Back on the bus

Posted 8/21/12

“I’ve been on this bus before,” I told my seatmate. We were on our way to the People’s Climate March in New York City to demonstrate with thousands of others our concern about climate change. …

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Back on the bus

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“I’ve been on this bus before,” I told my seatmate. We were on our way to the People’s Climate March in New York City to demonstrate with thousands of others our concern about climate change. She was new to demonstrations. I was not.

In the ’60s we went to Washington, DC to demonstrate for civil rights. I was barely a teenager when I heard the robust tones of Dr. Martin Luther King echoing over the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The mall was so full you had to hold hands to stay together in a group. We sang the songs of freedom we had learned at summer camp—a Unitarian youth camp that was probably on the FBI’s watch list, along with our church minister, Dr. Donald S Harrington.

Those songs were the anthems of our generation. “We Shall Overcome” promised we would all be free someday, and we believed it. We were full of the ardor of youth. Freedom was a big word, with big promises. It fit in the world view of idealistic teenagers who were eager to be free of the minor constrictions of their youth. Right and wrong were finite terms we believed had finite definitions. Freedom was right; equality was right; oppression was wrong.

Later we would fight the draft, oppose the war in Vietnam, protest for Choice and the Equal Rights Amendment, and against nuclear arms. Our songs turned into slogans. “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?!” was a popular anti-war cry. I cringe now when I think how simplistic and hurtful we were. LBJ was more a dupe than a despot, we know now.

But we were angry then, not hopeful. Our brothers and friends were dying in a war without end, without sense and without their choice. We felt victorious when President Johnson announced he would not run again in 1968. It meant a new direction was coming—we had had an effect. Our marches and organizations, our songs and slogans had meant something. Soon, we would be voting our power at the polls, we thought.

One by one, bullets shattered our illusions. Idealism went underground, the center could not hold.

This is too small a space to define a generation, and I wouldn’t try. This is one woman’s view. But the feelings I had as I settled myself on the 7 a.m. bus from Liberty to New York City that Sunday called up the memories of all that activism and cast a pall on my enthusiasm. This time, the fate of the planet was at stake, I believed, but now I was better informed about the forces that threaten us. Wealth is everything now. And wealth is hard to reason with. You can’t shame wealth. Wealth doesn’t need your vote.

People came out in force of numbers at the Climate March—over 400,000 at last count. There was a whole new generation, who had never protested anything, like my seat-mate. There was the old guard too. People in their 80s, who had once held our hands to stay together on the Mall in Washington, marched. I saw friends from past marches, friends from many aspects and times of my life. There we were again, taking to the streets as we did in the ‘60s. With so much at stake, what will the trajectory be now?

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