RAT Re: Revolutionaries and money

[Laura Winton <fluffysingler@prodigy.net>]

Brad (and everyone)--

One more point I wanted to make.  (I am actually staying late at work--off
the clock--to write these emails!)

The whole voluntary poverty thing was tricky for me with activist groups.  I
did not come from a family that could bail me out when I made certain
choices.  I have several times turned down job offers because the company
was in some way unpalatable to me.  I was offered a job making charts and
presentations all day for the investments department at a bank (where I was
temping) among people who would say things like "I think that Pat Buchanan's
a swell guy."  I was offered a 9 month temp job with a pipeline company
while I lived in Iowa City and I was running the Left Green Network
Clearinghouse.  I sat in the lobby with the promotional magazines from Mobil
Oil et al and just said "I can't do this".  It was months before I got
another job.  I was living on $100 a week typing papers for students on a
$200 computer that the Network owned that I was using.

A number of people who came from more comfortable backgrounds than I did
were much less ideological about it.  They said "do whatever you have to do
to get by", but I couldn't do that.  So yes, I am speaking from a situation
where my actions had consequences.

I never rethought any of my decisions for even a minute.  This is what I
mean when I say that I am worth so much more than money.

"Those poor kids.  So young.  So nauseous."
--Krusty the Klown Telethon for Motion Sickness


Laura Winton
fluffysingler@prodigy.net
http://pages.prodigy.net/fluffysingler