for a limited time only

i am undertaking this new task- i wish to begin to change the world. tis ambitious, but i am tired of being tired and feeling all tied up and helpless. here is a new tool and political action at our grasp. the following is the beginning of an adventure in which i explore my own ideas about where i have come from and how i come to be where i am now. i reach out and hope to find others interested in sharing my ideals.

When I was in my twenties I had a stint as an activist. The time was the first Gulf War and surgical strikes were all the rage. I was infuriated and horrified that killing could become so antiseptic. But that issue wasn’t the only one that has captivated me. from the time I was little, it was not just the threat of nuclear war, or nuclear meltdown of three mile island but rather the slow poisoning and raping of our planet that has gripped my consciousness and led me to, I would love to say, a whirlwind of actions that have culminated in a dramatic shift in the way the world works today. But alas, you know that my name is relatively unknown and my activist self, after two events was bound up tight.

I recall my partner at the time being way bolder than I and set out to protest the 1^st Gulf War in a huge protest that was to shut down the Brooklyn Bridge. I was busy and nervous, and so I stayed home. I thought he might not return from this particular adventure. However, he did finally return and with the most fantastic story. This part was on the news- they did manage to shut down the bridge and greatly disturb traffic. It was a raucous affair with cars honking, some for and some against the protest. But what was not on the news was this event: a rouge car freaked out and sped into the crowd of protestors. In the ensuing melee, my partner saw someone go over the side of the bridge. This was so disturbing to me that I don’t really remember any more of the particular details. But what was even more disturbing was the fact that I never heard about this painful development from the news. Not only was this particular disappearance was not reported by the news, but the whole event was only a small blip on the media page with hundreds of protesters reduced to a handful of mischievous disrupters of the commute. In fact, all the protests that I have ever attended have been grossly underreported. Most of the time, if it is stated that hundreds protested, it was usually closer to thousands. I was dismayed that the news people decided to only include a tiny blurb about the protest that temporarily shut down the Brooklyn Bridge! And that was true for the TV news and the print media. However, I felt traumatized and abandoned when there was no mention of the protestor who went missing. Up until that time, I had actually believed what I read in the papers and saw on TV was somehow a semi decent representation of what actually happened out there. Now I was mortified that the representation clearly only vaguely approximated reality.

The other event was one where I attended a meeting for organizing a march in NYC, around the same time. The city had been cagy about giving protest permits. The official places to protest were very circumscribed, say a corner of one block. And we wanted to make more of an impression. At this meeting there was a guy who looked different from the rest, and had never been to a meeting before. He had really short hair, but was wearing a fireman’s shirt, thus explaining the cop-like short hair. We talked about our plans for our various actions but the leaders were cagy about discussing what we were really going to do, (ideas that had been developed in different sub-committees). I didn’t really get it. So when this short-haired guy asked about our protest route, I told him what it was. I was glared at by the group leader. I thought he was being prejudiced against the short-haired guy. Well, we went to the march and were arrested right off the bat, at the appointed starting place because, well, we had a mole... guess who? Man, did I feel stupid.

These things should have been simply learning experiences, but my soul was more fragile. It was hard to swallow that simply letting your opinion be known by marching and protesting, you were viewed of as enemies of the state and people would actively try to stop you. It was really frightening. I became more involved in my personal life and let my political self languish in the prison of my fear.