July 22, 1968.

50 years ago, today, a man I didn’t know ordered me to take a step forward.

I didn’t.

Four months later I was sentenced to five years in prison after a 30-minute trial in Oklahoma City’s Federal Court I was twenty years old.

I knew when I stood my ground what the result would be. And yet, I didn’t move. Why?

Because I believed then, and believe now, that the war in Vietnam was wrong, that the United States should never have prosecuted it, that hundreds of thousands of young men should not have been drafted into fighting it, that 58,000 American lives shouldn’t have been wasted, that 2 million Vietnamese should not have been killed.

I gave up my student deferment voluntarily. I thought it was wrong for me to be privileged, while so many of my peers had no means to avoid the draft. I had a half-dozen ways to avoid the draft. I chose to confront it instead. I could have held on to my draft card. I could have applied for conscientious objector status. I could have faked a medical exemption. I could have told my draft board that I was gay. (I am gay. But I thought that was irrelevant and I refused to use it as an excuse.) I could have escaped to Canada, but I opted not to join more than 50,000 young American men who fled the US to escape the draft.

I chose to stay here and make my stand and speak out against the war. I chose to do what I could to stop the war.

I could have opted to refuse induction in Syracuse, less than 50 miles from where I was attending school, and where a judge had recently handed down a sentence of probation to a draft resister. But I chose to return to Oklahoma, even knowing I would likely face a five-year sentence, because in my home state practically no one was opposing the war and someone needed to.

In 1977, those 50,000 self-exiled men were pardoned by President Jimmy Carter. The two-thousand-plus of us who chose to remain in the US and were subsequently imprisoned – we were not pardoned. I have spent my entire adult life as a felon.

I have no regrets. I’ll never know if my act of resistance had any impact on shortening the war. But it doesn’t matter. I resisted an unjust war. That was - and is - a good thing.

Today, in 2018 we find our country in trouble again – quite possibly in worse trouble than in 1968. And not enough is being done about it.

Eventually the US got out of Vietnam. Eventually the draft - which targeted marginalized populations in America while exempting the privileged - was ended. Eventually the leadership of our country that dragged us into the Vietnam War became recognized as the villains they were. Johnson, Nixon, McNamara, Kissinger, Bundy, Westmoreland, Hershey.

Eventually.

May America survive its current heinous administration and its crippled legislative paralysis. May it find the means to thrive for another fifty years and beyond.
​

Lack of diversity in Madison theatre is appalling and inexcusable. Concern about this sad fact is justifiable. Anger is justifiable. But anger at whom? And to what effect?

Currently that anger is directed toward American Players Theatre (APT) for casting a white actor in one of the two roles in their 2018 production of THE BLOOD KNOT. Written in 1964 by Athol Fugard, the role was originally played by Fugard himself (a white man), and most of the productions in the last fifty years have continued this casting choice. Fugard believed that casting a white actor made it impossible for the audience to disregard the issues confronted in the play.

This history of the play and its many productions seems to have been lost in the heated outrage about APT’s casting that now appears on social media. Also lost is that APT has made a deliberate and highly noticeable effort in recent years to diversify its acting talent and the shows it produces. Since the change of artistic directors only a few years ago, it’s impossible for this long-time audience member to miss a massive and welcome change. The old APT would never have produced THE AFRICAN SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III – arguably the single best show I’ve seen in thirty years at APT, featuring a cast of only one white actor (as required by the script) among a group of brilliantly talented black actors. The old APT would not have cast a black man as the nextdoor neighbor in DEATH OF A SALESMAN. This casting choice was deliberate and strategic. It provided new layers to Willie Loman’s self-defeat, and injected an insightful consideration of race into what was already a powerful relationship. The old APT would never have produced THE BLOOD KNOT, a play that ripped open the ugly truth of apartheid in 1964, and that has great bearing on the racial divide in America in 2018. APT’s choice to produce THE BLOOD KNOT was not accidental. It was a deliberate invitation to its audience to engage in a discussion on race.

Do we need to be concerned about lack of diversity on Madison stages? Absolutely. Is APT the appropriate whipping boy for the problem? No. Quite the opposite. APT has been leading the way, as best they can, in addressing this issue and finding solutions. Have they solved the problem? No, but they are working on it. Is there more to do? Of course. But no Wisconsin theatre company has been more focused in its efforts to address diversity than APT.

Meanwhile, back in Madison, local theatre organizations are taking steps on their own. Theatre Lila comes to mind, not only for their recent production LINES – with five female playwrights of color – but for demonstrating how inclusion is not only right but makes for the best theatre.
In 2018, several of the for-all-practical-purposes lily-white Bartell companies are stepping out of the comfort zones in dramatic (no pun intended) ways. Strollers Theatre is producing my new play INFAMOUS MOTHERS, featuring four black actresses and one white and directed by a first-time black director. StageQ will present A LADY AND A WOMAN, a story of the courage of African-American women in the late 19th century. StageQ will also present ATTACK ON STONEWALL, an original play about the defiance of drag queens, many of whom were black. Krass will present TROUBLE IN MIND about a newly integrated theatre company.

In case you missed it, this is a huge change for the combined Bartell companies.
​
Is there reason to be concerned or angry? Yes. But there is also reason to be hopeful. And one of those reasons is APT’s aggressive efforts to change.
 
​

Tamara:

When I go places in public I always notice how people count my children for me.

"Wow, you've sure got your hands full". People think that's the thing to say to a mother of multiple children, but it really is offensive. When I tell people how many, they're shocked. They say, "You don't look like you have five kids".

Really what they're saying is ,“I had an imagination of what a mother of five kids would look like, and you don't fit that.”

Depending on what kind of mood I'm in, I'll say: "Well now you can reset what you think mothers of five children look like. Here I am. Nice to meet you".

 
Today, the book came back from the printer.

It’s not my book, but I feel tremendous pride of ownership, from the small contribution I was able to make as its editor. More than that, I feel humbled by being invited to be a part of this endeavor. I am a white, almost 70-year-old gay male, and the invitation to work with a powerful black female author telling the stories of twenty extraordinary black women was a gift I cherish.  I am grateful beyond measure.

The call came almost a year ago - out of nowhere, it seemed. A woman I had never met, Sagashus Levingston, had gotten my name from a mutual friend as someone who might help with her book. She had conducted extensive recorded interviews with twenty women. Transcribed, these interviews ranged from 20 to 160 pages each. She needed someone to edit each story down to roughly 6 pages, so she could combine them in a book.
​
It was a ridiculously impossible task, I thought to myself. And then she told me about the women.

They were Infamous Mothers. They had been sex workers, drug addicts, felons, victims of sexual and domestic abuse.  They had become teachers, counselors, nurses, entrepreneurs and leaders in their communities. They had not only survived; they had prospered. And they all had stories to tell.

I hesitantly, tentatively said ‘yes’.  I suggested that we start with a couple of the interviews to see if I was up to the task. Sagashus sent me two stories. I read them, more dismayed than ever that this might not work. Then I started editing – cutting out hundreds of words, often whole paragraphs and pages – but never changing a single word. I felt that it was important to honor the words the women used to tell their stories. I couldn’t insert a word of my own, or substitute a word that I thought might work better. I eliminated redundancies. I stripped out less vital parts of the interviews, seeking to spotlight the story that lurked within.

The first two stories totally worked. Slimmed down and streamlined, but entirely in the voices of the women who had lived them, these stories blossomed. They filled my heart in the process of the editing, and I knew they would fill the heart of anyone who read them.  I had eighteen stories to go. Each time I started a new one, I worried that it might not ‘work’ as a story. And then, remarkably, their stories appeared from within their words, like a glistening statue from a block of marble.

Sagashus T. Levingston was born in Chicago and raised in the area now known as Bronzeville. She holds a bachelor’s in English Literature from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has been attending graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There she earned a Master’s in Afro-American Studies and is currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of English. Sagashus is the mother of six children—three boys and three girls. They all currently live in Madison, WI. She is an infamous mother.

Over the last year, I’ve gotten to know Sagashus well. She is a charming, charismatic, dynamic whirlwind of a woman. She’s a powerhouse, a profound mover and shaker, and an eloquent and heart-moving speaker.
Infamous Mothers is published by Kristen Mitchell’s Little Creek Press (Mineral Point), and is available at www.littlecreekpress.com. It is also available through Sagashus’ website: www.infamousmothers.com, and through Amazon.

Working on this book changed me. It changed the way I look at a whole class of women, and at twenty women, in particular.
​
They are my heroes. They’ll be yours, too.
 
Janet:
I’m not afraid to stand here and say yes, I have not been the most perfect woman, mother, lover, mother, daughter, auntie, grandchild, sister, friend, or even a self-examiner.

I have not been a perfect person. My soul used to be dark and my heart used to carry hate. My mind wouldn’t let me forget.

Yes, I am not perfect, but at least I can stand here today and say – no, not say – I can scream from the mountaintop that I am no longer any of these things.

I am a survivor.

 
 

From Tits to the Wind – The Park West Chronicles
 
I often didn’t know what Jolene was doing at her desk, even though it was only two feet from mine. Same with David, his desk a more proper five feet away. It was clear what I was doing – reconciling last night’s receipts. Seven bank bags stared at me from my desk’s uncluttered surface, where I had plopped them after retrieving them from the basement safe hidden in the back of the liquor room. I was good at counting bills, and good at numbers in general. Fast, too.

I opened the first bag, pleased to see that Ray had, as always, properly aligned all his bills facing in the right direction, saving me time and aggravation in my counting. I knew Vince’s bag would be helter-skelter as always, but at least his bag routinely reconciled correctly. Not so with Ray’s. A cocktail napkin peeked out of Ray’s bag, and I knew what would be on it – an “IOU” from Dale saying that he’d taken $500 or $1000. IOU my ass. It was Dale’s club and when he needed cash for drugs or his monthly Bentley payment or anything else, it was his to take. My job was to hide his self-theft from the books. Everyone knew what was going on, including the bartenders and waitresses with whom he shared cocaine.

I needed coffee. Why hadn’t anybody made any? I grabbed the pot and headed to the hall bathroom to rinse it out and fill it. When I got back that’s when I noticed the coffee basket was empty. Shit. Jolene and David were studiously not paying attention. They’d already been here for hours, Jolene anyway. Why hadn’t they stocked the coffee?

I exited the office, navigated the narrow hall and entered the main room through the door to the lighting booth, then headed down the balcony stairs and cut around to the lobby. I strolled down the bathroom hallway, past the Neidermaier Display glitzy wall hangings, to the auxiliary dressing room/catering room, and said hi to Octavio, my newest busboy, whom I could hardly keep my eyes off of and who was filling a tub with ice. I unlocked the basement door, flipped on the light and descended. Then I unlocked the liquor room, nestled under the stairs, where we had to keep the coffee next to the cases of Dom Perignon ever since I discovered that we were losing cases of caffeine every month from the cabinets in the catering area.
In those days, I had a saying: leave the cash on the counter, but lock up the t-shirts. Tour t-shirts were desirable, rare and valuable, and had to be carefully guarded. Same with coffee it turned out.

Back in the office, a fresh pot finally brewing, I settled in to count the cash. David, it seems, had departed, probably for a run along the lakefront. He was in training for another Ironman. David was twenty years older than I - bald, tall, thin, sinewy, eagle-eyed. He was a gazelle on the Lincoln Park track. I counted the money and filed the payroll and Jolene paid the bills, but David was the real money man - handling the books, filing the taxes, telling Jolene when to pay what, and occasionally squeezing turnips from stones.

Someday, I thought, I might have to try this running thing myself.  Not today.

From the bulge in the bags it was clear last night had been a good night, with the bar clearing ten or twelve k, maybe more. It had been a Phil Johnson night. Phil was a black entrepreneur/ impresario, who rented the club a couple nights a month to throw his ‘private’ disco parties. He had a mailing list of several thousand VIPs, who waited anxiously to discover one of his colorful postcard invitations in their mailboxes.

Our waitresses hated Phil Johnson nights because blacks didn’t tip, but if they wanted to work on the money nights – the jazz nights, the blues nights, the rock & roll nights – they had to work the black nights too. We made one small concession to the waitresses. On the good tipping nights, the cocktail waitresses only made $5 a shift, but they were happy to get it since their tips usually surpassed $100, and sometimes hit $200, and in 1979 that was ridiculously good money. On Phil Johnson nights, we upped their pay to $15/shift.

Phil always drew a good crowd -  a thousand or so well-heeled, attractive dancers, womanizers and players, their white-walled and chromed cars lined up at the start of the party to be driven off by a fleet of valets. Phil was a gentleman, reliable and courteous, who always paid his $1500 rental fee up front and never failed to exceed the $2500 bar minimum or tip the DJ and lighting maestro. He was good to the doormen and security staff, too.  On slow months, when our booked talent failed to provide sufficient funds to meet the payroll or pay the bills, Phil’s parties filled the gap.

Ray’s bag was off again. His register receipt showed he should have stuffed the bag with seven hundred and change, plus Dale’s IOU for a thousand and his drawer bank of a hundred. He was precisely forty-three dollars short. It was time to cut him loose. I’d warned him.

“Hello,” she said.

Glenne Headley was standing in my office. Two feet in front of my desk. Looking at me.
This was before people knew who Glenne Headley was, but I knew who she was. The year before, she and some pals formed a little outfit called Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and they produced avant garde plays in the basement of a northside Chicago church. This year they had moved to a storefront on Halsted Street, where, with makeshift lighting and sets and a scant two score seats, they put on the most riveting theatre I’d ever seen.

“Hello,” I said back to her, dumbly.
“I need a job,” she said.

And my heart melted. Glenne Headley, as talented an artist as I would ever see, was standing in my office asking for a job. This was so wrong.

“Okay,” I said.

She needed money. The whole company, including her husband John Malkovich, needed money, and they all were out looking for jobs to pay the rent and keep food on the table while they toiled to get their theatre company going.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said.

“I’m sure,” I responded. “My name is Coleman.”

“Mine’s Glenne. Glenne Headley,” she said, and gave me the slightest smile with that signature tilt of her head.

“I know,” I said. “I’m your biggest fan.

She relaxed a little then. “So, can I have one?”

“Waitressing?” I asked.

“Yes. I guess. That’s where I’d make the most money, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go downstairs, and we’ll get the paperwork taken care of and I’ll show you around.

Glenne Headley was a terrible waitress. She scowled every minute of her employ. She hated the slinky white silk waitress uniform she was forced to wear, and she hated the high heels and she hated slinging drinks.

A week after she started, she was back again, in front of my desk, this time with a glow in her eyes and a big grin on her face.

“I quit,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“We got a grant. I don’t need the money anymore. I quit.”

“Great,” I said. “That’s really great.”

I never spoke with her again, except occasionally in my dreams.
 …

My doctor (whom I greatly respect) recently advised that as I approach the age of 70, I should give myself permission to slow down.

I'm sure that's sage advice. Still, it's advice I'm not particularly fond of. I'm not interested in slowing down. As the grim reaper comes somewhat closer into focus, that's precisely when I want to speed up. I don't want to waste a fucking minute.

​Recently, my vision has been a bit blurry. Damn. It had to be cataracts. Or something. Glaucoma, maybe. Anyway, I went to my optometrist, and he informed me that yes, my vision has changed since my last visit. My old glasses are TOO STRONG. My vision has gotten better.

​Take that, grim reaper.

1968. Oklahoma.
A Warm September Night.

It was a stupid thing to do, but … if I was going to spend the next five years or so in prison, which seemed likely, I needed one last visit to a gay bar before I got locked up.

I’d been so careful to hide my preference from men – from myself, from my friends, from my family, and most of all from my draft board and now from the judge. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I was queer. It was all new to me. Or rather, yes, I was sure, I guess. Of course I knew.

Or maybe I didn’t.  

It was a foolish risk. Someone might surely recognize me from the news, from all the damned print and TV coverage. Word might get out. The bar could be raided. If a reporter got ahold of this, everything I’d been working for would be ruined. I’d just be a faggot, which all by itself would be more than enough to lock me up without the rest of it. It was one thing to refuse induction. It was something altogether worse to be queer.

I had heard somehow, the way people hear these things, that there was a gay bar in Oklahoma City. It would have been easier to believe that there had been a real Dorothy who really was taken by a real tornado from Kansas to Oz where monkeys flew and scarecrows talked. A gay bar would never (could never) be allowed in Oklahoma. Not by the people who mattered. The very thought of such a thing was ridiculous.
Nevertheless, it was there. Smack dab in the middle of bustling May Avenue. I’d driven by it more than once. A low, squat ugly building with no sign giving any inkling what it was there for. A blight, really. On fashionable May Avenue.

I looked good, I thought. Which means I would probably get lucky. Or not. Probably not. Maybe. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get lucky. Maybe I wasn’t sure what getting lucky meant. But still, I might get lucky.
Traffic slogged along the flower-bedecked four-lane boulevard. On Friday night, May Avenue was for couples on dates. (Boys and girls, of course. What other kind of couples could there be?) May Avenue was for cruising up and down, grabbing a malted in the Big Boy down the street, or retreating to some quiet dark corner of Will Rogers Park, or continuing down the road all the way to 63rd and the new 70mm Cinerama Cinema where Yellow Submarine played to an audience that didn’t get it.

I parked where I could, a couple of blocks away, which allowed me to get a good view of the handful of people headed to the same ugly building as I. I slowed my pace and gave them plenty of room. I still had time to change my mind.

A fist.

A fist, or something hard.

A fist I think. On the back of my head. Hard enough to make me stumble and almost but not quite fall. Before I could come to terms with what was happening, I was hit again. In the back. Twice. And then again. Something punched my stomach. an anvil perhaps.

I was on the ground. They kicked my sides, my head, my legs. They stood on me. They jumped up and down. There were one, two, three, four … five, maybe?. I’m not sure. Through the fog of my pain and my fast-swelling eyes I still took notice of their tattered blue jeans and scuffed cowboy boots, their plaid shirts and ragged t-shirts and soiled straw cowboy hats. Their wide leather belts with big bronze buckles. Their singular Oklahoma twang.

They were as young as me, only twenty. Maybe older, but if so, not by much. No, I think they were younger.

As fast as it began, it stopped. They leaped and skipped and giggled back to the rusting red pickup truck at the curb, their arms around each other’s shoulders like lovers, grabbing at each other’s asses like straight men who grab each other’s asses.  They hopped up to the truck bed, hooting and hollering, clapping each other on their slim, muscular backs. They grabbed more asses; hugged more shoulders; and fell - out of breath – laughing, into the truck.

They left me on the cracked cement walk.

Bloody, broken alone.

Hurt. Defeated. Ashamed.

Stupid, embarrassed, confused.

Angry.

I melted into the sidewalk and tried to disappear.
​
Queer.

We got us a queer, they yelled. The truck vanished.
​
We got us a queer!

Between 1996 and 2001, I rode over 3000 miles on my bicycle to raise money for organizations that help people with HIV and AIDS.  I rode through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Alaska, Montana and Texas.

And then I took a little time off.

AIDS and HIV did not take time off. Today, more than 6,300 people are living with HIV/AIDS in Wisconsin and it's estimated that an additional 1,500+ are undiagnosed but living with the disease.

It’s time for me to mount up again.

I tested positive for HIV in 1983. For the last 33 years I have been asymptomatic, which is to say, the virus in my body never progressed to AIDS or even to so much as a head cold. I am one of the longest of the long-term survivors. I am extraordinarily lucky.

We’re lucky to have the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin. Without it, thousands of others less fortunate than me would be lacking adequate care, and possibly any care at all. But with ARCW, many thousands are thriving.
​
Please donate what you can. It takes a village …
​

Daniel Berrigan, S.J., died yesterday.
​
This photo of Dan in his Cornell office was taken around the time that we met. I was working in the office directly across the hall, and witnessed the traffic of interesting visitors that paraded in and out of his small office, until finally one day, I ventured in myself.

In 1970, Dan testified as my “character witness” at my Rochester Trial for destroying draft files. His testimony was widely reported, but it was this coverage by the Harvard Crimson that I think captured it best:

"THE HIGH moment of the first week, however, was undoubtedly the appearance of Father Berrigan, who is serving a three-and-one-half-year sentence for destroying draft files. Brought from Danbury "Correctional Institute" to testify as a character witness for Joe Gilchrist, who was a student at Cornell during Berrigan's chaplaincy there, the priest was on the stand for three hours.

Over the frequent vehement objections of Walford, who was openly outraged that Berrigan should even be there to testify, "Father Dan" forcefully and movingly related to the court the content of frequent conversations he had with Joe during the two years they were together in Ithaca. He told of the experience of seeking shelter underground as protection from a B-52 bombing raid on Hanoi while he was there in 1967 on a mission of mercy to bring back to America three POW's. He spoke of the children he saw in North Vietnam who had been burned with napalm, and of the total destruction of the countryside and food supply of that small nation. He told of his growing concern that Americans were unaware of the things being done in their name by the Johnson and Nixon administrations inVietnam. He told how he came to believe that speaking out against the war and injustice here at home were not sufficient, that one had to risk suffering and persecution, jail and maybe even death if he were serious about wanting an end to the killing. This gentle man, who has been such a clear and consistent voice against the institutionalized killing which America has promulgated both in Southeast Asia and in the ghettos and on the campuses at home, struck to the heart of what had moved the eight young people to do more than simply speak against injustice. His presentation was soft and he faltered at times.

Sounding very tired and drawn, constantly asking for water as he spoke, several times he apologized to those in the courtroom for "not being very sharp today." Each time he tried to explain that he'd been kept in solitary for three days, the judge would silence him and order the remarks stricken from the record. Finally, Dan burst out to tell the packed room that he would neither eat nor drink until he was back in Danbury, as a way of protesting the brutal treatment given to prisoners who are in transit from one jail to another. He had been taken from Danbury on Tuesday, and was not told where he was going or for what he was being taken away. He spent three days and nights either traveling or in solitary confinement, never permitted to mix with other prisoners in the jails where he was kept. It was not until the night before he testified that he was permitted to know where he was being taken.

At one point in his testimony, after a thirty-minute battle between the prosecution and the defendants as to the propriety of entering scripture as testimony, Joan Nicholson introduced into evidence Matthew 5:1-12, from Christ's Sermon on the Mount. This was after the government had objected to entering the Holy Bible as evidence, claiming it to be irrelevant. Judge Burke sustained the objection. The beatitudes were not ruled objectionable, however, and Father Berrigan slowly read through the ancient teachings of Christ. In the crowded courtroom, the old words took on new meaning to those who understood how much the government detests the kind of testimony that men of the church like Berrigan can offer about the effects of national policy. Near the end of the passage he read:

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad; for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

The world will miss you, Daniel Berrigan. ​​

Here are my recent out of pocket costs for prescription drugs:
 
January – $400
February - $600
March - $800
April - $1600
 
To be clear, I have insurance (Medicare Parts A & B, with a supplemental prescription drug policy, costing an additional $300/month). Without insurance, these drugs would cost even more.
 
Every month this year the price of these drugs has skyrocketed. If my husband was still working and if I was still covered under his company’s group plan, I would be paying about $200/month for these drugs. Private insurers can and do negotiate prices with drug companies.
 
The government on the other hand is prohibited by Congress from negotiating with drug companies. If you are over 65 and on Medicare, you are out of luck. Why? Because the drug companies give congressmen millions and millions of dollars to keep them in office. They are paid to vote to protect the profits of the drug companies.
 
The US is the only industrialized nation in the world that prohibits negotiation on drug prices for government sponsored health insurance.
 
I can’t wait to see what they’ll charge me in May. The fact is they can charge anything they want.