This says Evans grew up around Beverly and Temple. I think that's Chuck Grimes's old stomping grounds. Dennis Claxton
-------
(This guy Evans turned out to be really interesting to me...so long post)
Yes. I had to check a map. It looks likw Temple runs parallel to Beverly. We lived on a hill just above the intersection of Lucas and Beverly. I wonder if Evans went to Union Avenue Elementary. It was my favorite school. I repeated the second half of the fourth grade and then went through fifth there. So it was only a year and a half. I loved the neighborhood too. After Guadalajara, it sure didn't seem `tough' at the time. Although now that I think back, it had that reputation. One after noon, walking home along Beverly I went passed the intersection where the big kids from Belmont High were standing around in a big crowd where they caught the buses. So I asked some girl what was going on? She said some Mexican girls had gotten into a razor blade fight. Pretty wild idea. Fight with razor blades. The crowd was big and worried me, so I hiked around the front of the school and then down the hill.
It looks like the city has carved up the Belmont section so much what I am describing probably doesn't make much sense.
Anyway, the most important thing about going to Union was a combination of social and educational. The school was so heavily integrated with different kinds of kids, asian, white, mexican, black, and kids from places I never heard of. Nobody had a majority and couldn't run the playground. This created a great sense of freedom, because I didn't have to conform to any thing. Everybody all ready wore the same cheap cloths. Woolworth off brands. Bag lunches were so similar there was no point to trading food. After getting back from Mexico, I didn't know how to play any of the playground sports. So learning the organized kid sports in the US was pretty tough going. My ignorance must have been obvious, since I stood at home plate with bat in hand and missed three times. Things like that went by with a sort of cheerful derision from the bench.Then I had three good teachers in a row.
Another important experience was going to the swim program run by the downtown YMCA during Easter vacation. The way this worked was you sign up, and go to the school yard in the morning and wait. A big flat bed truck with high slats and cover rolled up and we all got on. This truck and several others then proceeded to wonder around downtown picking up more kids---again a really motly collection of kids. The trucks pulled up on this giant YMCA building near city hall. We went inside and took all our cloths off and put them in open lockers and then lined up at the edge of this huge indoor swimming pool, butt naked. The swim trainers had suits, but not us. I was kind of relieved I didn't have to see what was under their shorts. Ugly.
I thought this was pretty strange at the time. Now I realize that naked kids don't need bathing suits, towels, soap, or anything. Poor kids don't have to worry about not having anything. The trucks were cheaper than buses. It was a great way to learn how to swim. They gave out fancy certificates with a big gold seal and check marks for the tests you passed. I was very proud all my little boxes were checked for the beginner section.
So the reason for going into this is I think these sorts of experiences have great political and social meaning later. When snag asked about when did you become a radical, I thought of some of these experiences. These build up in my mind as a feeling of solidarity with a peer group, a core socialization process of childhood. A motly gang of low income city kids has a great sense of roots or tradition to it. Speculating. The lack of public institutions and community organization that build up these sorts of experiences is probably why there are gangs---and churches. People will organize themselves one way or another, so best to take that impulse and channel it into social goods.
As for Evans and the communist party, after getting kicked out of CORE for being white, I decided to stay out of organizations. You don't need to join anything to show up to a march or do a sit-in or get beat up by the cops. All you need is a phone number for a lawyer. It's a little like the swim program, just show up check it out.
Remodeling a house. Well, been there and done that, but it didn't end well. I got divorced and went back to living like a student. Owning property, especially something like a house is tough going. I didn't get along with houses---mostly likely because I couldn't afford one and couldn't live in one the way I liked. I liked apartments and studios, more of a bohemian style like my first parents had in Mexico and LA.
This is interesting to read Louis Proyect's review here:
http://www.swans.com/library/art16/lproy59.html
Turing to industry. Now there is a mixed bag. I ended up a mechanic because I couldn't get a teaching job out of school. Art school teaching turned out to require gallery shows and I could get into any. So I had to do something. I'd been a union carpenter, apprentice, but construction was just a fucking physical killer. There was nothing left of me at the end of the day. I used to come close to falling asleep on the short commute home from SF and Oakland jobs. The pay was good.
Anyway I got lucky when I worked as a hospital orderly... which led to becoming part of the first wave of disability rights orgs, etc. One key difference is that around here for some reason I found the working class was pretty well educated in their social and political views. I never figured out why. Social and political awareness is reasonably high compared to what Evans encountered in Minnesoda. The kinds of attitudes he found, only came from white middle class people who grew up and lived in the out laying suburban areas---but even that has changed quite a lot.
I had some of these lunch break job organizer style discussions. Most were pointless. We agreed on just about everything, except getting organized into a union. We would all lose our jobs. It was as simple as that. So you need a big well connected union, with lots of support back up if the boss decides to try anything like firing the whole shop.
I never saw this as a failure of the left. It was a failure of organized labor. I understand their side. Small shops are not worth the headache. Trouble is most of the working class around here work in small shops. Most of the damned residential construction, especially remodeling is non-union. Most auto shops are non-union, etc. What's with that? Most of the male immigrant labor is in the same small business sector. You can buy a guy on the street corner for a lot less than the rental of a small back hoe. He'll dig the trench for a water hook-up cheaper than a machine. See?
I thought of a way around this. Change a city ordinance on building permits to require union certification of any non-owner performed labor. The legal excuse is union workers learn the building codes and are expected to follow them. This is the way it's done above the residential level.
So the existing conditions have to be taken into account and most of the labor movement doesn't seem to see the problem. The emphasis on small business has atomized labor, pure and simple. When a small construction contractor can buy manual labor from a street corner, we've got some serious labor problems. I am all for big strong unions, so where the hell were they in any of my job sites?
After reading the rest of Proyect's review, I am surprised at Evans from his dismissle of Cuba to his Zionism. It must be part of that LA influence. And then too, if he is an administrator in the UC system, that's a whole other bad influence. Working in the administration can turn anybody brain dead and completely souless. It's just part of the job. I watched similar transformations up here at UCB among moderately radical disabled men and women who got on the professional career path.
CG