[R-G] [BearwWthoutBorders] A kind of general Thought
Hunter Gray
hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org
Mon Mar 24 04:48:03 MDT 2008
Good indeed to see your thoughts, David, with which I -- obviously -- quite agree. I am taking the liberty of forwarding this little package of good seed to several lists and some individuals where I'm certain that at least some soil will prove fertile.
Like a fair number of us still -- despite the vicissitudes of many decades -- you are for sure a Long Distance Runner. We both got into all of this in a grim epoch, you at the beginning of the '50s, I in the middle of that decade. Those years could be lonely.
I always remember a kid and fellow student from NYC with whom I chanced to visit at Arizona State [Tempe] in late 1957. I mentioned that I was a Wobbly [ for some newer readers, Industrial Workers of the World.]
He warmed immediately. "You Are!" he exclaimed happily. "I'm a YPSL!"
And that was the first time I'd really heard of the Young Peoples' Socialist League. He, btw, was very helpful when we organized, a few months later, the broad-based and successful movement at the university to greatly improve the on-campus food and dorm situation.
Your "project" sounds truly solid, David. Its timely nature needs no elaboration. And, among other gifts, you have a rare sense of finely honed humor that "breaks ice", helps free people from their sober-sided image.
But you are, of course, very serious. Keep us posted!
In Solidarity, Hunter
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'
Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm
[The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
SEE MY COMBINED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PIECES -- WITH MUCH NEW STUFF HUNTER GRAY/JOHN R SALTER, JR [HUNTER BEAR] SEPTEMBER 5 2004 -- AND WITH NEW INCLUSION: THE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER AS PRACTITIONER, TEACHER, WRITER AND STUDENT [HUNTER GRAY -- FEBRUARY 19 2008] ALL OF THIS MUCH REPRINTED - PLUS MANY NEW COMMENTS
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
Wobbly Mentor: http://hunterbear.org/wobbly_mentor.htm
See Forces and Faces Along the Activist Trail: http://hunterbear.org/forces_and_faces_along_the_trail.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: David Mcreynolds
To: Hunter Gray ; Friends of Hunter Bear
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 11:47 PM
Subject: Re: [BearwWthoutBorders] A kind of general Thought
I agree with Hunter that the organized left - new, old, whatever - is living on hard times. I also think the Obama candidcay may
open the door for much in the way of a push "to the left", and I say this fully aware that Obama is not a socialist, he will not
cut economic and military aid to Israel, he will not push for a single payer health insurance program, he will not call for nuclear
disarmament.
We are the ones who have to push for those things.
Part of the problem with the left (and these are very brief notes) is that the "models" are broken. The Leninist movement
in all its various forms - the Communist Party, the various Trotskyist organizations, the Maoist groups - all fall short of
seeing the need to build an American movement modeled on our culture, not on the brilliance of a Russian living and working
in the unique conditions of Czarist Russia. (I'd say exactly the same thing about those such as myself who are committed
to nonviolence and the teachings of Gandhi - if we do not realize that Gandhi, also, was a product of "time and place" we
will fail). I'm inclined to say the only problem with the Leninist-inspired movements is that so many adherents think they
might possibly be Lenin.
In New York I'm starting some very informal discussions with a range of views including those who belong to groups I
don't agree with in whole or part - CP, CCDS, DSA, SP, etc. - in order that we can, without trying to "convert one another"
or try yet one more time to "refound the Left", to establish some personal ties and trust.
Beyond that we can only work in our own communities, try to involve younger people in discussions in which we need to be
willing to listen much more than to try to impose our own ideology.
Fraternally,
David Mcreynolds
NYC
----- Original Message -----
From: Hunter Gray
To: Redbadbear at yahoogroups.com ; Bear Without Borders
Cc: Sycamore Canyon
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:50 AM
Subject: [BearwWthoutBorders] A kind of general Thought
NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR: [March 23 2008]
This RBB discussion, in my opinion at least and as I've noted in a quite recent earlier post, has become surreal in a rather personal fashion. I'm quite willing to see this brief cloud as inadvertent and I daresay that none of us would be pleased even with the fraying of the generally good interpersonal relationships that characterize our rambunctious little discussion list -- good relations that are often reflected in congenial off-list correspondence. Sam, indeed, has personally visited us [three years ago] right here in Idaho.
Clarence Darrow at least once remarked that "People live lives of quiet desperation" [and I always like to match that with the affirmative conclusion provided by William James in his essay, "Is Life Worth Living?"] But these are not good times for Left organizational radicals in this country. It'll soon be a decade since the first of the very promising large scale demonstrations against the World Trade Organization marked the end of a very long Death Valley Trek epoch that characterized radical life since the mid-1970s. But despite the challenges presented by the conservative [basically Reaganesque] Clinton administration and the Horrors initiated and carried by the present one, coupled with the quite commendable anti-war grassroots activities that have ensued now for years, Left organizations in this country, although there have been brief "flush" periods, have gotten smaller.
And Left folk are, in a phrase, frustrated as all Hell.
And, of course, so are a vast number of the American people. The genuine excitement characterizing tremendous support for the Obama Campaign/Movement speaks volumes about all of that -- and, in addition to feeling that Obama offers far more than the other presidential candidates re the Iraq War and more -- I'm at least even more strongly convinced that this grassroots excitement propelling and surrounding Obama is indicative of a phenomenon that transcends his hard-fought endeavor and will certainly continue in broadly promising fashion following the November elections.
I'm not sure what this bodes for the "Older Left" and the "Older New Left." My strong hunch is that History on these shores at least stands at a point similar -- in the rough or essential sense -- to 1960. If so, Big Things lie ahead in the realm of activism. On the other hand, though, I don't see a sweeping revolution at any time soon and the obviously and predominately much younger people aren't going to buy in, at least substantially, to that -- at least not in the foreseeable future. And They are going to want to make their own decisions sans outside manipulation, even that with the most altruistic of motives.
I do hold to my strong conviction that the Struggle is a step-by-step Mountain climb -- and, when one range is mounted, others will beckon. It's a Forever process.
Those of us associated with general or specific Left views have every good reason to stick to our guns. We can certainly make positive contributions in such realms as bona fide organizing and, whatever the limited circ of our journals, meaningful writing. And we have, if we're willing to abandon our factional and interpersonal biases and the more rigid dimensions of theory, a great deal of wisdom and solid advice to give to those who are now entering the door that opens into the Save the World Business. Not all of the people who get into that stay -- many do some good things, then fall away. But there are always those who for sure Keep On, Keeping On.
Here's a quote from Darkness at Noon:
As Ivanov [the soon-to-be killed himself secret police inquisitor of his old friend
Rubashov] put it so very well in Darkness at Noon:
" Satan . . .is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads
Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful
to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness . . .don't imagine
that he grinds his teeth and spits fire in his fury. He shrugs his
shoulders; he is thin and ascetic; he has seen many weaken and creep out
of his ranks with pompous pretexts. . ."
But we are not, of course, a Satan-complex in the remotest sense and our motives, I trust, are pretty faithfully altruistic. Not everyone who joins The Struggle will remain. But many will -- old hands and new.
So, while Darrow made an excellent point, I fall out with James and underscore his great optimism. He and Darrow kept going and so must we.
And so we will. Always and Forever. And, in our own way, Together.
[And now, for myself and Trotskyists and Workers World and More in Dixie, see this. Some have seen it, of course, but in the context of our quite recent RBB exchanges, it's worth another look:
Personal Reminiscence:
North Carolina and Jesse Helms [Hunter Gray, 8/22/01]
PUBLISHED IN THE SOCIALIST [JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003]
The departure of Jesse Helms [hopefully forever] from the national political
scene is a vastly pleasant and encouraging development -- much, much more
than, say, even the fading of an especially cruel winter in the Northern
Plains or rain in Death Valley.
I met him directly only once -- a long, long time ago. More on that in a
few moments.
Helms comes from Monroe -- Union County -- North Carolina. Even into
historically recent times, the racism of this place was among the worst in
the South [today, it's becoming a suburb of Charlotte -- but I suspect even
a thin scratch would produce the heavy and oppressive odor of contemporary,
essentially unyielding racism.] This was the setting where, in the late
'50s and just into the '60s, Black leader Rob Williams, a World War II vet
and then president of the local NAACP, and with other very courageous
souls, conducted a series of hard-fought desegregation campaigns at Monroe.
The Black community in that hate-filled town was violently attacked at
different points by increasingly heavy Klan forces -- and Williams, with an
NRA charter, organized an armed self-defense group. Condemned increasingly
by the North Carolina state government, he also wound up on the "hate-list"
of the FBI because of his strong support of the Cuban Revolution. In 1961,
a massive, armed Klan attack was directed against the Black community of
Monroe which climaxed at night. Rob Williams called the office of North
Carolina governor, Terry Sanford, to demand state protection -- but was told
pleasantly by Sanford's assistant, "I would have thought you'd be swinging
from that big tree in the Monroe courthouse yard by this time, Rob."
In the chaos of that final terrible late afternoon and night, Williams and his people took into protective custody a white couple that, either with malice or accidentally, had gone "behind the lines" in the Black community. Although the white couple was released quite unharmed a few hours later, Williams and others were charged with kidnapping -- and, though he was able to make his getaway to Cuba, others were caught. They came to trial in February, 1964 at Monroe.
In those rich and turbulent days, I was Field Organizer for the radical
Southern Conference Educational Fund [SCEF], and based at Raleigh, NC,
working across the Deep South in grassroots civil rights organizing and
anti-Klan work. I was also a very publicly listed and active supporter of
the Committee to Aid the Monroe Defendants [CAMD] -- headed by the excellent Berta Green [a Trotskyist] and George Weissman and others. The principal lawyer for my group, SCEF, was Bill Kunstler who was also one of the
attorneys for the Monroe victims. I got into Monroe for the trial in the
early evening before, noting the huge lighted [Christian?] cross on the hill
above, and stopped for gas at what we rather callously used to refer to in
those days as a "cracker nest."
A young white man handled the gas and, when that was completed, I asked him directions to a particular address -- which was that of the home of the
embattled Dr Albert Perry, a civil rights stalwart where Berta and the
others were staying. He looked at me with great distaste. "Why that's Coon
Town," and he spit it out. "Just tell me where it is, " I said. He
gestured vaguely and backed away.
At Dr Perry's home, the CAMD leaders were gathered -- enmeshed in an
extremely difficult crisis. The "other" defense committee, the Monroe
Defense Committee [MDC] [ Workers World], was also of course, at that
moment, in Monroe. Relationships between the two groups and their followers were extremely hostile. There had been altercations. The prospect of going into a major legal defense trial in such a divisive context -- a trial that was drawing considerable national and international attention -- was clearly very bad business for everyone on our general side. Since I was very much of the ecumenical Left, I immediately offered to go to the local
headquarters of the Monroe Defense Committee to see if a pragmatic armistice
could be arranged. I did and, ushered in by heavily armed guards, met the
very charming Mrs Clarence Senior, who with her husband, spearheaded the
MDC. I had no sooner introduced myself when she warmed very visibly, with
a huge smile. "Professor Salter of Tougaloo College," she said, "I know all
about you!" Very soon, and congenially, we had agreement on treaty
basics -- and, with only a few more back and forth middle-of-the-night
trips [Berta et al. and CAMD were as agreeable as Mrs Senior and MDC], we
had full agreement on joint cooperation in all key areas -- including media
presentations and statements.
The trial, as massive a perversion of justice as I've ever seen anywhere,
took place in this absolutely hate-filled town of Monroe [the Helms'
home-town], saturated with obvious [if ungarbed] Ku Kluxers, a raft of
Federal and state finks, and newspersons from the four corners of the globe.
A blatantly stacked-deck -- a completely unabashed one from the outset --
the "trial" ran its obviously racist course -- presided over by an openly "
hanging judge" type flanked by a gaggle of heavily armed deputies. The
Monroe victim defendants were, of course, convicted -- and appealed -- and
eventually were finally freed.
One of the most conspicuous regional media outfits in Monroe for this
nefarious affair was the racist television station from Raleigh in which
Jesse Helms was the major fixture -- WRAL-TV. It also always played a
conspicuously prolonged rendition of "Dixie" each night before its merciful
shut-down.
About a year later, I was -- as I had been for some many, many months --
directing a major, intensive and increasingly successful civil rights, voter
registration, and anti-Klan campaign in the extremely racist,
rigidly-segregated, poverty-stricken, Klan-infested multi-county
Northeastern North Carolina Blackbelt. This region, although predominately
Black , also had a substantial and equally victimized Native American
population which was deeply involved in our Movement. Our campaign was, in the face of virulently racist opposition -- e.g., antagonistic and viciously resistant voter registrars, widespread economic reprisals, open violence from police and Klan-types [and with hostile state agents from the NC State Bureau of Investigation and equally hostile FBI finks hovering in the shadows] organizing the grassroots, county by county, and generating extremely capable local leadership. Excellent lawyers [Bill Kunstler, Morty Stavis, Phil Hirschkop]
were major and critical assets.
As all of this burgeoned along, WRAL-TV and Jesse Helms at Raleigh were
among our shrillest and most hostile media critics. And then, at one point,
in that Spring of '65, Jesse Helms, in a news cast, levied an especially
venomous Red-baiting blast against me and our Blackbelt project: 2 minutes
and 18 seconds of it. But, in his fervor, he'd overstepped -- and the
upshot was that I got "equal time." Seeing no point in responding to his
Red charges, I put together, instead, a necessarily trenchant statement
which discussed the hideous nature of the North Carolina Blackbelt setting
and its power structure, also attacked the United Klans of America, and
called for a strong Federal voting rights act [then in the Congressional
hopper.] My statement, which I refined and honed and read to my patient,
watch-holding wife at least 15 times, fell neatly into the 2 minutes, 18
seconds context.
When the day came, I went to WRAL, on the outskirts of Raleigh. Entering
the station, I noted the delegation of several somber-faced white men
approaching me -- led by a black-suited entity which I realized was Jesse
Helms. We faced each other, staring, for a very long moment indeed. He saw
whatever he saw in me -- and I saw a pudgy, rather heavy-faced man, wearing
glasses behind which his quite conspicuous eyes blinked rapidly. He was
sweating. Then he stuck out his hand, with the coldest formality I've ever
encountered, and I took it -- and we, very perfunctorily, shook hands. "Are
you ready?" he asked me. "I am," said I. "Quite ready indeed." As though
we were en route to the ultimate manifestation of The Code Duello under the
Southern pines, we walked, he and I together, and followed by his
colleagues, up a stairway, to a broadcasting room.
There, with Jesse Helms sweating even more profusely, I took out my written
statement. Still staring, he told me, "You have two minutes and eighteen
seconds, son." Ignoring that, I nodded. The lights were fixed hard and
heatedly upon me and I could sense Jesse Helms' cold and distasteful stare
from behind. I read my statement, briskly and clearly, and I got it all
in: the awful nature of the Blackbelt and its power structure, the
intimidation and violence, the Klan -- and the need for a very strong
Federal voting rights act.
When it was over, after 2 minutes and 18 seconds, we walked back
downstairs -- followed by his colleagues. Obviously angry and with his face
still sweating profusely and his eyes big and cold, Jesse Helms looked at me
and I at him. Without saying a word, he stuck out his hand again and I took
it and we shook -- this time, very very perfunctorily. He and his group
turned and stalked away. The next day, back up in the Blackbelt, I was
asked by my very good friends and civil rights colleagues, Reed and Willa
[Cofield] Johnson of Enfield -- another hate-filled little bastion -- just
what it was like to shake hands with Jesse Helms.
I thought for a long moment. "It was like shaking hands with a toad's
belly," said I. And I still hold, to this very day, to that very accurate
descriptive analysis of that absolutely weird and surrealistic experience.
Our Northeastern Blackbelt project rolled on to many, many successes. In
time, I went on to many other organizing campaigns. And Jesse Helms went to
the U.S. Senate where his Never Never Potions and Malevolent Witch-Craft
have poured rank poison into our national culture and the long-suffering
world scene for a very, very long and tragic time.
In the Spring of 1996, I was chairing, as a recently retired University of
North Dakota professor, a panel on Native American challenges in education
and related dimensions at Indian Time Out Week, held by the Native students
at UND. One panel participant, a well-known Native educator and old friend
from a bit further west, had just returned to the Northern Plains from a
trip to Washington to which he'd gone seeking funds for his Native community
college. When he finished his presentation, he said, "Have kind of an
interesting story." It developed that our friend and colleague, somewhere
along the puddle-jumping plane trip to the Twin Cities, had found himself
sitting next to -- Jesse Helms! As he briefly described Helms, black suit
and sweat, I remembered my long-ago meeting with the Entity from Monroe.
With our naturally uneasy friend, Helms had tried to say how much he
admired Indian people but it fell 'way short, tumbling out of sight into a
Grand Canyon of obvious, syrupy hypocrisy. They left that plane, Helms
following our colleague.
"Did he stick out his hand when you parted?" I asked. "He did," said our
friend. "And we shook hands, though it seemed strange."
"Well," said I, "he does know the amenities." And then, of course, I told
the tale that I've just told you-all, the readers.
In Solidarity -
Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear] [formerly, John Salter, Jr.]
Hunter Gray
www.hunterbear.org
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'
Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm
[The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
SEE MY COMBINED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PIECES -- WITH MUCH NEW STUFF HUNTER GRAY/JOHN R SALTER, JR [HUNTER BEAR] SEPTEMBER 5 2004 -- AND WITH NEW INCLUSION: THE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER AS PRACTITIONER, TEACHER, WRITER AND STUDENT [HUNTER GRAY -- FEBRUARY 19 2008] ALL OF THIS MUCH REPRINTED - PLUS MANY NEW COMMENTS
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
Wobbly Mentor: http://hunterbear.org/wobbly_mentor.htm
See Forces and Faces Along the Activist Trail: http://hunterbear.org/forces_and_faces_along_the_trail.htm
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