What Happened To The Left
The writer has some interesting comments on the book “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“The solution needs to be that the white poor and the white working class needs to get together with black and brown folks and figure out a way to fight for a better system.”
I remember working for the Peace and Freedom Party in LA in the 60’s. The party was a socialist reaction to the politics of the “Old Left.” The idea was that it was better to join a coalition of black and brown folks to fight the system from within. The old left would come to the meetings and start fist fights. The party elected our next door neighbor to go to Minnesota to nominate Eldridge Cleaver (“Soul On Ice”) at the party’s convention to run for president in the 1968 election. Then Robert Kennedy and King were taken out as was John Kennedy before.
It was a fantasy. You saw posters saying rEVOLUTION instead of REVOLUTION. But the Old Left insisted on spouting party line to distinguishing themselves from the political system. And they still are but are marginalized now. But the P&F party still exists in CA and is going national now that Bernie is on the scene.
But the big mistake was that this was not a party that included the working class. It was a party of the Berkeley free speech intellectuals in tie dye t-shirts who the workers couldn’t relate to.
A lot has happened. In 1964 Mario Savio, the spokesperson for the Free Speech Movement, gave his “Rage Against The Machine” speech atop a police car on the Berkeley campus. Now Antifa (antifascists) who are insisting on political correct speech on college campuses, are fighting the Alt -Right in the streets who are insisting on “free speech!”
Every morning my friend writes a fantasy perception of life and posts it on Facebook. Today he writes:
“Salem. The Terrorism and Resistance Mitigation and Compliance people have been sweeping the city, picking up everyone in sight. Half the barista’s are in detention, and the streets are littered with propaganda leaflets. A man walks past the coffee house window, holding up a rear-view mirror to see who might be following him. A woman walks into the cafe with a license plate attached to her purse. Everyone’s ordering Xanax espressos.”
Tags: World Watching And Politics
Zoe
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