I supported Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential primary. Wearing my Jackson button around Manhattan, I was surprised at the change in the way New Yorkers perceived me. Because of my nineteen inches of fused vertebrae, I tended to walk with what was sometimes perceived as a patrician bearing; I was a healthy six feet back then and blonder, and well-spoken in a way that was actually the result of personality and a progressive Canadian elementary and high school education but sometimes came across, I think, as somehow Ivy League-adjacent, so with my “Jesse Jackson ’88” button, white people sometimes laughed and jeered at me, and Black people smiled at me and talked to me in a way that was transformative. Among many inspiring traits, Jackson was the first presidential candidate I knew of to talk about gay people in his stump speech. If I seem sometimes to make fun of or oppose young people today with their excesses of woke and cancel culture and ego-driven protest, it is only because it takes one to know one. Back then I believed, as young people in every generation tend to, indeed perhaps must, that we could change the world. Rest in peace, Jesse.