To the barricades – patiently, part one

Antiwar protests on college campuses are in the news and it’s no longer 1970. In the spring of 2024, young people are objecting to Israel’s handling of the war and the ensuing mass casualties. They also are upset that their universities may be funding Israel’s excesses through investments and other business ties. There are also protests by those who support Israel objecting to a 19-year-old getting involved in politics and saying bad things about Israel. It’s as ridiculous to say that criticism of Israel is antisemitic as its is if you decry Hamas you are Islamophobic.

You don’t have to know every single thing about this war to go out on the streets and check it out. Young people gather for events all of the time. It’s exciting. Their friends are there. The police look amazing in their U.S. Army castoff riot gear and their giant riot trucks once used to quell disturbances in Fallujah. That’s a lot of adrenaline surging through demonstrators’ bodies and things happen. Still, most protestors have been peaceful. I cannot say the same thing about NYC and Boston cops.  

I am a Baby Boomer who saw his first antiwar protest in the spring of 1970. I was a ROTC midshipman and I went to the demo instead of the annual Navy Ball. My dorm friends were going outfitted with gas masks and scarves to take the sting out of tear gas and pepper gas. I went with them to campus where all the action was going to be. Tear gas flew and the S.C. state cops rushed the demonstrators applying their batons to longhair’s heads.

We fled into the dorm complex and ended up in a restroom being used as a first aid station. Men and women were jammed in and those with even a tiny bit of first aid experience helped administer to those with cracked skulls, eyes blinded by gas, and asthmatics struggling to breathe. One guy had been a medic in Vietnam this time the year before. Others like me had been Boy Scouts and knew enough first aid to patch broken scalps.

An ambulance arrived outside and I was drafted (Hah – drafted) to pick up the wounded in makeshift stretchers and carry them outside. One was my buddy Pat who’d sliced off the top of his index finger when picking up a broken bottle to throw at the cops. Yes, there were young people on this night of nonviolent protest who threw broken bottles at cops and picked up tear gas canisters and threw them back.

We were demonstrators once, and young.

End of part one

When your hope shrinks, do a small thing to let the sunshine in

I tried to write a piece about the massacre of 10 innocents at the King Soopers in Boulder. Few subjects make me speechless but mass shootings are one of them. Archivists in 2121 may come across articles about massacres of civilians in the U.S. and thank their lucky stars that sensible gun laws finally were enacted in 20__ and that we would never see headlines like this again. That's as hopeful as I can be, that someday the U.S. will lose its cruel streak and the NRA will be bankrupt and all of our gun nuts will die from natural causes. There's hope in that. I liked these lines from a Naomi Shihab Nye poem I came across on the Poetry Foundation web site: 

When your hope shrinks 

you might feel the hope of 

someone far away lifting you up.

I'll write about the hope of small things. 

I bought a small grow-kit from Amazon. Nothing fancy. Just a metal tray, soil, and three seed packets. The chives and Florence fennel sprouted and are on their way to summer salads and desserts. I stuck some basil seeds in with my pot of Thai basil and still waiting for those. I planted chive seeds from hometownseeds.com but got nothing. I’m going to plant again today in a new pot and see if they do better. I like chives and you can put it in all sorts of dishes. But I can’t get it to grow. Best thing to do is buy some chives that already are far along and try not to kill them.

My herbs have taken over the end of the dining room table up against a south-facing kitchen window. The table is Formica laminate and is a remnant of 1950s kitchens. It’s in the mid-century modern (Mid-Mod) school of furniture. We had tables just like it when I was growing up. A perfect match for mac and cheese and meatloaf. I look at the table and see my mother and all of the many Susie Homemaker mothers of the era. My mom also was Anna the Nurse and knew when and when not to patch up our many wounds. When I was 7, our exchanges went something like this:

Me: Mom, I’m hurt! 

Mom: Are you bleeding?

Me: No but… 

Mom (kisses my head): Go outside and play – you’ll be all right.

Sometimes I was bleeding. She applied Mercurochrome to the wound and sent me outside to play. Writing about “Mercurochrome Memories” in ScienceBlogs, dblum writes that the bright-red antiseptic is a mercury derivative of a red dye discovered in 1889. The antiseptic version was developed 20 years later by researchers at Johns Hopkins, source of many of our magic potions and miracle meds. The FDA declared mercury a neurotoxin and it’s no longer made in the U.S. But never fear:

Science tells us that if once you were painted with Mercurochrome, your body has probably stored at least a trace for you. Nothing apparently too dangerous, just a reminder of your chemical past.

My chemical past. As a Downwinder from Colorado and Washington state, I already have some bomb-blast radiation in my body. And traces of lead paint – can’t forget that. I also have mercury in my dental fillings. And then there’s DDT. Damn, if I had known all this, I wouldn’t have lived to be 70 and (I hope) much longer.

I gave up ground gardening a few years ago when a spinal injury prevented bending and stooping. I grow my veggies in containers now. I’ve been successful although gardening at 6,200 feet in a semi-arid region continues to be a work in progress. My seedlings don’t go outside until mid-May. Most insects aren’t a problem but hail and wind and drought are. I keep growing things because it brings joy and I like the challenge of the cherry tomato harvest in August. You can get good ones at the store or farmer’s market. But I like to pick and eat them when they are still warm from the sun. It’s like eating sunshine. We all could use more of the simple act of nurturing a small thing to "let the sunshine in..."

What comes next after the Jan. 6 coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol?

We witnessed a coup attempt Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol Building.

Trump and his goons incited other goons to storm the Capitol and disrupt the approval of electoral college votes. They ended up trashing the place and killing a policeman. The mayhem delayed the counting of the votes until 3 in the morning on Jan. 7.

My daughter watched some of that day's CNN reports with me. She asked questions and I had no answers. 

She left for school and my mind wandered. I had attended two Vietnam War protests in D.C., in 1970 and 1971. D.C. Police were everywhere. At the May Day 1971 protests, promoted as "Days of Rage," President Nixon called in the National Guard and 82nd Airborne. Helicopters filled the air. Buses were lined up in a cordon around the White House. Federal drug enforcement undercover cops tried to blend in with the crowd, ready to bust pot smokers but there were too many of us so they just studied the freaks and took detailed notes.

These were the preparations for a bunch of longhairs. We were angry but unarmed. Would some have rushed the White House or Capitol and trashed those places? Maybe. They were angry about Vietnam. But were we prepared to interfere with a lawful election? Hell no. Many young men were angry when Nixon was elected in 1968 and 1972. We knew that it meant more Vietnam and a continuation, possibly forever, of the military draft. Most of us were there for peaceful protest.

Some Days of Rage protesters disrupted traffic and blocked the employee entrance to the U.S. Justice Department and engaged in various other acts of civil disobedience.

The police and military were more than ready for them. May 3 ended up being the biggest arrest cache ever in D.C. The jails overflowed and officials had to corral the longhairs at RFK Stadium (football season was long over). 

Where were these duly-appointed guardians of our democratic republic on Jan. 6, 2021? Nowhere to be seen. Until later in the day, after the worst was over.

This was an inside job and just the beginning of an old-fashioned coup. Are we ready for the next attack that may come on Jan. 17 or possibly Inauguration Day? 

We better be.

Americanism trumps Conservatism this week in JeffCo schools

Kudos to those Jefferson County, Colorado, students who staged a walkout this week to protest to new conservative school board's attempt to to ram their "America is Perfect!" history curriculum down student throats. They are perhaps a bit more wise that we were, back in the 1950s and 1960s, when we blithely attended our "Americanism vs. Communism" classes. BTW, Americanism, whatever that is, won.

One thing I will tell those students: history education only begins when we get out of school. Experience will teach you that Americanism has many faces, some of them glorious and some quite ugly. I'm hoping that you will read widely, watch a lot of offbeat indie films, learn another language, travel all over, and talk to everyone you meet. People will tell you the darndest things, if only you lift your head from the iPhone and really listen. Family elders are a great source of information and bullshit. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. My suggestion is to check your elders' facts. If they tell you, as Bluto Blutarsky did so famously in "Animal House," that the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, check it out. After all, fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

I'm impressed with the student activism I've seen out of this generation. Elders are supposed to spend an inordinate amount of time criticizing the younger generations. I suppose I've done some of that. But those 20-somethings and 30-somethings that I've met in the arts world and progressive politics, well, they are amazing. Young artists, impatient with the entrenched art establishment, have gone to crowd-funding and other resources to meet their goals. The Wyoming Democrats employed a young undocumented UW graduate as its PR person until recently, when he decamped to Austin to help the Texas Democrats hone their social media outreach. When the Occupy Movement was in full flower, I met young people from throughout Wyoming who were fed up with the status quo and willing to take to the streets to do something about it. Just as those JeffCo students did this week.

Now here comes the advice -- you knew that was inevitable, right? Activism is not a short-term strategy. You have to be in it for the long haul. You will be disappointed. You will fail. At times, you will succeed. When you get to be 60-something, you can look back with satisfaction and say that you fought the good fight.

And that you are fighting it still.

Check out Nancy Sindelar's e-newsletter for progressive happenings around Wyoming

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Get your art history on through Pepper Spray Cop art

This take on "Liberty Leading the People" by Eugene Delacroix has the notable addition of UC Davis's now-infamous Pepper Spray Cop. It's by Brady Hill on Tumblr. More in the Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/pepper-spray-cop-works-his-way-through-art-history/2011/11/21/gIQA4XBmhN_blog.html

Ol' Blue Eyes says (sings) it all about "New York, New York" in 2011

Why have the police resorted to violence against Occupy Wall Street protesters?

Following last month's police brutality in Oakland, and today's summary eviction of the Occupy Wall Street camp (and don't forget Seattle and Denver -- see above photo from Oct. 29 by Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post), American activists are reaching the conclusion that "police protect the 1%". More at Police Violence Reveals a Corrupt System (The Guardian via Common Dreams).

Seattle activist Dorli Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday, November 15, at Westlake Park. Protesters gathered in the intersection of 5th Avenue and Pine Street after marching from their camp at Seattle Central Community College in support of Occupy Wall Street. Many refused to move from the intersection after being ordered by police. Police then began spraying pepper spray into the gathered crowd hitting dozens of people. A pregnant woman was taken from the melee in an ambulance after being struck with spray. Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO / SEATTLEPI.COM

Denver Police overreact (again) at Occupy Denver

Here's how my hometown of Denver looks to the world right now. This photo comes from Westword and was shot by Kelsey Whipple. It shows cops aiming guns filled with pepper bullets at protesters. Photos like this were in newspapers worldwide. Here's the view from the London Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055243/Occupy-Denver-Police-use-rubber-bullets-pepper-spray-protesters.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

My gun is bigger than your nonviolence: Police raise weapons while making an arrest during the Occupy Denver protest in Denver on Saturday. (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post). Photos like this were on the pages of newspapers throughout the world today.

Read more:Occupy Denver protesters, law enforcement officers clash; 20 arrested - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_19223274?source=commented-news#ixzz1cHOwYtyh