DUers, At What Age Did You Become Politically Minded and Why?

[RandomAccess]

64. I always hated politics -- and still do

I refused to vote when I was first eligible because it wasn't a direct enough participation in democracy -- took too long to get them out if they weren't suitable, they could lie thru their teeth and we were still stuck with them, they didn't much have to cater to our wishes, you couldn't ever get in to see them unless you could buy them, etc. I'm also not big on the type of compromise too often necessary.

I remember one time in the early 70s, tho, that I got sufficiently motivated to write a letter to my Senator. I got back a form letter on the wrong damn subject! That was the last time I even bothered.

I did, however, watch as much of the Watergate hearings as I could with a toddler son. And I admired so many of them and nearly fell in love with John Dean. But I still really hated politics and refused to have anything to do with it, though when Gary Hart was running, I did go ahead and vote for him in the primary.

I became a feminist in the late 70s.

And then: Anita Hill / Thomas Clarence. I watched it gavel-to-gavel, literally exhausting myself. At one point a woman named Ricky Silberman, a deputy at the EEOC directly under Clarence Thomas, was being interviewed on Public Broadcasting coverage I happened to have on at the time, and she started questioning Hill's mental health.

I said to myself, in horror: OMG, these people can HURT us, and shot out of my chair so fast I'd have knocked anyone standing nearby over and went directly to the phone book to look up the closest National Organization for Women, who were fortuitously having a meeting only a week or so later. And it was packed.

Unfortunately, many of the women who attended ere Republican and felt put off by the fact that most of the women running the organization were Democrats, but -- lots of women were energized and made their voices known at the next election. Much like this year.

I stayed in and got very active. I continued to watch politics from then on -- out of pure self-preservation. And I still hate it.