activism – Treehouse Writers

It’s going to be Thanksgiving in the United States in a couple of weeks, and that got me to thinking about the people who worked hard and made sacrifices to make sure “we the people” means everybody. Given the way the current regime is trying to destroy those rights, it seems important to remember how we got them and what we need to do to keep them.

I’m thinking about these things in the United States because that’s the history I know best and it’s also where rights are under attack right now. But you can find similar histories in many countries.

Me, I thank the suffragists who made it possible for me to vote and led to many more women in positions of authority. That happened 105 years ago now, which may seem like ancient history if you were born in this century, but doesn’t seem that long ago at all if you’re my age.

I mean, my grandmothers were born before women could vote in the United States. My mother was born just three years afterwards.

I also thank the predecessors of the suffragists, the women who organized for their rights back in the 1800s, often working alongside abolitionists. I looked up the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and discovered that Frederick Douglass – who was the only African American at the convention – argued strongly for the inclusion of women’s right to vote, which was why they included it in their statement.

Douglass’s efforts in this regard are just one reason I think the abolitionist and the later civil rights movement were critical to rights that I have, and that we all share these days.

It’s not really freedom if it’s not freedom for all. The activism that finally implemented some of the rights set out in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments not only expanded the freedom of Black people, but expanded the rights for everyone.

I also thank unions for my freedoms. I’m personally grateful to the News Guild, my union, which enabled me to retire in reasonable comfort, but I’m grateful in general to all those people who fought for workers’ rights over many years, and who are still hanging in the fight right now. Continue reading “Feeling Thankful”…

Anyone who has followed my social media for more than a few weeks know that I don’t shy away from having an opinion, nor do I shirk from standing up and making some noise in support of what I think is right. So when the BLM/anti-police brutality protests started in Seattle, I laced up my boots, wrote the number of my bail contact on my arm, and went down to Capital Hill.

That night was not the first time I’d seen the police attack unarmed protesters. It was, however, the first time I’d ever been tear-gassed or shot at. And I discovered – much to my own dismay – that my first instinct is not to run from danger, but to run into it.

(short story shorter: I got my companions out of danger, then went back in, because the cops were using flashbangs as well as tear gas, people needed ear protection, I had a 50-set pack of earplugs, and… Somewhere, my mother is sighing, but also, I think, a little proud.)

ANYway. A little while after that, my boss mentioned that she was attending a training session for basic techniques in militant nonviolent civil protest, sponsored by Valley & Mountain and Washington Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. And I thought, “if you’re going to continue to be a chaotic good paladin idiot, you probably need that.”

Continue reading “Love, Anger, And A Skinned Elbow.”…