23 years ago, the world changed. My world changed.
I was away starting my second year at university, but grew up in New York and just two weeks prior was at an internship close enough to the World Trade Center that I ate lunch in the plaza at its base some days. My father still worked in the neighborhood. My uncle, a police officer, was in the towers helping people evacuate that morning--though I didn't know that on Sept 11th. They were both okay, though I didn't know that on Sept 11th either. The phones networks were all down for hours after the attacks. They were overloaded and crashed, though I didn't know that reason at the time either.
The only thing I did know that day, for the first time in my young life, was that there was something terribly wrong with the world.
I woke up a typical, oblivious 19 year old and when I did go to sleep--the next day--I was a changed person. I was an activist.
The first steps were identifying the problem--the concentration of power with too few, leaving too many to feel disenfranchised and disempowered, which is a recipe for a dark future.
Within days of the attack I had, along with friends, formed an activist organization. We started to organize teach-ins and protests. I was drawn to movements that didn't ask permission, and thus started a multi-year journey of arrests and state intimidation.
You're not really free, that's an illusion. You're free so long as you don't challenge the status quo--and asking for permission to protest does NOT challenge the status quo.
The first arrest--of 14--was at an IMF protest a few months later.
Some things have changed a lot in the 23 years since, but that same core problem still exists, nay has gotten worse: we do not control our own future. The one thing that has changed for me is I'm no longer trying to slow the bad, but rather am now trying to speed the good.
Three years ago I founded @MyfirstBitcoin_ and moved to El Salvador. One year ago my first son was born. Today, I'm as confident as ever that we can create something better.
