Silly Thinking

POSTED BY DOUGLAS LAIN

It seems appropriate that the former president of Cal Berkeley should die just as I begin to write about my experiences as an activist. It's both appropriate and sad. Clark Kerr ran Cal during the 1964 Free Speech Movement and his death at the age of 92 seems somehow sinister when you consider that Mario Savio, the young student who was Kerr's nemesis in 1964 has been in the ground for five years.

Kerr's death resonates especially because I had just found a home for a short story about the Free Speech Movement entitled Free Speech and the End of the World a few weeks before 9/11, and the story was published just as I was dipping my toes into the tepid pool of PPRC in early October of 2001. It isn't the best story I've ever written, but the timing of publication made it seem to be the most prophetic.


To Begin:
"We will make no distinction between those who have committed these acts and those who harbor them," Bush said.


He was promising a war on every state with a criminal element. With this approach he could have declared war on Canada, Germany, France, and even Florida. After all, Al Quaeda cells existed in each of these countries.

We would go to war and stay at war until the last "terrorist" was dispatched to hell.

I'd entered into a totalitarian nightmare, a nightmare sure to bring on more attacks like what we'd suffered on 9-11 while simulataneously empowering the police appartus domestically.

"You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists."

I wasn't with them. I'd committed thought crimes already. How long would it be before the FBI arrived at my door?

I had to do something. It was a matter of using my right to free speech or standing back to witness the end of the world.

Maybe a week after the attacks I ran into a former member of the ISO, a friend and co-worker who had been transferred to another department and with whom I'd lost contact. I was glad to see him.

"What's the far left going to do? Are you organizing?" I asked him before I even said hello.

"What are we going to do?" He tapped his chin and smiled broadly. "We're going to rally around the flag," he said. "The far left isn't going to do a thing."

He explained that the group he was working with, an organization consisting of maybe 300 activists from various groups, an organization mostly dominated by former Green Party members, had just voted that the group would not criticize US Foriegn Policy.

"What?" I asked. "What group is this?"

"PPRC-Portland's Peaceful Response Coalition."

"Are they against the war? Sounds like a peace group."

"We're focussing on trying to protect the local Arab community from hate crimes," he said.

"That's a fine thing, but what about trying to protect the Afghans? The Bush administration is threatening to use nuclear weapons," I said.

"They won't use nukes."

"But, isn't just the threat of using Nukes worth criticizing?"

"We're rallying around the flag," my friend said.

"That's terrible."

"Yes."

It turned out that he was overstating his case. PPRC was standing in opposition to the war, but only in so much as it stood for peace. No official critique of actual policy existed within the organization, but lots of people were criticizing US foriegn policy at the various rallies.

"What about the Anarchists? What are they doing?" I like'd to think that I was an anarchist, liked to pretend that there was some central anarchist collective in town, and I'd point to various infoshops and bookstores as proof.

"The anarchists I know have formed an anti-authoritarian committee within PPRC and they've walked out on 2 meetings," Paul said.

"Fuck!"

This was my introduction to what I would later call "the movement." For the moment it was enough to keep me away, but without any other alternatives I soon found myself at my first PPRC rally.

More next week...