I live in Mathews County which is about 75 due east of Richmond on Chesapeake Bay, but I worked at the Medical College of Virginia Commonwealth University since 1973 and am still a Senior Fellow in the Center for the Study of Biological Complexity. Even though I can't physically be there for their events I want to be in solidarity with them. It gets more complicated because my wife is having surgery on the 12th. We will actually be in Richmond, but at a hospital. When I came to Richmond in 1973 it was after being involved in the anti-war/civil rights movement since 1965 in Buffalo, NY, Little Rock, Nashville, and then Boston. Richmond was quite tame politically by comparison. Now that I am in the second smallest County in Virginia, that has to be put into perspective. We don't have a stop light in the whole County. Coincidentally we were at a candidates forum tonight and listened to three of five candidates for the Board of Supervisors spout out the Tea Party line. I heard "that was scary" many times afterwards when we were milling around getting ready to leave. So becoming a distant member of the Richmond group tonight picked me up considerably.
I have written quite a few diaries in the last year or so advocating the kind of movement the Occupy ............... movement seems to be becoming. I also have admonished President Obama for not keeping the movement that elected him alive. Now I wonder. I have always believed real change has to come from this kind of grass roots uprising and the more distant it is from electoral politics the better it seems to me. To much time, energy and good resources get squandered in these pseudo democratic elections. They seem to hold a bad system together and both parties seem to collude in doing that.
We need radical change. It won't come through elections. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we should stop voting to select our leaders. It is what they are to lead that must be changed and elections won't do that.
Where will the new movement take us? We can't predict. Uncertainty is scary but existential events usually have that character. Where should it take us? It should bring the system into a new level of sustainable activity as soon as possible. That won't stop some of the damage we have done from causing real pain, but it will get us ready for the pain in a way we will never be in the present system. Most important it can gear down the insane rush to keep consuming scarce resources and the willingness to poison our surroundings at an astounding rate.
I defer to the young as to what they want their future to be like. I am 75 and don't expect to be around a long time relative to that which I have already lived. I tried hard to work for the kind of future I could happily pass on to the young. That hasn't happened. In spite of the efforts of many of us the march to the cliff has proceeded at an alarming rate. So I signed up today. See it as a token if you like. I see it as a big moment and part of a dream coming true. Solidarity forever. Together we can prevail. Count me in!