Back to the Future

Allow me a digression. Last night Terry Gross of Fresh Air, NPR's saucy interview show, featured former Weather Underground member Bill Ayres, the same Bill Ayres Obama was accused of"palling around" with by the right during his campaign.

In my last post, I mentioned my minor pilfering as a teenager and later radical activist, as a protest against the capitalist system.

Even while protesting and marching and pilfering, no one in my crowd thought of breaking things or placing mini-bombs in strategic locations to make our point. We turned up at military coffee houses to let the soldiers know the anti-war folks were good people, and to offer them a choice. We had discussion groups and printed newspapers to get the whole story out.

Yes, we broke laws, we harbored fugitives from the Draft; we defied police barricades and locked arms and went limp in passive resistance. But we were dismayed at the actions of the Weathermen, because we feared that they would harm the movement as people misunderstood their actions and lumped all anti-war activists together as violent.

But violence was all around us. Police rioted and clobbered peaceful protesters of every stripe in an effort to maintain the power structure we were so very set on upsetting. When a group of radical youth (even more youthful than we, all in our mature twenties - these kids were, well, kids) went berzerker the day after the bombing of Cambodia, tearing up the streets and throwing rocks, breaking windows, yelling obscenities at police and generally fighting back in outrage, I wrote a piece on Violence in the paper I worked for in Cambridge, The Old Mole, trying to show that the true violence in our society was not the outbursts of pent up frustration of a generation, but the systematic violence of poverty, disenfranchisement, racism, imperialism and War, that led to messy outcomes on City streets.

William Ayres, in measured tones, explained to Terry Gross, why he could not in any sense of rationality be called a domestic terrorist, as McCain and his daffy running mate, Sarah Palin insisted. "Were we young and stupid?" he asked, "Yes, we were. We committed vandalism, we never meant to and never did harm any person. We meant to and we did harm property; property symbolic of the power structure, the war machine. We felt desperate times called for desperate measures." (I paraphrase; total recall is not my strong suit.)

And when asked if he would apologize, he turned the question around, "I will be glad," he said "to sit down with the Generals and the politicians and the ones who made the bombs and the ones who did the killing in Vietnam, and discuss what we all did that might have been inappropriate."

Everything in context. He regrets that the anti-war movement did not do more to stop the killing and the madness. And so do I. I only wish I knew then or even now what that "more" might have been.

Instead, many of us burned out, dropped out, took up communal farming or knitting or threw up our hands and joined the capitalists. While others went into public service. And then there was the women's movement. But, as I said when I started this, I digress. And more to come later.

A Life of Crime

There was one popular department store in the town, Russell's; it had a department that sold the clothes the cool kids wore. Not the "in crowd" with their Peter Pan Colors, but the uncool cool kids, with our bell bottoms and mini-skirts and flowered wide sleeved blouses.

In the jewelery department, there was a display of enameled flower rings, made of metal. Denise, who was the ultimate in blase, led me directly there and deftly pocketed two or three. "Now you try." She said. I looked around. I felt my heart going pit a pat. I was about to become a criminal! I never gave a thought to what my mother would think. What my friends in the "college" crowd would think. What I might think if I was thinking.

I didn't think, I just slipped a daisy ring in bright yellow and orange onto my finger and slipped the finger, hand and all, into my jacket pocket. (Pea coat, very cool.) Then Denise and I sampled perfumes as we scoped out whether any security types appeared to be watching us.

Looking back, I am amazed at how easy it was, how unguilty I felt. How thrilled to have a little trinket I didn't have to pay for.

Amoral at such a young age. In later years, I would join bands of radical youth openly protesting the capitalist system by pilfering items from toilet paper from the student union to steaks from high end markets. We justified our actions as redistribution of wealth. As a teenager, I was just having fun with the cool kids.