Jason enjoys a light moment after finishing chemo on January 22, 2004. (Photo by Marley Seaman)

Jason kept quiet when he learned he had cancer.

He told his roommate and a few close friends, but didn’t want everyone to know yet. He didn’t want the good wishes and the condolences and pats on the back and the awkwardness that came with the attention. Steeling himself for a long battle and getting well were enough to worry about. But when the school year resumed, Jason wasn’t there. The news spread quickly.

It was late October when we saw Jason next. He was gaunt and practically bald, but smiling and, like a good theatre major, he held dozens of us captive with his story: the shock of finding out, his fear of dying, and his ultimate optimism. Jason called himself “lucky” to have Hodgkin’s disease because it was so treatable. His visit felt celebratory.

In January, he returned to school, taking classes and trying to live a normal life between chemotherapy treatments. A few weeks into the semester, I accompanied him to his chemo session to take pictures. I learned that the struggle was far from over. Jason was going to live, but the cancer would fight him every step of the way.

It began as a routine visit. I met Jason and a family friend named Susie at the medical center. His health was good, and his sense of humor intact. He kidded that only he could gain weight while battling cancer.

Jason and the nurse, a pretty Asian woman named Tess, narrated for our benefit as they prepared Jason’s arm for the array of chemicals. Tess slathered his arm in iodine and began a saline drip.

Then the tube in Jason’s arm started bubbling. It was a bad sign. They tried two more veins, but neither was useable. Months of powerful chemicals flowing through his veins had caused them to collapse. There would be no treatment today.

Jason was stunned. It was so difficult for him to gear himself up for these grueling treatments. Each one sapped him of energy for four days. The only relief was that with each completed treatment, he came a step closer to finishing. He knew he would not take that step today, and he began to cry. His dark brown eyes full of pain, he blocked his face with his hand as he sniffled. In a few minutes, he’d pulled himself back together, ready to struggle on.

Tess explained that he needed to go to a hospital in Chicago to get a catheter inserted into his arm, bypassing his fragile veins. Jason didn’t seem to care about the details — none of it mattered as along as he could get another session behind him immediately. As we left the medical center, Jason called his mother and relayed the news. He stayed calm, focusing on the procedure and tomorrow’s treatment.

Back in his dorm room, Jason’s fury burst out. He kicked the walls and complained to his roommate about “My fucking veins,” and how they were damaged like those of a heroin addict.

The anger revealed his feelings before he’d gathered his optimism. He couldn’t hide it now. Most dominant was the frustration: In his voice were hundreds of hours spent wondering why this had to happen to him.

The five-year survival rate for Hodgkin’s patients was 95 percent. At age 20, he’d had to contemplate being in that other 5 percent. What he had told us about luck was true, and he meant it. But he cannot have felt lucky back then, hearing about the cancer spreading through his lymphatic system and about the side effects of chemotherapy.

By winter, his eyebrows, mustache and goatee, like the hair on his head, had turned to wisps. As the treatments progressed, he felt worse. The recovery periods following the chemo got longer and longer. Weekends were a distant memory; it took nearly a week to fully bounce back from treatments, which left him seven days until the next treatment. The chemicals began to make him throw up one week, and that pattern would continue.

Jason’s buoyant nature made us overlook the difficulties he faced. He did not deceive us, but we saw mainly the optimism — not the arduous process by which he had reached it. We took it for granted.

The day after the failed chemotherapy attempt, Jason and Susan were late for his next treatment session. When he got there, he had a bandage on his left arm. A wire now ran from just above his elbow into his heart. The catheter extruding from his sore arm was a mix of clear tubing and blue and white plastic, a small monstrosity he would cover with a slice of a cotton sock. The cancer within his body now had an obvious external marker. He said he would have it removed the day after his last session, but it stayed in his arm for weeks after that.

Jason apologized again and again that the treatment was boring. Compared to the ordeal the previous day, this session was a gift. The doctor and nurses came back on schedule to make conversation and change the I.V. medication drips. Jason complained bitterly about Adriamycin, the powerful chemical that made him vomit the previous week.

Adriamycin was a radioactive, candy red color. It looked strange vanishing into the veins of a human being — it would have been more in place attached to a car in a body shop. Its taste permeated Jason’s mouth from when the second the drip started until it was unhooked. He screwed up his face and sipped on a soda to counteract it. The treatment passed comfortably.

We walked home, and he collapsed for the weekend.

Jason allowed me to tag along for his chemo session two weeks later. It, too, was uneventful, and he slept for its last hour. Two weeks later, parents, stepparents, and friends flew into town for his last treatment. His girlfriend decorated his doorway and hall with banners.

“Last treatment ever!”  

“NO more weeks!”  

There was even a cake that read “Fuck Cancer.”

The story isn’t over, but the news is all good. The radiation therapy, sunburns aside, did not cause Jason much trouble. In the spring, he continued taking classes and directed a production of Taming of the Shrew.

He will need regular checkups for the next few years, and though he cannot overlook it, the chances of his cancer recurring are very low.

He is 21 and healthy, and much the same person he was before, though having his life so far out of his hands has made him a little more patient with situations he can’t control.

Even if he doesn’t know it, through his illness he has found a real strength — the kind found by plumbing the depths of one’s own weakness — that will never leave him.

STORY INDEX

TOPICS > HODGKIN’S DISEASE

How Hodgkin’s disease is diagnosed
URL: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/cri/content/cri_2_2_3x_how_is_hodgkins_disease_found_20.asp

Information on Hodgkin’s disease
URL: http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/wyntk/hodgkins

Treatment of Hodgkin’s disease in adults
URL: http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/pdq/treatment/adulthodgkins/patient/

In The Fray Contributor

As the 2004 Democratic National Convention descended into Boston, so did a major affront to democracy. Although a free speech zone was erected to keep the peace amongst various interest groups and concerned citizens vying to have their voices heard, this space proved to be anything but democratic. Epitomizing the stringent security measures have become the norm in our post-9/11 world, authorities stifled the voices of groups competing for space to express their opinions on matters of significance to them.

But the predictability of this censorship didn’t assuage my concern. A Canadian with a long-standing interest in American politics, I was elated at the prospect of covering the Democratic National Convention. After all, political conventions are where history is made, where a party’s image and ideals are showcased to the world, and where people begin to think more deeply about a nation’s state of affairs. The potential for change becomes tangible and one can feel hope in the air with impassioned and inspirational speakers like Illinois Senatorial hopeful Barrack Obama, who eloquently spoke of reviving a proud and patriotic nation where the American dream of opportunity and prosperity could become attainable for all people.

As songs like Sister Sledge’s 1979 smash hit “We are Family” blasted through the loudspeakers, people jostled back and forth clapped their hands and swayed from side to side. It was in these moments that a sense of unity prevailed. But as I walked around the Fleet Center where the convention was held, I realized that what was occurring outside in the free speech zone was equally as important as what was happening inside, even if it was antithetical to the spirit of the convention.

Naturally, there was no shortage of cameras and media representatives inside the Fleet Center. The convention walls were adorned with CNN banners, ABC signs, and the names of other major media outlets. But despite the wealth of media coverage of the convention, the mainstream media showed no interest in what was occurring in the so-called “free speech” zone, save for the chaos that ensued when four protesters were arrested for disobedience on Thursday afternoon.

Considering the ease with which one could get in and out of the convention without even seeing the demonstrators and hearing what they had to say, I decided to engage these silenced voices of dissent.

Welcome to the terror dome

Along with several delegates and convention attendees, I snaked around a hidden entrance to the Fleet Center where we could catch wind of the protesters‚ messages. Greeting us was a blaring loudspeaker announcement mocking the security checks we would soon encounter. As a man dressed in a bear costume with makeshift plastic buttocks dangling from his rear, who identified himself only as 47-year-old Boston-based Vermin Supreme, bellowed, “Please prepare yourself for a full-body cavity rectal search. Remember,” he cautioned, “It is in the name of national security, and it will make you safer; much like the Patriot Act which John Kerry voted for. Smile. Have a nice day,” he jeered. Hearing this as they filed inside, even delegates and other convention attendees couldn’t help but muster a grin or laugh outwardly.

Ari Maller, a 29-year-old Boston area representative from Rock the Vote, was competing for a space to be heard. Because he believes that youth have the power to influence and affect positive change collectively, he’s passionate about engaging youth in the electoral process. “This is about empowering youth to vote. Only 33 percent of people under the age of 24 voted in the last election (2000),” he explained. “A lot of issues are important to youth, such as education, jobs and war. We‚re just making sure that they have the information they need to make a difference.”

Protesters chanted, “If you‚re trying to bring democracy to Iraq, think of us too!” And with abortion surfacing as a divisive issue along the campaign trail, a group of female demonstrators yelled, “Choice for women. Protect our right to choose.”

Bob McLane, 43, who traveled from Texas to attend the convention, was selling bumper stickers that boldly read: “George Bush, Jr. couldn’t run a laundromat.” Selling these stickers for $1 each, McLane boasts that he sells about 100-150 per day, which helps supplement the travel and lodging expenses he incurs from traveling across the nation. “When someone sticks one of these on their car,” he roared, as he beckoned towards the stack of bumper stickers in his hand, “they’re not going to vote for Bush if they’re an undecided voter. This is about competence. This man is way under qualified to be a spokesperson for our country, much less to try and run it. I’m from Texas, and I’ve been around George a long time, and I’ve seen what an idiot he is,” he hollered. “New Yorkers are my best customers, because they know what a dummy Bush is.”

Carrying a sign that read, “Troops out of Iraq,” Jeff Knudsen, 44 and from the Boston area, explained why he chose to be in the free speech zone on the final day of the convention. “I’m not a Democrat, and although I often vote Democratic, I really wish the Dems would go back to their roots and become a People’s party once again — to be pro-peace, pro-working class, pro-women’s rights, and pro-minority rights. They need to increase social justice spending and to increase money for schools, job training, welfare and social security.”

As the crowd began to disperse on the last night of the convention, 54-year-old Bostonian Michael Schwartz, articulated a sentiment that was increasingly palpable throughout the four days of lockdown in the “free speech zone”: “The police have conflated dissent and terrorism, so to dissent is to be a terrorist. They‚re allowing the two separate issues to become one in the public eye, which is completely irrational. There‚s been an overwhelming police presence here. It’s provocative and it’s overkill.”

Troubled times

With civil liberties being drastically curtailed in the wake of 9/11, protesters are increasingly faced with difficulties as they attempt to organize demonstrations that seek to subvert conventional wisdom and to challenge those in power who serve to stifle the emergence of meaningful debate and dialogue on the array of issues facing the world’s lone superpower.

Such demonstrators, regardless of their motivation, demand a stake in the decision-making process. They seek to permeate the public’s conscience with their messages of hope, anger, disillusion, and a healthy dose of sardonic humor, epitomized by Vermin Supreme’s wry warning of “a full-body cavity rectal search.”

It was a sad four days for democracy in a nation that extols the virtues of such ideals and continues to use the issue of democracy to justify — at least in part — its disastrous invasion of Iraq. At the DNC, American hypocrisy was on full display for the world to see. I spent much of the four days of the convention holed up in the so-called “free speech zone,” where it often seemed as if there were more police in riot gear, citing “security” concerns to justify their excessive presence, than protesters, who symbolically placed duct tape over their mouths as a sign of the times. That is, times where to speak one’s mind and where to waver from conventional wisdom is tantamount to treason. The Patriot Act only serves to confirm this widespread sentiment.

Over the course of the convention, it became increasingly apparent that John Kerry’s Democrats could have used the convention’s glimmering spotlight to prove to Americans that this party is truly a people’s party. That they’re serious about fostering meaningful debate on the complex issues facing a divided nation.

Essentially, Kerry and the law enforcement officials could have succeeded in doing this by welcoming the protesters onto the convention’s premises, where they could be heard and where they could be visible and not on the outskirts of the site, down a dingy alley littered with Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups, cigarette butts, and discarded pizza boxes.

Voters may now be inclined to think that Kerry won’t be the “man for all people” after all “that the image of inclusion and tolerance that he and his vice-presidential running mate, John Edwards, have projected is nothing more than a façade aimed at deceiving the American populace.

With three months before the much-anticipated election takes place, Kerry will have to do a massive overhaul if he hopes to garner much-needed votes from the disillusioned people who have seen no indication that he’ll be open to diverging viewpoints thus far.

STORY INDEX

Commentary >

“John Kerry’s Waffles” by Michael Grunwald
URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2096540/

Legislation >

The Patriot Act
URL:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

In The Fray Contributor

(Photo by Dustin Ross)

The hopeful optimism of delegates at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston was unmistakable. At the heart of this optimism lies a paradox. Democrats are more impassioned and energized than they have been in some time, yet the various wings of the party are united to an unprecedented degree.

Ordinarily, political passion is associated with an energized party base and squabbles pitting it against party moderates, as Howard Dean’s remarkable primary campaign suggested. But a pervasive anybody-but-Bush sentiment among Democrats — a sentiment that propelled John Kerry to a seemingly unexpected victory in this year’s primaries — has become the dominant feature of the election. Sure, primary voters flirted heavily with Dean and later Edwards.But in the end they voted for the (unsexy) candidate they believed had the best chance of sending Bush packing.

Even though convention delegates tend to be less moderate than other voters, this pragmatic approach to the 2004 election was everywhere you looked among Democrats in Boston. Michigan delegate Cheryl Hadsall, for instance, is concerned with jobs and health care. But her first priority is much more basic: “We need to take back the White House.”  

Similarly, California delegate Judith Katzberg, a nurse who volunteers in a clinic serving the poor and an advocate of universal healthcare coverage and abortion rights, is well aware that the Democratic nominee’s proposal would fall far short of universal coverage. She is also aware that Kerry believes that life begins at conception. Yet she’s willing to make concessions this year, emphasizing that “you have to be pragmatic” first and then “always try to get more.”

Katzberg is hardly alone in this sentiment. Standing in solidarity with the anybody-but-Bush pragmatists, many single-issue interest groups have united under the moniker “America Votes” in an unprecedented campaign to increase voter turnout and boost the electoral prospects of Democratic candidates around the country. Howard Dean, once the beacon of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” played nice as he stood before delegates at the convention, declaring, “We’re all here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” Even hardcore lefties like Michael Moore are urging their supporters not to vote for Ralph Nader to ensure Bush’s defeat.

Biding their time

But because this anti-Bush consensus conceals important rifts within the party, it seems destined to yield to further intra-party battles beyond the election. Should John Kerry and John Edwards triumph in November, progressives who misinterpret the outcome as a mandate for their agenda, rather than a referendum against Bush, run the risk of setting back the party — and the progressive agenda — in the long run.

There are ample signs that party unity will fail to hold after the election.  Despite Representative and former presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich’s proclamation that “Out of many, we Democrats are one,” he waited until the eve of the convention to release his delegates to vote for Kerry. A unanimous nomination eluded Kerry because a number of the delegates voted for Kucinich anyway.      

Andrew Stern, the liberal president of the liberal Service Employees International Union (SEIU), professed his belief early in the week that a Kerry Administration would be bad for the Democratic Party and bad for unions. By his Marxian reasoning, a Kerry victory would delay the progressive change needed to transform the party, while a second Bush term would naturally produce a leftward lurch.

And a group called Progressive Democrats of America was launched at the end of convention week with an eye toward post-November organizing. As Field Director Kevin Spidel explained, “Our goal is to win back the presidency from the Republicans, and also to wrest the Democratic Party from the free-trading-Iraq-invading-Patriot-Act-supporting leadership it has now.” Needless to say, this perspective is notably at odds with the Kerry-Edwards agenda and the party platform.

While the impulse behind these strategies is often noble, they reflect a misunderstanding of the electoral constraints impeding a more progressive agenda. The 2000 election was essentially a tie, with Al Gore winning 48.4 percent of the popular vote and Bush garnering 47.9 percent.

Still a 50-50 nation

Four years later, little has changed. Despite problems in Iraq and a lackluster economy at home, the current presidential race is remarkably close. A Time magazine poll the week before the convention indicated that when registered voters were asked to choose between Kerry, Bush, and Nader, 46 percent said they would vote for Kerry while 44 percent said they’d vote for Bush. Democrats have reason for optimism in that the 5 percent who say they will vote for Nader may yet adopt the pragmatism of other Bush opponents. And conventional wisdom states that voters who are undecided this late in the election vote against the incumbent, so the 4 percent of voters who are undecided may also ultimately vote for Kerry. According to a poll conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, one in five voters potentially could vote for either major candidate.

Not surprisingly, the Democratic National Convention — which emphasized military strength and family values — sought to win over these undecided voters. And should the Kerry/Edwards ticket prevail in November, the new administration will need to tend to these voters to ensure that the Democrats’ return to the White House isn’t short-lived and give the Democrats a chance of regaining control of Congress in the future. These are the imperatives of enacting progressive change, and those who profess to be progressives must confront this reality more so than they have done previously.

Why? According to the nationally representative General Social Survey (GSS), 14 percent of voters in the 2000 election considered themselves “liberal” or “extremely liberal.” But 20 percent considered themselves “conservative” or ”extremely conservative.” Not only do progressives constitute a small minority of the voting population, but they are outnumbered on the right. Furthermore, 60 percent of Democrats identified themselves as centrist or right of center, while just 40 percent of Republicans identified as centrist or left of center. So even among party loyalists, Democrats are more moderate than Republicans. When Republican voters and conservative voters are combined, this group outnumbers Democrats who are not conservative by a factor of five. Republicans and conservatives outnumber non-conservative Democrats and Independents three-to-one. Progressives’ idea of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party constitutes a tiny fraction of the electorate.

Progressives like to argue that Democrats should increase voter registration and turnout rather than focusing on winning the swing vote. Moore, in particular, pushed this argument all over town last week, decrying polls’ shortsighted fixation on likely voters. Although such arguments are rarely accompanied by evidence, the available data refutes the idea that non-voters are more progressive than voters.  

According to the GSS, non-voters tend to be more moderate than voting adults. While 38 percent of voters identify as conservative, only 30 percent of non-voters do. But non-voters are also less likely than voters to call themselves liberal (25 percent versus 27 percent). In fact, according to the GSS, even if every eligible adult had voted in 2000, the popular vote would have remained unchanged. Thanks to the Iraq War, the outcome could be different this year. But in the absence of hard data, one can only speculate.

Potentially, Democrats could (and should) out-perform Republicans in registering new partisans to vote and getting disaffected partisan voters to the polling booth. But to the extent that this strategy succeeds, Republicans will presumably follow suit. The end result? Greater extremism on both sides of the aisle and more gridlock. Not exactly a promising strategy for achieving progressive ends.

The 2000 election demonstrates there is a great deal of room for the U.S. President to move beyond the center. Had Al Gore been installed as president instead of Bush, a much smaller tax cut would have likely been signed into law, freeing up money for other priorities. Perhaps there would have been more spending on health care or education. Maybe there would be a stronger safety net for workers who lose their jobs.  

With this in mind, many progressives argue that Democrats need to be as willing as Republicans to move beyond the center. This line of reasoning ignores or dismisses policy advances made by Democrats in recent years that involved real political risk. (Bill Clinton’s education tax credits, for instance, amounted to a larger program in spending terms than the G.I. Bill.) Similarly, the argument also dismisses that Republicans respond to centrist pressure, though Bush felt compelled to campaign on “compassionate conservatism” and has dramatically increased spending on education and health care for the elderly. It also ignores the extent to which voters punished Gingrich Republicans — and may punish Bush for his departure from bipartisanship.  

But perhaps most importantly, the argument ignores the fact that the average voter falls to the right of center. Consequently, Democrats have less freedom to appease their base than Republicans do. Additionally, the aforementioned figures neither account for the disproportionate weight attached to the votes of small-state residents (often Red-Staters), who have a greater voice than other voters in the Electoral College and the Senate, nor consider the gerrymandering that is currently helping the Republicans maintain control over the House.  

Pragmatism beyond 2004

If progressives impede efforts by a Kerry/Edwards administration — or future Democratic administrations — to build a politically sustainable coalition, they’ll end up ceding power to those who are openly hostile to progressive ideals. The 2004 election, though dominated by the Iraq war’s saliency, is really a particular case of the general problem facing progressives. In his memorable formulation, the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck declared politics the “art of the possible.” There is a reason Bill Clinton attempted to move the party to the center and why pragmatism in 2004 is necessary. It is the same reason why pragmatism will be necessary beyond 2004. The alternative is unacceptable. Progressives who don’t like Bismarck’s perspective may be more sympathetic to that of the American economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith: “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”

At a forum sponsored by the liberal Campaign for America’s Future last week, Dean wrapped up his fiery speech on what was intended as an optimistic note. Insisting that progressives could win over southern voters, he thundered, “There are 105,000 kids without health insurance in South Carolina. I don’t know why they’d ever vote for another Republican.” But they will vote for more Republicans, and progressives must address this reality if they want to advance their agenda in the next four years and beyond.

STORY INDEX

ARTICLES >

Dean, Kucinich quotes from convention
URL: http://www.dems2004.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter3.asp?c=luI2LaPYG&b=131063

Michael Moore on Nader
URL: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503232,

Kucinich and his delegates
URL:  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-naliberals31jul31,1,4291214.story?coll=la-home-nation

Stern and SEIU
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16387-2004Jul26.html

Progressive Democrats of America
URL: http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0720-06.htm

Polls >

2000 popular vote
URL: http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm

Time magazine poll
URL: http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm

Pew poll
URL: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=217

In The Fray Contributor