The ‘discovery’ phase of Surmountable, a two month jaunt through scenes of historic protests plus interviews with activists, academics, journalists, people on the street, thinkers, trouble makers, and witnesses is done. I arrived in Bangkok 2am from South Korea, after the final international leg of the trip that took me to Berlin, Kiev, Paris, Tunis, and Seoul.
The final itinerary traveled, four continents, 20 destinations, two months.
Now for the writing.
We have a wealth of raw material. Public thinkers like AEI’s Norm Ornstein, C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb, Adbusters/ Occupy Wall Street’s Kalle Lasn, Columbia University’s Todd Gitlin, historian Stephen Schlesinger. Journalists and authors. Front line activists who put their bodies on the line like Standing Rock’s LaDonna Brave Bull Allard who gave her land and was a leading figure in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, Kiev ‘squad’ veterans like Anna Kovalenko who led an all-woman group to physically resist attacks by secret police and militia, Tasnim of Tunis who shed the veil to take to the streets and launch the end of long-time dictator Ben Ali and the beginning of the Arab Spring.
It’s a privilege to gather these stories and be in the process of remarkable women and men, sometimes via choreographed interviews, sometimes via odd moments of serendipity as when I wandered into a Tunisian protest from the front door of my hotel into a weekly communist rally honoring the death of a martyred civil society activist.
Adam Edwards and I go into projects like this with certain foundational ideas and the outline of an editorial structure, but with open minds and a fierce desire to explore what is true, what is just, and how citizens might live the American founders’ vision of an active engaged public.
We intend to publish this year. I will be publishing photos and interview excerpts in the coming weeks. Here are a few memorable images from the trip.
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard after picking me up at the Bismarck, North Dakota airport and driving me 90 minutes to the Standing Rock reservation. I had asked how to get to her and where to stay, to which she responded, “Brian, you just don’t get it, do you, we’re in the middle of nowhere.” So she came and got me and put me up next door to her at the Water Protectors House. After two hours of conversation, and a home cooked meal by activists living in the house, she came by at 11pm with her new great granddaughter. “Direct descendent of Sitting Bull.” We toured the tribal council, the pipeline and protest sites, the local college and Sitting Bull museum, the tribal casino, and her ancestors’ burial grounds.
I told Pastor Leon Ross of the Weeping Willow Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama that I had beers with four white fellows at the base of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma the night before, and they said things were fine with race relations relations back in the day. He scoffed, “Sure for them they were. We were sick and tired and of being sick and tired.” He worked in the Montgomery Improvement Association along with Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., pivotal in the bus boycott started by Rosa Parks.
The Alley of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes, in the square where Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution took place. Over 100 protestors were killed as the protests grew in scope and intensity. I walked the scenes of the clashes and the moving, detailed exhibits on the streets honoring the dead and commemorating the events.
Tasnm and the Martyr. She walked me to the train like the mother of three she is, insisting on carrying my backpack, and warning me not to talk to strangers. We attended two protests that day, a second in front of the Central Bank as it was anti-imperialism day and students marched through the streets pushing past heavily armed police trying to stop them.
The palace at the far end of Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul where Koreans gathered every Saturday, first in the hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands until the president was impeached, turned out of office, and imprisoned with a 26 year term.
As so it begins. I begin my interviews of practitioners of the art of protest from Selma to Seoul tomorrow for the Surmountable book project. Thanks to my co-writer Adam Edwards and to our 80+ Kickstarter funders for supporting my travel to 4 continents over the next two months. My first interview will be at the iconic City Lights bookstore in North Beach, San Francisco, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s shop on the corner of Broadway and Columbus which shocked the literary world with its publication of Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl.” I will talk to the shop’s executive director and publisher Elaine Katzenberger then on to tech writers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. What would you ask her??
The “Surmountable” Kickstarter project is funded as of March 1 at $15,011 with over 80 backers. The trip to scenes of historic protests around the United States and around the world begins immediately. Thanks to all of our backers for supporting this adventurous and ambitious project. I will be blogging from each destination throughout March and April, starting in San Francisco. USA destinations will include Seattle/ Vancouver, Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, Charleston, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., the Alice Paul Institute in Mount Laurel New Jersey and New York City.
My “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Art of Creation” is voted one of the year’s top four jazz books in the just released JazzTimes Reader’s Poll. The winner of the poll is Dexter Gordon: Sophisticated Giant by Maxine Gordon. Other runners-up are Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century by Nate Chinen and Tony Bennett: Onstage and in the Studio by Tony Bennett with Dick Golden
Here is a first look at the March and April Travel Itinerary for the “Surmountable” book project. I leave 2 March at 2:10am and will arrive in San Francisco with the Kickstarter campaign completed. I will be blogging throughout the project, sharing interviews and observations throughout.
Brian Gruber is an author, writing coach, and marketing consultant living on the Thai island of Koh Phangan. He has spent 40 years studying, leading, and founding new media companies and projects.
