last good country

The raid on McPherson Square

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:22:00 -0500

On Saturday, the Occupy DC encampment at McPherson Square was raided by the United States Park Police. Officers and National Park Service employees in hazmat suits, surrounded by riot police and mounted police systematically shut down the park and removed most of the tents.

I spent much of Saturday afternoon at McPherson, watching the park service move through the park, taking down one of the longest running occupations. It was a brisk day, that turned to a wintry mix by sundown. There were only a handful of arrests, and until the police moved in to shut down the last corner of the park—little aggression.

It was only as the last part of the park was cleared that Park Police riot officers were captured on video moving aggressively through the crowd. It was a seemingly needless move when there was no urgent need to clear demonstrators. Those who resisted the order to leave could have been arrested, rather than shoved, risking trampling by horses, officers, or other demonstrators.

As I stood in the rain, watching occupiers gather in the last quadrant before it was clearned, it was a mix of emotion. People were preparing to make their last stand outside of the library, which ultimately the Park Police preserved, and allowed Eric, a librarian to remain with the books as they cleared the park around it. As riot police, along with SWAT members gathered, one occupier announced “Mic Check! Occupy dinner!” carrying pizzas that had been delivered.

Occupy DC has meant different things to people. For some, it had become home. For others, it was an eyesore that needed to go. For me, the occupation was important for a variety of reasons. I remember when it first began, I stopped by a few times to deliver supplies. I was excited by the Occupy movement, and was glad to see it take hold along K Street.

Occupy DC’s persistence is what has been so important to me. Even after the park was cleared on Saturday, seeing Occupy DC hold their general assembly in the middle of K Street in the cold rain was extremely moving.

Occupy DC, and the larger Occupy movement has been important because it hasn’t gone away. Here at McPherson, it provided community for those who wanted to speak out about the problems we are facing as a country. It provided a home, and a voice, for many who previously had neither. It also served as a very visible reminder to all who passed by that as long as the problems of money in politics, a rigged financial system, and massive inequality persist—so will the occupation.

I know I am not the only one who was moved by the Occupy movement, and who took a part of what they saw and heard with them. The message of the 99%, and that things can change if we want them to has reverberated across our society. And that’s important. That’s how change is made. Change isn’t dictated from on high. Change doesn’t trickle down. We have to make it ourselves. It starts with us. Each of us.

We all knew the clearing of McPherson was inevitable. It looks like the Department of the Interior was pushed to do it now by Darrell Issa, but it would have come sometime. In the final days of Occupy DC before the raid, they erected a massive “tent of dreams” over the center of the park. Some thought this was a dumb move, but personally I thought it was a wonderful symbol.

There’s a comic level of absurdity to the fact that corporations can spend millions, or billions if they wanted, on speech. Unlimited. And that this is all protected. Enshrined by the first amendment of the Constitution. However, to occupy physical space, with actual speech, and actual grievances, well that is subject to all sorts of limitations.

Maybe in a world that made more sense, those restrictions also made sense. However, the ability of people to pump millions upon millions of dollars into our political system is unprecedented. So I would expect nothing less of us as Americans then to meet that with an unprecedented amount of resistance. I’d say a 128 day occupation along K Street through winter was pretty damned good effort.

So of course we ask what’s next. How does the movement evolve. Where to go now? I understand that many of those who called McPherson Square home are upset. Something they built and cared for has been torn down. But, as has been said after the raid on Oscar Grant Plaza, or on Liberty Plaza, you cannot evict an idea.

Where to next? Well, we’ll see. But for now, I’d like to say thank you to all of those who have held down the camp at McPherson. I can only imagine how difficult it has been. It hasn’t always been perfect, and I know that together, as advocates for the 99% we can and must do better to spread the message. We will each continue to do so in our own lives, and will find new ways to come together.

I know this: it’s not over. It can’t be over. There’s too much work to do, both here in our city, in Congress, and all over our country. Spring is coming. Change is still in the air.

And we’ll all keep fighting. The alternative is unacceptable.

For Pete's sake

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:35:29 -0500

I’ve watched most of the Republican debates.

I know a lot of Democrats say that Mitt Romney is the person we’d least like to face in November. That Romney is the most electable of the Republicans.

It’s crystal clear that Mitt Romney is completely out of touch with not just the 99%, but the 99.9%. Mitt Romney exists on a level where he really believes that he earned his fortunes the old fashioned way, through hard work, and damned if he’ll be criticized for that. Romney certainly did earn his money the old fashioned way—by being born into a rich, powerful, and white family. Who are we kidding, Romney’s father was governor of Michigan and ran for president, for Pete’s sake.

However, sometimes I do think about the contrast. While President Obama has not been the ideal liberal, progressive president, his candidacy and presidency have represented something important. He was not born into the ruling class. But, more importantly, his campaign in 2008 represented the idea that people could have a say in how things are run, and that we have a duty and obligation to step up and do the work.

I hear a lot of talk about how the 2012 election will be about choosing what kind of country we want to be. I think that’s dead on. We do need to decide where we want to go.

Mitt Romney and the broken Republican “establishment” (whatever that even means) represent a clear view. They are rich and powerful and they know what’s best for everyone. They talk about how they don’t want the “government” to tell people what’s best, but who they kidding? All they do is talk about how they know what’s best, and last time I checked, President is a government job.

Romney will tell you what’s best, he’s got carnal knowledge of the economy (because he’s been inside it), and just listen to him and everything will be just fine.

The alternative viewpoint is that there’s a whole lot of work to do. There’s a lot of work to do, and it’s hard work. It’s recognizing that there are often no easy answers, and that most of the work is grueling and thankless. But, it’s urgent work.

So I can see how a lot of people who have been beaten down and had their livelihoods destroyed might lean towards the first choice. They are sick and tired and upset and don’t want to think about it and just want all of this to go away.

But I believe that something is happening. People are sick and tired and upset, but are beginning to realize that we, the people, are the only ones who can do anything about it. Voting for Mitt Romney isn’t going to make any of these problems go away. That’s what Romney would like us all to think, but to borrow a Gingrich attack, we aren’t that stupid and he isn’t that clever.

Voting for Barack Obama in November won’t make the problems go away, either. But voting for Barack Obama is a rejection of the notion that we should return to the idea that rich, white, usually old men know best and will take care of it for us.

The president isn’t perfect, and I don’t always agree with him and all of those other standard disclaimers. But I know this—we have had tangible victories that would not have been possible under a Republican president. I wish that some change would come faster. I wish sometimes we’d see more bold action from the president. But I also know that change comes slowly. And I also know that real change doesn’t come from the top down.

Mitt Romney is the perfect candidate to represent the Republican Party. He’s everything they have become. He’s everything politics in America has become. He’s condescending, patronizing, and hypocritical. He doesn’t believe in anything other than that he’d like to be president. As such, I’d be happy with him as his party’s nominee.

Romney represents the worst of American politics.

Meanwhile, more and more of us are stepping up to represent the best. I don’t believe that President Obama will solve all of our problems. But I’d much rather be fighting for change against an Obama administration than any other possibility.

Blackout

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:31:23 -0500

I’m all in favor of stopping SOPA/PIPA, but please remember that myself and 600,000 of my neighbors do not have Senators or Representatives.

Twenty-eleven, done

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 21:09:00 -0500

I go back and forth on whether this year went by in an instant, or if it seemed to last forever. It feels like it was only moments ago that the Draft Weaver campaign began, but that much more than a year passed since my grandmother passed away. I am so very thankful for the fact that years roll over, that we give ourselves the opportunity to hit a reset button.

I began this year with a hefty list of resolutions. I stuck with some of them, and let others fall to the side. I took some big steps towards my goal of being more involved, helping to launch a campaign for city council and change the conversation of that election. I learned so much from that experience, about organizing, politics, and most of all, people. I saw many people get involved for the first time—and do amazing things. We did so much in such a short period of time. I’ll always remember 2011 for being the year when people around the world decided that they were tired of waiting for others to stand up.

It’s really about taking chances. Trying something. Standing up. As Steve Jobs put it, “if I try my best and fail, well, I tried my best.” This year seemed to be about a whole lot of people realizing “if not us, then who?” As a city, as a nation, and as a planet we are facing problems that are both dire and complex. Our institutions have proven themselves unwilling and incapable of solving these problems. That leaves us.

You’ll never regret trying and failing. I promise. I spent a lot of time this year realizing that. Maybe things get tough, or it seems like it doesn’t matter, but the effort is worth it. You don’t have to do big things to make an important difference. Small things matter just as much. I know we all don’t have the time or energy to do big things all of the time. Take it slow. No matter what, though, remember that you do matter and you do count and your voice is heard and is not nothing.

Aside from getting involved, 2011 was a big year for me for travel and my career. I spend a lot of time up in the air, flying nearly 27,000 miles. I ended up back in Seattle for the first time since 2006, and for the first time ever visited Los Angeles.

I had the chance to spend a good amount of time in the city of Chicago this summer, which was wonderful. While in Chicago, I met many awesome people, took my girlfriend to President Obama’s birthday party, visited the Rush University Medical Center when I broke a wine glass in my hand, saw old friends, visited my family, and spent time at the Sierra Club Chicago office.

This summer, I decided that it was time to pursue a career change. I had been working in IT and operatons support at the Sierra Club, but wanted to switch to something more organizing or campaign oriented. I spent several months applying for jobs. I was not expecting much, due to the recession and the fact that there are a lot of people smarter than myself looking for jobs.

Eventually I was offered an opportunity to move into the Online Organizing department at the Sierra Club. I accepted that offer in October, and now officially am an organizer. It’s been quite an amazing change of pace, and I am very thankful to have the opportunity to help make some positive change.

I don’t know what will happen in 2012, but I know that if 2011 was the year of standing up, this will be the year where we fight. From the Arab Spring to Occupy, we are beginning to realize that The Powers That Be don’t always have to be. We are realizing that when everything that is important to us is under attack—we can, and must, fight back.

I have many memories from this year that I will hopefully never forget. Among them was something I overheard marching down K Street with Occupy DC after a Keystone XL Pipeline action at the White House. As we were marching—stopping traffic with a police escort—I heard a woman say,

I never thought I had any power. I never thought I counted.

2012. It’s time to stand up and be counted.

Keep strong, keep fighting.

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:10:22 -0500

Keep strong, keep fighting.

Unthinkable convergences

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:33:36 -0500

“Can the unity cultivated in the encampments survive as the Occupy movement evolves into a more decentralized phase? All sorts of class, racial, and cultural divisions persist within that 99%, including distrust between members of the former “liberal elite” and those less privileged. It would be surprising if they didn’t. The life experience of a young lawyer or a social worker is very different from that of a blue-collar worker whose work may rarely allow for biological necessities like meal or bathroom breaks. Drum circles, consensus decision-making, and masks remain exotic to at least the 90%. “Middle class” prejudice against the homeless, fanned by decades of right-wing demonization of the poor, retains much of its grip.

“Sometimes these differences led to conflict in Occupy encampments — for example, over the role of the chronically homeless in Portland or the use of marijuana in Los Angeles — but amazingly, despite all the official warnings about health and safety threats, there was no “Altamont moment”: no major fires and hardly any violence. In fact, the encampments engendered almost unthinkable convergences: people from comfortable backgrounds learning about street survival from the homeless, a distinguished professor of political science discussing horizontal versus vertical decision-making with a postal worker, military men in dress uniforms showing up to defend the occupiers from the police.”

—The Making of the American 99% And the Collapse of the Middle Class

"When will it come to America?"

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:35:00 -0500

“In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.

“As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.

“Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.

“The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.”

— Joseph Stiglitz, Vanity Fair, May 2011

This is wonderful.

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:23:31 -0500

This is wonderful.

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows...

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 22:48:26 -0500

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

We all know things are bad — worse than bad — they’re crazy.

It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”

Well, I’m not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad.

You’ve gotta say, “I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!”

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.

Stand up, fight back

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:13:00 -0500

I don’t think I have all of the words to say any of this right, but here goes.

I remember over ten years ago attending my first protest march, down Halsted Street in Chicago. It was a march against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. I don’t remember how many people were there, and I don’t remember feeling particularly fired up. I had a vague sense of why people were there, but it didn’t feel important and it felt like there was barely any “movement,” behind it.

I didn’t go to the Pershing Park protest in D.C., one that would become infamous because of the police response. That event would go on to give birth to D.C.’s First Amendment Rights and Police Standards Act of 2004.

Most of the time, most of us don’t give a lot of thought to the First Amendment. We may hear abstractions about why it’s important—or we study cases in a Constitutional Law course. I know that was true of me, at least. I was aware of First Amendment case law and such, but it was never really personal.

Then Occupy happened. I know I didn’t see it coming. Like most people, I was upset with what was going on in America, but I hadn’t found a way to vocalize it. Now, in a span of just a few months, so many things have changed. We’re having conversations in every city in the United States about how things are not right.

I don’t know how to solve many of the problems we are facing as a country. But, what I do know, is that the first step to solving them is standing up and saying things are not okay.

I’ve heard people say “what’s the point of camping?” The point of camping, and the point of occupying, is to make the statement that things are not okay and we are going to remind you every single day. We can barely keep our attention span as a nation on anything. Solving the biggest problems we have faced in decades will require a perseverance many of us thought we might not have. But damned if we have it. We have it in New York. We have it in Oakland. We have it in D.C. We have it at Berkeley. We have it at U.C. Davis.

So when I hear people say that we can’t allow people to camp overnight, because it violates some rule or regulation, I reject that. When I hear people say we can’t afford to “police” these protesters because our city budgets are stretched too thin—I reject that, too.

If we can’t come together as a nation and figure out how to support free speech when our nation is in crisis—well then, I don’t know that we even have a nation worth saving.

I don’t know where any of this is heading, or what the ultimate outcome will be. And that’s the most exciting part of this. Every time that a crackdown has been billed as the beginning of the end, Occupy has only grown.

People of all types are coming together to say that things are not right, but maybe together we can start putting our nation back together.

Yesterday was the 148th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Yesterday, people in hundreds of cities across the country continued to occupy and talk about how we can keep fighting the fight to make sure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.

If you are wondering when the silent majority might start...

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 01:00:55 -0500

If you are wondering when the silent majority might start speaking up, the answer might be after they see this. Police pepper spray students at UC Davis who were sitting on the quad in support of #Occupy. Horrifying video.

Photo

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:12:44 -0500

An idea whose time has come.

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:48:16 -0500

An idea whose time has come.

The show goes on

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:42:03 -0400

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

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:15:00 -0400

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

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:44:00 -0400

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

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:17:56 -0400

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

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 21:50:06 -0400

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.

"What more can you ask for in life than to be given an impossible challenge?"

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:26:34 -0400

“What more can you ask for in life than to be given an impossible challenge?””

- Mayor Cory Booker

Halfway

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 18:41:18 -0400

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.