---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 14:21:55 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Yet more on Movement history
From Portside
Yet more on Movement history
I sometimes get the feeling that I'm the youngest
person on this list (though that's probably untrue). I
make a point of noting my youth, though, because it
would seem disingenuous of me not to: I am 26, and I
was not even born at the time of the last SDS
convention and the emergence of Weatherman. Actually,
my parents were preparing to get married around that
time. It is because of them, and because of my own
current activism, and because of my ongoing belief,
deluded though it may be, that there might be something
to learn from the past, that I got interested in all
this.
In 1969, my father was a professor at Grinnell College.
A group of students there had decided to turn the
American flag upside down (a la the international
symbol of distress) as a protest against the Vietnam
war. My father spent a good part of the next two days
standing beneath the flag, hand on the halyard, to
prevent anyone from doing this again.
My mother told me this story when I was a freshman in
high school en route to a protest against the Persian
Gulf war. I pointed out to her that, had I been there,
I probably would have been one of the people trying to
turn the flag upside down. "Yes," she said. "You and
your father would have disagreed about a number of
things. Call if you need to be bailed out."
Mostly I tell this as a funny story, but in fact I've
been thinking about it for many years--turning a flag
upside down may not seem like much, but in Grinnell,
Iowa, it's tantamount to a very extreme tactic. As an
activist (these days, I mostly work with United
Students Against Sweatshops, but I dabble in any number
of other related global justice things), I am
constantly thinking about how to proceed--about how to
make the best strategic decision, about how to be true
to yourself and what you believe, about how to
reconcile the difference between the Quakers who just
want to witness and the ISO who want to print
everything in Impact font, and how to do this all in
the face of what seem like overwhelming odds--in the
face of a system--call it global capitalism, call it
what you will--that seems relentlessly determined to
walk all over most of what I consider precious in the
world.
A couple years ago, I decided to start reading all the
movement history I could get my hands on. I thought,
rather grandiosely, that it was my responsibility learn
from history so that the terrible mistakes of the past
would not be repeated. I have now read more theories on
the expulsion of whites from SNCC, the failure or
success of ERAP/the Worker Student Alliance/the
Mississippi Summer project/you name it, the demise of
SDS, the rise of women's liberation, etc., etc. than I
can count. I am a wealth of trivia about things that
happened in the decade before I was born. My conclusion
(though I'm still engaged in this project) has been,
both sadly and oddly comfortingly, that we study
history to learn that history repeats itself, willy-
nilly. This past summer I was at the USAS national
gathering in Chicago and was actually at some point
amused by a group of people running around handing out
leaflets and (depending on whom you talk to) either
trying to subvert the conference or trying to restore
it to its true guiding principles. They were all from
the Progressive Labor party. The last night of the
conference, we got dinner donated by the Heartland
Caf. The last plenary went on for a very, very long
time, and I didn't think there'd be any food left by
the time we got there, but Mike James had saved stuff
for us. "How'd the voting go?" he asked me as he handed
me a sandwich. I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, I remember some
of those SDS plenaries," he said, and we nodded, and I
thanked him for the dinner, and moved on.
I don't know where I would have stood on that flag at
Grinnell in 1969, or what exactly I would have thought
of the Weatherfolks, though I doubt very much I would
have joined them. In truth, when I contemplate the
events, I am always so amazed by anyone in the movement
who made it through the late '60s with their faculties
intact. I don't know that I would have been so lucky.
I do think, though, that this country is deeply
haunted, and wounded, by a lingering and ongoing racism
(and perhaps a number of other isms as well, but I'll
stick to one) and that the wounds it still inflicts
manifest themselves in kinds of violence that are hard
to comprehend, whether that's the 1981 Brinks robbery
or the shooting of Amadou Diallou. I generally feel
contempt for the cops who shot Diallou and pity for
those in prison from the Brinks action, which doesn't
make much sense--I could here make a number of
arguments about class and privilege and those who
should know better. I could also be criticized, quite
rightly, for laying blame entirely on the system, for
refusing to recognize the importance of personal
accountability, for trying to see everyone as a victim.
But I also think that we need to make a very careful
distinction between the action and the people behind
that action, and we need to try to understand the ways
in which the systems which surround that person have
led to the kinds of actions they've taken. A number of
posters to this discussion have talked about the need
to pass on certain kinds of knowledge--about
organizing, coalition-building, practical, workable
tactics, what have you--to younger activists now. I
think that's true--it's one of the reasons I read so
much history, and why I try to talk to older activists
when I have the chance.
But I think another thing we need to try to understand,
respect, and deal with, is the terrible toll that
living in this world and to resist and change its
systems can take on us. I know kids now who are
involved in Black Bloc stuff. I don't join them. When I
can, I try to persuade them that smashing up the
windows of Star$$$$, while satisfying in a certain way,
is not going to help--and that undoubtedly that
destruction will have to be cleaned up low-wage
laborers--the very people whose side (I'd like to
think) we are on. But I know also that there are days
when I want to smash things, as much as there are days
when I want to move to the mountains, become a hermit,
and pray, though to me neither of these is a
strategically viable way to build a movement or a
better world. I think what we owe one another is some
attempt at understanding, and some attempt at
forgiveness, and at reconciliation.
I hope that this discussion can continue, and perhaps
even move in that direction.
Laura E. Crossett
Nonfiction Writing Program
University of Iowa
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