October 25, 2007 9:57 AM

Stand Up. Keep on Fighting.

When Senator Wellstone's small plane crashed, killing him, his wife, daughter and five others, I was a new mother. Now, my daughter is in Kindergarten and full of questions. Lately, she's been asking me a lot about the war. "Where is the war?" "Will it come here?" "What do soldiers do?" We don't have any close family or friends deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, so for her, the war is safely removed from her everyday life. I can't imagine the difficultly faced by children who've lost a parent in Iraq.

Anyway -- here's what I was feeling five years ago. It's funny how things stay the same while everything changes.

It’s five AM and I can’t sleep. The hungry cries of my baby jolted me awake. And now that she is full, and drifting into dreamland, my mind races with questions – hungry for answers.

How can it be true that Senator Wellstone is gone – killed in a plane crash? I can’t stop thinking about him. I’ve long admired the former political science professor from Minnesota. When people would tell me that only rich people and lawyers can serve in the Senate, I’d point to him. He was one of us, a community organizer who crisscrossed his state in an old green school bus campaigning for his first election; winning by the slimmest of margins. And he remained one of us. Deeply principled, he always voted his conscious – even when it wasn’t politically popular. He fought for the rights of working people and the poor. He advocated the protection of the environment and the preservation of wild places. Most recently he opposed the rush to war with Iraq.

How could he be gone – just days before the election?

I met the Senator once. I had an internship with an environmental group working to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We were at a conference of canvassers to present a slide show. Senator Wellstone, once a canvasser himself, was the keynote speaker. He was so full of fire and energy that we wondered if he was testing the waters for a presidential run. But that was just how he always was – passionate, convinced of his mission. After his speech I went up to thank him for cosponsoring the Arctic Wilderness Bill, and my coworker snapped a picture. I look at it and wonder.

Why are there so few that serve so honestly?

As I told this story over diner the night of the crash, I remembered that the conference was held on a college campus in Ohio. Kent State. I’d always thought that my closest connection with Wellstone was wilderness, but now the where of that chance meeting seems most significant.

After the shootings at Kent State, my parents attended a rally. I wasn’t born yet, but they took my sister in her baby buggy. My father recalled a Studebaker circling around and around the public square, the driver blaring its horn to drown out their peaceful chants.

On Saturday thousands of everyday people attended rallies around the world to protest the war that Wellstone courageously voted against. I took my daughter to the one here in San Francisco, and thought about the Senator. I thought about my parents, and how they tried – in their way – to prevent our world from becoming too confusing and chaotic for the baby that stirs in the next room. And I thought about what kind of world she will have to face.

I hope that her cries are not drowned out by the drumbeat of war.