These favorites are fun – both as a way to introduce myself to Marina (and to blog readers) and as a way to travel down memory lane.
So. This is, for me, funny. I could say it was the 1982 march for nuclear disarmament in Central Park, attended by over a million people. Or Barack Obama’s inauguration – which my then-four-year-old son and I attended together, alone. Or a demonstration against Jacob Zuma in Cape Town, the day he survived a no-confidence vote in the South African parliament (at which T‘s cell phone was lifted from her).
But I remember one particular demonstration more than any other.
It was 1986. Maybe 1987. I was at a demonstration urging my then-college to divest its endowment from investments in companies doing business in South Africa. It was a small demonstration. We had gathered to meet trustees as they arrived on flights at the local (small) airport. And I should say, “we” were three of us. C, with whom I was barely friends, and A, whom I’d never met before.
So the three of us were walking up to people, holding signs that said things like “You have blood on your hands!” with dripping red paint, and asking them, “Are you a trustee?”
Needless (?) to say, we didn’t encounter a single trustee.
But A, today, is just about my closest friend. [Having now written this, I think I may have told you, on a video I recorded while driving a moped. Is that right?]
N.