Earlier today, I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond with my mother and a friend. I needed an ironing board; my mother needed a whole list of stuff. As I sat waiting for her to be checked out and pay for her cartful of purchases, I looked around the store. Hanging from the ceiling was a banner in purples and pinks, kind of batikish -- it showed two peace symbols.
The peace symbol now sells all manner of merchandise -- thongs for one's feet (and perhaps for other places on one's body...); t-shirts and tank tops from Victoria's Secret; office supplies from Staples; baby onesies; necklaces from Claire's.
I find it appalling.
I remember when wearing a peace symbol was risky, controversial, counter-cultural, and daring. People who wore them as clothing, as political buttons, as pendants flirted with being cursed at at best, beaten up at worst. My friend John, who wore his long blond hair in a pony tail and a small peace pin on his jacket came close to being roughed up at a gas station in Western PA where we stopped in 1971 on our way back to Marietta College in Southeastern OH. Wearing peace symbols indicated one had joined "the radicals" or "the hippies" or both. High schools forbade students from wearing them. Colleges didn't bother; the administrators knew they'd lose that battle.
Wearing a peace symbol in the 1960's and early 1970's meant that the wearer had joined "the other side," "the tribe," "the enemies of the state," those who were dangerous, those who opposed the government and opposed the War in Vietnam. They dared to say no openly and forcefully to policies and actions they opposed.
I know all of that because I was there, fully a part of it, fully a member of the generation that refused the givens and instead endeavoured to stop a war, improve race relations, change relations between women and man, change society, and bring about a revolution. I'm not afraid or ashamed to say that. I wore my peace symbols proudly, defiantly and wore my clenched fist pins even more defiantly. The peace symbol, the clenched fist, the peace sign made with the first 2 fingers -- along with long hair for white folk, afros for Black folk, flowers, blue jeans, Army surplus, bellbottoms, granny glasses -- except for the afro, I wore them all. All of them stood for a new way of living, of being, of creating, a new vision, a new commitment to a new future. We each learned to describe it and explain it ourselves; there were few, if any, precedents except for the ones from the previous week or month. Some of us read and quoted the Port Huron Statement and New Left Notes. Some of the more historically- and / or philosophically-minded read Marx. Some who considered themselves revolutionaries read Regis Debray or Mao or Marcuse. For the most part, though, we made it up as we went along.
We wanted peace ~~ an end to the War in Vietnam that threatened to engulf all of Southeast Asia. Until the early 1970's, unless one lived in a major metro area or in a place with a large, activist university, e.g., Berkeley or Madison, WI, declaring openly that one supported peace, opposed The War, wanted justice in Vietnam for the Vietnamese people, wanted the troops brought home, and opposed the military draft, one took a risk of isolation, ostracization, arguments within one's family, with friends, with teachers, professors, administrators. Wearing a black armband could get a high school student suspended or expelled. Peace wasn't patriotic -- it was dangerous.
Now, though, peace is a fashion statement. Everyone's for it, because everyone supports the troops. No danger anymore. No risk. So peace has become easy, its symbol ubiquitous. The question then becomes: Does the peace symbol retain any meaning?
I think I liked it better when being for peace was dangerous. At least then, we knew what it meant.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Remembering Kent State -- 4 May 1970
Nearly forty years after the shootings at Kent State University on 4 May 1970, the memories of that day -- seeing photographs and film, hearing audio of the shots being fired, recalling my own memories -- still have the power to make me cry. Four students were shot and killed that day, nine were wounded, including one who was paralyzed by Ohio National Guard troops. The students killed and wounded and the troops who did the shooting were mostly the same age, however, they stood on opposite sides of the great divide of my / our generation: The War in Vietnam.
Four nights earlier, on 30 April 1970, President Richard Nixon -- who had campaigned on a false promise of having a "secret plan" to end the war -- announced that US military had invaded Cambodia in a search and destroy effort against the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong -- pro-Northern insurgents in South Vietnam. In other words, Nixon had widened the war we had been laboring for years to end. Students on campus after campus in the US called for renewed anti-war actions -- marches, rallies, campus strikes. On my campus, Marietta College in Marietta, OH, those of us who openly opposed the war and embraced radical politics talked, but we couldn't figure out what to do. End-of-semester exams began the following week.
That Monday afternoon, 4 May, I sat on the porch of the student union building, what we all called "The Pit," studying for one of my exams; I have no memory of what I studied. Suddenly, someone -- I don't recall who -- ran up to me, yelling, "Pat, Pat, get to your radio!! They're killing students at Kent State!!" (Remember, in 1970, few, if any students, had television sets in our dorm rooms; instead, we gathered together after dinner to watch the news.) I ran across the street and up the fire escape door to my room which was right off the fire escape, turned on my radio, and heard the report. Students had been shot and killed by US National Guard troops at Kent State University, just a few hours' drive from Marietta. I ran to the Student Government office building to find my friend Charlie Dawes, the current Student Body Treasurer and incoming Student Body President. Finding Charlie there, we started trying to find other activist leaders.
Much of the next couple of days remains a blur in my memory. We decided to call for a campus-wide student meeting the following evening; at that meeting, a number of us called for the students to join the hundreds of campuses across the country that had gone on strike. The debate was fractious, angry, and loud. Rather than voting at the meeting, we decided to hold the vote over the next hours -- basically, overnight -- so the most students as possible could get a chance to vote. The votes would be counted at 8 the next morning.
Not trusting that the vote would favor the strike, I studied for another exam, joining several friends in the dorm living room that night. Suddenly, I looked out the window and saw flames; it looked like the Fine Arts Center were on fire. I realized, however, the those flames were reflections in the top windows of the arts center. I ran outside, across the main street, and discovered that the wood-frame World War II-vintage Old Classroom Building -- a building that housed faculty offices and the bookstore -- was ablaze. Marietta firefighters had arrived to put out the fire. The building was a total loss.
The next morning, we found out the result of the strike vote -- it had failed, due, I was sure, to the fire. Years later, one of the people who set the fire told Charlie who had been responsible. It never mattered. I was furious that other students would commit such a stupid act. I had passionately wanted the strike vote to pass. That afternoon, I was called in to our dorm housemother's quarters to be questioned by the FBI, State Police, and Ohio Arson Squad on my knowledge about the fire. It became clear that they suspected a resident in my dorm. I told them as little as possible, mostly on principle. (I was relieved that they weren't there to question me about my use of pot and speed.)
Several days later, I left for summer vacation, angry, grieving, disillusioned, more radicalized than I'd ever been. I thought seriously of dropping out of college and instead going to the San Francisco Bay Area to join the more radical campus forces out West. Instead, I wrote to Charlie, whose return letter asked me to please not drop out, that he would need me in the following year. I spent much of my free time that summer working on the unpaid campaign staff of Democratic candidate for the US Senate Joseph Duffy, a former minister and openly anti-war candidate. He won the Democratic primary, then lost in the fall election to Lowell Weicker, the Republican; Democrat Tom Dodd, the Senator who had been sanctioned, ran as an independent, splitting the Democratic vote and guaranteeing a Republican victory. By then, I was more concerned about my romantic relationship with a student at Boston University and whether I'd managed to get pregnant over Homecoming Weekend when he'd visited. (Fortunately, I hadn't.)
Forty years later, I still grieve. Kent State, and Jackson State ten days later, where 2 African-American students were killed and a number injured, shot by Jackson police, made it clear to me that the power structure would stop at nothing to keep in power, even if holding onto power meant killing students who were exercising their Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of Freedom of Speech and Assembly, or just passing by on their way to class. It was the beginning of the radicalization that resulted, 2 years later, in my becoming a Marxist and a revolutionary. The Ohio National Guard had indeed brought the war home. Two years later, Nixon was re-election after a campaign fraught with illegal actions by his party. Only his own arrogance and attempts to hold onto power no matter what brought him down, when he proceeded to engage in a cover-up of what his aides first termed a "third-rate burglary" in the attempted bugging of Democratic Party headquarters in what became known as the Watergate Scandal. But before he resigned, many of us on the Left were not convinced that Nixon wouldn't do a complete power grab, declare martial law, disband the Congress and Courts, and hold onto power in a coup. That that didn't happen still amazes me.
Kent State and Jackson State stand as the beginning of the end of the student movement of the late 1960's and arly '70's; the murders frightened students and their parents, and the majority of students held back from future activism. That that was the result must have thrilled Richard Nixon and his minions. Kent and Jackson also stand as markers in my personal political history, dividing my radicalism into 2 very different periods. I didn't withdraw from activism at all. In my early radical days, I believed that we could end the War and change society through peaceful protest, marches, demonstrations, teach-ins, changing consciousness. My later, post-Kent and post-Jackson radicalism moved much closer to that of the Weather Underground, becoming Marxist and openly revolutionary. That period lasted until the mid-1970's, when I became a Roman Catholic, having gotten to the point of being convinced that Marxist politics didn't offer enough to sustain my intellectual, psychological, or -- dare I say it -- spiritual life. There had to be more, I believed, than Dialectical Materialism. And there was -- and is.
When I converted in June 1975, I had pulled out of most of my political work, and I stayed apolitical until the summer of 1978, when a proposition authored by John Briggs got a spot on the California ballot. The Briggs Initiative would have barred gay and lesbian persons from teaching or working in the public schools in California, and would have prevented supporters of gay / lesbian rights from those same jobs. Infuriated, I joined a Roman Catholic organization, Catholics for Human Dignity, in opposing the initiative. That action on my part introduced me to people with whom I have remained close friends for now-over 30 years, and helped me to think politically as a Catholic.
Two years later, when I began graduate school in Theology, I discovered a new understanding of Theology that blended my faith and my politics into the Faith which Does Justice -- Liberation Theology, or, more accurately, Liberation Theologies. My embrace of Liberation Theologies gave me not only a new way to understand and live my faith as a disciple of Jesus Christ; it also provided me with friends and colleagues, included my late mentor, Robert McAfee Brown, who have remained community for me over the past 30 years. And those murdered at Kent and Jackson States are now in my Communion of Saints.
Four nights earlier, on 30 April 1970, President Richard Nixon -- who had campaigned on a false promise of having a "secret plan" to end the war -- announced that US military had invaded Cambodia in a search and destroy effort against the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong -- pro-Northern insurgents in South Vietnam. In other words, Nixon had widened the war we had been laboring for years to end. Students on campus after campus in the US called for renewed anti-war actions -- marches, rallies, campus strikes. On my campus, Marietta College in Marietta, OH, those of us who openly opposed the war and embraced radical politics talked, but we couldn't figure out what to do. End-of-semester exams began the following week.
That Monday afternoon, 4 May, I sat on the porch of the student union building, what we all called "The Pit," studying for one of my exams; I have no memory of what I studied. Suddenly, someone -- I don't recall who -- ran up to me, yelling, "Pat, Pat, get to your radio!! They're killing students at Kent State!!" (Remember, in 1970, few, if any students, had television sets in our dorm rooms; instead, we gathered together after dinner to watch the news.) I ran across the street and up the fire escape door to my room which was right off the fire escape, turned on my radio, and heard the report. Students had been shot and killed by US National Guard troops at Kent State University, just a few hours' drive from Marietta. I ran to the Student Government office building to find my friend Charlie Dawes, the current Student Body Treasurer and incoming Student Body President. Finding Charlie there, we started trying to find other activist leaders.
Much of the next couple of days remains a blur in my memory. We decided to call for a campus-wide student meeting the following evening; at that meeting, a number of us called for the students to join the hundreds of campuses across the country that had gone on strike. The debate was fractious, angry, and loud. Rather than voting at the meeting, we decided to hold the vote over the next hours -- basically, overnight -- so the most students as possible could get a chance to vote. The votes would be counted at 8 the next morning.
Not trusting that the vote would favor the strike, I studied for another exam, joining several friends in the dorm living room that night. Suddenly, I looked out the window and saw flames; it looked like the Fine Arts Center were on fire. I realized, however, the those flames were reflections in the top windows of the arts center. I ran outside, across the main street, and discovered that the wood-frame World War II-vintage Old Classroom Building -- a building that housed faculty offices and the bookstore -- was ablaze. Marietta firefighters had arrived to put out the fire. The building was a total loss.
The next morning, we found out the result of the strike vote -- it had failed, due, I was sure, to the fire. Years later, one of the people who set the fire told Charlie who had been responsible. It never mattered. I was furious that other students would commit such a stupid act. I had passionately wanted the strike vote to pass. That afternoon, I was called in to our dorm housemother's quarters to be questioned by the FBI, State Police, and Ohio Arson Squad on my knowledge about the fire. It became clear that they suspected a resident in my dorm. I told them as little as possible, mostly on principle. (I was relieved that they weren't there to question me about my use of pot and speed.)
Several days later, I left for summer vacation, angry, grieving, disillusioned, more radicalized than I'd ever been. I thought seriously of dropping out of college and instead going to the San Francisco Bay Area to join the more radical campus forces out West. Instead, I wrote to Charlie, whose return letter asked me to please not drop out, that he would need me in the following year. I spent much of my free time that summer working on the unpaid campaign staff of Democratic candidate for the US Senate Joseph Duffy, a former minister and openly anti-war candidate. He won the Democratic primary, then lost in the fall election to Lowell Weicker, the Republican; Democrat Tom Dodd, the Senator who had been sanctioned, ran as an independent, splitting the Democratic vote and guaranteeing a Republican victory. By then, I was more concerned about my romantic relationship with a student at Boston University and whether I'd managed to get pregnant over Homecoming Weekend when he'd visited. (Fortunately, I hadn't.)
Forty years later, I still grieve. Kent State, and Jackson State ten days later, where 2 African-American students were killed and a number injured, shot by Jackson police, made it clear to me that the power structure would stop at nothing to keep in power, even if holding onto power meant killing students who were exercising their Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of Freedom of Speech and Assembly, or just passing by on their way to class. It was the beginning of the radicalization that resulted, 2 years later, in my becoming a Marxist and a revolutionary. The Ohio National Guard had indeed brought the war home. Two years later, Nixon was re-election after a campaign fraught with illegal actions by his party. Only his own arrogance and attempts to hold onto power no matter what brought him down, when he proceeded to engage in a cover-up of what his aides first termed a "third-rate burglary" in the attempted bugging of Democratic Party headquarters in what became known as the Watergate Scandal. But before he resigned, many of us on the Left were not convinced that Nixon wouldn't do a complete power grab, declare martial law, disband the Congress and Courts, and hold onto power in a coup. That that didn't happen still amazes me.
Kent State and Jackson State stand as the beginning of the end of the student movement of the late 1960's and arly '70's; the murders frightened students and their parents, and the majority of students held back from future activism. That that was the result must have thrilled Richard Nixon and his minions. Kent and Jackson also stand as markers in my personal political history, dividing my radicalism into 2 very different periods. I didn't withdraw from activism at all. In my early radical days, I believed that we could end the War and change society through peaceful protest, marches, demonstrations, teach-ins, changing consciousness. My later, post-Kent and post-Jackson radicalism moved much closer to that of the Weather Underground, becoming Marxist and openly revolutionary. That period lasted until the mid-1970's, when I became a Roman Catholic, having gotten to the point of being convinced that Marxist politics didn't offer enough to sustain my intellectual, psychological, or -- dare I say it -- spiritual life. There had to be more, I believed, than Dialectical Materialism. And there was -- and is.
When I converted in June 1975, I had pulled out of most of my political work, and I stayed apolitical until the summer of 1978, when a proposition authored by John Briggs got a spot on the California ballot. The Briggs Initiative would have barred gay and lesbian persons from teaching or working in the public schools in California, and would have prevented supporters of gay / lesbian rights from those same jobs. Infuriated, I joined a Roman Catholic organization, Catholics for Human Dignity, in opposing the initiative. That action on my part introduced me to people with whom I have remained close friends for now-over 30 years, and helped me to think politically as a Catholic.
Two years later, when I began graduate school in Theology, I discovered a new understanding of Theology that blended my faith and my politics into the Faith which Does Justice -- Liberation Theology, or, more accurately, Liberation Theologies. My embrace of Liberation Theologies gave me not only a new way to understand and live my faith as a disciple of Jesus Christ; it also provided me with friends and colleagues, included my late mentor, Robert McAfee Brown, who have remained community for me over the past 30 years. And those murdered at Kent and Jackson States are now in my Communion of Saints.
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