[lbo-talk] how did you become a lefty

[Carrol Cox]

Operation Abolition has an odd place in my political history. Someone at
Northern Michigan (in Marquette on Lake Superior) showed it in, I think,
the fall of 1960. At the time I was a full-blooded liberal, quite
anti-communist, and could easily still have gotten my job at NSA back.
The movie struck me as wonderful farce, and I wrote a letter to the
Marquette paper to that effect (sort of typical professorial irony).
End, temporarily, of story.

After I got politiicized in 1965-66 I attended a few conferences in Ann
Arbor. Then a few years later someone in Detroit sued the Michigan State
Police for the records of their Red Squad, & I got a letter asking me if
I wanted to be added to the suit. I said yes, and in due course a copy
of my record arrived. Lo and behold, it didn't start with the conference
on Vietnam or the conference of Radicals in the Professions. It began in
Marquette. Some woman there had thought my sillly little letter was
subversive & complained to the State Police. They, among other things,
interviewed the President & Provost of Northern (who didn't like me
because of a snotty letter of resignation I had sent). They babbled
away, and to boot gave the cops a copy of my placement file f rom the
University of Michigan. I got to read all my letters of recommendation,
etc.

The movie had no particular political effect on me at the time, but the
image of them dragging people down the steps stuck in my mind and may
have colored various news from the early '60s.

Carrol

SA wrote:
> 
> Chuck Grimes wrote:
> 
> > In my senior year I had civics teacher who showed the Birch Society film
> > on the SF HUAC demonstrations. I might have believed this was a
> > documentary, if I hadn't already heard the stories about these
> > demonstrations from BC's older brother who was there.
> >
> 
> The movie ("Operation Abolition") was actually made by HUAC itself. They
> actually subpoenaed the local TV stations in SF to get the footage.
> 
> Though I'm sure the Birch Society, among others likeminded, distributed it.
> 
> SA
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk