Ellen Hopkins
If you follow me on social media, you know I’m a political beast. I make no bones about how I lean, which is hard to the left. I’m a staunch believer in the equal rights our Constitution affords every American, regardless of religion, skin color, country of origin, gender, or sexual identity. And if our president and congresspersons don’t represent every one of us equally, I am willing to openly and vocally call them out, or take to the streets and march, if required. Activism is second nature to me. That might not surprise you. But how I became engaged with it just might.
Honestly, I define “white privilege.” I was adopted as a baby by an older couple. My dad was seventy-two and my mom was forty-two when they brought me home from the hospital where I was ushered into this world. Daddy, the son of German immigrants, was born in San Francisco in 1883. His family was poor and so was his education, which only went through the sixth grade. But he was a brilliant man and willing to work hard, something he did every day of his life until he passed away at eighty-seven years old. Over his lifetime he set a world record in the long jump, invented a bookkeeping system, and built several businesses. One of those was a steel-manufacturing company that provided necessary resources to the government during World War II, and with it came a fair amount of money. My father defined “self-made man” and the American dream.
We weren’t Rockefeller rich, but we lived comfortably in an affluent Palm Springs, California, neighborhood. To escape the sweltering summer heat, we traveled north to Napa and Lake Tahoe. My childhood passions, which my parents supported, were horses, dance, and books, in that order. We attended church every Sunday. Our regular congregations were Presbyterian and Lutheran, but sometimes we’d attend Catholic or Baptist services, and my best friend in grade school was Jewish, so once in a while I’d tag along to her synagogue. There was never a concept of “one true religion” in our home.
I went to an exceptional non-parochial private school, with excellent teachers who encouraged critical thinking skills. Looking back, I see that three of my favorites happened to be gay men, but I had no clue about that then. It wasn’t something people talked about in the sixties, certainly not around children. Nor was it a badge worn out and proudly. Gay people stayed in their closets, except in certain urban areas where they felt safe among their brothers and sisters.
Neither was I very aware of the Civil Rights Movement occurring around the country. While I’d learned a little about the Civil War and slavery, I’d had no idea about the escalating African-American fight for social justice in the intervening years. As a child of white privilege, the violence and fear Black kids faced every day in their own neighborhoods was a foreign concept to me. It had never touched me. I’d never seen it. It was as if we lived on different planets.
The only political event I knew about in grade school was John F. Kennedy’s assassination. America’s thirty-fifth president served less than three years before Lee Harvey Oswald shot him on November 22, 1963. The United States was at odds (verging on war) with the Soviet Union and Cuba, so some people believed one or the other was behind a bigger plot. Others thought the Mafia, the CIA, or even Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson might have played a role, though investigators concluded Oswald acted alone. Regardless, the trajectory of this country changed with JFK’s death. Many historians agree he likely would’ve sought a diplomatic solution to the Vietnam conflict, while his successor escalated the war.
I was eight years old on that November day, so while I understood the basic details, the speculation about motives was completely lost on me. My parents might have discussed it, and I’m sure the nightly news played in the background, but the importance of that moment in time was something I came to understand later.
My parents were Republicans. My dad was a businessman, after all. But they weren’t overtly political. Rarely did I hear them talk about elections or candidates or how they felt about the draft that was sending boys to Vietnam in the sixties. My first real taste of politics came in the eighth grade, when we did mock elections. We drew names of candidates to research, and my pick was Robert F. Kennedy, John’s younger brother. The year was 1968.
I learned that Bobby Kennedy served as JFK’s attorney general, and in that role he advocated for the civil rights of African-Americans. In 1962, he sent federal troops to Oxford, Mississippi, to enforce a US Supreme Court order admitting the first Black student, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi. The state’s segregationist governor, Ross Barnett, had tried to bar Meredith, whose enrollment provoked demonstrations at the school. Bobby also worked, first with his brother and then with President Lyndon Johnson, on the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting, employment, and public facilities.
This was my introduction to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, as well as to major players, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. It was my first clear realization of the struggle for racial parity in a country that was supposed to guarantee equal rights for all.
On the day MLK was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy was scheduled to give a campaign speech in inner-city Indianapolis. Despite fear of violence, he broke the news of Dr. King’s death and comforted the largely Black audience with what has been called one of the great public addresses of the modern era. He acknowledged and honored their anger, but reminded them of King’s own efforts to “replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.”
His words resonated with a girl on the brink of adolescence, as did the marches and protests and even the riots that inevitably followed. At thirteen, I became a Democrat because Bobby Kennedy spoke about things my heart insisted were true. And when he was gunned down in June of that year, his death affected me deeply. He died for what he believed in. That powerful message resonated, but I never confessed this to my parents.
My dad, for all his many fine traits, was undeniably the “king of his castle.” His generation held more respect for men than for women, who weren’t welcomed into the workforce, except in certain specific roles: teachers, nurses, secretaries. My mother, in fact, met my father when she applied for a receptionist job at his factory. He was a widower, having lost his wife of forty years to lung cancer. Mama, who had worked as a nurse/caretaker for two decades, was in need of a job after her longtime patient passed away. Daddy was lonely. Mama was hungry. He was powerful. She was deferential. I can’t speak to romance, but somehow they agreed to marry.
It was a rocky relationship. My father was what I call a weekend alcoholic. Didn’t touch a drop from Sunday morning until Friday evening, when he’d start drinking and stay mostly drunk through Saturday night. Regardless, he’d be up on time for church. Weekdays were relatively quiet, but alcohol-fueled arguments were common on Daddy’s days off, and those were the only times I ever heard my mom voice opinions that ran counter to her husband’s. Women were supposed to be seen and not listened to.
But I loved listening to her. Our shared pastime was horseback riding, and on long desert jaunts, she’d tell me about her history or confide aspirations. Had she lived in another time, she would have accomplished great things, I believe. I remember an invention of hers, dreamed up to save time in the kitchen. But she didn’t have the resources to actually patent and build trash compactors, which appeared several years later. My mom was bright, funny, and compassionate. That I was one of the few people who were allowed to see those things in her confounded me. And to witness her societally programmed obedience to my father’s will likely sparked my early resistance to the concept of male dominion.
Mama also loved literature, especially the classics, though she was not above enjoying a bit of pulp fiction from time to time. She inspired my love of reading, and never censored a thing. In fact, she encouraged me to read widely, knowing books would open my eyes to a world much larger than the relatively protected one in which we lived. I pored through chapter books before kindergarten. By sixth grade, I devoured everything from Lord of the Rings to Lord of the Flies.
Once I hit high school, it was anything I could get my hands on, and in digesting classics like D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, it dawned on me how women have been pigeonholed throughout history. More modern, and even sexier fare, including Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying and Pauline Réage’s Story of O, showed me that women could choose not only to embrace their gender, but also use it to accomplish their goals. This made me confront the uncomfortable concept of patriarchy within religion, something I struggled to reconcile with the idea of an all-accepting God. As I came to terms with this, and also embraced my awakening sexuality, I decided that the time had come to break free of tradition. Feminism was taking root, not only in society but also in me.
High school, in fact, is where I first fell into activism. We had moved to the Santa Ynez Valley the summer after I graduated from the eighth grade. It was, and remains, quintessential small-town California—rolling hills and oak trees, ranch land (much of which is now planted in vineyards), and perfectly pretty neighborhoods. Almost all the kids in the high school had known one another since childhood, which put newcomer me on the fringes of the student body. I didn’t mind so much. Despite being a straight-A student, “mainstream” didn’t appeal to me.
Truthfully, I was born a rebel, and my teen years illustrate that. Sometimes I ditched classes, and I got really good at forging absence slips. (Luckily, I didn’t need lectures to ace tests.) I was comfortable with my body and didn’t mind displaying it at nude beaches and swimming holes. (“Look, but don’t touch” was the rule, and my German shepherd enforced it.) I preferred hanging out with guys to having sex with them (with a couple of notable exceptions). Okay, I smoked weed (but it was rare for me to drink alcohol).
I chose to avoid alcohol because, at home and outside of it, I saw how drinking to excess could make men aggressive and women compliant. I was determined to remain on equal footing with the guys in my life and was fortunate to find male companions who accepted my parameters. One of them, whom I loved very much, was killed in a drunk driving accident. At sixteen, I suffered real loss for the first time. My dad passed away not long after, and my mom’s subsequent tailspin proved how dependent on him she was. I vowed never to be totally reliant on a partner, and I’m proud to have managed that over the years. I’ve made mistakes, but nothing I couldn’t recover from.
Rebel or no, I did manage to make some amazing friends and go out with some very cute guys. A couple of those friends lost brothers in the Vietnam War, which was in its waning years at the time. Still, several boys who were close to me were sweating the draft. I’ll never forget them waiting for the Selective Service lottery that put them in danger of being forced into the armed services and shipped overseas. The evening news showed footage of men conscripted to kill or be killed in the jungles of Indochina. We saw graphic photos of bombed villages, fallen soldiers, and massacred villagers.
In the years since, the role of television coverage in the public debate about the Vietnam War has been dissected again and again. It was the first American conflict where some 90 percent of the country’s households owned TVs, and as primitive as the technology was, still we were escorted, via the screen, to a war-ravaged part of the world few enough of us would otherwise see. Some claim media spin was responsible for the surge in anti-war sentiment. Others insist that without the undeniable evidence of events like the Mai Lai Massacre (where American soldiers eliminated a village of South Vietnamese civilians) such atrocities would have continued. What can’t be denied is that visual connection brought the human element of combat into clear focus.
There were anti-war rallies across the country, people rising up in protest of what they felt was an unjust conflict. I admired the shared vision and their willingness to go to jail if that’s what it took to be heard. On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced the US invasion of Cambodia. This led to massive demonstrations, including one on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. On May 4, students armed only with sticks and rocks clashed with Ohio State National Guardsmen, who opened fire, killing four young protestors and wounding nine. When I heard this news it was like being punched in the gut, though I didn’t know any of the victims personally. And it was there this accidental activist was born. I was fifteen.
In our small, conservative valley, there were no marches. No overt demonstrations. But some friends and I figured out a way to make our voices heard—through silence. We refused to stand for the daily Pledge of Allegiance we were expected to participate in every morning. My homeroom overseer, who happened to be an ex-military shop teacher, was not amused and sent us to the principal’s office. Mr. Silva lectured us on the importance of respect for our country and its flag.
I reminded him of those dead Kent State students and asked how, exactly, their corpses represented “liberty and justice for all.” He suggested protestors weren’t true Americans and reiterated his expectation that I would stand for the Pledge the next morning. I asked him if he was aware of this thing called the First Amendment, something I believed applied to everyone, even outspoken young people like myself. He told me he did not appreciate my attitude and warned that if I chose not to comply my name would be added to a “watch list.” Anti-war activism was considered unpatriotic.
“Patriotism,” I insisted, “means holding your country to the highest standard. Killing innocent civilians, either here in the States or over there in the jungle, is pretty damn low.” Maybe I touched a nerve. He didn’t suspend me. But when I continued to sit for the Pledge, my name was added to his watch list. I have to admit taking pride in that.
In addition to countless individual protests like mine, there were huge demonstrations, including one in 1967 where one hundred thousand people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Joining college students were members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Many were in wheelchairs, and watching them on television, throwing away the medals they’d earned, encouraged “regular folk” into the anti-war effort. Perhaps for the first time in this country’s history a majority of the American people stood together against the government’s foreign policy. In 1973, caving to a strong anti-war mandate, President Richard Nixon announced the effective end to US involvement in Southeast Asia. And I played a small but memorable role.
As the war wound down, a new movement caught my interest. The proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) would guarantee freedom from legal discrimination due to gender. The idea that women weren’t protected from bias in the workplace and elsewhere made no sense to me, but even today women aren’t assured the same pay as men doing the same job. One reason is because, even though the proposed Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the Constitution passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1972, it was not ratified by the required thirty-eight states. To this day, there is still nothing in the Constitution ensuring equal rights for women.
But as women lobbied for ratification, I was swept along. Immersing myself in the history of American women’s struggles was eye-opening. From the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 through the suffrage movement that resulted in women finally earning the right to vote in 1920 (only white women, however; it took the Civil Rights Movement to enfranchise Black women and men), up to and including the ERA, the fight for gender egalitarianism has been an uphill battle. The more I learned, the more frustrated I became, and it sparked the torch of feminism I’ve carried throughout my life.
As an interesting aside, the state of Nevada, which I’ve called home for thirty years, just voted to ratify the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. Though beyond the original time frame allowed for ratification, there may be some legal precedence to pass the ERA, even now, should enough states join the Silver State in supporting gender equality. So maybe the signs I carried forty-odd years ago will still matter.
Over those decades, I’ve become a staunch advocate for many causes, chief among them LGBTQ rights. Yes, my oldest child happens to be gay, but the bigger reason is, from the time Bobby Kennedy spoke to my conscience until now, I have believed that equal rights for every single person in this country is not only promised by our Constitution, but vital to the health of our society.
I’m a bleeding-heart liberal. I make no apologies for that. And what my heart bleeds for is a viable future for my grandchildren, and their grandchildren, and all the generations to come. The planet is in peril, and activism is more critical now than ever before.
The 2016 election hit me hard because its outcome shattered my core belief in the political process, not to mention the progress this country seemed to have made in the decades immediately preceding it. The potential for human rights violations and environmental degradation is difficult to fathom. That so much of the country supported candidates determined to eliminate programs and agencies designed to protect the very elements required to sustain a decent quality of life on Planet Earth is simply beyond my ken. It hurts to consider how many things we fought for and gained when I was a teen are in jeopardy now.
The good news is America has reawakened. Those of us determined to lobby for the health of our republic and its democratic principles have mobilized and embraced the principle of using our collective voice. In huge numbers, we are calling and e-mailing and tweeting our representatives in government, demanding to be heard. We are overflowing town hall meetings, picking up signs and marching in the streets, reminding this country that democracy must not become a commodity, sold to the highest bidder. Those in power aren’t invincible or greater than the will of We the People. We are joining together in protest, and that defines patriotism, because we’re fighting for the principles that have always made America great. This gives me hope for the future.
That future is in my hands, and yours. I call on you to hoist the banner of activism. Find a cause (or two) that matters to you, whether it’s animal rights or LGBTQ rights, public lands or public schools, clean energy or clean water. Develop a real understanding of the stakes. Learn who your legislators are and how to open dialogues with them. State your concerns clearly and succinctly, and never forget that your representatives are supposed to work for you, regardless of political party affiliation.
Most of all, as soon as you’re eligible, register to vote, and cherish that right. Vote! In every single election, including midterms and primaries, not to mention state and local contests, which can be decided by a handful of votes. Be sure you are registered and have in place any state-required ID. Take the time to research candidates and ballot measures. These will affect you, negatively or positively. The choice is yours, and the ballot is key. Never, ever believe your voice doesn’t matter. It is powerful and necessary to the survival of your values. And while you’re at it, encourage others to get out to the polls. Elections have been won or lost by very small margins, 2016 included. Had a few more people decided not to stay home, the outcome might have been very different.
I stumbled into activism almost fifty years ago, and never left. Please join me. No matter how you arrive, accidentally or purposefully, hold fast to your ideals. Visualize the tomorrow you want to be part of. And never stop fighting for it.