If you're in Dallas on Thursday and happen to be looking for a creative way to bid farewell to the worst president in U.S. history, stop by Decorazon Gallery for the Farewell Shoes for Mr. Bush art show. The show runs through February 16, President's Day.
My shoes are in the show; I painted my comfortable, worn out protest shoes with the dates and locations of some key rallies and events I went to over the past eight years.
Working on the project made me realize that I didn't have such a bad time after all...
It all runs together in my mind, now, all the people I've met, all the anti-Bush, anti-Cheney, anti-war rallies. Until I pulled out all the datebooks from years past, I thought I'd met Michael Moore, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich all in the same year.
But it was 2002 when I met Michael Moore, at a book signing for "Stupid White Men."
I didn't meet Howard Dean until 2003, when he came to a rally at Dallas City Hall. That was an amazing rally; he told us we had the power, and urged us to become precinct chairs for the Democratic Party, the same thing Michael Moore told us.
By the time I met Dennis Kucinich, it was 2004 already. He had a meeting at Dallas Peace Center to tell us about his idea for a Department of Peace. He told us how to download resolutions from his website and bring them to the precinct convention after the polls close on Election Day.
From there, I was elected to go to our Senatorial District Convention, and from there to the state convention.
By 2006, I was elected chair of my precinct when the former precinct chair was elected Dallas County Treasurer in the big sweep of Democratic judges and officials who turned Dallas blue.
And all the time, there were rallies, protests, vigils, house parties and meet-ups; there was a surge of energy among us liberals, who used to sit at home thinking we were the only ones. In the darkest days of the Bush regime, we kept each other's spirits up, and managed to have quite a good time.
My artwork project is called "Off the Couch, Into the Street." If you can't make it to the show, don't worry--I'll take some pics and tell you how it went.