Better known as “That Woman” to the readers of CS2, Dorothy Reilly has been an indefatigable fighter for the cause of peace and a more progressive government. This is a very strong-willed, strongly opinionated individual who often clashes with others because she holds her beliefs so intensely. If you are in the fox hole and overwhelmed by the onslaught of conservatives, you want Dorothy Reilly to be there with you. She’s all about heart and she’s all about courage. Because of Dorothy’s efforts to organize marches on Washington, to stop the madness in Iraq; because of the many hours Dorothy puts into her e-mail blasts alerting and attempting to awaken Americans to the slide down the road to fascism, Dorothy is this months unsung hero. We at CS2 salute you Dorothy!

CS2: How you doing, Dorothy?

Dorothy: I’m just fine, Chuck. How you doing?

CS2: Swell. Tell me, when did you meet your husband, Terry, and was it love at first sight?

Dorothy: It was in August of 1971, and yes, it was love at first sight.

CS2: What? You mean you looked across the room, your eyes met, and that was that?

Dorothy: I had worked for The Addiction Services Agency in New York City. I was like a secretary or administrative assistant or whatever. The guy I worked with and I were sitting around not working for awhile because we were waiting for grants. He said the only way you’re going to meet somebody is if you go up to them. Somebody I knew invited me to a party at Fire Island for the weekend. They were sharing a house. So I went out and we went to this party and we were out on the deck and somehow I looked up and met the eyes of this very, very cute guy. And I heard that in my head that I should go over to him. And I did. And it was love at first sight.

CS2: The rest was history, huh?

Dorothy: Yes, and I even had to conjure up a hurricane. I said to my friend, “You’re inviting me next weekend.” And she said okay. And I found him on the beach, and we spent the whole weekend together. He said he’d call. He didn’t call and didn’t call and then he finally called toward the end of the week. He said, “I’d like to get together, but I can’t this week because I have to go to Washington.” He had been in Washington and in the Army and had been going out with somebody. He had broken up with her, but I was worried that he was going to see her, so I conjured up a hurricane so his flight couldn’t take off.

CS2: So you’re a witch on top of everything else?

Dorothy: Yes. A lot of people have told me that. Others say something that rhymes with witch.

CS2: (laughing) Very good. So this was 1971. When did you get married?

Dorothy: Ten months later.

CS2: And you went on to have some children?

Dorothy: Not for nine years. We had a very good time. We spent several summers at Fire Island, spent a summer in Europe. Taking early retirement we were even able to collect some unemployment for summers out at Fire Island. In those days employers actually gave you unemployment. In 1975 we moved down here. He was a CPA when I met him, and he decided that he didn’t want to do that because we’d never see one another. So he quit and did different things, and one of the things he did was he taught classes at H & R Block and really liked the teaching. So he started looking for teaching jobs and came to Albright College. So we’ve been here in Reading since 1975, a long, long time.

CS2: Wow! You must love it here?

Dorothy: (pause) No.

CS2: Okay, I’ll pass on that question. Okay before we get into other subjects you must as a mom have the obligatory bragging about your kids.

Dorothy: I have two incredible daughters. One is 26 and a physician’s assistant in the Rochester, NY area.

CS2: What’s her name?

Dorothy: Maggie. Emma is 22 and she’s in Providence, Rhode Island in a Ph.D. program in pathobiology at Brown University. They are the most wonderful girls that anybody could ever want.

CS2: I met one of them, and she’s very smart. Where did she get that from?

Dorothy: Not from me (laughing). Both of them are much smarter than I am. They’re both in the sciences, and I’m science disabled.

CS2: Dorothy, to our readers you’re known as “That Woman”. You’re a person who espouses very strong political views in her columns. I’m wondering when you became politicized? What caused it? Or did you always have an interest in politics as long as you can remember?

Dorothy: I grew up in not a very politically active household, but I knew about their politics. They supported Stevenson, and they were very liberal. But not terribly politically active. They really didn’t do that much. I was very, very shy when I was young. Once I started working, there were a couple of opportunities, like when I worked for The Addiction Services Agencies and they were going to move us. I got up in front of a couple of hundred people, and I spoke out. I’ve always been an idealist but also a realist. So it’s kind of a strange combination. Kind of hard on your heart. To know the way it should be but to also know the way that it is. Pretty hard!

CS2: Did you sort of ease into the level of activism that you’re at today? Or was there an event where you said, ” I’m just not going to put up with this crap any more”?

Dorothy: During Vietnam I went to a march in Washington. Also a big one in New York. But I was a little younger than most when I went to college at the age of seventeen. I really didn’t know much about it (the war). I knew it was wrong. But I wasn’t always terribly involved. I was very pro-choice. It was pretty much once I had kids that I started to get involved in local things. I got involved with the school district. They all hated me. Seriously hated me.

CS2: Then you must have been doing something right.

Dorothy: I went to school in New York City where we had thirty-five in a class. I thought thirty years later it has to be better than that. It’s not. It wasn’t better. They were very controlling and there was very little joy to be had, and so I started speaking out about that. And you had to be very quiet or very outspoken, nothing in the middle. So I was very, very outspoken. I began to speak out for all the kids, and I became educated about what I was talking about. I spoke of what I thought should be going on in school. This area is so anti-new ideas. So backward. The principal went to the parent teacher organization to tell them that they should stay away from me. I was too outspoken. So they did (laughs).

CS2: Did they ever take it out on your kids?

Dorothy: They knew I’d be in their faces so it only happened once blatantly. You have to keep your mouth shut or you have to be very outspoken. They have to know that you will give them trouble. There’s no middle ground there. I was involved in other activism. In the early 90’s we started to smell something when we would walk outside our house. I didn’t know what it was. Then we got a flyer that a group had formed, and we had a big information session. I went to that and there were about 400 people there. That’s when I got really politically active. I started making calls the next morning. I got people in Harrisburg. The snow helped. It was Western Berks Compost Facility, and they were composting sludge. They were not doing a very good job of it. Human sludge. It was right on 422. So we all got the smell. We formed Exeter Residents for Clean Air (ERCA) and met every week. That’s how I spent the next year-and-a-half until the D.E.P. had gotten them down to ten percent operating. With all our complaining, the meetings, we went to Harrisburg and all over to stop the smell. Then there was a big snow storm and it collapsed the roof. They realized we were never going away so they never rebuilt. So we were very successful. We also fought our water company because they wanted to start taking water out of the Schuylkill. We fought that, and we won that one.

CS2: Your early experiences were successful.

Dorothy: Yes. They were more local.

CS2: These local successes must have given you optimism.

Dorothy: Well, some. Not everything we were involved in went our way. We fought a landfill, but they got their permits. As far as the changes I wanted in the schools that didn’t happen. So we weren’t always successful.

CS2: Would you like to describe some of the things you’ve done the last ten years with your activism? The buses and all the other stuff you’re organizing all the time.

Dorothy: Well, I got involved out of desperation. Terry and I were just beside ourselves after they stole the 2000 elections. 9/11 sent me over the edge because I knew the minute the second plane hit that the Bush Administration was involved. That it was an inside job. It wasn’t I think so. It was I knew. There has not been one thing that has been shown to date that has dissuaded me from that view. Evey piece of evidence that exists leads to that conclusion. I was really devastated. Most people, of course, didn’t want to hear that. Finally, after a few weeks, I met someone who, when I approached them, said “of course”. That’s when I started to get more involved and read a lot. I learned how to use the computer more for research and stuff. Then came the buildup to the war. There must have been an ad in the paper that Berks Peace was having a meeting. I didn’t even know they existed. They usually had like 3 or 4 people and like 70 people showed up at this meeting. I had already been approached by someone at Albright about a march on Washington, so I had already made a few calls about the bus and someone else wanted to get a bus to Washington, and so we worked together to make it happen. We also decided to organize local rallies. We started doing those on a pretty regular basis. We got a lot of fingers in those days. Now we only get a few. We started with Berks Peace, but they didn’t want us to put things like Bush’s name on the signs at these rallies that we were doing. They said they didn’t want us to be political. We wanted it to be very political. It had to be political. So we broke off from them and a few of us started the Democracy In Action group. DIA. Somehow I started to amass an email list that has between 200 and 250 on the list. I started sending information out. That’s what I’m still doing. I’m not doing a lot of other organizing although we are planning a rally for March 19th.

CS2: Are you planning any more buses down to Washington?

Dorothy: Well, they’re not having a big march this year.

CS2: Why? Is the movement running out of steam?

Dorothy: No. My guess is what happened, and I’ve complained to them about this, the two big groups-United for Peace and Justice and A.N.S.W.E.R (Act now to stop war and end racism) can’t get along. If they can’t at least get over their egos and get it together, the rallies will wind up being separate. That’s what’s happened the last couple of years. They’ve had two different ones a couple of weeks apart. It’s ridiculous. I think what may have happened this year is money. They were having trouble getting a permit. There’s a big deal about them not being allowed to have rallies on the mall and stuff. So I think that might be what happened. They’re still having events in Washington. During the week they’re going to have civil disobedience.

CS2: Before we get into actual political issues, I’d like to spend a couple of minutes talking about the costs of activism and the benefits of activism. Let’s talk about the costs first. Do you find that when you have this intense involvement there’s a heavy toll, a psychological toll, that’s taken on you?

Dorothy: Yes.

CS2: As well as a physical one? And why do you think that is?

Dorothy: Because your heart is heavy all the time. You know too much. You know the truth.

CS2: Do you find the cost worth it?

Dorothy: There’s no option. There’s no choice. Particularly if you have children. There’s no choice. Although right now I’m really tired. Nothing seems to be working in our favor lately.

CS2: How about the positive rewards of activism?

Dorothy: The people you meet. That’s the only thing. I have said this before and I’ll say it again. There’s one thing I toast George Bush for. I really hated living here, and I’ve been here 33 years. I’ve always hated it. I had a few friends here, but I found this place to be very provincial coming from New York City. It was always backward. New ideas were never welcome. So I was not welcome. But since August of ‘02 I have made wonderful friends. They’ll be lifelong friends. With depth. Around here people think their best friends are acquaintances. Because what happens when you meet people in this movement, you start in the middle. You know, like when you meet somebody for the first time. Hi, how are you? Where are you from? But it takes a while to learn someone’s values, whether you click with those values, whether you are really going to be friends. Well, here you start out in the middle of that whole process because you know that your innate values, the things that are totally important to you, you have in common. So you already are friends. Because the most important things you have in common. It’s interesting, though, because you get to be friends very quickly. Some of them are so crazy (laughing) and some of them would say that about me probably.

CS2: Join the crowd.

Dorothy: Yeah. Let’s put it this way, I’m still shunned, but shunned less. You’ve felt that way (laughing)?

CS2: Yes, I’ve felt that way. Let me ask you to look at our politics. What is the state of our politics in this country? What are the realistic hopes of improving it and making it meaningful?

Dorothy: First of all, it’s such a disastrous situation in every respect. The Bush Administration and their friends have made a disaster of everything worldwide. I can’t imagine how many years it’s going to take to come back from this, if we ever do. Assuming there isn’t a nuclear holocaust, which is not out of the realm of possibility because these people are just fucking crazy, there’s a mountain of work to do. So why anyone would want to be president, to try and fix up this mess, is beyond me. They’ve still got a year to do more damage. They’re talking about Iran and there’s a nuclear weapon missing that nobody knows about and what they’re going to do about it. I think most people don’t realize what a dangerous situation we’re in because under the constitution they’ve gotten rid of our protections. Bush can now call martial law at his whim. He’s made 1200 plus signing statements. Most presidents sign maybe 8 signing statements. This guy has over 1200 negating every bill that’s passed. He just says “tough, that’s not what I’m going to do.” I foresee a very dangerous situation. Before the elections we are going to have a second terrorist attack carried out by the Bush Administration. Possibly, as some people have suggested, there could be an assassination, possibly a nuclear detonation. They will call martial law. They will suspend elections. People like us will be put into concentration camps, which they really do have. It wasn’t a big secret either. They gave a subsidiary of Halliburton a 385 million dollar contract to build and refurbish these camps. They say for mass influxes of immigrants. Yeah, right.

CS2: You’ve been documenting in some of your columns the march towards fascism. People who are on your mailing list are constantly getting more visual evidence that this is so. You sent out one the other day where a person in a wheel chair, I forget what illness he had, was dumped unceremoniously to the floor by a law enforcement official. Remember that one?

Dorothy: Yeah, it was a sheriff’s deputy. She had a prisoner who was a quadriplegic. The deputy said, “Stand up,” and the prisoner said,”I can’t stand up,” and she literally threw him out of the chair. From the wheelchair onto the floor. Because he can’t feel anything, he doesn’t even know what injuries he might have. It’s all on tape, and it was very violent. But that’s on top of police now using tasers on everyone, even people that aren’t doing anything. The only way they should be using an instrument of torture, and that’s what tasers are, is if they are about to experience bodily harm. A kid trying to ask Kerry questions at an event didn’t exactly warrant police officers holding him down and using a taser. There have been lots of deaths and injuries. There was a student who happened to have a Middle-Eastern name and said he didn’t have his ID with him in the library, and they tased him about 5 different times to the point where his legs lifted off the ground. The militarization of our police force is getting them ready to take over. It’s also the amount of violence that’s acceptable and that’s promulgated by the administration that’s getting us ready for the takeover.

CS2: With all the police violence and security guard violence and this epidemic of fascist behavior by people supposedly in authority, why is it that there’s not a bigger uproar from the public about it? There’s so much visual evidence out there now.

Dorothy: First of all, look at the fact that we pay attention and that we network. There are people like me, and there are blogs that are letting people know what’s going on. The media doesn’t cover anything, and if they do they put a spin on it or hide it on the obituary page way back at the bottom, or at some place on the back page where you won’t even see it. Fascism is the marriage between corporations and government. I think it’s worse than that. I think there’s a group behind the corporations. A small group that really are interested in taking over the world. I don’t understand it. It’s very hard as a normal person to understand the level of greed and desire for that kind of overwhelming power that some of these people have. I can’t fathom it, and most of us can’t fathom it. Some of the people have good reasons for not knowing what’s going on. They have kids, and they’re working full time trying to raise their kids and holding down more than one job because the economy is so bad. All they see are headlines on TV or in the paper. If the headlines don’t lead them to the truth, then they have no idea what’s going on. Quite honestly, I think a lot of them are very stupid. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to take the time to know. Rove and the Bush Administration know how to manipulate all those people. They’re like sheep. The religion aspect of it is also very scary, also one of the reasons why it’s so easy. That’s the reason for the church. To keep the people under their thumb. That is how they manipulate them. They did that wonderfully in the ‘04 election. They created this divide, and I don’t think they’ll ever be able to patch it up.

CS2: I’m watching the years roll by and this war seemingly has a life of its own beyond the ability of anyone to control or stop it. It rolls on unstoppable. Why do you think that is?

Dorothy: Because nobody holds any of them accountable for anything. If it was sex, people would be covering it and something would be done about it. Clinton was impeached. Even sex now doesn’t matter. Look at wide-stance Craig who said he would resign because they caught him. “Oh no, I changed my mind. I’m not resigning.” Nobody does anything about him. Actually every day there’s another scandal. Nobody does anything about the crimes that have been committed, and that list is so long it’s hard to even think about. We have the 935 lies that are documented, but that’s a drop in the bucket for this crew. We have impeachable offense after impeachable offense. Yet the Congress won’t take any action even though we now have a Democratic Congress. “Impeachment is off the table,” Pelosi said. She refuses to put it back on the table. People in charge of the committees are holding investigations, but they are perpetual investigations. They don’t stop and say okay, now we’re going to arrest them and do something to them. Why have they not been brought before the World Court? The Iraq War is not a war. It is an illegal attack and occupation of a sovereign nation. We were involved in killing the leaders of a sovereign government. I don’t care if we say they were dictators. It’s not our job to do that. And how on Earth, could we as a nation, be discussing whether it’s okay to torture. I always feel like I am down Alice’s hole.

CS2: You’ve had a tenuous relationship recently with the Democratic Party. You resigned your position as Committeewoman. Have the Democrats let us down?

Dorothy: Totally. At all levels. Local, state and most importantly at the federal level. They do nothing. They allow the Bush Administration, and at whatever level they allow the Republicans, to set the agenda. Even though they are the majority they still allow the Republicans to be the ones on the offensive. They’re like victims of abuse. They keep coming back for more.

CS2: Okay. Activists who are of the progressive persuasion are in a really tough position. We have an unacceptable fascist Republican Party and we have a Democratic Party that will just not be moved to stand up. Where should we be going?

Dorothy: I don’t know if it’s now too late. We need a front like they had in South Africa. The Liberation Front. Where all the small groups get together and form one massive group. You can’t get progressives/liberals to do that. They all think they know better than anybody else. They can’t get along.

CS2: That’s a fatal flaw isn’t it?

Dorothy: It is a flaw and, to tell you the truth, I have no idea what to do any more. I said it several years ago. I said that the American people will not wake up until two things happen: the middle class are standing in soup kitchen lines and having their children drafted for a never ending war. We don’t have the draft because the Bush Administration knows that’s the last frontier. People will go nuts if they do that. We are starting to have middle class people standing in soup kitchen lines, and people are starting to realize. But for some reason they continue to vote against their best interests. It’s something that I can never, ever figure out. And you really can’t get people willing to sacrifice anything, not even their time - there should be masses in the streets every day like in other countries but nothing happens here.

CS2: Thank you, Dorothy.

Dorothy: You’re welcome.

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