Peachy Politics

We drop Dena and Gary off to fly to Costa Rica for their honeymoon and we depart for our road trip. We spend the day in Atlanta, Georgia, where Tzadik begins his Real Troop Support project, collecting “Support Our Troops” ribbons in every state we visit and making plans for an art project about what real support for the troops looks like. We eat a hearty, organic breakfast at the Flying Biscuit, visit Little 5 Points—the Atlanta equivalent (attempt) at Haight-Ashbury, where we visit the independent feminist bookstore and the thrift store. We spend time at a city park that has some interesting art pieces, including an installation of roadwork neon orange colored hammocks that we nap in for an hour or so. We go to Donna Van Gough’s art store, a shop that Sam and I visited on our trip through the South before the election 2004, where we interviewed the owner, asking her “What is Christian about Bush?” This time I revisited the politics of Atlanta, and found that the progressive community is still working hard, vibrant, however small. What used to be a square of sidewalk spray painted with a sunshine with the words “Vote” in the middle is now red, white, and blue and reads, “Liberty and Justice for All.” We go to the library and I work on the internet for a little over an hour. We shop at Sevananda community-owned natural food grocery store and get a Rocket Pocket veggie sloppy joe that is absolutely delicious, as well as has a cool name.

We drive on the big freeway and on several little roads, visiting Cuba and stopping to play on the swing set there and watch a long train go by, and by nightfall we are in Birmingham, Alabama, where we stay with Reverend Jack Zylman and his wife, Mike. They live in a historical landmarked house build in the early 1900s, a house which is filled with colorful, funky artwork from all over the world, but mostly from Cuba, Central America, and the South. They have many nativity scenes, including my favorite which is a sculpture depicting the birth of Christ in the back of a pickup truck. Jack is an older activist with a fountain of stories that pour over the dinner table, spill out into the sitting room, wash through the kitchen, and swim upstream into the bedrooms and office upstairs. He tells us about his role in the civil rights struggle in the South, his work with students in the Unitarian community in Massachusetts, his anti-war work during the Vietnam War, and stories of the scandalous, racist politics characterizing the former mayor of Birmingham and FBI interventions in Alabama. His wife, Mike, relates her experiences working with the women’s studies program at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham), and she tells me that women’s studies and African-American studies aren’t even departments at the under-funded, struggling university. Mike has a quiet, yet very powerful demeanor and her satirical humor and bright whit course through our conversations.

I find myself extremely inspired by Jack, even through all of his painful and challenging stories about organizing. One thing that Jack says which sticks with me is when he is talking about organizing for civil rights and says that it is not courage, but rather faith that motivated him to do the work that he did. He talked about how many ministers and preachers and other members of the clergy spoke with him years after the civil rights movement began and told him that they wish they could have been involved in the way that he was, but they had families to take care of, church communities to look after, and survival needs, and thus couldn’t participate the way that he did. Jack said to these people that for him it was not a decision, that it was more important to him to die with meaning, for a cause, than to live a life without meaning; that he would rather live a meaningful life than die without having followed his heart. And this meant that he had to put his body on the line numerous times.

In addition to all this, Jack is a music aficionado and he and Mike are part of a neighborhood cooking cooperative, and they both have some pretty cool cats. I leave them with a CODEPINK book and a promise to organize a book event soon and with hugs goodbye we are off in the morning.