people think that protest against the madness of the Bush Regime is
just for college kids, some youthful folly they”ll abandon as soon as
they get a taste of The Real World, allow me to introduce myself. I’m
Kim, over-the-road truck driver and Mom, your emissary from beyond the
walls of academe. My world is the world of boneweary drivers plying
pitchdark roads slapping their own faces to stay awake through an
eleven hour driving shift, of forklifts pirouetting in warehouses in
the wee hours, all so we the people may obey the Regime’s one true
mandate: Shut Up and Buy. Never fear, when you open the case at the
Convenience Store and reach for that can of Assault Energy Drink; it”ll
be there, thanks to folks like me.
I
read and think, so I”ve been against the Bush Regime and everything it
is doing since Day One, and even before that. I’m not much of a joiner,
though I hit the streets at every opportunity, so my way of protest is
to talk to as many people as possible out there, and, more important,
to listen. At first I was a little shy about raising my voice, in a
truck stop T.V. lounge, for instance. Such places used to be a kind of
last bastion of unquestioning loyalty to whoever’s in power, I guess
because working people are often just too fucking tired to think. Been
there. I can relate. But I”ve seen change as the wars grind on and
working people daily become more exhausted and oppressed. These days,
if Bush comes on the tube and I criticize him, I get nods of assent. So
subdued, yet unmistakable. My experience on the road has shown me that
people are beginning to wake up to what’s happening to them and to
think that maybe, maybe things don’t have to be this way. Here’s a
story to illustrate my point.
last week, I was hauling water meter parts from Nogales to Milwaukee,
and “round midnight, on I-44 in Missouri, the truck broke down. It was
the middle of nowhere; the nearest town was quite small. I summoned a
mechanic on my cell phone, but it was going to be a long wait, so my
codriver and I bushwhacked up the hill toward the shining beacon of a
yellow Denny’s sign: Always Open. We sat down at a table in the back
dining room and ordered up some food. Our waiter was a young man,
exceptionally polite and attentive. “You”re great,” said my codriver.
“Have you had special training in customer relations?”
just the Marines,” said our waiter. He reminded me of Heath Ledger in
Brokeback Mountain. The titanic restraint. His mouth barely moved when
he spoke.
I held my tongue and waited, not knowing what I would hear next. The
waiter hung his head and clasped his hands in front of him. He was
built like a weightlifter; I could see the veins in his arms. He said
he”d been there when the Marines went in to Kuwait City and Fallujah.
“I’m not proud of what I did,” he said softly, and he repeated that
statement over and over throughout the conversation, as someone might
say “um,” or “ok.”
Fallujah, it was like in the Bible,” he began slowly. “When they marked
the houses with lamb’s blood, and the Angel of Death flew over and
killed the firstborn sons in all the houses that weren’t marked. They
marked the houses”and the ones that weren’t marked, they had us go in
and open fire and”” He stopped speaking and only made gestures.
waiter’s words came a little faster now. “If people knew what was
really happening over there, they”d rise up and say, “bring our kids
home NOW!” If people knew, they wouldn’t stand for it.” And then a
harried-looking, stringy-haired blonde appeared in the doorway and told
our waiter that his other tables were wondering where the hell he was,
and he had to go.
them. Damn the sick greedy bastards that have saddled that young man,
who could be my son, with guilt he”ll have to struggle with every day
for the rest of his life.
of course we do know. We know very well exactly what is happening over
there. The survivors of that hell are coming back and telling their
stories, not just in New York, not just in Chicago, but at midnight in
the Denny’s in Rolla, Missouri. And we know very well what’s happening
here as well. C’mon, do we really want to keep slaving away so the
greedheads can keep up their profit margins? How long before we decide
we”ve had enough? How long before we realize we truly have nothing
left to lose? How long, I wonder, before we make the transition from
“Isn’t that tragic?” to “Let’s roll.”
-Kim the Driver