Teaching High School Debate Differently

High school debate's worst case scenario

Friday was my last day of regular classes for the school year. It feels good to get across the finish line of a really difficult year. Going online presented a lot of challenges, especially when I had to teach debate over Zoom. My school's schedule has the year divided into five "mods," and the last mod has been completely under quarantine.

I did competitive debate for four years in high school and four years in college. It's an activity that gave an extremely withdrawn, nerdy kid a great deal of confidence in public speaking. In college it allowed me to travel to Ireland and fall in with a great group of friends. My mom was my high school's coach, and so this meant getting to spent a lot of quality time with her. One of our assistant coaches, a local college student, turned me on to philosophy, which I had never read before. My college coaches were wonderful people too, and I learned a lot from them.

It was a very good experience overall, but by the time I was done I realized that the whole enterprise was about playing games with rhetoric and not about actually changing the world for the better. In fact, too much immersion in debate can breed a certain kind of cynicism. I remember when we did a public debate on campus and my philosphy professor, who I greatly admired, attended and said the whole thing was "sophistry." That got me thinking abou the true nature of what I was doing, and whether it was the best use of my abilities.

When I parted ways with debate I was ready. After awhile, however, I missed the high I would get from the frisson of a hard-fought round. When I switched from being a college prof to a high school teacher I thought debate would be an interesting and enjoyable thing to introduce to my students. My school preaches progressive education, meaning that the learnign should be student-focused and geared toward exploration. Debate, when done well, certainly fits the bill.

However, I was also aware of how debate can so often work at cross-purposes with a progressive mindset, especially with learning for life. The world of competitive debate is so insular and byzantine that competitors rarely talk in ways that make sense to ordinary human beings. Policy debate, where competitors read evidence so fast that they can't be understood and keep trying to prove that the affirmative team's case will cause nuclear war, is the most infamous example of this. But even in other formats debaters talk too robotically and pepper their speeches with jargon because the judges are members of the same closed system. It's not necessarily a great education for learning how to engage in public discourse. At its worst its a training ground for new Ben Shapiros.

I really believe it can be if done well, however. When I taught my class I set about focusing on educating my students for life rather than competitive debate rounds. Since the school doesn't have a team, I could ignore the latter imperative. We used the Public Forum format, which is easy for the students to learn and allows for a range of resolutions. Each topic we debated was chosen by the students. The main topics ended up being the death penalty, cannabis legalization, and gun control. I maybe would have liked some less obvious topics, but they all allowed for lots of back and forth and an ease of entering into the topic.

For the last week of class I had initially planned on doing a parliamentary style debate on something related to the school. The more relaxed format would allow the students to branch out more and the topic would allow an emphasis on passion and humor. (There is nothing students are more poised to debate than their school's rules.) However, with the protests over George Floyd's death going on, a silly debate like that seemed pretty inappropriate. Instead I had the students all do their own speeches presenting what would have been their opening case for various resolutions related to the situation. If my class was supposed to be educating them for life, I thought it best to let them choose the position and build a case for a position they truly cared about, instead of just being assigned a side.

I was really blown away by the results. The speeches actually gave me a lot of hope, considering how hard the students worked in a short period of time, and how articulate they were in their calls for change. Considering the state of the world right now, high school students should be learning debate so that they can participate and make their own mark in the public sphere. If they come out of it thinking that the truth is immaterial to any debate, or that they have mastered a bunch of rhetorical tricks to win arguments, what have we actually taught them? The world has enough bullshit as it is.

What If...A Foreign Correspondent Sent A Dispatch From DC?

American In Turmoil After a Week of Unrest

Washington) Turmoil in the capital city today after violent crackdowns by local security forces. The president ordered protestors near the palace tear gassed so he could take his picture with a sacred text outside of a nearby house of worship. Palace watchers assume this was done as a gesture to his supporters, who tend to cling tighter to traditional culture.

The president has also ordered the mobilization of the military against the people in the streets by invoking a 200 year old law written to quell slave uprisings. No word yet on whether generals will comply with the directive. Cities in the provinces continue to experience unrest, and journalists have been assaulted by government forces. As of yet there has been no government takeover of the radio and television airwaves but state-aligned cable networks have been reporting praise for the president's behavior.

The governing party still stands behind the president, and as of yet there are no calls for abdication by opposition leaders. The opposition had failed to remove the leader through legal proceedings earlier in the year. Despite several accusations of abuse of power and corruption, these legal proceedings failed due to obstruction by the governing party.

The president has long been unpopular, and he received three million fewer votes in the last election than his opponent. The United States, however, chooses its president based on an antiquated and complicated formula that allows for minority rule. Recent government inaction in the face of pandemic has exacerbated the tensions caused by having a leader without the support of the people.

Provincial governors and mayors have set down curfews that protestors have openly defied. The American state is currently teetering on the brink, but no definite end to the crisis is in sight. 

A True "New Normal"

Modern American life is full of corporate bullshit-speak, and one of the worst phrases barfed up by that cursed genre is "new normal." This is a phrase bosses pull out when they make you work harder for less money. "Sorry underlings, this state of affairs represents the new normal! There is no alternative."

I think it's time for that phrase to be reclaimed into something positive. A lot of talk around the virus concerns some people's desperate need to "get back to normal." Of course, that is impossible. The world simply will not go back to what it was on March 1, 2020. That would be like a person in November of 1918 expecting to turn back the clock to the "normal" of June 27, 1914, the day before Franz Ferdinand's assassination.

As a friend is fond of saying, "you can't unfry things."

In any case, we should not want to go back to normal even if we could. Normal sucked! The protests and riots against police brutality erupting across America should be living proof of this. Our "normal" was a nation where the life expectancy was going DOWN due to overdoses and suicide. "Normal" was police murdering unarmed black people and getting away with it. "Normal" was workers completely under the thumb of bosses. "Normal" was poison water in Flint. "Normal" was immigrant families being broken apart at the border. "Normal" was people going bankrupt due to healthcare emergencies.

We owe it to ourselves to make something far better than the feeble "normal" of the pre-covid world. As I have said before, the only way forward is to have what Abraham Lincoln called "a new birth of freedom." This time of crisis, as scary and uncertain as it is, presents a true opportunity to make a "new normal." We cannot waste it, because without such fundamental change we will be stuck on the same treadmill of failure and injustice.

On Being A Lone Protestor

Caring enough about local zoning laws to waste my Monday night in a public meeting probably means I'm a kook

Since the beginning of the Trump presidency I have been thirsting to get involved in political action. I call and write elected officials almost every week. I have attended all kinds of protests, from the "People's Motorcade" at Trump's golf course in Bedminster to multiple events at ICE facilities in Hudson County to anti-gun violence protests in Newark to a candlelit vigil in my hometown for the victims of police violence.

Something inside of me can't rest unless I feel like I am meeting my obligation to combat the horrible situation we find ourselves in. This has driven me to put myself out on a limb all alone. Back in the early days of the Trump presidency he was going to drive down the interstate in a motorcade to Bedminster. This was in the midst of the threat to the Affordable Care Act, and I'd heard there was a protest about it where people would line the overpasses on Trump's route and hold signs to show the level of opposition. 

This interstate isn't far from from home, but once I arrived I realized that I was the only person there. (You can read the fully story here.) A cop stopped to see what I was doing, a couple of people honked. Later one person joined me. I wondered if people below could see my sign. It was a chilly night, with the cold wind whipping my face. In the town I live in people are pretty big on being progressive and resisting Trump, but I was the only person who bothered to show up.

I had a similar feeling last night when I went to a local zoning board meeting. I've recently become committed to the gospel of YIMBYism, meaning I want the local government to support inclusive zoning, more density, and more walkability in order to lower housing costs and create opportunities for a more racially and economically diverse town. I went to the meeting to speak in favor of a proposed multiunit development. There would be eleven apartments located at a major intersection, right across the street from another apartment building.

When it came time for the public to comment, I was the only person there to speak in favor of it, which was tough with everyone else's eyes on me. I also had to go first, meaning that the people who were against got to attack my arguments without a chance for me to respond. Those opposed basically argued that housing opportunities should be limited and having housing costs for others driven up was good because the people there would reap the reward of their home's inflated resale value. (Of course, they claimed that the developers were the greedy ones.) As you could guess, the zoning board did not give a variance to the proposed development.

It was a bit of a gut punch, mostly because I was there alone. I've started a local YIMBY group on Facebook and I had hoped at least one other person would come along. Nope, it was just me, looking like an idiot for believing in a lost cause.

I don't say this to get on my moral high horse, by the way. The fact that I was there alone means I was doing something wrong. Perhaps moving to the suburbs was a mistake. Maybe I suck at organizing. Maybe this is the adult version of me eating alone at lunch in high school, too maladjusted and dorky to be able to relate to other people. Maybe the problem is that my caring too much about this stuff is less about being morally righteous and more about being a kooky misfit. 

The thing is, I can't help myself, because I cannot do otherwise. I am only hoping this means I'm willing to do the right thing, not that I'm just a hopeless case. 

Get Your Marching Shoes Back On

Today brought the news that Nielsen's ouster at DHS was just part of a larger purge of officials in the domestic security state apparatus. She and many others were proteges of John Kelly, the former Chief of State. This purge was not merely done to maintain slavish loyalty in the DHS, it appears to be part of a broader strategy to "get tough." That I assume means that he wants to separate families and ignore laws about asylum seekers.

Nielsen and Kelly are absolutely atrocious people, but now it looks like Trump will be surrounded only by sycophants like his son in law and daughter, and extremist ideologues like Stephen Miller and Mick Mulvaney. He appears to have decided that the Mueller Report is behind him, and so nothing can stop him. Considering that the Democrats refuse to talk impeachment (and that the Senate would never vote to convict), he's onto something.

Since the midterm election so many people who should be in the streets have been staying at home. This has been a grave mistake. I am not sure where this complacency is coming from, since the Democrats in the House do not really have the power to do all that much. Perhaps this is also down to the misbegotten and naive faith in Robert Mueller's investigation. Opponents of Trump have allowed themselves to become passive observers, rather than active participants. That has to stop.

If you look at the Trump years so far, you will notice that the greatest victories against this administration have come through mass mobilization. The first Women's March, coming the day after inauguration, was absolutely crucial in shifting the narrative and putting the Trump White House on the defensive. The mass actions at airports in the aftermath of the first Muslim ban forced the courts to intervene. Last year mass action in the streets forced the government to back down from family separation. The most powerful force to counter Trump has not been elected officials, it has been what West German activists in the 1960s called the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Mueller won't save us. The Democrats won't save us. Our institutions won't save us. We have to save ourselves. The other side is readying for a fight. Time to get our marching shoes back on.

An Update on America's Brezhnev Years

Watching the Soviet gerontocracy applaud itself while their empire dies feels pretty relevant these days.

As loyal readers of this blog know, I have long hypothesized that America is in its Brezhnev period, and has been for some time. Not only is the material basis of the American empire declining and standards of living falling, most people no longer believe in the ideology that the entire edifice is built upon. (More on that here.) 

The essay I wrote for Tropics of Meta summing up my theories about this is now two years old. I wrote it as the Trump era was dawning, and I tried to end it on an optimistic note:

The millions who have taken to the streets in the past three months are hopefully a sign that enough people are ready to arrest the decline in democracy. In that respect, America’s Brezhnev years may be over in a much more positive way. We can only hope so."

I was thinking of the time about the airport protests against Trump's Muslim ban. I was hoping that they would be the precursor to more direct action. Sadly, their success has not been replicated. In fact, the air really seems to have gone out of mass resistance movements.

In 2018 that energy was directed towards gun control after the Parkland shootings. After massive school walkouts and huge protests, no new gun laws came on the national level, and few on the local level. In fact, this was used as an opportunity in many states to pass laws allowing teachers to carry guns in school. 

Political engagement in liberal and progressive circles quickly switched to the 2018 Congressional election, which did indeed bring many important victories but did not capture both houses of congress. Now that that's over there seems to be little to no mass action from the kind of people who had been taking it up after years on the sidelines. Most of the political heat I have been feeling from the left has been related to the 2020 primary election. That's a year away, and it has tended to lead to infighting and inwardness rather than unified action against a regime that still puts migrants in camps and is dead set on stripping the country of assets and selling the rest for scrap. 

So maybe we have passed the threshold into the Gorbachev years, but a crazy, Spock's beard version of Gorbachev intent on destroying institutions in order to kill democracy. In any case, I feel like the last two years have been a test, and that we have definitely failed it. The ramifications of this failure will likely still be here until the day I die. 

What I Saw At the "Free Pablo" Protest

You may have heard now of Pablo Villavicencio, an undocumented Ecuadoran immigrant from Long Island working in New York City for a pizzeria. While making a delivery to a military base in Brooklyn, which he had done several times, he had his papers checked and was reported to ICE and detained, then told he was to be deported. He was married with two children, all American citizens, and he himself had been applying for citizenship. Like the vast majority of people in his situation, he was working and raising a family without causing any trouble.

There have been protests in the area around this. I went to one on Saturday here in New Jersey at the Hudson County Correctional Facility, where he was being held. I got the tip from a friend of mine who is a member of the local chapter of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and decided to go.

Just going to the location was an eye-opening experience. It is located in one of those famously ugly stretches of swamp, warehouses, and factories amid a tangle of highways one finds in the parts of New Jersey right across from New York City. Getting there meant having to avoid accidentally taking the New Jersey Turnpike or going through the Holland Tunnel. It was located off of old Highway 1, jammed between industrial parks and truck stops, a place that no one would take a second look at.

In fact, I arrived late to the protest because I had taken a wrong turn in the confusing highway maze and had to drive to other side of Highway 1 to find parking in a lot of a run-down truck stop diner that also advertised packaged liquor. At the protest itself there were maybe thirty people, a great many of them wearing DSA gear. Although they were not the only organization involved, almost everyone there seemed to be DSA.

A middle aged woman in a "I am an immigrant" t-shirt asked if I was a part of that group, and I said no, I was there merely to protest Pablo's detention. She seemed a little put off by the speeches I missed, which I can guess were full of the fire and brimstone of the old Marxist religion. I mostly talked to her and another woman there who was not part of the organization. While standing in the blazing early summer sun in a sea of asphalt, we were joined by a woman there with her mother and two children. She was trying to gain entrance to the facility to see her husband, who was detained there. She wasn't sure if she was going to be able too. One of her children was a two year old, the other a baby. One of the protestors held the baby so that the mother could talk about her situation to a couple of reporters on the scene.

I had made a sign on thick posterboard for the occasion, and I used it to shade the woman and baby from the sun, which in the late afternoon was beating into us. I stood there for several minutes looking at the little sleeping baby, remembering when my daughters were that small. It was almost too much to take, this tiny person having its father ripped away so soon after coming into the world. Having my children taken away from me is my absolute worst nightmare, nothing really compares to it. I kept thinking about that as the baby's mother talked to the reporters, I hope they did something with her story and that it gets heard.

Standing there in a space very much not intended for people to stand in, all I kept thinking was that there were many other places like this in America. At that moment and every other there are nondescript buildings in quiet industrial parks in this country where families are being ripped apart and American dreams are being shredded. These places may be in your town or close by, and their machinery operates right under your nose, every single day in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Ever since the day of the protest that thought has not left my mind. I woke up this morning with horrible vertigo and nausea, and ended up violently puking and having to take a sick day. I'm beginning to wonder if it wasn't psychosomatic.

What I Saw At The March For Our Lives In Newark

Yesterday I was one of the millions who turned out for March for Our Lives events in the United States and the world. I attended the one in Newark, partly because it was the closest one, but also because I'm a former resident of Brick City, a place I hold close to my heart. (I made sure to go back to my old neighborhood afterward and get a giant plate of Portuguese food and a big bag of stuff from one of the bakeries.)

I was not anticipating a huge turnout, mostly because people around here tend to go to marches like this in New York City to be a part of the bigger, more noteworthy event. I was happily surprised to see a very large crowd at Military Park in downtown Newark when I arrived, and by the time things got kicked off, it doubled in size. The event started with a half hour of speeches and performances, then we marched over to Washington Park and snaked around it to go back to Military Park to hear speeches by the big shots in attendance. I knew we were a big congregation because I was near the front, and once we got around Washington Park we had to stop because the people in the back third were blocking our way because they were still coming.

One thing I was very glad to see that while this event drew a lot of people from suburban New Jersey, it still put a lot of focus on Newark. Students from Newark schools performed music and dance, and they gave speeches that talked about gun violence more broadly. They spoke not just about school shootings, but also of the day to day gun violence in the streets of Newark, domestic violence, and police shootings like the recent tragedy in Sacramento. I came away from the event thinking that many of the white, suburban attendees might also see the issue of gun violence with a broader lens. That's necessary, and also an important rebuttal to naysayers who refuse to participate in this movement because they think it doesn't check all of their woke checkboxes.

While the students may have stumbled a little over their speeches or not have been completely polished, those things only served to highlight their courage. I did speech and debate in high school, but I could not have imagined giving a speech in front of thousands of people with the governor and my Congressman sitting in the wings. The politicians in attendance did a good job motivating the crowd and keeping things brief, at least. My representative in the House, Donald Payne Jr, has actually been out front on this issue and has crafted a bill for gun buybacks. He kept things fiery, and connected the march with the need to vote in the upcoming election. (A lot of the people there hail from purple districts currently represented by Republicans.) New governor Phil Murphy gave a very short, to the point speech emphasizing efforts on the state level. I even cut state senator (and charter school supporter) Teresa Ruiz some slack because her comments were pretty effective.

This event gave me hope because the main reason gun control has failed to be passed at the national level has less to do with the NRA itself and more to do with the extreme pro-gun minority. These people have always cared a LOT more about guns than the people who wanted to limit them. Guns for them are closely tied to their deepest identities, and so like Prohibition gun control is really an argument over what kind of country this is. Opponents of gun control have been acting desperate and attacking teenage survivors of mass shootings because they know they have been in the minority for years and have been getting by on complacency. Will this actually lead to meaningful change? I do not know, but I get the feeling that outside of deep red areas politicians who are highly rated by the NRA are going to be forced to answer for that.

On an unrelated sidenote, I briefly talked yesterday with Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo yesterday, but only realized it after he walked away. "Joe D" is one of the big political fixers in the state, with rumors of corruption swirling about him. Despite that, Chris Christie never prosecuted him during his stint as state's attorney, when he went after several corrupt politicians. Joe D paid him back by supporting Christie's re-election, despite the fact that he was a conservative Republican and DiVincenzo is a Democrat in a a county that is deep blue.Yesterday, as we were stopped on the march route, a distinguished gentleman struck up a conversation with me, and his face looked strangely familiar. I made a little friendly small talk, and when the march ended he squeezed my arm and thanked me for showing up. At that moment I realized it was indeed Joe D, but it was too late. I was going to ask him why if he cared about gun control so much he supported a governor who vetoed new gun legislation.

My hope is that Democrats like Joe D saw what was happening yesterday and got a little scared for themselves. Machines like his rely on political complacency, a complacency which has made it possible for a blue state like New Jersey has been living under austerity for the past eight years. Even if gun control does not get passed in the short term, we are perhaps seeing a political awakening from the left that will not only get Republicans tossed out of office. Just as importantly, it could also give us better Democrats. One can only hope.

What I Saw in Bedminster

Saturday morning I drove forty minutes out to rural western New Jersey to meet a group of people participating in the "People's Motorcade." This is a protest where protestors get around the lack of a nearby protest space by driving very slowly past the gates of Trump's golf course, their cars festooned with signs and noise blaring.

I had done it once before, back weeks before during the president's first visit. This time there were fewer cars, about twenty of them. Those participating were almost all from the immediate area, except for a family that, like me, had trekked from Essex County. This is a part of New Jersey that's rather conservative in its politics, especially compared to the rest of the state, so the locals really seemed to relish their event. It was begun by a single person, and is completely and totally grassroots.

In many ways this is a great thing. This kind of grassroots action is the necessary ingredient for successful political movements. However, I found it disheartening as well. Where was the institutional support? Why weren't larger groups coming in to bolster and support this? Since Trump has taken office there has been a massive tide of engagement by liberals and progressives, but the lack of institutional support and organization has made it difficult to sustain.

Our opponents do not make this mistake. Remember the Tea Party? It was astroturfed into relevance with massive infusions of conservative cash. It had a champion, Glenn Beck, on cable news spouting its talking points every day. We, on the other hand, are on our own.

This is why I am taking part in protests like the one I did yesterday. It's not only important as a political act, it is a reminder that I am not alone in this. Just standing there and chatting before we drove to the course was a kind of therapy. In a time when everything seems to be out of my hands, it felt like taking back some power. As I went past the entrance of Trump's golf course the first time I blared the Isley Brothers' "Fight The Power," on the second run it was Public Enemy. It felt good. Did it do anything? Not in the bigger picture, but it mattered for those of us who were there.

My good feeling died pretty quickly since right after I got home I started seeing the news out of Charlottesville. I'm still kind of reeling, to be honest. I only know that we have to get out there. We have to fight. If you ever wanted to know how you would have acted in in other times of moral crisis, now's the time to find out.

Protest Has Really Mattered In The Trump Era

When Trump sent Spicer to defend his crowd size on the first weekend of his presidency he was already playing defense

As I was waiting to board my commuter train this morning, a powerful thought struck me: as bad as things are with our authoritarian chimp of a president, they could be a lot worse. Folks keep attributing this to the Tangerine Terror's incompetence, but that's only half of the story.

The big, overlooked story of this presidency is the impact that protest has made. Think back to inauguration day. The white supremacists were openly strutting in the streets. For weeks supposed leftists like Sanders had been talking about how he could "work" with the sociopathic real estate developer as if he would do anything in good faith. Moderate voices urged "give him a chance." The media also started fawning, trying hard to find a way to legitimize this president, which was much easier than facing the awful reality.

On the night of the inauguration I sat in my recliner, sipped on some Old Grandad, and felt scared, depressed, and anxious. As I wrote on this blog, I knew that we were all headed into the fire. Some of us were going to get burned, some were going to be consumed, and no one was going to come out the same. I went to bed that night with a feeling of utter dread.

The next morning, my wife left with a friend to go to New York City for the Women's March. I did my bit by watching my kids. Playing and having fun with them was a nice distraction, but soon I got texts from my wife that the crowds were so immense that she was merely standing in place. I checked out Twitter and turned on the TV, and realized that something truly momentous was happening. 

After my wife and her friend came home, we had pizza and wine and they told us of what happened in excited voices. We also saw Sean Spicer come on the television and try to yell at the press about reports over the protest being bigger than the inaugural crowd. We laughed and cursed at the TV. Soon I was seeing updates from my friends on Facebook, showing photos of protests they attended in "red" places like Amarillo, Shreveport, Topeka, Omaha, and even Nacogdoches, Texas. I had never seen anything like it before.

I will admit I started to cry. For the first time in months I felt something like hope. Later, after we put the kids to bed, I hugged my wife as the protest played in the background. "We did it, we did it, we did it" was what we kept saying to each other. 

The Women's March is not discussed much in the media, but I feel that it was an absolutely crucial moment. Only one day after his inauguration, the president was put on the defensive. It was obvious to the world that there were many more people in this country against him than for him. It also goaded him into that infamous incident in the press briefing room, which helped push the media to be not quite so afraid to criticize him. (They tried to normalize him after the State of the Union and after he bombed Syria, but it never took.)

Following that momentous weekend, Trump tried to put his white nationalist agenda into action by releasing the travel ban. Despite doing so on a Friday night to minimize pushback, his order led to a wave of spontaneous protest, including lawyers rushing to airports to help immigrants and travelers. This was an act of pure people power of the sort so rarely seen in this country.. (I was able to participate in a large protest the next day in New York City in Battery Park.) It also worked. The courts were forced to do something, and they knocked down Trump's executive order. Soon after the Democrats showed a greater willingness to resist and less to equivocate. After those tumultuous weeks, it was obvious that Donald Trump would not be allowed to run roughshod over the Republic.

The Democratic politicians didn't do that. The media didn't do it. Trump's own self-destructive foibles didn't do that. No, we did that. And never forget it.

Report From A Small Protest

Donald Trump is going to be right here in New Jersey this weekend at his golf course in sleepy Bedminster. That also happens to be just down the road on I-78, the closest interstate to where I live. I heard from my neighbor about a protest this evening where people would stand on the walkways above the interstate holding signs as the motorcade went by. Full of zeal and angered by today's health care vote, I decided to go.

Things were not glorious. My neighbor had to beg off due to child care responsibilities, and since Trump delayed his arrival in New York to engage in his frat boy smoker/signing party, the motorcade was not going to come down the interstate during the 7-8 bloc where the protest was occurring. I still went to the overpass closest to my house, off of Burnet Avenue, feeling an obligation to bear witness on this dark, dark day. After getting my kids fed I quickly grabbed some poster board and made a sign reading "Health Care Is A Human Right" with red and blue Sharpies.

When I got to the overpass, it was empty. I sat in my car for a minute, then realized I had nothing better to do. I've also never been the type to be afraid to be alone. During my single days I would go to movies alone, go to bars alone, and even travel alone. So I stood there by the chain link fence, the wind blowing hard an unseasonably cold. Below me the massive river of traffic moved, small cars buzzing and big trucks rumbling. A handful of people honked, mostly those driving over the overpass. At one point a Union Police cruiser stopped by me and I feared the worst. He asked me if my sign was a marriage proposal (obviously he hadn't read it since he saw it from behind.) I said no, and showed it to him. For a brief second I could tell he contemplated hassling me about it, but thought better and drove off.

After about ten minutes another person joined me on the overpass, friendly and sheepish (like me.) We talked a bit about the protest opportunities this weekend in Bedminster, but she did not seem that interested in small talk. Being a woman alone with a strange man, I totally understood.

So I stood quietly with the wind knifing me, somewhat hypnotized for the cars and trucks rushing beneath. I wondered if people could actually see my sign quavering in the breeze. I wondered if it mattered. And I wondered if I was just tilting at a windmill this evening. I knew I was right to bear witness, but on this dark day I was reminded yet again that fighting the good fight does not ensure a victory.

A Battery Park Reflection

Yesterday I took the train from New Jersey into New York City to attend the immigration protest at Battery Park. For those of you who don't know, Battery Park sits at the extreme southern tip of Manhattan, so named for the batteries of guns there placed to fend of an invasion from New York harbor. 

I am not going to write about the protest, you can read about that in innumerable other places. No, I want to write about the Battery itself. It was probably the most apt place in this country to have a protest to defend immigrants and immigration. Millions and millions of people first set foot in America after docking in the harbor well before the Statue of Liberty was there. For that reason I often get emotionally overwhelmed when I look at the harbor.

It was the first thing in America that my German and Swedish migrant ancestors gazed upon. Could they have even contemplated one of their descendants would be standing there 100 years later as a migrant from the middle of the country? I also get overwhelmed thinking about the fact that so many African slaves used to work the docks on the harbor, and they too first set foot in America there. They were bought and sold just up Broadway on Wall Street, the street named for the wall built by slave labor. 

It is an eerie place. Once you reach the Battery, the skyscrapers of downtown melt away, and you find yourself in open ground, with water on three sides. It can be a jarring transition, and I often feel almost naked standing there, especially on a sunny day like yesterday. There is a real energy in the air that is inescapable. I do not believe in ghosts, but there are places where human history has left behind a psychic atmosphere, I am sure of this. I've felt it too at the Bloody Angle at the Chickamauga battlefield. I remember standing there where a horrifically savage fight had taken place, and my skin started tingling. The place still remembered what had happened there.

I get that same feeling when I go down to the Battery. I can feel the spiritual residue of the hopes and fears and pain of the people who passed through and by it vibrating in the air. It is a reminder that New York harbor must still be a golden door of hope, not a mockery of this country's stated but unheeded narratives about itself as a nation of immigrants and land of opportunity.