last good country

The show goes on

So no matter what you been through
No matter what you into
No matter what you see when you look outside your window
Brown grass or green grass
Picket fence or barbed wire
Never ever put them down
You just lift your arms higher
Raise em till’ your arms tired
Let em’ know you’re there
That you struggling and survivin’ that you gonna persevere
Yeah, ain’t no body leavin, no body goin’ home
Even if they turn the lights out the show is goin’ on

DC, Occupied

Last week, a group of demonstrators from Occupy DC marched in solidarity with Occupy Oakland. When they reached the Wilson Building—the District’s city hall—they took down the D.C. flag and replaced it with their own Occupy DC flag.

Some people were outraged.

I think that it was wonderful.

I was outraged by what happened in Oakland. I’ve been outraged at what’s been happening in our country, and in this very city, for years. All of that outrage has also been coupled with cynicism and a feeling of hopelessness. Sure, we get fired up now and again for an election, and we agitate where and when we can for change. But at the end of the day, far too often, we’re left having to accept the status quo for a variety of reasons.

If you had asked me a few months ago if I thought people would take to the streets over any of this, I’d probably have said “I think that would be great, but it will never happen.”

But, here we are. Occupiers have set up in most every city in the country. They are people who showed up and have kept showing up. They aren’t going home. They come from all over and for any number of reasons but what connects them all is the fact that they are here and they are not going home.

I hear people say “but what is their message?” or “well, they don’t speak for me.” As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick wrote last week, “It takes a walloping amount of willful cluelessness to look at a mass of people holding up signs and claim that they have no message.”

The message has been brilliant and so well done. “We are the 99%” is more about saying “We are everyone,” than anything else. It’s not about violently overthrowing capitalism and redistributing income. It’s about saying “things are messed up, and it’s time we came together to fix them.”

One of my favorite Occupy chants is “whose streets? our streets!” I think it’s great because it’s literally true. For too long we’ve forgotten that these are our streets. That these parks, they are our parks. But, most importantly, that our government belongs to us. City hall is our city hall. The government is not some monolithic thing that exists and that we simply have to accept as being incompetent or corrupt.

So, no, I don’t have a problem with people for a brief moment taking that flag pole.

And I certainly don’t have a problem with a movement that is growing by the day and making people feel like their voice—and their participation—matters. That’s important. That’s more important than anything else right now.

In this age where politicians go on television and shout nonsense, I could never have dreamt of a better contrast than the human microphone. Something so basic, yet seemingly long forgotten, that everyone’s voice matters.

I can’t think of anything more American, or more beautiful, than a crowd of concerned citizens coming together and finding a way so no one’s voice is lost.

Occupy Everywhere

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets, then thousands.  And in the face of batons and sometimes bullets, they refused to go home, day after day, week after week …

… the events of the past six months show us that strategies of repression and strategies of diversion will not work anymore.  Satellite television and the Internet provide a window into the wider world—a world of astonishing progress in places like India and Indonesia and Brazil.  Cell phones and social networks allow young people to connect and organize like never before.  And so a new generation has emerged.  And their voices tell us that change cannot be denied.

In Sanaa, we heard the students who chanted, “The night must come to an end.”

In Benghazi, we heard the engineer who said, “Our words are free now.  It’s a feeling you can’t explain.”

In Cairo, we heard the voice of the young mother who said, “It’s like I can finally breathe fresh air for the first time.” 

In Damascus, we heard the young man who said, “After the first yelling, the first shout, you feel dignity.” 

- President Barack Obama

And in Oakland, we heard the people chant, “We are the 99 percent.”

Day after day. Week after week.

Bullet the Blue Sky

I never saw the World Trade Center.

This was as close as I got, two months after the towers collapsed.

This photo was taken on Thanksgiving Day. I had never been to New York City before. I was there with my father, as we drove around the East Coast visiting colleges. I was seventeen. The first thing we did when we arrived in Manhattan was go up to the top of the Empire State Building. On one side of the observation deck I looked down and saw the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. The giant Snoopy balloon looking like a miniature toy. On the other side, looking towards lower Manhattan, there was still a fog of smoke around where the twin towers had been.

It’s been ten years, and for nine of them I’ve lived in Washington, D.C. On September 11, though, I was at home in the suburbs of Chicago. Like on the East Coast, it was a beautiful and clear summer day. I watched the second plane hit the south tower live on the Today show. I did not go to school that day, I stayed home and watched the television all day. And all night.

I’ll always remember those typical things about that day, how beautiful the weather was, where I was when I first heard, the usual. My parents live under the approach pattern for Midway Airport, so I’ll also remember how quiet the skies were for several days following the attacks. I’ll remember how, when watching the second tower being hit, I felt a fear that I had never before known. Those are the things we all remember, they are the usual touchstones that we come back to because everything else is, well, a lot more complicated.

Ten years is a bit of time.

Watching the run up to the tenth anniversary, I’ve seen a lot of attempts at what does it all mean? A bit of time has passed. Osama bin Laden is now dead. We’ve seen the folly of a war entered in haste and done the accounting both in dollars and casualties. We’ve build an entire security infrastructure to protect ourselves against the unknown terrorists lurking in the dark. We’ve grown accustomed to fear. The new normal isn’t so much new anymore, just normal.

I’ve lived in D.C. for nine years. Nine years of the new normal. I don’t think about terrorism everyday, and if you asked me to list my biggest worries and fears, it probably wouldn’t make the top ten.

A few weeks ago there was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake not far from Washington. I was at my dentist, in downtown, a few blocks from the White House. When I felt the building shake, my first thought was that a bomb had exploded. It wasn’t exactly logical, the shaking lasted a good 25 seconds, longer than the blast from an explosion.

I raced down the stairs and headed outside, fully expecting to see smoke coming from either the Capitol or the White House. I started to hear word that it was an earthquake, which provided a bit of relief.

Right after September 11, I remember wondering how a day could ever go by without thinking about what had just happened. Like everything, though, it fades. Time passes. We go on.

Ten years is a bit of time.

I wish I knew what it all meant. People are trying to say what it all means. People are trying very hard to piece it all together. To draw a line from the people jumping from a tower on a clear blue day to air strikes in the Afghan mountains and back again. We want to know what it all means. We killed bin Laden, that’s something, we half-ask and half-tell.

Ten years later and I wish I could say what it means, if even just to me. But that’s a hard one. It’s tough. When I look at the pictures or watch the videos from that day, my body relives a bit of that fear. That shock. That sadness.

I know things have changed a lot since then. It’s been ten years. We’ve been over this again and again, each year reopening the wounds, barely allowing for even a scar to form.

I can close my eyes and remember what it was like walking between buildings at my high school, looking up at a clear blue sky, quiet and without any airplane contrails.

I can also close my eyes and remember seeing the south tower erupt into flames on live television.

09-11-01, Never forget.

I haven’t forgotten. I don’t think I ever will.

But I think it might be okay if we do, just a little bit.

Slow down

On Sunday night I cut my hand.

I was washing a stemmed wine glass and it shattered in my hand. I sliced my thumb pretty bad. There was glass and blood everywhere. I don’t react well to my own blood, and I began to feel sick and lightheaded. My girlfriend and her roommate got me into a car and drove me to the Rush University emergency room.

All told it’s just six stitches in my left thumb. My left hand. “No big deal,” I thought. Then I tried to do things. Anything, really. As it turns out, opposable thumbs are extremely useful.

I’m very lucky, I only sliced my thumb, and this will heal in a week or so. I have health insurance. I have access to medical care. In under two hours, I was stitched up and sent home. In the grand scheme of things, it’s nothing.

But, it has forced me to slow down. I have to spend more time on pretty much everything. Taking a shower. Getting dressed. Cleaning. Eating. Unpacking. It all takes longer.

I like to do things fast. I don’t go slow. It’s an adjustment. It’s forced slow motion.

I’ll adapt. And before I know it, I’ll be back to normal. I know many people don’t have that luxury. In the meantime, it’s just frustrating. It’s silly, I know.

Halfway

I started this year off with a good deal of introspection. Not only did I want to approach this year with a list of things to accomplish, but also with a new mindset. The change was long-coming, and it had happened before the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2011.

But, the new year gives us a much needed chance to reset. The year is roughly halfway over now, so I thought I would take a moment to reflect on where I’ve been, and where I am headed. I think it’s a good thing to every now and again take a moment to pause.

I started this year with one thought, to venture. To push myself. To get uncomfortable. As Liz Danzico put it, “One must get uncomfortable. If you venture a little, you will evolve a little. If you venture a lot, you may evolve a lot.”

One of my resolutions this year was to get more involved, especially in my city. A few days after writing my list of resolutions, I launched the campaign to draft Bryan Weaver for D.C. Council. That decision would lead to one of the hardest things I have ever worked on, but also one of the most fulfilling. It was an incredible learning experience, and I met so many wonderful people along the way. I learned just how true it is that big things can start small. Very small. With one person. And then two. And then a dozen. Watching change ripple through the system has been amazing. Though we did not win the election, we made a difference. We are still making a difference.

I can also cross a few cities off the to-visit list. So far this year I’ve been to Seattle and Los Angeles. I’ve flown about 13,500 miles. I didn’t get to spend much time in either place, but I did get to see them. I’ve got more traveling to do this year, and while I probably won’t make it though my whole list, I’m excited.

Overall, though, the biggest shift is one that as I mentioned began before January. The more I think about it, I see that for as long as I’ve been alive it has been building. I’ve stumbled a few times along the way, but that’s how these things go. For a very long time in my life, I never felt comfortable with myself. I felt like I was waiting, for something, to let me be myself. I saw glimpses of what I could be, or how I wanted to be, but I always found some way to talk myself out of it. No, that’s not possible, I’d tell myself.

Last year I finally realized that it doesn’t have to be like that. I made a dramatic change in my life, and I haven’t looked back. Things do work out. You can take the leap. You can jump off the cliff, and it will be okay. I can’t stress that point enough. The hardest part is knowing what you want to do. Once you have that figured out, just do it. You’ll be okay. I believe in you.

I had no idea what the world would hold for me when I decided not to leave D.C. I came back to this city without a home, and thanks to the kindness of friends I ended up just fine. I was able to see my city, my life, and the world in a different way. I began 2011 with that outlook, and it has not failed me. I firmly believe that when you open yourself to the world you will find that anything is possible. That doesn’t mean any of it is easy, but it is possible.

I still have bad days. I still wonder about what the next six months will hold. At the end of last year, I wrote: “The lesson of 2010 is to find a way to open your heart to the world. When you can do that, good things will happen and the bad things won’t seem so bad. You’ll find that it’s a world of possibilities out there.”

In March, I lost my grandmother to a stroke. Growing up she had been a big part of my life. We stayed close, after I moved to D.C. and as she grew older. The loss was sad, but I found a way to see it that made me more grateful than anything else. The bad things don’t seem so bad. The world has a way of constantly surprising you. It’s a hard thing to do, and I know I don’t always have success, but in those moments of sadness or uncertainty, I try to just say to myself remember what this feels like. You are alive. This is what it means to be alive.

I didn’t understand all of these things before. I wish that I had, because I know that I would have approached so many things differently. However, like everything else in life, we have to learn these things through experience. It never stops, we keep learning, we keep evolving. We learn how to better understand ourselves and others.

As I look towards the rest of this year, I do so with gratitude. For so many things from so many people. No matter what, I will always remember that it’s never too late to do the things you want to do. To be the person you want to be.

The hardest lessons to learn are often the simplest. It’s much easier to reject simple advice because it seems naive. While I’m not all the way there yet (and I don’t know that I ever will be), I’ve come to understand that sometimes the most precious moments in life are the small, fleeting ones. The ones that you can’t always construct elegant prose to describe. These are the moments you didn’t even know were possible until you find yourself in them.

So here’s to twenty-eleven. And to you. And all of us.