[lbo-talk] Comment on F-9/11

Jon Johanning jjohanning at igc.org
Tue Jun 29 21:05:46 PDT 2004


On Jun 28, 2004, at 7:13 PM, R wrote:


> the reason the black revolution of the 1960s was successful was
> that you had MLK, jr, and malcolm X coming at the problem from both
> directions, and the black people were mobilized.

Not just black people -- it was a genuinely interracial movement, at least for a while. (I remember when the whites were ejected from CORE; I was a member at the time. OTOH, I wasn't a very effective member, partly because of being white, so I didn't blame them too much for taking this step.)


> they wouldn't back down
> and they wouldn't take no for an answer. i don't see that spirit any
> more.
> i see glimmers of it here and there. but nothing like i saw in the
> 1960s.
> it saddens me deeply to write that.
>
> in 2000, i heard blacks say that the jim crow felon list problem in
> florida
> wouldn't have happened if they'd had the old civil rights workers
> around.
> those civil rights workers, they said, would have anticipated the
> problem
> and been ready for it. i don't see that level of preparation or fight
> anywhere today. i sure hope i'm wrong. not only because it effects my
> immediate family but because it effects us all as human beings.

I think it will be quite a while before anything like the social change movement of the '60s is generated. Perhaps the conditions for it were so unique that it will never be repeated. But in the meantime, anyway, we just have to do what we can.

Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax



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