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Radicalization

 There is a meme, and a general question in the air these days......what radicalized you?


It has become a joke, but for some of us, it's a very real question and one we have actually spent time on.  I'll gladly share my list from as early back as I can remember.  I first want to say how much I appreciate that my parents, local Charlotte radio and my elementary school and junior high school librarians didn't censor me.


It was reading James Baldwin, a gay man born in Harlem in the 1920's, before I was even 13.  Before I was even old enough to know what all of those qualities might mean.  It was not reading Richard Wright and Nikki Giovanni until I took an African American Lit class in my 30's with Dr. Alicia McCollough.  It was not until Barack was inaugurated.  It was not until Bernie stepped away from the podium for BLM speakers.  It was not until George Floyd.  It was not until Sonya Massey.  


It was reading Slaughterhouse-Five at age 12 and then devouring every book of Uncle Kurt's thereafter.  It was gaining an interest in war, especially Vietnam, and hearing my parents talk about the men who were "messed up" and "never right again" after coming back from Southeast Asia. It was going to a Native American college.  It was learning about AIM and Russell Means and listening to The Indigo Girls.  It was the Reagan and Bush presidencies.  It was Desert Storm.  It was the AIDS crisis that I was too young to even understand or hear about. It was Bono.  And The Troubles.  And the Berlin Wall.

It was not until I discovered Zach later in life.  And Joe Strummer.  And all the piss and vinegar for the upper class and The Man and how hard it was to make a living.  It was inflation and severe American inequity.  It was the Gilded Age and Robber Barons and the Vanderbilts and the Kardashians all those many, many so-called "real" housewives. It was getting divorced, twice. It was having a son with a disability.  It was growing up poor.  It was having teenage parents.  It was watching my grandmother die in a middle-grade nursing home.  It was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and the vision of that old man with his old and dirty toes.


It was Alice Paul.  And Gloria.  And all the 1st through 4th Wave Feminists that came before and after me.  It was cries for trans rights, and LGBT freedoms and gay marriage, and protections for sex workers.  It was Anora, Boogie Nights and Iron-Jawed Angels.  It was Francine Hughes and my Marriage and Family sociology professor in college. It was Disco Demolition Night and Stonewall.  It was The Castro and my beautiful friend, Doug Newton.  It was Sarah Marshall and the many, many podcasts that followed the Pandemic.  



Recently my 21 year-old niece made her first ever political post.  And even though I was bummed as her aunt that she didn't seem to care about the overturn decision of Roe v. Wade or campus violence, I was glad to see that something was finally moving her.  Even if it was the death of a right-wing pot-stirrer. 



And there are some people who will claim they have never been radicalized, mainly because they don't know what it means or don't want to admit to any kind of influence.  But believe me, you were.  It was Bugs Bunny or the book and movie "The Help" or it was Oprah Winfrey on every day at 4 or it was Tom Brady or Madonna or Evel Knievel or 9/11 or the day your dad lost his job.  

Believe me.  It was somebody or something.  
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