A new friend asked me recently to describe what I did during my time as a political organizer. I've not written much about my past and quite diverse work life. An older friend once described me as "veiled", an adjective I was surprised by because my perception of myself is more like a sufferer of social tehret's (sp?)- a woman who offers too much out of the conversational starting gate and, consequently, puts others off. Ahhh, the great etiquette expert.
Note: I'm having a bad night so my self-appraisal skills may be skewed toward meg-flagelation (whip on the back, if you get my drift.)
To some degree, the later may be a cultural difference - the Southern ex-pat living in the Midwest. In the area of the South where I grew up (Charlotte, N.C.), it is perfectly normal to pop into a convenience store for a cup of coffee and a Bama Pecan Pie (oh, baby) and exit only after discovering the clerk working behind the counter, Tina Marie, is dating a man whose son, PJ, just happened to have been the high school beau of your eldest niece, Glenna. Pj is now doing 8 to 10 for vehicular manslaughter.
In turn, you have shared w/ Tina Marie the fact that your daughter has a learning disability, is being placed in Special Ed, has not responded well to medication and your husband is refusing to admit there is any substantive problem so you've been sleeping in separate bedrooms for months. As Tina Marie hands you your change, you tell her to please give PJ Glenna's love the next time she makes it up to Oswald for a visit.
Midwesterners by nature are judiciously more reserved. "Looks like we might get some snow." "Yep." Mountain Dew and Twizzlers have been secured. End of transaction.
Here is the brief (and perfunctory) description of one of my gigs as a professional organizer.
I worked for the Maryland Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze in the mid-80's as one of 2 organizers in the state - as in common place, we had to raise all the money for our own jobs. We did everything from (1) producing the monthly newsletter, preparing it (and all) bulk mailing(s) and navigating the mystery of the various bureaucracies that comprise the main Baltimore Post Office (2) feeding begged for (i.e. donated) chainstore pizza to, and securing housing for, the myriad of groups of hungry & exhausted 100+ (once it was closer to a thousand) walk-across-the-country-for-peace peace marchers, (3)recruiting phone-canvassers and door-knockers for GOTV (get out the vote) campaigns for Freeze-endorsed candidates (we worked for Central American solidarity issue-oriented candidates as well, but sort of "off record") (4) renting and, occasionally, quarelling over the number of port-a-potties necessary to rent for any upcoming ginormous DC rally -- to -- (5) chasing our tails between our legs as we ran our behinds back and forth across the state speaking to community groups, schools, radio and television reporters/hosts (whose cameramen seemed to all share the uncanny ability to eradicate the presence of my chin) about the escalation and enormously devastating effects of the Arms race (6) stomping on Capitol Hill twice a month vying for the attention of elected officials who knew from experience the most they could hope for from us was lunch in the congressional cafeteria w/ a balding geologist from Hopkins while a pack of sweet suits from ,say, GE w/ a set of 23 year old "twins" named Carla & Karla stood behind us waving a corporate gold card over our heads (7) battling no good downtown Balto slumlords, losing, and, subsequently, buying a building collectively with Physicians for Social Responsibility and Nuclear Free America (8) having some of the best all around de-stressing from 120-plus-hour-work-weeks fun imaginable (I worked with some of the most generous and wonderful people on the PLANET - only one other staffer but lots of volunteers.) Oh yeah, we also did a lot of fund-raising, administrative everything (all our computing back then was on a Kaypro!), civil disobedience, laughing at ourselves, organizational inventories, random acts of everyday kindness and spent hours and hours working on coming to consensus about all major decisions (more coffee, more pizza more laughter - please!)
Is it time to do this all over again? I am willing - and eager - to do anything that might contribute to stopping the insanity of producing more and more weapons that can annihilate this PLANET (and every gorgeous soul interdepent with her) a thousand times over. The passion I've always felt (and feel) about things - peace and justice issues, poetry, cooking, people, music, film, even blogging (read: writing) - are one the ways God communicates with me. Those things that cry out from my heart to be addressed and nurtured are God-inspired - the great divine and loving heart showing me I can and do love and care. By honoring those things God has so graciously given me to love, I have the incredible opportunity of giving back to God just a tiny fraction of all He has given to me. This ROCKS!
It's so simple, so obvious but given my propensity to overthink everything it's no surprise I should only finally be truly comprehending the beautiful justice of this at the age of 46. I've thought this many times - esp. as it pertained to others - just never really believed it in terms of myself. Why? I suspect like a lot of things in my life, I was going at the thing backwards. I may have been in the right place but I wasn't looking to the right place for the answers - and the solution. As Steve Earle once said about finally figuring out transcedence, "F*ck me." Now there's a man who walks the walk.
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