Yesterday, I met with Craig Cox to pick up several copies of his book Storefront Revolution for the bookstore. His book is about the "co-op wars" in Minneapolis that happened just a few years before I became politically active here in the late 70s and early 80s. Co-ops are still around and still struggling, and people are curious to know more about the history.

After work I went over to the U of M to join in a student-organized protest against the new plan to phase out General College. Nine protesters were arrested after sitting in at the President's office. The issue is about class, pure and simple. General College is the only access that people from the community have to the University. The U wants to attract top research scientists from around the world, which is a worthy goal. But they've decided they must cut off access from the local community in order to do it.

Tonight, I went to St. Paul to hear Liza Featherstone talk about her book, Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Women's Rights at Wal-Mart" at Macalester College in St. Paul. The author is not a gifted public speaker, but the book, of which I've read the first few chapters, is quite good. She's onto something with her analysis of consumer culture and what happens in a world where citizens are turned into consumers. More on this issue once I've finished reading the book.

I just finished reading A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson. I picked it up at my last book group meeting. It is a quick read and quite hilarious. Bryson decided to walk the Appalachian Trail one summer and his account of the event is hilarious. Not a champion athlete, he managed to plow through several hundred miles through sheer stubborness. In fact, the successful trail walkers seem to embody a combination of sheer grit and lunacy that would be out of place anywhere else in the world. I lived on the edge of the Appalachians when I went to college at Ohio University and I vaguely remember fantasizing about walking the Appalachian Trail. After reading the book, I recognize that the trail is a symbol of something purely American and wonderful -- the urge to appreciate nature, the willingness to help strangers, the code of the trail. With so little community left in this world, it is a joy to read about it in Bryson's book.

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Yesterday, May 4, was the 35th anniversary of the Kent State massacre. I lived in Ohio in 1974 and the memory of that day was still alive at that time. In this day of cynicism, it is hard to understand how much that day affected people my age. We didn't realize just how callous our politicians had become. We didn't understand the depths to which Richard Nixon and his cronies would stoop to gratify their personal ambitions. Those soldiers who opened fire on their fellow citizens had been convinced by Gov. Rhodes, the mayor of Kent and the president of the University, that the innocent students they were firing at were evil infiltrators bent on destroying their way of life. Why did Rhodes and his gang stir up such hatred? Purely for their own personal political gain. They won, too, in the short term. But our country lost so much that day. I can't experience May 4 without feeling that draw -- that memory of betrayal and profound sadness.

And speaking of sadness, I am still profoundly affected by the death of Andrea Dworkin. 20 years ago I spent my life working day and night against violence against women. I understood then that there was a war against women in this world. The women in combat -- those on the front lines -- were living in a war unlike any we have glorified in our combined social conscience. The front line was the home -- the battle was between individual men and women. The personal is the political and once you are touched by that truth, there is no going back.

What Dworkin was then and will continue to be is an anchor for the rest of us. The horror of what happens to individual women at the hands of individual men in this country is sometimes incredibly hard to bear. But Dworkin bore it and refused to back away. She was our standard-bearer. She stood out front and suffered the slings and arrows -- the lies and distortion -- and never flinched. It made it easier for the rest of us, knowing that she was there, standing up for all of us. I want and I need to write more about this amazing woman.

In time. In time.