[Oe List ...] re: Seth's message

[opossum2 at att.net]

Colleagues,

I felt like I should send this out generally, but especially to George and Wand Holcombe and to Marsh Hahn:

Let me offer a personal testimony of my own to Seth.

The first political campaign I participated in was in my third year at college  (1968).  I was 19 years old, which meant I could not vote, the legal age then being 21.  I worked hard for Gene McCarthy in Beaumont, Texas, which was not exactly a liberal hotbed then or now.  The night that Lyndon Johnson accepted the nomiation at the infamous Chicago convention, was the night before my 20th birthday.  I remember the girls crying and all of us being really down as we watched the returns on television.

The next campaign I worked in was much later, after graduation, 4 years in Australia, 1 year split between Chicago and Tulsa, and I was back in Houston.  The colleagues at the House there canvassed neighborhoods and otherwise worked for the Carter-Mondale campaign and for a local colleague who was running for county commissioner against a notoriously corrupt incumbent (Jimmy and Fritz won, she lost).  Still, that was a sweet victory.  

There are too many parallels between what is going on now and the late 1960s-early 70s to enumerate, but I am looking forward to future campaigns.  And at the risk of seeming obnoxious, I'll repeat my Springsteen litany:

NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER!

Steve Rhea
Houston, Tx.