SOLSC March 15: Fifty Years Ago Today...

           In the late summer of 1963 I bought a datebook. It was the Week at a Glance. Every year since then I’ve bought a new one, mostly the Week at a Glance or Exacompta’s Space 17. And in summer 1971 I started keeping a journal.

            Whenever it’s been 50 years since something in my life coincided with something happening in the world or seemed worth noting on its own, I’ve written something about it either on Facebook or here, on the blog. So here’s my #FiftyYearsAgoToday to remember and pass on, from my March 15, 1973, journal.

“What I’ve been doing for the past three to four years is just bouncing along, marking time, and waiting for it all to start over again. What? Well, protest, revolution, the whole happy we’re-about-to-change-the-world scene. Only now, three months into Nixon’s second term, does it finally become solidly real that all that is over. The women’s movement has peaked and now sliding down into hard work for everyone. I am actually over 30, and my next birthday will make me 31, not 30 again. The fifties are a heavy nostalgia number—and when your very own adolescence becomes some other adolescent’s ancient history-nostalgia, it’s time — to what? Grow up? No, not that yet. Take stock? I do that all the time. Well, what? Start looking ahead, that’s what. Stop waiting for the sixties problems and solutions to come around. Keep on top of what is happening now. The way to stop getting old is not to be old. Stop thinking, ‘back when I was 25’ because you’re not anymore and it’s not anymore. The seventies are going to become history pretty soon, and you might as well know what they were about when they happened. Looking backward with your eyes shut won’t keep them from happening. If all you know is the fifties and sixties, you’ll become obsolescent in no time. So the war in Vietnam, as we knew it, is over. What’s next? What is going to happen next?”

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 15 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOLSC 29: Yet Another Political Protest, This One Local

            Today I stood among 25 others in front of Governor Cuomo’s New York office. We were urging the governor to support an abortion bill called the Reproductive Health Act. The bill would repeal the current law (part of the criminal code that permits abortion only up to 24 weeks or when the woman’s life is in danger), and create a new section of the Public Health Law permitting abortion up to 24 weeks, if the fetus is not viable, or the woman’s health or life is endangered.

            This now gets very complicated. The RHA has been passed by the state Assembly three times, but the state Senate, controlled by the Republicans, hasn’t yet allowed it to come to a vote. One complicating factor is that Democrats actually have a one-vote majority in the state Senate, but a group of Democratic state senators have formed something called the Independent Democratic Conference, and it voted with the Republicans to give the Republicans control.

            There’s so much more to this story, but enough politics from me. Instead, what was exciting for me about this protest was that my daughter, CM, was there with me. And she not only led became one of the leaders of our chants (in a call and response: “What do we want? The RHA. When do we want it? Now!”), but she came up with a fresh chant as well (“Ho, ho, hey, hey, Cuomo, sign the RHA.”)

            After almost an hour, the protest disbanded, vowing to return in a week if the bill hasn’t been enacted and signed. I expect we’ll be back next Wednesday. 

That's CM, second from right

Essay #5: Marching, part 2

Marching in the streets. I’ve been going to protests for more than 53 years. A sign I saw at the women’s march on January 21 said something like “Why am I still having to fight for this shit?” I feel that way myself, but I can’t sit home and pretend the current events don’t affect me, even if they don’t all specifically address me. Here’s how I got this way.

            In the fall of 1963, while Kennedy was still president, Madame Nhu, sister-in-law to South Vietnam’s president, came to Washington, D.C., where she gave a talk to the National Press Club, attempting to shore up support for her brother-in-law. I was living in a commune of like-minded lefty students and other young people. Some of them organized a protest in front of the National Press Club at noon on a Friday afternoon in October.

            The organization where I worked, United World Federalists, was just a few blocks away, so I thought I would walk down on my lunch hour and join them. When I arrived, the “picket” was across the street from the Press Club, not where I’d expected it. And among the dozen or so people walking around in a circle with signs (“Madame Nhu must go”) were none of the people I knew. What to do?

            I had never joined a picket line. Even though I had lefty parents, they had never involved me or my younger siblings in any political activity. In fact, their political activity largely consisted of working for Democratic candidates.

            When I was 16, I’d heard about a march against nuclear bombs from New York to Washington, D.C., in August, to culminate on Hiroshima Day, August 8. The march was scheduled to pass near our home in Levittown, Pa., and I wanted to join in. My mother said, “no.” My father had recently started a new job, and if anything happened to me, if I got into the newspapers, it might damage him. But this is something we believe in, I argued. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t stand up for my beliefs. But it was 1958. I knew about McCarthy, but he’d been out of the Senate for a few years. Because my parents didn’t connect their politics and their personal lives, I didn’t understand until many years later how fearful they were.

            A year or so later, there were pickets of the local Woolworth’s in sympathy with civil rights sit-ins in the South. I wanted to join those too. But no one I knew in my new high school were part of those protests, and I didn’t know how to become part of a group where I knew no one. I never even asked my parents.

            Now, watching a group of people I didn’t know walking around with signs expressing thoughts I agreed with, I didn’t know what to do. People going by looked at the picketers or ignored them. No one joined them. I wanted to, but didn’t know how to take that first step.

            Then I noticed, down the street, another group of protesters. They were wearing brown uniforms and carrying signs the proclaimed them as the American Nazi Party. I knew such a thing existed and its headquarters were not far away, in Arlington, Va.

            I watched the Nazis in support of Madame Nhu, then the picketers in front of me, then the people walking by, oblivious to both groups. Thoughts and feelings began to clarify. If I continued to stand by, I was basically saying, there’s no difference between these two groups of people expressing their political thoughts. Maybe this is what happened in Germany in the 1930s, ordinary people not able to see a difference between Nazis, Communists, Socialists, and other political parties. Here were two opposing views right in front of me, and I knew who I thought was right, and that I had to make that clear with my body.

            Still feeling nervous, I stepped into the walking line where a space appeared. A woman smiled at me. I smiled back. We walked and walked, until it was time for me to go back to work. I had gotten my political feet wet and didn’t drown. 

#52essays2017