August 26, 2003

Or,...My Continuing Struggle to Desperately Try and Make Sense of Post 9/11 ?Lefties?

It?s a perfect summer?s day.
I?m sitting on the beach reading my page-turner mystery while intermittently waving to my friends as they frolic in the ocean a few yards in front of me, relaxing on my sand chair. (Someone has to stay to guard the bags, purses and wallets.) Pleased that everyone is having so much fun I look down to read a couple more juicy pages. Our hero has just stumbled upon another big clue, so I become more engrossed and read further for a while. Just as the detective puts on his disguise I feel a distinct chill move over me as the sun too has gone under cover and I wonder why the familiar splashing sounds my friends were making have stopped. So I look up, away from Moses Wine for a second, taking in the fact that a storm seems to be gathering. Where are my friends? A sudden panic takes over for a few seconds until I realize with relief that the tide has brought them, ever so slowly and subtly, further down shore. I see them now far away, seemingly unaware that they?ve drifted. They look up, expecting to see me but only have a clearer view of the lifeguard chair instead.

So it seems they?d drifted away from me, unaware of the current?s surge, enhanced by the beginning of a storm that has moved them down shore. And even though Moses Wine has moved closer to the killer, I am in the exact same spot, tide and storm fast approaching.

Suddenly, alone on the beach, the storm?s all around me, but from where I?m sitting it?s eerily still and quiet. I see all this debris flying through the air, all this energy in full force raging around and around but strangely when I reach out to grab hold of anything, there?s nothing there and then when I look straight up all I see is clear blue sky. What?s going on here?

I?ve realized that this is how it feels as I grapple with figuring out what has happened to the ?left? that I thought I knew. This is also how it feels trying to explain my experiences working in the ?lefty? worker-owned collective that I was once so proud to be a part of. I?ve also realized that both these storms are really one and the same. For now, let?s say that they both have the same ?root causes?.

There are so many assumptions made each and every day by good loyal ?lefty? practitioners that these assumptions have become invisible and automatic. These assumptions have become like unconscious facts. These assumptions, I think, used to be considerably more flexible, treated more like guidelines, but have turned rigid and unmovable in the wake of 9/11. My lefty friends now behave as if these assumptions were carved in literal lefty stone. And it is just this literal interpretation of events that leaves them convinced that, because they no longer see me on the beach directly in front of them, I?m the one who has disappeared from the lefty beach party.

-to be continued...

-Cara

I live in a neighborhood of Los Angeles where cars sport the bumper stickers "No War in Iraq" and "Free Tibet" without a hint of irony. As an old lefty myself, I'm appalled at its swift descent into fantasy and conservatism of dogma in the face of true struggle. I'm glad I found you guys.

Posted by: Jenette Goldstein at August 29, 2003 07:55 PM

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