A Former Radical Goes Back to the Future at the 9/12 MarchRead the whole thing here. And be sure to check out the pictures. The comments are pretty special, too.
In 1967, I was the radical Alinsky wrote the rules for. On the political cutting edge, I’d been arguing with fellow students and coworkers for years about Vietnam, and my growing disgust with my country led me down many winding roads of anti-American thought. I was counterculture before there was a name for it, skipping my prom and graduation as “bourgeois,” going barefoot, braless, and unshaven, and collecting tattoos at the only place in town those days — a crummy hole-in-the-wall next to downtown D.C.’s Greyhound station.
Everything about me was about making a statement. And while it was pretty exciting for me as a young woman to create a new identity based on rejection of the status quo, for years I’d felt like I was alone.
Then suddenly I discovered I wasn’t.
On October 21, a crisp, clear D.C. day, I arrived with my boyfriend at my first anti-war protest and felt a thrill of belonging and hope. The Pentagon grounds were churning with 50,000 or so people like us — a curious conglomeration of serious anti-American academic types (like me) and sha-la-la-la-la-live-for-today potheads (like him). But the differences didn’t matter to us that day, which celebrated everything from putting flowers in National Guard rifles to taunting police until we were tear-gassed. The counterculture had a big umbrella, and we were all hippies at heart — eager to create a new world, whatever that might turn out to be. This day gave us a sense of unity, strength, and purpose.
[snip]
Flash forward forty years to find this mother of 12 (nine by birth, three by adoption) once again a political activist — but now for the conservative cause.
What happened? Life happened. A 1972 permanent pilgrimage to San Francisco, another baby (Jasmine Moondance), divorce, promiscuity/experimentation, abortion, drug addiction, welfare — all in accord with my proud leftist political banner. A 1980 move to Marin County, Alcoholics Anonymous, a second marriage, New Age spirituality, birth control failures, building a business, owning a home.
A 1987 born-again experience, homeschooling, a son with Down syndrome, a writing career, three adoptions, and finally in 2002 a cross country move with 24 native Californians (my husband, children, sons-in-law and grandchildren) to come back to the traditional values I’d rejected before.
Not much about my current life looks like anything like the me I used to be — other than a lingering weakness for retro hippie fashion. Oh, and the skin art now lumping me with tattoo-come-lately Baby Boomers rather than communicating my colorful past.
But the hopeful giddiness I felt last Saturday at the 9/12 Freedom March took me back 40 years. And what I observed — no matter how ignored or spun by the increasingly irrelevant dinosaur media — tells me that this spontaneous and improbable gathering of conservatives is just the beginning of a movement that in the end will be as culturally revolutionary as the Woodstock generation.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Yet Another Perspective on the March
This is a really different perspective, and includes a link to a wonderful photo album.
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It has been eight years since I shed so many tears in one week. After the 2001 attacks, my wife and I stood in front of the TV watching video of people leaping to their death to escape the flames engulfing the upper floors of one of the World Trade Center buildings. My wife said, "I can't cry anymore." So it seemed.
ReplyDeleteBut this week, the tears are from joy. I have read numerous reports of the 9/12 march by local couples who attended, family from other parts of the country who attended, from professional and amateur journalists who attended and were published. All say the same thing.
That can be possible only when they all report the truth. No tangled webs woven here, beyond those attempts to decieve, practiced by the likes of Axelrod, Pelosi and company.
Since the extreme left ideologues siezed power in the last two elections, I have vowed that we would come back... that the conservative movement was too strong to be defeated. How sweet it is to be proven correct!
Ditto, Pop. Each of these accounts I find, I read aloud to John...and we both cry. I especially loved "What I Saw at the Revolution" - except for the ages and a couple of minor things, it could have been our story. We saw and heard so many of the same things.
ReplyDeleteThere simply are not words to express the joy that was present in that million-plus crowd. I've tried to articulate it, as have others, but no one can possibly understand completely if they weren't there. It was a truly beautiful event, with wall-to-wall beautiful people.
I know there will be another, and probably another after that. I have no idea where I will find the money to attend, much less the time off work, but I would give up much to experience that again. Never in my life has anything given me so much hope.
Perhaps most exciting of all is the fact that I now know that there are still millions of truly good, moral people left in this country. Listening to the news, you start to wonder if there are any decent people left...I will never doubt again.