by James Dean Boldman
A few years ago I wrote a book called An American Feast. It’s a book about America, from my perspective, and it begins with my arrest at 19 years old, on May 1, 1971 … while completely naked and on Acid … smack-dab in the middle of Washington DC’s Reflecting Pool.
You may ask, why was I in that ridiculous situation?
Simple. Nixon was in the White House, the Vietnam War was raging, and I, being of Draft age, had just set fire to my Draft card and dropped it through the iron fence onto Richard Nixon’s south lawn. But, I wasn’t alone.
I was one of 12,000 angry young people that the combined forces of the Capital Police, the National Guard and the United States Marines, who were landing in helicopters on the grounds of the Washington Monument, struggled to contain us. It was the largest mass arrest in U.S. history … and it was my introduction to the counterculture. I was considered an agitator, because I was willing to stand up and speak out for my beliefs, even when they were not always popular. But it felt important and personal to me because I was part of a generation that was under attack, for our stance against the war. And I was eligible for the Draft.
Now I’m older and tired, and Trump has returned to the Oval Office. And, while I’m not exactly the energetic firebrand that I once was, I did manage to instill certain values in my children.
And, on the day of the recent election, before the votes were even counted, I recognized some red flags, the last of which told me it was over and I knew that Trump, that cruel buffoon, the least qualified jockey in the race, would win back the highest office in the land, and that the world would think, because of that sea of red on the electoral map, that we’re all behind him.
But, for me, the final Red Flag that informed me that it was over, and that the Resistance was and is still of paramount importance? It was when, on the day of the election, not in Texas or Arizona but in the Blue-est area of the deep-Blue states, but here in what we half-jokingly call the People’s Republic of Berkeley, Berkeley, where there is a long history of resistance, Berkeley, where there’s a cannabis dispensary on every corner, right next to the Whole Foods, Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement and of student led anti-war protests in the ‘60s, of the Black Panther Movement, and now the home of highly educated older hippies in tie-dye, who drive Teslas and ride around on $4000 recumbent bicycles.
The final aforementioned Red Flag, on the very day of the Election, no less, was when my beautiful transgender daughter, Max was driving on the freeway, and some fucking idiot wearing a wife-beater t-shirt and MAGA hat on backwards, pulls up alongside Max’s car, not a foot away at 65 mph on the freeway, mind you, and for no reason screams “I’ll kill you, you fucking freak” scaring poor Max, who is the sweetest most sensitive soul, out of her, not his, but her, mind.
I’m embarrassed to report that my immediate protective fatherly response, was to suggest that she maybe “tone down her look” in order to attract less hostility, which I’m proud to say, Max flatly and defiantly rejected … and, I wouldn’t have considered it either.
So, now I’m asked, What is the task of counterculture — then, now, and beyond?
My answer is this: It is raising thoughtful, kind children who are taught to respect and support the human rights of all, including their own, while standing up and speaking out loudly and firmly against that which is clearly wrong, against those that endeavor to roll back and erode, if not deny, basic human rights to our most at-risk and vulnerable. It is feeding the hungry, spreading kindness in a world that seems to have increasingly forgotten how. And it is by passing the torch to a new generation in order to ensure that the Resistance lives on. And that is the ultimate defiance.
Viva la Resistance.
