by Mike Farrell
Like his brother John, the activist priest, Steve is a sweet and deeply dedicated man who has done wonders to raise the level of understanding about the horrors of the death penalty for the people of North Carolina. They’ve come close to getting a moratorium here and I expect to see more exciting developments in the future. North Carolina has had eight men exonerated from their death rows, two within the past few months—Glen Edward “Ed” Chapman, who I met in Asheville, was freed in April and Levon “Bo” Jones was just released on the second of this month. Steve and PFADP will not let this go unnoticed.
The crowd here at Quail Ridge is huge, filling the area set aside for seating and spilling into the aisles of the store and up around the counters behind. And once again, it’s a hoot! People are thoughtful and attentive, open to the ideas I offer and full of questions, comments, concerns and, of course, a palpable love and appreciation for M*A*S*H.
Perhaps one should expect such a warm and wonderful embrace from a group of people willing to come to an event sponsored by organizations such as Steve’s and Jill’s, but for me there’s always that old actors’ fear of coming out and having to play to an empty house. That has certainly not been the case on this trip, I must say, but the insecurity remains, nonetheless.
In any event, it’s a wonderful evening and a great discussion. Afterward, between signing books and having pictures taken, I’m able to meet three people from Nazareth House Catholic Worker, with whom I’ve had some communication. Though I didn’t get here early enough to visit their place, as I had hoped, they have come to hear me and say hello. The Catholic Worker movement grew out of the life and teachings of Dorothy Day, and involves a commitment to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and providing hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. Catholic Workers protest injustice, war, racism, and violence of all forms, but this community, run by Scott Langley, an Amnesty International Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator, focuses on providing refuge and support for family members visiting loved ones on death row.
Heroes abound in this world.
After conversation is had, books are signed, pictures are taken (including a sweet interlude with Abbi, a six-year-old whose family has endured a three-hour drive to bring her here to meet “BJ,” her favorite M*A*S*H character) and people are gone, Steve Dear and I take four young friends of his out to dinner. Speaking of heroes, these lovely young women, all in their early twenties and all college graduates, are Jesuit Volunteers. The Jesuit Volunteer Corps offers young women and men the opportunity to work full time for justice and peace. Living in community and existing on the smallest of stipends from the organization—this augmented by another small contribution from the group to which they’re assigned—the JVs give a year of their lives to work with a social justice organization.
The dinner is lively and full of laughter, the young women bright and attractive and fun. One of them, Amanda, works with Steve at People of Faith Against the Death Penalty. Alex works with an organization dealing with victims of AIDS, Chelsea with a group providing shelter and support for the homeless, and Melissa an organization offering support for immigrants, especially, as I understand it, focusing on issues of domestic violence.
Charming, vibrant young women giving their time, talents and a good measure of their hearts to people in need. Damned impressive, I think, and evidence that this country really does have the capacity to live up to its promise.
After all that, I still get back to the hotel in time to catch the last few minutes of the Lakers/Spurs game—a romp for the Lakers, who are up 2–0 in a best-of-seven series!
DAY FIFTEEN
Saturday, May 24, 2008
CITY OF ORIGIN: RALEIGH, NC
CITY OF DESTINATION: WASHINGTON, DC
MILES TRAVELED: 276
VENUE: BUSBOYS AND POETS
EVENT COSPONSORS
Service Employees International Union, Public Citizen, Greenpeace
Up early, grab a quick shower and hustle down to wake up Mule. It’s raining this morning, a surprise after the beautiful weather we’ve been enjoying. But hearing from Shelley last night about the tornadoes (tornadoes!) in Southern California, I guess I don’t have much to complain about. The drive to DC is supposed to take four and a half hours, per my itinerary, and I have a TV interview in the afternoon; the book event is an early one, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. It’s Saturday and I guess it’s the Memorial Day weekend (the downside of a trip like this is that you get so focused you lose touch with what’s happening in the world), so the early schedule is an attempt to compensate for that.
The radio tells me that something like thirty million cars will be on the road this weekend. It feels like they’re all on mine. And you know the problems I was talking about in Atlanta with the directions printed out by computer? Well, they’re frustrating and confusing enough when you’re by yourself and trying to read and understand and turn and go 0.2 miles and stop and do a U-turn and then go again and somehow manage to not get killed, but it’s even worse when they’re WRONG. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! Even Mule knew it. The damned directions sent me west when I knew they should send me east, but they were so confusing that I doubted myself and followed them, only to end up screaming bloody murder as I went around a cloverleaf twice trying to get back in the other direction with every North Carolinian who was up too early on Saturday morning honking and swearing at me. I probably broke more laws in that one maneuver than in my entire driving career.
But finally, calm again—I think Mule was actually scared that I had entirely lost it—and headed in the right direction, things smoothed out, the rain went away and we sailed up through Virginia.
Shelley called, which was early for her and it worried me a touch. It turned out that she was worried too. She was hearing strange noises coming from our bedroom fireplace and she was afraid some animal might have gotten trapped in the chimney. It had poured rain during the night, she said, and she wondered if it was possible that some creature had crawled into the top of the chimney to get away from the weather and gotten trapped.
My daughter Erin is there with her and she came in and thought she could hear something walking on the roof. As we talked over the possibilities, I tried to reassure her that it was unlikely that anything could have gotten into the chimney, but I really didn’t know for sure. Shelley once had a bad scare when some raccoons tore shingles off the roof of another house and she was told by the animal welfare people that they sometimes actually work their way into the house.
That was clearly on her mind at this point, as it was on mine, but neither of us seemed to want to mention it. As she pointed out later, if some animal came down the chimney and she had to get out of the room in a hurry, that wouldn’t be an easy thing to do, given her hip.
Fortunately, as it turned out, the problem was being created by huge blackbirds that were congregating on the chimney. Erin’s investigation seems to have scared them off, so we were all able to calm down.
Now, racing along just north of Richmond, I see a worrisome thing. The southbound traffic across the median is stopped. “I don’t like seeing that,” I say to Mule. “Every damn time it happens over there it seems to happen on this side too, sooner or later.”
Mule just snorts.
“Okay,” I say, “but humor me. Keep your eyes peeled.”
We were actually doing well. I figured at the rate we were going we’d be in DC by 1:30, I could check into the hotel, change, have plenty of time to do the TV interview and then casually stroll into Busboys and Poets, the bookstore/café on 4th Street, Northwest, in plenty of time, cool, unruffled, suave, debonair …
SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION
With two million members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is the fastest-growing union in the Americas.
SEIU’s local union affiliates and state councils represent the people we see every day: nurses, doctors, home care providers, nursing home workers, jan
itors, security officers, child care providers, public employees, and workers in many other service professions. It is the most diverse union in America, with a leadership that reflects its ranks: more than half of our members are represented by local unions led by women or people of color.
Under the leadership of President Andy Stern and Secretary Treasurer Anna Burger, more than a million workers have united in SEIU since 1996. This has made SEIU the largest union of health care and property service workers and second-largest public employee union. As SEIU has grown, it has pioneered new models for workers to win a voice on the job. It has spearheaded bold new partnerships with community allies, employers, and other organizations to unite workers in the union.
SEIU is among the most powerful political forces in America. Fighting for issues like quality, affordable health care for all, wages that support families, a secure retirement, and freedom for workers to join a union, our members lobby for a proworker agenda on Capitol Hill, work to elect proworker candidates and to hold elected officials accountable.
During the 2008 presidential primary season, SEIU required all candidates seeking the union’s endorsement to submit a detailed universal health care plan and to “Walk a Day in the Shoes” of an SEIU member by spending a day on the job with them. Six of the major presidential candidates accepted SEIU’s challenge. SEIU endorsed Barack Obama for president in February 2008.
Through tireless organizing and tough political action, SEIU continues to be a driving force for change that affects working families. We are winning better wages, health care, and more secure jobs, while uniting our strength with our counterparts around the world to help ensure that workers, not just corporations and CEOs, benefit from today’s global economy.
… Oh crap! Brake lights! No way to exit, nothing to do but slow down, and down, and down. Pretty soon we’re stopped. The cars on the right are still slipping by, so we ease over there and get a bit further along, but pretty soon everyone’s stopped. “Did I tell you, Mule? Did I tell you?”
No snort this time.
Sirens, lights flashing. After sitting there for a long time, I step out to see if I can get a sense of what has happened. I don’t know if there are other cars involved or not, but about a hundred yards ahead, a big semi has obviously lost control and it’s a mess. The tractor part is upside down on the left side of the three-lane highway, actually up on the hillside, while the trailer is stretched out across two of the three lanes with its rear end hanging over a slope on the right side. Cops are converging from every direction, ambulances come down the perimeter of the road, a big wrecker rolls in, and we sit, unable to go forward or backward, with what are clearly hundreds of cars, maybe thousands, lining up behind us.
It is awful. Clearly, someone is hurt, possibly badly hurt, so one needs to keep priorities in order, but … you find yourself wondering … how long is this going to take?
Well, the answer is, a long time. We all sit there for about an hour and a half. I call the TV show and the producer tells me they’ll wait. It is to be taped and shown tomorrow, so they’re okay and willing to be patient. So we sit. People from cars lined up as far back as I can see have left their vehicles and walked down to the line where the fire people have stopped everybody.
Gives you a lot to think about, seeing something like that.
And there are practical considerations. Mule doesn’t like to idle for long periods—or to creep, as I discovered the other day. His battery runs down.
Anyway, they finally get the injured taken away and eventually clear the roadway, so we ease into one lane and speed off toward DC. I call the producer and say it lookslike I’ll have to come straight there without checking into the hotel and changing, but I’ll need them to be sure to get me out in time for the bookstore thing. She reassures me it is no problem.
PUBLIC CITIZEN
Public Citizen is a nonprofit public interest organization that represents consumers in the courts, executive branch agencies, and Congress. Based in Washington, DC, the national watchdog group has been fighting in the halls of power for the rights of ordinary citizens for more than thirty-five years. Corporations have lawyers, lobbyists, and experts in Washington; the public should as well.
Public Citizen’s unassailable research exposes facts that people can use to hold government and corporations accountable. Public Citizen campaigns focus on safer drugs and motor vehicles, public health, access to the courts, government ethics and transparency, fair trade policies, and sustainable energy. The organization ensures that people have access to government information so they can be active citizens.
This is the group that secured airline passengers’ rights when they are bumped from flights, won the release of Nixon’s secret White House tapes, fought for twenty years to get lifesaving air bags in cars, successfully petitioned to have the dangerous herbal supplement ephedra removed from the market, secured strong ethics laws for federal lawmakers and lobbyists, blocked new coal plants in Texas, fought for stronger fuel economy standards, and much more.
Public Citizen exposes how much money various corporate interests raise for lawmakers, pressures Congress to repeal tax subsidies now given to wealthy oil companies, warns of the dangers of nuclear power, and successfully petitions to have dangerous prescription drugs removed from the market. Our lawyers argue—and more often than not, win—precedent-setting public interest cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, fifty-five cases to date. Public Citizen publishes a significant online health resource, www.WorstPills.org, which provides patients with an independent, second opinion about the safety and efficacy of prescription drugs.
In addition to lobbying for the people, testifying before Congress, and delivering timely news and reports to the media, Public Citizen builds strong coalitions with other nonprofit groups to more forcefully advance the consumer agenda.
Public Citizen is funded solely by memberships, foundation grants, and publication sales; it takes no corporate or government money, so it remains fiercely independent. Public Citizen works relentlessly, never giving up until reforms are won.
The show is something called Out of the Box, and has a larger audience outside the U.S. than in, much of it throughout the Middle East, so we get to talk a lot about the war in Iraq, about the Bush/Cheney policies, international relationships and the works. She has obviously read the book and asks me a bunch of questions about my trips to various parts of the world, allowing for an unusually frank political interview, not the tap dancing that passes for discourse in most of the media today.
Racing off to Busboys and Poets, I get there just at 4 p.m. and there is quite a crowd waiting, which surprises me again. This event is cosponsored by the Service Employees International Union, Public Citizen and Greenpeace. Rick Hind, who handles government relations for Greenpeace, introduces me. A good guy, Rick has been in the struggle on the important issues for years and is a great friend and a wonderful resource.
One of the founders of Iraq Veterans Against the War is there, as is a woman from the Nuclear Information Resource Center. Tina Richards, the woman whose TV show I had just done, surprises me and shows up too. And a particular thrill is that my old friend Janet Shenk is here. Back in the days of the struggle against the Reagan administration’s war in El Salvador, Janet was one of the true heroes, accompanying us on delegations, acting as a translator in meetings, arranging connections that no one else could make happen. The coauthor of El Salvador: The Face of Revolution, Janet is one of the brightest and most committed people in the movement for social justice today, whether in Latin America, the Middle East or here at home.
A representative from Congressman John Conyers’s office is there too, wanting to recruit me into a single-payer health care campaign they’re setting up. Conyers has been very helpful in a venture I’m currently involved with, trying to free the Angola 3, so it’s possible we may soon be working together on something else.
GREENPEACE
Mike Farrell has been a great friend and ally of Gr
eenpeace and the environmental movement for decades. Long before Hurricane Katrina, Mike joined Greenpeace in a 2001 “Celebrity Bus Tour” of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. The tour was organized by our legendary environmental justice leader Damu Smith and also included poet Alice Walker and Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA). They heard painful accounts of illnesses, deaths, and the routine denial of the petro-chemical industry responsible for the pollution. Mike wrote movingly about it on his website.
After more than a decade of organizing, Damu was diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and tragically died a year later at fifty-four. Damu worked tirelessly to organize rainbow coalitions that defeated industry efforts to expand in low-income African American communities. One community’s heroism against Shell Chemical was chronicled in a book by Steve Lerner, Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor. In addition to the pollution, workers and residents live in constant fear of another Bhopal disaster. Since 9/11, the vulnerability of chemical plants to terrorism has intensified these concerns. Greenpeace is asking Congress to require chemical plants to switch to safer chemicals and processes to eliminate these risks.
It is another terrific event, with lots of good discussion about activism, the problems in the world, and whether there are reasons to hope. There are.
During the book signing, Gil and Susan introduce themselves. Though we’d never met personally, through a mutual friend they’ve been recipients of a torrent of e-mail articles and musings I send to a growing list. Gil is a former legislator and Susan had been—up until yesterday when Senator Clinton made a remark that Susan disagreed with—a committed Hillary Clinton supporter. No longer.