It Is About Time

I walked on a picket line for the first time around the time I turned 13. It was a protest urging a boycott of Woolworth stores and we picketed the Woolworth store on 34^th Street. The issue: segregated lunch counters in their Southern stores. I recall that my parents had mixed emotions about the endeavor. On one hand there was that vaguely defined working class Jewish ethic that said it was the right thing to be doing. There was also an underlying fear that this would surely prevent me from ever getting a job at the Post Office. For my parents, who had entered adulthood during the depression, a job at the Post Office represented some sort of mythical financial security. The only one I ever knew who actually made a career of working there was my cousin Sheldon who I sort of remember as a nebish. I had never figured on following in Sheldon's footsteps, so that argument didn't carry much weight.

This was also the time of HUAC, Senator McCarthy's House Committee on Un-American Activities, with, by the way, Richard Nixon as counsel to the committee.  I didn't really understand what that meant - or why my getting involved with political action might have terrified my parents - until sometime later.  But that's another story.

Anyway, a friend had invited me to join that picket line on 34^th Street. I showed up. Some one handed me a sign, and so it began. For the next few years I was involved in the Civil Rights movement and a bit of political awareness grew out of that. These were exciting times. One evening my dad came home with a newspaper that had a photo of me holding a home-made sign that read “Ban The Bomb.” It was a march from a rally at Madison Square Garden to the UN.  The march was lead by Norman Thomas and Harry Belefonte. And me, standing right there behind them, sign aloft. I am sure my parents were severely torn between pride and fear.

Somewhere in my later teens I sort of shifted from being an active demonstrator to being a 'movement' photographer. During the next decades I photographed hundreds of demonstrations.  Instead of a sign, I wore a press card. Over the years I collected lots of press cards. 

Tomorrow, half a century later, I will go to a demonstration at the UN again. I will have a camera with me, but for this one I will again be a demonstrator.  I doubt that anyone will publish a photo of me this time, but if someone hands me a sign, I will probably carry it. I figure it is about time.