Reply #177: she-bear dragged me to my first protest [View All]

and i do mean dragged because i was NOT political but i was in love and would have followed her anywhere. as soon as we got free of HS we lived in tents and in vans and traveled from one college to another to organize and fill buses and vans. that's what we did for the next 2 years or so. i was never "management" or even middle management although she-bear was sort of skirt the power ring.

just as is the case today, few of the kids or the old ladies that we packed onto the buses were communists or anything other than fed up with the killing. but, there were a lot of people in the movement with strong socialist ties. the media didn't have to spin much to make that connection. imho, it hurt the movement in general. it diminished the message. it's a shame that the average joe and jane are so hard to organize.

i feel like an old fart, talking about 'back in the day' but the problems were the same. she-bear may kick my ass for saying this but
if you ever met her, you'd understand what i'm saying. the main reason we had so much success at filling buses was her. ok...so she's a knock out but she had/has this really compelling way of dealing with people. it's as if she bears her soul whenever she speaks. i swear, all she needed to do was talk for ten minutes and people were standing in line to sign up. i'm not very good at people to people stuff. if it were up to my skills, we'd still be at war in vietnam.

i like the idea broached here at DU about using a concert or such as the hook. it worked well for us. not only did we get truely massive numbers for any weekend when music was the draw, people got informed and involved and that made a big difference.