LAST CALL

A SOUVENIR FOR THE ROAD HOME

At the end of every ComFest, there is a bittersweet moment for each of us. It comes early or late, depending on whether we have to leave in mid-afternoon sunlight for a long drive home, or at dusk as the fairy lights are just coming on along the winding pathways of the Street Fair village, or after midnight, with the last blissful notes from the jazz tent only a memory, and even the drum circles winding down. Whenever your own farewell moment comes, you know it felt the same for every other lover of these extraordinary gatherings: How can I wait another year to feel so...whole?

I was dreaming in my dreaming
Of an aspect bright and fair

Because in your heart you know it isn't just the beer or wine or sunshine or even the music that makes each of us feel so full and content after a visit to ComFest. It's the flowing river of thousands of people, so different in lifestyles and yet so alike in spirit.

Last year local writer Nita Sweeney commented, "I have never heard the words, "Oh. Sorry," more in a shorter span of time than I did last night. A teenager in a "Buck Fush" t-shirt with tattoos up and down his arms and pierced lip, eyebrow, nose and ears accidentally elbowed me in the crowd. Instead of ignoring me, which I expected, he turned to me and said, "Oh. Sorry. You okay?" This type of kindness happened over and over and over again with one "character" after another...And this is why I go. Not for the bands or the incense and especially not for the beer. I go to be reminded that, despite all appearances, people are generally kind. I go for character development -- and here, the character I'm trying to develop is my own!"

And we strolled there together
With none to laugh or criticize

Community Festival started from an impulse to demonstrate this truth: that kindness and generosity of spirit are at the core of all people, and cooperation for common good is a power that can change the world. Nothing sounds more hippy-dippy than that, but it certainly has worked to build this event from a milk-crate and card-table block party into the biggest platform for peace, social justice, independent music and art the Midwest has ever seen.

And the shepherds and the soldiers
Lay beneath the stars exchanging visions

When we're immersed in the fest, surrounded by swirling color and lilting sounds and delicious smells and that river of good folks, it can be easy to take it all for granted. It's only when we're back "In Real Life" that we realize how precious these three days are. And at the other end of the calendar, in the depths of midwinter with the gray lid pressing down for days on end and the news full of blood and desperation, it can seem like ComFest was just a dream...or worse, a taunting memory of a home now lost forever.

And my sleeping it was broken
But my dream it lingered near
In the form of shining valleys
Where the pure air recognized

This past winter had that aspect, with a vengeance. Being conscious and mindful of the world, traits that ComFest was built to celebrate and enhance, became almost physically painful. An unimaginable number of civilians -- at least 255,000, maybe twice that -- were counted as victims of genocide in Darfur. Palestinian "refugee" camps in Lebanon, where some residents were born and have lived to see grandchildren still waiting for repatriation, were made suddenly visible by towering flames devouring what little these dispossessed had ever called "home".

And my senses newly opened
I awakened to the cry

Severe poverty in America hit a 32-year high, with 16 million people, mostly women and children, trying to stay alive on less than $10,000 for a family of four, even as fallout from time bomb mortgages signaled an economic crisis of terrifying proportions. The gap between rich and poor widened to an extent not seen since the 1920s, with at least one hedge fund manager taking home 38,000 times the average income, and CEO compensation for the largest corporations hitting a new median of $6.8 million apiece. Our friendly bankers took over $10 billion in overdraft fees, while insurance companies decided that policies could be rescinded for allergies, pregnancy or depression.

Throughout it all, there were two constant drumbeats: the brutally pointless war in Iraq, and the smirking refusal by demonstrably corrupt national officials to heed public demands for accountability.

By May, despite overwhelming opposition from both the general public and the military generals who resigned to protest it, the war in Iraq was claiming four American lives every day, and it still was not possible to find the number of Iraqi casualties in any news story. Veterans came home in unseen coffins to overfill the brand new Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, or in wheelchairs to overfill the rotting warehouse called Building 18 at Walter Reed Hospital. Police state tactics escalated even as the crooks and liars stood defiant behind flimsy legal rationales for concentrating power in their own bloody hands. Newspaper staffs were gutted by thousands of layoffs, while "American Idol" and Anna Nicole took over the front page in place of corruption investigations and national policy issues.

I was hoping in my hoping
To recall what I had found

And then Congress voted to approve continued funding for the war, and Cindy Sheehan resigned from the anti-war movement in despair. Suddenly it seemed like drinking a lot might be a really good idea, never mind the Prozac. Celebrating hope for a better world seemed like a quaint idea from another era.

That was a perfect time to get schooled again by Patti Smith. At her reluctant but uncompromised induction into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, the primal punk rocker roared out the same message she has carried all these years:

The people have the power
to redeem the work of fools
It is decreed
the people rule

She's right. Even when the scale of the world's pain is overwhelming, and we each feel that we have to fight injustice on too many fronts, the source of hope is right here in front of us, hidden only by being too big to see. It's the same as it ever was: the power of the people -- that same river of good, kind people that surrounds us every year here at Community Festival.

And now we have a new tool, the greatest leverage ever given to the struggle for justice and democracy. Through the Internet, we the people are coming into collective self-consciousness on a global scale, reinventing the common, levelling the field for knowledge distribution, politics and even art, developing our own rules, teaching each other to speak strongly and check facts and have faith in ourselves as one humanity.

Al Gore, another wise elder with a long range vision, says the greatest renewable resource on earth is our will to act -- and he's right, too. We are in the world to change the world, and more than ever that is within our collective reach. We just have to remember our own power, and act on it, especially in the darkness of hard times.

Listen. I believe everything we dream
Can come to pass through our union

So as you leave ComFest this year, resolve to take with you this one most precious souvenir: a new perspective that you can carry, and that will carry you. This handmade and homegrown festival, green-powered and user-generated before those terms existed, is not about partying to forget our woes. We come together and party to remember our history and our cooperative strength, to become conscious and stay mindful of our collective beauty and transformative potential.

People have the power
the power to dream
the power to rule
the power to wrestle
the world from fools

You know it's right. You saw it all around you, here at Community Festival. Now take that souvenir, that knowledge, out into the streets and act on it.

We commit our dream to you.

--Mimi Morris