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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 24, 2014)
Street roots S ep t 26, 2014 wj ig'J MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, from page 8 She just felt completely overwhelmed and took this exceedingly radical step of holding reached out, and people suggested other books and articles. It seemed to really hit a a potluck. Three or four people come, and they don’t have any magic solutions but nerve. they agree to meet again. This time it grows, and before long they’re reaching R.R.: That was 10 years ago, and now the book has been reissued. Are we still facing the out into small Nebraska towns. They get this wonderful guy who is this long-time impossible in 2014? veteran rancher, looks like John Wayne, political conservative, and he just says, “I P.L.: It s hard to say, but in some ways, will not be bulbed. I’m not going to sell my there’s almost more political land to these people.” And they did these demoralization than even 10 years ago. I life-size cutouts saying, with a picture of think some of it was that, for a lot of him, “I stand with Randy. I will not be people, there was a lot of hope that they bullied.” So this is one of the hopeful invested in Barack Obama in ’08, and they themes, when you have coalitions that had this image of “this would transform extend past the usual suspects. We don’t everything” if this president gets elected. know what’s going to happen with You saw that quite literally [when] they Keystone, but it’s been four years that it’s adopted the brand of “Hope,” like our been delayed. brand is hope like Nike’s is a swoosh. I’m In the same vein, I talk with a young not really condemning them for doing it, Egyptian woman about everything that led but it did have this very unfortunate up to Tahrir Square [a communal gathering consequence that once you put hope on any political figure, then if that figure turns space in Cairo that served as a focal point for protests during the political upheaval out to be fallible, your hopes get dashed/ called Arab Spring], to the point where Be that as it may, I think there is just h people were willing to come forward. And sense that the system is broken, and as I’m putting this together along with there’s not much you can do about it, so another piece, last summer, and things are you kind of go home and deal with your not really pretty in, Egypt, I am just private life. The other area that can undermine hope thinking “Is this evenhopeful? Is this something that’s going to lift people’s ' is climate change. In 10 years, there are a spirits, or is it going to depress them?” whole lot more renewables out there, and And this young Egyptian woman, who lived that’s part of what the writers talk about. in a city about 600,000, went down to So we haven’t completely blown it. But [Tahrir Square], and she was just saying, compared, to the magnitude of the “Well, yeah, there’s more work to do. It challenge, it’s playing catch up. So people hasn’t turned out the way that we wanted, feel, I think, demoralized, a sort of but millions of us learned our power and paralysis sets in. In some ways it’s at least our strength. We’ve overthrown two as hard a time, and that was part of my dictators now (President Hosni Mubarak in hope was just to speak to that and say, 2011 and President Mohamed Morsi in “Yeah it’s a hard time but: Is it harder to 2013). If we have to overthrow a third, act in the United States in 2014 than it was we’ll do i t ” challenging apartheid South Africa or the coming of dictatorships in Europe or the R .R: I saw auH BO Eilm version of the Argentinian dictatorships and death squads play “The Normal Heart. It’s about Larry if you’re the mothers of the Disappeared?” Kramer and the AIDS crisis, and how he It’s pretty clear that, as hard as it is, you’re became this vocal, angry activist who pushed not going to get tossed in jail and tortured Mayor Ed Koch in New York City and and thrown off a helicopter. It’s easier. [President] Ronald Reagan to address the H R R.: There are 55 people you reference in this book. Do they have any qualities that are the same? Or are their qualities all unique? P.L.: I think a little bit of both. One of the things that definitely is a core theme is I had to stop (almost) every piece from quoting [playwright and first president of tiie Czech Republic] Vaclav Havel, because the thing he said is hope is not the same thing as optimism. It’s a fundamental! quality that’s much larger, about the possibility of your actions mattering. We tend to use [the word “hope” a little bit sloppily: “Oh, that’s a hopeful sign.” Even in the absences of heartening developments, like solar (energy) or debating a $15-an-hour minimum wage in Seattle, whatever it happens to be, there is this quality called hope that drives you forward. That’s a theme that everybody shares: that you a c t It’s true whether you talk about Johnathan Kozol (National Book Award-winning author who writes about discrimination in public education) looking at these faces of these children and their own joy amidst the most terrible circumstances one could imagine, or Eduardo Galeano, the great writer from Uruguay, talking about people in jail finding ways to communicate. It weaves in and out of this sense that we can tap into something larger. And, again, it doesn’t have to be expressed theologically. The other element of hope, that (author and social justice activist) Howard Zinn certainly articulates, is “the optimism of uncertainty,” that you never know when something’s going to turn. There is a great story in the book of a friend, Mary Piper, who is a bestselling psychology writer. She has not particularly been a political organizer. She lives in Nebraska and was reading about climate change and just getting demoralized, and then realized the Keystone (XL) Pipeline was coming through not that far from where she lived. think that was valuable: Somebody willing to dramatize it, people willing to take some risks and then organizing. We don’t know where exactly it’s going to end, but you sort of see an interesting dynamic where, if youfre pushing maybe for something, a compromise occurs. Like, you really want to give some leeway for small businesses and starving nonprofits because they just don’t have what McDonald’s does or a Gap or a Starbucks. (Seattle companies will phase in the $15-an-hour wage between three and seven years, depending on the company’s size and whether employees receive tips and benefits.) So sometimes the compromises are for good reasons, or sometimes they’re what you can achieve politically. I look back at the sprawling mess of the Affordable Care Act, and I would argue that it’s a step forward, and had people been pushing more strongly, you would have had a better bill. R .R: You have a section in this book—i t ’s one of my favorite titles - called “Rebellious Imagination.” P.L.: It’s everything, from a wonderful Pablo Neruda story [where he writes about lessons he learned as a child exchanging gifts] and [his] sense of connection to, other human beings, to [civil rights activist . and U.S. Representative from Georgia] John Lewis talking about this tiny house that was going to blow off its moorings in a storm. Hisaunt had the children, who were all terrified, walk from side to side, where the combined weight of their bodies could hold it down. There’s a theologian named Walter Wink who does this brilliant look at classical stories from the New Testament and how they’ve been misinterpreted. He talks about the “turn the other cheek” image. People think, “Oh, that just means being meek.” But he said this is very sophisticated nonviolent resistance. ? A R .R.: Is there anyone who’s not in this book who inspires you? P.L.: I think they’ve all kind of inspired me, to be honest I personally got active ; before I was reading authors, of this level because I was still in high school. So I think iny original activism preceded these wonderful writers. But I would say Nelson Mandela’s autobiography: It is stunning RL.: In “SouPof the Citizen” I talk about because it is about how to maintain dignity in the harshest situation. You’re forbidden the “perfect standard,” which is the notion newspapers, and you’re told you’re going that you have to have everything absolutely, immaculately perfect before you to die (in prison). So a guard has a begin and be certain that it’s the right time sandwich wrapped in a newspaper and somebody retrieves (the newspaper) from and place and that you’ll win: a standard the garbage can and copies it in code on that no one will ever m eet You see it toilet paper. How can you not be inspired repeated in the book again and again, that by something like that? The interesting everyone has trepidations. Everyone’s thing is, Nelson Mandela uses the phrase uncertain: “Will this really work? Should we really try it? Can it make a difference?” . “multiplication of courage,” where one Everyone faces those same kinds of things, person’s courage inspires another. So to me the stories are transferrable. so to me, it’s part of the game. Then you That’s so important because you can learn as you go, and you get more take the situation from somebody working confident and there may be parts of the in one particular context and historical task that are always difficult, but at least period in time, and you can apply it to a you are more familiar with th a t wholly different situation. So if We’re working-on climate change, we can draw R R : Earlier on, you mentioned the push on the Arab Spring or the Civil Rights for $15-an-hour minimum wage. How would Movement We’re working on you sum that up on the scale of impossible? homelessness, we can draw on the (Editor’s note: A t the time o f this interview, Keystone folks or [Stranger Editorial the Seattle City Council had not voted on the Director] Dan Savage, who has this measure. On June 2, the measure passed wonderful piece where he’s reflecting on unanimously.) this fundamental rise in human dignity, where 30 or 4Q years ago, gay people were P.L.: It’s interesting because anything that’s woh usually seems impossible before living in fear — then you end up with a U.S; Supreme Court Justice [Ruth Bader it’s won. Any victory. Granted, Seattle is a Ginsburg] conducting a gay marriage in healthier economy than some, places. Washington, D.C. It’s just unthinkable. It’s Might be tougher to do it in Detroit or not to say it’s wholly universal everywhere something like th a t But the fundamental inthis country, but it’s a measure of issue [is] that people who work are getting paid so little: What allows that to be raised, progress in a way that the people who drove that progress 30 or 40 years ago,, I I think, is people raising the issue. Here’s think, would find just astounding. an example. The Occupy [Movement]: It failed in the Reprinted from Street Roots sister paper, sense that it didn’t sustain its momentum, Real Change News in Seattle, Wash. but nonetheless put a bunch of issues on the agenda — so maybe you call it a partially failed movement - issues that everyone knew were real in their hearts. I AIDS pandemic in the gay male community. I want to talk about being a reluctant activist, about feeling as if you don’t have the ability or the power to address some big crisis or issue before you. 9 H Autumn by Susan Kristjansen I love the fall because it leads us to winter And Winter is my favorite season The coolness of fall Directs me to winter’s freezing cold When icicles grow and fall Only to disappear in the snow below Then I make an angel Then I disappear There I feel at peace with myself, and, finally, with the world There I feel no pain and there I shall remain untilthe snow melts away - Then, and only then will you finally see me and know that you were loved So hurry autumn and bring winter to me, ’ when icicles grow, so I can ; finally disappear and hold you one more time
