A Bad Dystopian Novel

Found in the Daily Planet archives, dated April 31, 1984

USA 2020—a review

by Jim E Olsun

First time novelist, Peter Parker, has produced one of the most outlandish pieces of fiction of the year. While USA 2020 is certainly an imaginative work, it stretches credulity past the breaking point by throwing in disaster on top of disaster and imagines a year where the president of the United States is a failed businessman, casino operator, and former TV star who attempts to use the office to make himself into the type of dictator more often found in Latin American countries and spends his time sending crazy messages to the public who apparently carry personal computers in their pockets disguised as mobile phones. (I am imagining the author intends this as some type of satire.)

The book has five gigantic wildfires sweeping across California and three burning through Colorado, so many hurricanes cropping up in the Atlantic Ocean that the meteorologists run out of people's names and have to use Greek letters, and a derecho (I had to look that one up—it's a rare windstorm) devastating much of Iowa and Illinois. The book also has multiple killings of Black men and women by police culminating in over 10,000 protests throughout the summer. A whole novel could have been written about any of these horrors but to claim that they all occurred in one year is way too much. There is even the mention of something called “murder hornets”.

Yet this doesn't even approach the biggest disaster facing the various people caught up in this insane imagining of a year in this country. The author actually throws in a plague-like pandemic which virtually shuts down the nation (and most of the world) and makes it completely unlikely that half of this stuff would occur. Then the author throws in characters who claim that the pandemic is a hoax and refuse to take measures to ensure their safety even as hundreds of thousands die around them.

To top all of this off, there is a presidential election that is unimaginable, won by career politician who barely campaigns. Although he is your typical presidential figure, his wife is a college professor who insists on being called Doctor and intends to keep her career rather than settling into being a first lady, his vice president is not only a woman but born of immigrant parents from Jamaica and India, and her Jewish husband refers to himself as the “Second Gentleman”. (The author certainly subscribes to political correctness) Although they win both the popular and electoral votes, the sitting president (who comes across as an out of control narcissist) refuses to acknowledge this and incites his followers claiming that the election was stolen through voter fraud.

This leads to the most unbelievable part of the novel, as it ends with a mob breaking into the Capitol building wearing fur and horned helmets and carrying spears and a Confederate flag, running around trying to find the vice-president so they could hang him while members of congress hide under their desks. Just the idea that so many people could just break into the US Capitol, one of the most secure buildings on the planet, with that much ease is simply highly unrealistic.

I am giving this book a C+ rating, only because it is a first attempt and is so highly imaginative, if equally improbable. My suggestion is that the author focus on only one disaster at a time in his next book. A year that had that many things go wrong in it is obviously impossible.

 

All-American Communes

I’m far from patriotic and so it seems wild to me to label anything,  “All-American”, but I also realize that at the beginning of this blog, I spent four months (from a post labeled “US History 1:Why?” on January 1st, 2009, to “USH30: What About Now?”  posted on April 27th) focusing on American history.   

In fact, the most popular post on this blog, by far, is one of the history posts,  “USH25:Social Movements in the Eighties”.  It's had over three thousand page views, which isn't a lot for a blog, I know, but the next most popular post has only five hundred something page views.   My guess is that the reason it's so popular is that it shows up in searches, and it may be one of the few pieces on eighties social movements, and it's being used by high school and college students for writing papers.

I’ve talked extensively here about communes and communities as laboratories for social change and, in my history posts, I also talked about communal histories, especially the utopian communities of the nineteenth century.  I have thought about that as the beginning of the communal movement in the US.

Finally, I have a Google newsfeed set up to flag any articles on “Communes" or “Intentional Communities”.  Recently this showed up.

 

It's a promotional piece for a talk on the Oneida community.  I’ve always been fascinated by this community, but what grabbed my attention was the beginning of the piece.   

The author mentions the communes of the sixties and how ‘counter-culture’ and, for some people, ‘un-American’ they were.   He then goes on to say: “In reality, though, they were as American as apple pie.  We often miss the fact that the English colonies in America started out as experimental utopian societies: the Pilgrims with their communism and commitment to the simple life; Massachusetts and the other Puritan colonies, with their austerity and a commitment to self-examination and self-criticism that would make Chairman Mao cheer; Rhode Island, with its commitment to anarchy; the Pennsylvania Quakers, with their pacifism and their mysticism; the pacifist anabaptist sects, with their semi-closed communities; Georgia, where the rulers imported misfits and criminals so as to reprogram them after isolating them in the wilderness.

“Our pioneer settlers were the lunatic fringe, and when they sailed away, folks back in Europe were delighted to wave goodbye.”

It’s a very different view of American history, and one that makes me appreciate that the communal experiments that a bunch of us are engaging in, go a long way back.

Quote of the Day: “We got another burst of utopian communities in the middle of the 19th century, as the world was turning toward the modern age, away from lifestyles that had endured for a thousand years. … While dozens of such communities speckled the American landscape, they lay especially thick in a band then ran from Boston to Buffalo. “ - Kirk House

The Next Society 1: Some Background

I want to return again to the major theme of this blog: social change/social alchemy. 

I've been working on this blog for eight years now.  During that time, I've studied and thought a lot about, not only social transformation, but history, systems thinking, and communities as laboratories for social change.

Lately I've been thinking a bit about what we're working toward.  What would a new society look like?  How would it come about?  How likely is change to really happen?

Over the next few posts, I want to put my ideas out about where we might be heading. As someone once said, "It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."

Nevertheless, I'd like to give it a try.

I think that one of the best ways to look at the future is to look at what's happened in the past.

I'm going to start with politics and economics.  Until very recently in history, these two were intertwined.

Here's my rapid, super condensed, super simplified, idiosyncratic version of world history:

We start with nomadic, hunter-gatherer tribes.  As I quoted in my post on Chimps, Bonobos, and Tribes (March 31, 2016),  Iain Couzin and Mark Laidre claim that “More than 99% of human history was spent in a hunter-gatherer existence..." That began to change with the development of agriculture.  There are a bunch of theories as to how that came about but with agriculture, tribes settled down and inequality grew.

Eventually the tribes grew into the city-states of Sumer, Egypt, Phoencia, Babylonia, Greece, and eventually Rome--and many of these became the seats of empire.   Rome was the biggest empire but it eventually overextended itself and had to deal with internal conflicts and corruption. Rome was finally done in by the tribal groups that they referred to as 'barbarians'. These tribes settled down into fiefdoms, new kingdoms, and new empires. This was the Middle Ages and the system that emerged from this has been called feudalism. 

There had been traders and merchants through much of history, but they were kept in control by the rulers.  In the 1600s and 1700s, the merchants began to gain power as they grew richer.  With industrialization in the 1800s, they took control and capitalism emerged.  All this has been described by David Ricardo, David Hume, and Adam Smith.

My point here is that Ricardo, Hume, and Smith described the growth of capitalism--they did not invent it.  Capitalism, like the city-states, empires, and feudalism, emerged in an organic growth process.

Karl Marx (who even many mainstream capitalist economists view as an important economic theorist) studied this process and attempted to predict the next stage.  He was influenced by Hegel's dialectical method where a thesis meets an antithesis and through their clash a synthesis emerges.  He saw the contradictions of capitalism leading to an emergent dictatorship of the proletariat.  While he encouraged and worked for a revolution, he saw this as an organic process that would occur when the situation was right.  As Wikipedia points out, "Marx accused ... other revolutionaries of being 'adventurists' because of their belief that a revolutionary situation could be created out of thin air by the sheer 'will power' of the revolutionaries without regard to the economic realities of the current situation."  While he did dedicate himself to trying to change the world, he pointed out "Communism is ... not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. ... The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence."

The person who changed all this was Vladmir Lenin, who came up with the idea of "a revolutionary vanguard party" which would overthrow the capitalist government.  He started with Russia, which would have horrified Marx, since Russia was a largely agricultural society and practically still in the feudal stage.  Rather than socialism emerging through an organic process, Lenin claimed "that capitalism could ultimately only be overthrown with revolution..."  This became the template for all the "Communist" countries, where socialism was imposed from the top rather than grown from the bottom.  We have now seen the results of that.

When people point to these countries as examples of why communism can't work, I point to Twin Oaks where communism has been working for nearly fifty years and is going strong.  The difference is that at Twin Oaks, it grew from the ground up and it's entirely voluntary to be part of it.

So, my first claim about the next society is that it will emerge organically, out of things that have been grown from the ground up, and I predict that it will come from several sources that will be strung together--that is, it will be networked.

Next: A Patchwork Politic


Quote of the Day:  "Life did not take over the globe by conquest, but by networking." - Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan

Update 5: Riding the Rails

If you want to travel long distance within the US, you really have four main options: drive a car, fly, take a bus, or take the train.  (There are, of course, other ways, such as taking a ship, biking long stretches, or even walking across the country--which I've heard tales about.)  There are a bunch of airlines if you decide to fly, but if you decide to take the train or bus (which both have a much smaller carbon footprint than flying or driving--alone anyway), there is really only one option each.  If you're traveling by bus, your only real option is Greyhound; it acquired Continental Trailways, its main long-distance rival, in 1987.  If you want to take a train any long distance, you need to take Amtrak.

When the small rail systems began losing passengers and money in the late '60s, the US Congress (prodded by the National Association of Railroad Passengers) began looking into the possibility of a national rail system.  In 1970, they passed the Rail Passenger Service Act to create that system.  As the Amtrak brochure, Amtrak America, 2011-2012, states: "Officially known as the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Amtrak began service on May 1, 1971 as the country's first centrally managed, nationwide rail network."

When I realized how much I'd be traveling this fall, I was debating between taking Greyhound or Amtrak.  Greyhound looked cheaper, but friends pursuaded me to do most of my travel on Amtrak--pointing out (because they knew me) Greyhound's difficult union history as well as it being a private corporation and Amtrak being a publically owned enterprise.  I have and will do some of my travel on Greyhound but I'm doing most of it, including my long trip to California (see my last post on Eco-Oakland, Riveting Richmond, and Groovy SF, for details about what I did when I was out there) on Amtrak.

The trip to California was a long one.  I left South Station in Boston, Friday, September 28th, on a bus that replaced the train west, because they were working on the tracks.  Luckily the bus went directly to Albany, New York, saving lots of time.  Unluckily, that meant being stuck longer in the station in Rensselaer, NY (the train, or in this case bus, doesn't actually go to Albany), which was not near anything.  (From a roadway near the station I could see the capital building in Albany in the distance.)  Eventually the train came for Chicago and by the next morning we pulled into the 'Windy City', where the most exciting thing I did was dash across town so I could see Lake Michigan in the distance for a minute.

At 2pm on Saturday I left Chicago on the California Zephyr.  For the next three days I saw cornfields and mountains (the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada), towering cliffs, looming mesas, and miles and miles of desert.  I saw the Mississippi River as we crossed it and I saw bits of Denver, Reno, and Sacramento (not to mention Grand Junction, Colorado, where the train stopped for forty-five minutes and I got to run around outside for a bit).  At about five-thirty on Monday, October 1st, the train pulled into Emeryville, California, its last stop.

My train ride back last week was equally long--four days--in the other direction.  The biggest differences were that I was longer in Chicago this time around (and got to stand on the shore of Lake Michigan for a while) and when the train reached the 'Albany-Rensselaer' station, it actually split in two, with one half (that I was in) going on to Boston and the other half heading off to NYC.  Pretty clever.

And I'm getting to be a regular on the Northeast Corridor route.  I'll be taking Amtrak down to Charlottesville, VA, in a few weeks to go to Twin Oaks, and later (because I'm also planning to visit a community in Pennsylvania on this trip) taking it back from Harrisburg to Boston (via Philadelphia).

The most important thing I can say about taking the train, or the bus, (other than notice the smaller carbon footprint) is that, unlike flying, you get a real sense of what lies in between your destinations.  I feel like I've experienced how big the US is and a lot of what lies in the 'heartlands', and with every trip to Virginia, I see more and more of the east coast.  Which is why I'm 'riding the rails'.


Quote of the Week: "There was a time when taking a trip in America meant taking the train.  But by the end of the 1960s, the national highway system and a growing aviation industry had changed travel habits.  Private railroads clamored to eliminate their unprofitable passenger operations.  But the government knew that the country needed passenger rail and stepped in to create Amtrak." - Amtrak America

Update 4: Eco-Oakland, Riveting Richmond, and Groovy SF

I can't believe that I'm out in Oakland, California.  As someone who seldom likes to leave New England, it seems bizarre to me to be traveling the country.  But I have a very dear friend out here who has wanted me to visit for a long time and this seemed like the best opportunity I'd have.  I took the train out here and I will write a post on my train adventures in the near future.

While I've been in Oakland I've visited some of the community groups that my friend has been working with.  One is Phat Beets Produce. They have a garden where they teach young people about growing food and make all of what they're growing available to the neighborhood.  They also run a great little farmer's market, which we visited on last Saturday. Another cool group that he is involved with is the People's Grocery.  They have a garden behind the California Hotel--a place which houses people with disabilities. When we visited the People's Grocery they were hosting an event where they made 'smoothies' with fresh vegetables and fruit and offered them to anyone who came by the busy urban intersection by the Hotel (located in a very low income area).  The MC for the event managed to pursuade on young skeptical kid to try a smoothie--which he then spat out.  Turns out he likes eating nachos.  But the MC stayed with him and got the smoothie makers to create a fresh food drink that he liked.  Maybe this will spark an interest in eating better--or at least create a seed that might flower later.  I was very impressed with the work that both of these groups are doing.

My friend and I also took a bike ride up to the Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park in Richmond, CA.  (Richmond is few towns north of Oakland.)  This is an amazing exhibit about how the needs around World War II led to changes that eventually sparked many social change efforts.  It gave me a view of the situation of women, blacks, and Asian and Latin groups in the 1940s and how the war changed everything.  It was a good reminder that the movements of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, did not come out of nowhere.  (For more on this time in US history, see my posts on World War Once More, 3/2/09, through Social Movements in the Seventies, 3/30/09.)

Recently we had a great time in San Francisco, which is across the bay from here. We did Sunday morning meditation with the Gay Buddhist Fellowship which had a nice group of mellow men, took in some of the 'Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival' (which featured Patti Smith--who is truly hardly bluegrass and who we didn't see--and Emmy Lou Harris--who is sort of bluegrass and who we caught a little of), and spent a night at the Red Victorian in Haight Ashbury which is not only a bed and breakfast, but also "a living peace museum".  Needless to say, wandering around Haight Ashbury was a trip.  Monday we biked around Golden Gate Park where we saw bison, as well as a whale off in the distance in San Francisco harbor and a blue heron up very close up in the lagoon behind the Tree Fern exhibit (very prehistoric looking) in the Park.

There are some wild and amazing things happening out here in the Bay Area.  But, much as I've enjoyed it, New England is still my home and I'm still hoping to settle down somewhere on the east coast.


Quote of the Day:  "What We Work For, What We Want:

1. Health Care Without Harm
2. Strong Economic Opportunities for small, disenfranchised farmers [sic]
3. Edible Parks, Edible Communities
4. Neighborhood Based Food Micro-Enterprise
5. Empowered Youth that Shape their Food System
6. Resiliant Communities Organized Through Food and Healing" - Phat Beets Produce brochure

Day of Mourning

This year I took the opportunity to attend an event that I have heard of for many years: the 'National Day of Mourning'.

I wrote last year about my ambivalence about Thanksgiving: on one hand, it's important to be grateful and thankful for all we have, and on the other hand the irony of a holiday where we are grateful for what our ancestors took through genocide and slavery. (See Giving Thanks, 11/26/09.) I mentioned the Day of Mourning that is held by the United American Indians of New England. This year I went.

It's important for white US folks to pay attention to how we ended up with the privileges that we have. When I wrote my series on US History I covered the treatment of those who were living here when the Europeans arrived. (See USH3: Finding a New World, 1/9/09, and USH5: The Nation Grows, 1/17/09.) Basically the native people helped them out and the Europeans enslaved and killed them in return.

For Thanksgiving, 1970, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts held a banquet to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. An Aquinnah Wampanoag man named Frank James, or Wamsutta, was asked to speak. However, when they got a copy of the speech ahead of time, they 'disinvited' him, claiming "...the theme of the anniversary celebration is brotherhood and anything inflammatory would have been out of place." The inflammatory things that he pointed out included that "The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn and beans. Mourt's Relation describes a searching party of sixteen men. Mourt goes on to say that this party took as much of the Indians' winter provisions as they were able to carry."

On Cole's Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is a plaque that explains the rest: "Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered at noon on Cole's Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture. Participants in a National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience."

It was an honor to be part of this remembrance. Unfortunately, most of the native people in the US today are among the poorest people in the country. They are still treated badly. We need to change that, just as we need to change the way we treat immigrants, African-Americans, poor and working class people of whatever color, etc, etc. I don't ever want to forget that there were a people living here that are still living here and they cared for the earth and still do. We need to be honoring them, and learning from them, and asking their pardon. We need to do more than just treat them better. We need to support them.


Quote of the Day: "This is a time of celebration for you - celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.
"... We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people." - Wamsutta (Frank) James

Collapse

In my last post I mentioned the possibility that the system--and, in fact, this society--might collapse on its own. It's not just peak oil theory that leads me to suspect this.

In fact, I am coming to believe that the collapse is already happening and you can see it if you pay attention. Part of the problem is that people think that collapse is going to be a sudden, dramatic event. I have been appreciating the viewpoint of John Michael Greer, author of the book, The Long Descent, and writer of The Archdruid Report. (For more on The Archdruid Report, see my post of 8/5/08.) He claims that there is a collapse coming, but it won't be the sudden, dramatic collapse that some of the 'doomers' predict. Instead, it will be slow and gradual, punctuated by sudden events, but mostly apparent only in hindsight.

Having done a long review of American History in this blog last year, I can see ways in which we are already into the collapse. I'm an old guy. I remember the fifties and sixties and they were quite different from life now. Not a golden age, but one with a very different economic reality. People seldom worried about their jobs disappearing, corporations, by and large, took care of their workers, and prosperity seemed to be increasing for everyone. Oh, there was a lot wrong with this time, which is why the rebellions of the sixties and seventies were so dramatic (see my posts, It All Breaks Loose, 3/14/08, and Social Movements in the Seventies, 3/30/08, for more on this), but something changed in the seventies. Nevermind peak oil, I think that the fifties and sixties were our 'Peak Economy'--a time of general affluence that we will never see again. The change is so clear it can be pinpointed to a particular year. (See my posts on 1973, 3/22/09, and Economic History of the 20th Century, 4/19/09.)

My series on US History began with a question: how did the sixties end up with the eighties? The answers, of course, are found in the seventies. I think that it's interesting that I've been to a bunch of conferences on energy, the environment, etc, where people will propose something and an old dude will get up and point out that whatever it is, it was done in the seventies. The question then arises, what would things be like if we continued doing those things, instead of stopping them in the eighties and trying to reinvent them now? The short answer seems to be that we wouldn't be in the unprepared mess we are now.

None of this stuff really disappeared totally in the eighties, but most of it (systems theory, alternative energy, conservation, intentional communities, creative shelter, etc) got scaled way back. Some of it was 'the Reagan Revolution' and corporate/Republican destruction of anything that threatened them. Some of it was the hubris of the designers. (See my post on Hubris, 12/30/09.) But I think that a big part of it was that people did not want to hear anything about needing to do with less. President Carter told the American public that they needed to turn down their heat and begin car-pooling and using public transit. Energy usage certainly went down, but Carter lost to Reagan by 91% of the vote. (See my post on The Rest of the Seventies, 3/29/09.) Telling the public to do with less has been political poison since then.

It's not that we could have the affluence we had in the fifties and sixties, only with solar and wind power (something that some folks in the alternative energy community seem to claim--see my post on Bright Green, Dark Green, Deep Green, 11/10/09, for a bit on the 'Bright Green' folks who seem to believe that the right technology will save us). Rather, I think that if we learned from the seventies, we would be better able to deal with the changes that are going on now.

For those who don't believe we are well past 'Peak Economy' and may point out the affluent periods of the eighties and nineties, I ask that you notice that those who prospered were a small segment of the population--quite unlike the general prosperity of the fifties and sixties. There were 'economic bubbles' then and there may yet be a few economic bubbles in the future that a few folks can take advantage of for a while, but like any other bubbles, they're temporary, and eventually burst. What we saw in the last years of the Bush administration and are still seeing today, is a result of some of those bubbles bursting. While I'm not a big fan of Obama, I doubt that anyone could do a lot better with this economy.

And for those who might say, how could a collapse be going on and be unnoticed, I say, look around. We are currently involved in two wars in the Middle East (one of them the longest war in US history) and experiencing one of the greatest ecological disasters the US has ever experienced, and life goes on as if nothing is happening. Sure there are some things that make people take notice (the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001 and the economic woes of the last decade--especially the collapse of the housing market, to cite a couple of examples). I'm sure there will be more in the future. But, by and large, the collapse that is occurring will only be noticed by comparing the past with the present and realizing that there will be less in the future. This doesn't necessarily need to be a bad thing. Certainly, we don't really need much of what will be disappearing. But we need to be ready (as I pointed out in my last post) to replace it.

Change happens.


Quote of the Day: "This is the way civilizations decline and fall. ...

"Nearly all of our ancestors lived in times when there was no bright future on the horizon; nearly all of our descendants will experience the same thing. The great majority of the former and, no doubt, of the latter as well, found other reasons for living. That’s an equally viable option right now, given a willingness to think the unthinkable, recognize that the age of abundance is ending, and consider the possibility that doing the right thing in a time of crisis, no matter how uncomfortable or challenging the right thing might be, may be a more potent source of meaning than waiting for magic to make a bright future arrive." - John Michael Greer

USH30: What About Now?

While I am tempted to repeat much of my last post to answer this question, I will simply summarize and for details, go back one post.

The upshot of what I've learned from studying US history is that this country was started to favor rich white men and that's still going on. There is a strong conservative streak here that is reinforced by the propaganda machine that is called the 'Mainstream Media' and that those of us who rebelled in the sixties were "näive" to think we could easily change the system. Nevertheless, there has been a long history of rebellion in the US--a history often suppressed or downplayed--but not everyone has simply accepted the official version of reality.

I ended my post with a quote from Howard Zinn (author of A People's History of the United States, one of my key sources for this series) which ends with him pointing out "...the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful." It's not an accident that the system as we know it came into play with the Robber Barons of the late nineteenth century, their rise fueled by the industrial revolution, which in turn was fueled by coal and oil. (In my post of 1/29/09 on the Robber Barons, Zinn refers to the industrial revolution as being a revolution "...of petroleum and steel.") I also pointed out that the amazing affluence of the sixties, in fact of the whole period from World War II to 1973, was largely fueled by oil, and it was not an accident that the change in economic direction that came in 1973 was sparked by the Oil Crisis that year. (See my post on the Economic History of the Twentieth Century on 4/19/09.)

If the powerful of today got there via wealth generated directly or indirectly by fossil fuels, and if peak oil predictions are anywhere near correct, they are extremely vulnerable. In my post of 8/3/08, I quote John Michael Greer as saying that we could see the industrial capitalist system as an invincible force, or we could look at it as "a brittle, ungainly, jerry-rigged contraption whose managers are vainly scrambling to hold it together against a rising tide of crises". Watching the news these days makes it easier and easier to begin seeing the latter; the crises are coming fast and furious. Or as Richard Heinberg put it (see his quote at the end of my post on 7/20/08)"...efforts to try to bring industrialism to ruin prematurely seem to be pointless and wrongheaded: ruin will come soon enough on its own."

In other words, it's a lousy system but rather than trying to bring it down, we are better off working on building a new system. I talked about the founding of the IWW in my post of 2/14/09. In the preamble to their constitution, they talk about "...forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old." And that's what we need to do. In the tradition of rebels and freethinkers, not only in the US, but throughout the world, we need to create the world that we want to live in--and create it now, so that when things collapse, we will have something to take its place.

So where will I take this blog from here? A key question is, what do we need in order to create that new system, society, way of being? In my post on 'Creating Social Change' that I wrote way back on 7/2/08, I focused on the need to Educate and Organize. I should probably look at ways to educate next, ways to counteract that propaganda machine and get necessary information to people--but that's not what I'm going to do. I will look at education soon, but first I want to look at what I think that we need to know most in order to doing the organizing, to build that new society--I want to look closely at what our real needs are and how we might meet them.

I'm going to end this segment with a bit of the ending of the song I have been quoting sporadically throughout this series. Although this is how it ends on Ferron's classic album, Shadows on a Dime, she has rerecorded the song with a contemporary musician who goes by the name of Bitch. At the end of the new version they repeat, back and forth, several times, as if affirming a promise: "I will not be complacent... I will not be complacent..." If there is anything that US history teaches me, it's that I can't be complacent.


Quote of the Day: "And beware you sagging diplomats, for you will not hear one gun, And though our homes be torn and ransacked we will not be undone, For as we let ourselves be bought, we're gonna let ourselves be free... We are dreamers in the making, we are not afraid of 'Why?'" - Ferron

USH29: Making Sense of It All

So, my original question that started all this history stuff was: how did the sixties turn into the eighties?

Having looked through US history, maybe the bigger question is why did we expect anything different? Many of us thought we were making a lasting change, but we didn't see that the system was set up to resist change.

I want to list what several authors have said about why the change in the sixties didn't last.

Todd Gitlin gives many causes for the death of the sixties: He connects the emergence of the movement to the economic boom that lasted from 1945 - 1973 (see my last post) and saw many people returning to more liberal and conservative views for both the veterans of the movement and the younger generation entering college when stagflation/economic distress/returning scarcity hit; he also claims that having not dealt with its own sexism, the emerging women's movement fractured the New Left, and in its desperation at being so far from revolution, the movement spawned the very violent 'Weathermen'. Gitlin claims that in spite of attacks from the government, what did in the movement was it "imploded". He points out that in some ways the country was as conservative in the sixties as it was in the eighties, but there was a (white) young people's movement inspired by the civil rights and black power movements and spirit of the age that grew and self-destructed and got a lot of media attention. Finally, he claims the movements of the sixties also engendered 'the Right... lashing back'. "The counterrevolution seems to have outorganized the revolution." "Ronald Reagan swept to the White House as the defender of verities against upstarts... astonishing not only radicals but many liberals, all of them drastically underestimating the force of conservative impulses. ... The Right, awash in money, unencumbered by antiauthoritarianism, proved... more successful at coalition-building than the Left, which was not only undisciplined but seemed committed to staying that way. ... Who could have expected a reformation without a counterreformation?"

Lisa Duggin (see my post of 11/25/08) suggests that global competition and falling profits in the '70's got "U.S. corporate interests to mount a counter-movement... Beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency and through the 1980s, the overall direction of redistribution of many resources, in the U.S. and throughout the world, has been upward--toward greater concentration among fewer hands at the very top of an increasingly steep pyramid." (Again, this mirrors what was in my last post.) She claims that the "New Deal consensus among business, government, and big unions, built during the 1930s and more or less in place through the Great Society era of the 1960s, was dismantled." Her analysis of how the sixties became the eighties: "During the 1960s and 1970s, the proliferation and expansion of progressive-left critiques and social movements constituted a fertile ground for connections ... During the 1980s, as standards of living dropped in the United States and global inequalities expanded, social movements responded to multiple constraints and pressures in part by fragmenting, in part by accommodating to the narrowing horizons of fundraising imperatives, legal constraints, and the vice grip of electoral politics. Identity politics, in the contemporary sense of the rights-claiming focus of balkanized groups organized to pressure the legal and electoral systems for inclusion and redress, appeared out of the field of disintergrating social movements. Single-group or single-issue organizations dedicated to lobbying, litigation, legislation, or public and media education had existed earlier as only one part of larger, shaping social movements. ... But during the 1980s, such organizations ... began to appear as the parts that replaced the wholes."

Lawrence Goodwyn dismisses the whole movement of the sixties in a couple of sentences. He regards the "student radicals of the 1960's" as an prime example of why he thinks the system is so difficult to change, saying "While the students themselves clearly felt they could substantively affect 'inherited patterns of power and privilege', the prevailing judgement of the 1970's, shared by both the radicals and their conservative critics, is that the students were näive to have had such sweeping hopes."

Unfortunately, my survey of US history supports what Goodwyn says. This country was founded by relatively wealthy white men for wealthy white men. The 'Founding Fathers' had an agenda that was quite different from the working folks who came to this country (let alone the native peoples, or the Africans that were brought here as slaves). Our valued Bill of Rights only happened because 'Unruly Americans' fought for it. (See my post of 1/13/09.) From the beginning, the people in charge were interested in building an empire, not taking care of people. (See posts of 1/9/09, 1/17/09, and 2/10/09.) With the advent of the industrial age, some men figured out how they could turn this to their advantage and became 'Robber Barons'. (1/29/09) Eventually, men like Mark Hanna and Edward Bernays figured out how to manipulate the public so real change became unthinkable--today we have Fox News, talk radio, and folks like Karl Rove to keep things in line. (See 4/15/09.)

Nevertheless, rebellions kept occurring, from the early rebels that forced the Bill of Rights (1/13/09), to the farmers who organized co-ops (2/2/09), to turn of the century freethinkers of all kinds (2/14/09), to the lost generation and social rebels of the twenties (2/18/09), to the workers and organizers and unemployed of the thirties (2/26/09), to the beatniks, peaceniks, homophiles, and early civil rights movement of the fifties. (3/6/09) In spite of it all, there has been an undercurrent of questioning and a desire for change (look at the utopian communities of the nineteenth century--profiled in my post of 1/25/09) of which the sixties were only one more manifestation. As Gitlin pointed out, a movement of young white folks that got a lot of media attention. And the rebellions continued through the seventies and eighties and even the nineties. (See posts of 3/30/09, 4/7/09, and 4/11/09.)

Some of the problem is, as Lisa Duggan put it, many of the movements of the sixties and seventies saw how the issues were all connected whereas now (due to repression and economic contraction) the focus is on single issue movements--a much more liberal than radical stance. She mentions how the New Deal consensus between businesses and workers disappeared with the oil crisis of 1973 (again, see posts of 3/22/09 and 4/19/09)--along with the affluence that buoyed much of the movement of the sixties. The change began in the seventies, it was just consolidated with Reagan's election in the eighties. And we are the inheritors of that now. We are in hard times and we are hunkering down. Unfortunately the narrow focus that comes with that seige mentality keeps many from seeing just how interconnected it all is.

The sixties did open some doors (as did all the other rebellions and movements I've talked about) but, as Lawrence Goodwyn put it, we were 'näive' to imagine easy, radical change. And, as Todd Gitlin said, if we were trying to reform things, we should have expected a 'counterreformation'.

And so the work continues...


Quote of the Day: "These rebellions, so far, have been contained. The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. ...
"But most histories understate revolt, overemphasize statesmanship, and thus encourage impotency among citizens. ... History that keeps alive the memory of people's resistance suggests new definitions of power. ...the unexpected victories--even temporary ones--of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful." - Howard Zinn


References:
Lisa Duggin, The Twilight of Equality
Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

USH28: Economic History of the 20th Century

The economic history of the United States during the twentieth century can be divided into three parts: the beginning of the century (prior to the Great Depression), from the Great Depression to the Oil Crisis of 1973, and after 1973.

The early part of the century looked a lot like the roller coaster that I described in my post on the 'Economic Currents of the Nineteenth Century' (2/6/09). There was a 'Panic' in 1907 set off by a run on a bank that led to "a severe monetary contraction." And there was a recession following World War I that lasted three years and was followed by an eight year period of prosperity (that being the 'Roaring Twenties'--see my post of 2/18/09).

Then came the Great Depression (see my posts of 2/22/09 and 2/26/09)--as I mentioned in one of my posts, what seems to have gotten us out of it was World War II.

Following WWII were twenty-eight years of relative prosperity (yes, there were minor recessions in 1953, 1957, and 1960, but none of them lasted long or cause major problems). To some it seemed as if it would last forever. The AFL-CIO put it this way: "During the period 1945-1973, when a high percentage of workers had unions, wages kept pace with rising productivity, prosperity was widely shared, and economic growth was strong." French economist Jean Fourastié refers to this period as Trente Glorieuses--the Thirty Glorious (years). Wikipedia says: "The period from the end of World War II to the early 1970s was a golden era of American capitalism."

The Oil Crisis of 1973 and resulting stock market drop changed that (see my post of 3/22/09). Even during the more properous periods of the late eighties and late nineties, Americans no longer felt secure. From Wikipedia: "The 1973 'oil price shock', along with the 1973–1974 stock market crash, have been regarded as the first event since the Great Depression to have a persistent economic effect."

To show some of the changes, during the period from 1947 to 1979, all sectors of the economy grew by at least 85%, and the bottom fifth of earners actual saw their income grow by 116%. During the period between 1979 and 2003, the bottom fifth of earners lost 2%, the next fifth of earners only saw a 8% growth in income, while the top fifth of earners saw their earnings rise by 51% (and the top twentieth gained 75%). The book Economic Apartheid in America (where all the information in this paragraph is from) puts it that from 1947 to 1979 "We Grew Together" and from 1979 to 2003 "We Grew Apart". They claim that there has been a major "Power Shift" since the seventies with a strengthening of corporations, lobbyists, CEOs, and people who own assets, along with a weakening of labor unions, popular political movements, and wage-earners. They cite a growing anti-union climate, global trade treaties, tax cuts for the wealthy, 'corporate welfare', and privatization.

The SEIU put it out clearly: "The recession of 1973-74 marked the start of a sustained assault on workers' ability to form unions and negotiate with employers for shared success."

Along with attacks on unions came outsourcing, offshoring, and globalization. As Wikipedia says: "Outsourcing became part of the business lexicon during the 1980s." (I wrote some about this in my post 'Into the Eighties' on 4/3/09.) The deregulation of businesses began in 1974 under Ford and was continued by Carter, but Reagan's policies accelerated not only deregulation but economic inequality on every level. Essentially, the corporate strategy shifted after the oil crisis and resulting recession, from the idea that taking care of their employees was good business to creating lean, mean multinational corporations. Thomas Palley talks about the period from 1945 to 1973 as a Golden Age 'Main Street Capitalism', and the post-1973 economy as a 'Mean Street Capitalism' which he sees as a throwback to the laissez-faire economy that existed before the Depression. Reagan actually "presented his economic proposals as merely a return to the free-enterprise principles that had been in favor before the Great Depression." (Wikipedia)

Peak Oil believers (see my blogs of 7/18/08 and 7/20/08) would be quick to point out that that the post-war prosperity was fueled (literally) by fossil fuels and that it's not an accident that Oil Crisis of 1973 initiated a major change in the economy. If that's true, it means we will never see the kind of prosperity and abundance we had in the sixties again.



Quote of the Day: "The shift to Mean Street capitalism has manifested itself along four dimensions. First, the economy is growing more slowly than in the past. Second, the economy is running slacker and operating less efficiently than before. Third, there has been a significant worsening of income distribution, with wages of ordinary workers actually declining over the last twenty years. Fourth, workers are economically insecure and subject to greater levels of stress. Slower, slacker, more unequal, and less secure are the hallmarks of the disordered economy. Economic booms may temporarily ameliorate these conditions, but once the boom is over, they reassert themselves." - Thomas Palley

References:
AFL-CIO, "Unions Are Good for Business, Productivity and the Economy"
Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel, Economic Apartheid in America
Thomas Palley, Plenty of Nothing
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Path to Prosperity
Wikipedia, many articles (including ones on the Economic history of the United States, List of recessions in the United States, Outsourcing, and Jean Fourastié)

USH27: Of Presidents and Polls

So, what to make of all this history... What does it say for social change?

Social change would mean, among other things, that the United States is changing over time. Is that happening? Do we even have a society where change is possible? Or was the US set up from the beginning for rich white men and structured in a way that there's little chance of change?

While I am a radical, I am well aware that radicals, and even progressives, are a minority in this country. Let's look at liberals and conservatives for a bit to see what direction the US leans toward.

While all Republicans aren't conservative, and many Democrats are far from liberal, I want to start by analyzing the elected presidents with the assumption that when Republicans are elected the country may be looking for someone more conservative and when Democrats are elected the country may be looking for someone more liberal. (Maybe.)

The following table is taken right from Wikipedia (and edited by me). It gives some sense of the US direction through the twentieth century:

PRESIDENT-----------STARTED---------- ENDED-------------PARTY--RE-ELECTED?
William McKinley------- March 4, 1897--------September 14, 1901--Republican ****
Theodore Roosevelt ---- September 14, 1901--March 4, 1909--------Republican ****
William Howard Taft --- March 4, 1909 -------March 4, 1913-------- Republican
Woodrow Wilson ------- March 4, 1913 ------- March 4, 1921-------- Democratic ****
Warren G. Harding -----March 4, 1921 --------August 2, 1923------- Republican
Calvin Coolidge ---------August 2, 1923 -------March 4, 1929-------- Republican ****
Herbert Hoover --------March 4, 1929 --------March 4, 1933 --------Republican
Franklin D. Roosevelt---March 4, 1933 --------April 12, 1945 -------- Democratic ****
Harry S. Truman-------April 12, 1945---------January 20, 1953------Democratic ****
Dwight D. Eisenhower--January 20, 1953----- January 20, 1961------Republican ****
John F. Kennedy-------January 20, 1961------November 22, 1963--- Democratic
Lyndon B. Johnson ----November 22, 1963--- January 20, 1969 ----- Democratic ****
Richard Nixon -------- January 20, 1969 ----- August 9, 1974 --------Republican ****
Gerald Ford-----------August 9, 1974---------January 20, 1977------ Republican
Jimmy Carter---------January 20, 1977------ January 20, 1981------ Democratic
Ronald Reagan--------January 20, 1981------ January 20, 1989------ Republican ****
George H. W. Bush --- January 20, 1989------January 20, 1993------ Republican
Bill Clinton------------January 20, 1993------January 20, 2001------ Democratic ****
George W. Bush------ January 20, 2001----- January 20, 2009------ Republican ****
Barack Obama -------January 20, 2009----- Incumbent -------------Democratic

Since McKinley was elected in 1896, there have been 12 Republican presidents and 8 Democratic presidents. Of these seven, Republicans and five Democrats have lasted more than one term (that is they have been re-elected after serving in office). One of those Democrats (FDR) was re-elected three times. Interestingly enough, the first two Democrats of the Twentieth-Century were president during the World Wars--leading to the idea that Republicans were peacetime presidents and Democrats were wartime presidents. Kennedy changed that; after that it seemed like when things got rough (when Johnson couldn't deal with Vietnam, when Ford pardoned Nixon, when Carter didn't seem effective, when Bush,Sr, was stuck with the recession, and after Bush,Jr, got us in two wars and ruined the economy) the country switched parties. The one exception to that was after Clinton when it seemed like the country couldn't decide between Gore and Bush--and that led to a hung election for over a month--with the final decision giving Gore the popular vote but Bush the electoral vote.

What does this tell us about the country? It does seem like there was a fairly conservative background early on, with voters only going for Democrats when the country was in trouble. Kennedy's election could be seen as 'a new generation' emerging, but all that has happened since is the country teetertottering. Over the last few elections the idea of Red States (conservative/Republican) and Blue States (liberal/Democrat) has emerged--that is, certain areas of the US are more one way than another.

It did seem like things got fairly progressive for a while in the sixties, but was the country ever really progressive?

I've found two polls that gave Americans a chance to identify whether they were liberal, conservative, or moderate. The first is from the University of Michigan's American National Election Studies. They found:
In 1972, 18% identified themselves as Liberal, 26% as Conservative, and 27% as Moderate. And in 2004, 23% identified as Liberal, 32% as Conservative, and 26% as Moderate.

The second is from polls done by Pew research. They found:
In 1992, 18% identified as Liberal, 35% Conservative, 40% Moderate. In 2000, it was 18% Liberal, 36% Conservative, 38% Moderate. And in 2008, the proportions were 21% Liberal, 38% Conservative, 36% Moderate.

Looking at these would give you a sense that Americans are by and large either moderate or downright conservative--only a small minority identify as liberal. It also doesn't seem as if much social change is happening, since the proportions don't change that much over time.

But Media Matters, a progressive group formed to counter conservative misinformation, disputes the idea that the country is basically conservative and has not been effected by social change. In an article entitled "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth", they cite poll after poll pointing out Americans favor more (not less) government, stronger unions, an increase in the minimum wage, stricter laws on guns, more environmental protections, more clean energy, and better, more comprehensive healthcare. Over the last few decades, more Americans have become supportive of women's rights and gay rights (even gay marriage), and less in favor of the death penalty.

The people at Media Matters are well aware of the ideological polls--I got the information from the University of Michigan polls on their website. But they point out how people identify does not correlate with how they actually feel about specific issues. In fact, they cite the authors of the University of Michigan studies as observing: "...on issue after issue, moderates have opinions almost exactly mirroring those of liberals." The Media Matters people claim that because liberals have been so villified, many people don't think of themselves as liberals. In fact, they claim that some so-called 'conservatives' actually hold liberal positions.

Lawrence Goodwyn looks at things differently. He claims that no real change can occur in the US (or any industrialized nation) because the culture is set up to make us believe that things are as good as they can get and anyone who attempts real change is undemocratic. He felt that since the McKinley election, media manipulators have made sure that no one can seriously threaten the status quo--and the outbreaks in the sixties were exceptions that were quickly brought under control.

One thing that is clear (from both Media Matters and Goodwyn) is that the media (supposedly liberal) downgrades liberals as well as the possibility of change. SoapBoxTech has commented more than once that part of the answer is in the BBC series The Century of the Self, which talks about how public relations and advertising is used to influence (and manipulate) the way we act and react.

There is a hidden history here. Goodwyn talks about how the media was controlled and coordinated by industrialist Mark Hanna (with lots of help from robber baron outfits like Standard Oil and JP Morgan) during the 1896 election. McKinley was painted as "the advance agent of prosperity". According to Goodwyn: "In sheer depth, the advertising campaign organized by Mark Hanna in behalf of William McKinley was without parallel in American history. It set a creative standard for the twentieth century." And, according to the Century of the Self, Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, picked up that standard. From Wikipedia: "Bernays argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of democracy..." He helped create a consumer society, but he also influenced elections, working for Calvin Coolidge as well as helping with the overthrow of the government of Guatemala in 1954, partly by branding the democratically elected president of Guatemala as a Communist.

And now we have Fox News and talk radio, churning out right-wing propaganda so strongly that people could hold ideas we'd think of as liberal or progressive, yet identify as conservative, for fear of being labled 'liberal'. We could be making progress, but it would be kept invisible by the mainstream media.

Next: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century.


Quote of the Day: "... nearly three-quarters of self-identified conservatives are not conservative on at least one issue dimension [size and scope of government, or abortion and homosexuality], and considerably more than half hold liberal preferences on the dominant dimension of conflict over the size and scope of government. Simply put, many conservatives are not very conservative..." - Christopher Ellis

References:
Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment
Media Matters for America, "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth"
Pew Research Center, "Winds of Political Change Haven’t Shifted Public’s Ideology Balance"
Wikipedia, articles on List of Presidents of the United States, The Century of the Self, and Edward Bernays

USH26: And the Nineties

With the end of the Cold War, there was talk of a 'peace dividend', money that could now be taken away from military spending and used to fund our infrastructure and social services.

That disappeared with a bang when, in August of 1990, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) invaded Kuwait. President George Bush (Sr) responded quickly; within days US troops arrived in Saudi Arabia. In January of 1991, Operation Desert Storm began with a massive bombing of Iraq. By the end of February Iraqi troops had withdrawn from Kuwait and the war was over.

Talk about the peace divident was over, too. Zinn cites a New York Times article where someone from the Bush administration is quoted as saying: "We owe Saddam a favor. He saved us from the peace dividend."

With 1992 came celebrations of Columbus's voyage. Native people began preparing for this in 1990, in a meeting of indigenous people from the entire hemisphere in Quito, Equador. October 12, 1992 was declared International Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People. There were demonstrations across the country protesting the 500 years of mistreatment of the Native Americans.

Also in 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president. Clinton was a centrist and, as his republican opponents were quick to point out, a waffler. First, he tried to allow openly gay men and lesbians in the military, but when he ran into opposition he quickly backed down. The result was the current 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy. First he supported his Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, then (when she said, in response to a question, that maybe students should be taught about masturbation) she was fired. First he suggested Lani Guinier as an assistant Attorney General, then he withdrew her nomination as newspapers distorted her views and she was made out to be a 'civil rights radical'. (I wonder if it is an accident that Clinton found two African-American women to be so expendable.)

Not every thing was Clinton couldn't accomplish was all his fault. He proposed a national healthcare reform package that got quickly scuttled by insurance company lobbyists, conservatives, libertarians, and even many Democratics who were busy offering plans of their own.

Making matters worse was the 1994 elections when the Democrats lost control of both the House and the Senate for the first time in forty years. The Republican Party (spearheaded by Newt Gingrich) proposed a new 'Contract with America' (actually a combination of an old Reagan State of the Union address and ideas from the Heritage Foundation). Clinton later referred to it as the Republican's 'Contract on America'. It was a combination tax cuts, cuts to welfare programs, cuts on capital gains taxes, cuts on US payments for UN peacekeeping operations, cuts on the amounts of damages that could be gotten in product-liability suit, etc. The Republicans had returned with a metaphorical hatchet--and the result was to move Clinton's policies even further to the right.

But Clinton was popular and was re-elected in 1996. He remained popular, in spite of several scandals. I'm not very concerned about Bill Clinton's sexual activities. It was things like his support of NAFTA and the WTO, his signing of the Defense of Marriage Act, and his bombings of Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan (all in 1998--these were retaliation bombings) that upset me. Of course, he would never face impeachment for any of these things.

In 1988, Rush Limbaugh began his radio show which became increasingly popular during the nineties. When Republicans got control of Congress in 1994, the newly elected Republicans made him an honorary membership of their caucus. The nineties also saw the start of Fox News (1996) and programs like Hannity & Colmes and the O'Reilly Report (later renamed the O'Reilly Factor) on it. Liberal bashing became big business during the nineties.

The first Web browser was created in 1990. Where the eighties were the decade of the personal computer, the nineties were the decade of the internet. The internet grew by leaps and bounds over the 1990s--often doubling in size each year. (And, obviously, I can't complain too much about the internet since that's how you're able to read this blog.)

There were some social movements that got going in the nineties. Third wave feminism emerged, along with queer theory, Queer Nation, and the queer movement. The concept of multiracial identity also became more visible--with people like Tiger Woods, who claimed a Cablinasian (Caucasian, African, Indian, and Asian) identity.

The nineties were also the start of the anti-globalization movement, with many large protests--a key one being the 'Battle for Seattle' in 1999. And in Mexico, in 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation emerged--which has been a major influence on movements all over the world.

The nineties ended with three nasty events. In October of 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay man, was tortured and left to die in Wyoming--raising an awareness of hate crimes for many people. In April of 1999, two high school students at Columbine High School in Colorado shot and killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves. This did lead to a discussion of gun control laws--however not a lot was changed. And, although nowhere near as violent as the previous two incidents, in November of 1999, Exxon and Mobil merged, forming the largest corporation in the world--and unfortunately, the long-term reprecussions of this still effect us now, as this company is a major player in climate change (and a major backer of misleading 'scientific' studies denying climate change), and responsible for supporting human rights violators and engaging in illegal activities (such as bribery and illegal trade with Sudan).

Unfortunately, things did not get better in the new millenium, but that is very recent history and I am not going to cover this past decade.


Quote of the Day: "Dear President Bush: Please send your assistance in freeing our small nation from occupation. This foreign force occupied our lands to steal our rich resources. They used biological warfare and deceit, killing thousands of elders, children and women in the process. As they overwhelmed our land, they deposed our leaders and people of our own government, and in its place, they installed their own government systems that yet today control our daily lives in many ways. As in your own words, the occupation and overthrow of one small nation...is one too many. Sincerely, An American Indian." - from a Native group in Oregon responding to US horror at the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and the 1991 US intervention

References:
Wikipedia, several articles (including History of the United States (1991–present) and the Presidency of Bill Clinton)
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

USH25: Social Movements in the 80s

In spite of all the problems with the eighties, there was a lot of organizing going on as well.

For one thing, the protest music of the sixties had nothing on the music of the eighties. Tracy Chapman was talking about revolution, U2 sang of Bloody Sunday in Ireland and the legacy of MLK, Midnight Oil devoted a whole album (Diesel and Dust) to colonialism in Australia, Bruce Springstein showed us the pain of working class folks who were born in the USA, Prince warned us about the bomb and told us to party like it was 1999, Holly Near made her funkiest albums (Fire in the Rain and Speed of Light) about things like working women and Emma Goldman, and Ferron gave us the song "It Won't Take Long" which I've been quoting periodically through this series (including below). (The whole song is wonderful.) In addition there were politicized protest albums like Sun City and benefit concerts like Live Aid and Farm Aid, which if they weren't radical, at least had their hearts in the right place.

The nuclear arms race, which had already spawned the group Mobilization for Survival in the eighties, now brought about a major protest movement known as the Nuclear Freeze. Women like Randall Forsberg and Helen Caldicott spearheaded this movement and it took off. In 1982 close to a million demonstrators gathered in Central Park, NYC, to protest the arms race. By 1983, the Freeze had been endorsed by 368 city and county councils, 444 town meetings, and 17 state legislatures. A poll showed that 79% of the country favored a nuclear arms freeze. Even the Catholic bishops came out against nuclear arms.

Peace encampments sprung up in Romulus, NY, and Greenham Common, England, protesting the decision to send US Air Force nuclear tipped cruise missiles to Europe (some of these missiles were stored at the RAF base in Greenham Common--and the women at the the Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Romulus believed that missiles were being stored at the Army base nearby, although the government wouldn't confirm this). These were feminist encampments, generally limited to women, that were collectively run. (I've heard tales of reporters who wanted to talk with the leaders and refused to believe that there weren't any.)

Protests against nuclear power plants also continued through the eighties--some major protests occurring at plants like Seabrook, Diablo Canyon, Black Fox, Shoreham, Rancho Seco, and Rocky Flats. By the end of the decade, the Black Fox plant was never built, Shoreham was closed without ever operating, and voters shut down Rancho Seco. To a large part, the protesters were responsible for this--along with their education of the public. There have not been any new nuclear power plants planned in the United States since the end of the seventies, also partly due to the continuing protests (although lately, with climate change on the rise, occasionally there are claims that nuclear is clean energy and suggestions we build new plants--unfortunately, even Obama has made statements like this). (Last minute add note: I've just heard from a couple of different sources that there are now applications in the works to build twenty-six new reactors. Yipes! It looks like this is a battle we are going to have to do all over again!)

US activities in Central America got many people concerned and led to a series of protests. Rallies took place across the country protesting US involvement in El Salvador--particularly after the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero and the murder of three American nuns and a laywoman (both in 1980) and following reports of a massacre in El Mozote by US trained Salvadorian soldiers. (The massacre took place at the end of 1981 but wasn't reported in US paper until late January, 1982. The Reagan Administration characteristically dismissed the reports as propaganda.) There were many protests held in Boston, outside and inside the JFK Federal Building against our activities in El Salvador and threatened activities in Nicaragua--I know, I took part in them. (Zinn mentions a report of similar activities in Tucson, Arizona, so I imagine they took place around the country.) At one protest in Boston, 550 people were arrested. And across the country over 60,000 people signed pledges to take action if the US tried to invade Nicaragua.

Beginning in 1977, but building up in the 1980s, a major campaign took place in the US against apartheid in South Africa. A disinvestment campaign began pressuring corporations to stop doing business in and with South Africa and stockholders to withdraw any investments they might have in both South African companies and US companies doing business in South Africa. The campaign particularly made strides on college and university campuses when students pressured them to 'divest' (cease South African related investments). The movement grew sharply in 1984 after news reports of South African resistance. The University of California withdrew three billion dollars worth of investments. Congress legislated economic sanctions against South Africa in 1986, overriding a veto by Reagan. From Wikipedia: "by the end of 1989 26 states, 22 counties and over 90 cities had taken some form of binding economic action against companies doing business in South Africa." The economic problems these things caused (along with growing international pressure) were part of what led to the fall of apartheid.

In feminism, the eighties were a time when women of color enlarged the meaning of term. In 1983, Alice Walker introduced the word 'womanism' as an alternative name for feminists of color (her book, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens was subtitled Womanist Prose). bell hooks wrote books like Ain’t I a Woman? (1981) and Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984) and, in 1984 Audre Lorde published her classic book, Sister Outsider, which explored the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality. (The book was a major influence on my thinking.)

For the gay movement, the eighties started off well enough, with David McReynolds running as the first openly gay candidate for president (for the Socialist Party USA) in 1980, but in 1981 doctors in Los Angeles treated five gay men who all had a rare form of pneumonia. Soon the Center for Disease Control was tracking that type of pneumonia along with other immune system diseases that seemed target gay males in southern California and began suspecting there was a new epidemic starting. At first it was nicknamed GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency), then the '4H disease' as it became apparent that it was concentrated among Homosexuals, Haitian, Hemophiliacs, and Heroin addicts. Eventually, it got named AIDS--and as it spread through the gay community, and funeral followed funeral, the community was forced to make AIDS (rather than new forms of liberation) its priority. The Gay Men's Health Crisis organization was formed in 1982 and the rather confrontative and controversial ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was formed in 1987 as a extremely democratic (perhaps anarchist) organization. Queer Nation, the GLBT activist group of the nineties, was formed by ACT UP activists and was directly influenced by ACT UP. Another group of the eighties, formed in San Francisco, began making a quilt in 1987, in memory of those who died of AIDS. The NAMES project has gone on to create the largest piece of community art in the world--The Quilt now consists of over 46,000 panels and weighs around 54 tons.

Reagan's budget cuts sparked protests around the country. While it never coalesced into a movement, there were scattered demonstrations including blocking traffic during rush hour in East Boston in 1981 to protest cutbacks in funds for police, teachers, and firefighters; teachers' strikes in seven different states in 1982; and foreclosure protests from Pennsylvania to Colorado in 1983. (Hmm. That sound familiar.)

And a 1989 poll by Harvard Medical School found that 61% of Americans favored a single payer health insurance system similar to Canada's.

Finally, in a notable protest of the eighties, Amy Carter, daughter of former president Jimmy Carter, was arrested along with Abbie Hoffman, while protesting CIA recruitment at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In her trial, her attorney argued that because of CIA involvement in Central America, she was attempting to prevent greater crimes by her occupation of the UMass building. The jury eventually acquitted her of all charges.


Quote of the Day: "Divisions between the peoples will disappear on that honoured day, And though oceans lie between us, lifted candles light the way, Half will join their hands by moonlight, the rest under a rising sun... And you may say, 'I don't know how to be a part of what you're talking about,' and it makes me want to say,'Come on!'" - Ferron

References:
Wikipedia, lots of articles (including ones on the Anti-nuclear movement and Disinvestment from South Africa)
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

USH24: Into the Eighties

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I had high hopes for the eighties. Unfortunately, the decade represented a major change in direction from the sixties and seventies.

It began, I suppose, with the election of Ronald Reagan who brought with him a coalition of rabid conservatives--in particular, those with a bizarre version of economics where you could cut taxes, reduce the deficit, stop inflation, and build up the military--all at the same time. Some of his minions called it 'supply-side' or 'trickle-down' theory. George H Bush (before he became Reagan's vice-president) called it 'voodoo economics' which I think was closer to the truth.

As Wikipedia puts it, the 80s were a backlash against the 60s, "with religion, patriotism and materialism making a comeback." They also point out that "The decade saw social, economic and general upheaval as wealth, production and western culture migrated to new industrializing economies. As economic liberalization increased in the western world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, China and new market economies in eastern Europe following the collapse of communism in eastern Europe."

This was the decade that first saw words like 'McJob' and 'outsourcing' to describe work prospects. This was the decade when Walmart grew from 276 stores to well over 1,200. This was the time of corporate raiders, leveraged buyouts, and hostile takeovers, as business became ruthless. The Laissez-faire approach of people like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman was now the economic policy of the country.

And Ronald Reagan was all business--corporate business. His bizarre economic policies became known as 'Reaganomics'. He encouraged deregulation and ignored antitrust laws. He put a businessman in charge of OSHA that hated OSHA (one of his first acts was to destroy the booklets that warned textile workers about the dangers of cotton dust). In fact, most of the people Reagan appointed as agency heads and cabinet members had plans that were nearly opposite to what the agency was supposed to be about--Reagan's ideas about reducing government seemed to mean decimating well-functioning offices. (Think James Watt, Ann Burford, David Stockman...) I joked at one point during that time that if Reagan was consistant he would have put Daniel Berrigan in charge of the Pentagon.

And while the rich got richer under Reagan's administration (and later Bush's, which was more or less a continuation of the Reagan administration), the poor got poorer. Reagan's budget cuts were to welfare, housing, job training, drug treatment, and Social Security (not to mention mass transit and renewable energy). Unemployment soared, inflation soared, and poverty soared. (Another Reagan era joke I heard when I was working in Detroit was that he was the first president that truly loved the poor as they were--poor! In fact, the joke went on, he loved them so much he wanted there to be more of them.)

But for those who had money, this was also the decade (a big part of that trend toward 'materialism') when high technology came into its own. 'Personal computers' (and the first versions of email), compact discs, wireless phones (and early cell phones), answering machines, fax machines, camcorders, VCRs, and even cable television (which had been around since the 1950s but came into its own in the eighties) were everywhere. And it seemed like everybody had to have one (at least) of each.

But this was not all a happy technoconsumer's paradise. The end of the seventies brought Love Canal and Three Mile Island, 1984 brought Union Carbide's toxic gas leak in Bhopal, India, 1986 brought Chernobyl, the nuclear power accident in Ukraine, and 1989 brought the largest oil spill in US history when the ship, the Exxon Valdez went aground off the shore of Alaska. On top of this, in 1986, with hundreds of schoolchildren watching, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded soon after launch.

The one thing that Reagan did build up was the military--and he used it. Reagan sent Marines into Lebanon, and 220 of them were killed in 1983 by a suicide bombing in Beirut. Soon after, the US invaded the tiny island of Grenada after the execution of their Marxist Prime Minister. This was the first major military operation conducted by the U.S. since the Vietnam War. In 1989, at the end of the decade, President Bush ordered the invasion of Panama in order to capture their dictator, Manuel Noriega.

Reagan's administration was also notable for its willingness to talk about and deploy nuclear weapons. Casper Weinberger (Reagan's defense secretary) oversaw dramatic increases in the US nuclear weapons arsenal, production of the B1 bomber, and work on Reagan's favorite military program, the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as Star Wars. This was also the time of the development of the MIRVs (Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles--missiles with multiple warheads) and long-range 'Cruise Missiles'. Twice in 1983, the US came close to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union--the first time because of a Soviet computer malfunction and the second time, two months later, because the Soviet Union wasn't sure if a NATO wargame that featured a release of weapons was a cover for the real thing. The Soviet nervousness around nuclear weapons was heightened by the Strategic Defense Initiative (which they viewed as an escalation of the arms race into space) and the deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe.

However, perhaps the most notable thing about the decade of the Eighties its conclusion. 1989 featured the so-called "Revolutions of 1989", when the countries of Eastern Europe broke away from Soviet control--including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of Solidarity in Poland, and the 'Velvet Revolution' in Czechoslovakia. Ironically, this was the same time that the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred in China. The Cold War was over--and the US declared that it won.


Quote of the Day: "It was the truly wealthy, more than anyone else, who flourished under Reagan. ... The 1980s were the triumph of upper America... the political ascendancy of the rich, and a glorification of capitalism, free markets, and finance." - Kevin Phillips

References:
Kenneth Davis, Don't Know Much About History
Wikipedia, lots and lots of articles (including ones on the 1980s and the Presidency of Ronald Reagan)
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

USH23: Social Movements in the Seventies

The activism of the sixties didn't end with the decade. The changes that were wrought resonated throughout the seventies. In fact, some of the social movements of the sixties spawned more movements over the course of the seventies.

First of all, there was a change in the thinking of the general public. For example, a University of Michigan research team had been asking people: "Is the government run by a few big interests looking out for themselves?" In 1964, 26% said yes; in 1972, 53% answered yes. A Catholic group doing a survey in 1975 found that 83% of the people they interviewed agreed with the statement that "The people running this country (government, political, church and civic leaders) don't tell us the truth." (Of course, Watergate was a big influence on that.)

The events of the sixties led to new ways of thinking and being, much of which continued well in the seventies. As Howard Zinn put it: "There was a general revolt against oppressive, artificial, previously unquestioned ways of living. It touched every aspect of personal life: childbirth, childhood, love, sex, marriage, dress, music, art, sports, language, food, housing, religion, literature, death, schools." A counterculture came to life and was nourished. Todd Gitlin points out: "The thousands of communes, underground papers, free schools, food 'conspiracies', auto repair and carpentry collectives, women's centers and health groups and alternative publishers, required commitment. Where there were thirty free schools in 1967, there were as many as eight hundered in 1973, not counting the versions implanted within official school systems. ... Counterinstitutions were ways of settling in for the long haul." And some of those counterinstitutions are still with us. I know of 'women's centers and health groups and alternative publishers' that were founded in the late sixties or early to mid-seventies that are active now. The 'food conspiracies' are today's food co-ops. While many of the real communes have disappeared, some like Twin Oaks and The Farm go on. More popular than communes in the seventies were co-op houses and other group living situations. I live in a co-op founded in the seventies (most of us are aging hippies) but I have also lived in more recently birthed co-ops filled with young people. There is a decent sized network of co-op houses in the Boston area.

Some of the movements of the sixties dissipated at the end of that decade or early in the seventies. The anti-war movement hit a peak in 1970 with a nationwide student strike. In 1971, there were dozens of actions including a huge protest where thousands of activists tried to shut down the federal government, an action where nearly a thousand Vietnam vets camped out in the Washington Mall and threw their medals onto the steps of the Capitol, and a raid by Catholic group, the Camden 28, on a New Jersey draft board which led to a 1973 trial where they were all acquitted--seen by some as a referendum on the war. But with their success at ending the war in 1973, while many peace groups went on, the anti-war movement faded away. Little happened on the peace front until late in the decade, 1977, when a new group, the Mobilization for Survival, was founded, linking nuclear weapons with nuclear power. (I'll have more on nuclear power later.)

The the Civil Rights/Black Power movement seemed to disappear even before the sixties ended. Piven and Coward claim that "While there is no way of marking an exact time when the tide of unrest turned, the year 1968 might be considered such a point. It was the last year of major urban rioting (in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination); it was also the year that the presidency passed from a liberal to a conservative leadership. With Nixon's accession to power the class and racial injustices that had figured so prominently in the rhetoric and action of earlier administrations, and that had encouraged protest among the black poor, gave way to rhetoric and action emphasizing law-and-order and self-reliance, with the effect of rekindling shame and fear among the black masses." With Malcolm and Martin gone and some civil rights gains having been made, much of what was left of the movement turned to electoral politics, voting for black politicians (at least some, locally) and as well as others who seemed supportive of civil rights goals. The Democratic party was a major beneficiary. In 1968, 87% of blacks voted Democrat. In 1976, it was 94%. There were still some activists that continued the work. A group called the Black United Liberation Front in Philadelphia, set up in 1970, took over work that had been done by the Black Panthers, running a free breakfast program and a free clothing program, and over the course of 1971 and 1972, redirecting street gangs from fighting each other to demanding that the city turn over abandoned buildings to the Black community and give them money to rehabilitate them. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm, became the first African-American (not to mention first woman) candidate for president. In fact, the women's movement (see below) inspired many black women to look at the multiple oppressions they were facing (unfortunately this often happened by their encounter with the racism of white feminists). In 1974, the Combahee River Collective was founded in Boston, and was key in developing the concepts of Black feminism and 'identity politics'(they have been credited with coining the term). And during the decade some of the concepts of Black pride developed in the sixties entered the mainstream. 1976, for example, saw both the publication of Alex Haley's book, Roots, and the start of the tradition of Black History Month.

The work of African-Americans for liberation also inspired other groups from the late sixties through the most of the seventies.

The Chicano Movement grew during the sixties and early seventies. The Brown Berets, a youth group that modeled themselves on the Black Panthers, began in LA and spread up the west coast. They set up a free health clinic in Chicago in 1972, and worked with SNCC in Texas. And during the height of the anti-war protests, a group called the National Chicano Moratorium Committee organized demonstrations throughtout the Southwest, including protest in East Los Angeles, in 1970, where 30,000 people marched. Also in 1970, the Raza Unida Party was established--a Chicano third party that continues today, with chapters active in California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. And the work of César Chávez and Dolores Huerta with the United Farm Workers in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, inspired many.

Puerto Rican nationalist groups also learned from the black movements. The Young Lords were a street gang that turned themselves into an organization focused on achieving self-determination for Puerto Rico, as well as dealing with local community issues--they also modeled themselves in part after the Black Panthers. The Puerto Rican Independence Party, an US electoral group which had been around since the 1940s, saw their largest growth during the '70s when they ran a socialist, pro-worker, pro-poor campaign.

But perhaps the largest identity group to grow from the thinking of the '60s were the Native Americans. In 1968, a group of Mohawks began a journal entitled Akwesasne Notes, filled with vibrant, radical articles. In 1969, a group of "Indians of All Tribes" occupied Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay and proposed that it be turned into an education center, an ecology center, and a cultural center. After eighteen months US forces invaded the island and removed the Indians. In 1970, the United Indians of New England began a yearly protest in Plymouth, Massachusetts, they call a National Day of Mourning--an alternative to the traditional, sanitized Thanksgiving celebration. And in 1973, the American Indian Movement seized the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. In response the US government sent out a large military force that included "federal marshals, FBI agents, and armored vehicles". It became a siege lasted 71 days. The American Indian Movement continues to this day, although the organization has split into two factions. And as far as I can tell, Akwesasne Notes has continued to publish.

Also inspired by the Civil Rights movement and the anti-war movement was the Women's Liberation movement, also known as Second Wave Feminism. I talked about the start of it in my post on the late sixties (3/14/09). 1969 saw the founding of such groups as Redstockings and New York Radical Feminists. In 1970, two books came out that became a huge influence on the movement, Sexual Politics and Sisterhood is Powerful. One of the most well-known feminist publications, Ms. magazine, first appeared as an insert in the New Yorker magazine in 1971. And support groups and consciousness raising groups were flourishing everywhere. Things really seemed to be happening when the Equal Rights Amendment waspassed by Congress in 1972--unfortunately, as many of you know, it was never ratified. The feminist movement opened up many issues. Sex workers (primarily women), a group that includes prostitutes, strippers, phone sex operators, etc, began organizing. A group called COYOTE (which stands for Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) was founded in 1973. Other groups followed. In 1975, a book called Against Our Will, which was a feminist work on the politics of rape, was published. And, as I mentioned, those women's centers continue on.

A movement that was influenced by Civil Rights movement and the Women's Movement was Gay Liberation. I talked about Stonewall in my post about the late sixties (3/14/09). In 1969, just after the Stonewall riot, the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance were both founded. The next year (1970) found a variety of anniversary marches around the date of Stonewall, including the Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March in New York City. The parades were held annually, called things like Gay Liberation Marches and Gay Freedom Marches. It was only in the 1980s, as the politics shifted in the GLBT community, that these parades became named Gay Pride. The early Gay Liberation movement was a radical, passionate, and flamboyant happening that was politically aware and able to connect with other struggles but like the homophile movement of the fifties (see my post of 3/6/09) it became more conservative and assimilationist as it went along. Other groups emerged from the gay shadows as the seventies went along. In 1973, Lesbian Nation, a lesbian/feminist/separatist book, was published, making it clear that there were women in the movement and they weren't going to take a back seat to the men. Bisexuals also made themselves known, to the point that the term 'bisexual chic' came in vogue. The 1972 film Cabaret featured a man and a woman admitting that they shared the same male lover. And in 1978, that potent GLBT symbol, the Rainbow Flag, was created. In 1974, Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly GLBT candidate to win election when she took a seat on the Ann Arbor city council. In 1975, Elaine Noble was elected to the Massachusetts State House as an open lesbian. And in 1977, Harvey Milk was elected as a city-county supervisor in San Francisco--unfortunately, he was assassinated in 1978 by a former supervisor. (Of course all this is in the film Milk, released last year.) And the decade ended on a more radical note with the first gathering of the Radical Faeries, an attempt to create a spiritual GLBT entity, in 1979. One of the founders of the Radical Faeries was Harry Hay who founded the Mattachine Society in 1950 (in my post of 3/6/09).

The modern Environmental/Ecology Movement came to public consciousness on Earth Day, April 22, 1970. Although environmental concerns can be traced back to Thoreau's work in the 19th century, and Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring awoke many in the late sixties, the seventies made it mainstream. Some of this can be traced to the energy crisis of 1973 (see my post of 3/22/09), but there were many movement highlights during this decade. Greenpeace was founded in 1971. In 1972, the book Limits to Growth was published which pointed out (to the dismay of many) that our current rate of growth wasn't sustainable. Also in 1972, astronauts took a photo of the earth from space that inspired many to think about the whole planet--the image was later put on Earth Flags. In 1973, Small is Beautiful was published, again echoing the theme that our current economy isn't sustainable. Several new eco-terms were coined in the seventies, including Acid Rain (1972) and Deep Ecology (1973).

From the Environmental Movement, another movement sprang up in the seventies: the No Nukes/Anti-nuclear Movement. It may have had its start in 1971 when Dr. John Gofman wrote the book Poisoned Power. In 1974, Sam Lovejoy, a member of a communal organic farm in Montague, Massachusetts, knocked over a weather tower that was built to test conditions for building of a large twin nuclear reactor complex nearby. In his trial he argued that the reactors were a threat to the health and safety of the community--and he was acquitted. The event was recorded in the 1975 film Lovejoy's Nuclear War. Soon anti-nuclear organizations sprung up around the country. The first could have been the Clamshell Alliance, which was founded 1976 to protest nuclear power in New England and became famous for their demonstrations against the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire. The Abalone Alliance was founded in 1977 with the goal of shutting down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. 1978 saw the founding of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service and, in 1979, the Musicians United for Safe Energy held the famous No Nukes concerts.

Two political groups in particular that both started at the beginning of the seventies and had a major influence on me in the eighties were Movement for a New Society (MNS) and the National Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR). While there were some real differences between these groups (among other things MNS had a commitment to nonviolence that NOAR didn't have and NOAR was much more racially diverse than MNS--and many other movement groups of the seventies) both groups were different from other social organizations in seeing the need for personal change as well as social change (see my next paragraph), dedevelopment--realizing most Americans needed less stuff not more, and decentralized leadership--MNS was consciously egalitarian, NOAR was deliberately moving away from a Marxist-Leninist 'centralist' position. Both groups ended in the late eighties, MNS 'laying itself down' in 1989, and NOAR just 'fading away' between 1985 and 1987. These were no longer revolutionary times. (I was a member of MNS in the eighties and read NOAR's books and literature as well as attending one meeting--when I was out in Detroit--and meeting some of their leadership.)

A social movement that was less political but nevertheless influential and, I think, important was the 'Human Potential Movement'. While the movement has its roots in the fifties and began flowering in the sixties, the seventies saw a flood of encounter groups, sensitivity training, meditation techniques, and workshops and books on Gestalt Therapy, Bioenergetics, Primal Therapy, est, Rolfing, yoga, tai chi, and more. As Todd Gitlin put it: "In the early seventies it seemed that no movement house was complete without meditations, tarot cards, group therapies, the Tao Te Ching, and the writings of Alan Watts on Zen, Fritz Perls on Gestalt Therapy, Wilhelm Reich... R.D. Laing... Baba Ram Dass... and most of all, Carlos Castaneda's parables..." While Gitlin saw this as a political downfall, I saw it (and I was pretty involved with all this at the time) as a way of working on ourselves so we'd be better at changing things. I've seen too many activists whose 'stuff' gets in the way of their work. As the NOAR people (see the paragraph above) used to say "Change Yourself to Change the World".

As the seventies became the eighties, I was hoping that the new decade would be a time when we could merge the inner work with the outer work, that the 'Me Decade' would be replaced by a 'We Decade'. Of course, that's not what happened.


Quote of the Day: "Never in American history had more movements for change been concentrated in so short a span of years. But the system in the course of two centuries had learned a lot about the control of people. In the mid-seventies it went to work." - Howard Zinn

References:
Dick Cluster (ed), They Should Have Served That Cup of Coffee
Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements
Wikipedia, lots of articles (some linked from their article on the 1970s)
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States