Woof, this really hits. I had to take my time and read it in small chunks, because I have so many feelings and vivid memories about this era, because of the age I was then.
It feels almost too on the nose, but I swear it's true: on March 20, 2003, I was 16 years old and at a youth retreat at the Quaker summer camp that I'd attended growing up. Since this was before most people had cell phones, at least anyone I knew, we found out when someone announced before dinner that the bombing had started, and we joined hands around the room. I remember crying, and feeling taken aback by having an emotional reaction instead of an intellectual one-- I was a fervent baby leftist and also hella traumatized and mainly pretty divorced from my feelings.
I think a lot about the type of naivety you describe of young white leftists in that era, having also been one! I'm sure a lot of people experience their own coming of age similarly, regardless of era, and map their own move from naivety into disillusionment or to more complicated forms of hope, onto the era writ large, but damn is it ever striking in that era.
For a while I flirted with the idea of writing a novel set in that era, since I would really really love to read an early 2000s period piece about what that was all like-- if anyone could recommend one, I'd be very interested!
I don't know about you, but I've come to really admire the particular naïveté I had in that moment. I want to be somebody whose first experience to immense human tragedy is emotional and not intellectual. I want to believe that we can stop a war. And I also want this current, more complicated form of hope, but I've recently had a lot of tenderness for that kid who was ready to stand down in front of a tank and who thought perhaps that's all it would take.
Oof Lee and Garrett, yes to all of that! Lee, I would 100% read a novel set in that era. I have none to recommend, and encourage you to write it! If you want a beta-reader or co-writer, count me in 😉
Garrett, I so appreciate your admiration and tenderness toward that version of you who reacted emotionally. I sometimes feel like, because the bad things happening are easy to see coming, I shouldn’t cry or feel it, I should just do something about it. Reading this essay, and this comment, reminded me that we’re human, even when horrible things are happening, and there is strength in letting ourselves feel it.
Thanks for sharing Garrett. I needed this today. I'm reminded of the quote (mis)attributed to Martin Luther but is lovely nonetheless: If I believed the world were to end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today.
I'm a little older than you, so my experience of this realization came with the first Gulf wars of the 1990s which I protested with the fervence of youth. I went on to spend the next 15 years enmeshed in radical activism around many causes, all of them hopeless from the start. I am now, 30 years later, about to retire from being president of my union local. I don't know that I have been naive in all my activities despite the fact I've picked the "losing" side over and over. I like to think that despite the world as it is, I've been able to carry a vision forward of something different- more compassionate, more hopeful, more generous. Perhaps I am biased by my own life, but I would call that a strength of character that this world woefully needs these days.
Oh man this brought it all back, thanks for writing it but it took me a while to steel myself to read the whole thing. I was in Sheffield, in the north of England, and when we protested it felt like the whole city was on our side-as it pretty much was. And London on the day of the global protest was just something else. The protest seemed to take over the whole city.
I often try to imagine what the experience was in England at that moment- of feeling like it was so obvious that everybody opposed the war but Blair was going to go ahead any way. That's a fascinating cousin-hopelessness to the American variety of hopelessness (namely, that we could put together massive crowds for individual rallies, but we knew that public opinion more broadly was against us)
If I'd been paying more attention it would have taught me everything I needed to know about power, but it took Jane McAlevey to lay it out for me nearly two decades later.
One thing it did, which I've never really shaken off, was encourage my already-significant tendency to want to avoid offending people, because it felt so good that EVERYONE agreed when it came to the war, but you knew that if you went any deeper with "the analysis" and, say, veered into anticapitalism, lots of your new allies were going to get uncomfortable (not that I was veering into anticapitalism at that point in my life, I would in fact shortly beveering straight towards West Wing/Ted Talk liberalism).
Also it was really weird to talk to my friends back at University of Maryland College Park, which at that time was compensating for being next to DC by being America's most stridently apolitical college (apologies to all of you who were working at the co-op and fighting the power, and particularly the punk I took Freshman English with, I should have been standing beside you). My email exchanges became variations on: "How goes the revolution over there, comrades?" "I have no idea what you're talking about but Mikey puked all over a frat boy"
One thing I'd offer is that, while our tendencies to not offend people may not be all that helpful, it's also a gift to have new folks show up for the cause of "care for all" even if they might not be all the way with all forms of liberation. So, I offer that not as a counterpoint (I have a sense that you'd agree) but as a "both things can be true at once" thought.
Woof, this really hits. I had to take my time and read it in small chunks, because I have so many feelings and vivid memories about this era, because of the age I was then.
It feels almost too on the nose, but I swear it's true: on March 20, 2003, I was 16 years old and at a youth retreat at the Quaker summer camp that I'd attended growing up. Since this was before most people had cell phones, at least anyone I knew, we found out when someone announced before dinner that the bombing had started, and we joined hands around the room. I remember crying, and feeling taken aback by having an emotional reaction instead of an intellectual one-- I was a fervent baby leftist and also hella traumatized and mainly pretty divorced from my feelings.
I think a lot about the type of naivety you describe of young white leftists in that era, having also been one! I'm sure a lot of people experience their own coming of age similarly, regardless of era, and map their own move from naivety into disillusionment or to more complicated forms of hope, onto the era writ large, but damn is it ever striking in that era.
For a while I flirted with the idea of writing a novel set in that era, since I would really really love to read an early 2000s period piece about what that was all like-- if anyone could recommend one, I'd be very interested!
I don't know about you, but I've come to really admire the particular naïveté I had in that moment. I want to be somebody whose first experience to immense human tragedy is emotional and not intellectual. I want to believe that we can stop a war. And I also want this current, more complicated form of hope, but I've recently had a lot of tenderness for that kid who was ready to stand down in front of a tank and who thought perhaps that's all it would take.
Oof Lee and Garrett, yes to all of that! Lee, I would 100% read a novel set in that era. I have none to recommend, and encourage you to write it! If you want a beta-reader or co-writer, count me in 😉
Garrett, I so appreciate your admiration and tenderness toward that version of you who reacted emotionally. I sometimes feel like, because the bad things happening are easy to see coming, I shouldn’t cry or feel it, I should just do something about it. Reading this essay, and this comment, reminded me that we’re human, even when horrible things are happening, and there is strength in letting ourselves feel it.
[just responding now because I was on vacation]... but I am now officially pre-ordering y'alls co-written early aughts novel!
Hahaha thanks, Garrett. You’ll be the first to receive a copy 😂
Thanks for sharing Garrett. I needed this today. I'm reminded of the quote (mis)attributed to Martin Luther but is lovely nonetheless: If I believed the world were to end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today.
Whomever said it, I like that quote!
I'm a little older than you, so my experience of this realization came with the first Gulf wars of the 1990s which I protested with the fervence of youth. I went on to spend the next 15 years enmeshed in radical activism around many causes, all of them hopeless from the start. I am now, 30 years later, about to retire from being president of my union local. I don't know that I have been naive in all my activities despite the fact I've picked the "losing" side over and over. I like to think that despite the world as it is, I've been able to carry a vision forward of something different- more compassionate, more hopeful, more generous. Perhaps I am biased by my own life, but I would call that a strength of character that this world woefully needs these days.
Absolutely sounds like the kind of strength of character that the world woefully needs these days! This was really inspiring to read.
That last paragraph really touched me. I’m not helpless and it’s not all hopeless and in the choosing we reclaim our humanity. ❤️
So glad it was useful for you. I wrote it because I needed the reminder myself!
Oh man this brought it all back, thanks for writing it but it took me a while to steel myself to read the whole thing. I was in Sheffield, in the north of England, and when we protested it felt like the whole city was on our side-as it pretty much was. And London on the day of the global protest was just something else. The protest seemed to take over the whole city.
I often try to imagine what the experience was in England at that moment- of feeling like it was so obvious that everybody opposed the war but Blair was going to go ahead any way. That's a fascinating cousin-hopelessness to the American variety of hopelessness (namely, that we could put together massive crowds for individual rallies, but we knew that public opinion more broadly was against us)
If I'd been paying more attention it would have taught me everything I needed to know about power, but it took Jane McAlevey to lay it out for me nearly two decades later.
One thing it did, which I've never really shaken off, was encourage my already-significant tendency to want to avoid offending people, because it felt so good that EVERYONE agreed when it came to the war, but you knew that if you went any deeper with "the analysis" and, say, veered into anticapitalism, lots of your new allies were going to get uncomfortable (not that I was veering into anticapitalism at that point in my life, I would in fact shortly beveering straight towards West Wing/Ted Talk liberalism).
Also it was really weird to talk to my friends back at University of Maryland College Park, which at that time was compensating for being next to DC by being America's most stridently apolitical college (apologies to all of you who were working at the co-op and fighting the power, and particularly the punk I took Freshman English with, I should have been standing beside you). My email exchanges became variations on: "How goes the revolution over there, comrades?" "I have no idea what you're talking about but Mikey puked all over a frat boy"
One thing I'd offer is that, while our tendencies to not offend people may not be all that helpful, it's also a gift to have new folks show up for the cause of "care for all" even if they might not be all the way with all forms of liberation. So, I offer that not as a counterpoint (I have a sense that you'd agree) but as a "both things can be true at once" thought.