Re: 60's radicals

PNFPNF@aol.com
Sat, 27 Apr 1996 21:34:37 -0400

I have to second Andi's response on this. "Living in the 60s" seems the
kneejerk, rightist response to demands for social justice--and/or expressions
of hope in the possibility of social justice--by anyone (oh how this sounds!)
over 40 or so.
Certainly many of us, for all we looked very sreiously at the democratic
elements of "revolution in the revolution" and "continuing revolution,"
stayed wary of Maoism and parts of Debray. Further, some, probably most, of
us did not come into the Movement by way of the old Left--except perhaps in
diluted form from campus bull sessions/the Goodmans/etc.--but from our own
struggles with psychological/sexual/gender oppression, the Vietnam War, fear
of the Bomb, or etc.; and only as the U.S. and/or our own economics worsened,
in later years, got hip to some basics of communism.
Further, indeed many of us are NOT in "soft cushy" academic jobs. Some of
us are still very much IN STRUGGLE, in our own as well as our activist lives.
And more of us will be; check out this week's ABC news coverage of
Medicare's decision to do controlled studies/limit funding re a certain
heart operation "and this is only the beginning of limits" of the same sort
on some heart treatments, anti-cancer drugs, etc.
Guess the struggle is and remains ours, however many reactionary
revisionists may say that capitalism's the road and any hope over.
Paula Friedman