Tidbits for Dec. 15, 2008
3. Re: Katha Pollit and Bill Ayers
4. Re: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
5. RE: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
6. RE: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
7. RE: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
8. RE: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
===
3.
From: Carole Travis
Re: Katha Pollit and Bill Ayers
Weatherpeople called me a running dog. I spent much of
the 60's staffing national coalition efforts : MOBE
anti-war activities, Nixon's InHOGuration, the 1968
Democratic Party Protests, the Conspiracy 8 Defense and
much more. Then I returned to my working class roots
and followed my father's path to the factory for close
to 30 years. I retired as a UAW Local union president
representing GM workers at locomotive factory outside
Chicago, and then joined SEIU's international staff for
13 years.
The attacks on Ayers by the right wing had a fascist
smell to me. I was afraid of a McCain/Palin win for
many reasons. As an old red diaper baby, I remember
the McCarthy period. It was dangerous to associate
with radicals, but even more dangerous to be one. My
father, for a short time, others for longer periods
went underground in the 1950s to evade arrest because
of the Smith Act sedition trials. Didn't all of us
60's activists think we were dangerous radicals?
Couldn't the right wing attack most of us, no matter
our line or affiliation? For this it is important that
Ayers not only directly attacks 'guilt by association',
but also that he is not totally apologetic, that he
stands for the right to be radical. When questioned
about apologies he carefully uses the South African
Truth and Reconciliation model in a way that is smart,
principled and reminds us that everyone might be called
to explain where they were and what they did or didn't
do during the Vietnam War.
Although there is a delicious habit we lefties have,
including me, to defend our old positions and fight old
battles, there is a time to give that up, close ranks
and defend all the guys on our side. Bill is not every
60's radicals choice for our representative face, but
that is what he became. And he did a good job. In
spite of the great temptation, he kept his mouth shut
during the critical period. He suffered endless public
attacks and frightening personal threats. And when he
did speak, he did it well. And he spoke for all of us,
he did not use the short space in the NYTimes or on
Good Morning American to distinguish Weather from PL,
from OL or RYM II. He used it to defend our side.
None of us should line up with Sarah Palin and Rush
Limbaugh to make palling around with him anything but
what it is, interesting, fun and involved. Bill and
Bernardine were and are on our side and still spend
every ounce of their boundless energy on making the
world more just, less racist, better.
Carole Travis
===
4.
From: David Barber
Re: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
I agree with Katha Pollitt criticism of Bill Ayers's
continuing efforts at rewriting Weatherman's history.
When Ayers falsifies Weatherman's history in the
sixties he leaves the door open to the charge that he
is falsifying his relationship to Obama -- the part of
his story he tells truthfully. This may not seem
terribly important at the moment -- McCain's gambit was
unsuccessful in winning the election -- but for the
longer term the hatred McCain and Palin stirred up has
not gone away and threatens to metastasize as the
economic pressure on working class white Americans
increases. Bill's false account of Weatherman history
is and will be used against the possibility of peace
and racial justice, today and in the future, just as
Weatherman's practice redounded against those same
struggles back in the day.
I hope portside readers will check out my recent book,
"A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why it Failed," in order to
help discover a more realistic history of Weatherman
and of SDS and its other factions. We must root our
defense against the next wave of reaction not only in
articulating the world we'd like to see, but also in
humbly acknowledging our past failings and the basis in
ourselves for those failings.
===
5.
From: Sharon Yandle
RE: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
Katha Pollitt could not have articulated better my
sentiments re: Bill Ayers' non mea culpa.
I was a Students for a Democratic Society activist at
the U. of Wisconsin (Madison, of course) in 1968-69
when the Weather Underground was taking hold. I didn't
notice exactly when they emerged or who they were. I
just experienced their disruption of SDS meetings and
serious political discourse and assumed they were FBI
agents. If they weren't they might as well have been.
However, I have to say that it was the Weather
Underground (and/or government agents) who taught me
the most important political understanding of my life:
that the real struggle is for and about hearts and
minds. I feel sorry for the Weatherpeople whose
perspectives and actions hurt them personally. I feel
much greater regret over the impatience and arrogance
which so often substitute itself for real political
activity and which seriously impede real movement among
real people. That's the only mea culpa I want to see.
Sharon Yandle
===
6.
From: Jack Radey
Re: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
Right on, Sister Pollit,
I have friends who were in the Weather Whatevers, and I
feel compelled to say that I must salute their courage.
The temptation to cast oneself in a romantic light,
pick up the gun, and go out to take on the system is,
of course, bred into our DNA. We boomers were all
raised by our American culture to know that the Hero
always defeats the Bad Guys, not by organizing a mass
action, far less by slow, patient, organizing, but by a
right cross to the jaw in the last panel, or before the
last commercial. And at worst catches a slug in the
shoulder which, of course, can be shrugged off in
minutes. So seeing the evil wrought by our government
and capitalist system that it served, is it any wonder
that some among us felt the urge to emulate John
Wayne... I mean, Huey Newton, Huey Newton, or Che, or
Nguyen Van Troi, or... well... maybe just a LITTLE of
John Wayne? Our classmates were often moved to join
the Marines or Airborne for precisely the same
motivations, they just didn't bother to figure out who
the Bad Guys were, and often paid dearly for their
mistake.
But saluting courage, whether of a Weather Wonder or a
Marine (courage is courage, and many of our brethern
went to their deaths in Vietnam believing that they
were doing so to help people, even if in fact they were
committing what the judges at Nuremburg labeled war
crimes) is not the same as suggesting it is something
that showed much intelligence, or was a useful path for
ANYone to follow.
A friend of mine wrote for the Berkeley Tribe, which he
described as a cheering section for the violent
factions of the left, in particular the Weather folk.
He summarized the classic Weather operation to strike a
blow at the heart of the empire as "blowing off the
toilet seat in the men's room at the Federal Building".
To which I might add, usually a week before a major
demonstration was planned in front of this same
facility. At one point they detonated one of their
oversized firecrackers in the Senate, the week before a
march by 100s of thousands was planned. Hey, THANKS A
HEAP, comrades, that really helped.
The Weatheroids expressed the same frustration that a
lot of people on the left did, including our now more
moderate comrade, Tom Hayden, who declared, "We tried
big demonstrations, that didn't work." To which I
always thought, gosh, can you hear the Vietnamese
saying, "Well, we tried antiaircraft fire, that didn't
work, they're still bombing us." ?
It was not the Weather folk with their cherry bombs
that rattled and scared the Johnson and Nixon
administrations, restrained their hands (a bit) when
they felt the itch to reach for nukes and other
horrors, undermined the discipline of the armed forces,
or left the leaders of the "Free World" wondering if
there were enough loyal troops left at home to
guarantee them against the threat of the American
people coming to string up their president from the
tree behind the White House. It was the slow, patient,
frustrating, and unromantic work of convincing and
organizing people, done by thousands and hundreds of
thousands of us, that did the trick.
Sometimes, a little violence is definately in order.
But only when no other avenue is left, and when it is
not glorified, bragged about, or made an end in itself.
It makes me sick, whether hearing it on KPFA or in
movies or memoirs, to hear the silliest of us
glorified, and the hard lessons swept aside by the
waves of revolutionary rhetoric, as if they were the
force that won the day, back in the day. All they ever
did was to isolate us, and make us look far sillier
than the situation required.
When our local would-be street fighters sneer at
demonstrations and hint at how they are going to clear
the pigs off the streets, I always ask them, "If you
have the courage to break a window, or fight the
police, do you have the courage to go door to door in
your neighborhood, or perhaps another neighborhood
where the people are not quite as hairy, and try to
convince people about the war, economy, environmental
disaster, racism, whatever?" The fact is, they don't.
Jack
===
7.
From: Tom Smith
RE: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
Thank you, Katha. From that wing of the movement that
went into the plants to better understand the
industrial working class and how to communicate our
anti-war, anti-racist politics, Ayers' tactics supplied
mainstream media with just the tool they needed to
discredit the entire movement! Tom Smith
===
8.
From: Donna claire
Re: Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again
Thank you Katha,
I was at the last 69 SDS convention in Chicago. I
remember Bernadine Dohrn and other Weatherman stomping
around arrogantly destroying the organization. In
effect, the mass anti-war movement was dealt a fatal
blow and did not last to see end of the Vietnam War.
I bet the massive number of FBI agents were having a
wonderful time watching this happen at the convention.
I saw an interview with Ayers and on DemocracyNow and
was disgusted by the arrogance displayed by Ayers and
Dohrn to deny their negative roll during the 60s in
between pathetic attempts at apology. Of course, we
should all realize that there was a responsibility on
the part of many who bought into their anarchist
mentality.. This played a big part in the failure of
so-called "revolution." of the sixties.
Donna West
===
.
No comments:
Post a Comment