Yes we all reached our own threshold of 'burn out or bummed out' Lack o money, as Ben Franklin once said puts an end to many a good intention. I was sitting on the student body bank account, so I knew Edwards would not run out of money. Whether I could 'stay the course' myself became problamatic.
Anti war was just that, against the establishment, and they had lots of allies so long as they could stay organized and non-violent. My own intentional attitude of keeping S.D.S. and the fringe at arms distance was based on just that, they had no program FOR anything, and beyond my own personal efforts on campus there was no reform movement at State.
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I lived in Berkeley during the 1960s. My mother worked at the University and was a socialist, so i was a red-diaper baby. I went on my first peace march in 1961, at Easter. I took part in civil rights demonstrations and anti-war demonstrations on a regular basis. I was tear-gassed often... i returned to Berkeley and took part in more demonstrations, but i left again for good in 1969 because i could not see dying, as one man had, to secure a square block of city park. I became a back-to-the-land commune-dwelling dirt hippie and continued to oppose the war until it ended.
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It appeared to me that later in the sixties, the "peace" movement became more violent. Many of my friends from SNCC, Ad Hoc etc., joined the Panthers. Devisiveness started within the "peace and justice/anti-war/civil rights" movement. I stopped going to rallies and demonstrations (except the Easter Peace Walk). The movement was "against" too many things. It was hard for me to have friends I had known for many years feel torn between our friendship and their loyalty to the black movement. The "peace movement" started being anti-government, anti-establishment, etc, but not FOR very much that seemed productive to me.
I started doing community work, with AFSC's CO program, SF State Free University, migrant workers, high school dropouts and gang members in SF. In early '67, I burned out. I went to live on a Quaker communal farm for a year.
Were you tired and discouraged by the resistance which you ran up against as you promoted issues that could have led to a better society?
I was discouraged by how few people wanted to work. I worked with a project that advocated juvenile justice. We worked to get courts to give representation to minors. We visited families at risk (the kids had been arrested) to assess the family situation. We attempted to establish communal-type group homes for teenagers at risk. I also worked part-time with the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. There I encountered so many people who were destroying themselves, who didn't see that there was work to be done, etc. With Reagan as governor, a lot of really good programs were being cut off and a lot of people's lives were seriously affected. Violence and advocating violence was becoming more prevalent in the movement.SF State went crazy and closed (I was in my last semester) and I quit. One of the kids I had been working with (I was close to him and his family) was killed in jail (trying to stop a fight). It seemed like the whole country could explode in violence and more and more people were going off to war. A lot of my friends were coming back from the war and they were all wounded. The final reason for me leaving the Bay Area for the farm was personal. A person asked me to keep a briefcase for him for a couple days. (My house was somewhat of a safe house as I worked closely with a couple lawyers and the police knew about it.) The owner of the briefcase was found killed and a couple men with guns showed up at my door for the briefcase. I left everything I owned and got on a Greyhound bus. This probably sounds pretty tame in light of the current situation in most cities. I, however, had never had my front door broken open with a very large shotgun. The person who gave me the briefcase was a truly loving, non-violent beautiful man.
When you say "work," I assume you are referring to "work" [for the cause of promoting a better world]. Am I correct?
Yes, I mean getting up every day and doing the boring stuff. Cooking for the homeless, teaching highschool dropouts, cleaning up neighborhoods, keeping your scene together are all mostly just day-to-day work. There are too few people who think that carrying out the garbage is one of the "important jobs." My grandmother worked for the Red Cross with homeless kids at the Chicago stockyards in the 1920's. My son is working with homeless kids in downtown Denver. I was downtown with him last evening, The kids were the same kids that I knew in the Mission in 1966-7. Everyday, all day the kids played Aretha Franklin's 'Respect' on the record night and the entire back wall was covered with 'RESPECT' in graffiti. If my grandmother had been there, I know she would've known those kids too. There's no way these kids should still be on the street.[How does one reach enlightenment?
Chop wood, carry water.
What does one do after reaching enlightenment?
Chop more wood, carry more water.]
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You said, "The War set me off on a course that few others followed. It so disillusioned me about America and its values and lifestyle that I dropped out completely, ended up living as a voluntary peasant on the Farm for 12 years and only dropped in so far as to work for Whole Earth during the 80s." I would like to know more about the ways in which you became disillusioned. It sounds like a lengthy, involved process to me. How did it take place?
After graduating from U of M, I went to New Haven with a few of my high school buddies for the summer. One of my friends had gone to Yale and he wanted us to start a magazine that would effectively present radical politics in language palatable to the mainstream. It would have probably ended up like Mother Jones. But we didn't get anything off the ground. Instead, we got involved with the Bobby Seale trial that was going on there at the time. The Panthers wanted us to be their allies, but they held us in contempt because we were white. New Haven was a very uptight scene. Near the end of the summer I did a heavy dose of acid at an outdoor rock concert somewhere in New England. After that trip, I knew that politics and violence were going nowhere. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I was leaning heavily in the hippie direction, ready to drop out if I could find a place to drop IN to.If you were disillusioned, how did you feel about the factions who wanted to overthrow the American government?
I knew that violence was not the direction I wanted to go. I figured that if I lived in America, I would live an alternative lifestyle because we had the room and the freedom to do that if we did it with enough of us. I became a part of the counter culture.
Last of all, you say, "I was one of the founding directors of The WELL and kept my countercultural beliefs alive through managing that system into what it became. I still refuse to buy in to the American Dream." That is a very interesting statement. How does the WELL still house the counterculture's values? You don't want to "buy in to the American Dream." However, you don't sound like a nihilist to me. I think your antiwar experiences have replaced the traditional values given to young Americans with a new set of values.
I lived for 12 years at the Farm without earning a penny for myself. I left there in 1983 with five kids and no savings or possessions at age 34. I worked at Whole Earth for another nine years for low wages. I now have about $10K salted away and I own a 15-year-old car.Big deal. I don't think I can be described as a follower of the American Dream by those standards.
I could get a high-paying job now at Pacific Bell if I wanted it, but I refuse to work within a bureaucracy. I want to know exactly who my work is helping. I don't own a suit and I might wear a tie once a year. I still stay in touch with some of my ex-neighbors from the Farm. Some of them are very well off. Most live modestly. And most still have their ideals. I would not be surprised if many of us end up living on shared land again before we die.
I think you dropped out to search for a NEW American Dream. Do you agree?
I agree, but bringing about a more democratic society begins at the level of what you can actually affect. The WELL was grown as a very democratic online society where the customers took part in designing the system both technically and ethically. Even the millionaire who now owns the WELL must put up with public debate about his every move in trying to turn the WELL into a large network of regional systems with a graphical interface. The culture of the WELL is one of the things I am most proud of having been involved with.
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