Yes they are similar. Eerily so. In fact they seem to be a parody, like so
much of our post modern culture these days. In a posting to Ed W. the other
day I said this somewhat stronger,
"A lot of what is going on in every day events really turns out to be
parody. Some protest is authentic and deserves to be heard. This is not
authentic and we should tune them out."
I am not unhappy with the demos, but I do get the feeling that they are
checking the old newsreels to "get it right"
arthur cordell
-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Goertzen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: March 29, 2001 11:00 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Fwd'd We Are Everywhere Project
Hi All:
Does anyone besides myself see the current demonstrations as similar to the
ones that introduced the 60's?
Note the following except from Bork's book.
THE BIRTH OF THE SIXTIES
"The Sixties were born at a particular me and place: June, 1962, the
AFL-CIO camp at Port Huron, Michigan. (There were preliminary stirrings in
parts of the civil rights movement and in the Free Speech movement at
Berkeley. Though most Americans have never heard of the proceedings at Port
Huron, they were crucial, for the authentic spirit of Sixties radicalism
issued there. That spirit spread and evolved afterwards, but its later
malignant stages, including its violence, were implicit in its birth.
Port Huron was an early convention of SDS, then a small group of alienated,
left-wing college students. There were fiftynine delegates from eleven
campus chapters. One of them described their mood. "four-square against
anti-communism, eight-square against American culture, twelve-square
against sellout unions, one-hundred-twenty square against an interpretation
of the Cold War that saw it as a Soviet plot and identified American policy
fondly." In short, they rejected America. Worse, as their statement of
principles made clear, they were also foursquare against the nature of
human beings and features of the world that are unchangeable. That is the
utopian impulse. It has produced disasters in the past, just as it was to
do with the Sixties generation.
Starting from a draft by Tom Hayden (heavily influenced by the writing of
the radical sociologist C. Wright Mills), the convention wrangled out the
Port Huron Statement," a lengthy, stupefyingly dull manifesto, setting
forth the SDS agenda for changing human beings, the nation, and the world.
Like the wider student radicalism that ensued, the document displayed the
ignorance and arrogance proper to adolescents, These youths were in a state
of euphoria about their own wisdom, moral purity, and power to change
everything. They were short on specifics about how they would reform the
world, what the end product would look like, and what was to be done if the
world proved intractable.
SDS and the Port Huyon Statement did not create the temper of the Sixties
out of nothing. They coalesced the restless discontents of their
generation. While most student rebels did not belong to SDS, the Port
Huron Statement repays attention: it was the most widely circulated
document of the Left in that decade, brought SDS to national prominence,
and its notions became the common currency of the New Left. The New Left is
important because it is still with us in the guise of modern liberalism.
What was composed atb Port Huron, therefore, is a guide to today's cultural
and political debates."
Reprinted in James Miller's "Democracy Is In The Streets - From Port Huron
to the Siege of Chicago." Miller's subtitle rather neatly sums up the
progression inherent in the manifesto.
PP 26-27 "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" by R.H. Bork
Regards
Ed G
