2008-03-29
Some days are just more important than others
Today was one of those.
There was an anti-war rally on campus this afternoon, followed by a city wide march through Pittsburgh. It was sunny and beautiful outside, but overcast with sadness and anger.
Anyways. The march culminated in in Schenley plaza where a slew of professors, reverends, authors, veterans, widows, etc, came to speak.
It was a crazy, mixed up salt shaker of adjectives: sublime, basic, empowering, encouraging, disheartening, disgusting, freeing. Anyways it kind of "inspired" me to write a little something. I slipped away from my friends on the hill and approached the stage, scoping out whoever seemed to be in charge. I pulled her aside and asked quietly if I could share it. Surprisingly she said yes, and after three more ppl more went, I found myself standing behind the microphone and facing at least 500 people.
I stood up and delivered with a quivering voice the speech I had scribbled onto the back of a crumpled pamphlet. I tried my hardest to restrain the waterworks, but fuck, with something so overwhelmingly beautiful/terrible/small/powerful I didn't really have a sporting chance. Nevertheless, I got through it. And was received by tons of hugs and appreciative smiles from strangers as I walked off stage. (love Pittsburgh people!)
This war, the state of our economy, the fundamentally screwed up education and health care systems, these things are important dammnit! It's too easy to stay on Facebook all day, plugged into your ipod, shutting out these issues that seem so big and complicated and far away from you personally. But the truth is, they DO affect you, and if these things continue to spiral out of control because of our ignorance and laziness, we only have ourselves to blame.
This was, and still can be, a great country. But WE have to fix it from within to preserve it. Fuck!
hosay at 5:51 p.m.