A moving personal tribute by Ellsberg for his dear friend. Over the past year, the left has lost several prominent male figures with roots in the New Left of the 1960s: Europeans like Peter Gowan, Giovanni Arrighi, Chris Harman and Daniel Bensaid and Americans like Ronald Takaki and, now, Howard Zinn. With the emergence of more women on the left as a consequence of the women's liberation movement, we shall soon sadly experience their departure as well.

All of these figures deserve the praise that has accompanied their deaths, but, perhaps, it is time for reflection as well. Recently, Diana Block, an American radical of the 1970s and 1980s, wrote a moving autobiography entitled, Arm the Spirit, published by AK Press. I posted a two part review of it here last April and May. In it, Block relates her experiences of personal empowerment against the backdrop of political failure. She encourages readers to ponder to what extent she, and those that she worked with, succeeded, and to what extent they failed, and, even more importantly, why they were unable to persuade more people to rally in support of their vision of society.

It is a central question for these radicals, especially American ones like Zinn, Takaki and Block, as the Europeans, Gowan, Arrighi, Bensaid and Harman, are manifestations of a culture that encourages more self-reflection. Block, to her credit, confronted it as best she could, and it would have been mesmerizing to hear or read what Zinn had to say about it as well. Perhaps, he did, and I missed it. I concede that I have not followed his statements and writings avidly. My impression, however, is that Zinn, like most others of his era, evaded the question by treating as a problem of inadequate education. If we just keep telling people why bigotry, militarism, poverty and, yes, even capitalism, are bad, they will eventually figure it out.

Well, maybe so. But it didn't happen during Zinn's lifetime, and his insistence upon support for Democratic presidential candidates, while emphasizing the necessity of social movements to push them into doing the right things (much like his contemporary, Takaki), did not spark the popular imagination. Indeed, the Open Letter to Barack Obama that he, and many other activists and academics, signed in the summer of 2008 helped to motivate me to abandon the electoral process entirely, and post an ongoing critique of it under the label Vote or Die. If it wasn't obvious at the time, it is now evident that the letter represents an abject capitulation of the left in the face of the most rigorous rationalization of the global economy by finance capital since the late 1970s and 1980s. Interestingly, Ellsberg was not an initial signatory of the letter posted on the The Nation website, although I can't say as to whether he added his name afterwards.

As I said, perhaps Zinn addressed this subject in the final years of life, and was unable to get people to listen. If so, I'd be very interested in what he said or wrote, if anyone visiting this site can direct me to places where his remarks can be found. Because, if we really want to show respect for people like Zinn and others of his generation, we should seek to understand and learn from their failures as well as celebrate their personal bravery, integrity and accomplishments. Otherwise, we risk reducing the significance of their lives to the sterility of an innocuous personality cult.

Labels: Activism, AK Press, Civil Rights, Daniel Ellsberg, Imperialism, Neoliberalism, Obituaries, Vote or Die

Former Atlanta Constitution and Los Angeles Times reporter Jack Nelson is dead. Very few journalists successfully challenged the official version of history as he did:

The next year Mr. Nelson went to Selma, Ala., when Sheriff Jim Clark’s deputies and state troopers arrested more than 3,000 demonstrators there, beating many of them, as they demanded that blacks be allowed to register to vote. Mr. Nelson covered the Selma-to-Montgomery freedom marches, including Bloody Sunday, on March 7, 1965, when 600 marchers were attacked with billy clubs and tear gas.

Then came a scoop. On March 25, Viola Liuzzo, a white housewife from Detroit, was killed by gunfire from a passing car as she and another civil rights worker were driving from Selma to Montgomery. The next day four Ku Klux Klan members were arrested.

“Nelson sensed immediately that there was an untold story in how the F.B.I. had cracked the case so speedily,” Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff wrote in their book “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation” (Knopf, 2006).

“He began tapping the network of law enforcement sources he had started cultivating during his years as an investigative reporter,” the authors added. “Within days, he supplied readers of The Los Angeles Times with the answer: One of the four men in the Klan car when the shots were fired was an undercover F.B.I. informant. It was a remarkable exclusive.”

Another exclusive came in February 1968, when three black students were shot to death and 27 others were wounded by state troopers at South Carolina State College, a black college in Orangeburg. The troopers claimed that the students had charged them, hurling bottles and bricks.

Mr. Nelson went to the local hospital, introduced himself as “Nelson, with the Atlanta bureau” — he did not say “F.B.I.” — and asked to see the victims’ medical records. What he revealed became known as the Orangeburg massacre.

“It was eye-popping; they were shot in the soles of their feet, in the back of the head,” Mr. Nelson said in the interview. “Even today, if you ask somebody about the Orangeburg massacre, hardly anybody has a clue. But if you ask about Kent State, where it was white people, everybody knows about it.”

In 1970, Mr. Nelson learned that the F.B.I., in a sting operation, had given two Ku Klux Klansmen $36,500 to enroll Kathy Ainsworth, a sympathizer, pretending that it was for a plot to dynamite the home of a Jewish businessman in Meridian, Miss. When she and another Klansman arrived with the dynamite, a gun battle broke out and Ms. Ainsworth was killed.

“Nelson’s story of entrapment and the use of agents provocateurs raised more moral and legal questions than the F.B.I. was prepared to answer,” Time magazine wrote in October 1970. “Ever since, Nelson has been on the F.B.I.’s list of untouchable people.”

Most people under the age of 40 probably have trouble believing that journalists have been anything other than stenographers for the power elite. And, admittedly, a lot of them always have been. But not Jack Nelson.

Labels: African Americans, Civil Rights, Mainstream Media, Obituaries, Police, Racism

I've had my disagreements with firedoglake in the past, but site creater and frequent commentator Jane Hamsher has been courageously on the cutting edge of liberal opposition to the rightward drift of the incoming Obama administration since its inception. Here, she calls out Obama on the selection of Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation during his inauguration. She rightly recognizes it for what it is, a cynical effort by Obama to insulate himself against political pressure from the left while using gays and lesbians as a foil to appeal to what they used to call Middle America.

If more liberals possessed Hamsher's candor, liberalism would still retain credibility as an ideological alternative to the bipartisan consensus by which the country is currently governed. She stands in marked contrast to the cynical calculation of the Huffington Post and the worship at the altar of political pragmatism that personifies the Daily Kos community. Does Obama realize that, by selecting Warren, he has stained his inauguration with the bigotry that his election as President was supposed to overcome? Doubtful.

Labels: Barack Obama, Civil Rights, firedoglake, Homophobia, Liberals, Religion

Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the United States, was, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, assassinated by Dan White thirty years ago tomorrow. A movie based upon his life, with Sean Penn in the role of Milk, will open this weekend in San Francisco. People there who have attended a special screening say that Penn's performance is remarkable, as did San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle.

For many, Milk is a figure who has receded into the mists of time, and this film will introduce them to someone who was one of the most dynamic and inclusive political figures in American history. His participation in the emerging movement for gay and lesbian rights is deservedly legendary, as reflected by this excerpt from his famous Hope Speech:

And the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias and the Richmond, Minnesotas who are coming out and hear Anita Bryant in television and her story. The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone.

Milk placed the struggle for gay rights within the context of the need for progressive social change in this country. He was known for his willingness to enter into coalitions with labor unions, as he did when the Castro virtually eliminated the sale and consumption of Coors beer in honor of the Teamsters boycott. In return, the Teamsters endorsed him during his campaign that got him elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Less known is the hostility that Milk's progressivism engendered. He supported the efforts of Moscone to reform the police department, generating tremendous hostility among the rank and file cops. One of my friends told me that, during the booking of White, a former SFPD officer himself, the cops slapped him on the back, saying, Attaboy, Danny.

Maybe, that's an urban myth, or perhaps it comes from the reporting of Warren Hinckle. Hinckle did write that the cops wore Free Dan White T-shirts after the killings, and it is one of the quirks of history that Milk is universally remembered as a victim of White, with a popular vigil in his memory every year in The City, while Moscone has become a footnote, or, more accurately, a supporting character in the saga of Milk's life and times. Hinckle also said that someone sang Danny Boy on the police radio when the manslaughter verdict at the conclusion of White's trial, a verdict that would result in White spending only five years in prison, was announced. During the course of the riots that erupted that night, the police entered a bar in the Castro and savagely beat many of the patrons.

Milk knew he was going to be killed. He was challenging the homophobic values of a country that had responded to the civil rights movement with violence in the previous decade. He spoke at Gay Pride Day in 1978 after receiving a death threat moments before taking the stage. He traveled the state speaking in opposition to the Briggs Initiative, Proposition 6, an initiative that would have banned gays and lesbians from employment in the public schools. Of course, the more outspoken he became, the more death threats he received.

Many speculate about what would have happened had Milk lived. Most say that his progressive, community oriented populism would have helped push San Francisco, and perhaps, the state of California, in a direction away from the gentrification and economic conservatism that has marked the last 30 years, a conservatism personified by the person who announced his death, Dianne Feinstein.

Perhaps. But there was also a sybaritic side to him as well. For example, I have no doubt that he would have opposed Proposition 8, but he never showed the slightest inclination that he wanted to be married himself. He was having too much fun in the liberated sexual climate of the 1970s, although like many from that time, he might have settled down by now. In any event, we should not ignore the possibility that, while unlikely, Milk could have instead adapted a more pro-business, corporate politics instead. Projecting the future of someone who has died is always a rather speculative endeavor.

Labels: Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Obituaries, Political Violence

Every now and then, less and less frequently, unfortunately, there are days when you just can't help being proud of where you live. In California, today is one of those days. Earlier this morning, the California Supreme Court released a 4-3 decision to the effect that same sex marriage must be permitted under the California Constitution. Predictably, gays and lesbians responded with tears of joy.

At last, my gay and lesbian friends will no longer be implicitly ostracized as social inferiors because they cannot receive the respect that we show for straight couples. Even so, I can't resist expressing my contempt for Justices Chin and Corrigan. Both dissented on the ground that such a decision should have been left to the voters of California. Indeed, Justice Chin, we should have left it to the voters of California to decide whether people can exclude Chinese people from owning property. Indeed, Justice Corrigan, we should have left it to the voters of this state as to whether women should have opportunities in the workplace equal to those of men. Cowardice is as easily found in the California judiciary as it is within the state's political system.

Finally, on a more personal note, congratulations to Shelly and Ellen, the affection and integrity of your relationship, something that many of us experienced all along, has finally been legally recognized. I remember interviewing Shelly several years ago on KDVS, and she off-handedly did something that must have been difficult. She described how she came out by merely raising her hand to donate $20 to the effort to defeat the Briggs Initiative, a measure that would have prohibited the employment of gays and lesbians as teachers, after being exhorted to do so by Harvey Milk in 1978. That was it, I was out, she said. After the accumulation of millions of other similarly brave decisions, the world changed.

Labels: California, Civil Rights, Same Sex Marriage