I'm here with a mix of feelings. A mix of anger and frustration over many things. I can chase it to the situation in Oaxaca...which tracks back to the Mexican Presidential election...which leads me to the leftover (and going nowhere) fury I have from the Presidential Election(s) in America...which then brings me to many, many other branches. Constitution. Environment. Africa. Iraq. Afghanistan. Phosphorous. Lies. Torture.

I can hardly blog on half of the things I want to, anymore. I delete twice as many posts as I write. I feel so damn frustrated. A shadow slowly slips over the land. Corruption, greed, sadism, racism—oppression joins hands all over the world, united in its purpose to feed itself. To grow disgustingly overproportioned and starve the rest of us. I feel so fucking ineffectual, watching from way over here, Discussing Reality n shit, looking through all these tubes.

And here's a man, on his feet and in the fray. Did I envy him? and identify with him in some sense? and admire him? You're damn straight I did. And that is part of why I was frustrated at his end. And why I mourn him, too.

What did I yell, laughing, to my wife-to-be on that free August day in 2004, as we marched down the street in New York City, blocking traffic from driving down 14th street? I think it was something like I feel like I'm living up to my family values and that made us both laugh, as we clapped and sang and la chota began to corral us all into the alley for what was to be long, long few days. We laughed at the irony of living up to family values that led you into orange police net.

I link it and I mention it often. Because it is part of what led me here to blogging about all these things, and because it is who I am, where I came from, and who I am proud to be.

But did I have a vest on when I stepped into the street? Or when I sat down in the middle of it? Did I have armor on? Did I have leg braces on? Did I even have the NLG (National Lawyer's Guild) phone number magic-markered onto two places on my body that day? Did I bring a phone card? Did I even plan to march in the street until I happened across the anarchist band in Union Square? Until we all began singing and clapping together, a song about the wrongs the President was doing to our world?

No.

So who am I really angry at? This man, who was putting himself in harm's way to protest, to inform, to fight the Evil Tide that must always be faced down? Even if you are but a boy with a rock facing a tank or a self-appointed reporter in a Tshirt with a videocamera? No.

Well, I'm glad that by now I've learned to think things out a little. I don't know where we get the idea that we know all our thoughts and feelings on the spot. It's been a project of mine, in the last half year: to stop and say "I think I need to think about this." Because to tell you the truth, my instinct is to barrel ahead using my vocabulary and my feelings to hammer out the moment until it no longer peels up at the edges and pokes me. But that is the kind of impulse that leads to body counts in other countries that did not attack you if you slide all the way down the slope. And perhaps a missed step or two down that slope you're not killing anyone or taking lives, but still saying junk you really don't agree with, or that makes you look silly. So when commentors Arcturus (and mostly) Luisa and I were discussing it and I began finding my own thought process a bit more, I said "I have to think on this." And I have been. (The Decider's compass points us all to a stance where we cannot second guess ourselves, where we are Always Right, where we are four year olds. But I do not follow his compass. I am human, wrong often, hypocritical always, and extremely flexible.)

Brad Will's death did feel feel "tragic and senseless"as this beautiful post says (that is not the main thrust of article). When I first watched his last 16 minutes of footage, it was a feeling I ended up with, and it came over me strongly. (I have to say, as a sidenote, that any footage of actual death (Faces of Death 1 - 5p; old war films, lynchings, burnings, etc) or footage involving actual death is somewhat disturbing to the system, I think. I'm not sure how good it is for the my mind.)

Thinking about it, moving through my feelings, reading other articles and hearing other news of Oaxaca has changed my stance on this "senseless" element completely. I still feel the man's individual loss of life...or the manner of it, is sad and tragic. (And thanks to commentor Luisa for the good talk). Perhaps it is that moment where the oh-so-celebrated "I" must meld into the larger purpose, the larger reasons—and the invidual ego/identity is washed into the past—that I feel this agony of letting go, this "senseless" experience. Like a little death in my own world, fractal empathies. But when I step back and look at all that is happening, I see the sense immediately. Especially when the man intentionally went the places he did and did the things he did. And it is a beautiful sense. Thank you, man. Thank you, Brad, for the reminder.

Pier 57 didn't make me give up hoping and fighting. The tombs did not either, nor did those riot cuffs, nor will the seemingly bottomless well of harm these large powers seem ready to drown us in. Brad Will's life and the way it ended has had many effects, I think. Some we may not even see now. But I begin to.

Oaxaca. It's like slow motion, and it's good to let myself be buoyed by all the fuego and corazón in the heart of the Mexican people (or people like Bradley Roland Wills). Their belief and heart seems unending, despite the consequences. I let their energy be my teacher, for it would be hard to find another so relentlessly beautiful or on point today.

Yet, seeing the pictures of jets and tanks, I feel like I'm waiting for bad news. Waiting for the bigger, badder sequel to Tlatelolco.

And I ask myself: When did I become so cynical?

And then I say "Oh yeah."

Maybe it began a long time ago, at 14 or so. Back in the days of my original existential breakdown. But I've always had a hopeful heart underneath. Perhaps my anxiety....or cynicism, or fear became intensified a few years ago. Maybe it was...six years ago. And then five years ago, two buildings downtown were exploded into dust and thousands of bodies and I found myself stuck to the news broadcasts suddenly.

A couple stolen elections and a few hundred pages of unwanted information later, I see the government as some immediately hostile agent. A real, present, danger. One that has turned its back, in one instant, on all those things that made me feel being an American was so frickin grand when I was a loud and callow young man. Freedom of Speech. Freedom from search and seizure. The fifth Amendment. You don't know! I really identified with those tenets.

I had a class when I was going to school in Florida, this school behind a fence. Nautilus Jr. High? I don't know. I get the schools mixed up. We moved so many times. It was this honors Social Studies class that focused on law, and I loved reading about the Bill of Rights. Ever since the day I first learned about it. Reading through it, you can sense the goodness, the righteous fury, the care for the individual living under a government's baleful eye by the very choice of freedoms that are guaranteed. And that resonated with me, as a child living in the conditions I did for years. Conditions that were often unpredictable, unkind, and unfair. The Ten Year Rule of the Legally-Adopted White Father. The land I longed to escape from for so long. (I even tried a few times.) That's a whole other story. But for now, we'll just say that I really found a hope in laws that were so determined to look out for oppression against a weaker individual.

That's why I remember so clearly, in my blur of half-empty photo album memories, learning about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I thought it was beautiful that people thought up these rules. The guarantees of your freedoms felt safe. They protected you. No Matter What, they said. No Matter What, you will have this. You are safe, here.

I grew up, perhaps with the remnants of my mother's 1970s anti-establishment ethos. True. But I grew up in an America that let you be as freaky as you needed to be. As dissenting, as free-speaking, as outspoken as you needed to be. I am not a product of a tyrannical nation. And I was not reaised by mainstream parents. I have my outspoken, and sometimes extreme, views. If I were a product of Dostoevsky's country...well, I would never be posting such loudmouth junk. It got him locked up, just conversations in his living room. As it is, I begin to wonder how safe any of this blogging is. Free speech such as I utilize is now a relic from an ancient time. A remnant from a day when protesting Americans stood in complete confidence of their ability to be differentiated from a helmeted, bayonet wielding enemy of the USA (well, except for the four students at Kent State, perhaps). My confidence in what I say and the rights that protect me are vestiges of a better day. They are rights that are in my mind, but that do not exist in actuality. Like so much else within me, they are now the dream of a boy who was in a land that was once somewhat sane. Or seemed it. The Days Before Rendition. Great name for a play, or album, perhaps.

But to stop? Or to shrink in fear? Or to layer ourselves in bulletproof padding? To hush up, to ware the guns and wiretaps and snickers and threats of the Junta? To live as if they have won is to lose.

Things are shifting. A shadow moves across the world. North Korea firing up Nukes, a sociopath in the White House, War, War, War, Hell in Darfur, The media doesn't even pretend anymore, Mexican government crooked as shit, in collusion with the US, all big agents against the little man. The shadow that moves into Oaxaca, under boot and tank and footstep.

But as Morrissey said, There is a light that never goes out. and as Emiliano Zapata said, Es mejor morir de pie, que continuar viviendo de rodillas. And as Camillo Torres said, If Jesus were alive today, He would be a guerrillero. And as Thomas Paine said, Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it; I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons should I make a whore of my soul. Past (better) presidents have reminded us here in the US what the King Demon is: Fear, and only fear.

As many reports note, the APPO is not backing down. And those in Mexico, without even the benefit of a United States Constitution, know what's right. The last I heard, the Mexican Congress is asking Ruiz to step down. And Brad Will played an important part in this. And so do all who put aside their own personal risk to join the always singing, always marching, always fighting movement for truth and peace. The one that can never be shot in the chest and left in the dust, but that will always be growing, a power rising, a light that is lifting.

Rest in Peace, hermano. You may have been forced to turn off your camera, but you have lit something in me.