1. Missed TurnsI’ve been to my local airport more times than I can count. My previous boss loved to shove me on a plane to DC at 5 in the morning, and have me return the same day, hungry, migrainy, bleary eyed and cranky. There were times when I was traveling at least once every week; I can make that drive from my house to the airport in my sleep. There were probably times when I did. Today I dropped my kid off at the airport, took a wrong turn getting there, took a wrong turn getting home. Back when I had an exchange student for a year, she loved driving around with me, because she knew if she could get me distracted, I’d drive to all parts of the state she hadn’t been to before, sometimes other states as well. I get that from my mother; I remember her taking me to Connecticut once, on the way to the dentist. Those are the accidental turns, the ones we take or don’t take without thinking, the ones that lead me to other parts of the country, that led to me joining the army, that have taken me through all parts of Detroit I wouldn’t have found otherwise.
The missed turns that bother me aren’t the accidental ones. What bothers me is the ones I ought to have taken, but decided against. If you look here:
http://www.greatstufftodo.com/eventdetail.asp?eid=10310 you’ll see I was scheduled at one point to talk at an event alongside Senator Levin. I didn’t find out about it until the night before, when my googling mother called to tell me how impressed she was that I was a speaker at this rally.
I wasn’t supposed to be a speaker.
I talked to the guy organizing the event at one point, I expressed some interest, we sat at a picnic table in a park; we chatted. Somehow my name, scrawled on a scrap of paper, got pushed over into the speaker list, when it should have been shoved into his pocket, gone through the wash a few times, and eventually been thrown out.
This is the thing, though. I wish I’d just done it. I’m not anyone; I’m not a politician, not an activist, not a celebrity. I’m a middle aged middle class school teacher in the Midwest – you can’t get more nondescript than that. But if someone was going to hand me the microphone, I should have just grabbed it. Instead, I panicked. I stayed home, drank too much coffee, called my buddy, and asked her what the hell this was about. “It’s a sign,” she said. I drank more coffee.
2. SignsI took down all my kids’ work from the makeshift gallery in the school lobby, and temporarily put up a stripped down (depoliticized) version of my blogs, and some photos of the walk. I talked about it to my classes, to explain why I was away for a week. Things spiraled out of control, in the way they often do, and now there’s a sign up sheet for kids who want me to take them down there this summer to do some relief work. The IVAW is talking about returning to do some relief work. A veteran from Baltimore is talking about returning with a team of construction workers to do some relief work.
I might be speaking about the walk at a gathering of high school peace clubs next weekend. If that happens, I’ll bring the sign up sheet along. I like the idea of mixing everyone together, teenagers and veterans and minorities and whites and men and women, northerners and southerners, having them all work side by side toward a common goal. We don’t do enough of that. That was one of the things talked about on the march, and discussed online afterward, that it’s not enough to show up for a day, carry a sign and go back home. We can’t bridge the gulfs in this country by carrying signs.
3. Detroit to Lansing, Fayetteville to RaleighPeople are already beginning to talk about plans for next year, what to do if the troops still aren’t home yet, come the 4th anniversary of this war. If you haven’t read Stan Goff’s blog about this, you probably should.
http://bringthemhomenow.org/what/latest.html#Goff060326 In case you don’t click the link, here’s an excerpt:
Dave Cline (President, VFP) and I were talking, and he is suggesting a parallel, two-step campaign… one I want to endorse in its general outlines. “Home by Christmas” as part of the Bring Them Home Now! campaign, that whips the living hell out of Congress — followed by a build up of marches similar to the one we just did, but across individual states, culminating in state capitols across the country. Detroit to Lansing. Fayetteville to Raleigh. Bay Area to Sacramento. Albuquerque to Santa Fe. Portland to Salem. Newark to Trenton. And on and on. Four or five day walks and caravans, camping again, landing each night in some community under assault by thuggish police, by gentrifiers, or economic crisis. Linking with African Americans, Hispano-Latinas, Native Nations. Joining their issues, accepting their leadership, and sharing our resources. Converging in state capitols on the fourth anniversary of the war, with our motley marchers, led by vets, especially Iraq vets, and our peace-train convoys of cars… a new popular democracy struggle on the move.
Yeah, that’s in my email, too. “Hope to be in touch with you about a Detroit to Lansing march next year.” For some reason, the phrase “amused and horrified” keeps coming to mind with all my interactions with Stan. I already sent him the beginnings of my list of why I can’t organize a march from Detroit to Lansing, starting at reason #1,000. Reason #998 reads: I’m the kind of person that gets lost in thought on the way home from Lansing, snaps out of it, and suddenly realizes - shit, I’m in Ohio. That’s fine when it’s just me and my car, but not so cool when the 200 people with blisters following me want to know why they’re sitting at a road sign that says “Toledo, next exit.”
I’m tempted to send him a reason a day – a sort of email campaign that whips the living hell out of him, a buildup of reasons similar to the ones I’ve already sent, culminating in one final irrefutable piece proving why such a thing can’t be done, and why I couldn’t possibly organize it.
I’m also thinking of dropping Conyers a note, though, to see if he’ll speak at it.
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