she told her USU audience.
"In the open space of democracy, there is room for dissent. In the open space of democracy, there is room for differences. We remember that our character has been shaped by a diversity of American landscapes, and it is precisely that character that will protect us."
An audience member praised this wisdom, saying Williams doesn't stand for the right or the left on issues. "You stand in front," she told the speaker.
ajbrunson@comcast.net
