Ralph Nader announced he was running for president on Meet the Press when I was returning from Spring Break. I smiled from ear to ear and was excited at the opportunity that presented itself.
For one, I was not going to have to vote for Barack Obama. I was going to be able to vote my conscience. (That’s not to say I couldn’t have voted for Cynthia McKinney .)
I also chose to call the campaign and volunteer to be one of the many college students who would Road Trip for Ralph and go around the country getting petitions signed so he could get past our nation’s draconian ballot access laws and onto the ballot of all 50 states.
In the third week of May, right after my spring semester had come to an end, I stayed at an Extended Stay America in Woodridge outside of Chicago and took a van into downtown for four days straight attempting to get signatures. It was rough, and for the most part, I failed. I let personal hang-ups get in the way and made too much out of simply asking people to sign the petitions.
I took a train home from Chicago to Mishawaka, Indiana (where I live) to see if this was for me and see if I wanted to do this for an entire summer. It seemed like something worth doing if I could get used to asking people to sign for Ralph Nader. But, then on a Saturday night when I was getting ready to return, I began to have intense stomach pains.
The intense stomach pains developed into something unbearable. I spent most of the night curled up in front of my toilet wondering what to do because my body’s insides would not let anything out in either direction. What went wasn’t going out and what went down was coming back up either.
With a history of digestive problems and an infanthood filled with surgeries and trauma of this nature, I went to the doctor. The doctor assessed the problem and sent me to the emergency room. The nurses in the emergency room did the proper procedures and quickly got me into a room in the hospital (which I would be staying in for a week).
Twenty four hours later, I had surgery because my small intestine had twisted and wasn’t letting anything in or out. There was a blockage hours away from bursting and causing severe damage.
As I think back, I wonder what would have happened if I had not had health insurance. What if I had not been under a plan that my mother was still paying for which covers me until I am out of college?
I was told it could be weeks before I recovered from the surgery. How I would get an income so that I would have money to live off when I went back to college was up in the air. I would not be returning to any job until July.
I had plans to go to the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis. And, I also was going to be helping the production of a documentary called "Seriously Green" when the Green Party National Convention was held in Chicago.
So, what do you think I did? Against the best wishes of my family and maybe even the doctor, I took my Vicodin and went to Minneapolis to cover the NCMR for OpEdNews and to learn about media reform so that I could grow a group properly on campus.
The experience was a start to a summer that was one of the most fulfilling periods of my life so far. The summer took me to the Green Party Convention in Chicago, the Democratic National Convention in Denver, and finally, as college was starting back up, the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
In Chicago, it became evident that the Green Party’s nominee Cynthia McKinney was a great candidate but the press was not interested. You could count the number of press people at the convention on two hands and while there was independent media there, the mainstream news networks would not be bothered with McKinney despite the fact that she was going to be a black woman candidate for president.
In Denver, I saw for the first time how easy it is to turn any area in America into a police state. There, I participated in protests, helped the Iraq Veterans Against the War conduct Operation First Casualty for people in Denver, and marched down to the Pepsi Center with Rage Against the Machine, The Coup, and the Flobots in support of IVAW and their demands for Obama to support immediate withdrawal from Iraq, reparations for Iraqis, and benefits to veterans returning home. Our presence forced Obama to accept a letter from IVAW.
In St. Paul, I witnessed what government at all levels will do to silence people who feel compelled to use their First Amendment rights. On the final day of the RNC, the city deployed over a hundred police with gas masks to trap about 250 people intent on marching to the Xcel Energy Center. Bicycles, horses, batons, dump trucks, and bulldozers were used in a standoff that ended with police deploying chemical weapons and arresting and detaining press and protesters who had been trapped.
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