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.’