Re: Social Activist Movements in California Audio Archive

T Bruce Tober (octobersdad@reporters.net)
Wed, 19 May 1999 11:04:00 -0400

In message <3.0.3.32.19990506175545.0072b43c@library.berkeley.edu>, Karl
Slinkard <kslinkar@library.berkeley.edu> writes

>recordings related to California social activist movements of the 1960s.The
>first phase of this project will focus on the Berkeley Free Speech
>Movement. The project coincides with the 50thAnniversary of the Pacifica
>Foundation, the oldest alternative public broadcasting network in the
>United States (see http://www.pacifica.org/programs/celebrate/index.html).

Speaking of the FSM...

I find it rather ironic, the turnabout which has taken place during the
40-50 years since.

Back then it was the kids and "pinko, commie, godless, kids" who were
into the FSM and the "Bespectacled, respectable, republican middle
class" who fought them tooth and nail (I'd really like to say "us"
rather than them in re the FSM, but I was still but a kid in HS and then
at a dinky little college on the east coast away from their fun and
games when they were at their most active).

In the intervening years however, those "pinko, commie, godless, kids"
grew up into the middle of the road, suburban, clintonish new liberals
who invented pc. You all know pc, that's the new form of language that
requires anyone who wants to say "fuck" has to say "the f word" instead
and anyone who wants to write even as mundane a word as "asshole" has to
write is "@$&hole". Meanwhile, back at the homes of the "Bespectacled,
respectable, republican middle class" mob, they're saying much worse
than "fuck" and writing much more profound words than "asshole".

I think that's only one indication of how all too many of us became our
parents and our kids became our grandparents. Where are the Abby
Hoffmans now that we NEED them? Why are we letting the MIC get away with
this illegal and immoral war (no, I'm not ignoring the alleged nastiness
of the Milosevic regime, but two wrongs don't a right make)? Why haven't
we turned out in the streets in huge numbers? Where are the Berrigan
Bros when we need them?

Shit man! We not only lost it, we let ourselves lose it.

tbt

-- 

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