On the Death of a Patriot (for Khephra)

WilliamPitt

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Sun Jan-09-05 03:07 PM
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On the Death of a Patriot (for Khephra)

http://truthout.org/fyi/

Well I had a dream
I stood beneath an orange sky
Yes I had a dream
I stood beneath an orange sky
With my brother standing by
With my brother standing by
I said Brother, you know you know
It’s a long road we’ve been walking on
Brother you know it is you know it is
Such a long road we’ve been walking on

- Alexi Murdoch

His name was Scott, and he lived in Indiana, and he was a little man. Almost nobody beyond his immediate family knew his name. His knee was bad and his back was bad, and his soul was of such a tender quality that this hard world bruised him early and often.

I got to know him on the forums at DemocraticUnderground, a website dedicated to progressive causes and liberal politics. He wrote me a private message one day, telling me his story. His physical disabilities had rendered him incapable of working a traditional job, and this left him despairing for a long time. When he wrote me, he was just coming out from under. He asked me to check the posts he put up, to make sure they were clear and concise. I did so, and saw pretty quickly that he didn’t need my help.

Over the course of the next two years, this little man became a giant within that online community. Posting under the name ‘Khephra,’ he took it upon himself to track the news from as many sources as possible. His disabilities kept him from being able to work, so he made the gathering and disbursing of information his work. He sat in his small office with two tiny televisions going, and tracked the action in the House and Senate while keeping an eye on CNN. He would keep a running thread of information about the doings in Congress for the edification of the members of that online community who could not watch. He scoured the news wires and put up the stories that mattered with immediacy.

Scott was a Dean man from the word ‘Go.’ He called me on the day he joined the Hoosiers for Dean campaign, and the joy and pride in his voice radiated through the telephone. In the rancorous environment of online political debate, during a primary season marked too often by poisonous rhetoric, he was a calm voice of reason and logic. In May 2003, he helped bring Dean to the Jefferson Jackson dinner. Being able to shake the Governor’s hand and spend time with him was, by far and away, the greatest moment of Scott’s life.

A funny thing happened as time went by. Scott, with his bad back and his bad knee and all that rough road behind and ahead of him, became an integral and indispensable part of the alternative online news media. Dozens, and then hundreds, and then thousands, and then tens of thousands of people looked for his work every day to inform themselves, and to pass that information on to others. The information Scott put out was spread far and wide on countless alternative news sites. Behind every good alternative news organization is a person who goes out and does the research, finds the stories, and makes them available to others. That was Scott’s role, and nobody did it better.

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