When Radicals Reform

Something happens to radicals in this country as they age out of their wild youths, and some of us, like me, seem to get more radicalized as we get older. I've been thinking about this topic for quite a few years, and have written quite a bit about some of the transformations that have taken place among some of the (more or less) political and social radicals who have been important at various times in my life.

Names pop into mind:

• Mario Savio -- who is in a class by himself

• Jerry Rubin
• Abbie Hoffman
• Angela Davis
• Bobby Seale and Huey Newton
• Mark Rudd
• A number of members of the Royal Chicano Airforce

And others will pop into mind as I wander around the topic for a while.
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Mario Savio on the Sproul Hall steps (now named for him) December 2, 1964

Mario Savio, I think I've made clear, was a huge influence on my youthful perception of what worthwhile rebellion was all about. He stood on principle, head and shoulders above nearly everyone shouting and carrying on in those days, the early '60s, just before the '60s became the '60s of lore and legend. I've been reading about him in Seth Rosenfeld's "Subversives," and while I knew some of his backstory and what became of him after the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley --  in sketchy outline -- the details are somewhat surprising.

He was such an influence on me -- though I was in high school 80 miles away from the Berkeley campus -- because I felt such a strong kinship with him, wanted to say what he was saying, wanted the freedom he was advocating, wanted the human dignity that he said over and over was the due of the students at Berkeley and by extension, was due everyone, not because they earned it or fought for it but because they are. Mario's iconic speech on the steps of Sproul Hall (the University's administration building) has echoed down the years, and it resonates as strongly now as ever if not more so.

 There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

There was a good deal more to the speech than the penultimate paragraph, but that's what has lived on and has inspired generations of righteous rebels around the world. There is a time... Yes, there is.

Even then, I was aware that he was coming from a moral, much more than a political, grounding, but I wasn't aware of his Catholic faith, nor was I conscious of his Freedom Summer efforts that year (1964) and how that experience had shaped his sense of injustice -- and what to do about it. I just knew that he was standing up for human rights and human dignity, standing in the schoolhouse door, and it was a fierce counterpoint to the efforts of so many authorities, in and out of the South, to limit and curtail rights and access to education, freedom, and justice.

What Mario did was deeply radical at the time, something that may be overlooked now because we're so used to similar types of efforts on behalf of dignity, freedom, and justice. But at the time, these things were very rare, and rarely did they succeed. Submission to authority and social conformity were the cultural norms, and woe betide you if you rebelled or deviated from the norm. Mario was arrested and otherwise subjected to "university discipline." But he never seemed to lose his sense of mission and purpose.

I didn't know until many years later how difficult this whole thing had been for him, and how in its aftermath, he faced a long period of doubt and sometimes despair, how he struggled with mental illness, and how eventually he became a professor at California State University, Sonoma, where he was teaching philosophy, mathematics and logic when he died of heart failure in 1996.

He gave voice to a generation of rebels, and yet later in his life, he conformed to an academic discipline and was rarely heard from on the topics that had been so important to him during the Free Speech Movement. Which is not to say they didn't remain important to him and to many others. It means only that his voice was muted as he grew older, and his life became more, not less, conformist in the academy.

I'm still learning about his later life, and I may come to another conclusion about him. For now, however, I'll posit that when radicals are subsumed in the academic environment, they become defenders of what they once rebelled against. Mario is a type model of what happens.

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Jerry Rubin, at the HUAC hearings, San Francisco, 1967

Jerry Rubin was a huge influence on me a little later on -- largely because he was so spectacularly theatrical in his rebellion. I didn't realize until much later how old he was compared to me and compared to "my generation." He was born in 1938, ten years before I was, and yet at the time he was raising hell, I thought of him as barely older than me at all.

I had one encounter with him during a campus ruckus at which I was more a spectator than a participant, and I was surprised at how physically small he was and how remarkably modest, considerate and thoughtful he seemed to be in person compared to his often over the top and out of control media presence.

"Flamboyant," "flashy" were terms used to describe his antics, but they were usually wonderful antics, garnering  enormous amounts of attention -- as well as frequent ridicule. He didn't seem to mind, and he didn't seem to care.

Rubin is often credited with the catch phrase "Don't trust anyone over 30," although he was himself over 30 for much of his rebel career. The phrase, however, was not original with Jerry. Rather, it came from the Free Speech Movement, particularly from Jack Weinberg, whose arrest on Sproul Plaza lit the match for the Movement. (Weinberg is an interesting case in his own right, and I may get back to him anon.)

Jerry's theatrics were essentially a form of marketing, and later in his life, after his rebel period, and after he went through a series of changes, including marriage, he became a securities broker, and eventually he became a multi-level marketing executive, and they used to say  he was "selling Amway" -- but it wasn't Amway. He was declared "the first Yuppie." Mark Ames, now of Pando, took him (and by extension, all hippies and Yippies and Yuppies) to the woodshed in a swell article at the eXileD online from 2011. How embarrassing it all was for Ames to look back on.

The embarrassment factor would actually be something that entered into the reforms many radicals experienced as they aged out of their wild(ish) youths.

Jerry went on trial for his part in the Yippie actions at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, and throughout the trial he made a spectacle of himself and a mockery of the court, which in its majesty under the redoubtable Judge Julius Hoffman, mocked itself as often as Jerry's tantrums and costume changes did. From that moment, I think, few Americans would be able to see the vaunted justice system the same way again, and many would see it for what it is: a two tiered system of injustice.

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Abbie Hoffman will be forever linked with Jerry Rubin, of course, and their fates, superficially might seem similar. Both died too young, Jerry by accident (or rather misadventure) and Abbie (supposedly) by suicide, though why he might have chosen that path is still a mystery and some observers suspect he was "suicided" -- perhaps one of the early examples of the treatment. I don't claim to know. But this is what I wrote about him on the 109th anniversary of my father's birth:

And the star of the show was Abbie Hoffman. There was no doubt that it was a show and he was an absolute star. Simply amazing.

And my doG he and those with him got a lot done. To say that protest and resistance and monkeywrenching, and yes, clowning when the situation calls for it, is "ineffective" -- after what Hoffman and others were able to do -- is so full of shit and ignorance the mind boggles with the breathtaking arrogance of it.

Hoffman was a character, no doubt about that, and he relished the spotlight. He was a liberationist, not a communitarian, and yet every cause he supported and everything he did seemed geared to "be of service" to far more than himself and his image and reputation.

Somehow too many Americans have lost that spirit, or maybe never knew it.

He was an organizer with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; he was a committed anti-war activist; one of his stunts was organizing the "Levitation of the Pentagon;" he always encouraged others to get involved and he was very successful in motivating otherwise passive or apathetic individuals to get off their butts; he went to the New York Stock Exchange and threw fists full of dollars down on the trading floor making some of the traders scramble to get the money.

Of course his arrest and trial in Chicago for his participation in the Democratic Convention protests in 1968 is the stuff of legend, and while his trial with that of the other "Chicago 7" was going on, his antics in court were magnificent, appropriate for the political trial context, and utterly contemptuous. Where are those today who will so creatively and gleefully expose the corruption of justice that passes for our court system today?

 His books -- like Steal this Book and Letters from the Underground -- are still inspirational.

He went underground when he was set up by police as a big cocaine dealer and ultimately skipped bail. But while underground, he remained active as an organizer and writer. When he eventually surrendered to authorities, he was given a light sentence and was released after four months, something that is almost impossible to conceive of given draconian sentencing these days.

Abbie Hoffman was one of those involved with the revelations about the CIA's illegal involvement in the "Contra" war against the Sandanistas in Nicaragua when, at trial after his arrest (along with many others) for protesting the CIA's recruitment at the University of Massachusetts, Daniel Ellsberg, Ramsey Clark, and Edgar Chamorro, among others testified to decades of illegal and violent activities by the CIA.

Hoffman is alleged to have committed suicide by ingesting over 150 Phenobarbital tablets on April 12, 1989, but many of those who knew him don't believe it was suicide. Instead, they suspect he was "suicided," though just how is a mystery. The "why" is obvious. He remained a very effective organizer of trouble and afflictions for the powerful and comfortable to his dying day, and if there was anyone in America at that time who "needed suiciding" by the Powers That Be more than Abbie, let's hear who.

Jerry stopped being a radical in the political sense and became the First Yuppie instead. He was hit by a car while crossing Wilshire Blvd, and even though some people think it was a "hit," the signs point to no. No, he'd reformed, and he'd become very successful financially. That's what always counts in America. The money.

Abbie did not reform, not really. He remained true to himself and to the principles of resistance he'd been espousing most of his life. He continued to fight the good fight on behalf of others. Abbie was a couple of years older than Jerry, and he was far more grounded in social and political movements than Jerry was. He knew whereof he struggled. Jerry, for all his dynamism and charisma, always seemed somewhat lost or flailing.

Because he didn't reform, I think it more likely than not that he was "suicided" for his continued outspokenness and disobedience, though there is no way to prove it. But too often, this is what happens to radicals who don't reform and conform and quiet down.

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Angela Davis Wanted Poster, 1970

Angela Davis, to my eye, learned that lesson well. She, of course, is still considered the (Honorable) Uber Rebel Radical Black Lady, but oh my has she changed. Since retiring from the University of California at Santa Cruz where she was the director of the University's Feminist Studies program. She has since been writing books, collecting awards and honors, and giving what amount to motivational speeches for audiences all over the world, doing numerous TeeVee appearances to discuss her issues (principally prison abolition and women's rights) and otherwise bulwark-ing the left flank of "legitimate dissent" in this country. Well, what a substantive career choice.

Far be it for me to impugn it. I don't. In fact, when we were considering the curious case of Angela Davis around the kitchen table at Casa Ché one day, the point was made that if this is what she wanted to do, why did she have to put the rest of us through what she did back in the day? Yes, indeed. Why?

If this is what she really wanted to do and wanted to become, what was all the hoo-hah about? But the more I thought about it, the more I was sure that she wouldn't be where she is, saying what she's saying, and as honored as she has become if she hadn't done what she did back in the day. It was among the only ways for an outspoken, charismatic, rebel black woman to get a leg up at the time.

You had to do something to knock the Establishment upside the head, or you wouldn't be noticed at all.

You had to. There was no other way. And Miss Angela always, always had a flare for the dramatic.

I thought she was great when she was firebranding all over creation, calling out the "justice" system and the prison complexes it was feeding with political prisoners and innocents. At the time, of course, the prison system was barely a blip on the screen compared to what it is now, but she knew, she knew full well what it was becoming, and she knew and said how the monster soon to arise was being fed and nurtured.

She's always been an academic, something that has typically been left out of her authorized hagiography. Her rise to prominence came when in 1969 she was targeted by the Reagan administration in California for removal from the faculty of the UCLA because she was a damn-dirty-Commie. This action led to a huge brou-ha-ha (one of many over Communist infiltration of the Academy) which resulted in endless gallons of ink spilled and endless TeeVee debate on behalf of the "sides." Ultimately, she was dismissed by the University regents and reinstated by court order, and then fired again for "inflammatory language." She did, after all, relish calling the police "pigs." Given her druthers, I don't doubt she still would.

Some things don't change.

Due to her involvement in the Marin County Courthouse Shootout in 1970 (she bought the guns used by Jonathan Jackson in his take over and hostage taking that led to the shoot out in which a judge and Jackson and two others were killed) she became a fugitive, only the third woman to wind up on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. She was apprehended in New York and sent for trial in California, where, fascinatingly, she quickly became an idol and icon as the symbol of America's growing population of political prisoners. She declared her innocence.  She was supported by hundreds of grass roots activists and -- interestingly -- by some of California's wealthy. Ultimately she was acquitted by an all white jury and promptly became a legend, renowned around the world.

She's channeled but never stopped her activism. While she takes strong stands on issues that are important to her, she has not been involved in anything that could be considered "radical" or "revolutionary" since her trial and acquittal. Some might think she "learned her lesson." She's had a number of academic posts since her acquittal, and has she has rather cheerfully used her positions to further her activism and campaigns.

But she never really challenges Power in any way that Power must pay attention and respond. Instead, she challenges her audiences to think about what is going on in more critical ways. That's a fine position for her to take, but so far, it hasn't led to change.
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Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, armed and dangerous, back in the day.

Bobby Seale and Huey Newton were the co-founders of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA, back in 1966. They took their inspiration from Malcolm X who had been gunned down in New York (they say by rivals) just a year before the BPP arose in California.

For whatever reason, I wasn't much aware of Malcolm X prior to his death, but boy was I aware of Bobby and Huey. You couldn't help being aware of them, especially not as close as I was to Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area. They and the Black Panthers scared the bejesus out of white folks in California and eventually around the country.

I thought it was terrific.

Eventually, Huey would become a fugitive after admitting to his involvement in killing of a Georgia police officer and would live in exile in Cuba for a number of years before he would be gunned down in Oakland, allegedly by a rival in 1989.

Bobby, on the other hand, is still active and an Honored Movement Elder and Bar-b-cue Chef.

While the antics of Jerry Rubin gained so much attention at the Chicago 8 (or 10 or 7)  trial, Bobby Seale was the one who was chained, shackled and gagged in the courtroom for disrespecting His Honor Julius Hoffman and he was the one who would be sentenced to four years in prison for "contempt of court."  The charges against him for "riot" (or whatever it was) were not successfully tried as the judge declared a mistrial.

Upon his release, Seale seemed to be a changed man. Reformed, you might say. He went back to Oakland, reformed the Panthers, ran for office, took up writing, remained -- and remains -- an activist and speaker, but he's not at all threatening to the PTB in his activism.  That's what becoming a reformed radical means, after all.

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Mark Rudd in custody, Chicago 1969

Mark Rudd wasn't just a radical, he was a full on revolutionary -- at least if his legend is true. I've always wondered, and when I had the chance at an (Un)Occupy Albuquerque event, I didn't ask him about it. He's written a book, so I ought to look it up. I guess.

As a leader of the uprising and occupation of Columbia University in 1968, as head of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and as a noted fugitive domestic terrorist with the Weathermen that became the Weather Underground, Rudd blazed a remarkable path in the heady rebellious '60s. There was hardly anyone as notorious for a while.

Yet even then and still today there were and are suspicions that he was an FBI informant and/or provocateur. He denies it, of course, but I'd say the question is an open one, in part because of his behavior once he was released from prison (he served a few months).

I certainly was aware of him and I followed his career during the various transformations he underwent.  The foments, the bombings, the uprisings, the occupations, the confrontations, the underground. And then... he disappeared.

Had he been secretly executed? Who knew? I didn't. I got on with my life as most of us did, and then... in 1977, he surrendered. In New York. Where he'd been living and working, openly, though under an assumed name, a few blocks from Columbia University for... years. Gobsmacking. Whuttehfug?

He surrendered, he was charged with a number of misdemeanors, he was convicted of some, but most of the charges that were lodged against him over the years that he was a fugitive-in-plain-sight had to be dropped because of the abuses of the COINTELPRO program which meant conviction was essentially impossible.

Rudd served a brief term in jail, and when he was released, he was reformed. He dedicated his life to absolute nonviolence and social justice. He married, had a family, took up teaching at an Albuquerque community college, and like everyone else, got on with his life as if... what happened never happened.

It was the most amazing thing.

When I encountered him at an (Un)Occupy Albuquerque event, he was so adamant about nonviolence, he was very nearly ridiculous. To his mind, anything that could conceivably be interpreted as discomforting to anyone else was -- by definition -- "violent." Absurd. But it was his argument -- an argument  I suspected he was making for effect rather than because he sincerely believed it.

And there is still the question: how was he able to hide in plain sight for so long? Why did he change so completely after his surrender? Was he an FBI informant? Was he a provocateur? He denies it, but ... I don't know. I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

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Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't say anything about the Royal Chicano Air Force, the art-wing of the United Farm Workers in California. There is no movement without art, just as a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having (h/t Emma Goldman).

The Royal Chicano Air Force was an art collective based in Sacramento that was instrumental in reinforcing and amplifying the message of the United Farm Workers under Cesar Chavez far beyond the confines of the oppressed and exploited workers themselves. That wasn't their sole activity but it was an important part of what the RCAF did and was about.

Compared to Cesar, the RCAF was radical. They were artists. What do you expect?

I knew and worked with some of them over the years. Jose Montoya, Armando Cid, Juan Carrillo, Juanishi Orosco, Joe Serna, Gina Montoya, and so many more. We would sometimes discuss... Que pasó...

It's important to ask what happened because over their long years of their activism and arts, the changes they wrought and went through were significant. 

Jose was a co-founder of the group, born in New Mexico, in 1932, so he was almost an abuelo when the RCAF (originally known as the Rebel Chicano Art Front) got under way in 1969. He was muy suave, muy chido. There was no one else like him and everyone in the group looked up to him. He had... presencia.

Perhaps because he was somewhat older, he could guide the group toward the kinds of arts and actions that would most enhance and encourage Chicano life during a time of intense turmoil in California's Central Valley -- where farmworkers, campesinos, were marching and singing and praying every day, and farm owners and their goons were beating, shooting at and sometimes shooting down their own field hands who dared to ask for something more, something better than a short-handled hoe and a rude cabin to sleep in before the next day's hard labor.

The RCAF was rude, rebellious, deeply committed to bettering the lives of the campesinos, and they were often hilariously funny and creative in their rebellion and commitment. California has never been the same since, and for that, we can all be grateful.

Their art works are all over the state, though much of it is concentrated in Sacramento, for many members received commissions from the California Arts Council and the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. They ran a bookstore and art gallery (La Raza bookstore and Galeria Posada) that provided a central exhibit space for their works and literary works by Chicano and Native American writers.

Many were closely associated with California State University, Sacramento ("Sac State") where they were either on the faculty or were students. Some stayed in the academy while others branched out to politics and the public arts field. Perhaps the most prominent of the politicians that arose from the RCAF was Joe Serna who served as Mayor of Sacramento from 1992 until his death in 1999. Prior to serving as Mayor, he had been on the Sacramento City Council for 11 years and had taught Government at Sac State.

Armando, Juanishi, and Juan Carrillo all became public arts advocates through their appointments to the California Arts Council and the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission.

The more prominent they became, of course, the less radical they needed to be. They never lost interest in the conditions faced by farmworkers -- after all, many had either been farmworkers themselves, or they were the children of farmworkers. But as they were better accepted into the official world, they were less active in support of farmworkers.

They were aware, too, that they had gained immense privilege compared to the lot so many farmworkers and their descendants. I think Joe Serna was most conscious of his own privilege compared to that of his parents, for example. As time went by, the lot of California's farmworkers seemed to backslide, and when I asked Juanishi and Armando how they felt about that, given their own high status, the answer intrigued me.

To paraphrase: "We laid the groundwork. Now they have to fight their own battles. We'll help any way we can, but we can't fight their battles for them."

There's a superficial truth and there's a deeper truth in that statement. The superficial truth is that these former radicals had reformed, and because they had, they now had privilege -- which they were very aware of -- and status to protect. They were making a good living, and they were never going back to the fields out of necessity, but only to show their support for those still working out in the midday sun.

Conditions for farmworkers and their opportunities beyond the fields had improved greatly since they had been fomenters of rebel arts back in the day, and then those conditions started deteriorating and opportunities seemed to become less and less. But those, they said, were problems for the current generation to struggle against.

It was almost -- not quite -- as if they believed that if the current generation didn't fight for better conditions in the fields and more opportunities beyond them, then they deserved their fate.

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This is what happens when radicals reform.

As I've said, I've felt like I became more radical, not less, as I got older, but it's just the opposite in most of the cases offered here. When a certain level of acceptance and privilege is obtained, the radicalism of youth is left behind, as the necessity for protecting status and privilege so hard won comes to the fore. When I think about it, most of my life has been about rejecting status and privilege rather than seeking them out or trying to protect them. I couldn't reform because I wasn't radical enough to begin with.

The few mentioned here who didn't reform too often wound up... dead.

It's tough to be a radical in America at any time, and perhaps it's tougher now than ever before as so much "radicalism" has been almost seamlessly incorporated into the mainstream.

Most of those I've mentioned here were or are well aware of their own status and privilege, make no mistake. Most never gave up the causes for which they had for which they had fought. They changed their methods, however, from pushing or pulling from outside the standard political and cultural framework to working within it. Often that meant they couldn't be as effective, but the trade off was that they were respected.

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NOTE: This post is undergoing considerable revision. As it does, I'll add some stuff that may not seem to fit but which is informing some of the revisions under way:



Because of where I  was, there wasn't a lot of Indian radicalism/activism when I was a youth, but what there was was spectacular, such as AIM's occupation of Alcatraz.

The video above features Russell Means' grandson, Nataani. Up to now, I haven't dealt much with the Indian side of activism and radicalism in posts like this one, but as I work on revising this one, the "reform" of some Indian activists will be included among the reformed ones...

Propaganda and Scaremongering In the 1950's

Propaganda and scaremongering. This is the sort of thing that school kids were exposed to regularly during the 1950's and into the first half of the 1960's.

I remember seeing the following movie while assembled with the rest of my elementary school in the cafetorium. I must have been in the second or third grade. It scared me... and it made me laugh because houses in Southern California didn't have basements in which to take shelter when the bomb warnings came...



I remember seeing the one below, too, whether in school or in a theater, I can't be sure now, but the vision of the destructive power of the Bomb -- even when we were being told we could survive it, ha ha -- was a constant back-of-the-brain nightmare, and for many of us, it was a literal nightmare.



This is a photo (from the Goggle) of my elementary school cafetorium taken recently.

It hasn't changed a bit since I was a student there 100 years ago (well, from 1954 to 1959), except it was painted Institutional Green in my day. Notice something? That high bank of windows? Well, there's another bank of high windows on the opposite side of the building. Of course there were dark green canvas curtains to pull over the windows to darken the room when we were shown propaganda and survival movies and film strips, but none of us thought they would do much to keep the flying glass from cutting us to ribbons when the Bombs fell. We did believe the sturdy concrete walls would survive a blast, however, so there was that. The cafetorium, btw, was our "shelter" at school, unless we didn't have time after an alert to get to the cafetorium. In that case, we were supposed to shelter in our classrooms.

This is a picture of one of those classrooms:

Picture taken in the kindergarten of my elementary school by Allan Grant (not used) for a Life Magazine article on a family moving from Connecticut to Southern California for the sake of jobs and future..

Note the high windows? Not surprisingly, the other side of the room had windows, too, but these weren't up high. Instead, they went from the height of the cabinet you see on the left up to the ceiling. Note, also, in this room there are no desks under which to duck and cover (it was actually a double room with a folding door in the middle which could make it into two rooms if need be). The portion of the room not shown in the photo did have tables and chairs, though.

Regular classrooms, unlike the kindergarten, had desks of the rounded modern style, but getting under them was... well, a joke as they weren't really designed for... erm... blast protection.

Your Child Deserves the Best (blast protection? Not so much)

We did regular duck and cover drills, nevertheless, and what they'd do is have us push the desks against the side of the room with the lower windows and have us crouch against the side of the room with the high windows, covering our little necks with our hands. Much like the scene of children crouching in the hallway of the apartment house in the first video above or as the children below are doing in the hallway of Elysium Heights School in Los Angeles.

Duck and Cover Drill, Elysian Heights School, Los Angeles, CA, c. 1962

Of course there were no interior hallways in newer public schools in California; fresh air and sunshine was the fashion, and so there were no hallways at all; each grade level had its own separate building with up to four classrooms in each (it depended on the number of students in that grade). On the entrance side, there was a broad roof overhang that was like a porch, on the other side there was another roof overhang, but no "porch". There was a covered but not enclosed concrete walkway that connected all the buildings, as seen in the overhead shot below taken recently for the Google:

I

I don't know what those little buildings are at the ends of classroom wings. They weren't there when I went to school. Probably punishment cells for the children who annoy or defy the teachers or who bring contraband and forbidden things in their backpacks. Training them up for their inevitable prison stint, don'tchaknow.

Scaremongering was primarily of the Instant Incineration -- "but you can survive it!! if you Duck and Cover!!!" -- kind. This went on all through the 1950's and well into the 1960's. In high school, for example, one of our Bomb drills involved quick-marching the entire student body to "the bowl" -- the football stadium in the far corner of the campus -- where we were directed to assemble on the running track next to one of the seating areas and do the Duck and Cover routine. I only remember doing this one time though, because afterwards it was obvious to everyone, most especially the students, that this was one of the most absurd and ridiculous exercises the school district had ever ordered us to engage in. It took far too long to assemble the student body in the first place, longer still to quick march us to the far end of the campus (it was a large school) and it was obvious as sin that once assembled in "the bowl" we may as well kiss our asses goodbye as there was no protection from The Bomb at all, though the theory was that because "the bowl" was partially sunken into the ground, we would escape the blast wave. The problem, it was eventually realized, was that the distance between the rims of "the bowl" were so great, there wouldn't actually be any protection and we may as well be fully exposed to the impending blast.

This high school was located near one of the air force bases that was part of the SAC, the Strategic Air Command, and everyone knew in their bones that it was a prime target for nuclear annihilation. The school was no more than two or three miles from the main entrance of the base, so we knew full well that if the Bombs ever came, we would be vaporized or crispy critters in an instant. That realization leads to a kind of soul-deep resignation and apathy that's hard to describe, but which is very real. The honest assessment that most of us had was that "there is nothing we can do" if the base was targeted with hydrogen bombs. It would be... over... in a twinkling, and God help anyone who somehow survived. We knew this. It was not a matter of question or debate. We would not survive a nuclear attack. We were too close to a primary target.

My elementary school in Southern California, however, was thought to be far enough away from any likely target (primarily the Aerojet plant in Azusa, about eight miles as the crow flies) that "many" would survive... somehow.

We were also fed a steady diet of anti-Communist propaganda, mostly literature that warned us about Communists lurking in our midst or movies that told us blood curdling stories of the Communist tide overruning everything good and proper. Much of was focused on how "wonderful!" everything was for children in America compared to the gray and sooty -- and shoeless, always shoeless -- existence poor Ivan in Soviet Russia had to endure.

 

Two Samples of "Fight the Red Menace" Bubble Gum Cards 

In some ways, we believed this. In others we didn't. I lived in a new and integrated neighborhood, one of the few in California at the time that was not de facto segregated by race. Our neighbors may have been mostly Anglo, but there were many Latin/Hispanic families as well and more than a few blacks and Asians in the mix. Children thought nothing of it, of course, but parents sometimes let the prejudices they'd grown up with run away with their judgement, and there was occasional racial tension if not outright conflict.

The story of how "wonderful" everything was in the United States was the story of how "wonderful" everything was for white people. There were no people of color in this story, and there wouldn't be for many years to come, in any story of America, the Brave and Beautiful. While I lived in an integrated neighborhood and went to an integrated elementary school -- and thought nothing of it at all, because it seemed perfectly natural to me -- I was made aware that things weren't so "wonderful" for some people,  people of color, my neighbors and some of my friends. No, they had to endure discrimination, taunts, and not infrequent threats of violence from white people. It was wrong, absolutely wrong but that's what they endured. I also learned that for the most part, people of color were poorer and lived poorer than I did -- and when I was a child, I had no illusions about being well off, because we didn't live as if we were. We lived very modestly. But the children I knew in black and Hispanic families lived far more modestly than I did. As did some of the Anglo households.

The strictures and struggles of Poor Ivan in Soviet Russia that we were propagandized to believe were mirrored in the strictures and struggles of poor people and people of color all around us. The idea that somehow Ivan had it worse and that we should all celebrate our good fortune failed to resonate very strongly. It was obvious that we weren't all living in Capitalist Paradise. Not even close to all of us.

So even when I was very young, the anti-Communist propaganda we were immersed in didn't really resonate. I didn't know what conditions really were in the Soviet Union -- I would later learn of course that is both worse for some and much better for most than we were told -- but I knew from looking out my own two eyes that social and economic conditions in the United States were essentially nothing at all like we were told and were expected to believe. Nothing. At. All.

For example, none of us lived in houses with picket fences in front, and only a few of us were blond and blue eyed. In many households, even in the 1950's, both parents had to work because the father didn't make enough at the plant to make ends meet. Some households had only one parent in any case, and so for them there never was a well-coifed mother at home all the time to take care of the children. There were several ad hoc child-care providers -- that is to say, a woman down the street who would look after children whose parents were working -- but there was no organized day care of any kind.

Where we lived, by and large, people didn't have new cars, couldn't afford all the new appliances coming on the market, had few or no luxury items at home (many didn't even have televisions until the late '50s), didn't go on vacations to "the lake" and kids didn't go to camp in the summer,  some couldn't afford to belong to the Scouts or Campfire organizations -- and even if they could afford to belong, they might not be admitted because of some "defect" in their home-life or characters (such as being black or Hispanic for example.)

This was the reality we lived with. The anti-Communist propaganda campaigns seemed surreal under the circumstances, not so much because we disbelieved the myths about Communist Russia (we really didn't know one way or the other) but because it was so starkly obvious that the myths about America The Wonderful were... false.

Although I'm sure some of my neighbors were either Communists or Communit-sympathizers, as they were termed in the propaganda, they didn't seem to me to be any different than anyone else.

But one day, we found out my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Brossard, was targeted for alleged "subversive activities." He was a really good teacher -- which was apparently part of his problem, you see. The kids all liked him, and most parents thought he was great. But apparently someone reported him, for what I'm not entirely sure because there was nothing even vaguely "Communist" in his teaching. That didn't matter. He was a "suspect." And once "suspected," you might as well be dead. He was out of class on many days, and we had stupid and mean substitutes who we ignored or ridiculed to their faces. When he came back to class, he was... chastened, subdued. I began to think he didn't want to teach any more.

We never knew the details of the "investigation" into his "subversive activities," but whatever had happened had clearly hurt him deeply, and I don't doubt it had scared him witless. I moved out of that area in the middle of fifth grade, and I don't remember hearing about him after I moved (I may have and have forgotten). Just the idea that the anti-Communist witch hunt of the 1950's and '60s had come so close, though, was definitely disturbing.

It was one of many examples of the times, of the arbitrary imposition of authority, authority we were conditioned to accept, and yet when it happened to someone like Mr. Brossard, we knew it was wrong. Simply wrong.

The arbitrary imposition of authority would light the fire of the Civil Rights Movement and the Free Speech Movement and many other rebellions and movements through the rest of the century.

And now there's little doubt in many people's minds that the arbitrary imposition of authority as well as the general collapse of institutional integrity and the resurgence of propaganda and scaremongering is leading inevitably to another era of revolt and rebellion, the vanguard of which we've already seen in the Arab Spring and the subsequent global Occupy movement.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Speaking of which, while doing some research on Mario Savio, I came across this long and detailed article by Seth Rosenfeld published in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004. It covers a lot of the same ground as his later book "Subversives" does, but it seems to do so more succinctly. I haven't finished reading the article -- it is quite long -- but from what I've read so far, I can recommend it highly for the insights it provided into Mario's sense of justice and doing what is right. The more I learn about him the higher my respect and regard for him. He was always a reluctant Movement celebrity, to be sure, and when he returned to relative obscurity, not that long after becoming such a huge figure in the student rebellion at UC Berkeley, what he gave to the rebels and the world may have been forgotten or overlooked -- as more radical and clownish figures like Jerry Rubin or Abbie Hoffman emerged, along with not a few more threatening figures. Mario was at the beginning of my rebellion -- I was 16 when the Free Speech Movement got under way at Berkeley -- and so he remains, for me, the central and original figure in the '60s revolt.

Repost -- On Effective Resistance and Abbie Hoffman

[Every now and again I get flashbacks to 1968 and before. This essay was written last year and seems for some reason to be germane now... dunno. Maybe there's something in the air?]



I'm in a strange and contentious mood today. Maybe it's the extended heatwave. Maybe it's just my "time".

Today would be my father's 109th birthday if he were still alive. Of course he died many years ago in a hospital where he was finally taken at the last to perish of a cancer that is usually controllable or curable if treated early enough.

He refused treatment when it might have saved his life. By that time, he was refusing most every overture from the outside world. He lived his last few years as a virtual hermit, doing his best to withdraw into a shell. I had no contact with him by then since I was more than a thousand miles away on the one hand, and I was unable to get a response to letters or phone calls, on the other hand.

In fact, I found the letters I had sent to him stacked in a neat pile on a side table when I explored his house after he died. None had been opened. I had tried calling him numerous times, but he never answered the phone. Eventually, I called his sister who lived down the street from him to find out whether he was OK, and she said he was, but she hadn't seen or talked to him for over 6 months, maybe a year. She thought he was fine, he just didn't want to be bothered. He wouldn't even listen to her the last time she saw him. He just looked right past her. What could you do?

Yes. What can you do? I missed his funeral and burial due to a flight delay from California, but I did attend his wake at the home of his sister, and I left with my head reeling, revolted and disgusted at these shallow and self-centered Iowans, claiming as they did: "Well, you know, Ray committed suicide. He wouldn't take any help when it could have made a difference. When they finally got him to the hospital it was too late. It was his own fault. Did anybody send for a priest?" The best thing they could say about him was that he should have stayed in the military. He had a very promising career in the Air Force, and he would have been out of the mess that things became in his small town in Iowa. It would have been for the best for all concerned.

OK.

At the time, I was actively resisting military service -- which the rest of the assembly to "honor" my father knew -- and so I saw it as backhanded slap not just at my father (for being himself) but at me, too, for being a doGdamned Hippie. He had left the military to go home and defend his older brother who on trial for murder. A political trial, I might add, for the real killer was known to the prosecutor before he took the case to trial, and it ended with a directed verdict of acquittal. That was the "mess" that things became in small town Iowa.

I still rage about those people. Not that it ever did me the least bit of good.

But then, I didn't have to deal with them more than occasionally. What a relief.

This is a picture of my father's house as it looks today:


I think it was actually taken last year, and the house looked a good deal different when my father lived there. The sort of mismatched window on the first floor left front was a door, the main door to the house. The larger window on the left front was even larger, and it was put in by my father to please my mother who came out to Iowa from California and who found the house dark and dreary when she got there. The house was built in stages, starting in the 1840's or '50s with the two rooms in back (which became the kitchen and dining room when my father lived there.) The small wing on the left side was added as a lean to originally, in the late 1850's; it had two bedrooms and a bathroom when my father lived there. Not too long afterward, a second story was added over the four early rooms, and one of the rooms above still had a Gothic arched window that Grant Wood made famous:




The front was added in the 1870's, and included a parlor, a stair hall, and a large bedroom upstairs.

A wraparound porch was added at the same time.

My father had lived in the house for years, since the early 30's. It had belonged to his father from whom my father inherited it. This was one of several houses on the street my grandfather had owned. Once it was in my father's name, he "cleaned it up," as he said, removing all traces of its Victorian Era origins from the exterior, including the porch, and masking the Gothic window from the outside with siding and a new window. He had it painted white. He partially modernized the interior -- Late Moderne Era light fixtures, tropical figured wallpapers, plumbing updates and the like -- and overwrought Victorian furniture was replaced with simple '40's modern pieces. Linoleum and new appliances were installed in the kitchen and the coal fired furnace in the basement was updated.

By the time my father died, the house was pretty much of a wreck. He hadn't maintained it for years while he'd shut himself up in it like a hermit. He'd rented out the upstairs to some very strange people who pretty much trashed that part of the place, but they're the ones who finally got him to a hospital. Some attorney friends of his said they'd take care of his estate on contingency, and so they did. Of course, it was nothing but trouble getting the few things I wanted boxed up and sent to California, getting the house sold, the proceeds (such as they were) distributed, and ultimately gaining closure on the whole sorry affair.

But you can see by the way I write about it more than 40 years later, I'm still puzzled at all the unknown elements of my father's final years, and annoyed at the complete insensitivity to him and to others shown by his surviving friends and relations.

I mentioned that I was actively resisting military service at the time my father died. I was called up for the draft in October, 1967, during a time of intense protests at draft centers all over the country, including Oakland where I was ordered to appear. In fact, the Oakland Induction Center was shut down by the protests during the time I was in transit. There had been protests and shut downs and arrests all week. I thought that going for my physical as ordered could be quite an interesting experience, though I had no intention of becoming a troop.

And it was interesting to say the least. We were scheduled to arrive at the Induction Center at 10am, but because of the protests, we were held at Santa Rita until about 4pm, and needless to say, we tended to act up some while we waited. Anti-war chants were our favorite.

When we were finally delivered to the Center, the smell of teargas was very strong in the air and the protest was still going on. Protesters had been removed from the front entrance, but they were right behind the double line of Oakland police who formed a kind of gauntlet for us to literally run through from the bus to the front entrance of the Induction center. The crowd was chanting slogans, and some of us were chanting too and raising fists as we stumbled into the Induction Center.

I remember being surprised at how respectful and even gentle the staff was once we were inside. I expected something much rougher, and it wasn't that at all.

We could hear -- and if we were near a window, see -- the protests outside all through our not too excruciating ordeal inside, and I saw people being arrested and hauled away. Some of us inside made for the windows in our underwear and shouted our solidarity with those outside, but truthfully, most did not. Most were silent, enduring the various pokage and proddage that's part and parcel of the process and getting ourselves "evaluated" by the psych team. Some of it was very funny, like when we had to give a urine sample and the military fellow supervising this process had to keep very close (and eager) watch on us to make sure... well, not sure what, but he obviously loved his job!

Now and then, we could hear the pop of tear-gas outside amid all the chants, and soon enough the air would fill with that acrid aroma and we'd all start coughing and gagging. They gave us something for it, but I honestly don't remember what. It may have been just a wet cloth to hold over our noses and mouths. I can still feel the burn of teargas in the back of my throat from that day, and every time my eyes are irritated due to allergies, I'm reminded of it.

Eventually, they were done with us, and I was surprised it was over so fast. I had a handful of papers to take with me, and when we got back outside the crowds were gone and it was getting dark. There were a few police milling around and a lot of debris in the streets. Faint odor of teargas lingered. Got back on the bus and went back home.

Got a notice that I passed my physical, and the real struggle began. I was NOT going to be drafted. Period. There were maybe half a dozen of us from that induction cohort who had vowed we were not going to go, no matter what. And we said as much at the Induction Center, something that the staff said they were very used to hearing, and it was no skin off their nose one way or another. Some people, they knew, really didn't want to be drafted. Oh well.

I sent letters to my draft board saying, "No, I will not go, don't call me," and I remember they sent me one back saying they received my letter and would I please provide documentation that I was a conscientious objector. Hm. No, I would not, thank you very much, and I would not be drafted, either. This went on for several months as I recall, with the draft board periodically replying to my refusals with very polite requests for more information. I was actually expecting to be arrested at any minute.

I burned my draft card at a public ceremony at my college (I wasn't a student at the time, I had dropped out for a variety of reasons, and that was why I'd been called up for a physical). I protested at the Federal Building, marching and chanting and carrying signs against the war and the draft. While the police were always a threatening presence, they didn't bash my skull and they didn't arrest me, either. Much to my surprise.

Finally, the draft board sent me notice that I was classified 1-A and would be subject to induction into the military within a short time (30 or 60 days, I'm not sure). Of course they conveniently included a new draft card. Bless their hearts. The one I had burned was a 1-S student deferment, which was no longer valid anyway, since I was not a student any more.

So I expected to get a notice any day that I was drafted. And you know what? It never came. The same thing seems to have happened to all six of us who "Hell no, we won't go." After what seemed like a long time -- and many letters back and forth to the draft board, and for some of us but not all, medical opinions from sympathetic doctors that said we weren't "fit" for service -- we were all re-classified 1-Y, subject to induction only in a national emergency.

It was... over. We weren't going to be drafted. We wouldn't have to go to jail, and we wouldn't have to go to Canada. Deferments didn't matter any more. It was... over.

Of course, if the Viet Cong started crawling up the beaches of Santa Monica, all bets were off.

Some time later, toward the end of the draft, some of the draft board members were interviewed, and they said that from time to time, they would get letters from draft and war protesters, and they said they would not arbitrarily reject them. They considered each one carefully. They knew there were many, many Americans opposed to the war and the draft, and they didn't see it as their job to induct men who were simply going to resist. So, if the facts warranted, they would try to find a way for men who were genuinely opposed to the draft and the war to stay out of the military, because what use would they be inside?

This was the first time I'd really thought of the draft board members as human. Their reputation was something entirely different. And yet, apparently they found a way to keep us out of the military.

Who'd a thunk it?

So, in a very small way, and essentially without our understanding of what was happening, our resistance was effective. And I cannot go to the Vietnam Memorial downtown and read all the names of the men who died there, some of whom I knew, some of whom were drafted, and not burst into weeping rage. Why? Why? Why?

By 1968, my rage at what was going on was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that it wasn't just damned dirty hippies or dumb kids who were outraged. Far from it. The McCarthy campaign and then the Kennedy campaign demonstrated the depth and breadth of opposition to the horrors being inflicted on the suffering peoples overseas and at home. This was no fringe uprising. It was global. It was deeply felt at home. I was attracted to the Kennedy campaign, but I thought he was an opportunist just the same. I watched the primary results come in from California, and I went to bed before Kennedy gave his victory speech.

I felt a hand shaking me awake. "Kennedy's been shot."

Oh my god. Not again. Please. Not again. Martin Luther King had been shot in April, and the national upheaval was intense. Many, many people had been killed or wounded in the aftermath. Please, not again.

This time, there was only sorrow and resignation. The last, best hope extinguished... And yet, there was still Chicago.

If I could have, I would have gone. "Won't you please come to Chicago..." Yes, well.

But I was penniless, had no way to get there, and no chance of going. I watched the events of the Democratic convention unfold on television, more bloodshed and rioting and teargas. More anger, more misery, more outrage.

And the star of the show was Abbie Hoffman. There was no doubt that it was a show and he was an absolute star. Simply amazing.




And my doG he and those with him got a lot done. To say that protest and resistance and monkeywrenching, and yes, clowning when the situation calls for it, is "ineffective" -- after what Hoffman and others were able to do -- is so full of shit and ignorance the mind boggles with the breathtaking arrogance of it.

Hoffman was a character, no doubt about that, and he relished the spotlight. He was a liberationist, not a communitarian, and yet every cause he supported and everything he did seemed geared to "be of service" to far more than himself and his image and reputation.

Somehow too many Americans have lost that spirit, or maybe never knew it.

He was an organizer with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; he was a committed anti-war activist; one of his stunts was organizing the "Levitation of the Pentagon;" he always encouraged others to get involved and he was very successful in motivating otherwise passive or apathetic individuals to get off their butts; he went to the New York Stock Exchange and threw fists full of dollars down on the trading floor making some of the traders scramble to get the money.

Of course his arrest and trial in Chicago for his participation in the Democratic Convention protests in 1968 is the stuff of legend, and while his trial with that of the other "Chicago 7" was going on, his antics in court were magnificent, appropriate for the political trial context, and utterly contemptuous. Where are those today who will so creatively and gleefully expose the corruption of justice that passes for our court system today?

His books -- like Steal this Book and Letters from the Underground -- are still inspirational.

He went underground when he was set up by police as a big cocaine dealer and ultimately skipped bail. But while underground, he remained active as an organizer and writer. When he eventually surrendered to authorities, he was given a light sentence and was released after four months, something that is almost impossible to conceive of given draconian sentencing these days.

Abbie Hoffman was one of those involved with the revelations about the CIA's illegal involvement in the "Contra" war against the Sandanistas in Nicaragua when, at trial after his arrest (along with many others) for protesting the CIA's recruitment at the University of Massachusetts, Daniel Ellsberg, Ramsey Clark, and Edgar Chamorro, among others testified to decades of illegal and violent activities by the CIA.

Hoffman is alleged to have committed suicide by ingesting over 150 Phenobarbital tablets on April 12, 1989, but many of those who knew him don't believe it was suicide. Instead, they suspect he was "suicided," though just how is a mystery. The "why" is obvious. He remained a very effective organizer of trouble and afflictions for the powerful and comfortable to his dying day, and if there was anyone in America at that time who "needed suiciding" by the Powers That Be more than Abbie, let's hear who.

Effective resistance is sometimes an accident, often an art. But effective resistance and protest to right the wrongs of our nation is a constant necessity.

'When our country is right, keep it right; but when it is wrong, right those wrongs.' -- Abbie Hoffman, 1987

Our call never ends.

Is Somebody Getting Very Rich From All The Tumult In The Streets, Too?

The Market Plunge on the news of the Standard and Poor's downgrade of US Government debt was of course obviously a short selling bonanza for those who were properly set up to profit from the Plunge. The notion of deliberate market manipulation to produce said Bonanza is hardly far-fetched. The Gods Who Walk Among Us wanted another injection of cash-dollars to momentarily sate their insatiable financial demands, and so they "manufactured" another Crisis Bubble, and we were once again on that E-Ticket Roller Coaster Ride with no way to get off.

The Crisis -- repeated over and over again -- is the New Bubble Economy, a game only played at the top.

Which of course brings me to a consideration of the tumult in the streets all over Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and from time to time the United States (in muted form), tumult that has devolved into civil war in more than one state experiencing street protests and battles between the People and Authority. Are these Crises, too, aspects of the New Bubble Economy? Is somebody getting rich off them?

I don't have an answer. I don't think this aspect of Tumult, Popular OUTRAGE!!!™, has been explored in the literature, and I doubt that anyone participating in the demonstrations, civil disturbances, riots, and civil wars that are wracking so much of the West and Middle East are counting the shekels involved, if they are counting much of anything at all -- apart from the dead and injured or the number of useless cell-phones they can cart away from the shops.

But the Money? Could there be Money, indeed handsome profits, involved in the uproars?

Why not?

Some of this tumult is similar to, if not modeled on, the protests and demonstrations, the riots and civil disturbances of the '60's, and while in those days it was all very horrifying to the Silent Majority, especially the riots in the Ghettos (it's hard to imagine just how much fear those riots inspired in the white suburbs), there were plenty of people making money off of them, off of the Student Movements that were underlying much of the tumult, and off of the security measures necessary to protect the White Women from the Rampaging Hippies and Negroes. Fear of Nuclear Annihilation was nothing compared to fear of Hippies and Negroes. Of course the drug dealers ("God Damn the Pusher Man!") were making out like bandits. Which some of them were.

Commercialization of the Movements of the Era was taken for granted and was criticized in lengthy screeds published in obscure periodicals like Ramparts and The Realist.

The Death of the Hippie was famously celebrated in the Haight in October, 1967, in part due to the hyper commercialization of the Summer of Love.

Of course one of the most famous activists of the era, Jerry Rubin, famously became a multi-level marketer and toured the country with Yippie co-founder Abbie Hoffman presenting a staged debate between "Yippie versus Yuppie."

But that kind of commercialization of a Movement -- which most of us at the time took for granted, even if it was criticized intellectually as more evidence of the oppression of the system -- is quite a different thing from the kind of money that is possibly being made from all the tumult in the streets these days.

From a cultural and political standpoint, what's going on now is on a different plane. Those raising a ruckus now are no longer motivated by their belief that they could make a better world. Instead, in Europe and America at any rate, they're trying to hold on to what little they have before it is taken away by a handful of hyper-rich and not very bright economic predators.

That's a key difference, in my view, and the transformation happened before our eyes in Seattle at the WTO conference in 1999. It seems so long ago now. Though I wasn't in Seattle for the WTO protests themselves, I was on the phone with people who were there while the action in the streets was taking place. They could recognize right away that there were provocateurs among the crowds who were trying to precipitate violence among the protestors and who were committing most, if not all, of the acts of vandalism that were used as the pretext for the excessive police crackdown on the protests. This was obvious to people who were there at the time, and it has been pointed out many times that many protest actions are peppered with undercover police and provocateurs as a matter of course. Exposing them has become a protest action sport.

The heavy-handed repression of the WTO protest in Seattle in 1999 became the model for such actions, and we see it repeated over and over again. Protestors get injured and sometimes die in these events. It has become an almost ritualized process, though, with heavily armed paramilitary police on one side, masked Black Bloc Anarchists (who may or may not be provocateurs) on the other, and the masses in between. The police and the Black Blocs are the ones who get the attention. What the protestors are agitated about is almost never discussed.

The repression, however, is. It is discussed and widely celebrated.

But are these events set up to make money for speculators?

The mind boggles at the thought.

I'm not going to get into it too much more because I don't have enough information, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

"Small But Powerful Political Group"

I just did a quick search of NPR programming for references to "Tea Party" and found there were stories and references every day, sometimes several times a day, and so it has been for weeks.

What's the matter, aren't enough sharks in the water? And the missing white girl has already been rescued, right? So, like last summer, when the TeaBagger Rage was all over the media, especially in connection with their disrupting of congressional town halls, parading around with their guns and their "Obama=Hitler" signs, and their constant threats of insurrection if not outright revolution, we have daily TeaBagger updates on NPR (and one assumes the other media, which has nothing to report about the sharks and missing white girls, either) to keep the pot stirred.

But the story embedded above starts out by describing the TEA Party (to use their own term for themselves for once) as a "Small but Powerful Political Group," and I got to thinking about that. Why?

Why is such a small group so... powerful?

Of course NPR won't address that fundamental question, nor will the other media that constantly highlights the TeaBaggers and their Power. How is it that large political groups on the "left" are ignored by the media and are granted no power whatsoever?

How is it that a tiny group of malcontented white folk -- mostly well-off white folk -- are granted free rein to do what they will and given constant coverage for every little thing they say and do?

Of course it's summer, and during the summertime, the media is on vacation. Vacation time means fluff rules, and last summer, like this summer, the fluffing has been focused on the TeaBaggers, who, for reasons no one can quite understand, are able to dominate political coverage like no other fringe faction since the days of Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies.

Except for the fact that the TeaBaggers don't have the theatrical skill and the sense of humor the Yippies and the others who protested in the '60ss and '70s did, the TeaBaggers are like a dark reflection of previous protests, and their supposed focus -- to the point of obsession -- on the Constitution is something of a mirror image of the "Constitutional Redemption" urge of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent anti-war and anti-draft movements and their offspring social and economic justice movements.

It all grew out of a sense of promise that was implicit in the Constitution. The Free Speech Movement 1964-65, which was the trigger for the student rebellion that swamped campuses nationwide, was based on the Constitution. The Free Speech Movement was the offspring of protests against the House Un-American Activities Committee Red baiting in San Francisco two years before, again based on the Constitution and its promise of free speech and association, for example.

The TeaBaggers aren't focused on the promise of the Constitution, they're focused on how the Constitution can be interpreted to restrict freedom for the many while offering free rein to the few. Their vision of the Constitution is that of the Confederate Constitution with its focus on property and its protection and defense -- especially property in slaves, but not exclusively so.

TeaBagging is Opposite World from the liberationist movements of the past.

But it is just as captivating to the media.

The Last Letters of Ché Guevara

Click the image to embiggen it and go to the Realist site.


While researching Abbie Hoffman, I came across Ethan Persoff's site, which includes The Realist Archive Project, the purpose of which is to scan every issue of The Realist magazine/pamphlet (each issue was four pages, one fold) and post it online.

What fun.

Some of the ephemera of the 1960s is still around, particularly the psychedelic posters from the various concert venues, but most of it is just gone.

I haven't seen a copy of The Realist in decades, and I haven't thought about it either, having passed on to more substantial fare: Harpers, Salon and dKos, for example. It's fascinating to look at issues of The Realist online, and to recognize what Paul Krassner, et al, were doing back in the day, and see the striking parallels between this olde tyme underground publication that was relatively widely available if you knew where to look and how to get it -- and were interested in that kind of thing -- and today's Lefty Blogosphere. They're not the same, to be sure, because The Realist and other efforts like it came out of an atmosphere of rebellion and activism. There may be the abstract thought of rebellion in today's Lefty Blogosphere, but there is essentially no activism outside a very narrow range of approved political "action" -- phoning, faxing, writing the White House and your representatives in Congress assembled, sending money to approved candidates for office, writing for the blogs -- most of which is very private and individualized "action" that appears oddly coordinated and homogenized when it is seen by the public.

And there is all that jockeying for seats at the Big Table. To be taken seriously in other words by people who matter.

It's hard to imagine that was ever a goal or objective to those who came up with and persisted in publishing the underground samizdat in days gone by. In those days, the Underground was... well, Underground. There was a public face to it, sure, and there were characters like Abbie Hoffman and Krassner himself who were literally Underground stars, but they were agitators and monkeywrenchers par excellence, and that was risky. Very risky.

Arrests and political trials were relatively common. These days, you'd be hard pressed to find members of the Lefty Blogosphere putting themselves at that kind of risk under any circumstances, nor are they likely to defend people who do. They are far more likely to denounce and disparage any sort of Leftist "activism" that includes anything outside the approved norm.

That's partly due to a fairly standard petite bourgeois individualized shopkeeper mentality that pervades the blogosphere in general. This is how some blog proprietors make their living or want to make their living, and that is as serious as a heart attack to them. They are not going to put their livelihood or potential livelihood at risk in any way, certainly not in this economy. So they will adopt standard formulae that have proved themselves over the years, they will stick to the norms of the field, and they will discourage anything off that relatively known and narrow road. It is the nature of shopkeeping.

I've got my own little place here on blogtopia, but I'm not doing it to make a living. Blogging is not how I expect to make any income at all, it is -- for me -- a way to record and if anyone is interested, share some of my commentary on history and what's in the news, the various interests I have, travel notes, and what have you. In other words, Ché(What You Call Your)Pasa is a personal... weblog. What a concept.

I'm convinced my days as an activist are mostly over. Been there, done that. Which certainly doesn't mean that anything that needs doing is finished or completed. But there comes a time when you realize there is only so much you can do, and you only have so much time left on this Earth. Priorities. And there comes a time when you realize that your own small contribution to the Whole can probably be done better by someone else. That's a key realization that many Old Farts never make in any field.

There's a tendency in today's activist community to want to endlessly proliferate organizations, to endlessly reorganize existing ones, and to "professionalize" activism. In other words, turn movements into lobbying. As a way to make a living.

You have to constantly recruit. Induce new members to participate, donate, what have you. And divide and subdivide over and over again, to restart the process endlessly. Those who have never done it before, of course, are gratified to finally find something that will "make a difference"; those who have been down this road before are... tired. Well, many are, not all.

I was ruminating on the US Social Forum the other day, for example, and while I genuinely cheer it on, I realized that nearly everything they were set up for -- ie: information sharing and seminars on how to "do" activism itself -- were things I've already done, on a wide range of projects, and while I might be able to contribute some experiential anecdotes and provide some insight into how a Power Structure actually functions, where its weaknesses are, and what the risks are for activists going against it, I realized that I wasn't really keen to do it anymore.

If somebody wants to ask questions or hear me out on some aspect of "making a difference", fine. But otherwise, have at it, kids! Go forth and change the world! You can do it!

Yes, you can.

On Effective Resistance -- and Abbie Hoffman

I'm in a strange and contentious mood today. Maybe it's the extended heatwave. Maybe it's just my "time".

Today would be my father's 109th birthday if he were still alive. Of course he died many years ago in a hospital where he was finally taken at the last to perish of a cancer that is usually controllable or curable if treated early enough.

He refused treatment when it might have saved his life. By that time, he was refusing most every overture from the outside world. He lived his last few years as a virtual hermit, doing his best to withdraw into a shell. I had no contact with him by then since I was more than a thousand miles away on the one hand, and I was unable to get a response to letters or phone calls, on the other hand.

In fact, I found the letters I had sent to him stacked in a neat pile on a side table when I explored his house after he died. None had been opened. I had tried calling him numerous times, but he never answered the phone. Eventually, I called his sister who lived down the street from him to find out whether he was OK, and she said he was, but she hadn't seen or talked to him for over 6 months, maybe a year. She thought he was fine, he just didn't want to be bothered. He wouldn't even listen to her the last time she saw him. He just looked right past her. What could you do?

Yes. What can you do? I missed his funeral and burial due to a flight delay from California, but I did attend his wake at the home of his sister, and I left with my head reeling, revolted and disgusted at these shallow and self-centered Iowans, claiming as they did: "Well, you know, Ray committed suicide. He wouldn't take any help when it could have made a difference. When they finally got him to the hospital it was too late. It was his own fault. Did anybody send for a priest?" The best thing they could say about him was that he should have stayed in the military. He had a very promising career in the Air Force, and he would have been out of the mess that things became in his small town in Iowa. It would have been for the best for all concerned.

OK.

At the time, I was actively resisting military service -- which the rest of the assembly to "honor" my father knew -- and so I saw it as backhanded slap not just at my father (for being himself) but at me, too, for being a doGdamned Hippie. He had left the military to go home and defend his older brother who on trial for murder. A political trial, I might add, for the real killer was known to the prosecutor before he took the case to trial, and it ended with a directed verdict of acquittal. That was the "mess" that things became in small town Iowa.

I still rage about those people. Not that it ever did me the least bit of good.

But then, I didn't have to deal with them more than occasionally. What a relief.

This is a picture of my father's house as it looks today:


I think it was actually taken last year, and the house looked a good deal different when my father lived there. The sort of mismatched window on the first floor left front was a door, the main door to the house. The larger window on the left front was even larger, and it was put in by my father to please my mother who came out to Iowa from California and who found the house dark and dreary when she got there. The house was built in stages, starting in the 1840's or '50s with the two rooms in back (which became the kitchen and dining room when my father lived there.) The small wing on the left side was added as a lean to originally, in the late 1850's; it had two bedrooms and a bathroom when my father lived there. Not too long afterward, a second story was added over the four early rooms, and one of the rooms above still had a Gothic arched window that Grant Wood made famous:




The front was added in the 1870's, and included a parlor, a stair hall, and a large bedroom upstairs.

A wraparound porch was added at the same time.

My father had lived in the house for years, since the early 30's. It had belonged to his father from whom my father inherited it. This was one of several houses on the street my grandfather had owned. Once it was in my father's name, he "cleaned it up," as he said, removing all traces of its Victorian Era origins from the exterior, including the porch, and masking the Gothic window from the outside with siding and a new window. He had it painted white. He partially modernized the interior -- Late Moderne Era light fixtures, tropical figured wallpapers, plumbing updates and the like -- and overwrought Victorian furniture was replaced with simple '40's modern pieces. Linoleum and new appliances were installed in the kitchen and the coal fired furnace in the basement was updated.

By the time my father died, the house was pretty much of a wreck. He hadn't maintained it for years while he'd shut himself up in it like a hermit. He'd rented out the upstairs to some very strange people who pretty much trashed that part of the place, but they're the ones who finally got him to a hospital. Some attorney friends of his said they'd take care of his estate on contingency, and so they did. Of course, it was nothing but trouble getting the few things I wanted boxed up and sent to California, getting the house sold, the proceeds (such as they were) distributed, and ultimately gaining closure on the whole sorry affair.

But you can see by the way I write about it more than 40 years later, I'm still puzzled at all the unknown elements of my father's final years, and annoyed at the complete insensitivity to him and to others shown by his surviving friends and relations.

I mentioned that I was actively resisting military service at the time my father died. I was called up for the draft in October, 1967, during a time of intense protests at draft centers all over the country, including Oakland where I was ordered to appear. In fact, the Oakland Induction Center was shut down by the protests during the time I was in transit. There had been protests and shut downs and arrests all week. I thought that going for my physical as ordered could be quite an interesting experience, though I had no intention of becoming a troop.

And it was interesting to say the least. We were scheduled to arrive at the Induction Center at 10am, but because of the protests, we were held at Santa Rita until about 4pm, and needless to say, we tended to act up some while we waited. Anti-war chants were our favorite.

When we were finally delivered to the Center, the smell of teargas was very strong in the air and the protest was still going on. Protesters had been removed from the front entrance, but they were right behind the double line of Oakland police who formed a kind of gauntlet for us to literally run through from the bus to the front entrance of the Induction center. The crowd was chanting slogans, and some of us were chanting too and raising fists as we stumbled into the Induction Center.

I remember being surprised at how respectful and even gentle the staff was once we were inside. I expected something much rougher, and it wasn't that at all.

We could hear -- and if we were near a window, see -- the protests outside all through our not too excruciating ordeal inside, and I saw people being arrested and hauled away. Some of us inside made for the windows in our underwear and shouted our solidarity with those outside, but truthfully, most did not. Most were silent, enduring the various pokage and proddage that's part and parcel of the process and getting ourselves "evaluated" by the psych team. Some of it was very funny, like when we had to give a urine sample and the military fellow supervising this process had to keep very close (and eager) watch on us to make sure... well, not sure what, but he obviously loved his job!

Now and then, we could hear the pop of tear-gas outside amid all the chants, and soon enough the air would fill with that acrid aroma and we'd all start coughing and gagging. They gave us something for it, but I honestly don't remember what. It may have been just a wet cloth to hold over our noses and mouths. I can still feel the burn of teargas in the back of my throat from that day, and every time my eyes are irritated due to allergies, I'm reminded of it.

Eventually, they were done with us, and I was surprised it was over so fast. I had a handful of papers to take with me, and when we got back outside the crowds were gone and it was getting dark. There were a few police milling around and a lot of debris in the streets. Faint odor of teargas lingered. Got back on the bus and went back home.

Got a notice that I passed my physical, and the real struggle began. I was NOT going to be drafted. Period. There were maybe half a dozen of us from that induction cohort who had vowed we were not going to go, no matter what. And we said as much at the Induction Center, something that the staff said they were very used to hearing, and it was no skin off their nose one way or another. Some people, they knew, really didn't want to be drafted. Oh well.

I sent letters to my draft board saying, "No, I will not go, don't call me," and I remember they sent me one back saying they received my letter and would I please provide documentation that I was a conscientious objector. Hm. No, I would not, thank you very much, and I would not be drafted, either. This went on for several months as I recall, with the draft board periodically replying to my refusals with very polite requests for more information. I was actually expecting to be arrested at any minute.

I burned my draft card at a public ceremony at my college (I wasn't a student at the time, I had dropped out for a variety of reasons, and that was why I'd been called up for a physical). I protested at the Federal Building, marching and chanting and carrying signs against the war and the draft. While the police were always a threatening presence, they didn't bash my skull and they didn't arrest me, either. Much to my surprise.

Finally, the draft board sent me notice that I was classified 1-A and would be subject to induction into the military within a short time (30 or 60 days, I'm not sure). Of course they conveniently included a new draft card. Bless their hearts. The one I had burned was a 1-S student deferment, which was no longer valid anyway, since I was not a student any more.

So I expected to get a notice any day that I was drafted. And you know what? It never came. The same thing seems to have happened to all six of us who "Hell no, we won't go." After what seemed like a long time -- and many letters back and forth to the draft board, and for some of us but not all, medical opinions from sympathetic doctors that said we weren't "fit" for service -- we were all re-classified 1-Y, subject to induction only in a national emergency.

It was... over. We weren't going to be drafted. We wouldn't have to go to jail, and we wouldn't have to go to Canada. Deferments didn't matter any more. It was... over.

Of course, if the Viet Cong started crawling up the beaches of Santa Monica, all bets were off.

Some time later, toward the end of the draft, some of the draft board members were interviewed, and they said that from time to time, they would get letters from draft and war protesters, and they said they would not arbitrarily reject them. They considered each one carefully. They knew there were many, many Americans opposed to the war and the draft, and they didn't see it as their job to induct men who were simply going to resist. So, if the facts warranted, they would try to find a way for men who were genuinely opposed to the draft and the war to stay out of the military, because what use would they be inside?

This was the first time I'd really thought of the draft board members as human. Their reputation was something entirely different. And yet, apparently they found a way to keep us out of the military.

Who'd a thunk it?

So, in a very small way, and essentially without our understanding of what was happening, our resistance was effective. And I cannot go to the Vietnam Memorial downtown and read all the names of the men who died there, some of whom I knew, some of whom were drafted, and not burst into weeping rage. Why? Why? Why?

By 1968, my rage at what was going on was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that it wasn't just damned dirty hippies or dumb kids who were outraged. Far from it. The McCarthy campaign and then the Kennedy campaign demonstrated the depth and breadth of opposition to the horrors being inflicted on the suffering peoples overseas and at home. This was no fringe uprising. It was global. It was deeply felt at home. I was attracted to the Kennedy campaign, but I thought he was an opportunist just the same. I watched the primary results come in from California, and I went to bed before Kennedy gave his victory speech.

I felt a hand shaking me awake. "Kennedy's been shot."

Oh my god. Not again. Please. Not again. Martin Luther King had been shot in April, and the national upheaval was intense. Many, many people had been killed or wounded in the aftermath. Please, not again.

This time, there was only sorrow and resignation. The last, best hope extinguished... And yet, there was still Chicago.

If I could have, I would have gone. "Won't you please come to Chicago..." Yes, well.

But I was penniless, had no way to get there, and no chance of going. I watched the events of the Democratic convention unfold on television, more bloodshed and rioting and teargas. More anger, more misery, more outrage.

And the star of the show was Abbie Hoffman. There was no doubt that it was a show and he was an absolute star. Simply amazing.




And my doG he and those with him got a lot done. To say that protest and resistance and monkeywrenching, and yes, clowning when the situation calls for it, is "ineffective" -- after what Hoffman and others were able to do -- is so full of shit and ignorance the mind boggles with the breathtaking arrogance of it.

Hoffman was a character, no doubt about that, and he relished the spotlight. He was a liberationist, not a communitarian, and yet every cause he supported and everything he did seemed geared to "be of service" to far more than himself and his image and reputation.

Somehow too many Americans have lost that spirit, or maybe never knew it.

He was an organizer with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; he was a committed anti-war activist; one of his stunts was organizing the "Levitation of the Pentagon;" he always encouraged others to get involved and he was very successful in motivating otherwise passive or apathetic individuals to get off their butts; he went to the New York Stock Exchange and threw fists full of dollars down on the trading floor making some of the traders scramble to get the money.

Of course his arrest and trial in Chicago for his participation in the Democratic Convention protests in 1968 is the stuff of legend, and while his trial with that of the other "Chicago 7" was going on, his antics in court were magnificent, appropriate for the political trial context, and utterly contemptuous. Where are those today who will so creatively and gleefully expose the corruption of justice that passes for our court system today?

His books -- like Steal this Book and Letters from the Underground -- are still inspirational.

He went underground when he was set up by police as a big cocaine dealer and ultimately skipped bail. But while underground, he remained active as an organizer and writer. When he eventually surrendered to authorities, he was given a light sentence and was released after four months, something that is almost impossible to conceive of given draconian sentencing these days.

Abbie Hoffman was one of those involved with the revelations about the CIA's illegal involvement in the "Contra" war against the Sandanistas in Nicaragua when, at trial after his arrest (along with many others) for protesting the CIA's recruitment at the University of Massachusetts, Daniel Ellsberg, Ramsey Clark, and Edgar Chamorro, among others testified to decades of illegal and violent activities by the CIA.

Hoffman is alleged to have committed suicide by ingesting over 150 Phenobarbital tablets on April 12, 1989, but many of those who knew him don't believe it was suicide. Instead, they suspect he was "suicided," though just how is a mystery. The "why" is obvious. He remained a very effective organizer of trouble and afflictions for the powerful and comfortable to his dying day, and if there was anyone in America at that time who "needed suiciding" by the Powers That Be more than Abbie, let's hear who.

Effective resistance is sometimes an accident, often an art. But effective resistance and protest to right the wrongs of our nation is a constant necessity.

'When our country is right, keep it right; but when it is wrong, right those wrongs.' -- Abbie Hoffman, 1987

Our call never ends.