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.

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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.

The Altar Boy is Radicalized at Berkeley -- Mario Savio and More About "Subversives"

Mario Savio, Free Speech Movement, UC Berkeley, 1965

Now that I've gotten to the chapters about the student rebellion at UC Berkeley and more particularly about Mario Savio, I'm learning plenty of stuff I didn't know or didn't think about if I did know.

Images of the early Free Speech Movement protests at Berkeley and of those involved (particularly Mario, but not just of him) are burned into my brain. They form a huge part of what I considered positive in my adolescence. "Who" these people were and the underlying motivations for "why" they were doing what they were doing hardly mattered. What mattered was that they were doing it, fearlessly, determinedly, and at considerable risk to themselves and and their futures. Bravery was only the most obvious of their attributes.

While I was riveted by Mario Savio's eloquence and charisma -- and oh, yes, I had a sheepskin lined suede jacket like his, and I think in other ways I strongly identified with him -- I knew nothing, really, about him, except that he was considered "working class" among the students and administrators who came from money (I knew too many of those people), and thus he was subject to relentless denunciation and ridicule by those opposed to the FSM protests.

After the glare of the media spotlight faded from him and the student movement went on to other issues and other campuses, I didn't try to follow Mario's further adventures. I knew that he was a reluctant hero, if you will, and was deviled by doubt during the Free Speech Movement years, but beyond that, not much. It wasn't until much later that I learned he'd gone on to become part of the initial faculty at Sonoma State University in the 1980s, and died of heart failure in 1996. Resquiat in Pacem.

Until I got into the biographical chapters about him in "Subversives," I didn't know that he had been an altar boy in Queens, or that he was considered a "troubled genius" in school and had a terrible stammer when speaking -- unless he was on stage or in front of a crowd, at which time he could become extraordinarily eloquent and persuasive. I didn't know that his mother wanted him to become a priest -- and he seriously considered it -- but he chose physics and the sciences in his initial college days in New York, only to switch to philosophy studies when he transferred to UC Berkeley in 1963.

I didn't know that he was initially enthusiastic about the Kennedy presidency, but he became disillusioned as Kennedy seemed incapable of following through on his campaign rhetoric and promises. Where have we heard that before?

I didn't even know that he had gone South for the Freedom Summer, and that his experiences with the Freedom Riders and with CORE and SNCC at Berkeley had profoundly shaped his perspective about the absurd and arbitrary restrictions placed on student political advocacy and activity on the University campus.

While Mario's iconic speech about "the gears of the machine" he gave on the steps of Sproul Hall on December 2, 1964, will likely resonate forever, the issues he was speaking about are not really well known at all, and they're not particularly easy to explain or examine from the distance of almost 50 years.

I remember what I was feeling about it back then, but the issue of the prohibition of on-campus political activity -- which is what the Free Speech Movement was opposing -- seems somewhat arcane and even petty from a distance.

It was actually a pretty much universal rule to prohibit on-campus political activity throughout California's public education system at the time, especially so at the University. The premise was that California's students would receive a mandatory and "free" public education through high school, and qualified students would be eligible for tuition free higher education at any public institution of higher learning in the state -- any that they could get into, as access was highly competitive and restricted. But part of the bargain that made this possible was that the public education system, particularly the University, had to stay out of politics... thus the prohibition on political advocacy on the Berkeley campus that became the fuse that lit the fire of the Free Speech Movement.

Up to a point, this prohibition was tolerated because the University didn't interfere with tabling and political speechifying "outside the gate," Sather Gate. Well, that is they didn't until they discovered that the sidewalk outside the gate actually belonged to the University, not the City of Berkeley as they had assumed. The campus administration and police started enforcing the rule on the sidewalk as well on the campus proper, and this seemingly arbitrary act triggered the protest. Students moved their tables onto the campus in front of Sproul Hall, the administration building, and defied the administration and police orders to desist.

And when Jack Weinberg, a graduate student, refused to desist or identify himself to police, he was taken into custody and hustled into a waiting police car on Sproul Plaza. This arrest by campus police precipitated a sit-down action by hundreds and then thousands of students, and the Free Speech Movement was launched. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Mario quickly emerged as the spokesman for the Movement, though it was obvious even then that he was uncomfortable in the role that had been thrust upon him. Nevertheless, he was a passionate and very articulate spokesman.

His passion derived from his experience, an experience I knew very little about until I started reading "Subversives." I have a much greater regard for him now than I did nearly 50 years ago, and I hardly thought that was possible. But learning about his past, and what he believed in, and what he had done prior to the Free Speech Movement only makes me admire him the more.

I'm no hero-worshiper, as anyone who knows me knows. There are many individuals, however, for whom I maintain great admiration and respect. Mario Savio has always been one of them, but now my admiration and respect for him has increased substantially.

The more I learn... I'm grateful I can still learn...

Subversives

I just received a copy of Seth Rosenfeld's "Subversives" -- a book about the early days of the student rebellion of the 60s. I've written about that era quite a few times, for the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley and the more or less general student rebellion it inspired were deeply influential to my own perspectives about American imperialism and authoritarianism. What I've written about it is almost all my personal perspective on events I witnessed (in person or on television) or was involved in (such as the Draft Moratorium protests in Oakland in 1967 -- I was there for my pre-induction physical.)

Rosenfeld got hundreds of thousands of documents that I understand revealed the deep, deep involvement of the then-existing Security State to infiltrate and disrupt the student rebellion, largely at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director since dirt was new. There was much more Security State involvement than we knew at the time, that's for sure. And yet the fall out from the events of those days -- including the apparent co-optation of such rebel lights as Todd Gitlin and Mark Rudd, both of whom I have had at least passing dealings with -- continues to resonate.

I'm sure I'll have more to write about those days once I've finished the book.

Mario Savio Explains It All For You

Thanks to Michael Cavlan RN over at FDL for posting this full version of Mario Savio's December 2, 1964 "Gears of the Machine" speech that he gave on the steps of Sproul Hall just before several thousand hundred students occupied the building thus catalyzing the student (and counterculture) rebellions of the 1960's.

I've posted many times that this was a radicalizing event in my life -- I was 16 at the time and in high school. Three years later, I would be involved in this:



Here's Todd Gitlin's narrative of those events:

Here, protestors wait to close down the Oakland Induction Center where young draftees arrive for their physicals and are taken into the Army. They hold wooden shields and wear helmets. It is an October Friday in 1967 and no one anticipates a peaceful outcome.

At some point in that year anti-war activists across the country agreed to turn protest into resistance. Fred Halstead says in Out Now!, his detailed history of the anti-war movement, “it was a time to move opposition to the war and the draft from moral protest to a show of power.” The draft of young men into the armed forces was a particularly odious feature of the Vietnam conflict. Beginning with the war’s expansion in 1965, President Johnson doubled the number of young men to be drafted each month from 17,000 to 35,000. Because college students still held draft deferments, the vast majority of hapless draftees were lower class males and much more likely to be black, Mexican-American or Puerto Rican. In 1965 there were 25,000 soldiers in Vietnam. By the end of 1967 there were more than 480,000 soldiers in Vietnam. And 15,000 of them had been killed.

In May of 1965 some 40 Berkeley students staged the first public burning of draft cards in front of the local draft board, at the time a handy half-block from the UC campus. A “liberal” Democratic Congress responded to the burning of draft cards by making the act a felony punishable by five years in prison. Draft card burnings continued, though, and by 1967 a group called The Resistance was organizing ever-larger protests against the draft. Leaders decided to mount a weeklong protest October 16-21 that would end with a march on the Pentagon. Ground zero for draft resistance was the Oakland Armed Forces Examining Station, aka, the Oakland Induction Center.

[snip]

What followed on Bloody Tuesday was a riot. Direct action collided with police brutality and the result was an hour of mayhem as members of the Resistance, who had expected to block Center entrances and be arrested, were instead beaten bloody. Organizers held a rally Thursday on the Berkeley campus and vowed to return to Oakland on Friday. “We’re going to give the cops one hell of a run for their money,” shouted Stop the Draft Week organizer Morgan Spector. And they did. More than 10,000 protestors showed up early Friday morning, prepared with shields and helmets to engage the police. As cops poured out again into the streets, activists ran a virtual Chinese fire drill around the city’s central core, occupying intersections until police arrived, then vanishing down alleys to return to the Center where they blocked entrances until police returned. Battles ensued as police officers fought hand-to-hand to arrest protestors who, aided by comrades that attacked police from behind, would break free and run. Barricades were built from parked cars, rolled into intersections and tipped over. A bus was seized, emptied of cheering passengers, and rolled into the street to block access by police.

Protest had become insurrection.

Yes, well. The rest, as they say, is history. And to clarify, this insurrection in Oakland lasted all week, and there were Stop the Draft events held all over the nation that week as well, culminating in the Levitation of the Pentagon on October 21, 1967.

In Oakland, the history of insurrection has a long and noble lineage, so every time I run into someone who wants to mindlessly denounce the current insurrection in Oakland -- which continues apace, despite all the hoo-and-haw over various tactical and strategic errors (to put it gently) -- even if it is Todd Gitlin -- my generally tolerant demeanor tends to get bent out of shape and I tend to respond with a bit of bite.

The point is not that I favor violent insurrection and resistance because I don't. The only ones who would actually engage in such a thing in this country are the rightists and fascists in any case. They've been doing so on a limited scale for decades. For some odd reason, though, the "anarchists" and what's pitifully left of the Left are blamed for whatever insurrectionist tendencies there are and are strictly advised by their Elders (of which I am now one, thankyouverymuch) to declare adherence and strictly follow passive nonviolence principles as outlined by "Gahndi" and King. Now isn't that interesting? It should be. It should be interesting and instructive about the true nature of Power and Control in this country.

What I find interesting is that the nonviolence advocate who had the greatest influence on me is never mentioned: Cesar Chavez. It's the strangest thing. It's as if he and the United Farm Workers he led never existed, and their struggle never happened at all. He and his work have been all but erased from the historical record, and I truly wonder why.

Every now and again, I get together with some of the abuelos from the farmworker huelga days, and they shake their heads sadly at how far we have come yet how very far there still is to go. The struggle continues, yet it has become so highly ritualized and enervated that measurable progress is almost impossible to find, while there is plenty of backsliding to be found in the fields everywhere throughout The Other California, where those many farm fields still are (well, at least the ones that haven't been buried under suburban sprawl.)

One of the ways the Overclass got a handle on the farmworkers' movement and made it much less effective was to essentially buy off some of its leaders and younger workers by providing them with a way out of the fields and a comfortable living if they wanted it. Many farm labor activists wound up teaching on college campuses, others became civil servants, ironically in some cases charged with enforcing farm labor law but without the tools to do so. The less they felt trapped in the fields, the less the farmworkers felt they had little hope for improvement besides the UFW. The Overclass used many other tactics, including murder, to get their way, but from the public's perception, the farmworkers were the ones who got their way, not the growers. Little do they know.

Similar tactics were used to disarm and ultimately disable the anti-war movements of my day. As with the farmworkers, Power did concede the minimum it had to -- such as, for example, instituting a draft lottery, then ending the draft, then removing troops from the ground in Vietnam, and finally withdrawing from Indochina altogether. Many of those firebrands and movement leaders -- those who weren't murdered -- wound up teaching on college campuses where some of them still are. Others found civil servant positions which by now they have retired comfortably from, and we all know what happened with Jerry Rubin: he became a capitalist pig.

Mario Savio himself taught physics and philosophy at Sonoma State until his untimely death in 1996.

Who am I to talk, I went into The Theater and ultimately into government service myself.

What I began to understand about all this is that what appears to be radical and insurrectionary at any given time probably isn't. Mario's speech on the steps of Sproul Hall still resonates -- at least it does to me, but then I can (vaguely!) remember what he's going on about. Yes, the issues were critically important in those days, and yes, the insurrection at UC Berkeley in the fall and winter of 1964-65 made a huge difference and catalyzed movements and rebellions all over the country and parts of the world some of which were brutally and bloodily suppressed.

But underlying it all was a demand for dignity and respect, justice and community. And most of all for Peace.

While the issues Occupy is wrestling with are different, and the Occupy rebellion/revolution itself is very different -- the underlying demands aren't. We once again have an out of touch and wildly out of control power structure that ignores or dismisses the Public Interest in pursuit of private interest goals. Mario is complaining because the University is being run like a corporation and to serve corporate needs, not the Public Interest at all, and in his view and that of many students at Cal and elsewhere, that was simply wrong on principle. That was not what the University was for and that was not the purpose of higher education in California, but there it was: Cal served its government and corporate "sponsors" not the People.

And so it is today, even worse than it was in 1964. And now it is wildly more expensive for students at Cal and in the rest of the public higher education system in California than it was almost 50 years ago.

The abuses are far greater and the costs are far heavier. And sometimes the solutions seem farther away than ever.

The Matter of Trust

Now hold on.

This is the Open Letter from Occupy Portland expressing dismay at their treatment by the police and the mayor:

15 November 2011

An Open Letter to Mayor Sam Adams:

We, as members of the Occupy Portland Liaison Team, are officially resigning from our roles as city and police liaisons for the Occupy Portland movement. This is in direct response to the deplorable police actions of this past weekend and your refusal to communicate clearly with us during that time.

We were specifically asked by City Hall to create this Liaison Team, for the purpose of facilitating clear communication between city government, police and the Occupy Portland movement. We worked hard to assemble a capable team of activists to act as a conduit of information as agreed upon by our General Assembly.

Initial meetings were amiable and seemingly productive, as your staff was able to express concerns, some of which we shared, about conditions within the encampment. We facilitated communication and followed up by working closely with city employees and our own volunteers to address issues relevant to camp safety.

Despite our efforts, over the weekend, you decided to cave to pressure from your friends at the Portland Business Alliance, the Police Association and other groups interested in maintaining the status quo of economic injustice and issued us an eviction notice. Instead of allowing us to address conditions within our encampment in a transparent and democratic way you chose to enlist the full apparatus of police repression to destroy our encampment.

There's more. A great deal more. But you get the idea.

I'm concerned that our friends in Portland don't have The Idea, and this may be a reason why there has been such despondence in Portland after The Raid, while there is such jubilation and even celebration elsewhere (New York and Oakland come to mind) after their camps were raided.

Our friends in Portland say they "trusted" the Mayor and the police.

My question is simply, "Why?"

Why does anyone involved with the Occupy Movement-Becoming-Revolution "trust" or "want to work with" or in any other way express unity or a desire for unity with the Powers That Be, whoever they may be?

Listen to Mario again:



That was the whole December 2, 1964, speech on the steps of Sproul Hall that led directly to the "Occupation" of Sproul Hall -- which in turn triggered all sorts of student rebellion and response through the remainder of the 1960's.

A couple of things must be noted: the protesters were IN active negotiations with the University administration when this Occupation took place. The Occupation of Sproul Hall was due to the betrayal by the administration and the University regents of the basic principles of fairness and good will with which the student protesters had approached the problem of Free Speech on and near the campus.

Note what Mario says about "liberals."

Today, we would refer to them as "progressives." '

In other words, in 1964, the progressive administration of the University was actively negotiating with and betraying the good will and trust of the students; this was quite a revelation at the time. People -- not just students -- who had been brought up in a "liberal" or what is now known as "progressive" environment all their lives were discovering a horrible truth: these people lie, they're violent, and they serve the interests of the corporatist war machine first and foremost. Their mission is to provide endless fodder for the machine they serve, forever, world without end, amen.

THIS WAS IN 1964.

It hasn't changed.

After numerous protests and sit-in/occupations and a good deal of violence by police toward the student protesters -- violence that would escalate, not just on campuses but in many cities and their segregated ghettos -- negotiations continued and a sort of ad hoc agreement was reached that more or less defused some of the immediate rationale for protest over "Free Speech" for a time.

In other words, Authority Pretended to Yield, students got some of what they wanted, things calmed down. Somewhat. For a while.

But we've seen -- haven't we? -- that the argument over Free Speech that began at Berkeley in September of 1964, when the University decided to enforce a prohibition on political action and speech on and near the campus (actually, there were precursors, but I won't get into those here, though I have posted on some of it previously), has by no means ended.

Nor did it end at Berkeley when the administration was forced to make some concessions back in 1964 and 1965.

"Power concedes nothing" and all of that, but there is more to it than that. "Power" can be "liberal" or "conservative" or something else, it doesn't matter. You cannot trust Power under any circumstances. Except to trust that Power will be abused and that abuse will be directed at you.

That's it. Period. The Ideology of Power is always the same. It is in favor of itself and opposed to you. It doesn't matter -- at all -- what the political party designation of Power is, and it doesn't matter at all what superficial "agreements" are made. It is always the same: if you insist on being in the way, you will be crushed. Your only options are to stifle yourself or become absorbed by the Borg.

When you take that insight to heart -- and I've never been sure Mario ever did, or if he did, then I guess he was comfortable being "absorbed" -- it doesn't matter what Power does; everything Power does merely reinforces the point of the protest.

Power does not negotiate in good faith.

Ever.

You cannot trust Power. Ever.

The point of a Revolution is to replace Power -- not to become part of it and not to negotiate with it.

And this is the tough part, the hardest part of all. It's been done many times in the past, but how to do it is never known in advance.

Whether to do it at all is still part of the internal struggle of the Movement.

David Graeber may have some useful insights.

But it's tough. Mario ultimately couldn't do what was really necessary, nor were most of the Revolutionary Upstarts of My Day really up to the challenge they set for themselves. Most were either absorbed -- or paid for their fervor with their lives.

I don't know how far the current Revolutionaries are prepared to go, and I don't think the answer will be found in this country. Americans are the followers in this Revolutionary Era not the leaders.