(00:00:00) What I wanted to do is to talk a little bit about what I see as the I call the lecture. Hope in hard times and I think it's fairly app because it's It's about the contradictory dynamics that are going on in the present moment in history and and about our role in them that it is. This is not a time where all of a sudden the visions that are the most Humane the most compelling are without question prevailing and it's also not a time where they're absent. So what we really have are a couple of contending World Views out there and we get buffeted back and forth by one or another one says we resign ourselves we go about our private lives. We don't worry about these large Global complicated issues or don't even worry about the person down the street the next block over and another says well look we are indeed interconnected. We can't afford not to be and we have to be able to take some stands and shape the directions of those choices that the that ultimately affect all of us. It's nice being introduced by Mark because it in a way, he's somebody who of were very very long time has represented that current that they really asks how people can deal with each other in a way that creates a world. That is more Humane that is more just that it that is peaceful and not just subservient to whoever commands the most military force at the moment now in a way when I when I got into these things I've been working on for a long time, but they crystallize I think I'll are around the time. I was writing my first book nuclear culture, which is about the weapons workers of a place called Hanford. It was a place that I mean you could you could imagine Honeywell transported to the Eastern Washington desert and you wouldn't be entirely too far off base, except they they don't even make thermostats. They simply make Atomic weapons plutonium and did that from the World War II Manhattan Project on and ultimately of made the plutonium for about a half of America's Arsenal. Which means that this one place you could say that the court about a quarter of the nuclear weapons in the world got their start there. I mean you're talking about you enough destructiveness that that God is origin with these very very nice ordinary men and women to essentially no late life on this planet. And so what I went in there is to say well how you know, how do people manage to come to grips with this because to me it's so directly tied to something that's so terrible and Unthinkable the that I would think that they would have very substantial qualms and yet what I found out is that and this is I guess the hard times part that we have to confront that there is a way in our culture that daily life and the ordinary routines of going into a workplace of being in a community that does not have a tradition of challenge can take over and can really obscure all of the most important questions so that at a place like There simply is no discussion of the purpose of the weapons because their task is they see it is to Simply go in day-to-day and make some machines work the task the question of who uses the machines who uses the weapons who uses the bombs how they might be used that somebody else's business. And I think that that's a separation that many of us in our society have been convinced of that. We do not have a need to take on these questions. Somebody else will take care of I mean occasion this place got a little bit booster ristic about their product and had things like streets called proton Lane and mushroom clouds on the football helmets of the high school teams the bombers, but that was that was the Far Point and in a way it almost pales in significance beyond the fact that they simply most the time went into day-to-day not even thinking about what it was that they were making it all so the first point of reference I think we all have to understand is that we in America today are the subject of very very profound splits between our own actions and the kind of history that is made in the name of all of us by the the P the Elites in Washington DC or wherever and it is not I don't think it's not as if there have been National choices to escalate the arms race. It is not as been the popular choices to remember when I was in my I got my start in politics in 1964 canvassing for Lyndon Johnson who would keep the boys out of Vietnam. That was the referendum in a sense that he won. And of course the boys were not kept out of Vietnam. So when there have been popular choices by and large with some exceptions most of the people registering the will of said wait a moment, we do not believe that the only path to live in this world is a path of Arm domination, but nonetheless the momentum is continued and so what I looked at Hanford efficiently is to say again. How do we do that? Well, we do it by deferring to the elites. There was a guy who had a conversation with who was a director of a weapons reactor who just bemoaned the arms race and he says my God, how did this happen? How did we get here? What kind of mess are we in? He sounded like Helen caldicott. And then he I said, well does that mean that you're that you're opposed to it that you want to begin some shifts and rolling back The Logical conclusion of what he was saying and he said literally every weapon we have makes us less safe. And then I asked him this and he says well no because you see this isn't my you know, that's my personal feeling but I have a job to do somebody out there knows better than you do or than I do. It's it's their job to tell me to talk about the neutron bomb earlier and what a ghastly weapon was. He says, you know, it's my job to make the neutron bomb as best. I can if someone tells me to do it even though I think it's a terrible weapon and that were utterly barbaric for even imagining it let alone building it and I don't think that that split is so rare. (00:06:01) I see it another kind of venue where I was (00:06:03) mentioned. I'm working on a book on current students how they engage in and how they pull back and it's not really so different from this conversation with a very very nice student. I got to be friends with in Nebraska this last year who came out of a small family farm and his dad was basically one of the many many people who have been creamed by the politics of agribusiness and such in the last 10 or 15 years. Has a farm but had to sell most of their land and most of their livestock and when I asked him, you know, what do you think the forces behind it? He says well, you know, it's Cargill, it's Dow Chemical, it's ConAgra. These are the people who set the prices. They've manipulated the laws. They the subsidies it's really stacked in their favor. And then I asked him what he's going to do. He says well, I'm going to get a summer job as an internship Dow Chemical and I said, well isn't that a little contradictory and he has a rationale and what he says is that very sincerely and this is somebody I liked very much you see if I want to be in farming. Now the way my dad lived is dead. I've got no choice. (00:07:13) So at least they're in the farm Mary there in the farm business and maybe if I'll (00:07:17) change them from within as it will like how (00:07:21) his well, you know, there's people who are (00:07:23) very unethical and they tell somebody to spray for corn borer infestation at 10% level of infestation and Supposed to spray at 30 and if you do it at 10, it's on an economical and I would never do that. I said okay, I believe you because I do but nonetheless that wasn't what drove his dad nearly out of business. And so what happens I think is that people get sucked into a sense that (00:07:48) by their own innate (00:07:50) moral character because I think all of us want to believe that we're moral we ourselves will automatically change the institutions that were part of in isolation. Now, this is not to say that it points people have to make decisions of necessity to go into into institutions is goals. They don't necessarily respect because that happens and it's called a course of nature of our society. And I'm not going to damn somebody who has three kids to feed because they take a job that maybe I have luxury not to take (00:08:19) but what I do think is that if we have (00:08:21) hopes of changing the world which we should that if we believe that they will happen. They will be affected in isolation. That's where we deluding ourselves as opposed to as part of a common social movement. And that's where I had the problem with the student who again, I liked very very much is that (00:08:38) he believed that (00:08:39) simply because again, he was a good human being he would affect the policy of Dow towards people like his father and I don't think that that was true. So that's one kind of Separation The deferral and the distance the splitting of our private lives and and public lives. Another kind is a kind of signal is cynicism (00:09:00) the remark at Hanford (00:09:02) that probably stuck with me the most was somebody to very very smart computer scientists saying, you know, maybe the human race is like a company that's gone on past its time and it simply do for bankruptcy. You think about that? What is somebody saying, you (00:09:16) know doesn't matter (00:09:18) doesn't matter what happens? I mean, obviously you get a variant of that from a religious fundamentalist perspective that said well, you know isn't the Earth doomed anyway and won't doesn't the Book of Revelations for Caledon shouldn't we just be waiting happily for this tale for told till you know, the perfect kingdom comes I think that's terrible theology. You know, it has nothing to do with you know, with the notion of you're given a gift by whatever forces and you know, so you have the right to abuse and maltreated and say, you know blame God (00:09:47) but we see that we see that a lot and I think that that's a shall I say it's a function of helplessness. It's a function of people (00:09:55) not wanting to say I don't know what to do. I'm afraid to take a risk. I'm afraid to even voice that uncertainty to somebody (00:10:03) else who may be together. We will (00:10:04) come up with some kind of common solution. Rather I would say well you can't do anything. And (00:10:13) it's a way in which I think the one of things that people coming up now are dealing with is the very (00:10:19) complicated Legacy of the way that for instance the history of the last 20 years have been portrayed. (00:10:25) So if you look at say 20 years ago, one of the very interesting that one (00:10:28) saw is a (00:10:29) substantial citizens (00:10:30) movement challenging the consensus that says (00:10:34) we have the right to order the (00:10:35) world in our image and at the same time if you look at how the history portrayed now, it's everything from you know, benign mistakes to Vietnam to we lost the war because of the protesters on the streets wouldn't let us unleash our full massive amount of muscle (00:10:50) which I always find problematic because I mean depending on who you whose figures you believe. It's anywhere from 2 million to 4 million people (00:11:00) who died in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia, and I don't know (00:11:04) what unleashing a full muscle (00:11:06) would have meant I mean, would that have meant 10 million? I mean when you're I mean we're talking about you (00:11:11) know, Lutely devastating a whole area (00:11:15) of the world. And so it's just it's unrealistic to me. It makes no sense leave alone inside the morality unless they're really saying obliterate every human being standing on that corner of the earth and maybe that is what the people are saying. I don't think the people that were coming up now, we're who sort of repeat the phrases of really thought the implications what one node in relationship to that is interesting that no Senator or Congressman lost a son during the entire course of that war, which was not true during World War II actually apparently and I got that somebody told me actually I think actually met been here in the cities and I did about 50 phone calls and finally hit the US Senate historian and he said, yep, that's true. I think two three serve one was wounded and that was it. So, you know separation between the quote men who know best and the people who bear the consequences of their actions whether they be US soldiers or whether they be the Vietnamese. That's that's part of that that split though that says again, you know, we can't do anything and and part of what happens is the people feel like, (00:12:16) you know, if we act here we are we're up were going to be cast into some image of what we get in (00:12:22) the pictures that are now, you know printed in newspapers when they do the 20-year retrospective of the time and it I'm afraid the phrase that I heard a lot was because a guy Dartmouth said his Marchers with their marcher face on you know, what will become some kind of caricatures if we act will become some kind of people who are violent. We will it's an odd transposition and it's (00:12:43) complicated because there are moments where (00:12:46) indeed social movements do internalized the should I call (00:12:51) internalized the anger internalized the fear internalized the hostility (00:12:56) that the trying to fight and you did in fact see some in the last years of the war some people who started out, you know running children's shelters and volunteering in the inner cities and trying with all High Hopes (00:13:09) And ideals to To serve human (00:13:14) good growing real (00:13:16) bitter and charging cops (00:13:17) with you know, sticks and helmets and sending a few bombs. Although again bombs that I don't know what the if the entire casualties of the anti-war movement created was 10 people. It's ten people too many, but I'm sure that it was no more than that. And again, you've got a racket up against, you know, the two million and the 50,000 vets. I mean it's to call it violence has to be said in proportion, but nonetheless you see people see that image one grown out of a frustration and bitterness and they were coil against it and they say, you know, this is what happens and I don't want it to happen to me. So, you know, it's a part of the Tango 11 see that people are dealing with and I remember somebody at Columbia saying that earlier on saying well, you know II have a choice I could get politically involved but this is the kind of a big school. It's a little bit isolating and I want a feeling of community and you know, I sort of have a choice It's that or politics. and yet (00:14:10) from my vantage point (00:14:11) the highest type of politics is a form of community draws on community creates community and yet there is a sense that to get involved in the (00:14:20) larger issues of time of this time (00:14:22) is It's entering the sphere of the carnivorous. It's entering the sphere of pure power and you know values and compassion get dropped away. And all you're really doing is trying to fight to push somebody into agreeing with what you think. And so, you know, why do it because you'll destroy yourself as a human being I think that that's an image that's very much fostered by certainly the media in (00:14:46) our culture that says again, you (00:14:48) know, you really do damage to yourself. You become in common life much better to stay private. And if you have idealistic dreams deal with with you with your family remember somebody who was very very sincere. I was on these cars School in in Connecticut, and he was talking about his father's father was a Furniture salesman. He didn't really like the furniture since he sold it wasn't very interested in the job. But he worked hard made a pretty (00:15:13) good living He says, you know, my father's highest (00:15:15) happiness was when he could T could take us out to dinner. And and he felt like he was really doing (00:15:21) something and I and I listened I felt a real pain because I've the one hand I (00:15:25) had to respect that the you know, the sense of this person was (00:15:27) working very very hard for his (00:15:30) family his and the son of his really looked up to him as a model and yet all his dreams were private all his dreams were what he could do for his family. They never reached beyond that and I think that in a way we can't really afford that we can't afford it. I know a lot of the forces on people are very strong financial forces that are pounding home and saying, you know, you know look, you know, you get out of here, you can't there may not be a job waiting. What are you going to do and yet we have to understand that I guess it was 73 was the turning point in real income per capita in this country and then it's been slipping ever since why is that I mean, what are the roots of where we've spent our national resources? We spent them on the comic arms race. We spent them on troops and Central America and money to the contras and Lebanon. And Korea and on and on and on and you know, the huge debt of Vietnam, that's our that's where our natural choices have gone. That's why our base has been eroded. So in a certain sense, even if our dreams are really I didn't are really private still that public sphere rebounds on them still that is where the difference between. I've been debating possibly going back and finishing my doctorate recently and when 20 years ago, there was a hell of a lot of money out there to do that fellowships and whatnot. Now, it's dried up. Why why does it even have a country that's tremendously affluent. Why does it become less affluent? Again? It becomes less affluent it the resources aren't there because we make social certain social choices and at has to be understood that that again it comes back down on us now. What occurs in the society right now? I think is a real sort of split sense. And that is that there is a great many people which I'll talk about in a few minutes who indeed are engaging in working and fighting to say this is the vision that we are working for and there's been a lot of Headway made are over. There is a march on Martin Luther King day. I was ironic that the Larry Pressler Cloud white like I'm Morgan, you know, I guess he was arrested on Martin Luther King day because that's when they chose to commission this particular Trident submarine. That was at the Basin Kings Bay, Georgia. That's one of the strains it's a thing that says, you know, and I don't know if it's deliberate or not. It's either deliberate are heedless. Why don't know what the difference is really it says, this is the way that we're going to pursue no matter what the other time. I was mentioned this a few minutes ago. I was not there was a Seattle as an annual walk which goes about five miles through the ascent essentially Central southern area of our town which Our poor and largely black and minority section and Seattle like Minneapolis st. Paul is one of these Clean Cities clean affluence that he's but we also have our Underside and there's a very very weird very good Congressman would serve for about 10 years. Whoever you're at walk the five miles and he lost by about a percentage point for the Senate the last election and he walked the five miles again and it is just as a private citizen now and sort of brought along the person who had succeeded him in his seat saying kind of as a requirement for the job. I think (00:18:43) you have to you have to see this. (00:18:45) It can't just commute between here and why you know the nice Suburban home and you know what and washing it. This is a nice liberal new Congressman, but just wanted him to see a few things and what I was thinking of I was walking along and talk with him at some points and just talk with some other people. I had known and worked with and connect with her 10 or 15 years and thinking, you know, damn what does (00:19:08) Name that 1% of the vote. This guy (00:19:10) who was a tremendously really would have been a rare voice in that usually complacent and somewhat corrupt body known as the Senate and Congress, you know one percent and he would have been in there. I thought well, you know, it means a couple things it means that we're here on the playing field that we're there's a substantial body of people out there working in fighting and that this country is divided and Confused (00:19:33) it much as the (00:19:34) students I'm looking at now are and that is people again want to act one to respond and they see Gorbachev and I see something, you know fifty thousand troops out of scheduled to be taken out of Central Europe unilaterally. I mean for years we've heard this phrase, you know, what happens if you do a unilateral action the roof caves in well Gorbachev stops nuclear testing for a year-and-a-half unilaterally the US has well, you know, they're ahead which was very odd because that particular year we tested more weapons more and more bombs (00:20:04) and all along (00:20:05) cumulatively we tested more bombs. (00:20:07) So I don't even know what they meant by (00:20:09) that but you know, it was an easy phrase to use The roof didn't cave in and now he makes us you know, that unilateral Declaration of pulling a salad or european or the what we are afraid of the Specter that is always conjured up a red tanks rolling into you know into Paris or (00:20:24) Belgium. It's okay. Let's address this. Let's do (00:20:28) something. Acting again saying alright, I will do a symmetrical reductions. I will I will take away more of our (00:20:35) missiles. Let's just talk. Let's try and push this (00:20:38) arms race and shifted because my economy is collapsing which was true and yours is in such bad shape is not in such good shape either. (00:20:45) So again, how do we respond? Well, you know (00:20:48) assigning that says will take away a (00:20:50) few of them and George Bush says, well, you know, it's fine with me if we can keep on doing some (00:20:54) more asymmetrical reductions where they give up more each time. (00:20:59) I'll probably go along a little further. really Noble really generous really magnanimous and we still have not come to grips with the fact that there is this tremendous shift in place in the Soviet Union going on. I don't know if you've seen the film repentance is credible film. It was the two years ago. It was made spent six years ago band for five years and then was released to become the number one best-selling box office draw in (00:21:27) Soviet Union the same year as I guess ours were Top Gun and Rambo. (00:21:31) There's was this film that it was a film about stalinism done in a sort of Fellini style, but it was more than that because it drew it up to the moment. It talked about people being put in Mental Hospitals it talked about. If you do not (00:21:43) confront the past then you are reliving it. Then you are recreating this in and it was (00:21:48) very very very blunt in unsparing and cut to the Bone and I thought you know my God how long has it been since we have had a film that has gotten out on the general box office that has confronted our culture to the extent that this film confronts their (00:22:03) culture. We have to recognize the (00:22:07) profound nature of that shift. I mean, I think a tremendously hopeful phenomenon. You know, it opens up all sorts of possibilities. I don't know. I mean we will certainly we were took on a mantle of being willing to intervene around the world. Well before the (00:22:20) Soviet Union was was founded as a and it's 1917 Revolution and (00:22:25) the phrase of the Marines from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli still speaks a (00:22:31) similar current and Lenin wasn't even born when it was the events that it referred to were, you know transpired (00:22:38) but nonetheless we have to (00:22:39) do is to recognize that there's been this profound shift in the world. (00:22:43) And again this also a profound shift I think here and I as mentioned I spend a lot of time about three years writing nuclear culture, which unfortunately I (00:22:52) shipment didn't reach me. So there's some flyers (00:22:54) if you want to order the book from the publisher or through a bookstore, but I spent about five years writing hoping hard times and just looking at all sorts of people who were some who were Marv has been in it for you know since about before I was born or right about that time, but a lot of other People who who have it who started to act for the first time. I guess I call it inspired by the (00:23:18) long-distance Runners inspired the people who've been in a 30 40 50 years (00:23:23) and you know, all of a sudden I remember being in South Carolina and (00:23:27) seeing this the small town of 30,000 where nothing (00:23:30) had ever gone on of any kind of controversial politics and all of a sudden. Here's the Southern Baptist preacher calling a people on the phone and taking up this film from Physicians from social responsibility around to the First Baptist Church in Ebenezer Baptist Church in the PTA and the Garden Club and and saying, you know, I think y'all want to deal with this. It's very interesting because it's not as if our culture responds automatically and easily and says oh terrific. I'm so glad to hear the news that something is terribly wrong and that there's some men in power who are willing to blow up the world to save it. Oh terrific. I mean there's a lot of mixed feelings than ever remembers this Rotary Club. He was part of an even a rotarian for 30 years (00:24:14) and they say he said it was like he had the plague and they wouldn't talk with him for six months (00:24:18) until finally the start teasing him about. Well, you know, I saw (00:24:21) this on TV or that on TV and how come you (00:24:23) weren't up marching tying ribbon around the Pentagon or something very interesting Sikh communities that never again really come to grips with this and we're used to this a little bit more in the cities. We used in the heart of Seattle across the lake in the suburbs it you can go by and never even be touched by those currents but see communities that aren't touched by the that don't have a tradition of activism for all of a sudden the dialogue occurs. I mean being in Waco, Texas and That the Methodist Sunday school adult classes are studying the arms race and you think my God if there's dialogue in Waco, Texas. This is indeed very interesting. And so one of the things that's occurred over the last and oh I'd say the last 10 15 years which makes it actually quite different and more hopeful than say during the Vietnam era is that There's a proliferation of voices all around the country. I mean I suppose you could use the phrase a thousand points of light if it hadn't been, you know, pre-emptive that indeed and I actually I guess apparently he's somebody who thought it up and in and he wasn't sure what it meant until afterwards. He sort (00:25:31) of researched it and (00:25:32) said, oh this is what it means. I don't know maybe got it from one of us. I'm not sure (00:25:36) but (00:25:37) what I see occurring is that there was a potential for reaching in bridging in all sorts of areas where there really wasn't 10 or 15 years which were really much more closed and again at the same time. There's this sort of this confusion this void and there's a large impulse to say (00:25:55) Does it matter won't make any difference no matter what we do (00:26:00) why bother they're really warring. They're really working in the American soul. And I think very very contradictory impulses and maybe even this last election, you know, the last is you know, three weeks when some of the issues raised by Jesse Jackson resurfaced in the Democratic speeches, all of a sudden people started (00:26:17) saying, oh maybe George Bush isn't the you know, the wonderful savior after all it was too late. (00:26:22) I mean, it was so much evasion of real (00:26:25) questions that I think most people were, you know, (00:26:29) well, even the people who voted were profoundly (00:26:31) cynical about the process and (00:26:33) the ones who didn't were probably more so still but I think again we have this divided culture and that it's tremendously important not to take as a sort of final mandate the fact that people who represent what I would call genuinely callous unthinking reflex. Visions of how to live in the world have been inhabiting the White House for a good deal longer than many of us would feel happy. It's It's important to understand that there are the things going on in the culture of the same and that they're really equally important. I think of during Vietnam Nixon who was hardly one of my favorite people was making a threat to basically what used Atomic weapons on North Vietnam and and Ellsberg describes it in the introduction to protest and survived and he says are essentially, you know, he's listening to about 20 or so times at the US has used threat of atomic weapons. Most of you know view you overthrow the government of Guatemala and 54 and fly nuclear-armed bombers into Nicaragua and for support do Berlin we know of Cuba we know of islands called chemo and Matsu off the coast of China One interesting one of the times we came very close during a period of to taunt was in The arab-israeli X was the 73 war and we're on full Readiness of alerting and you know, if some accident happened at the wrong time God knows what would have occurred (00:28:00) because we always extremely (00:28:02) precarious situation which none of most of But didn't even have a sense what's going on? Because again, we'd sign solve or at least agreed on salt to and everything was fine and we were for the moment Peaceable. So it's a way to say that that again that current in the in the US government that's willing to use the weapons is and threats and power tools very tenacious. But in this case it got blunted because Nixon made this thread he said, you know two weeks we want you to send you to capitulate or will use Ultimate Weapon measures and they had apparently drawn up the bombing plans. And then there was a couple events one was this massive March in DC during which he watch the Notre Dame football game said, you know, hey, this is what's more important. I'm not going to I don't give a damn about these hippies outside and but he did it really shook him up the size of it. The other was something called a moratorium. I was in High school at the time working in a drugstore and wearing a black armband to to work and getting in some kind of argument with my boss over whether I could have couldn't keep it on and I just sort of foresaw that situation replicated all across the country because not just I was in Los Angeles the large town but places all over people were doing some gesture that brought that were visible to the public interrupting daily life, even if by something as innocuous as wearing an armband and Nixon said that in his view our country because of these events will was too polarized and we quote lack the national will to to carry out those measures in other words that the people who acted basically stop potentially the dropping of nuclear bomb of of nuclear war and did not know it at the time again, and now as mentioned earlier that was a period where the history was beginning to fracture and people were going to go very very bitter and yet in some sense we were already beginning to win and and so it's that gap between what you perceive because they're never going to say. Hey look, you know We're very glad that you blockaded Honeywell because you forced us to change some policies. And if you do a little bit more will blow will change the more policies and the never going to say that it's like I remember one of the schools I visited Columbia had a four-year campaign for divestment including a almost unanimous vote of the University Senate and then they still continue to waffle and they just refuse trustees refused to do it. So there the sit-ins that that in some ways helped trigger the a lot of the divestment students around the country and finally the next fall students were in spring summer went by Fall. They announced we've decided to divest and it has nothing to do with that is to dance absolutely not and they've been there was a New York Times article last the Sunday magazine by Michael Sovereign the president of Columbia who was duly patting himself on the back for all the Innovative programs that they're now doing and if you look at the history, basically they were pushed into every single one kicking and screaming But of course they're happy to claim credit. So I think we have to be able to reclaim a certain sense of our own history and and and do that as we act now, there's a story often tell which has to do with somebody. Well, it's a couple stories I tell with people from this state but one of them really I guess I it's a sort of Touchstone for my my sent my own inspiration and hope is that woman who I'm sure many of you may know of that a couple years ago named Ruth young Don Nelson whose brother was actually two (00:31:21) term governor of this state. And another one is a congressman. She was a very (00:31:25) active Lutheran laywoman it written six or seven books longtime activist in various ways. And she was also the national mother of the year, which is sort of your I don't know your maximum wholesome award or something like that and a very funny thing happened to her as she was living her life and going through his commitments and seeing them pull each other one into another is that her son. John Nelson is a minister in Seattle where I live I've been involved in a campaign against the Trident submarines and participated in a number of Civil Disobedience actions. And when the first Trident was coming in because we were acting against the base and sort of escalating things going what occurred is that it was me a massive blockade sort of 114 blockade of small boats on the water and the government was threatening 10-year jail sentences and this woman with young Don Nelson decided to participate and John essentially tried to talk her out of it because she was 79 at the time and he said something like, you know, you might be almost 90 by time. You get out of jail. I let me do it and you know, she raised him right and was not going to let him talk you out of doing something that she wanted to do and she said that she thought the weapons were obnoxious was afraid that she'd used and I really like that phrase because it's saying that you know, here are there just a violation of some kind of basic way that the world ought to be and the that is the that is a starting point. Understanding that understanding that you know, if they're obnoxious it means that they should not exist have no right to exist and everything else followed from there. In other words the problem wasn't that we had three too many or 32 few or this particular weapon. I mean, it was all part of it, you know, yes some Weapons Systems are even more provocative than others. The problem was basic existence of them. And so she went out there in the water and the Coast Guard is firing water cans tip over the small boats that in a blockade and this guy's about 18 sort of resource aiming a water cannon at hers is sort of high-powered hoses and she turns in she shakes her finger at him like this and you know, like a grandmother scolding and she says young man, you know, not in my America, please you wouldn't And he backs down and I don't know what it is about that instance that that resonates so strongly but I think it has to do with a notion of being an inhabitant now, that's what it boils down to it says we live here. We will take a stand we are not going to be marginalized. We're not going to be called, you know unamerican we're not going to be called we're going to say that we have every right as every human does to claim the Earth what it ought to be and that's the and that's what's so important. Is this understanding that that when one does that history begins to change I mean it's hard in this challenges. There's always different ways to do it. I mean, I think even I was at University of Michigan about a year ago and ran into a group called Greeks for peace, which maybe sounds like a contradiction in terms, but I don't think it was what happened is some people who were in the fraternity and sorority system. Became politically involved different catalysts went and took a class on El Salvador and other words. There was a lot of apartheid demonstrations going on. Somebody else was reading about nuclear arms race through the the sort of what are called the effects of the very significant long-standing radical activists tradition on that campus touch them as often had occurred and the normal course of events would there would be that they would have moved out of those fraternities and sororities and moved on to some kind of their sort of they called in the Residential College the called the hippie dorms are moved off campus or done something to be in an environment of people who who had a similar subculture and instead they made a very interesting choice to stay and to try and work with the people who by then were her of their friends and to say okay this institutions call themselves institutions of community and service not only of getting drunk and falling on the floor and let's try and hold them up to those standards. And let's begin a dialogue. And so we remember sitting in seeing this is beautiful man, almost a mansion in this chapter the oldest sorority in the country and was collimated halls and beautiful carpets and match the drapery that March the furniture and this house mother was like the Daughters of the American Revolution. And here's this medical student from the University of San Salvador giving a talk in that venue and telling about some very difficult things to deal with like how the National Guard the DUS equipped and trained occupied the university killed the rector's enter the president shot a bunch of students how he was forced to lie down face down on the ground with have been abandoned in his back. These are these are not nice things to deal with but they also I think in themselves deep contained the seeds of another Vision, which he also talked about that did not depend on supporting that and that was a vision that said it was a vision that was not absent on the University of Michigan campus. I'm in some way it's not act Here but it was absent in the fraternity and sorority row that was the distinction because those people generous people were not touched by it. And I think that that's one of those profound challenges that we face is figuring out ways to take and bring these issues into those niches of the culture that are not normally touch in other niches where people are confused or uncertain and want to try and do something but don't know how because it's not enough to just talk with ourselves. I mean, it's I remember one of the things that when I was at Stanford 20 years ago that that wasn't it I was wasn't my initiation when an RA in my dorm started but was tremendously powerful as we had a dorm. We had a hundred people made was maybe 10 bucks a piece of dorm funds for parties and films and whatnot. And somebody said, let's take $50 of that thousand dollar budget 50 cents apiece and give it to something called Medical Aid for Indochina, which was rebuilding a hospital in North Vietnam that the u.s. Had bombed was very interesting because it was a humanitarian. In gesture, we building a hospital and was a political statement saying we're not at war with a with a Vietnamese and it was a something that affected everybody's money. I mean never mind. It was only 50 cents a piece you get to the summit $50 at the point of seems like real money and he got it people have to make a decision. So I saw two or three weeks where incessantly people are debating And discussing and people are wholly thought that these issues had nothing to do with them all of a sudden come out of the woodwork and say well gee, you know, maybe we should do this and they start thinking about it. And in that discussion that they'd opens them up. They start talking about a little bit more later on as I understand. I got ended up getting kicked out of that campus for challenging recruiting of Honeywell for which I have to blame Abdel fattah who discovered the cluster bombs that they were making devastating anti-personnel weapons, and there was a Nationwide Nationwide campaign against them in which we at Stanford for part. One of the things that happened after I left was a referendum To bring a Vietnamese Professor was there in jail to get him out of jail to be a university student sponsor Professor. Again. It was a school of 10,000 to was a referendum put two dollars in student fees. And again here it is. Everybody has to take a stand on this. Yes know how do you feel? So what happens I think is I guess I see a Continuum of actions spreading from something like those which you know, you know, it's not asking somebody to go like Larry Clark Morgan and spend, you know, a plowshares action and dismantle a warhead. It's not asking somebody to Holy uproot their life. It's just ask them to open that little bit of a window to deal with these larger issues and really wrestle with them and common to those people who by the force of their experience or character or just how far they've thought through these issues can in a sense be a beacon to the rest of us like with young Darnell said and you know, I think of current and I mean not choose to blockade a Rain or risk 10 years in jail, but when I think of somebody like her what I have to say is, okay. What am I doing? And how can I do it in a way that really matters? And I think that that is a response that that's the response you want. She doesn't see that saying everybody has to do it exactly the way I do it. She sang Take A Stand make this your Turf and an act and I think what happens when people begin to do that is that you do indeed begin to choose that to build that Community to get a sense that human beings, even though we have been told all our lives that we cannot affect history that indeed history is what we create history is what we shape and that is our choices that ultimately matter in the world. Thanks. Well, there's a really good book. That unfortunately is $35. I got it from the University of Washington library called that just came out by guy named Richard flax at Santa Barbara as a sociologist. They're called making history that I'm not I'm only about a quarter way through it that it deals with the tension between sort of pursuing ordinary lives and Trying to shape the history that affects that lives. I think that that's a real. It's a real useful study. He's also done a very interesting thing where he and former student of his now the University of Oregon took 35 Min one of the mythologies of our societies that everybody active during Vietnam essentially is now chasing after BMWs. And when he did is he took very simple, he's at Santa Barbara. He took 35 people who were tried for the burning of the bank at Santa Barbara and and acquitted (00:41:30) because they weren't we cannot (00:41:31) but who are all activists of core active is the time and he followed him out 20 years later and then he took 35 people who were in what they could construe is very a political circles at the time like Fraternity Row and what he found out is that of those people who are active that in fact, and this is not a you know, huge National survey sample, but it was interesting nonetheless. All of them were in some ways trying to still come to grips with these issues. They're working in our food bank project or you know, Or this or that I mean on the side of their regular job that they were all connected at least partially to some attempt to steer a course in the world. There was a little bit different than the one of the momentum of the society and he took the people who had not been active and by and large that all they're (00:42:14) making much more sound much higher salaries in the people who had been active (00:42:18) they'd gotten traditionally successively more (00:42:20) conservative as time went on (00:42:22) that indeed. They were driving BMWs and the rest of it and it was an interesting point is not to say that if one doesn't act in University, that's it and you've lost your chance forever, but it does say that you know in a period where you have a very significant polarization and divide that oftentimes what happens people stayed on other sides and followed out that's path (00:42:41) and that the people who the (00:42:43) popular media image says. Oh, they've all sold out are in fact the ones who were never really touched by those events so much to begin with, you know, where maybe you know, they went to a (00:42:54) demonstration once when the entire campus turned out but never really had that (00:42:58) Sustained dialogue. And so I mean I think it's an area that's probably just begun to be addressed within the academic Community as time goes on but that that flax (00:43:09) book Flac KS which reflects is (00:43:13) definitely a you I think a very useful study. No, I also like Todd get lens book on the (00:43:18) 60s, which is in paperback and you know much more reasonably priced (00:43:22) just as a memoir on understanding of a narrative of the period (00:43:26) and some of the legacies that it has so there is stuff coming out of the academy. But again, it's sort of in the niches. (00:43:33) The fact is we end up being crisis-driven in a way because there are these real crisis in the world. You know, it's all of a sudden, you know, you're working on Central American issues and then all of a sudden decide this group start releasing these reports in the Greenhouse Effect and you think you know my well, I mean, oh it's not so bad for cities like Seattle and you know Twin Cities because maybe it's the winters will be warmer, but nonetheless it's you know, it's major Global crisis. And you know, what do we do? Do we do we jump over to that? I think that I mean for my own part what I've seen the most effective thing seems to be a couple two different approaches one is to take a particular issue that just resonates to you and just go with it. I mean my own focus is really on the question of culture and what in our culture allows people act and what prevents them and there are other people to take kids in nuclear arms race who are working on things like alternative defense strategies that don't involve use of military force and I can see how I'm not just within the war peace Continuum how their work is tremendously important and I want to read some of it and I Able to integrate it into my own perspective, but nonetheless the odds that I'm ever going to do a lot of research and work on that particular area. I think are relatively small because it's just not what I'm choosing. But so what I'm trying to do is to go from where I for my own personal focus is and then Branch out and understand the relationship of other issues, but not necessarily put my whole energies into them. Now another part of course is to try and work something like a Rainbow Coalition which is attempting to expand a number of issues and forging interconnected vision, and it's hard because traditionally I'm this is a society that's very very well cause of self and ideological which means essentially that one archaeology the ideology. The market is the one the reins and is very suspicious of other kinds of ideologies like the traditional socialist, which is, you know, a huge span from you from Anarchist socialist to you to died in the wood Hardline communist, but there's a whole current of in 11 In Alternatives that say this is a relationship between different kinds of interconnected questions. And let's try and dress it systematically that is simply washed out and denied as even having intellectual need to Grapple with by our culture. So so it makes it all the more difficult. I mean we can within religious tradition. I think there are two currents that are maybe more accepted where there's a mandate to say. What is the just Kingdom? How do you get there? But it is very very hard in this particular culture to try and Link issues. I think much harder than saying Western Europe where there is again a strong socialist labor tradition and you can begin and it's accepted that these bridges are going to be built. So again, you have a choice of either trying to work with something like again Rainbow Coalition that's trying to reinvent how to link the issues or taking one issue. But trying to draw interconnections along the way I think hopping back and forth. Unless one simply is by nature Restless than Likes that kind of diversity that that is often way to burn oneself out unless unless it again becomes something that gives you a refresher and you work on this issue and then you switch to something else and draw the lessons to another issue, but I think the dangers Point comes where we feel like we have to take on everything and anything all at once and that the sole weight is on us and it's much better to understand that there are people working together with us complementary and so we don't have to carry everything by ourselves. The media control is you know is definitely you know a very it is not helpful to the Democracy of this country. I mean, there's a friend of mine who did a book called On Bended Knee guy named Mark hurts guard exceptionally good book on the way that particular the national broadcast but also for National print media accepted the terms dictated by the Reagan Administration and and presumably will continue to do so and Bush. I mean that's undeniable. It's it's a hard thing to counter on the national level mean locally we had in Seattle or something called the Central American Media project which is done a very good job by simply very closely monitoring every story that runs whether it's originated by our local papers are off the AP wire service and saying, you know, why is it that you have quoted the official sources in El Salvador 333 times and the fmln three times. Nicaragua is the quote the contrast 400 times and their supporters and official government to times and just been very very unrelenting and in extremely rigorous in what they do in saying, Here is the reality. Here's how you're presenting and there's a gap and it has had a significant. It's had a very significant effect on the papers. They showed that it will display a while ago where they showed us over the past few years. They had certain criteria of what would be closer to coming to the truth. And when they started out our papers lag behind the New York Times They now are better than New York Times still doesn't mean they're they're they're conveying the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth but that pressure did have a difference and they're doing on the broadcast realm as well. And I think that that's one way to counter it again. My sense is that I wouldn't say that people are Holy embracing the images presented. I think again that you know, if we we have this sort of notion of culture that things are one way or the other, you know, do they vote Democratic do they vote Republican? What does that say? Yes. No, I think the reality is that we have a very very divided like the example the nuclear free zones, you know, like the states that voted for the fries and then, you know, then voted in people who are ask lighting new weapon system. So if we look at it as a divided culture, I think we're more accurate and maybe that again gives us more room to move. I think it is very important to keep the pressure on the media. We also have to you know, support our own forms and whether it be I work with clients 3/4, which is now has a, you know, a publication here in cities something like that or at Northern sun or whatever. It happens to be to really, you know, ensure that there are some mechanisms of communication that are that are open to us that we have some control over I think, you know putting pressure on NPR which is supposedly something of an alternative and you know again really takes a pretty compliance Dance all those things are sort of intertwined.