Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Cynthia---You have a bit more faith than is warranted in the folks who
have captured political power in our country...Suppose we can convince
them,you muse....Well it makes utter sense--- and decades of practice
and research with Head Start for example confirms this---that if you
invest in early education,the benefits for individuals and society are
immense,incontrovertible.And what does Congress do?Starves Head Start
for years,and now Bush proposes to kill it off.Power concedes nothing
without a demand:Social Security was a response to social upheaval,the
war on overty including Head Start a response to a mass movement and a
mobilized,discontented people.If we hope for a better world our job is
not to hope the rich and powerful will come to their senses,but is to
organize a powerful,irresistible force...
  

    
Cynthia---On keeping faith:Bush said after the unprecedented antiwar
protests of Feb.15 that he wasn't paying attention.Like Nixon saying he
was watching the Superbowl when we brought 250,000 people to DC.So one
reason to keep going is pure spite:don't let the bastards grind you
down.More seriously,it's important for the rulers to say what you do
doesn't matter precisely because it does matter and one weapon they
weild is to sow despair,cynicism,passivity...Don't give in!Resist!
Gather around you friends and colleagues with whom you can interpret
and make sense of the world,and find pathways to resist..
And participate in political activity because that's how you learn the
limits and possibilities and next steps...
Rosa Luxemberg wrote to a friend from prison:Be a mensch...Love life
fully,admire the sunrise and the clouds,fall in love....and be prepared
to throw yourself on history"s wheel when possible.
So be both modest and audacious in turn.We are both little specks of
nothing living on the edge of the gallaxy for a nanosecond,and at the
same time we have seen ordinary people stand up and change history....
What a dire and happy time to be alive and fighting... 
  

    
You've got a fine philosophy.
  

    
Thanks, Bill, for your thoughtful and passionate answer. I'll try, I swear,
to find that enthusiasm I once took for granted as being limitless.
  

    
And now, I want to thank both Bill Ayers and Andy Klein for joining us here
for the past two weeks. This has been quite a journey, and though we've now
turned our virtual spotlight onto a new interview, there's no reason this
one can't continue. This topic will be left open for continued discussion,
so please feel free to keep talking.

Thank you, and keep up the good work, Bill!
  

    
Hey----thank you...sorry to stop just as I was figuring out my
machine...but  I'll  check in and see what's going on...I like the site
a lot and the concept.I also would love to hear from anyone who gets a
chance to read Fugitive Days.Bill
  

    
It's been an interesting discussion. Bill, I hope you take a little time
to look around here on the Well and see if there's anything
ongoing you'd like to participate in.
  

    
Oh, dear. It's over already? Heck. I regret that I haven't yet bought
your book, Bill, so I didn't know what to ask you specifically (though
being roughly the same age, of course I remember you and Bernadine
well). I didn't know you back in the day, but Mike Klonsky was a great
friend. Your story was important to me, and it's SO damned heartening
to see you here. To know you're not only _alive_, which is a triumph in
itself (Fred Hampton's murder was one of the darkest and most
disheartening days ever), but that you and Bernadine are still
together, and still working hard for a better world. I can't tell you
how much this means to us (I read some of your words to my roommate,
who was moved and gladdened, too).  

I have a little $ now, so intended to rush right out and devour it,
and then get back to you. 

Do you have a website? Or, I will email you after reading the book, if
you're no longer around the Well. Hope you will be, though. 

Your encouraging words, exhorting us not to let the bastards get us
down, are wonderful, and just what the doctor ordered. Forget Prozac; I
need a shot of your energy every once in a while, to remember to "Fuck
the Nazis!" 

Thank you
  

    
Whoops. The "it" I intend to devour is your book, of course. 
  

    
Some places to check out within the password-walls of The WELL proper -- 
and maybe folks will post others that touch on some of the issues
addressed in your book:
<writers.>  
<boomers.> (for generational musings) 
<politics.> (relatively civil discussion, with real and opinionated humans  
<current.> (current events and more unfettered political stewing)
<education.> 
<media.>  (about and with media folk, large area)
And many more of course, but you may find one or more of those perfect
for settling into.  You can continue to post right here in your own topic, 
of course, and make this an online home.  Thanks, very interesting life
you've led!
  

    
><current.> (current events and more unfettered political stewing)

Aw, thanks, Gail.  That's the kindest description of <current.> I've
encountered since I've been a host.  And absolutely, Bill.  Drop by
<current.>
  

    
Bill, I hope you hang around for a while and check out some other parts of 
the Well. And that this very interesting discussion continues.
  

    
I read Fugitive Days about a year ago and some of the stories in the 
book took me back to where I was at about the same time in about the 
same place.

I remember when Fred Hampton was murdered by the Chicago Police.   I was 
near Lincoln and Fullerton.  There was revolution in the air.  I don't 
know if the red stenciled signs Piece Now with a silhouette of a pistol 
had begun showing up on the sidewalks, but it was around that time.

There were extra large sized plainclothes cops in jeans and flannel 
shirts pulling guys off the street.  

I recall being very pissed off at the time, but I didn't walk over there 
to see the scene of the crime, but you did!!  

You go into some elaborate details to show how much work you had to do 
to lose tails, but you were able to slip in and out of the crowd there, 
white kids in a black neighborhood.  

Were you that good at misdirection that they thought you were in 
some far off place when that happened?  
  

    

Indeed, thanks, Bill, although it seems like this just started. I hope you 
continue to hang out and we can keep this going some more. 
  

    
Lincoln and Fullerton -- bbraasch, we must've crossed paths a million 
times.

I have a question about the Days of Rage but I'm insufficiently 
caffeinated at the moment to compose it properly.
  

    
I don't believe  people around twenty or thirty have any idea how
sickening the war in Vietnam was, how divorced from reality or decency.
  Looking back, I think the effect was, and continues to be,
comparable in many ways to the wounds of the Civil War.  Afterwards, 
as a country, we went into denial and cynicism.

And, yes, I do think education is the best (not the only) hope.  And I
say this as one who used to feel, as an adult, that the way we were
taught in school-that we were stupid, and could only learn by listening
to teacher and believing what we were told-was so damaging that the
only way out was 2-3 years, starting at 10 years old, learning to read,
write, and figure, and no more.  With two more years of access to
books, of course. God knows, the history I was taught in grade school
was no help to anyone.  Remember, this was 50-60 years ago.
  

    
(Starting at 10 -- that's interesting. Why 10?)
  

    
I thought then that kids were more prevented from knowing they
could/do learn on their own if it started early.  By ten, they would
be..less gullible?  more aware of who they were?  Now, I think that
being with other children, since we're not a tribe anymore, is too
valuable to miss.  Children learn so much, bad and good, from other
children. This is one of the problems I have with home schooling.
  

    
Hey jenny---Thanx for the note and write when you've read the book if
you want to...We do all need to remind ourselves that we are neither
crazy nor deluded nor alone...the clique running OUR country represents
the American people in the same way that the Soviet CP represented the
people of the old Soviet Union---which is to say,yes,to some extent
some of the time,and really a large NO WAY most of the time for most of
the people.
Now here we are with all the familiar talk of how SHOCKING it is that
a president lied,and all the clever misdirection and fumbling about 1
sentence when the whole thing was a lie top to bottom,when the man
can't open his mouth without lying---we need to speak clearly into the
fog.
Also,now comes the familiar underestimation of the cost of
occupation,the toll in $$$  but also in a corrupted
culture,consciousness,spirit...And the liberals call it a
quagmire,holding on to the myth of American innocence,our good
intentions undermined as if no one pointed this out again and
again---pointedly in the recent antiwar protests....But to the
established powers,liberal and conservative,it's critical to hold to
the idea that we're outside the debate and so never a serious
voice....And so we must work harder to establish the power of people
mobilized and energized to wage the struggle for peace and justice....
  

    
bbraasch---I worked in the Cleveland colony called Lakeview/Hough,but
years before I was on the run...No hiding out there,just getting high
on the people,rapping about freedom,and living in the beloved
community----amidst the clarifying wreckage....
  

    
proletarianly intoxicated, eh?
  

    
I saw a new documentary on the Weathermen tonight at the Castro.  It'll 
be there for a week.  Very well done.  Catch it while you can.
  

    
Title? I'm not likely to get to SF but I have a local indie/art theater that
has an excellent booking agent. I could ask about bringin' it up here.
  

    
The Weather Underground. Or maybe just Weather Underground. It's also 
playing at the Shattuck, where I saw it today. Very emotional experience. 
I'm gonna go back in a few days and see it again.

Bill is one of the main people in it, of course -- Bill and Bernardine and 
Mark Rudd and a few others are interviewed throughout the movie.

The old footage is incredibly compelling, or was for me. The Vietnam stuff 
is gorrifyingly violent. That's a typo, but so apt I'll leave it.

Bill? You there? Do you have any comments on the movie?

I wish I'd gone opening day, because Bernardine appeared for Q&A at both 
theatres (on different evenings).