It was June of 2002, less than a year after 9/11. Mixed in with our thrill was a good dose of terror: sneaking around on public building was a dangerous proposition. Police were cracking down on activists, legislators were proposing changing the law so that some routine acts of civil disobedience would be felonies, and, as we later discovered, there was truth to the conspiracy theories that many in our community were being monitored by the FBI.
Much to our frustration, our action team was deterred by heavy winds, beheaded pidgeons, and 'bad juju', derailing the deployment of our banner. Our action was delayed, but not canceled, and we grew tired and anxious sitting in a hotel room on high alert, waiting to see if opportunity would strike.
No one was more despondent than my colleague, Todd, who was running our Staples campaign. Except perhaps me, because I thought for sure we were all going to land in jail, forcing me to miss my wedding.
Our Staples banner never flew, but we won the campaign shortly thereafter, partly, we think, because we didn't escalate. And Chris and I danced at our wedding below a banner deployed just for us by our intrepid crew.
During my work trip just now to Bellingham, I stayed with Shannon and Todd. Throughout the years, we've stood on bars together celebrating victories, licked our wounds on a few painful losses, co-founded organizations, eaten a lot of decadent meals, (mostly cooked by Todd,) and held each other's newborn babies. My first date with Chris included dragging him over to Shannon's so Libby and I could present some design concepts for Shannon and Ilyse's campaign against Citibank.
We're all still up to our same tricks. And, so apparently, is the government. Only this time, it's the Canadian government that's scaring the pants off of activists. We alway joke at work that everything that happens in the US happens ten years later in Canada. So, it only makes sense that as Chris and I come up to our ten-year anniversary, we also mark ten years since the 'Green Scare' down here, and what do you know... Now, it's my Canadian colleagues who are getting seriously hassled at the border, facing new legislation that will allow them to be monitored by the government, and feeling generally under fire.
It's strange how scary things eventually get normalized. Remember the color coded security system in airports? I never really thought twice about code orange after a while. 'Cause it always was.
Meanwhile, the thought that I'm not being monitored in some fashion hasn't crossed my mind in ages.
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