It wasn’t Detroit in ’68. It was not even Richard. It was dark. It was dark café days. And it was a time when the U.S. was at war with itself. It wasn’t the first time but I did not know that it would not be the last. The nights were hot and playing out in bloody, shouty conflagrations on the public park lawns of Chicago. The Democrats were more of a party then, united, if weakly, against a man who would eventually become his own enemy of the state and go quietly off to his own ignominy.
I was 14 then and enthralled with being a part of a movement that was moving fast. I did not know these clipped adolescent battles in the spaces of Grant Park would stand to influence the person I later became. I did not know then that nearly a dozen people would die in those contretemps and that death at a rally was even possible. There was an illegal war on and we simply had to show up and be counted to stop it. Kent State was not a household word yet.
The movement matured and so did I, joining the Mobe (National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam), and showing up at the organized Moratorium Day with a crowd too big to be counted on that sunny and cold November day. The marches kept happening. The flowing of tear gas expected, but we showed up just the same. And as the war in Vietnam droned on, the president did what all bad leaders do, surrounded himself with weaker people he thought would take his fall. But he did not have the tools we have now. He did not have a social media disinformation machine that would turn red into green and up into down. We had not yet figured out that facts could be fudged, brazenly and without consequences, on network news, and how fictions could freely take the waves. We still had some rules in place: the fairness doctrine in journalism, faith in an electoral process and in a peaceful transition of power. Our political landscape that had not met Citizens United. Civil debate and friendships thrived across the aisle… We had our work to do but we always knew the right thing would be done, eventually.
We watched the president shrink away a few Augusts later, too blind to see that the taped conversations he believed would preserve his presidential glory would eventually become his prison. There is always a blind side, a gloating vanity to watch for and then follow down like blood to a wounded animal. And there is usually an abusive relative in there somewhere, arching the first arrow.
As I listened to that Joni Mitchell ballad from her breakout Blue album. I cried a little for that time of innocence and yes, it was all that. Even in those dark cafés with spinning 45s in the jukebox and leggy barmaids doling out the beers, there was a dalliance of light, the strum of passionate conversing. Hope and adventurous futures that were just there – just beyond, in squintable reach. We were unstoppable, planning the world to our own liking and it would have accessible rental rates, intellectually challenging and upwardly mobile jobs, and oh yes, all neighborhoods would be integrated.
Some of us went on to have families and work for insurance companies, even fall asleep with the TV on, a Bud in hand and “all the house lights left up bright.” Others of us went on other paths, of struggle and pain and a whole lot of doubt just trying to stay true to the promises we made in those smokey and dark cafes. But we did not blow that old candle out. Dreamers we stayed, believing that there was more work to be done, one more story to write, tale to be told, difference to be made. Until now.
That candle is flickering, drowning in its wick through wet and wind. Weak now, a reflexive wince could put it out. We may be looking at the dim lights and shadows before the next and final movements of regime change bring all hope to a simple snuff. We watch daily as Zelensky battles Putin in a 21st century tale of David and Goliath and every other underdog myth underlying the western zeitgeist. But Zelensky is no man of secret superpowers, just a whole lot of grit and a knowledge that this is a fight to the death because there is no otherwise.
I read Timothy Snyder and his painfully detailed recountings of what has lead us to these moments, and see now that those reports are just the preview. Putin has his pieces in place, his information distorting machine at capacity showing that his legions are defending the great motherland against Nazi Ukraine’s takeover. And the people clap to the timbre of updates on the airwaves.
I see a 2024 presidency that will be making America great again and the people will gladly give up their democracy for the wonderful favor. Marches will be met with bullets and arrests. Attempted abortions will be met with jail time. Proud Boy (aka Brown Shirts and Night Wolves) will likely see fit to set up ad hoc check points in territories they want to claim and California will eventually give long, hard thought to becoming America II, the Still Beautiful.
We don’t know where the current war will lead, but it is global, even if not in name. Still, we wrap ourselves up in a dyed in the wool democracy, grip tightly to what truths we can, maintain a leap of faith in our court systems and harbor an embedded notion that elections are sacred. We clutch tightly to the sense that we can walk through the streets and pursue our dreams without a thought to what reversals we will meet on the next block, in the next email or on the next evening news segment.
So I listen to Joni and shed a tear for those dark café days and a memory of when a nearly-impeached president faded away because there was still a country that made sense. And I walk in peace, block to block, café to café, while I still can.
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