Awakenings

The phone rang early for many of us on the West Coast that morning of September 11. For Pat Driscoll, the voice on the other end of the line was his mom. She interrupted her son’s breakfast, urged him with a trembling voice to run, quick, go turn on the TV. Something terrible had happened, she said. Something unimaginable.Driscoll clicked on the news and discovered that a staggering mass murder was in progress. A wave of nausea hit as he watched the failing towers, the awful smoke, the terrified people, the ceaseless replay of the second plane crashing into the second building. Like many, Driscoll witnessed the events of 9/11 on unrehearsed TV, where broadcasters told the truths of the day in a daze of sorrow, anger, revelation and fear.

“I felt trapped watching,” said Driscoll. “I felt powerless that day, and I thought I’d never feel any other way again. I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what.”

Today he prepares, along with the rest of the nation, for the first anniversary of 9/11. A tall man and handsome with white hair, blue eyes and a good-natured grin, Driscoll, 50, is a Vietnam veteran and a computer pioneer from the early days of Silicon Valley. For a week after the terrorist attacks he was unable to work, unable to function, unable even to leave his home. “I basically became non-capable as a human being,” he said. “I just sat there and watched TV.”

Within weeks, though, something turned over in him. A process of awakening and change began in Driscoll that soon permeated every fiber of his being.

He remembers hearing President George Bush repeatedly state that the terrorists were attacking America because they envied our freedoms. “It just seemed wrong,” says Driscoll, “I couldn’t understand why anyone would attack us for a concept.” He is a literal man who had never before been involved in politics, never written a letter to the editor, never joined an activist organization, never attended a protest rally.

He became alarmed as the president and many of his fellow Americans began promoting what Driscoll thought would be an ill-advised, unilateral war in response to 9/11. “My gut knew it was wrong,” he said. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

America’s news media became famous after that day for asserting that everything had changed; for claiming that 9/11 was an awful wake-up call for U.S. citizens. But as the first anniversary approaches, the urgent pronouncement of 12 months ago—the decree that all our lives would change forever, our country was seriously broke and needed fixing—seems to have faded. Of course, there will be plenty of authentic tribute-paying this week across the country in honor of 9/11 and its victims. But unless a person lost a family member or friend in the attack, at the deepest level, for many 9/11 seems a terrible, distant memory. Americans have been inconvenienced at airports and, certainly, those who live in New York City or serve in the military have been impacted to a greater degree. Still, concerns about tanking retirement funds, crooked CEOs, child kidnappings, and West Nile mosquitoes seem to hold our attention more today than whatever it is the country was supposed to have woken up to after 9/11.

There are those who think Americans are capable of forgetting anything. Pulitzer Prize winning author Studs Terkel said that he believed the country suffers from what he called a “national Alzheimer’s disease”—somehow we have become unable to learn the lessons of history. Another writer, Thomas de Zengotita, said that Americans were able to “get over” the horrors of 9/11, simply, because a capacity to get over things was in our very nature. Our popular culture—with its soap opera politics, celebrity obsessions, reality TV shows—acts like an anesthetic, he wrote in “The Numbing of the American Mind.” Our daily experience has become so saturated with superficiality, that “reality has become indistinguishable from fabrication.” Thus unable to tell the truth from lies, we simply choose to forget.

But none of this accounts for Pat Driscoll.

Driscoll stirred out of the confused weeks after 9/11 and began a process of change. He acts differently, thinks differently, shops differently. Now he’s a dedicated activist and founder of the Sacramento chapter of Veterans for Peace.

“I knew some things were messed up before,” says Driscoll. “I was aware of some wrongs. But I never did anything about it. I was cruising along and settled into my typical American rut. … But after 9/11, people were talking about a wake-up call for America. I guess I really woke up.”

Despite a few close calls during his Navy career in the early ’70s, Driscoll said he didn’t have much to complain about compared with other Vietnam veterans. The 6’4” tall data technician stayed on board a ship and never saw actual combat. “I actually took away a lot of positive things from the military,” he said. In fact, it was the Navy that taught him to operate computers.

After an honorable discharge in 1974, he found himself back in the Bay area in a job building computer terminals in Silicon Valley at Data Measurements Corporation. There was “still no chip” says Driscoll; the industry was brand new. After a while he went to work for TymNet in Cupertino and began building early global networks. Eventually in charge of special projects for that company, Driscoll traveled the world—France, Hong Kong, Sweden—to aid clients in connecting to the network. He met his first wife Debbie, and the couple had a son and daughter who are now in college. Around 1989 British Telecom purchased TymNet, and Driscoll spent five years “high flying,” as he says, in the high-tech world setting up a deal involving TymNet and MCI. “I was moving up the ladder,” said Driscoll. “I was there, I was inside the American dream. I was getting rich and comfortable.”

In 1995, Driscoll—now divorced from his first wife—married again and moved to North Carolina with new wife, Sandy. But when an anti-cipated MCI deal fell through, Driscoll found he was out of a job. It was 1998. The couple packed up and headed back to familiar stomping grounds with a year’s salary. Driscoll used his Silicon Valley connections to set up his own computer software company, Sonic Frog Productions, which he operates to this day.

Tragically, Driscoll’s wife died suddenly in 2000. Driscoll asked not to discuss this aspect of his life in detail except to say the loss spurred him to move to a new city. He relocated to Sacramento and bought a home in Curtis Park. A widower healing from the death of his wife, Driscoll proceeded to set up his business, get connected locally as a professional musician (he’s played the keyboard in several Sacramento bands) and make friends by getting involved with the Sacramento Tall Club, a social group for men over 6’4” and women over 5’10.”

Until 9/11, he said, his focus was basically on making a life for himself, recovering from his wife’s death, “just being normal, trying to live a happy life.”

Like any righteous computer techie, Driscoll hit the Internet with a vengeance after 9/11, seeking any information he could find about terrorists, Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. He read stories from newspapers all around the world and hunted down independent sources of information relating to the 9/11 attacks. He had begun to doubt what he was seeing on TV. He hadn’t cared about the veracity of network newscasts before. Now he did.

Driscoll went to a Yahoo site where people from Saudi Arabia were conversing. Arabic lettering scrolled by on his screen. When an instant messenger popped up asking him what he wanted, he typed in English, simply, “I just want to talk to somebody.” Soon he was conversing with a Saudi Arabian man, a devout Muslim, who seemed like an “average guy, ordinary person.” The 25-year-old drove a Toyota, owned a condo and was looking to get married, said Driscoll. “Then I asked him what I’d really come to ask … ‘What do you think of Osama bin Laden?’”

The man stunned Driscoll by reporting that he and his countrymen had deep respect for bin Laden. The man typed out that he didn’t agree with what happened on September 11, but that it hadn’t changed his overall opinion of bin Laden and his goals.

“At that point I knew [our country] was in big trouble,” said Driscoll. He was learning that his perception of America’s place in the world was vastly different from the one held by huge numbers of people who didn’t live in this country.

So he decided to dig even deeper. He began consuming a media diet that came, over time, to include: the Guardian, the BBC News, ZNET and Al Jazeera (Arabic translated into English). He started listening to a leftwing radio station, KPFA 94.1, based in Berkeley. Simply put, he came to believe that the terrorists had popular support in the Arab nations and the Middle East. “I didn’t understand at the time, but now have figured out, that a population can support terrorism when they themselves are victims of terror and witness violence all the time in the form of economic injustice and poverty.” He even read Osama bin Laden’s terrorists’ manual and discovered, among other things, that bin Laden taught his followers that in America you can rely on people being isolated from each other. “It’s easy to hide in America,” reads the document.

It was late October when Driscoll took a step out of his own isolation.

He drove from Sacramento to his hometown of San Francisco to attend a “teach-in” in Dolores Park. He wound up at Veterans for Peace (VFP) table talking to fellow veterans about some of their projects. “Before that time I never thought of myself as a veteran,” said Driscoll. “That day in the park, I thought ‘Here is something that I am.’ And people respect that. I served my country and I have something to say about all this.”

Driscoll, who had been feeling powerless to do anything about the injustices in the world, now recognized a community of people he could come together with to take positive action. “I’d heard a lot of talk. By then, I was getting tired of talking. I wanted to do something.” Basically, he had come to believe that retaliating against terrorism with violence was actually the worst thing America could do and would likely provoke even more terrorism.

Since there was none, Driscoll set to work collecting names of local veterans to help start a VFP chapter in Sacramento. During the bombing of Afghanistan, he joined a peace vigil held every Tuesday for two months on the corner of 16th and J streets. He built a Web site (www.sacramentovfp.org) with information, action alerts, photos and videos, “talking points” about peace and justice for local veterans and others. The only political action Driscoll had taken before this was voting—usually for middle-of-the-road Democrats.

Soon, he had signed up enough veterans to apply for formal recognition as a VFP chapter. The group has since put on fund-raisers and participated in local peace events. Just recently, Driscoll attended a national VFP convention in Duluth, Mich., where the national group officially sanctioned the Sacramento chapter. In fact, the trip inspired him to run for a spot on the national board.

Lorraine Krofchock, spokesperson for Grandmothers for Peace in Sacramento, recalled the first time she saw the lanky Driscoll at a local event. “There he was at a protest rally, this very tall man, wearing a suit and holding a clipboard! I thought … ‘Hmmm, I wonder what he’s doing?’ But then I learned he was gathering names of veterans.”

Driscoll laughed when he heard that several others wondered about him and “the suit” he wore at protest rallies. But it represented a part of his life, he said. The business side says as much about him as his veteran status does. “Plus it helps me reach out to Republicans,” he laughed.

Dr. Bill Durston, an emergency room physician at Kaiser Hospital and member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said he was recruited by Driscoll at one of the vigils and decided to sign up as a Veteran for Peace. Durston, who served on the ground as a Marine in Vietnam, found himself in agreement with the man over many issues, including the current-debate over whether the U.S. should try to topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq. They both believe such an action would be ill-advised. “As a veteran, I would hope the country had learned its lesson. All of history shows that you can’t stop terrorism with large military campaigns,” Durston said.

The normally sedate city of Stockton was jumping with cops—on horseback, in helicopters, astride motorcycles, in squad cars, on foot and blocking freeway on-ramps. Probably the last place on earth you’d pick for a presidential pit stop in late August, Stockton—with its rebuilt downtown and “we try harder” sensibility—was nonetheless hosting President George W. Bush at the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium as part of a whistle-stop, fund-raising tour of California.

No surprise, then, to find Driscoll among the 300 or so protesters who gathered behind a designated barricade to greet the president. “Drop Bush, Not Bombs” seemed the favorite placard at the demonstration. An activist with a megaphone got a rise from the crowd with a rousing chant: “Bush didn’t win! Bush didn’t win!” Another megaphone cry went: “No war, daddy’s boy. It’s our world, not your toy!” When asked about why he’d chosen a particular costume for the demonstration, one Sacramento activist in a Dick Cheney mask told a reporter, “I couldn’t find a George Bush!”

Driscoll, wearing a new Veterans for Peace T-shirt and a baseball cap (not the suit today), stood near the VFP banner, with its dove on a helmet logo, and joined the crowd in attempting to communicate to the president and his entourage that many Americans opposed his military build-up and talk of war in Iraq. Driscoll had been stopped by police from waving the American flag from a pole, so he simply held the red, white and blue above his head throughout the protest or draped it over his shoulders.

Veterans like Driscoll are often bellowed at from bystanders who say they shouldn’t be waving the flag at a peace rally. A man shouted at him at a Sacramento July 4th vigil, crying out that he didn’t deserve the freedoms he had as an American. “Can you imagine that?” laughed Driscoll, whose father is also a veteran and lost his leg below the knee in WWII. “The flag is mine. When I stand up with the flag at our vigils, I am being patriotic. Period.”

Dr. Durston had a similar reaction. “I served on the ground in Vietnam, and Bush evaded service. Now to hear people call veterans like me unpatriotic for questioning the military buildup … it’s pathetic. It’s jingoism. And jingoism is very different than patriotism.”

Unlike some peace activists, Driscoll said he believes the country has a duty to defend itself. Though he would prefer the non-violent approach, he thinks America needs a military. But it should not be used in a way that harms civilian populations, such as was done in Afghanistan, especially without appreciating the long-term consequences, he said. Also, the military should be run not by ideologues but by “people who are cautious” and conscientious. “A lot of peace activists have a problem with my attitude,” said Driscoll. “But when push comes to shove, you defend yourself, you defend your country.”

The Stockton demonstration finished off with Driscoll and the protesters re-grouping at the city’s airport within eyesight of Air Force One, flying banners, waving flags, pulling out the stops, once again, to get their message across.

Somewhere between 9/11 and that recent day in Stockton, Driscoll figured out that to change the world, he’d have to change himself too. So besides his Veterans for Peace activism, he’s set himself a goal to “consume less stuff, consume less energy, produce less waste.”

“I started to realize that everyday I vote with my money,” he said. “When I buy things, that’s a concrete vote. Every dollar.” For example, he now shops at the co-op, though he’d never done that before, because he believes it assures that he’s buying items that are “produced in a fair and just fashion.” Also, Driscoll says, to save energy, he’s “almost” retired his small, gray ’95 Ford truck. He lives close to downtown so he can use public transit or ride a bike on most occasions. People are always wondering about what they can do to change the world, he said. “Instead they should think about what they can not do.” Speaking of this, Driscoll said he no longer watches TV either. “I can’t watch it now. Not at all.”

Ultimately, he feels the changes he’s made since 9/11 served to transform him into a better citizen, a better man.

When asked why she thinks Driscoll was so affected by 9/11, Krofchock responds, “I guess Pat was just ready to have his consciousness raised.”

One of Driscoll’s five siblings, brother John from San Francisco, another worker in the computer trade, says he too has witnessed a change in his brother this past year. “Pat seems like he got more aware all of a sudden. … He used to be pretty conservative, but after 9/11 he took a very tough position on what the government was doing.”

A psychologist might add that Driscoll’s personal loss, with the death of his wife not too long past, might have put him in a state where a transformation was more likely. “I’ve experienced personal tragedy,” agrees Driscoll, acknowledging that this might be part of why he was ready to make sweeping changes in his life. “People who have had those kind of losses can tend to make the connections.”

This week, America seems primed to meet the anniversary of September 11 with mixed feelings of terrible sadness, re-kindled anger, patriotism and some uncertainty about the future. On the day itself, memorials will be held, moments of silence will be observed, flags will be flown at half-mast and “America the Beautiful” will be sung many, many times.

But most people across the country will likely stay at home that day glued to the television, trying hard to remember what it felt like to actually experience the horror of 9/11, one year ago to date, for the very first time.

But not Driscoll.

The newly born activist plans to spend the day at a vigil on the north steps of the State Capitol. He’ll be out there with others in the local peace community waving the flag, holding the Veterans for Peace banner, talking to anybody who will listen about the tragedy, the terrorists, the war, the president, the flag, the freedoms and, ultimately, the concept—that Americans need to start seeing themselves as inhabitants of a planet, not just a country.

They say those who forget are destined to remember. But Driscoll says he’ll never forget. “My world changed on that day,” he says. “I woke up. I’ll never go back.”