Journalism

[Resistance is the secret of joy]

At the first meeting of my first journalism class, we studied the morning paper. Breaking news that day consisted of horrific accounts of the war in El Salvador--secret battles, mass graves. As the professor spoke, I watched a hummingbird just outside the lecture hall window. My mind wandered back to a morning seven years earlier when I'd watched an old woman with long grey braids being arrested on a San Francisco street corner for shouting this very same news through a megaphone. I thought of the boy I loved then, and the way the riot cops flung his limp body out of their way as they moved in on the old woman. The hummingbird fluttered out of sight & I thought of the boy's face, smooth and optimistic.

Sometimes news takes a long time to break, but the truth still matters here and now.


[A 9-year-old girl recovers from a skull fracture and two broken legs in the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. A U.S. Army Bradley fighting vehicle crashed into her family's car.]

I'll be proud to be an American when Bush is in jail.