The first day I volunteered at the Co-op was the day we laid the linoleum at the downtown store. There were several people there, and it was hard to know where expertise was coming from, if there was any. I did my part, carefully placing tiles where the glue had been spread.
There was a new rule at the co-op. It was a warm summer, and men were regularly coming into the store without shirts on. Now this was troublesome for some of the women who saw inequality and male privilege in this display.
At home that night, the war was present in my mind and my dreams, the images and stories haunting me. I wasn’t the only one. We were soon meeting and talking about how to organize in support of the poor of El Salvador and confront the policies of our own government that perpetuated rampant abuses. No one envisioned an antiwar movement like we had with the Vietnamese War. This was a tiny country and U.S. involvement was hidden and more subtle than boots on the ground, though there were boots on the ground in some cases.