At 03:44 PM 12/6/2001, you wrote:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/1201dohrn.htm
Sixties Lessons and Lore
by Bernardine Dohrn
a review of
Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the
1960s (Oxford University Press, 2000), 368 pages, $25.95 paper.
A pretty good review by Benardine with some of her own prejudices.
Benardine was part of a faction that went on to dedicated themselves to
"Third World Struggles" which really wasn't good for local organizing.
And she leaves out a big part of what made the Sixties the Sixties. That
is the cultural and personal aspects. The idea that we were working and
struggling for each other. That we could create a loving community. That
the working classes and poor could find hope, an overall hope, in the
agendas we proposed.
We couldn't ask people to just selflessly dedicated themselves to militant
struggles. That never occurs. Only when people find a united struggle
imperative that you find such dedications. Like the struggles for national
independence in Vietnam, Central America.
The struggle here had to build on both a political/economic agenda and a
personal/community one. People have to see their personal stakes and how
their own lives will be better.
Without a foreign enemy, a crushing economic or a fascist government the
"the masses" aren't going to erupt in militant struggle.
For instance the issues of racism and sexism have been extremely
institutionalized and used by institutions to divide and conquer. But they
are also personal issues, which are best addressed on a personal and
community level, where people can see them and how they effect their own lives.
If the Women's Movement instead of making the headlong rhetorical attacks
on "males'" in the Seventies would have tried to talk to and engage men and
build a movement bases on mutual respect and understanding, and on
love, that might have had a much greater, real progressive impact.
At 03:44 PM 12/6/2001, you wrote:
>http://www.monthlyreview.org/1201dohrn.htm
>
>Sixties Lessons and Lore
>by Bernardine Dohrn
>
>
>a review of
>Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the
>1960s (Oxford University Press, 2000), 368 pages, $25.95 paper.
John Johnson
Change-Links Progressive Newspaper
change@pacbell.net or change-links@change-links.org
http://www.change-links.org
Subscribe to our list server. Email change-links-subscribe@egroups.com
(818) 982-1412
Cell (818) 681-7448.
===
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Dec 10 2001 - 18:49:33 EST