VOX POP Q&A With Author Marisa Handler
1. In LOYAL TO THE SKY, you share your experiences, both firsthand and observed, of people joining together to protest against social and economic injustice. What inspired you to become an activist?
I think what inspired me was the same thing that inspires anyone to want to make positive change: you see someone suffering, it moves something in you, and you want to help. We're all activists; we're all acting and making choices, and those have effects. It's just a matter of believing that we have the power to have positive effects, to really make change. Which I do.
2. What are some of the major protests you've participated in? How are these protests organized?
Protests against the war, protests against the occupation of Palestine, and protests against free trade agreements like the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Also, I was in NYC during the Republican National Convention doing my best to raise hell. In the global justice movement, demonstrations are organized in a way that is directly democratic, via small groups called affinity groups and consensus process.
3. In addition to being a journalist, and now author, you are also a songwriter. How does your songwriting augment your activism?
It gives me a different vehicle via which to reach out. It comes from a different place--and when I go there, when I sing, I think I reach people in a different way. Plus I just love to sing, pure and simple. Onstage, offstage, in the shower....
4. Being both an activist and a journalist, do you ever find yourself at cross-purposes?
Uh, yes. More on that in the book. It's taken some real discipline to remember my different roles at different times.
5. In LOYAL TO THE SKY, you recount visits to India, Israel, Nepal, Ecuador, and Peru. Do all of these countries have similar problems?
No, they each have their own unique set of problems, and reporting from these places has given me the opportunity to explore them in some depth. But ultimately I believe that what underlies these very different problems is a philosophy of separation: there's me and my kind, and then there's the Other. So here's where it gets spiritual, if you'll indulge me. I think we'd be living in a very different world if we let the "Other" retain her humanity, instead of demonizing and dehumanizing--instead of manufacturing an enemy where there is none... or at least none that doesn't exist within us, too.