Students told to get beyond comfort zones to make change

This is the second half of Paul Haeder’s closer look at 84-year-old protester Dorli Rainey, who was pepper sprayed and arrested during Occupy Seattle protests last fall. She continues to speak to students and encourage them to continue to fight for injustice, including a presentation at Green River Community College earlier this year. For part 1, visit here: In the 1990s Dorli Rainey taught a media class at Highline Community College in Federal Way, Wash., called “Current Issues-What the Media Don’t tell You.” She continues to be inspired by and inspire young people. During a visit to Green River Community College this spring, she invited the students to continue Occupy thoughts and actions. “Occupy Seattle, Occupy everywhere is another progression of the anti-war movement. It is a diverse movement with many groups and many ideas. But there are two main points: get the money out of politics and stop the war,” she said. A Power Point developed by Chicano studies adjunct, Carlos Adams of Green River, highlighted student activism in the past century, including Kent State and the anti-war actions, and the rise of feminist power, Black power, and Chicano power movements. As a follow-up, she offered a wizened face and her own historical ‘boots on the ground’ perspective on protest. “I was born a protestor … My mother had to go to the school a lot and talk to the principal.” That was in Austria, where she spent the first 30 years of her life. She moved to Seattle when her former husband landed a job as a technical engineer for Boeing. She was quick to jab Boeing for not paying its fair share of taxes and for promulgating its role in the military-industrial complex by building parts, engines and jets that end up killing people in other countries. Boeing got back $5 billion in refunds last year even though it enjoyed profits in the billions. Half its income is derived from military air power. Dorli Rainey has been fighting against some sort of rapine of the soul all her life. When she was 10 in Austria, Hitler was sharpening his fascist talons. She lived through a huge depression, flu pandemics, and World War II. She’s watched faces change and presidential policies carried out, from Eisenhower to Obama, wars in Vietnam, Central America and the invasions of Iraq, twice. Without a doubt, education is her linchpin, both at the Occupy Seattle rally that got her face pepper sprayed then drenched in milk after being sprayed with toxic irritants by the Seattle Police Department and he outreach around Seattle and the state. That image moved on every wire service as the face of protest in the U.S. in the 21st century. Seattle Mayor Mike McGuinn issued a statement of apology the next day, but Dorli then and now hasn’t been impressed. “We spoke very briefly, and I told him that he is not in charge of what is going on, that our politicians really have lost control, and this sort of brutality is now endemic all over the United States and is being controlled by Homeland Security, by the FBI, and by the military against the war on terrorism,” she said. “It has nothing to do any longer with what individual mayors may want or not want to do.” Since the media in general have failed to really understand the Occupy Movement, she puts a face on it – young people with huge student loan debts working for minimum wage or who are jobless. She sees her Occupy Seattle participation as a natural outgrowth of decades on the front line protesting unfair treatment of her fellow Americans and people worldwide. “Washington’s constitution specifically states that education funding is the Legislature’s first priority. Compared to the 1970s – when I was already seeing the cuts in education then as a teacher – today we have really fallen in funding education.” As always, her message resonates as one of fighting for truth through education, and her idea is that all higher education should be free. Rainey is as persistent and determined as any postal courier. Her narrative deserves more than one-hour at any Seattle-area school. She should be a guest in all classes, a guest at an all-school assembly, anywhere, private, public, charter schools (which she rails against), religious, alternative schools. “It all boils down to fallen down priorities – there’s too much money in politics, too much money for the military, too many wars, and not enough power to the people,” she told the students and few faculty. She referenced Albert Einstein, who was as well known as a peace activist as he was as the father of the nuclear age. In the end, Rainey emphasized Einstein regretted he was even part of the lead-up to splitting the atom. Her heroes? Three Catholic nuns, Ardeth Platte, Jackie Hudson, and Carolyn Gilbert, who were sentenced to jail-terms ranging from 30 to 41 months by a US District judge in 2003 for spreading their own blood on an unmanned Minuteman III missile silo near Greeley, Colo. Most everyone in the Green River community college multipurpose room had no idea about these activists and their sentences. “You just need to take one step outside your comfort zone to make change,” she told the students. That message also is galvanized to learning, and understanding history. Leaders pop up in all sorts of funny ways. For GRCC student Sarra Tekola, the horizon is long, filled with many battles. She spoke loud and clear before the audience. She promoted the very concept of involvement and not backing down. One student group I had some hand in creating, since I was a part of the first Green River teach-in Oct. 6, 2011, The Attack on Higher Education, is fighting not only their own campaign of stopping class closures and raised tuition, but are looking to support faculty in their own fight against layoffs and the exploitation of contingent faculty. We had SEIU’s Working Washington folk there, which organized the students to tackle the legislative attacks on higher education in Washington – approaching a billion dollars in statewide cuts to education on every level while at the same time all education leaders, proponents of early childhood learning and community and business development folk know education is the key to survival for the state of Washington and State of Democracy. This Dorli Rainey event was part of the college’s year-long series of teach-ins and other events under the theme of The Attack on Higher Education.