My mother's illness fitted into this protest against the treatment of the sick who could not pay, the inefficiency of commercialism, the waste, the extravagance, and the poverty.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Protesting is good, but healing is better. We need to see America heal.
I had been an activist on the issue of HIV, primarily in the African American and Latino communities here in the U.S. for many years. It was horrifying to me how the pandemic was raging right here in this country but no one was talking about it.
The British Red Cross asked me to help them spearhead a fundraising campaign for the victims of the war in Nicaragua. It was a turning point in my life. It began my commitment to justice and human rights issues.
People might not protest for overtly political or social causes, but when they can't feed themselves and their family, they will take to the streets.
The health benefits of paid sick days policies are obvious. They prevent the spread of disease. But the impact is wider. If a working mom or dad loses a job because of sickness, the family may slip into poverty.
I just came from South Africa, a place that had been in a perpetual uprising since 1653, so the uprising had become a way of life in our culture and we grew up with rallies and strikes and marches and boycotts.
Sometimes I think that I was forced to withdraw into depression because it was the only rightful protest I could throw in the face of a world that said it was alright for people to come and go as they please, that there were simply no real obligations left.
My parents demonstrated against the Vietnam war, they were into the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, they started the first vegetarian restaurant in Pittsburgh.
There are always protests, whether you do something good or bad. Even if you do something beneficial, people say you do it because it's advertising.
In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.