And if you highlight the "foolish" expectations of the 60s era, that's what I criticize. And I get accused of being a conservative, yet I am only conservative on tactics and strategy because I think those foolish expectations - what a number of friends from the era call their "collective insanity" - were of great destructiveness to the movement, since it made people attack any tactical compromise and any lesser good as the enemy, since the "real" revolution was just around the corner. On any substantive issue, I am as radical as anyone out there, but I find tactical self-delusion to be one of the worst political diseases -- and the infection stems largely from the 60s, which is part of my admittedly overstated criticism. Younger activists combine both idealism with tactical practicality, which is one reason why I appreciate them so much.
-- Nathan Newman
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I keep wanting to write something about your posts on the 60s and your comparison to your own experiences in the late 70s to mid-80s.
I think the key here is this: ``I am as radical as anyone out there, but I find tactical self-delusion to be one of the worst political diseases and the infection stems largely from the 60s, which is part of my admittedly overstated criticism.''
I matched this comment to your earlier support of Bradley's health plan and the idea that it was better than nothing and better than what the working class has now.
All I can really say is that it is far better to fight the good fight, than the right fight. In other words, tactics are tactics and winning a tactical battle, wins exactly that, a tactical battle.
If you want to feel the ground tremble, you have to move something big. I guess there just isn't any way to communicate it better than that. I wouldn't claim activists accomplished anything by themselves, since first of all that model relies on the idea that there are critically important leaders.
The way to understand what was going on in the 60s is to realize that there were no leaders in the classical sense of the term. This is the reason that when the FBI went looking for ring leaders and found them, it made no difference. Assassinations, mass arrests, prison time, censorship, media spin, the national guard, marshal law, federal indictments, police murders and harassment, infiltrations, surveillance, sabotage, and the combined focus of national security agencies and military intelligence made absolute no impact.
So, in retrospect, adding up numbers of organizations, leaders, activists, and media estimates of demonstrators misses the mark.
For example, one evening I went up to Cody's on a book run and there was the usual crowd standing around a flat bed truck, megaphones, etc. I found out it was May Day solidarity demonstration for the French student strikes and now the Renault auto workers (in Lyon?) were calling for a one day general strike. That night's demo was probably about the size of the nightly demos in front of KPFA last year, i.e. maybe five hundred, if that, a footnote on the local news. I stood around and listened to the speakers. The French police had just been called to clean out the Sorbonne. French students had been ranting on and off all spring. We all thought the same thing. That's end of de Gaulle. If we could only get rid of a government that easily (Johnson's not-a-second-term speech didn't count, but at least there was hope). Meanwhile the German students were ranting and there were rumors of something brewing in Mexico City at University City for the summer Olympics. Prague was cooking, but I can't remember if the Russians had shown up yet or not, and there was Chile. God could we get rid of Franco too--sure, why the hell not, for old time sake? The Pathers were holed up on Shattuck behind sand bags about a mile away. The US Attorney's Office (Cecile Poole) had just announced it was back logged to the tune of 1300 cases a month on draft charges alone. I had just got back from some bullshit Selective Service interview in North Hollywood in early April and knew my case was one of the 1300. Everybody was hoping for a very long hot summer. The California primary was coming up next month and it looked like Kennedy was going to win. The entire Mid-west was still smoldering from the King assassination riots. My buddy Noel from U of Iowa had gotten killed in the riot in Cincinnati. The January Tet Offensive seemed like a long ways away, but they were still holding out in Hue. And then there was Khe Sanh, a horror counter horror, typical of the war--why the fuck didn't they air vac them out of there? My draft lawyer was using my place as a temporary over night for guys he was smuggling (in his car trunk) out of the US Army Intransit Personnel Center in Oakland. They all wanted to use the phone and make long distance calls, talked forever, and never slept. They all had this quivering thing in their voices. They were really scared to death.
But I had problems of my own. I had just flunked the comprehensives and had to get a real job for a while before I could afford to go back for another year at UC. The carpenter's union hall had just moved out to the Oakland airport off Hegenberger Road. I had taken the exam and made it on the list and had sat through a few early mornings for call-ups. I had to resolve myself to hanging out there from about six when they opened to about eleven. Most of the guys left after nine. After a week of this routine I got called to go out to guess where? UC, California Hall on a remodeling job! Yes, I was stripping off hand made roofing tiles, some of them signed by Italian immigrants from about 1910 when these were fired in Port Costa. So I sat on the roof, eating lunch and watching the tear gas float up from Sproul during the noon rally riots. The foreman assigned me to Wally a journeyman carpenter and a graduate from a Hitler youth apprenticeship program in Silesia(?). Wally and I used to laugh at history. Amazing.
What I am trying to say is I could feel the world spinning off in some random direction. It was fucking magic.
Chuck Grimes