The San Francisco Chronicle has a wonderful piece remembering the life of activist John Ross who died last week. A beat poet in New York as a teenager, a tenant organiser in San Francisco in the 60s, and a life-long revolutionary, he was a radical voice advocating bold changes ahead of his time. As an old man, in 2003 he travelled to Iraq to act as a human shield to defend Iraqi citizens, but was thrown out for criticising the Iraqi government by Saddam Hussein’s forces. Most famously, however, John Ross lived in and wrote about Mexico – and particularly the Zapatistas.
An old friend describes his first trip to join them,
“When the Zapatistas began their rebellion, he hitched a ride south from Mexico City, then hiked into the hills in Chiapas with a bag of granola and a couple of bottles of water, found the rebels in a little hamlet, met Subcommander Marcos and got interviews and information that left the rest of the media in the dust. In the first story he sent me, he described seeing a couple of reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle zipping by in a fancy rented jeep, with about $1,000 worth of camera gear, totally befuddled. They were out of their league; John was right at home.”
The Nation labelled him the Master of Speaking Truth To Power, but he wasn’t only a rebel. He had a wicked sense of humour – when he lost sight in one of his eyes later in life, he would sign-off his emails with the name, ‘Juan Eye’.
Perhaps the most striking idea of who he was is captured in this story. When John Ross left a federal prison in Los Angeles after serving a couple of years for refusing the Vietnam draft, the warden shook his head and said: “Ross, you never learned how to be a prisoner.”
We are wind, Us,
not the breath which blows on us.
We are word, Us,
Not the lips which speak to us,
We are step, Us,
Not the foot upon which we walk,
We are heartbeat, Us,
not the heart that pulses,
We are bridge, Us,
Not the soils which the bridge joins,
We are roads, Us,
not the point of leaving or arriving,
We are place, Us
not who occupies that place,
We do not exist, Us
We just are,
Seven times we are,
Us, seven times,
Us, the repeating mirror
The reflection, Us
The hand which just opened the window,
Us, the world calling out
to the door of Tomorrow.
By Comandante David and Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.