At Bookshop Santa Cruz
I look at a book about the East Bay then and now
One picture strikes me: 1969 Sproul Plaza
Govener Ronald Reagan has the National Guard spray
tear gas on protesters on the steps of this Berkeley Administration Building
People run in black and white
they look like my parents
The helicopter is so close to the ground, like the Vietnam War
I was three
In the backseat of our VW Bug
My mother was driving me to Strawberry Canyon
for a swim
Then she got scared--something on the radio
We turned around
I didn't understand
She had to protect us from tear gas
We lived in a war zone
Everyone was very upset
We were attacked by our own government
Even children were fair game
An innocent frog is placed in water
If the water temperature is raised gradually
the frog will sit there until it dies
In 1980 Ronald Reagan became our President
Much to our dismay
"70% of pollution comes from trees" he had announced
as Governer, he was obviously a man of science
The vice grip clenched, the water temperature raised
as we felt around us the world becoming more
difficult as a middle class
we were supposed to wait for crumbs to fall
from the table of the rich folks
fighting over the bits like starving animals
Budgets were cut
Prices rose, wages fell or disappeared completely
We were at war
1985: I took a class in Economics in college, a UC
I learned that Supply Side Economics was
a silly idea written on a napkin at a fancy restaurant
where the fat ones eat
and the crumbs are thrown away
It was all a sham
An excuse
The vice grip tightened, the world became
more difficult
not the American Dream my parents grew up in
To be middle class was to struggle and struggle and still
not have anything
The frog began to die
Somehow we saw that
Reagan drifted away, but his ghost
remained, a respite in the 90's
Then we were at war again
Not just tear gas, but carpet bombing
Guerilla warfare in the streets of a hot arid country
Oil companies, already saturating our ground and our air with their products
Cashed in
The frog is near death
We struggle, and nothing gets better
Only a respite
At a fancy restaurant
on a napkin someone wrote
a new theory of Economics
that became like Scientology
Outgrew it's ridiculous inception
And became real
Ronald Reagan dropped tear gas
from helicopters on Sproul Plaza
and it drifted to Strawberry Canyon
where children learned to swim
But that is child's play now
the frog is about to die
I want to pull it out.