Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
That's a good question. I think the lack of a deep, bonding
philosophical skin beneath all the sub-issues pasted onto the surface
of the left is one problem, a big one. Go to a peace march or other
left-tilted activist event, and there are tables and booths and
pamphleteering from all manner of causes, from freeing Mumia to saving
manatees. What's holding them together? Nothing more, it seems, than a
deep, almost conspiracy-esque distrust of the right. But that's not a
philosophical or moral keel, just a fall-back position. 

The civil rights movement had a moral keel that reached very deeply,
and I believe it is what allowed the movement to eventually overcome in
court and in federal legislation, but the left in this country has
never been entirely comfortable with a Judeo-Christian moral presence
in social issues. And now that the loony branch of the right hass
seemed to have coopted Christian politics just about entirely, there's
no chance of an effective presence in the left of what Martin Luther
King and his preacher peers called the "social Gospel."  

However, without an abiding agreement on a progressive, moral
foundation on which all those lefty issues can stand, I fear the left
in the U.S. will remain splintered, thus weak and ineffective.  
  

    
King's victories,and they were partial and limited,are spun today into
a mythological creation that makes everything seem obvious and neat
and mostly complete.Before Montgomery no one could foretell what was
coming...later it was the most obvious thing in the world.What are the
injustices today?What are the problems in need of repair?What connects
the issues and what are the deep causes of the dangers,imbalances,and
crises before us?And yes,what is our vision of a better world,a kinder
and more just society?What is our moral compass and how do we enact and
articulate that?
Direct action can be a wonderful tool when it makes real and concrete
a piece of the world you want to live in---Bl.and wh.people eating
together in the old south,e.g.---when it opens a public space for
dialogue---education in the streets,free universities,teach-ins,workers
councils--when it exposes the nature and the true face of the
powerful---the strong arm tactics of the cops in situation after
situation---and when it provides opportunities for participants to
become smarter,more committed andmore effective....
  

    

> Dave---The concentratoon of media,etc.is surely worrisome,but the media
> never embraced a left perspective.

I understand and don't disagree.  But it seems hard to refute the notion that
the press was vastly more independent then than it is now.

> It's true that a few honest reporters broke thru in time and one lesson the
> imperialists learned was don't let citizens including reporters near the
> front...they might say anything,even the truth.

For sure.  And both editions of the Gulf War have been press-managed to a
creepy degree by the government, with a depressing lack of resistence from
the press.


>  This calls for a new era of pamphleteering,a reblossoming of an ancient
>  art form,and your doing it right now...

Hell yes!
  

    

> the lack of a deep, bonding philosophical skin beneath all the sub-issues
> pasted onto the surface of the left is one problem, a big one.

Damn straight.  The right is united around the common value of profit uber
alles, with various moralistic sideshows; "our" "side" had myriad iissues and
priorities, and can be relied upon to descend into squabbling over same
before any momentum can be gathered.
  

    


This is from Robert Worrill:


Hello To All,
This subject is so close to my heart, what happened to the Spirit of the
Sixties?  I grew up in Africa, so far away from all of you in America but I
thought I could feel what it was that was going on.
Later in my life I have this to offer: 20% or less of any population, at any
time, in any civilization, are Epicurian all the rest are Stoic.  That means
that only a few are brave enough or foolish enough to " wing it " all the
rest follow outside forces and rules for guidance.  I think that this is an
evolutionary thing and follows a Normal Distribution Curve that can never be
gotten away from, unfortunately.  So it is always going to be true that some
in each generation will see a better future but it never comes to pass
because there are too many "stick in the muds" who think that outside
supernatural forces of the past somehow dictate all that has, and will
happen.
Yours in sad realization,
Robert Worrill
  

    

Off-WELL readers are invvited to send comments or questions to inkwell-
hosts@well.com
  

    
'Fugitive Days' is a great book. 
 
It is very hard to evoke the feeling of a time.  I know that when I
was trying very hard to understand how the holocaust could happen, in
human terms,  or just what went on in the sexual revolution of the
twenties, the writings that helped me were not  history, but fiction
and autobiography.  Then the history made sense.

I'm 70, I marched for Equal housing, I sent money to CORE before the
bus strike, I lived in the Haight in 1969, and few of the things I've
read about those times seem to me to connect with the feeling. Three
different people have asked, "Why would they shoot someone for having
long hair?"  (The short answer I finally came up with was, "For the
same reason my Grandfather denounced his 11 year old daughter, in
church, for having cut her hair- it was a sign that fundamental things
were changing." )

I can't believe that anyone reading this book would not understand
some of the joy in stretching yourself to your limit, or in seeing
something that seemed it would take years to change, begin to change
NOW. (Not that I ever stretched myself nearly to the limit Bill Ayers
did.)
  

    
Martha---I love your spirit,I love you... and thank you for the
generous comment on my book...The key is not to explain rationally why
nothing works or why substantive change is impossible,but is to try to
understand what is really happening beneath the surface,what conflicts
and contradictions are ripening, what we can plausibly hope for and
work for....And also,to imagine a world that could be but is not yet...
I want to live with one foot in the mud and muck of the world as it is
and the other striding toward a possible world,a world more
peaceful,more just,kinder and fairer.In our struggle, one of our
greatest strengths is our imaginations,and in the battle of
imaginations we can prevail...unless we are stuck in an Eeyore like
funk...
There's nothing inevitable about rebels and progressives and
revolutionaries descending into fatal sqabbling---we should argue and
stuggle and engage in dialogue,what the hell,democracy is a
messy,contentious business,but to take again our own history,the first
American revolutionaries fought each other constantly and somehow
united enough to change the world,and the anti-slavery forces were
split in a thousand ways but in the end the abolitionists won.Surely
there were lots of people in those days who said,woe is me,we can't do
anything effectively....
The idea that the way things are is just inevitable or stable and
unshakable or permanent----the notion that we are living at a point of
arrival,the end of history,blah,blah,blah....all of this is in the
service of the status quo.
Our job:to make sense of the conditions that we find,to educate
ourselves and our fellow citizens,to mobilize,agitate,come
together...In other words,to be actors in the living,dynamic,rolling
history we're a part of....rather than smart cynics living above and
outside the battle... 
  

    


From Eric Ridenour:


Bill,
    I was wondering, what would your advice be to people who are now trying
to start a movement without breaking the law?  I saw your posts on getting
the voice out(pampleteering, etc.), and uniting the issues, but what specific
advice would you give to the new movement(if one existed), on how to make
change, without resulting to violence?
  

    
Eric---I guess the point is that all real and substantive progressive
social change results from people coming together to name the obstacles
to their full humanity,and then to move in concert to repair
deficiencies,meet and overcome challenges.This means that the task is
always an educating,organizing,mobilizing one...
I think there is a growing movement worldwide for peace and against
the power and mentality of empire including pre-emption,a seperate
standard for the US in all international matters,the unaccountable and
self-serving power of capital,and more.In other words a movement for
peace and justice against permanent war and conquest--always under the
banner of liberty,etc.just as Orwell noted so long ago...
My advice is to join that movement,participate,build it in your
town,workplace,school,or community,and work out next steps with
colleagues,comrades,and loved ones.Another world is possible and
essential if we are to survive....Get busy....
If you have a strong and developing vision of a just world,a humane
society,and a planet in balance, if you act in collaboration with a
vital and developing movement,if you stay aware of the danger of
dogmatic and sectarian thinking as well as of inaction...if you do all
that you're more likely to stay on a defensible,moral,and effective
track...
  

    
Bill, these days you're a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago
and a school reform activist, according to a bio I found about you on the
'Net.

Can you talk a little bit about your work as a school reform activist? What
reforms are you pushing for? Where do you think the educational system inthe
United States needs the most attention? What parts do you think are
succeeding?
  

    

(And speaking of the educational system, I just want to say that your
brother taught my son Finnegan for four years at Berkeley High, and was by
far the most inovative and outstanding educator that system has seen in
decades!)
  

    
Hi Elizabeth---Rick really is an amazing
teacher---thoughtful,caring,curious about the world and endlessly
fascinated with young people.I'm glad your son had a good experience w
him---he's the kind of teacher every kid should have....I look to Rick
often for inspiration and the smart practice of teaching....
  

    
Cynthia--beware of bios on the web,but it's true,I work mostly in
education and school reform.... I've written about it in several books
including, To Teach; The Good Preschool teacher; A Kind and Just
Parent; City Kids; Teaching For Social Justice; and a few others.

Schools are naturally sites of desire and struggle. Partly because
they are public places where we decide big questions like what kind of
society we want to live in, what tools we are going to offer the next
generation who not only have to live in the world we have left them,
but also have to transform it.  Schools are where parents invest much
of their hope for their own kids.  And young people invest time, and
energy.... For over 150 years in this country, the ideal of a free,
common, public education for all was agreed upon. The questions that
were faught over were things like who constitutes the public, and what
knowledge and experiences are most valuable.

Today we face something both ominous and unprecedented: the frontal
assault on the ideal of public education. The attack comes in many
forms: narrow, high stakes testing, zero tolerance, charters in some
places, vouchers in others. While the fights have included
desegregation, equal access, bilingualism, the rights of disabled
people, immigrant rights, the question was always access, equity,
fairness. Today, the fight is over whether public schools for all kids
will survive.
The whole sale retreat from public education, led by the federal
govt., comes of course, cloaked in the rhetoric of freedom, excellence,
standards, and so on.  But there should be no allusion; the kids who
will suffer in this juggernaut are predictably kids from families who
have no access, little power, and a dirth of resources to combat the
hostility visited on them.
Even more disturbing, the retreat from public education as a
democratic ideal is combined with the embrace of criminal justice as
the logical solution for every social problem. It is this double
jesture that may prove to be fatal.
What I spend a lot of time on is fighting for urban public schools as
a human rights and civil rights issue. Two of my recent edited books
are Zero Tolerance: resisting the drive for punishment in our schools,
and A Simple Justice: the fight for small schools. And there is more of
course....
We know what makes for an excellent school: generous resources, strong
leadership, a collection of teachers who are energetic, capable, and
passionate about what they do. This is not beyond our reach...
  

    

Agreed.  Good on ya for that work.
  

    
Bill, can you expand on your assertion that "narrow, high stakes testing" is
an attack on public education?
  

    
I would also, non-tendentiously, like to ask Bill what mechanisms
he would endorse for accountability of the educational system --
for making sure that it does in fact produce a quality of education
that would enable young people from all backgrounds to cope with
and compete in the 21st century.
  

    
Hello---The strongest correlate to how anyone will do on the Iowa or
the LSAT or the SAT,for example,is the income and educational level of
their parents.It's the Volvo Variable---if you have a Volvo in the
driveway then you're likely to do pretty well.These tests are eminently
coachable,and guess who can afford the tutors,special classes,car
pools downtown?...

So the test measures class... 

The tests as they're used---punitively,blaming-the-victim---do nothing
to improve schools,but rather ask kids to own a failure that's been
imposed on them.We need to start by giving all kids what the priveleged
kids mostly have and it's no mystery:small responsive schools and
classrooms with smart teachers who are rewarded for their efforts,the
chance to invent and pursue things of interest,the right to experiment
and grow from mistakes,the sense of agency that comes from doing
something useful.And yes a second chance...See the Bush children as a
somewhat twisted instance of the last point....

We also need to imagine schools where there are multiple routes to
success---notice art and music,sports and clubs---abundant in Winnetka
are decimated on Chicago's southside.Think like a teacher:You want
every one of your 2nd graders to read more materials for a greater
number of purposes,and you can keep track and make sense of
it....Ranking the kids on a scale of winners and losers is of no
interest. 
There is a strong role for standards, but standards need to be
developed by the community as dynamic, flexible and in context.  The
people affected need to be decision makers.  It makes no sense to say,
for example, that everyone in the the USA should be up to an
international standard in physics and then to provide no resources to
create physics labs in every high school in Chicago -- we have two.
Standards ought to be thought of as demands on the federal, state and
local authorities to provide decent, accesible, generous palaces of
learning for all kids.  Does that sound extravagant? Maybe that is
what's wrong. In chicago we have a state of the art jouvenile detention
facility, 5 years old, holding close to 1,000 young people. It costs
$20,000 per year to incarcerate one kid. Right across the street there
is a crumbling elementary school, 120 years old, and the government
only spends $8,000 per year per kid. Something is wrong there.
This does not rule out the value of some measures to see whose getting
an adequate education and who is missing out. But the result of those
kind of measures should be to put a demand on govt to do better, not as
an economic death sentence for youngsters who already face too many
obstacles.
  

    
I think we'd all be rather suspicious about a test that showed that
rich and poor kids were getting the same education.  So the fact that
there's a correlation between class and test scores isn't necessarily
pointing out something wrong with the tests, but rather the inequality
in our educational system.  (Which we already know.)
  

    
Bill, I sympathize with your viewpoint and I agree that pouring money into
prisons for adolescents instead of funding better schooling for these same
young people at an earlier age is a losing proposition, for the youth and
for the community.

However, I don't think it's possible or practical to shift the funding from
one to the other overnight. Supposing we could get legislators to adopt the
"teach them earlier instead of incarcerating them later" philosophy, there's
have to be a lengthy period where both aspects -- prison environments AND
schools -- were seeing funding on an equal basis.

So this shift would be expensive, in the short run. And legislators who
pushed this "double spending" risk being voted out of office for "wasting"
the taxpayers' money. Which means that voters need to be convinced that
spending extra now would bring a worthy pay-off later.

How to convince the voters? I don't think it's going to be easy. The public
interest in education is about this deep (holding up thumb and forefinger
about 1/16 of an inch apart). Sure, there are some parents who are truly
invested in their children's education, but most only pay lipservice
attention to the process. 

So, you've got a lot of barriers to address, from the huge transitional
costs to legislators' CYA approach to legislation to parental/community
apathy.

  ***********

Bill. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you haven't thought of about
the difficulties of making these kinds of changes. And though I might 
appear to be rambling, I actually have a question: 

Given all these barriers, I find myself so discouraged that I mentally
turn the page. How do YOU keep your fire? How do you manage to persist
in being an activist when the social changes are so damn glacial?  
  

    
I think one big difference between the sixties and now was the surge
of hope, largely, I think, because the progress in civil rights, which
had seemed so impossible, seemed to make other impossible goals
possible.  I mean, how many revolutions did we have going?  Civil
rights, women's movement, politics, sex, music,  fashion, even food-(
the hippies saved bread).  And there was a base of prosperity that we
don't have now.
  

    
the boomer youth culture demographics did help with the hope and the zeal,
too.
  

    

bill, I hope this question doesn't cross some line, but I'm curious as to 
how your more unusual life experiences affected your relationships with 
your kids. 
  

    
Hmmmm....first,the kids-----I have three beautiful,sweet,accomplished
and lovely kids,all grown and on to amazing pathways of their own
making.I've been blessed,lucky,and I've had the wild good fortune to
share it all with Bernardine Dohrn who is before all else a loving and
wise parent.So to kids the parents are just there---unusual life
experiences belong to everyone,each in a particular way of course---and
the important things are about being present and committed and engaged
and so on.Our kids grew up in a home where their lives and hopes and
needs counted centrally--what else matters?--and of course it was full
of conversation and friends and a spirit of,well of happy opposition I
suppose.But again to our kids we were neither unusual nor
notorious---just mom and pops...
  

    
Brian---True there's nothing wrong with the test,just the claims made
for the test...Let's call it what it is:a measure of background
mostly...And then let's stop spending so much money on the damn
things,and invest in learning mostly.We could for example simply ask
kids to line up according to class and spare the hypocrisy.Note in NY
last week the state cancelled Math A--touted as essential for real
reform--when huge #s flunked it,and Cal.has suspended its big state
test for the same reason:when the white kids can't hack it,the rules
are changed...