Last Friday night we went to hear talks by Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, leaders of the SDS and the Weather Underground back in the 60's. Specifically, they were speaking at a benefit for the new Rag Blog. The *Rag* was an underground newspaper at the University of Texas at Austin from 1966 until 1977. About four years ago, the *Rag* was revived as a blog and also as a radio show, *Rag Radio* on KOOP (91.7 FM) in Austin, hosted by Thorne Dryer, the original editor of the original *Rag.*
I was impressed by Dohrn and Ayers. They were at considerable pains to repudiate their image as mere creatures of the 60's, and cited their ongoing work and the work of many others up until the present day. I have to admit my presence was motivated in large measure by my nostalgia for those days. I was associated with an "old left" faction of SDS, The Spartacist League, a Trotskyist group that on principle was opposed to the "lifestyle" radicals in SDS—and it was many of the those lifestyle radicals that later became the Weatherman Underground. We Trotskyists tended to disdain an acquaintance with mere personalities—and hence did not always know a great deal about media figures like Dohrn and Ayers—at least I didn't. At one point, Ayers said that he thought that the New Left had done a good job of avoiding the "Stalinism" of the "old left", and that the Occupy Movement was doing even better by avoiding the elevation of charismatic figures. (Ayers seemed to be equating the "old left" like my faction with Stalinism. I bristled a little at that one, especially since the Weather Underground eventually began to study the inspirational writings of Joe Stalin)
I did not know, for example, that Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers had been a couple for 44 years . Bernadine Dohrn struck me as an articulate, brilliant but nurturing soul, not the fire breather I was half-expecting. The same was true of Bill Ayers. He seemed like what he is (now)—a confident, engaging professor, but by no means a charismatic figure, like say, Abbie Hoffman or Danny the Red (of Europe)—should any of you are old enough to remember them.
Oddly, as mentioned when the Weatherman group cast around for a more coherent ideology, many of them looked to Comrade Stalin for inspiration ("Comrade Stalin" is meant as snark, BTW). And yet, the Weathermen ditched one of the core principles of Marxism—that is the central role of the working class. They decided that the working class in the U.S. was hopelessly corrupted by "white skin" privilege, and looked to people of color and the *lumpenproletariat* (of all colors) as the bearers of socialist revolution. Interestingly, there were few people there under the age of 60—and I suspect many of the younger people were the children—or maybe even grandchildren—of the older attendees.
Ayers and Dohrn also apologized for their mistakes and talked about the numerous mistakes that the New Left made in those days. Most specifically, they apologized for their self-righteousness and a certain unwillingness to engage in dialogue with ordinary citizens--failings which led them into a destructive sort of activism that got them and the Movement exactly nowhere. They also pointed out that their more civil forms of activism, and that of their cohorts, also failed. Their work did not stop the Vietnam War and they did not end white supremacy. Nevertheless, they pointed out that their activism laid the groundwork for later actions that, for example, may have ultimately contributed to pressuring Obama into refusing direct military intervention in the Syrian civil war.
They pointed out that the largest anti-war demonstrations by Americans did not occur in the 60's The largest were in 2003 in protest against the prospect of the invasion of Iraq. Those failed also, but Dohrn and Ayers felt that those demonstrations raised the consciousness of the American people to the extent that Obama felt he could not intervene in Syria without making the electorate very angry. That same pressure of public opinion also gave Obama political cover to begin disengagement in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Ayers mentioned the successful teachers strike in Chicago and talked about its significance. I knew about the strike and knew that it had been successful. What I did not know and completely missed was that the strike was not about wages and working conditions. In fact, the teachers union already had successfully negotiated a contract for those items. The strike was, in essence, a strike on behalf of the public education system. Chicago had been closing down schools for years and stinting on resources for others, e.g. there were 120 schools in the districts that had no library. And the teachers won all or most of their demands. I was thunderstruck by this and said that although I read two or three political blogs every day, and the newspaper, and watched two or three news shows every day, somehow there had been no salient coverage of what the strike was actually *about.*--at least not enough to penetrate my consciousness. They agreed that this was a problem that often occurred. They went on to mention similar successful actions by teachers' unions in California and Hawaii and other places. I knew nothing about those.
To spell it out the issue above, the reason the teacher's strike was significant was that it was a strike on behalf of professional standards and belied the current right wing meme that the problem with public education is the reform-resistant teachers' unions, who do not care about education but only about their own wages and working conditions. Usually, the picture that is painted of public education by the right is that it is so bad that the only way to reform it is to abolish it and substitute "free market" style charter schools—which, not to put too fine a point on it—is a bullshit solution. I hasten to add that not all charter schools are bad and not all are "for profit" private schools.
But by and large, the effort to introduce legislation favoring the establishment of charter schools has come from lobbyists for for-profit educational enterprises, such as Edison Schools. But there is no evidence that charter schools, on the average, perform any better than public schools. (See Diane Ravitch's work, *Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools) The media will sometimes highlight some well-performing charter schools and also cover some that have been plagued by scandal and misappropriation of funds, but hardly is there any effort to make in-depth comparisons.
Certainly, there are major trouble spots in public education and they should be addressed, but the public should be aware that given what the U.S. does to educate its citizens has few real comparisons anywhere. The U.S. strives to give *everyone* a high school education in a way that few other countries do. If charter schools schools are called upon to do the same, they eventually would cost as much, if not more, than the current system , because of the incessant pressure to increase the bottom line—and that would necessarily be at the taxpayer's expense if there is a continued attempt to provide the same universal education. Moreover, there would have to be a replication of the same oversight agencies as exist now if standards are to be maintained. Worst of all, it is easy to imagine a proliferation of charter schools catering to various private economic, political, and religious interests—a kind of balkanization of education (too much of that already)—and also possible balkanization of even the country. Do we want to have Christian schools, Muslim schools, atheist schools, creation science schools, flat earther schools, etc?
But the rant above about public education is mostly my digression on what they said about the Chicago teachers' strike.
Another observation they made was that the Occupy Movement was created by local groups, not only in the U.S. , but also all over the world. The Occupy Movement itself has also spawned numerous other local activist groups, working for a variety of labor and progressive causes. From my point of view, one of the best things about this development is that these groups are engaged in many different local struggles and yet they are aware of their solidarity with groups across all geographical boundaries where the struggle may be quite different.
Apart from showing up for a demonstration now and then, I don't have an ongoing involvement in any of the Occupy groups or their offspring. But I have been reading the works of David Graeber and Michael Hardt whose reflections are similar to the report Dohrn and Ayers provided.
Ayers and Dohrn went on to emphasize that the point was that likely a majority of the American people agreed with a progressive agenda on the majority of the issues, but cynicism and despair about political action rendered most people passive. Moreover , the misleading framing and emphases on issues by the media kept people isolated and unaware of a potential solidarity. They said it is the job of activists to penetrate and disperse the fog of apathy and passivity as best they can.
Ultimately, Dohrn and Ayers are proponents of a left, non-violent anarchism (to be carefully distinguished from the current "libertarian" movement) They recommended the works of David Graeber (*5000 Years of Debt,* *Possibilities,* and others), James Scott (*Two Cheers for Anarchism*), the works of Noam Chomsky. I would also recommend the work of Michael Hardt, *Multiplicities.*
There are no guarantees of success, but if no effort is made, failure *is* guaranteed.
Ayers also recommended the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, a sociologist and economist. Ayers said earlier that there was no Revolution in the 60's despite all the talk
But Wallerstein says there *was* a revolution in 1968—it's just that it has been spreading (mostly) with the speed of very cold molasses, but it's still in progress.
And some day it will be 1968 again, across the board. I hope.
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