Every Monday, while I lived in Athens and for much longer that that, Art and Peggy Gish led a lunch-hour vigil outside the county courthouse. They were calling for international peace and justice. They were local heroes, I thought, and I was fortunate enough to spend time talking with them occasionally as a writer and editor at the off-campus progressive newspaper, The InterActivist.
I’m writing an essay now that’s sending me backward to this era. It was around this time that I began to think about the tiers of society—the comfortable and the afflicted, as salty gumshoe reporters might have once said. It’s easy, once you’re looking at your jagged community with clear eyes, to see that some need help and others need to be held accountable for how their relative comfort is distorting society. Inaction breeds inequality. Inequality foments the us-vs.-them narrative that keeps us locked in wartime. The engine steams ahead. You can’t afford to be neutral on a moving train.
Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are in Cleveland tomorrow night. I’m not one to get all bent out of shape over presidential politics as sport, to believe that a high office would do anything but corrupt its own electorate, but this is a simple enough decision. One set of values lifts people up. The other set of values: Well, “nothing would fundamentally change,” we’re told.
Two stories as old as time.
I hesitate to make the 2020 Democratic primary sound like the great climax of political narrative, but it seems to be a pretty obvious parable for the future. Which path does your heart lead you down as you scout the horizon line of your self-as-yet-to-be? How do you visualize a better world for your children? What story are you telling yourself about who you are?
Art and Peggy Gish were featured in a short documentary called Old Radicals. It’s terrific. A good reminder that life is both short and long, and each decision you make leads you and your community into the next moment.
Sandy 