And yet I didn’t go to a march in Washington last month. Instead, I walked along the beach in my hometown the next day with my fiance and a hundred others, some of whom had emerged from a returning D.C. bus minutes earlier. In a fit of political defiance, I pasted a giveaway sticker that said ATTACK IRAQ? NO! to the bumper of my car after the rally. I’ve been frightened someone will flatten my tires or key my paint job ever since. And perhaps that is a sign of who I’ve become.
I’m a professional now, a far cry from the budding radical I was at 22. In 1990, I volunteered to be arrested at a war protest in the college town where I lived, and spent an afternoon eating bologna sandwiches in jail with a fellow protester. My co-conspirator was Spruce, a conservationist who was opposed to the war because of the potential damage it would do to the environment. We planned to show up in court wearing Groucho Marx glasses with the noses and mustaches, but we couldn’t get them in time.
The next month, bombs started falling on Baghdad, and I was arrested again, this time for planting myself at the town’s main intersection along with 102 other activists. Police herded us onto buses and took us to the unheated locker room of the town swimming pool that served as a temporary jail. Sitting in the cold for four hours didn’t bother me; I was doing what I believed in with others who felt the same.
During that first gulf war, my activism shaped my entire life. I was angry at all things establishment. My father had died almost a year to the day before the hostilities began, and I saw protesting as a way to prevent other deaths. I quit my corporate job to move into a cabin with an outhouse and spent 12 hours a day working with peace groups to stage protests, marches, sit-ins and seminars.
I met people from many different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds, and I learned they weren’t very different from me. I took active-listening workshops to deal with counterprotesters and learned skills I still use to great effect in the business world. I found out who I was and dreamt about who I might become. I never imagined that would be a person who valued the comfort of daily routine over the thrill of getting involved.
I still stand fast in my conviction that war is wrong. I avoid watching footage from the front lines and cringe when I accidentally catch an image while switching channels. I cheered the low-keyed protests at the Oscars and applauded the throngs of people all over the world who took to the streets when the war started. I respect the protesters who made a point of carrying support the troops signs, and I agree that the best way to support them is to bring them home as quickly as possible. Even so, something has changed. I’m not the peace activist I was a decade ago.
I’d like to believe that’s because I’ve learned that one person can’t change the world. If I had been a voter anywhere other than Palm Beach County, Fla., in the 2000 presidential election, I could give this excuse some credence. I know better, because if it weren’t for a few hundred votes in my county–for the infamous butterfly ballot and the ultimately less significant hanging chad–Al Gore might be president today.
The truth is, as I get older I feel less and less of the righteous anger that used to fuel my activism. It just seems too inconvenient to spend 20 hours one way on a bus singing “Give Peace a Chance” so that I can spend another four hours marching on our nation’s capital. And I can’t take the time off work. I know that my boss, a dedicated Republican, would let me go even if I told him the reason, but it’s not worth the spirited discussions we’d have before I left.
I haven’t completely given up. I vote in every election. I occasionally do volunteer work as a member of the local Libertarian Party and plan to run for city commissioner in two years. I go to neighborhood association meetings with religious frequency. The difference is that now I’m working to change my world, not the world. I’ve been surprised to find that I’m much more content that way.
I will still think about the people at the center of the storm for a few minutes every day, just as I did during the last gulf war. And like last time, I will spend those minutes hoping that it’s a quick war, one in which civilian–and military–casualties are few. One from which my friend the Marine comes home safely.
