
Visitors check out books at the People’s Library in Zuccotti Park, October 2011
Image taken by Emily Wachowiak
My mom took me to my first protest at age 15—a reading of Lysistrata at Chicago’s Heartland Café. This was early in 2003, before the invasion of Iraq. I ate some vegan pastry, laughed at an ancient Greek sex comedy, and listened to middle-aged folks talk past each other in the post-play discussion. I walked out with a “Not in My Name” button I hoped would counteract the one I’d seen around school that read “Hug a troop, not a tree, hippie!”
A few weeks later, bombs lit up the skies over Baghdad as spring lighting flashed over my suburb.
As an adult, I’ve marched and chanted in only a handful of Chicago protests, mostly anti-gun and pro-union affairs over the last two years. Each experience has both moved and unsettled me. I’ve born witness to the stories of old union activists and young gun-massacre survivors, their words stinging me to my core. But as I looked over the mostly middle-aged and elderly crowds, I also felt I was bearing witness to a dying tradition. Continue reading →
Tags: 1960s, 21st century, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, government, Ken Kesey, Oberlin, politics, protest