Friday, October 10, 2008
Peaceniks
People love to hate hippies. The hip love to diss them because they aren't stylish, and conservatives, of course, are certain that America would go to hell in a handbasket if peace love and incense burning won the day.
I was fifteen in the streets of Washington D.C., during the "moratoriums", the major student protests against the Vietnam war. Sneaking out of my prep school with a few like minded friends, I experienced an adolescent thrill through standing with half a million other young people against a wall of flak jacketed riot police, for a cause you felt was just.
That is, uncannily, what it felt like to be in the streets of St. Paul recently during the "Unconvention", the protests against the RNC.
If everyone who disliked "pit bull" politics, felt America had gone down the wrong track, and wanted us out of Iraq, had gathered on Labor Day, then the city would have been jammed to the gills with protesters. But these days, it's only a handful of activists who are willing take their opinions to the street.
While peace activists have gotten more creative, using tactics of street theatre: paper mache puppets, masks, and visual puns to get across their views, local news during the RNC mostly showed images of windows smashing and police pinning "anarchists" to the ground amidst a background crowd of unshaved long hair kids. It looked, to mainstream America on the evening news, like trouble-makers had come to our town with their radical ideas and revolutionary bandanas.
These days Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn's 70's radicalism is being framed as "domestic" terrorism to paint 51% of Americans as "unAmerican".
In the early 70's, when the leaders of Vietnam protesters started to make explosives, arguing that violence would force change, I left their ranks.
We may never know exactly how much Cointelpro contributed to that escalation in bellicosity, but it was instantly clear to me and many others that war was no way to argue for peace, that two wrongs never add up to a right.
I can understand how Ayers and Dorhn may have gotten caught up in it. I, too, experienced the frustration and anger and sense of futility and injustice; it was the Zeitgeist of the moment. We simply didn't have the faith and patience to see that society was moving in our direction, in it's lumbering and reactionary way.
America knows now that when we took our troops out of Vietnam, there was no "defeat", there was no "domino" effect of countries falling into the Commmunist camp. We simply left, and in a few years the Polish workers of Solidarity, NOT Ronald Reagan, tore the Berlin Wall down.
There will be bloodshed if we leave Iraq, I have no doubt. But I hope Iraq has taught us that diplomacy is a better answer to conflict, that sanctions and inspections and continual pressure can contain a dictator and a rogue state.
I am still one of the Peaceniks. The "movement" wasn't just anti-something; anti-war, anti-establishment. The 60's and early 70's activists were FOR peace, and they saw how society needed to change to get us there. They gave us such an incredible wealth of ideas, idea that we've still hardly begun to explore. Ideas about community, about non-violence, about sustainable agriculture, multi-culturalism, about conservation, and ecology.
That dream did not die in the ashes of a New York tenement. Ayers turned his back on violence and took up teaching, he's now a respected university professor who advocates for children's education and won a Chicago "Citizen of the Year" award for his efforts.
The "movement" continues for millions of Americans, in ways big and small. It lives in the simple pleasures of knitting, in thrift store shopping, designing or redesigning your own clothes, it lives in our restored love of tea, of hanging out on the porch with friends playing the fiddle and banjo. It gave us yoga, homeopathic medicine, tantric sex. It lives in brilliant green architects and organic chefs, in user-friendly computer technology, and the simple wonder of cooking swiss chard grown in your own backyard.
That's where my hope is. That peace movement is alive and well in many progressive cities and neighborhoods, in many many minds and hearts.
I've done a series of portraits of peace activists from the recent protests in St. Paul. It's mostly about the women, an anti-Palin antidote, strong smart women- mostly either very old or very young.
I call it Peaceniks.
St. Paul Art Crawl, Lowertown Lofts. 255 E. Kellogg Blvd. #502
See you there!
I was fifteen in the streets of Washington D.C., during the "moratoriums", the major student protests against the Vietnam war. Sneaking out of my prep school with a few like minded friends, I experienced an adolescent thrill through standing with half a million other young people against a wall of flak jacketed riot police, for a cause you felt was just.
That is, uncannily, what it felt like to be in the streets of St. Paul recently during the "Unconvention", the protests against the RNC.
If everyone who disliked "pit bull" politics, felt America had gone down the wrong track, and wanted us out of Iraq, had gathered on Labor Day, then the city would have been jammed to the gills with protesters. But these days, it's only a handful of activists who are willing take their opinions to the street.
While peace activists have gotten more creative, using tactics of street theatre: paper mache puppets, masks, and visual puns to get across their views, local news during the RNC mostly showed images of windows smashing and police pinning "anarchists" to the ground amidst a background crowd of unshaved long hair kids. It looked, to mainstream America on the evening news, like trouble-makers had come to our town with their radical ideas and revolutionary bandanas.
These days Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn's 70's radicalism is being framed as "domestic" terrorism to paint 51% of Americans as "unAmerican".
In the early 70's, when the leaders of Vietnam protesters started to make explosives, arguing that violence would force change, I left their ranks.
We may never know exactly how much Cointelpro contributed to that escalation in bellicosity, but it was instantly clear to me and many others that war was no way to argue for peace, that two wrongs never add up to a right.
I can understand how Ayers and Dorhn may have gotten caught up in it. I, too, experienced the frustration and anger and sense of futility and injustice; it was the Zeitgeist of the moment. We simply didn't have the faith and patience to see that society was moving in our direction, in it's lumbering and reactionary way.
America knows now that when we took our troops out of Vietnam, there was no "defeat", there was no "domino" effect of countries falling into the Commmunist camp. We simply left, and in a few years the Polish workers of Solidarity, NOT Ronald Reagan, tore the Berlin Wall down.
There will be bloodshed if we leave Iraq, I have no doubt. But I hope Iraq has taught us that diplomacy is a better answer to conflict, that sanctions and inspections and continual pressure can contain a dictator and a rogue state.
I am still one of the Peaceniks. The "movement" wasn't just anti-something; anti-war, anti-establishment. The 60's and early 70's activists were FOR peace, and they saw how society needed to change to get us there. They gave us such an incredible wealth of ideas, idea that we've still hardly begun to explore. Ideas about community, about non-violence, about sustainable agriculture, multi-culturalism, about conservation, and ecology.
That dream did not die in the ashes of a New York tenement. Ayers turned his back on violence and took up teaching, he's now a respected university professor who advocates for children's education and won a Chicago "Citizen of the Year" award for his efforts.
The "movement" continues for millions of Americans, in ways big and small. It lives in the simple pleasures of knitting, in thrift store shopping, designing or redesigning your own clothes, it lives in our restored love of tea, of hanging out on the porch with friends playing the fiddle and banjo. It gave us yoga, homeopathic medicine, tantric sex. It lives in brilliant green architects and organic chefs, in user-friendly computer technology, and the simple wonder of cooking swiss chard grown in your own backyard.
That's where my hope is. That peace movement is alive and well in many progressive cities and neighborhoods, in many many minds and hearts.
I've done a series of portraits of peace activists from the recent protests in St. Paul. It's mostly about the women, an anti-Palin antidote, strong smart women- mostly either very old or very young.
I call it Peaceniks.
St. Paul Art Crawl, Lowertown Lofts. 255 E. Kellogg Blvd. #502
See you there!
