The shattered universe never ceases to slash us with shards of memory, and also makes us laugh over the pieces. Daystar’s dying is a horror, and I know we’ll all think back over our lives together and not only feel the immense pain, but also — more and more — the beauty that Daystar brought into our lives. I am of course so sad that she’s flown off. Let me share some moments …..
When I was in the middle of a heart attack in January of 2001 at a statewide meeting of the NY Greens / Green Party, Day Star Chou and her sister Tanzania, drawing on their Cherokee heritage, put a small team together to physically push the blood through my body while we waited for an ambulance, and saved my life. It was quite miraculous, and yet it’s not in any of the modern medical books or protocols.
Joel Kovel told Robert Gold to call an ambulance, and Jennifer Jager and Joel hopped into it with me. We arrived at St. Luke’s hospital. In a scene right out of Hollywood Jennifer, seeing that they had me on a long intake line and refusing to treat me or even move me up in the line — during a heart attack! — decided that the only thing she could do to get them to examine me right away was to race my gurney through the emergency room shouting, “he’s dying, he’s dying!” Joel Kovel said, “Sshh, don’t say that!”. I looked up and thought “I am?” Suddenly everyone clicked into gear. I was whisked through the emergency room, and my good friends and audacious fellow Greens saved my life for a second time that day.
That scene has nothing directly to do with Day Star, but the different pieces are indelibly connected and jumbled together in my mind; what began with Day Star saving me was bookended by Jennifer saving me again.
We’d met 5 or 6 years earlier. She supported the old Green Party USA (as did the rest of the NY Greens’ assembly of locals) and the two of us co-edited the NY Greens’ newspaper, which the prior editor, Pete Dolack (then a member of the Brooklyn Greens and No Spray Coalition coordinating committee), christened as “G”. We sat through lengthy meetings of the NY State Greens coordinating committee, which met one Sunday per month, frequently in the Flushing Greens’ office, where Day Star and I alternated as secretary, Evergreen served as Treasurer, and included Robert Gold, Maria Kuriloff, Paul Gilman, Elizabeth Shanklin, Nina Scalora, Marc Jacobs and 7 or 8 others.
Day Star and Evergreen. Evergreen and Day Star. The two of them, inseparable, were raising their nephew Little Horse, and we all watched him grow up into a tall and strong man. Day Star confided her fears of allowing Little Horse, as he got older, to venture off on his own; they were especially worried of how the NYPD would respond to Little Horse, and tried to teach him to be alert and avoid unnecessary confrontation with them.
They supported freedom for Leonard Peltier and Mumia abu-Jamal, and helped steer those as policies of the NY Greens. They also opposed — unusual for Greens — the use of marijuana, although they were clear to separate that view from their denunciation of the Rockefeller Drug laws and the use of the drug war to throw Black people into jail.
Day Star pushed Evergreen to run for local office on the Green Party line, and of course we endorsed his campaign,
conducted in several languages among the large Chinese population. I tried to encourage Day Star to run as well, but she felt that Evergreen would better represent the largely Chinese-immigrant district.
Day Star was (was? is?) someone just so special, so powerful and righteous, and engaged. A Green through and through. And the photo Paul Gilman found (at the top of this remembrance) is sooooo amazing. Wow.
Missing Day Star’s presence on this planet ….