And it was Savio, who did have that experience and who did mobilize Berkeley around students' bill of rights who explained the "urgency" of the movement with respect to having grown up under the nuclear umbrella.
He was an extraordinarily intelligent, patient, brave, and hard working man. And if he said that the possibility of nuclear annihilation had something to do with the mind cast of the period, I believe him.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Monday, February 21, 2011 6:28:17 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] NONSENSE RE THE '60S - was A Note on an old slogan
Joanna,
I'm not doing that. You're making it seem like I'm doing that.
Never mind. When you decide to be crotchety, there's no helping anything. ====
Preliminary: Check my post: I said nothing about you, but focused on Mario: "I'm sorry to hear that Mario fell for the junk about "generational conflict." I _had_ read your post sloppily in a secondary way, not noticing that you had linked yourself to Mario's position; I merely focused on the quotation (or paraphrase) and ignored the rest. Sorry: Had I recognized that you were so attached to his statement I might have changed my rhetoric a bit. _This_ post is focused on "The '60s" and Mario's distortion of a great period in U.S. history.) There is, I think, few if any more important questions for leftists of the present perod than a full and clear understanding of "What happened in the 1060s," the title of a book I am paying a student $22 an hour to read to me. I've gotten through three chapters. It is a densely written and lengthy book, and I fear it is going to take quite a few dollars to get it done. But it is a crucial book. His intention, which from the first three chapters I believe he fulfills is to set the '60s in the entire context of U.S. politics since WW2. (The '60s really started, perhaps, the minute some returned Black veteran encountered a sign, "Whites Only.") And it was in the late 40s that C.L.R. James, on the basis of figures showing a steady rise in NAACP local member ship, predicted that an era of social change was coming. As I will reiterate below, any statement about the '60s that does not place the Black experience and the Black movement at its center is racist, however unaware the person making it might be of that fact. We need to grasp the period as a whole.
That Black Struggle remained crucial to the very end of the period. And if one wants to understand how "white students" got involved in the first place, it was simply moral outrage of what they saw happening in the South. And white students _returning_ to campus from their experience in the South who broadened the movement there. Those interested should read Morgan's book.
It is from that perspective that I want to give a fuller response to Mario Savio's unfortunate statement as paraphrased by Joanna.
=====
Joanna's paraphrase of Mario Savio: He said that the generation who articulated the messages of the 60's had grown up with the possibility of nuclear annihilation as something that could happen at any moment. And that as a result, there was the feeling that there was only ten minutes left to live, so that if there was going to be change, it would have to happen now.
=====
"generation who articulated the messages of the 60's: True, not explicit reference to generational 'conflict' but it clearly makes _a_ generation _the_ carrier of _the_ messages_ of 'the 60s. This is flatly false. It is also (though unintentionally) racist. The _key_ message of the period was enunciated by Rosa Parks, Rev. King, SCLC, SNCC, Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, the Fredom Riders of 1961, the ex-CP members who were King's key advisors. Most of these were hardly members of "the generation" that grew up under the shadow of the Bomb, and to steal from them _the_ articulation of _the_ messages of the '60s is flatly racist. And what was the demand/message of this stage (roughly 1954-1964) of The 60s? It was We are Americans and Demand that we be treated as Americans. It demanded the end of that White Male Nation celebrated in Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Nothing more, really. Mario even slurs over the importance of some old fighters of the '30s in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.)
"so that if there was going to be change, it would have to happen now": Again, flatly false. "Demand the Impossible" was and is is a political principle. "We want it now" was never more than a bit fo rhetorical fluff, a flourish in chants at a demo. It was certainly never used by the originators of the slogan, the French of 1968, who would have been seriously insulted had they heard Savio's false explanation. (It was of course relevant to wanting the right to literature tables to advertise next week's rally, but that hardly explains 20 years of struggle.)
"grown up with the possibility of nuclear annihilation": I would like to see some concrete evidence of this. It seems seriously silly to me. If someone can provide evidence, for example, linking ERAP to fear of annihilation I might be interested.
I repeat. There is hardly a more important intellectual task of current leftists than understanding the '60s, a period of serious political struggle, growing and expanding from 1954 to the mid-70s. Savio's odd statement can only deflect from and confuse that task.
Carrol
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk