80-year activist continues to spread passion

Small in stature, quiet in voice, a bit road weary, sure, but this retired nurse and public school activist blasted through the Green River Community College campus in Auburn, Wash., earlier this year with several plasma-setting lightning bolts of energy and passion for her almost eight decades of protest. Even Wonder Woman couldn’t have stopped the electricity of activist, former nurse and Austrian-born Dorli Rainey, who was not escorted to the stage by the school’s president or any school board member. No big-time media were there to record her visit, one based on speaking with youth at a very suburban campus that has, like many other ‘burb community colleges, a culture of disinterest by students and lethargic faculty who are many times hiding behind desks to placate the tsunami of budget cuts. For Rainey, who was made famous last fall by the Seattle Police Department’s brutality and a photo of her milk-drenched face during the Occupy Seattle movement, this is the time for young people to Occupy not just downtowns of big cities but everything. Student loan debts are averaging $35,000, on youth expected to lock-step to the adage of the new bachelor’s is the master’s and who are being forced into unpaid internships (read the book, Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy) Rainey understands. In an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now Nov. 17, 2011, one day after the City of Seattle targeted her face with offensive pepper irritants, she demonstrated why she has quickly become an icon of the Occupy Movement. “When you look at the pictures, you will see that the pepper spray fog and the stream of pepper spray is all over. My problem is not only with police brutality, it is with the progressively getting worse attitude of the police. I was tear-gassed—and thank you, Norm Stamper—in Seattle when the WTO was there in Seattle.” Just three months later, she’s already joking with students how being pepper-sprayed is a great way to get on a diet: “I’ve lost 20 pounds since that day … I have trouble breathing … I don’t have the ability to taste food.” That program was also indicative of how the Occupy movement was forcing people to either bear witness and not act, or go into action. Along with the headline introducing Rainey to a worldwide audience, “84-Year-Old Dorli Rainey, Pepper-Sprayed at Occupy Seattle, Denounces “Worsening” Police Crackdowns,” other stories belie a deeper story: “Occupy Wall Street’s National Day of Action Launches with Protest at NY Stock Exchange” ; “Ex-New York Times Freelancer Natasha Lennard on Quitting the Corporate Media in an Occupy Era” ; “Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on Paramilitary Policing From WTO to Occupy Wall Street.” I bring up that particular episode of Democracy Now because as a college instructor in Seattle, Spokane, Las Cruces, N.M, Tucson and El Paso, I’ve come to understand how mind-numbing K-12 public education can be, forcing good teachers to toe the party-line of standardized testing, forcing students to not think critically. In many cases, teachers are reprimanded or fired for exposing students to certain authors, movies and movements. During Dorli’s presentation at Green River, a majority in the audience did not know what the Occupy Wall Street movement was, and not one had heard of Democracy Now. Dorli has been all around the state, before and after being sprayed. She told me how tough it is in places like Auburn to find students willing to shape their lives around resistance, rebellion and questioning authority. I taught English at Green River September to December 2011. As a part-time faculty my role is diminished because I need to make ends meet by taking on ridiculous schedules and teaching loads. No lamentation, though, considering Dorli Rainey is pugnacious, determined, and highly critical in a Jane Jacobs kind of way. Her work as a nurse and a proponent of teachers in the Issaquah School District and support of a principal who fought for non-sexist language in her school and for implementation of Title IX (fair treat treatment of females in sports participation), campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment, marching during the Civil Rights movement alongside Martin Luther King’s allies, running for Seattle mayor in 2009, and rallying around fellow educators during the McCarthy “Communist hunts” set the stage for this speaking event, organized by faculty member Louise Hull and others. There was a music-enhanced Powerpoint show, “Power to the Students,” created by Carlos Adams, another faculty member. There were rousing calls to action from Sarra Tekola, an environmental sciences major and member of the new campus group, Student Activists for Education, SAFE. Finally, Cindy Small, an art faculty member, worked with about two dozen participants to transform themselves into political activist artists in a poster creation frenzy. The real staying power behind this teach-in was Dorli and the students who asked questions and heard how a person two decades past retirement stays so active and impassioned. “I would maybe retire if I saw young people taking up the leadership roles of the protest movement,” she said. Because of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, youth today have so much more power “than we ever had when I was starting out.” Her modus operandi is always tied to social justice. She feels the United States has perpetrated a lot of global injustices with its economic and foreign policies. The under girder to Rainey’s work is justice, and she knows her climate change frames, knows the unwieldy city-private ventures like the Alaskan Way viaduct dismantling project and the $4.5 billion dollar car-truck tunnel project are tied to the One Percent wanting waterfront property over the needs of the environment, both ecologically speaking and culturally speaking: “I believe change begins in the streets, and all citizens have the power to make a difference. ,” she writes in the blog’s about section. “Together we can make our voices heard in the ivory towers of government, so lace up your combat boots, log in and turn on!” She’s proud of being an activist across a wide range of issues, including non-violence in foreign affairs, feminism and local transportation. She took the bus from her retirement home in Seattle to the Auburn campus, and she repeated to me that she disapproves “car takeover” in Seattle and the morphing parking lots. She even mentioned all the embedded energy in cement, like that of the Viaduct, which is being crushed by diesel-consuming trucks, and then a tunnel built by the most expensive tunnel grinder using untold amounts of Portland cement. When asked by the student editor of the school’s paper, “The Current,” whether getting media attention was a penultimate goal of Occupy Seattle, Dorli respectfully scoffed: “The media just don’t know what we’re doing because they don’t ask, and they toe the corporate line.” The Occupy movement, she said is working magic behind the scenes, with community clubs, churches and others working on recruiting and training. “Teachers are joining us, and we have Physicians for National Health Care signed on.”