Tom Wakely for Congress / P.O. Box 1501, Columbus, NM 88029
Paid For By The Tom Wakely for Congress Campaign
When I was a kid, I liked to run. I ran everywhere. I just wanted to run, and when I entered 7th grade, I thought about joining the school’s track team. So, when tryouts came around in late January, I ran. The next day, after math class, my teacher, who also happened to be the school’s track coach, asked me to stay behind. He wanted to talk to me. He said he would be adding me to the team’s roster of runners, and I was ecstatic. However, my joy was short-lived. A week or so later, a winter flu virus swept through my junior high school like a freight train; hundreds of us were out sick. The school closed down. Almost everyone recovered within a few weeks and was back in class when the school reopened. But my cold lingered on and on—first pneumonia, then pleurisy. I slowly recovered, but my running days were over. I was very disappointed, for sure, and after talking to my coach, he suggested I consider staying on the team, but as a water boy. He said the job involved far more than just handing out water. I would manage equipment and towels and assist with minor injuries, like wrapping a sprained ankle. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but it kept me on the team.
Back in the gym locker room, which the track team shared with the football team, I talked with my classmates about everything under the sun. Which teachers we hated, which ones we loved, that sort of thing, and not everyone agreed on which teachers were bad and which were good. But the one thing everyone agreed on was that cafeteria food was terrible. Given that we were just a bunch of kids, everyone knew that there wasn’t really much we could do about it. However, I wasn’t so sure about that.
Now, remember this was the mid 1960’s. I was a 7th th grader whose dream of becoming an Olympic runner was cut short by a cold virus and pleurisy. I was still feeling my oats, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Not unusual for any kid on the cusp of becoming a teenager.
Every evening back home, I watched Walter Cronkite on CBS Evening News. It was early March, and when I turned on the TV to watch the evening news, I was mesmerized by what I saw. It was a brutal attack on peaceful marchers in Selma, Alabama. In the days that followed, I watched interviews with people who were in the march, who had been beaten up by the police. I watched an interview with one of the march’s leaders, John Lewis, who later became a United States Congressman from Georgia. As the days passed, I thought more and more about what I had seen and heard on TV, and it gave me an idea. In the grand scheme of things, my idea wasn’t important at all, but to this 12-year-old it, was. I would organize a boycott of the school’s cafeteria.
I discussed my idea with some of my classmates in the boys’ locker room, in study hall, and in the library. All out of earshot of the school’s teachers and staff. Everyone thought a cafeteria boycott was a good idea, especially if we could actually do something about the cafeteria food. The first thing I did was think about a date for the boycott. After I chose a date, I rode my bike to my dad’s office and asked him if I could use his new Xerox copy machine for a school assignment. He said yes, but don’t make too many copies. Yeah, I lied to him about why I needed to make some copies of a flyer I had made, because I knew he wouldn’t support, in any shape or form, what I was planning. I made about fifty copies of the flyer, took them to school the next day, started to hand them out, and asked my classmates to spread the word. We were going to have a Brown Bag Day. I can’t remember the date we boycotted the school cafeteria, but on that day, the vast majority of kids brought their lunch to school in brown paper bags their mom had packed for them.
The brown bag boycott was a roaring success if success could be determined by what happened next. A few days after Brown Bag Day, the principal called an assembly. He told us the cafeteria staff would be making changes to how lunch is prepared. I have no clue, even to this day, what they did, but after the boycott, the food tasted better than it ever had. However, the repercussions soon followed. I was called into the principal’s office, and my parents were there. I knew I was in trouble. I received a 3-day suspension for organizing the boycott, my dad whipped my butt for using his copy machine, and I wasn't allowed to watch any TV for 2 weeks. While I didn’t expect the punishment I received, I knew in my heart that organizing the brown bag boycott was the right thing to do.
The moral of this story is: when you see something that needs to be changed, do your best to change it.