Re: [sixties-l] Re: new ground: The Sixties and the Right

From: William M Mandel (wmmmandel@earthlink.net)
Date: 10/04/00

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    The fact remains that nothing won in the field of civil
    rights has been lost, that gay rights are at this moment in
    better shape than ever before, and that, considering all the
    multifarious criteria for measuring the status of women, the
    same probably obtains there as well. Consider the latest:
    the legalization of the at-home abortion pill.
        This does not mean that cops don't engage in racial
    profiling. They do, and they kill Blacks when they would not
    kill whites. It doesn't mean that hate crimes against gays
    don't occur. It doesn't mean that male chauvinism has
    disappeared in any phase of life whatever. It does mean that
    the status of all three categories is qualitatively better
    than before the Sixties. That does not absolve anyone,
    particularly those of us who are not of
    discriminated-against ethnic minorities, not gay, and not
    female, from the human responsibility to work for full
    equality for those categories.
    
    William Mandel
    
    Marty Jezer wrote:
    
    > Don, and others.It was not just the state that repressed
    > us.We also offended people in deep and harmful ways,
    > trashed the way they lived, the way they dressed, what
    > they listened to, how they worked. And they rose up angry
    > and, also (and this was my major point) got organized.And
    > the backlash, which was organized into politics, has
    > shaped the past thirty years.Social change always creates
    > a backlash. Civil rights, women's liberation, gay rights,
    > etc.were issues of justice that were bound to upset people
    > in very personal ways. A backlash was inevitable. We
    > (because we were young) rubbed it in, however, and made it
    > worse.We wanted respect, but we had no respect for
    > "straight" people. It's that dynamic that we (especially
    > the younger generation) has to learn from.One of key
    > organizing ideas that came out of SNCC and early
    > grassroots organizing was that you have to recognize where
    > people are coming from and educate and organize them from
    > where they're at. Not everyone gets tolerance and a love
    > of justice with their mother's milk (or their father's
    > bottle).MartyAt 08:19 PM 10/3/2000 -0700, Don wrote:>Well
    > put posting Ted! Much more detailed than my simplistic
    > emotional>description. We scared the hell out of people
    > who had something to lose,>whatever branch of the elite
    > they came from. Those elites directed the>media at are
    > largest warts, and as we all know, we had plenty; and
    > they>rolled out the tanks. snip snisp snip
    >  Marty Jezer  * 22 Prospect Street * Brattleboro, Vermont
    >                05301 * P/F [802] 257-5644
    >
    >     Check out my web page: http://www.sover.net/~mjez
    >       Read my commentary on Richard Nixon's Treason
    >  <http://www.tompaine.com/history/2000/09/15/index.html>
    >
    > To subscribe to my Friday commentary, simply request to be
    >    put on my mailing list. <mjez@sover.net>  It's free!
    >
    
    
    



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