Yes, I’m afraid of heights. That fear has been deepening as the Parkinson’s Disease I’ve had for 18 years takes over my neurological system.
OK, I’m scared of small, enclosed spaces, too. That, I think, is the result of a traumatic incident when I was about 7 or 8, in which some of the older boys in my neighborhood dug a huge hole, covered it with plywood and dirt. Calling it a “cave,” they let my younger brother and I go in and check it out. As we did, the older kids were making it seem like the “cave” was collapsing. It scared the shit out of Kevin and me.
Those are real fears. Here is what doesn’t scare me: dying for the cause of justice.
Over the years, I led a nonprofit that actively picked fights with bad actors in the marketplace. The agency saw its role as intervening in the marketplace where unscrupulous or even downright unlawful exploitation of poor people was keeping poor people poor and their neighborhoods blighted.
We challenged slum landlords, banks, predatory lenders, real estate brokers, insurance companies, utilities, hospitals and more. Our tactics were fair and appropriate. Sometimes they were unconventional, but only when they had to be.
I can’t tell you how many times someone said to me something like, “I can’t believe someone hasn’t tried to take you out.” In the past year or so, I’ve heard it much more frequently than in my early years at Community Action. Maybe that’s because we have allowed gun nuts to stockpile very sophisticated killing machines. Or, maybe it’s because some idiots (including Supreme Court justices) have decided that the Second Amendment says that just about anyone with a pulse can get a gun, carry it into day care centers, hospitals, churches or anywhere else anyone damned well pleases. Or maybe it’s because any anti-social nobody can become world famous overnight.
I did have a short, maybe 7-month period during which I had three flat tires, one of which was clearly slashed. That was during our campaign taking on slum landlords.
Other than that, the thought of being “offed” has rarely entered my mind. Except when one of you says, “I can’t believe no one has taken you out.”
But at the risk of being excessively dramatic, being “offed” doesn’t scare me. I have Parkinson’s, for crying out loud. My health is declining and it will continue to decline. The quality of my life is diminishing. I am becoming more dependent on a few loved ones, especially my wife, Denise, to help me along.
I’d love to find a better way to exit than choking to death or falling, the two most common ways Parkinson’s gets us.
So, you wackos out there – white men, mostly rednecks who hate their government while considering themselves patriots, law-and-order types who will break the law without thinking twice if it helps put another kooky white guy back at the top of the food chain – you don’t scare me. The high dive does. But you don’t.
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