The new saw, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, post online or blog," may not always be true. One exception is Sister Jen W., whose Walk for Democracy evolved over 4000 miles and 2 years of her life. She was named Freedom Fighter of the Month in September of 2001 and called Road Warrior by Jim Hightower who wrote:
"But her real aim is to get into the minds, hearts, and souls of the American people, rallying them to stand up for their democracy, which she sees as being greatly imperiled by the political and corporate elites who don’t seem to give a damn about what regular people think."
Jen is now working as a conductor for BNSF in the Pacific Northwest and recently emailed me the following:
"Ron and I have been kicking around the idea of starting
a newsletter for some time, and it seems to be a good time just about now.
We envision a cross-craft type of rag - UTU, BLE, BMWE, UP, BNSF, CSX...
all the acronyms you can come up with! It's time we got to know each other
and our respective issues so we can actually start working together. We'd
like to find folks to submit not just articles about their workplaces and
contract issues but art, poetry, humour... there's a lot of talent out
there. We want something rails will feel compelled to distribute on their
own all over the country (not hard to do if you look at the phenomenon of
poor Doug Siebert's sick call tape... who HASN'T heard about the five
million thousand gallons of whiskey??). I'm approaching folks out here -
any ideas on rabble-rousers in yer neck of the woods who'd like to
contribute and/or be involved in putting this thing together?"
Many of you know that I've been unsuccessfully agitating for such an effort for about 5 years now. Jen has demonstrated with her life's work that anyone can escape from being consumers of top-down dis-information and become active participants in a real grass-roots, democratic network of communication. That's what will liberate us individually and collectively, and that's what scares the hell out of the powers-that-be. Let us know if you'd like to participate in a little troublemaking.
11:30:16 AM 
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