It could begin here........

As best as I remember it, it began for me when I was 14 and walked a picket line for the first time. It was in front of the Woolworth's Store on 34^th Street in Manhattan. A friend told me about it. They were picketing on account of Woolworth stores in the South weren't serving people at their lunch counters on account of they weren't white. I had no political interest at the time, but the idea just seemed stupid. So that's where I started. My parents, products of the Depression and the McCarthy era, told me that if I walked a picket I could never work for the Post Office. I didn't know if that was true, but the only person I ever knew who worked for the Post Office was my Cousin Simon and he was a complete jerk. Anyway, I walked that picket line. Later on some friends of mine got beat up for riding a bus down south someplace. One who I sort of knew got killed.

A few years later I had the privilege of coordinating 150 volunteer photographers as we photographed the largest anti-war demonstration in the history of New york City. Along the line, we made it impossible for a miserable failure of a President to run for office again, got to watch a totally corrupt President quit in disgrace, began electing candidates that we wanted, sowed the seeds for movements that empowered women and gays and on and on it went. It wasn't perfect, but it was a beginning. So today I got to watch these kids – same age as I was that first time – standing up and demanding change. Maybe for them, it'll begin here.