In some ways I\’m kind of relieved. Yesterday I found out about Camp Katrina/Bushville, which is kinda sorta the same idea I had with starting Resurrection City back up on the Mall. I\’d been sort of freaking out about the whole idea of trying to instigate that demonstration myself.

The first time around, in \’68, organizers took a lot of flack for leaving at night to go sleep at a motel. I guess I just don\’t believe in the cause enough to be a martyr; for a while I was thinking, okay, yeah, fuck my health, this is more important, I\’m gonna go do this and sleep on the Mall, but then reality set in and I realized what a completely fucking horrible idea that would be for me. I mean, yeah, it would help prove the point that people living in nasty conditions have failing health, but I\’ve spent years trying to get better and finally have the opportunity and start seeing the Hopkins sleep guy next week–am I to fall on my figurative sword for that? Part of me says yes and part of me says no. I feel selfish and smart and cowardly and self-preserving and justified and two-faced all at once.

But finding this other group that plans to hold the same sort of camp-on-the-mall demonstration puts my mind at ease, somewhat, because now I know that at least there will be other people doing it. So my plan now is to distribute the edited statement to message boards, letters to the editor, blogs, etc., set up some site or something that links to all the other sites that are detailing accountability and demands, try to centralize facts and figures and such, and then point people very much in the direction of the Camp Katrina/Bushville people. Go align with them, \’cos they have the right idea.

And hang my head because I\’m scared to subject myself again to the conditions that make people sick–that have made me sick in the past. Scared that living down there will no plumbing and the mosquitos and the dampness and the mold and the ragweed and the stress will eventually end up giving me double pneumonia AGAIN and I\’ll end up back in the hospital AGAIN and Cheney or Condi will win in 2008 somehow anyway and there will be a draft and people will get tired of the grind and go back to watching reality television and it will all have been for naught, anyway. I hope that\’s not the case.

Anyway, the camp out on the Mall starts this Saturday, September 11.