One Lone Woman Occupies The Tundra

Maybe you missed seeing her on the Net. One lone Alaskan woman who joined in Saturday's Worldwide Occupying by "Occupying the Tundra."

There she was, absolutely alone in a vast expanse of flat, empty and rather frightening land. Bundled against the cold, she smiled as she held up her sign.

Her image doesn't fade from my mind. Merry and determined in her bleak and lonesome landscape, she represents all that is best about the people who want to make things better.

For one thing, we are brave. Whatever we face, we know we can do it. We CAN make things better. Whether we face isolation in an empty stretch of tundra, or policemen's nightsticks and pepper spray in a city,  or  -  as in my case  -  the approaching twilight of being old. No matter what, we can do it!

"Like a tree beside the river, we will not be moved."

That's a song from the old Civil Rights days. Those days of struggle were commemorated this weekend in the dedication of the big statue of Martin Luther King. It was a fitting day for Worldwide Occupying.

Because the struggles are all of one piece. There should be no elite. Not by skin tone and not by wealth, nor by power nor gender. We are all here together as children of the universe. And every man, woman, and child on this earth has a right to social justice.

Yet one American child in four is hungry.

And the young people can't  get jobs and see no future.

So we all stand with the woman on the windswept tundra. She is alone in the picture of her, but she is not really alone. For we all stand together wherever we are. And we will not be moved.