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

[moriah]

83. 8, made aware being liberal was weird here. 20, when Bush v Gore, that...

... I truly got pissed.

I remember writing in my diary as a child about being upset about the invasion of Panama, and feeling we could have done something different during the 1st Iraq War. I thought the impeachment was ridiculous, voted for Gore expecting him to win and telling Nader people they were throwing their vote away... then the Daily Show's coverage of Disaster 2000.

I said the moment they declared the winner that we'd be back in Iraq before his first term was over... and I was right.

I protested it because I had the opportunity to leave my home red state and spend a year in Queens. Helped the NLG hand out educational materials to arrestees getting released, along with coffee and cigarettes and hugs, after the A7 mass arrest that cost the city.

I don't know how much was nature or nurture. Mom was a liberal but my grandfather, who we lived with, was a,conservative and my grandmother kept her mouth shut. I have always detested war, violence, even yelling, though. And I have always felt you couldn't depend on a man as a woman when it came to supporting children but that's definitely nurture. Grandpa got sick and Dad was an addict.

I've joked I'm either reincarnated from a past life as a Quaker or a Vietnam war protesting, bra-burning feminist who burned out young.