Not Your Sweetie

Massachusets votes for Clark

(#207) (Rated 5.00/4)

by TOTALLY COMMITTED on 03/02/2004 09:53:02 AM EST

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For Forrest Gump, life was like a box of chocolates. For me, not so, but for just today, it was just as sweet.
I grew up on the cusp of a lot of society's changes... a girl-child of the 50's, who "burned my bra" in the 60's and 70's with all the other Feminists of the day, while remembering vividly the days when women stayed home, and wore gloves and a hat whenever they went out.
So Liberal was my thinking and believing that the relationship with my mostly strict Catholic, Republican, reactionary family was forever altered for the worse by the Vietnam War. I grew up spiritual rather than religious, Democratic rather than Republican, and positive that everyone was equal... I left home early, and rarely went back. But, at the College I attended, the times were heady... terrifying, horrible, and there was chaos in the streets. I often joke that I wasn't able to get the smell of tear-gas completely out of my hair until the eighties, but I also have a large scar on my arm from a burn I received when I tried to stop a protester from burning an American Flag at a protest. I was complicated - like the times I lived in.
I hated war, and thought Vietnam was absolutely wrong, but grieved as family members and the boy I'd been in love with all through my high school years died there. Those deaths changed me, and complicated my thoughts even more about the war that I hated so much. I was almost alone, in my "circle" in welcoming home the veterans of that war, and was appalled at their treatment.
Nothing was ever "uncomplicated" for me. I fought for things that are still unresolved today... Civil Rights, The ERA, Roe v. Wade, No-Nukes, Immigrant Worker Rights, The Anti-Landmine Treaty, The Clean Rivers Act... and many more "Liberal" causes got my dedication and time. But, so did the Veterans at the VA hospital in my town, the Vietnam Memorial Fund, and the inner-city soup kitchens where most of the homeless 'Nam-ers gathered for a free hot meal on cold Boston nights.
On Thanksgiving Eves, we'd go into Boston, and pass out blankets, gloves, socks, and "Thanksgiving dinners" we'd packed in bags, to the homeless. I felt it would help the kids always live humbly and with gratitude. I wanted to have them always just slightly uncomfortable with the security of their middle-class lives. But, it got too uncomfortable, even for me, when we started finding whole families - children and all - huddled around the grates of the subways for warmth on those freezing-cold nights during the Reagan Administration. I'd always been political, but it was then that my real "activism" started.
Candidates came and candidates went. None ever lived up to the promise of JFK, whom I had idolized and idealized since childhood. Carter was a good man. Mc Govern was a good man. The candidacy of Geraldine Ferraro gave me hope that a woman would be President in my lifetime... yeah, right! Bill Clinton came close, but, in the end he was no JFK. Where was the candidate that would "fix" this mess?
I found him on CNN. He was a soft-spoken, intelligent, thoughtful man. An opponent of war, except as a "last, last, last resort". Even as he described what was going on, he seemed so kind, so compassionate. He radiated "goodness", "decency", and every time I saw him, I thought of JFK. This, I thought, THIS was "the one". As I started to advocate for his candidacy, people (my family included) was stunned that I would support a 4-Star General, the former SACEUR for NATO. Like I said, I'm complicated.
You all know the rest of the story, because most of you have been there through it all with me. Wesley Clark, the most perfect of candidates, didn't make it to the presidency this time out. I believe he will someday, I believe he MUST, as a matter of fact. But, in my last act of his Presidential campaign, he gave me a gift more valuable than a sack of gold... I just got to vote FOR a candidate I believed whole-heartedly in. I didn't vote AGAINST anyone. I voted FOR someone whose policies, issues, compassion, and humanity had moved me - finally! - to a positive vote. Before Wesley Clark, I never thought I'd see that day. But, today I did.
I have come full circle. My first campaign experience, as a girl of 9, stuffing envelopes for JFK was forever married to my last campaign experience, as a grass-rooter for Wesley Clark. I didn't get to vote for JFK, but I just voted for General Clark. What a proud moment. I'm finally home!