Forgive me if I roll my eyes at your precious outrage about torture.

[Downtown Hound]

297. You know this might come as a big surprise to you, but...

"Choking on tear gas" is not something that comes with a guarantee of a positive reward. Sometimes, you just have to stand up to a bully even it it means you get your ass kicked. Hey, I'd love it if I got something positive for my efforts as in the world changed overnight and war, poverty, environmental destruction, racism and a whole host of other ills disappeared. But that's probably not going to happen. And the reason why I mentioned campaigning for Barack Obama is because I believe in a multi-facted approach with a variety of different tactics. Voting, protest, civil disboedience, debate, campaigning, all of it. I'm even willing to tolerate the occassional riot.

What did I accomplish? On my own, nothing. But the fact that I was part of a much broader movement, well we did actually accomplish quite a lot. We took Congress for the Dems in 2006, elected Obama twice, eventually ended the wars or at the very least toned them down significantly, stopped the torture, got a better health care system in place (although it's still flawed), and have started to make both cannabis and gay marriage legal.

Would all those things have happened if I hadn't "choked on tear gas." Who can say really? Would women have gotten the vote if the Iron Jawed Angels hadn't gone to jail? Would African Americans ended segregation if they hadn't committed civil disobedience, rioted, and formed militant groups? Would the American people have turned on the Republicans and the Iraq War or for that matter the Vietnam War if we hadn't protested by the millions?

I'll tell you what I think. I think that change happens when people get so fed up that they're willing to take risks and radical actions as well as campaign and fight within the system as well as outside of it. While an individual arrest or action or tear gas here or pepper spray there may not mean jack shit in the larger scheme of things, eventually, if enough people do it, then change happens.

And that's why I do those things from time to time and will continue to do them. I don't expect change to come overnight or as a direct result of anything I do as an individual. I just do my part to keep the fire lit for when change finally does happen.