Happy New Year!

Istanbul, Turkey

Happy New Year to one and all! I have a cold and so I haven't really done much at all in the past few days. For new years eve I was at Aylin's house and another family came over and we had dinner and watched a Turkish new years program and then they went to bed before midnight. So I stayed up and watched more tv (although this time in english) until about midnight when I switched back to the Turkish station to see the countdown. I'm not good enough with the Turkish numbers to count down in Turkish. There are some advantages to being in an appartment on the 14th floor of a building, one of which is that it gives you a great view of the city and the fireworks that people shoot off. For a while they were going off everywhere I looked. It was exciting since I love fireworks.

And now because it is a new year I feel the need to be political (something I've left out of my blog). Friday I met up with a guy that is an activist in Istanbul as well as a graduate student working two jobs on top of that. He and others have been working for five months to organize the European social forum, and then they hope to have the first Turkish social forum in November. They are talking to farmers and workers all over the country and getting them involved. But he told me that they can only do so much unless the US changes its policies. The words he's like to share with people in the US - "break it, smash it!" - *using nonviolent means*. Talking to him and hearing his energy and enthusiasm was really inspirational for me, because sometimes I forget that activism is more than sitting in meetings and talking about process without ever doing anything. And it gives me hope, that if we can all leave our egos in last year, that we could really make enough changes in the US to let the people in Turkey (and everywhere else in the world) make changes in their countries. Talking to him also reminded me that activists in the US are not the only ones. We often fault leaders in the US for putting us in places where we don't belong because we are supposed to right the wrongs of the world, remove the dictators, etc., but as sometimes I think that as activists we also forget that people are organizing in other countries too. We Americans are not the only ones trying to change the world, people across the world are trying to change the world and we can be more effective if we remember that.

And I know I said it once, but I think I'll say it again...Happy New Year!