``..It seems to me that the deepest and most enduring change in American society coming out of the 60s has to do with the status of women... Jacob Conrad
``..Oh good, now I don't have to say it... It's portrayed by many academics as a spontaneous simultaneous springing up, but if you check out the early documents, specific people argued for specific programs (consciousness-raising, the pro-woman line) against very large opposition from the 'politicos' who felt socialism was sufficient to free women and we should all just fight for that...'' Jenny Brown
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I am sitting here reading a history of the Free Speech Movement FSM ('64), partly from interest and partly to see if there were any connections with the origins of the slightly later disability movements ('68).
There were a lot of intersections between most of the big title movements like Civil Rights, Anti-War, Women, Disability, etc. that were not explicit linkages---although there were some. For example almost all the major movers in FSM were members of either SNCC or CORE and had been to the South during previous summers for: education, voter drives, health care, organizing help, whatever. The essential battle at UCB centered around Slate, SNCC, CORE, YSL, and YPSL (joined by the campus Young Republicans in a shaky coalition) to hand out political literature, make speeches, advocate local actions, solicit members, and collect donations. All of these common rights were denied on university property through a whole variety of rules, procedures and bullshit technicalities.
So, there is a common theme that developed in my mind while I was reading all this and recalling the times and people. What I think links these movements was not principle or issues in the abstract however well framed, but material interest---there were concrete, tangible, palpable interests---right to vote, right to education, right to public access, right to speech, right to organize. The point was that these were systemically denied through law, policy, and social practice.
I realize these sound like principles, but they are not just vague hand waving `rights'. It came down to the physical ability to vote, physical ability to go to school, physical ability to walk (or drive) into and use public facilities and accommodations. These were concrete things that were not allowed through a whole system of means: law, custom, physical and bureaucratic barriers.
Now the linkage to both the anti-war and women's movements was also literal, physical, concrete, palpable---and not a matter of principle or ideals. The war movement had the draft and military authority to point to---palpable threats given Vietnam. The women's movement had not only the pill and abortion, but legal, social and bureaucratic access barriers to point out that were remarkably similar to some of those erected against blacks.
So in my mind the common theme was concreteness, material interest, things and places that could be pointed to, laws that could be broken, bureaucratic procedures and social customs that could be violated.
Now I am not saying that ideals, principles and issues were not important. But demonstrations, vigils, sit-ins, and so forth couldn't really gain mass scale until these organizing and attention getting methods came up against the `real' physical, legal, and social barriers that were not only crudely obvious, but were also the concrete manifestation of the issue, right, or practice.
Part of this was relatively simple. You would be beaten, arrested, thrown in jail, tried, convicted and do time if you broke these laws, customs, and procedures. (And obviously murdered on occasion). And those simple concrete facts also set the concrete terms of battle.
Today in the US, the terms of battle and the concrete manifestations of oppression are or tend to be more diffused, less obvious, or at least more easily avoided. (Or target quasi-hidden populations like immigrants, or simply suppressed by mass media)
The establishment is also better at not just spinning an issue, but handing it off to less centralized or less accessible and less publicly vulnerable institutional systems of responsibility. The legal system for example has more elaborated nuances at its disposal to simply avoid direct confrontations: civil and administrative remedy systems.
Also, union organizing is a whole lot more difficult when there are fifty small shops in different business sectors that have to be worked on, rather than one giant plant in a company town. (The move to manquiladoras makes the whole problem infinitely more difficult, since Mexico and SEA for example already have more well established oppressive mechanisms built-in to their existing political economies---which was obviously why they attracted US investment in the first place.)
Another problem is the increasing heterogeneity of the work force. For example in the current UCB strike (started Monday), the work force on strike is heterogeneous---some white collar, some blue collar, some high tech, some low level management, some academic----a mixed bag labor force that can be divided off against itself.
On the other hand, then it falls to the organization or organizers to define the unity, define the commonality, define the shared concrete manifestations of larger and more diffused principles, issues, and rights.
It is my sense that people will not move, until they literally feel the weight of oppression and the grip of authority on themselves in some physical form or other. So all the defining and framing of issues goes to no effect until it begins to unfold and define the real, tangible suffering directly to be found in the lives of the people involved---caused by some obvious law, procedure, social custom, practice, or policy, enforced by some asshole group in power.
So then, I won't argue against reconstructing the histories of leftwing movements in the US, and resuscitating their lost leaders---since I am marginally involved in some of that in disability history. But the more meaningful purpose to those efforts has to be to re-discover some of their best practical lessons. And the one lesson that comes through to me, is make it concrete.
Chuck Grimes