What event (s) turned you into the activist that I'm assuming you

[layne]

are? Those of us on this board are different ages, ethnicities, and probably come from very different backgrounds. What is the main event that got you into the political arena more so than the "average" American? For me, without question, it was the stolen election of 2000. However, I know others that were activated by Vietnam, Watergate, etc. I'm just curious regarding what made you say: "OH MY GOD" and then you were changed forever (as I was on 12/12/2000).

[FloridaPat]

1. Ok, so I'm old enough that I got into this during

the 60's during Vietnam. Lot of protests. It was nice to win then. Hope there is some of the country left if we when this time.

[AngryWhiteDemocrat]

2. It started 3 years ago

I've been political for a long time, taking elderly people to the polls, volunteering at Democratic Headquarters, etc.

But my activism started 3 years ago....

My wife was a librarian, and their union went on strike over a multitude of reasons. I got my first real taste of civil disobedience, and I LIKED it.

That's when I became an activist.

I became a radical at Ohio State, when I was detained by the Secret Service for turning my back on Bush.

[Catch22Dem]

6. I remember that one AWD

I must have checked DU 100 times waiting for you to post your account of the graduation where you and others were planning to TYBOB.

Here's to ya. :toast:

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. The conditions farmworkers labored under and the intimidation

they faced for organizing which I witnessed from the time I was 9 years old.

[Catch22Dem]

4. The neverending Whitewater investigation

I thought the whole thing was bullshit, and really became interested in politics when Clinton was impeached, but had really high approval ratings. I remember thinking, what the fuck? If we have "representatives" in D.C. then why aren't they "representing?" If the President has the approval of almost 70% of the country, why are we wasting time and money on this bullshit investigation?

[caledesi]

14. Same here. Total BS.

[NightTrain]

5. Election 1988

When King George I became president after a particularly sleazy campaign against Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis--or more specifically, against prisoner Willie Horton, who the Bush campaign made out as the boogeyman. Not to mention how the mainstream media fawned over Papa George after Dukakis conceded defeat--even Dan Rather, with whom Bush had had an on-air argument earlier that year!

Yep, that was it for me. After Election Day 1988, at age 22, I came to realize that no matter how much it displeased my immediate family, I could no longer act the part of a conservative, as I had been doing all my life to prevent making waves. Fifteen years later, the "L" word in my house is "leftist," baby! And to those of my relatives who continue to disapprove, I can only say this....

_!_

[layne]

11. I also was outraged by everything that happened to the Clinton's

(Whitewater, impeachment, etc.)but I just didn't realize how bad it was (that there REALLY was a "right wing" conspiracy until much later). After the 2000 election, I started reading all of the books: "The Betrayal of America," "The Hunting of the President," "Blinded by the Right," etc. Then, after 911, I started reading about America's foreign policy and discovered Kissinger/Pinochet, more details of Iran-Contra, etc. I just shake my head and say to myself: "What have we done? and will there be a collective Karmic debt that I owe just because I live here?" I don't mean that in the sense of "oh no, I don't want to be held repsonsible." But more in the tone of is there ANYTHING I can do to help repay some of the pain that this country has inflicted?

[utopian]

7. Ronald Wilson Reagan

[ForrestGump]

8. I was born

And I looked about me and I saw that it was not good.

And, yea, I resolved to go forth and kick bubblegum and chew ass; and I was all out of ass.

Thus has it always been - the strong and rich beating down the not-so-strong and not-so-rich - and thus perhaps it will always be. But Pharoah Reagan made me see that to not do whatever one can to end such tyranny is inexcusable. And the attacks on Clinton, particularly the frenzy over Monica, convinced me that America had totally lost the plot. The end of 2000, and the end of America as it once at least pretended to aspire to be, was both the logical progression of that collective insanity and the end of my rope.

Reagan got me alarmed, the attacks on Big Bill got me incensed, and the coup of 2000 just.....just....just.....well, you know.........

[madmax]

9. The 2000 Presidential Campaign

The empty suit candidate, the endless and constant media bashing of Al Gore, Election night when Florida was called for Gore, then pulled back - too close to call. The Florida fiasco, the repug congressional employees rioting in Miami/Dade to stop the vote count. And the final blow, the judicial coup on 12/12/00.

[deek]

10. * campaigning for office in 2000 n/t

.

[LoZoccolo]

12. The Iraq war II but...

...I think what made me really mad enough to actually get into the streets about it, what made it seem necessary to take a visible stand was the War on Dissent that was happening, especially hearing Eric "Mancow" Muller calling people "anti-american" and "peace pussies" and hearing people on the show talk about what we should do to the protesters. It still makes me mad thinking about it.

Lately I've been tossing around this concept in my head, kind of a parallel to the neocon idea that peace is abnormal. The idea is that absence of dissent is abnormal, that there should always be active and open demonstrations about whatever concerns the left, not just when there's a huge crisis, so that our claim to do so is staked out and well established. If we did this, maybe we wouldn't find ourselves in the middle of a debate about whether or not we're "anti-American" when we're trying to bring up something important.

[roughsatori]

13. having parents who could not afford healthcare

My parents had 6 children. I grew up in a trailer park (and I will keep mentioning that fact until DUers stop referring to "white trailer trash." My father worked but could not afford glasses, or dentistry for us children. I remember him pulling out my sister and brother"s teeth. We had a sceptic tank that he could not afford to have emptied--he would drain it out at night 5 feet from our home (trailer).

I was lucky to get out of that enviornment and last year bought my parents a condo so they would not have to live there anymore. My father is a Vet--but I help them with their healthcare now. My father has a 5th grade education; my mother an 8th. They are lifelong Democrats.

It disgusts me when I read posts asking "Why do all trailer-trash vote Repuke?" I guess many progressives were lucky enough to be raised to "look down" on the poor--it is a shame they have not out-grown it.

[layne]

16. I also am disgusted by

the "trailer trash" comments. I think you should be proud and admired that you can help now - Good for you! :-)- My ex was so poor when she was growing up that there was a time they lived in a camp ground. Her father was a janitor. Her brother went on to get an MBA, her sister became a dentist, and she graduated with a B.A. All three kids help their parents whenever necessary (they are the absolute kindest, most loving people). I think I'm more turned off by the class wars and elist attitudes than anything else. In fact, a couple of gay guys who I've been friends with for years are making lots of money and have turned into biggest snobs I've ever known. I don't even want to continue the friendship. They voted for Bush so they would get a break on their taxes! Nevermind that his base is out to get gays. I still can't believe how people literally sell their souls for money - it just freaks me out!!!

[roughsatori]

22. the Log-Cabin gays freak me out totally

I guess greed can destroy any sense of decency.

[anti_shrub]

27. I would say folks like you guys are the minority

for everyone who got themselves out of the trailer park there's probably at least 10-15 others who seem happy living on the wrong end of the poverty line and don't grasp the cognative dissonance of continually voting for a party than makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

[kimchi]

20. I understand completely, roughsatori.

Your life seems to parallel my own. The problem with my illiterate mother and my 7th grade educated father is that they were Republicans. Well, they usually didn't vote, thankfully.

What made me an activist is that I saw so much needless suffering and bitching in my community. The same violence, ignorance, and poverty repeating itself over and over in each generation. I knew that education was the antidote, and resolved to get a degree and get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak. My father and I still argue about politics all the time. The difference is that now he listens to what I have to say because he sees that I DID escape the cycle. Unfortunately the rest of my family hasn't. I like to think I've made a difference since they all come to me for advice and help (and money). Not because I went to college, but because I'm the only one who didn't go to jail or get pregnant at 15. Our family put the "fun" in dysfunctional for sure.

If I can raise my child without the atmosphere of alcoholism, violence, and poverty that I endured, maybe I can escape the shame I still feel sometimes when my husband jokingly calls me redneck trailer trash. If I help someone else end the cycle of poverty then I might begin to be proud of my heritage. But look down on others? Maybe if I didn't know what it was like to eat potatoes every night and shop only at second hand stores I'd have the luxury of being a snob. I can never forget that there are millions of people who have it MUCH worse than I ever did-whether through poverty or abuse, and I won't stop speaking for those who have no voice.

[roughsatori]

25. We had the pregnant 15 year old and the brother in prison too

Yet, I was telling my mother recently how lucky we were, that we didn't starve to death, had clean drinking water, and 2 parents who loved us (yes my father was alcholic, but...). I am outraged when children need health-care and people say "it is the parents job, not mine." And when this talk comes from a "Christian" I could crucify them.

[Arugula Latte]

15. Well

Ever since I woke up one day as a 14-year-old and had to live under Ronald fucking Reagan as president, I've considered myself political. Since then, my passion ebbed and flowed...until George W. Bush and his brother et al blatantly stole the election. What? Democracy can be flushed down the toilet by scrubbing a voter list of several thousand names and the mainstream press doesn't make a peep and then the morans in this country just stick their head in the sand and go along with it? WTF!!! Every day since then I go to bed angry and wake up angry. I try to channel my anger into a little activism. It never feels like enough.

[layne]

19. Oregonian

I sooo know what you're saying. I too go to bed angry and wake up angry about what happened in the election. I have often told friends that my last words on this planet (if I have a death bed scene) will be "He didn't win, he stole the election and no one did ANYTHING! WTF!!!!." I still get so sad when I think about it :-(

[mjb4]

17. Fake Rodney King trails

overly charge the defendants so that no charge is rendered. Instead of charging the defendants with beating the shit out of a black man charge them instead with capital murder and they get off scott free. To this day no one will be able to tell you the charges, but were all up in arms at the verdict. It was all a very sick joke on the stupidity of americans.

[anti_shrub]

18. A few things helped form my activism

Watching St. Ronald's policies destroying the economy around Pittsburgh and causing the company my father worked 36 years for to fold (steel mill).

Owner of said steel mill looting the pension fund and running to Florida, leaving my dad with a meager $200 a month for his 36 years of service.

The repeated insistance of the Social Security Administration that my mom's bone disease would "go away" and having her have to prove her disability every 10 years.

When my dad was dying of cancer, we turned to the VA for some sort of assistance (my dad being a Korea vet and all) and all we got from them was a free headstone that we had to pay the cemetary to set.

When after watching the 867 billonth story on Monica/Ken Starr I realized that the media were bought and paid for whores and no one seemed to care about it.

The final straw was how it seemed like I was the only person aware of the fact that we have an unelected AWOL war mongering fraud occupying the Presidency, and that the War on Terra was drawn up years ahead of time (complete with "Pearl Harbor event").

[UrbScotty]

21. Much of it had to do with 2000, but DU has a part.

I was outraged by the 2000 campaign, and I wanted to do something about it.

My anger was channeled into action when I discovered DU in August of 2002. I found some good activism ideas, found ideas on what to write my Representative and Senators, and a lot more. Maine Mary's story about how she beat the odds to become a State Representative lifted me up when I felt fown in the dumps after last year's midterms. And I have had a great time in the Lounge.

But enough rambling. ;-)

[leftist_rebel1569]

23. Rage Against The Machine

their message got me into politics...this board really helped a lot too

[Coffee Coyote]

24. Anti-apartheid activism - mid80's

Pushing for divestment, sit-ins at my college campus... all that, and Iran-Contra on its heels. Ah, the Reagan years.

[Gingersnap]

26. growing up in the cold war nuclear escalation

really scared me as a kid and young adolescent. I remember starting my own peace anti-nuke magazine in fifth grade and wondering why it wasn't obvious to more people that nuclear proliferation was stupid. But not being old enough to vote and lackluster Democratic candidates put a damper on my enthusiasm for a few years...

Like some of the other responders, I also grew up poor. Both parents were educated, but my mom couldn't find a job and my dad was a teacher. When they divorced my mom and brother and I lived on welfare until she found a shitty minimum wage job at a mall with no benefits. But where I grew up this was sort of normal, except for the divorce part (white conservative religious small town where "good people" didn't get divorced).

I would say rage at the way that poverty has become framed as a moral issue (i.e., the poor are immoral) has definitely contributed to my activism, but I didn't see that in living color until I went away to a private college.

The election really pissed me off, but I was living abroad--in Guatemala-- at the time and had limited access to U.S. news. When I came home I was shocked people weren't more upset about it. I guess I expected Bush to trash the environment and give tax breaks to the rich and increase corporate welfare (some things that Dems have done in the past too), but I never could have predicted Ashcroft and the horrible deeds that have been committed in the name of terrorism. I lived in Guatemala with people who really did have to fear for their lives for criticizing the government during the 80s and felt like I would be a pussy if I just went back to the U.S. and allowed myself and the people around me to be apathetic. Conspiracy theories aside, we can still dissent in this country and go to sleep at night knowing that a death squad won't come in the middle of the night. Our right to stand up to the government is too precious to cede to the war on terrorism.

Sorry to ramble.

[layne]

28. It's the term "trailer trash"

that bothers me. I also wonder why people who are poor would be Republican. A lot of it has to do with people simply being uneducated (regardless of economic status). For example, my two friends (the gay male couple). They both make a lot of money in the entertainment industry (fashion end) but neither has a college education. One went to college for a short time. My point is that they've never taken a sociology course, a cultural diversity class, etc. I know for sure they have no clue who Howard Zinn is or what "A People's History of the United States" is about. They are uneducated and believe EVERYTHING that CNN tells them.

[LWolf]

29. Effects of a liberal childhood.

I was raised by a liberal single mom who stood up for cause after cause after cause. The first significant event I remember was in '70 or '71, or somewhere around that time. I was 10 or 11. She took me to a large building somewhere in L.A.; a "women's" building, or group, or something, to hear Angela Davis speak. It was an underground thing; she was apparently a wanted woman, or at least a closely watched woman, at the time. She spoke about racial injustice as it pertained to black men, crime detection, arrest, and prison.

While I paid attention to issues all of my life, I wasn't really an active participant most of the time; I left that up to mom. Engaging in actual dissent, and working actively in the political arena, began with the 2000 selection.

[clyrc]

30. 2000 election

I was in such despair after the fiasco, it took me a few months to get myself motivated to do something, but eventually I did. I don't feel like I've accomplished all that much, for all the work I've put into it, but I don't regret anything.

[joetruck]

31. Art, nature, Monkeywrench Gang, thoughtful childhood

are some of the things that made me who I am today. At 55 I am proud to be a freethinker and have my parents to thank for it. Years ago after reading the book 'The Monkeywrench Gang' may have been the deciding moment to become politically active in protecting our planet...I realised then that we only get ONE...

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

32. Interest in politics, world history

began in 2000 during the selection. I'd always been interested in history and stuff but it really picked up during that election. I was always a liberal in my opinion, but I began to really understand and learn about what they stood for during the 2000 election.

[dani]

33. East Timor

I accidentally left the radio on all night (tuned to KCMU in Seattle), I awoke early in the morning to hear an interview with an American reporter who was in East Timor during the Indonesian invasion in 1975(?). I was shocked and horrified by what the reporter said, especially when he went on to explain how the USA had provided the weaponry and military support and had given Indonesia the green light to invade (East Timor is not a 'viable entity'). That was about 5 years ago; I had never heard anything like this on the (corporate) news. I went to the library and began to learn more about these things; over the next year I studied the history of US interventions in Latin America. Suffice it to say, my view of the USA as the "arsenal of democracy" flipped 180 degrees. I came to believe that only a genuine bottom-up democracy can put an end to the USA's constant support for tyrants who engage in mass murder -- as long as the USA remains a plutocracy our country's wealth and power will continue to be employed to buttress a cruel global system of poverty and powerlessness for the vast majority.

[LiberalLibra]

34. For me, and this will age me, it started when Kennedy was.....

....killed and over 100 people later died in very suspicious circumstances, including one who was an expert swimmer but somehow drowned. That didn't get me involved in every single election thereafter but I was more involved than most people.

Then came Watergate and that just set my dandruff to flying for months. From that point on I was involved in all but two election processes and those two exceptions found me in the hospital both times.

The stolen election of 2000 just confirmed my suspicions and made me even more determined to fight the neo cons that I think will do anything and everything (regardless of how vile it is) to control our government and the general public's opinions. In other words they will do anything to make everyone think they are the only ones who oppose the neo cons tactics. Especially because of Nov/Dec 2000 I will always be involved in the election process from here on out.

BTW, for those wondering about why the media doesn't report Bush & Co's lies more fairly let me remind everyone that the same kind of thing happened after the Watergate Breakin. It was over two years before things started coming out about what had truly happened and even then it was a tricle at a time. Even when the WP came out with the story thanks to "Deep Throat" it was a while before it took hold in the media. So keep the faith because things will break before long.

[MaineDem]

35. No one event

My father was very active so I grew up with the Democratic party. I volunteered on campaigns through high school - and beyond. Bobby Kennedy, MLK, and Ed Muskie encouraged my thinking.

However, my Freshman year in college (69-70) did it for me! The war in Viet Nam was raging; I was singing in coffee houses and marching in protests; we were attending peace vigils and rallies. (I should have been going to classes but hey!) Then in May of 1970 the National Guard shot into the crowd at Kent State. I had a friend there and his accounts of the events bring tears to my eyes even as I type this now. I knew the Nixon administration was evil and I resolved to do what I could to get good people elected!

And I think I've done ok. I'm having doubts about one of my elected officials now for whom I did a lot of work but, overall, I think I've backed the right horse every time.

[havocmom]

36. Three events come to mind for me

First was when I was 10 or 11 and wanted to get a paper route. I had done routes for friends many times before, when they were sick or off on family vacations, and never had a single complaint from anyone. So when the chap in charge of the paperboys told me I counldn't have a job because I was a girl, the unfairness of it all hit me hard. My mom was working very hard at $1 an hour to support my brother and I and I really wanted to help her out in a tangible way. It hurt that to find that I could not do this since I was a girl, but boys could have a job and $$!

In high school I scored higher than anyone on a mechanical aptitude test (and very low on clerical accuracy, as anyone pained by my typos will attest) yet I was not allowed to take any shop classes because... there is that girl issue again. Insane!

I vowed that if I ever had a daughter that nobody was ever telling her she couldn't do anything, except become a father, because she was a girl! Hey, you should see her with a blowtorch!

Another incident, also in high school, was when I had to observe a civil rights march and demonstration at a school board meeting as part of an assignment for a psych class. Arrangements were made that allowed me to sit right up behind the board members. I dutifully went to the march and remained a neutral observer, making notes and carefully taking in the details of group dynamics in this crowd situation.

Later, at the actual meeting, I sat like a little mouse behind the board members, again watching and listening to the people presenting their grievances. At one point, after a rather brilliant and hard hitting presentation, the crowd got really motivated. A board member (right in front of me) leaned to the member to his right and whispered, "I wish I was fishing in Mexico instead of listening to this shit."

I went ballistic! Impartial went the way of my natural shyness: out the door. I jumped up and shouted' "Do you wanna know what this man just said?" Then I repeated, at my full decible capabilities, the man's remarks.

Got only a C on that assignment, but the teacher smiled and whispered, "You did good, kid. You will be OK."

Later, my mom told me tails of my granny's exploits in the early days after women got the vote. Seems I come by my habits naturally.

[WilliamPitt]

37. "This generation may be the one to face the apocalypse."

Ronald Reagan, December 26, 1986

:grr:

[cmf]

38. Nothing specific

I started becoming politically active in college. I had always argued against the neo-cons at my high school and went to a few campain rallies early on, but I never participated in organized action before college. My first protest march was actually against a 1996 federal court decision. I went into a lull after college and the 2000 selection got me off my butt again.

[primavera]

39. Shrub's anti-inaugural march in DC

That was the first march I attended that I really cared strongly about and got hot and bothered enough about to become more active. I've since been to most of the DC area anti-Iraqi piracy protests. Guess I have to hand it to the shrub: he was wacko nazi enough to finally get me off my butt.

[gypsy11]

40. For me it was

the stolen election of 2000... And then, as an extra added push, the events of Sept. 11.

[rene moon]

41. It was the first Gulf War

I was in high school when my father, who was in the AZ National Guard, was sent to Iraq for that joke of a war. I remember being so pissed off. He was there over a year and came back a different man.
In the 12 years after Desert Storm, he has had a stroke, memory loss and has become an alcoholic. My parents marriage has since crumbled because of that war. I hate the Bushes with a passion.

[SPICYHOT]

42. Since I was very little

I liked to know about to many serious issues, then suddenly when I was 14 I read a stupid national magazine telling incredibles stories about how the goberment of that time was soooo goood. I get so mad that I started to looking for some information about. I realize then that I'm a very socialist person and I dream about this conspiracy that we are living.

[ulysses]

43. birth?

I've pretty much always been this way. Argued throughout the entire fall of my first grade year with my best friend (Repub family) over the 1976 election...

[maxanne]

44. the civil rights movement

of the early 1960's. No one could answer my questions about why those mean looking white guys were turning firehoses on black people and little kids. I grew up in a wealthy white community - I had never seen a black person - but I knew they were hurting those people, and I knew that was wrong.

Later - the first peace movement, the feminist movement, and the antinuke movement. And on and on.

I was meant to be Muffy when I grew up in Hamilton, MA - the east coast polo capital of the USA. :eyes: My parents were Republicans. I was not supposed to turn out this way - but I could not avoid it. The gravitational pull was huge.

[SOteric]

45. I grew up in a liberal household

I read and thus my mind expanded. I developed a sense of outrage at injustice fairly early in life, and doing nothing interferes with my sense of self-esteem.

[noonwitch]

46. When Reagan's people were hunting down Marcos' enemies for him

Our church helped hide out a refugee from the Phillipines. He was a pastor that Marcos had ordered arrested/killed (same difference). The Reagan administration had a policy of locating people like this pastor when they were in this country legally and deporting them back to the Phillipines. We were one of several families from the church that took turns hiding him out in our house. One thing we knew-the INS was not going to raid a bunch of church people's homes in Grand Rapids, MI to arrest a preacher and send him back to his native land to be killed by a despot.