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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2007 | |
COMMENTARY | 41 |
| Can we revive '60s-era ideals? |
DICK SIMPSON simpson@uic.edu Politically, 1968 began in Chi- cago in 1967. The country at the time faced three great crises: racial discrimination, the Vietnam War, and the imperial presidency in which all executive, legislative and judicial power was being gathered into the hands of the president. Behind these loomed the cultural clash of the ‘60s generation. The hippies, Yippies, Beatle-loving, pot- smoking free lovers doing their own thing came up against Richard J. Daley, the Chicago cops and the National Guard upholding the sta- tus quo against their own “barbar- ian" children. Society was sliding into stereotype, and anger was rising. The clash had begun with civil rights protests, which had morphed into anti-Vietnam protests and a third-party convention held in a downtown Chicago hotel in August 1967. At the time forming a third party of students, some community leaders and protesters seemed plausible. We sought to draft Eu- gene McCarthy as our candidate before he entered Democratic Party primaries. There were no rules for how to defeat a seated president, Those who came of age in the ‘60s were optimistic. end racial discrimination, stop a disastrous war and return power from an imperial presidency by giving “all power to the people.” Those of us who came of age in the 1960s were optimistic. We actu- ally believed that peace, democracy and justice could be achieved. We naively thought it would only take a few years of dedicated struggle. None of us in the “movement” believed that 40 years later we would be fighting another disas- trous war abroad, fighting yet an- other imperial president, one who spies on American citizens, and liv- ing in a country in which minorities are still not equal. |
Still, some real progress has been made. Richard M. Daley is more enlightened than his father, for instance. Many African Ameri- cans (and women, Latinos, Asians and gays) have made major strides individually and collectively. Our great enemy since World War H, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. Times have changed. In the ‘60s, though, we didn’t really worry about getting a job, about finding health insurance or about saving for retirement. We weren’t fearful of crime walking our city streets. We felt free to demonstrate, protest and work inside and outside the system for our idealistic goals. Today, we no longer believe that anything is possible. We no longer expect to achieve peace, democ- racy or justice in our lifetime. Some of my fellow ‘60s activists have dropped out over the last 40 years. But there is still a hard core of us in human services, mid-level government positions, the halls of Congress, foundations and other places in society. We have not lost our zeal. For us, the question is whether today’s youth can over- come their own generation's doubts and current cynicism. Peace, democracy and justice still demand the same noisy protests as they did then. The ‘60s began with Kennedy in the White House, folk songs in the parks, civil rights marches in the streets and hope in the air. They ended in assassinations, urban ri- ots, the epic clash at Chicago’s 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the quagmire of the Vietnam War. By contrast, our 21st century be- gan with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Penta- gon, followed by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Now we face a hous- ing crisis and a looming economic recession — in part brought by tax breaks for the wealthy and the drain of the wars abroad. Previous imperial empires have been broken not by defeat on the battlefields but by corruption within and a waste of resources in wars they couldn’t afford. The fear is that we will remake their mistakes. Our hope is that the spirit of the ‘60s still lives or may be reborn. If so, we will achieve more progress this time around if we learn the ‘60s’ hard lessons. It still must be the youth who provide the energy and leadership. But we all need to rediscover the idealism and the determination we had back then. |
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