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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 1971)
entary Nicholas Von Hoffman Mass politics may make a comeback (C) 1971, The Washington Post Apathy on the campus. New mood in colleges. Such are the headlines appearing above articles telling us that burning down the ROTC building has gone out of fashion, and, indeed, the mood has changed. The movement, that hopeful, radicalistic turmoil with its enormous energy and its promise of who knows what kind of better tomorrows, seems to have lost its power to command people’s imaginations: no longer able to take on the major questions of the time, it fritters away its resources on such fringe issues as prison reform, a cause which, even if successfully won, will leave everybody and everything as they were before. It’s commonly said by people outside the movement that the partial withdrawl from Vietnam drained it of its force. From within comes talk of grand juries and the way the courts tied up its leadership and forced it to expend what moneys it had in endless litigation. A somewhat different view comes from Staughton Lynd, the radical, ex Yale, ex-Roosevelt University history • professor who goes way back to the beginning of SDS in the north and the r Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Com mittee in the South. Mass movement Last spring he gave a talk at Joan Baez’ Institute for the Study of Non violence in which he said, “I think this feeling that the movement could be a mass movement, had to be a mass movement if it were going to change society, is the one that existed in the early 1960s. . Even if it were only a few people sitting in at the lunch counters ... we felt that these exemplary actions were intended to catalyze a majority movement, a democratic movement, a movement of the people as a whole. “I have the impression that, somewhere in the last two or three or four years, for many that hope, that vision, that assumption, got lost. “If instead of thinking of ourselves as part of the American people who were helping to initiate a transformation of that people as a whole, we began to think of ourselves as a separate people, a per secuted minority, a harrassed band of ' dissidents who could not in their wildest dreams hope that they could transform this monster, that they could reach their fellow Americans sufficiently to win them to the possibility of a new society. Instead of feeling ourselves inside what was happening to American people, we began to feel ourselves outside what was hap pening ; to spell American with a “K” and to feel that the homeowning, union belonging, 10,000-dollar-a-year-making American who lived next door to us was irredeemably a pig and an enemy who could be neutralized or sedated but not converted.” Became outsiders It wasn’t just the principal figures like Staughton Lynd who became outsiders in their own land, but much of the youth from which the movement has gotten its greatest support, both active and passive. Some of this apartness derives from the unutterable folly and bad judgment of the leadership, but some of it arises from the separated position that younger people are placed in. The job market, the school system and the endless advertising tatto proclaiming that youth is different and separate join to keep them apart. Tens of thousands of social workers, ministers, teachers, shrinks and merchandisers of everything from pimple cream to pop wine make their livings by maintaining the large variety of playpens in which we keep youth on ice. Halfway houses, counseling centers, rapid academic credit requirements, all the gimmicks of the multi-billion-dollar youth industry keep the young ones out of the labor force and away from the business of the nation. Without realizing it, the movement has collaborated in keeping youth powerless and at a distance. The don’t-trust-anyone over-30 slogans, the age exclusivity of the gatekeepers to the counterculture and a tinge of reckless goofyness all have helped . to make sure youth stays in the social cooler. Calm Panther" Now however, efforts are being made to change that. Staughton Lynd recalls that up to ’89 the youthful oolitical en deavors did have an impact, and he's gone off to organize around Gary, Ind. Huey P. Newton is trying to turn the Panthers from armed theatricals toward activities which attract instead of terrify the Black community. Outfits like the Youth Citizenship Fund have stocked themselves with hundreds of thousands of dollars of foundation money and are making a sober, businesslike effort to register the young, eligible voter. In Davenport, Iowa, this past weekend there was a meeting of the radicals of the ‘80b like Lynd and Paul Booth, former national SD6 secretary. What brought them together was the belated realization that, if they hadn’t accomplished their political goals, they have to an astonishing degree persauded millions of Americans that their critique of our society is * sensible one and that there is no reason for them to flit around like shadowy pariahs. “In the ‘60b we had to show people what was wrong—that was the time of consensus—but the question of the ‘70s isn’t what’s wrong; it’s what we’re going to do about it,” says Michael Lerner, a former wildman whose rhetoric has turned prudent. “We’re trying to build an organization that is the expression of the American people...we had that chance before but just when people had opened up to the new political perspectives, the old new left ran away saying ‘God! we’re going to be co-opted.”’ The people meeting in Davenport hope to start something called the New American Movement, and it’s too early to speculate on whether it will be successful in gaining political power But what’s interesting is that this group of ex-new lefties have given up some of the crazier kinds of T-group politics for structured meetings and majority votes. Everywhere and in many different forms you can see the urge to learn how to master the mechanisms of this endless, intricate society and use them in the service of the values and perceptions that brawls on the last decade made respec table. So it L that a Washington D.C. collective has brought out a book called “Source Catalog No. I," the first of a series on communications, law, economics, etc. (Swallow Press, Inc., Chicago $1.50). Unlike the enormously successful whole earth catalogue that was desperate people fleeting to begin again on the sides of remote mountains, this is a handbook for the people who’re staying to work it out and need precise information about how to organize and operate. All of this may fail, but if it does we will still have millions of students and young adults who’re functionally disconnected with the business of America and in that detached and isolated condition they’re going to act like every other mass of over-educated, under-employed people... they’re going to cause some kind of trouble. Los Angeles Tlmes-Washington Post News Service | Letter Parking Saturday, November 20, 1971 1 parked in the Eugene Overpark, while viewing a movie. I arrived at Overpark and received a ticket marked 7:40 p.m. At 9:30 p.m., less than two hours later, I came back to my car and found an envelope that indicated that I should pay fifty cents for my two hours parking. This was, however, inconsistent with the sign at the exit, which quoted parking, prices as two hours of parking for twenty five cents. The parking attendant would not accept twenty-five cents for parking saying that the envelope had already been put out and that there was nothing she could do. I suggest that Diamond Parking could be more consistent in its parking policies. Don Crawford 1000Patterson, Rm. 237 Eugene, Oregon 97401 •irs NICE TO KNOW THAT EVERY FOUR YEARS WE REGAIN OUR IMPORTANCE TO SOCIETY.’