In the United States during the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement of the Fifties and Sixties, the Old South was aging and plagued by the festering cancer of racial hatred that had been leaving ugly scars on it's society for over 100 years following Reconstruction. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan led to decades of terror that included bombings of churches, killings of school children, lynchings, and of course the barbarous practice of "segregation then, segregation now, segregation forever" that fostered the separate but equal mantra of the Old South.
Drinking fountains and lunch counters for 'blacks only" were the abnormal norm. The public transporation system of the south also suffered from racial bias. Black citizens had to give up their seats to white riders. One such rider, Rosa Parks, a hard working determined Black female was sitting on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and when told to give her seat up to a white man she refused. Believe it or not, this was a "crime" and Ms. Parks was arrested and booked. This incindiary incident ignited the fuse that brought to prominence a new leader in America...the Reverend Martin Luther King. He was not a politician looking for votes. He was a minister who took up the mantle of civil rights and was thrust into the eye of the storm overnight. He was a leader for his times and he led by example, he marched peacefully and he managed to influence an army of black and white supporters who adopted the manta of non-violence in order to achieve their goals. The were beaten by police, intimidated by the Klan, and for a time ignored by the federal government. King took the lead and led the movement to victory, the Non-V way. He also paid the price for his leadership in a violent end, brought down by the violence of an assassins bullet. Some say it was the governments finger on the trigger.
Both Ghandi and King led by example, as did Moses when he said..Let My People Go. Ghandi got independence and King had a dream. Both men had what a leader needs to lead and inspire others to action...commitment to a cause...conviction of purpose...and the heart to see the battle through to it's conclusion. Most importantly they also had charisma to influence their followers and in effect create more leaders to set the example for others. Hitler and Stalin influenced millions as well..through fear, intimidation and violence, but it takes a leader with extraordinary qualities, vision and virtue to have others follow out of respect and belief. Violence may win the short term battles...but non-V will win the war.
In America, the practice of non-violence has its roots in the writings of Henry David Thoreau who wrote extensively obout the duty of citizens to practice civil disobiedience in cases where the laws were unjust. "If the laws are unjust, then the only place for a just man to be is in prison" His book, "Resistance to Civil Government has been the holy bible of protest since then from union organizing by the IWW and Joe Hill in the 1930's to the present Occupy Movement and recent peoples revolutions in countries like Egypt.
Today's movements whether they be for Human Rights, Peace, or Nuclear Disarmament has a need for a few good men and women..new leaders to set the example and teach others to lead through the practice of non-violence. Movements need young blood to infuse the non-violence arteries of todays social movements. There also has to be a unity of purpose for all diverse groups to work as one for a common goal. Remember, Abraham Lincoln the Great Emancipator said.."United We Stand, Divided We Fall." Even earlier in America's timeline, Thomas Jefferson said, "The people should not be afraid of thier government. Their government should be afraid of it's people"
Todays Gen X for the most part aren't looking for answers anymore that might be blowin' in wind my friend. Bob Dylan has been reduced to the status of an interesting icon and curiosity of an era of protest when music by the bards lit the path of protest from Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie to Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan. Today, they occupy space on the protest pedestal as "a before my time" scraggly old folkies whose "folk you" days are long gone. Dylan and Ochs and Baez are as interesting to todays youth as my collection of vinyl records is to a visitor from outer space.
Folkies and activists, all DOA in the pop culture dumpster of protest at the crossroads of nostalgia. Nobody wants a dose of Quinn the Eskimo anymore. Woody Gutheries land is no longer your land or my land. Instead it belongs to the corporate interests and politicians who rape us and violate the environment on a daily, hourly basis. Organic mantras of peace, brotherhood and sisterhood have been sucker punched by the behemoth Monsanto. ABC's have been replaced by GMO's. The peace symbol has become as dinosaur extinct as tie-dyed Grateful Dead bears, while peaceful protest or protest of any kind is stuck in negative neutral of the American left today. The Occupy Movement was a valiant effort but it lacked leadership...inspiration and in effect it added up to zero..nothing has changed and besides when you say you will occupy Wall Street, don't don't kid yourself thinking you're making a political statement by occupying a park with a permit! That ain't revolution! Wall Street prospered while you were flying kites and posing for the media.
So I ask myself, are Little Red Books still hungrily read by hordes of angry young reds? Do American students get their Marx and Lenin confused with Groucho and John? ...right on! You say, you want a revolution? As a political and social scientist, I register a negative-two or lower on the Richter scale, and yes, I have no social scientist degree, and yes, there is no -ologist attached anywhere in my name, cart or horse, fore and aft, so don't anticipate any salivatory revelations or orgasmic illuminations in this piece, this, this peek through the peephole of history at the paths followed in revolutionary orbit in a rebellious solar system of social issues and rights of the people. I am merely a dumpster diver in the overflowing trash bin of pop culture and clutter that has lived blissfully ignorant and comfortably numb on the Pacific Left Coast as well as the Peoples Republic of Ann Arbor.
Apathy has descended across the land...a darkness, not a light...lethary, not activism...the willingness to accept authority without question and along with the apathy and letting our guard down, it leads to the atrophy of our cacophony of constitutional rights. In this country, our fathers and our grandfathers generation bent over backwards to do their part for the myth of the American Dream., tday we bend over forwards and accept the nightmare of war and violence. Enter stage far left...while LSD colored our world, of some of us anyway, the false drug of patriotism wore off and like a junkie suffering from withdrawls, our hypodermic needle empty, we woke up to the reality of rampant racism, war mongering, and the capitalist rape of the working class. Apparently the new left has grown complacent, and complacently is the placenta of Orwells 1984. Think-Speak!
What happened to the revolutionary protest zeal of American youth? Did it pull a Cheech and Chong and merely go up in smoke? Take a look around you. It appears alive and well in the young people of other parts of the world with America the lone exception. Overseas! Now that is a protest horse of different color. There is a very strong visual image that still haunts today...a young Chinese student in Tianamen Square facing off with a tank....he had no permit by the way and wasn't standing in front of a Good Humor Truck! That is revolution or in this case...taking a revolutionary stand against authoritarian rule.
The Egytian revolution in recent digital history was a revolution taht was not only televised but downloaded, You Tubed and Facebooked. We saw first hand bullets firing...tanks rumbling...buldings on fire...billy clubs clubbing, soldiers and protesters facing off...once again it was the students who took the lead and led the revolt that brought that government down. Now that is revolution as are so many other recent examples such as Turkey, Greece, squatters in England, and most recently Ukraine. The battle still goes on as of press time, and the beat goes on.
We used to have that revolutionary zeal and spirit in America in the Sixties. But the catalysts in play were a desire for change from the hypocrisy and hyperbole of our government and it's talking heads "do nothing" congress. Lies and belligerant retaliation for peaceful protest fueled the youth of America. Heads got bloodied, leaders were assassinated, police agents infiltrated movements and organizations and the FBI had a hit list of people like Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and Dr. Spock! To clarify for the younger readers who enjoy wallowing in the "that was before my time quagmire" I am not referring to the Spock with the pointy ears that buzzed around space.
We had police riots in '68 in Mayor Daleys fiefdom of Chicago (the same year as the Paris revolts) and of course the massacre at Kent State where young students literally took a bullet for peace! Protest has been tossed in the trashcan in favor of that new Orwellian mindset of think-speak acceptance of the status quo that I mentioned earlier.This is 2014, but if you strip away the techo-crap veneer, it really is 1984. There is an all pervasive all-American apathy that apparently has fallen over the land of the free. The theater lights go dim, the final curtain of an off off Broadway production begins its descent. and the protagonists and the antagonists make their exit to go to their dressing rooms as the stage of activism in this country goes dark and the theater empties and natural leaders are nowhere to be found. The last act was completed at Kent State with four dead students lying on the ground, shot down by National Guardsman, not much older than their victims lying lifeless in pools of blood...they had to die it appears while trying to stop the killing overseas and the bloodshed half a globe away...the war had come home and the enemy was our own government, but then we always knew that anyway.
To be fair...in the Sixties...we effected some change, had our martyrs and kind of sort of ended a war, but didn't really bring the government down and usher in our new utopia. John Lennon when commenting on the Sixties said simply in an interview..."We Blew It!" So don't feel bad if you blow it too. In the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" the Jack Nicholson character, R. P. McMurphy tries to life a bolted down uber heavy sink to toss out the window and can't...the inmates laugh at him..he looks them in the eye, defeated, and says.."Well, at least goddamn it...I TRIED!" In the Sixties so did we...today...so can you...It's time to resurrect leadership in the form of new Ghandi's, new King's, new Thoreau's and take to the streets. Remember its a new age and Non-V for Victory is our our collective mantra...we may loose a battle or two, but in the end..Non V will win the war!