You are on page 1of 76

EdiIOrS: Margaret Cerullo. John Demeter, Rob Elias, Marla BrUen, Elizabeth Francis.

Evelynn
Hammonds, Ann Holder, BiU Hoynes, Judy Housman. Donna Penn. Cynthia Perers. Leigh Peake,
Ken
Schlosser. Hassan Vakili. Kim Westheimer, and Deb Whippen.

Associate Editors: Peter Bisldnd, Carl Bogp, Frank Brodhead. Paul Buhle. Margery Davies. Ellen Du
Bois. Barbara Ehrenreich, John Ehrenreich, Phyllis Ewen, Dan Georgakas, Matthew Goodman, Ted
German. Martin Glaberman. Jeff Goldthorpe. Linda Gordon. Jim Green. Mike Hirsch, Allen Hunlel'. Joe
Interrante. Mike Kazin. Ken Lawrence. StaughlOfl Lynd, Mark Naison, Jim O'Brien, Sheila Rowbotham,
James Start, Gail Sullivan. Annmarie·Troger, Martha Vicinus. Stan Weir. David Widgery, Ann
Wilham, and Renner Wunderlich.

Cover:design by Kristen Bjork

Vol. 21 No.6 November-December 1987 (Mailed March 1989)

RADICAL AMERICA (USPS 873-880) is published fin times a year (bimonthly except for a sinlle issue Marcb
lhroulh June) by the Alternative Education Project, Inc. at I Summer Street. Somerville MA 02143; (617)
628-6'8'. CoPyrilht © 1988 by Radical Am�rica. Unauthorized :uroxina or other republication without the ex·
press pennission of the journal is prohibited. Subscription rates: $15 per year; $26 for two years; $10 per year fOI
unemployed, retired. or fixed income. Fret: to prisonen.

Add $3 per year to all prices for foreign subscriptions.

Subscription rates for institutions and libraries: 138 per year; S62 for twO years: 186 for three years. Bulk rates: 40'. reduction
from cover price for five or more copies. Printing by Neuber, Phot08raphy and Printing. Hayfork. CA 96041 . Typesetting by
Gay Community New$. ISSN 0033-7617

RadIcal America is distributed in the US by Armadillo and Company distributors. Carrier Pigeon. Don Olson Distribution.
The Homing Pigeon, Ingram Periodicals, and Ubiquity Distributors. We welcome all distribution queries. Discount rates ar�
available upon request.

�ond class postage paid at Bostcn. Mass. and additional post offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address chanles to RADICAL AMERICA. I Summer Str«t. Somerville, MA 02143.

RADICAL AMERICA is available on microfilm from Xerox University Micro films, 300 North �b Road, Ann
Arbor. MI 48106. and indexed in Alternative Press Center Index, P.O. Box 7229. Baltimore, MD 21218. It is also
indexed in Am�'ica: History and Lif�. Sociological Abstracts, and Wom�n's Studi�s Abstracts.

RADICAL AMERICA is a member of the Alternative Press Syndicate.


AMERICA
VOL. 21, NO.6

I
I DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION
2

I THE OFFICIAL STORY: IMAGINING VIETNAM


Lynne Hanley
7

THE IMPACT OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 15


ON POPULAR MUSIC
Reebe Garofalo
LOOKING BACK AT THE SIXTIES 23

WOMAN/NATION/STATE: The Demographic Race 37


and National Reproduction in Israel
Nira Yuval-Davis
PREFACE: THE AIDS MOVEMENT 61
AND ITS CHALLENGE

STATE OF EMERGENCY: Speech from the 65


AIDS Movement
Vito Russo
WHY THE FDA? 66
Robert Massa
PASSION PLAY AT THE FDA 69
Dan Bellm
DIARY: FDA ACTION 71
Nancy Wechsler
This issue of Radical America
is ded icated to the memory of

"My government can ignore me. My government can treat me as a mere


statistic. My drug company can get rich off of me. The Commonwealth of
Massachusetts can continue denying my basic civil rights, can arrest me,
and can beat me up. The unseen AIDS virus in my bloodstream can kill me.
Statistically it probably will. But none of these things can ever silence
me.... For love and for life, we're not going back." -from Radical America,
Vol. 21, Nos. 2·3

,
INTRODUCTION

Remembering the sixties is harder for some than for others. For many of the white male
leftists whose books have garnered so much popular attention, "the Sixties" are
remembered with a glow of personal and polilical nostalgia: as a political initiation rite, a
time when they reached a pitch of power never to be found again. For veterans of the Civil
Rights, Black Power, and Black Liberation movements, there are often more ambivalent
memories. of less theatrical, more threatening violence, of essential hopes bypassed, dreams
stillborn. White women may recall both the liberation of the refusal of the feminine mys­
tique, the opening of sexual freedom and political possibility. and the bitterness of indif­
ference, trivialization. even betrayal of political allies. Women of color. gays and lesbians all
may harbor even more complex memories of the experience of social movement. And work­
ing class men and women often recall the fear of the draft along with the thrill of the
countercuhure. and the ridiculing of their forced choices that too often characterized the
elite culture.
With this issue, Radical America begins to look at the politics of remembering-what is
remembered and by whom; to what end and with what effects. Lynne Hanley begins the pro­
cess with a reflection on the fictions of Vietnam, in literature and film, confident that how

1
we remember the last war will shape how-and the summer of 'Retha, Rap (Brown), and
whether we fight the next one. It is the soldier's revolt. '
story, the tragedy of the American soldier con­ Radical America has wanted for some time to
fronting not the Vietnamese but himself, that publish a separate "Sixties Issue." For more
has dominated our cultural imagination, our than two years we have tried to solicit articles
cultural industries and institutions, she argues . that would both evoke the memories and
We have an alternative literature, written by speculate on the meanings of the historical
women, but it is mOst often not even seen as reflections emerging around us. RA editors
war literature, precisely because it doesn't con­ who had lived the sixties wanted to be sure that
centrate so exclusively and obsessively on the the radical ness was recovered, against the
soldier's story. The Vietnamese literature of the relegation of the Sixties to youthful excess,
war is virtually unknown in this country. and utopia without organization, or pre-marxist
only recently through translations (mainly by naivete. Younger editors wanted a Sixties Issue
vets) is it becoming available. And yet, Hanley that would make sense to them, that was linked
recalls that it is to the Vietnam era that we owe to today's political dynamics.
the challenges to the literary "canon" that are Rather than wait until the 1990s to remember
currently being raised in colleges and univer­ the sixties, we begin in this issue with a less am­
sities, on behalf of the literatures of other than bitious project. We publish the first in a
white men. In the controversy over the Pulitzer series of "Sixties sections" to be continued over
Prize which went to Poco s Story not Beloved
' several issues. Here we are including some of
we are further reminded that the politics of the short reminiscences solicited from readers,
cultural transformation is ongoing. As we go to associate editors and friends of RA by the
press, the debate over Mississippi Bllrning rages Board. The reminiscences of people of color,
about who will tell the story of the civil rights women, gays and lesbians are sorely under­
movemenl, even whose story it is. In Boston represented. The response to our solicitations
this month, there is a full production of Lor­ points to the patterns of remembering we had
raine Hansberry's posthumously published hoped to criticize not illustrate. What are the
play, Les Blancs, set within the Mau Mau sources of this pattern? What are the obstacles
rebellion in Kenya in the fifties, and dealing to memory and to writing about memory? We
with complex questions of black liberation are reminded of a remark made by Susan Son­
"yesterday, today, and tomorrow-but not tag in 1975 when the Vietnam war finally end­
long after that." [1959} The title was a sarcastic ed, commenting on the sense of anticlimax and
response to Jean Genet's The Blacks (Les disorientation that existed in this country, and
Negres) which Hansberry saw in 1961 and particularly within "the movement": "the
found to be essentially a conversation among Vietnamese won," she said, "but we didn't."
white men about themselves, a necessary con­ Looking toward future issues on the Sixties,
versation perhaps, but one which too easily and in hope of exploring the process of
purged the whites, "self condemning and self remembering, the Board invites RA readers to
absolving," while "the Blacks" remained in submit their memories and memorabilia
"untouched remoteness." (leaflets, diary entries, clippings, etc.) to write
Reebee Garofalo looks back to documenl the us letters or articles to expand this process of
connections between the black political collective remembering.
movements of the sixties and the position of The 60s meets the 80s in the A lOS activist
black artists in the music industry. the content movement. We are publishing a speech by Vito
and form of their music, and the entire Russo along with three shorts to convey why
character of American popular music. The ear­ the Food and Drug Administration and the
ly sixties, he recails, saw more black women, in health induslrY have become a target of ac­
fact more blacks of both genders, on the pop tivists in the fight against AIDS.
charts than at any point in our history. And for
those who think of Flower Power, he reminds Nira Yuval-Davis' article "Woman/Na­
us that Ebony christened the summer of 1967 tion/Slate: The Politics of National Reproduc-
5

4
tion in Israel" is timely. The results of the last a "demographic war" puts women on the front
election in Israel, that threatened to expand the line. At stake is women's relationship to na­
authority of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, tionalism . Yuval-Davis here concretely unravels
created an international furor among Jews as the interconnections between gender, race and
the question of Who is a Jew? took center nationalism. Israel's identification with the
stage. Yuval-Davis elaborates how the answers West, where Ihe "modern woman" limits
to that question have been contesled among reproduction conflicts with the national re­
Jews since the French Revolution. With the quirement to increase the Jewish population.
development of Zionism and the establishment Birth control is free to Palestinians within Israel
of the state of Israel, the boundaries of the and not to Jews. Yuval-Davis suggests thai
Jewish coll�tivity, the Jewish national collec­ feminist analyses of the politics of reproduction
tivity, and the [sraeH collectivity have become that concentrate on economic requirements
contradictory and subject to challenge from (sufficient labor power for the national
within Israel and from world Jewry outside. economy) are nOI sufficient. " A closer
Because "the criteria for 'membership' for analysis," she suggests, "will often reveal lhat
Jews" in the Israeli national collectivity is the national/political rather than economic in+
under debate and Palestinians represent 17 per­ terests lie behind the desire to have more
cent of Israel's population, whether Israel can children, or rather more children of a specific
defend its boundaries as a Jewish collectivity re­ origin."
mains an open question. Demographic policies In addition to illuminating the gendered
and Jewish reproduction thus become central character of current Middle East politics,
concerns in Israel's attempt to secure itself as a Yuval-Davis enters a larger discussion of what
"Jewish state." may be a worldwide crisis of reproduction that
Ironically, the need, on Israel's part, to wage Radical America hopes 10 follow.

TheSh,psofWeEutya;
TomolTOW i s taking shipe. The question is-What Shape?!
The key tool carving out our futua; is Technology. Aa; we COII­
tent to create our future OUt of the j»st?
Having the ben Technoiosy il only half the battle. The de­
structive consequence. of our pn:sent Technology ,nd Agricullun:
are results of it being blsed upon (hly ONE HALF of the truth_
AI ENERGY UNUMITED Rese.rch and Publications we an: con­ SUBSCR18E NOW AND RECEIVE ANY ONE OF
Jlructing machinery .nd developing methods for a new non­ RADICAL AMI-:RICA'S RECENT ISSUES .'Rt;E!
dellruetive TeChnology and Agriculture. We an: assembling the
($4.00 value with a new one year subscription.) Use Ie.
form of the New Age Technology. That form happens to be the
sheet. Sfe ad on back cQvtr)
unexplored mOlion fonn of the Vortex.
Why has Technology in thc past used only one type of motion "Youth and Popular Culture"
and movement--the one which Nature UICI only to decompose, Yes, send me
"Voices of Black Feminism"-Sold 0
diuoJve ,nd radiate iu cn:ations?
I
What, in f'CI, is motion? Are there different!XW of mOlion?
Might there CJtist I form of mOlion yet unknown to Science?
The voru:x i. I gathering tool of Nature which Ihows how air
,nd water can be harnessed for awesome power in the tornado and the Peace Movement"
hurricane. It il known thll a hurric.ne coilects enough energy to
power the entire U.S. for about sill months.
By ming the centripetal (inward-spir.ling) motion of Ihe loma­
do many new propulsion systems an: possible with power eltlnC­
lion fmm �.oo ail WJ1110lff heat input.
The liule known PA)CC$I of IMPLOSION (lflstCid of Explosion)
could be our New Age fuel and power SWItt.
By w.y of nllura.Ily occurring pA)CC$ses,
machine power can be generated and Jub­
stancel produced in great variety, which i n
tum Cln Itimulate growlh--witlt no dilll­
trous side effects or oClru.equenced
We explore tlte blsics of "VORTEXIAN
MECIIANlCS""', point out il.l phenomena
in Nllure .round us, Ind report on ils IWli­
Cllion in Technoiosy, Agriculture and Meta­
physics i n "CAUSES" New.letter, P.O.
Bolt 311O-RA; Laredo, TX 78044.
$5.00 brin I sam Ie copy. and brochure. 5

-
'.

. -
THE OFFICIAL STORY:
IMAGINING VIETNAM

Lynne Hanley

One of Anna Wulf's many literary diversions, in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook,
is parodying herself, her work and the culture business in general . (Remember, for example,
what The Blue Bird Series of Television One-Hour Plays wants to make of Anna's first
novel, Frontiers 0/ War.) Anna takes a certain sour pleasure in inventing counterfeits of
herself and watching them sell. In response to an editor of a literary journal who has been
plaguing Anna for years for "something of yours-at last" (TON, 437), Anna Wulf invents
the journal of "a lady author of early-middle age, who [has] spent some years in an African
colony and (is] armcted with sensibility" (TON, 437). This lady author afnicted with sen­
sibility discovers "the essential tragedy of the colonial situation" (TGN, 438) in a story she
records and comments upon in her journal:

A young white farmer ... noticeisl a young African girl of rare beauty and intelligence. He tries to in­
nuence her to educate herself, to raise herself, for her family are nothing bUI crude Reserve Natives.
But she misunderstands his motives and falls in love. Then, when he (oh, so gently) explains his real
interest in her, she turns virago and calls him ugly names. Taunts him. He, patient, bears it. But she
goes to the police and tells them he has tried to rape her. He suffers the social obloquy in silence. He
goes to prison accusing her only with his eyes, while she turns away in shame. It could be real, strong

Jocing page: Instollotion by ortist Kim Jones, from Unwinding the Vietnam War, 7
drama! II symbolizcs. . .lhe superior spiritual status
Vietnam. That the American soldier suffered
of the white man Irapped by hislOry, dragged
down in to the animal mud of Africa. So true, so
intolerably in Vietnam is beyond question. That
penetrating, so new (TGN, 439). the character of the American soldier, indeed
Though Anna thinks this is all a bit thick, the l.he character of America itself was, as Larry
editor accepts the journal entry enthusiastical· Heinemann puts it in an interview last January
ly, but, as Anna puts it, "my rare sensibility with the San Francisco Chronic/e, "squandered
overcame me at the last moment and I decided in Vietnam" is equally beyond question.
to keep my privacy. Rupen sent me a note say· "There was this sense of carte blanche, "
ing that he so understood, some experiences Heinemann says in the same interview. "You
were too personal for print" (TGN, 439). could do anything, stand naked in the street
When I think about the impact of Vielnam and piss if you wanted; there was the broadest
on literature, I think first of the soldiers' possible permission. I f you killed the wrong
stories. Like every war, Vietnam has been person, that's too bad. That was a body count.
remembered, and some of its memoirs, both in So we got brutal and mean, and the evil of it
fiction and in fact, offer powerful and precise was, we really began to like it." What is not
accounts of the experience of some of the beyond question, however, is the priority we
young American men who fought there (Going have given to American suffering and
After Cacciato, for example or Dispatches). American brutalization in a war which America
We have also had some fine coming home inflicted, for no good reason, on the entire
novels (In Country, for example, and most populations of three unoffending countries on
recently. Poco's Story). And we will, no doubt, the other side of the world.
if we don't already, have some fine going back The impact of the widespread pressure to
novels. That I think, instinctively, of this body "reheroicize" the Vietnam soldier was brought
of literature as the literature of Vietnam, is home to me by an article in the February 22,
perhaps a response as much to the films as to 1988 Los A ngeles Times by Bob Baker called
the literature of Vietnam. The story of the "Staying Behind Now Catches Up." Baker
American soldier in Vietnam has proved to tracked down a number of men who refused,
have a vise·like grip on the imagination of evaded, or fled the Vietnam draft. Referred to
Hollywood and, like the Ancient Mariner, throughout the article as draft dodgers or draft
Hollywood has to tell it again and again, and evaders, never as draft resisters, few of the men
never more often than in the last couple years: interviewed express pride or conviction about
Rambo, Gardens of Slone, Full Metal Jackel, their decision not to fight in Vietnam, and none
Missing in Action I, II. and III, Good Morning offers as a reason for his decision an unwill·
Vietnam, the list goes on and on. What our ingness to kill Vietnamese. Most feel guilt,
films and literature of Vietnam have operated many ascribe their action to cowardice, one
together to do in the twenty years since Tet, is doubts his manhood: "The feelings people like
to lay down the line of the story of Vietnam, me have are that maybe at a certain level I
and that line is, I think. essentially the wasn't really a man because I never did what
discovery of the tragedy of the colonial, or the guy who went to Vietnam did." Asked
perhaps more accurately the imperial, situation about his feeling towards the men who refused
in the tragedy of the white American man. With to serve, a Vietnam veteran explicitly identifies
the partial exception of The Killing Fields, vir· the Vietnam memorial and Platoon as the in·
tually all of our well·known represemations of itiators of a change of attitude among draft
Indochina in literature and in film ask us, first resisters: "They have-a feeling like they had
and foremost, to pity the American soldier-to missed something . . . [EJver since the memorial
share his guilt, to weigh his wounds. to forgive and Pla/oon, a lot of people's minds seem to
his degradation, to understand his loyalties, to have changed. When people like that get 10
admire his endurance, to appreciate his know you and they know you served, they say:
betrayal, to recognize the "superior spiritual 'Gee, maybe I should have done my part.' "
status" of the American soldier "trapped by Another veteran, Arthur Egendorf, author of
history, dragged down into the animal mud" of Healing from Ihe War, reads the slogan, "Hell

8
no! won't go," as an expression of soldier, our celebrated films and novels of Viet­
"negativism" and argues that those who acted nam still offer a shockingly thin version of the
on it "identified themselves by negativism." Vietnamese, and a number of writers suspected,
"They are resigned to a sense of impotence," even while the war was still going on, that our
he adds, "committed to the ideal of no com­ failure to understand the first thing about the
mitment." Though our literature of Vietnam Vietnamese, about their history or their culture
insists on the brutalization of the American or their language or even their land, was very
soldier in Vietnam, it insists even more per­ close to the heart of our problems in that coun­
suasively that to refuse to undergo such try. Many of these writers were women,
brutalization is morally bankrupt. perhaps not surprisingly, since women had less
There was, during the Vietnam War, a com­ access to and, perhaps, less commitment to the
peting literary response, the trip to Hanoi, (for soldier's story. Denise Levertov's "Glimpses of
which, by the way, Jane Fonda has yet to be Vietnamese Life," Susan Sontag's "Trip to
forgiven by many of the Vietnam veterans of Hanoi," Robin Morgan's "Four Visions on
Holyoke, Massachuselts, who are mounting, a Vietnam," Frances Fitzgerald's "Fire in the
campaign effort against her efforts to film part Lake" were all efforts, in various forms, to
of Union Street in their town. "I'm not Fond'a create Vietnam as a culture in the American im­
Hanoi Jane," the bumper stickers read in my agination, and to confer upon the enemy a
neighborhood). Like most of the novels and spiritual status at least equivalent, if not
films, this literature was documentary in in­ superior, to that of the American soldier. That
spiration, but the experience it sought to record the enterprise of representing the Vietnamese
was nOt that of the American soldier but that of and their culture as the real victims of the
the enemy. No doubt because of our preoc­ tragedy of the war has all but dropped out of
cupation with the tragedy of the American our sense of what "Vietnam" is all about is an
indication, I think, of the sentimentalization of
our imagination of the war in the twenty years
since Tel.
The soldier's story. rooted as it is in a par­
ticular man's experience of a particular war,
lends not only to sentimentalize, but also to
dehistoricize our apprehension of war. Vietnam
is not seen as one in a series of wars whose
repetitions reveal a pattern in our relations with
the peoples and cultures of the Third World. As
in Heart of Darkness, which has been the
paradigm for so many of our representations of
Vietnam, the clash of cultures and political in­
terests is mythologized and psychologized into
a kind of "ur" encounter of the while
American man with his own unsuspected
capacilles for evil-Adam "surprised by
sin"-a compelling story to be sure, but one
which fails to represent that evil as policy.
rendering it instead as an isolated and personal
encounter which occurs only under extreme
duress deep in the heart of the jungle. A more
recent version of this same story is currently
coming out of Israel, and represents the Israeli
soldier as surprised by sin in Gaza and the West
Bank, thus transforming an occupying army in­
to the victims of its own occupation.

9
Eller! Shub pho/O

Less myopic versions or our experience or throughout this century, occurs, I think, in the
Vietnam seem to me to occur primarily in fiction or Doris Lessing. Lessing is one or the
literature we overlook in this context because few novelists or the generation that spans
we assume, consciously or unconsciously, that World War 1 to the present to rix her eyes on
the soldier's story is the story or Vietnam. The the history or human violence in our time. Born
rail or Saigon, ror example, is the event around in 1919 or a World War I amputee and his
which Joan Didion's Democracy circles, but its nurse, and coming or age with the outbreak or
narrative is not about the American soldier World War II, Lessing recognized early that
"trapped by history, dragged down" etc., etc., hers was a generation and a culture steeped in
but about the American politicians, white war. In her first series or novels, Children of
American men too, just about every one or Violence, written mainly in the rifties, Lessing
them, who devised and executed the policies defines the people she is writing about as "peo­
which put the American soldier in the mud. ple like myselr,"
Didion's is not a tale or an innocent young man
surprised (and why, slill, so surprised?) by his people my age who are born out of wars and who
have lived through them, the rramework of lives
capacity ror violence and brutality and blinding
in conflict. I think the title explains what t essen­
rear, but or ripened war mongers, grown
tially want to say. I want to explain what it is like
ramiliar and easy with their ways and means.
to be a human being in a century when you open
War is the proression or the American men your eyes on war and on human beings disliking
Didion depicts in Democracy and, by the end or each other (ASPV, 57).
the novel, our hearts do nOI bleed ror them.
An even more capacious exploration or war, One of Lessing's crucial contributions here to
not just of the Vietnam War but or the wars the IiteralUre or war is her intuitive expansion
which have recurred with obsessive regularity or its terrain. War is not something a handrul
-

10
of doomed young men trip over in the jungles hunting. This confusion of war with sport is, in
of an alien and inhospitable land, war is what fact, a kind of trope of the imagination of the
the sons and daughters of Europe and the American soldier in Vietnam, and in a country
United States wake up to every day, it's the mar­ in which we conduct football games, presiden­
row of our culture. tial elections, video games, foreign policy,
In Childrell oj Violellce, Lessing treats war as disarmament talks, children's cartoons and sex­
a family legacy, it's something Dad hands down ual relations in the same rhetoric of the prize
to son, Mom hands down 10 daughter. Focus­ fight, we might consider whether the bellicosity
sing, as the series does, on World War I and of our metaphors doesn't have something to do
World War I I , conveniently precisely a genera­ with our ever-readiness for war.
tion apart, Lessing treats the balliefieid and In part because she is a daughter of the
home as different arenas of the same conflict. British, not a son of the American, empire,
Marxist historical determinism and Freudian Lessing does nOI present Vietnam as the war
psychological determinism join hands to force which confirms a pattern of generational
her generation to repeat the war of its parents. violence. From the point of view of Europe,
Her generation is, in fact, a direct product of Vietnam is not so special, Vietnam is merely
war, and metaphors of violence and connic! one more in a series of violent clashes along the
shape its understanding not just of the relations perimeters of the spheres of influence of the
between nations and races, but also of the rela­ Superpowers. Moreover, Lessing has come to
tions between men and women, between regard her view of war as a family affair as ex­
parents and children. Cold War, the War Bet­ cessively deterministic, permitting no response
ween the sexes, the War Between the Genera­
tions are merely the domestic names for the
mentality which erupts militarily under the
names of World War I, World War II, Korea,
Vietnam, Afghanistan, Nicaragua.
Vietnam, of course, fits very neatly into this
generational pattern of violence. Heating up
almost exactly twenty years after the end of
World War II-Iwo Jima plus twenty, we
might even say-Vietnam was fought on both
sides of the world largely by the sons and
daughters of the soldiers and nurses of World
War I I , and what's at the back of our minds, if
not on the tip of our tongues, when we say "Tet
plus twenty," what makes this cate reverberate
with a peculiar significance, is not just our
sense that it's time for a retrospective, it's also
our sense that it's time for another war. Many
American writers on Vietnam share this sense
of the war as an inheritance, the legacy of the
World War II generation to its children. I heard
Chuck Norris, father of MiSSing in Action I, II
and III, say on LV. recently that John Wayne
was like a father to him. And in Going Afler
CaccialQ, Paul Berlin goes to Vietnam largely
because his father can imagine no other possi­
ble response to "the caU of duty." Like the pro­
tagonists of The Deer Hunler, Paul Berlin is
groomed for war in his boyhood by par­
ticipating with his father in the war game called Ho Chi Minh

11
but an enlightened cynicism. The quotation Association, Joseph Berger of The Times
from Lewis Carroll which Lessing puts at the comes to the conclusion that the crucial issue
beginning of the second volume of Children of under debate in American academic literary
Violence hints at her early r�ognition of the circles is, can we know what literature is
dangers of even a wry and witty fatalism: superior? Since twenty years ago, the superiori­
" 'You shouldn't make jokes,' Alice said, 'if it ty of literature by white men was assumed at the
makes you so unhappy' " (APK, I). In her re­ M.L.A., and since, twenty years ago, an alter­
cent fiction, Lessing has taken a much more nate body of literature worth reading was not
global and impersonal view of Vietnam in par­ even imagined at the M.L.A., this debate does
ticular, and of war in this century in general. In point to a certain erosion, in the twenty years
Shikosla, the first volume of her Canopus in since Tet, of the white American male
Argos series, Lessing presents the history of the academic's assurance o f his cullUral
earth from prehistory to the not so distant preeminence, a certain unhinging of his easy
future through the eyes of a vastly superior confidence in the "superior spiritual status" of
species from another galaxy. This view robs his kind. But note with what bellicosity the idea
Vietnam of the special case status we of an alternate, an alien body of literature is
Americans tend to give it, and places it instead entertained at the M.L.A. "U.S. Literature:
inside a pattern of violence perpetuated, not by Canon Under Seige, " Berger litles his article,
Communists against the "free world," but by and who can fail to hear the echoes of Khe
the white races against the non-white races of Sanh, who can fail to see, particularly if they've
the world. Shikasla ends with the trial of the been reading a lot of Vietnam novels, the
white race for its life, for its crimes against beleaguered white man's books-the best he's
humanity. Vietnam is cited as an instance of seen and thought and done-dragged down in­
these crimes, but its inspiration is the same as to the animal mud of books by women and
that which led white men to exterminate the In­ African Americans and Indians and what have
dians, enslave the blacks, establish apartheid in you. Though drenched in a sentiment we owe in
Africa, practice genocide against the Jews, and part, I think, to our literary representations of
colonize and exploit non-white peoples around Vietnam, Ihe sentiment that allows white
the world-the unexamined assumption of the American men to perceive themselves as victims
white race of its own superiority. The trial ends, of the tragedies their assumption of superiority
however, nOI with an agreement to exterminate creates, the article does document an increasing
the brutes-to apply Kurtz's solution (a the real tolerance in academic circles for literature by
culprits-but with the citing of the case of the authors who are not white men. Remnants sur­
treatment of untouchables in India. In this face of the conviction that the best that has
case, the assumption of superiority is detached been seen, thought, and done by white men is
from race, and revealed to be, in itself, the all we need to know, particularly remarks of
motivating force behind aggression and ex­ several prominent literary critics. Yet, the arti­
ploitation, race being a central, but not the on­ cle points out that those who mourn the loss of
ly, category within which it expresses itself. "once-honored standards like grace of style,
Coming in, as the anti-war movement'did, vigor of prose and originality of expression"
on the back of the civil rights movement, and are under fire and losing ground. We are no
coming in, as the feminist movement did, on longer quite so convinced that the white man's
the backs of both, one thing all three literature is the only one we need (0 know, or
movements recognized they had in common that it does indeed embody the best that has
was a critique of the cultural hegemony of been seen and thought and done. In fact, as
white, male America, American spelled KKK, Berger points out, a good deal of work is cur­
and it may finally be this critique which has had rently being done on how literary reputations
the most lasting impact, if not on the literature are constructed, on how networks of white men
about Vietnam, at least on literary studies in in criticism, academics, and publishing engineer
America. Covering the meeting in San Fran­ the canonization of writers of their circle.
cisco last December of The Modern Language Though the M.L.A. seems prepared to make
-

12
a little room for a number of literatures it once Pearl Buck, a professor of literature at the
dismissed as "popular," though the M.L.A. University of Pennsylvania said at the M.L.A .•

seems prepared. even. to allow that "the New is "no different from choosing between a
England spinster['s) struggl(eJ to 'grow old with hoagie and a pizza," suggesting the choice is
dignity' .. is as much a paradigm of courage as merely a matter of taste and one taste is as good
the matador's performance in the bull ring, the as another. While this position does not open
M.L.A. showed no inclination to launch a up the canon, it also discourages renection on
serious critique of the canon as enshrining the the relation between literary choices and
cultural values of a race and a sex with a for­ military history, on the relation between, for
midable history of violence. Its inlenlion is to example, what we know as our literature of
assimilate other literatures and other cultures. Vietnam and our behavior as a nation and a
not to transform its own. The premise of the culture in the Third World since World War II.
trip to Hanoi literature was not just that we
need to be familiar with other cultures, it was
also that we need to discover in other cultures Lynne Hanley teaches literature and short story
less pugnacious ways of structuring OUf feel­ writing at Hampshire College. Two earlier
ings, of structuring our whole apprehension of articles on twentieth century women writers on
life. Choosing between Virginia Woolf and war appeared in the Massachusetts Review.
Time coiled him {he Messenger or Lov�. Marvin Gaye during {he early Mo{own days. (Michael Oehs Archil'es
photo). Bus burning lII!Qr Allnis/on. Alabama, during the first Freedom Rides.
THE IMPACT OF THE
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVE­
MENT ON POPULAR
MUSIC

Reebee Garofalo

When political activists think about the music of the Civil Rights Movement, they are like­
ly to focus on union songs and spirituals like "Which Side Are You On," "This Litlle Light
erMine," "Keep You Eyes on the Prize," "This Land is Your Land," "Down by the River­
side," and, of course, "We Shall Overcome." These were the songs that raised con­
sciousness, energized activism, and provided moments of celebration within the struggle. In
the words of Bernice Reagon, these were the "songs that moved the movement."1 With their
roots in the culture of the Black church, the locus for most civil rights organizing, these
songs were critical to participants in the movement. To the nation-aI-large, however, the
music orten served as little more than the background for terrifying newscasts of racial
violence. Interestingly, as the Civil Rights Movement expJodedon the national scene, its im­
pact on the national consciousness was more clearly reflected in popular music. As always,
this was the music that moved the mass audience.
As any social movement attains national recognition, popular music can be used as an im­
portant socio-political indicator of that struggle. In the case of civil rights, the trajectory of
the entire movement can be traced through an analysis of trends in popular music from
1954-1973. Such analyses are often limited to a consideration of changes in lyric content.

An earlier version oj this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting oj the Popular Culture Association, Mon­
treal, Canada, March 28, 1987
"
d
While there is no Question that these changes historian Peter Guaralnick; "it was like a blind­
are, at times, powerful, it is also important to ing flash of light in which the millenium, aU of
note that changes in musical form, tone, in­ a sudden and unannounced, had arrived.") In
strumentation, production style, and personnel popular music as in civil rights, the Black
can be more telling. One pattern related to the church was now becoming a force to be reckoned
Civil Rights Movement is that innovation in with in the material world.
these lauer areas generally preceded changes in The explosion of civil rights as a national
lyric content. issue was anticipated by a number of regional
Civil rights activity heated up in the 1950s struggles that also had parallels in popular
when a new activist Black clergy, with Martin music. When Rosa Parks moved up to the front
Luther King at its forefront, began to form of the bus in 1955, Black artists like Fats
political alliances with secular organizations Domino ("Ain't That a Shame," "I'm in Love
like the NAACP, CORE, and, later, SNCC. Again," "Blueberry Hill"), Little Richard
"While this spiritual-secular coalition was form­ ("Tutti Frulli," "Long Tall Sally," "Good
ing in the political sector," stales music jour­ Golly, Miss Molly"), and Chuck Berry ("Rock
nalist Nelson George, "the music world was & Roll Music," "Sweet Little Sixteen,"
witnessing the breaking of a longstanding "Johnny B. Goode") were just beginning to
taboo, as gospel began to fuse with rhythm & cross over into the pop market as heroes of rock
blues. "I Prior to this time, gospel singers simp­ 'n' roll. Increasingly, regional civil rights strug­
ly did nOl perform "the devil's music," and gles based mainly in the deep South came to
vice versa. But as the faithful began to take national attention, just as much of early rock
their struggle to the streets, the musical in­ 'n' roll was based on regional r&b styles from
fluences of gospel-the prominent use of the deep South that found a national audience.
keyboards, soaring vocals, background The rebellious tone of this music mirrored the
choruses, and the call-and-response style-were growing demand for political change in the
Quickly appropriated by the secular world of Black community. As early as 1956, the cor-
rhythm & blues and brought to the aUention of
a mass public.
Prefigured in the 1953 releases of "Shake a
Hand" by Faye Adams and "Crying in the
Chapel" by Sonny Til and the Orioles (covered
by June Valli for RCA), the fruits of this trend
could be seen in the vocal stylings of Clyde
McPhatter and Jackie Wilson, both of whom
began their careers as lead vocalists for the
gospel-tinged Dominoes, and in the spectacular
pop career of Sam Cooke, who was already at
the top of the gospel heap as the lead singer for
the Soul Stirrers. But nowhere was the marriage
of gospel and r&b more apparent that in the
early recordings of Ray Charles ("Hallelujah, I
Love Her So," "What'd I Say"). By 1954, all
the elements of the fusion were already present
in one of the most influential, if not most suc­
cessful, releases. The impact of "I Got a
Woman" is remembered by music historians as
nothing short of apocalyptic. "The very
stratagem of adapting a traditional gospel song,
putting secular lyrics to it, and then delivering it Sam Cooke and fhe Soul Stirrers, mid·J950s, from Rock Archives.
with all the attendant fanfa� of a Pentecostal
service was, simply, staggering," writes music
.

16
responding cullural changes were already ap­ wntmg 'School Days'. "J The strategy of the
parent in popular music. "It was not only the early Civil Rights Movement was integrationist
slicker, more pop-oriented singers like Clyde and i t was in this historical context that Berry
McPhaller and Otis Williams who hit in the pursued his career. While he never disowned his
pop market," reported Billboard, "but also Blackness, his goal was full acceptance in the
those working in the traditional style like white mainstream. In keeping his eyes on that
Shirley and Lee, Lillie Richard, and Fats prize, Berry's intent was not significantly dif­
Domino. Their impact, in fact, has virtually ferent than that of the other Black rock 'n'
changed the conception of what a pop record rollers who crossed over. He just did it beuer.
is. " . Interestingly, the down side of the Black educa­
With the advent of rock 'n' roll, the form tional experience was more nearly captured­
and style of popular music changed dramatical­ albeit somewhat tongue-in-check-in the
ly and irrevocably. But these changes were not Coasters' "Charlie Brown" (1959), written by
yet accompanied by analogous changes in lyric the white songwriting team of Jerry Lieber and
content. Brown may have rocked the Board of Mike Stoller. Neither popular music nor the
Education in 1954, but Chuck Berry's depiction Civil Rights Movement were without their con­
of "School Days" in 1957 did not describe the tradictions. In its integrationist phase, the
educational experience in Lillie Rock, Arkan­ movement tended to play down real differences
sas that same year. Berry was a true storyteller in favor of the slogan "Black and white
in the folkloric sense of the term, but he was together. " Issues like white skin privilege on the
also a man for his time. As he recently told his one hand and self-determination on the other
audience, " I said: 'Why can't I do as Pat were not yet prominent on the political agenda.
Boone does and play good music for the white If the movement itself avoided confronting
people and sell as well there as I could in the pressing issues at the time, it should come as no
neighborhood? ' And that's what I shot for surprise that civil rights themes were nowhere

17
to be found in the lyric content of popular music was a refreshing change of pace (and
music. In this period, the movement exerted its race) in the pop market.
influence on music in other ways. I t was also during this period that we saw the
Following a period of repression of both civil formation of the most significant Black-owned
rights activity and rock 'n' roll in the late '50s, record label ever-MolOwn, until recently the
bland, white vocalists like Fabian, Frankie centerpiece of the largest Black-owned corpora­
Avalon and Bobby Rydell gradually took over tion in the United States. There can be no doubt
the pop charts. However, as civil rights activity that the growing civil rights movement provided
gathered momentum once again in the early a climate that encouraged the development of
'60s with sit-ins, freedom rides, the 1963 March such an enterprise. Barry Gordy, the founder of
on Washington, and the Mississippi Summer Motown, was a brilliant producer able to incor­
Project in 1964, a new phenomenon appeared porate while audience tastes without abandon­
in popular music-the "girl groups." Black ing a Black sound. In the process he created a
female vocal groups such as the ShireUes ("Will formula that was the perfect metaphor for the
You Love Me Tomorrow"), the Crystals early Civil Rights Movement-upbeat Black
("He's a Rebel"), the Chiffons ("He's So pop, acceptable to a white audience, that was
Fine"), and the RonneUes ("Be My Baby") irresistably danceablc. but not threatening to
provided a polar opposite to the white males on anyone in tone or content. Dozens of early
the charts. Corresponding to the increase in Motown releases such as the Marvelleues'
civil rights activism, there were more Black "Please, Mr. Postman" (1961), "Dancing in
women-indeed, with the continued success of the Streets" by Martha and the Vandellas
artists like Sam Cooke and Ray Charles, more (1963). the Supremes' "Where Did Our
Black artists of both genders-on the pop Love Go?" (1 964), or "My Girl" by the
charts in the early '60s than at any point in our Temptations (1 965), could serve as examples.
history. In 1962, 42 percent of the best selling While the influence of the early Civil Rights
singles of the year were by Black artists. Their Movement clearly extended to the music
business, the major pop styles still showed vir­ spired by Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," ten­
tually no change in lyric content. During this tatively attempted a similar fusion with "A
period, civil rights texts were performed mainly Change is Gonna Come." By the time the
in the folk idiom and, to a lesser extent, in jazz. record was released as a single, though, Cooke
At the time, these musics experienced some had already been shot to death. When his friend
brief successes in the pop market. In folk Malcolm X was assassinated two months later
music, whether one looked at old timers like on February 2 1 , 1965, "A Change is Gonna
Pete Seeger or newcomers like Joan Baez, the Come" was a pop hit. It stands as Cooke's
best-known performers who addressed civil monument to civil rights.
rights themes in their music were white. This For the Civil Rights Movement, 1965 was a
phenomenon probably had more to do with the pivotal year. Activists marched in Alabama
process of becoming famous in this country from Selma to Montgomery. The Voting Rights
than who was performing civil rights-related Act was passed. Rioting broke out in Walls,
material, but in the context of the early Civil ushering in an era of urban unrest. And, Stoke­
Rights Movement, this was not identified as a ly Carmichael coined the term "Black Power."
major contradiction. The newcomer who In the jazz arena, Nina Simone captured the
became the most famous of all the folkies was, tenor of the times, in context and in tone, as her
of course, the enigmatic Bob Dylan. With selec­ 1965 recording of "Mississippi Goddam" an­
tions like "Oxford Town" (1962) and "The ticipated the militance that was about to erupt
Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (1963), (just as her "Backlash Blues" would anticipate
Dylan was early on proclaimed a "leader" of the reaction). This transformation was also
the Civil Rights Movement. He performed his reflected in Black popular music, but, again,
"Only a Pawn in Their Game," a song about changes in form, tone, and production style
the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, preceded changes in lyric content.
at the 1963 March on Washington. That same As the liberal Civil Rights Movement gave
year, the more commercial Peter, Paul, and way to the more radical demand for Black
Mary scored a top ten pop hit with Dylan's power, Motown's hegemony over Black pop
"Blowin' in the Wind." was successfully challenged by a resurgence of
Soon a number of Black folk anists like the closer-to-the-roots, hard driving rhythm &
classically-trained Odetta, the unorthodox blues from the Memphis-Muscle Shoals region
Richie Havens, and the gospel-influenced of the deep South. Chiefly responsible for this
Staple Singers also gained prominence as voices popularization of Southern soul, as this music
of the Civil Rights Movement. As more Black was called, was a short-lived but highly suc­
performers achieved recognition, the style of cessful collaboration between Atlantic Records
civil-rights related music moved closer to.pop and a number of Southern studios, most
production. The Staple Singers, for example, notably Stax in Memphis and Fame in Muscle
performed "We Shall Overcome" with electric Shoals . From 1965 on, artists like Otis Redding
guitar and drums. Of critical importance in ("I've Been Loving You Too Long"), Wilson
linking "folk consciousness" with pop appeal Pickett ("Land of 1000 Dances"), Sam and
was the often underappreciated Curtis Dave ("Soul Man"), Arthur Conley ("Sweet
Mayfield. Like feUow Chicagoan Sam Cooke Soul Music"), and Percy Sledge ("When a Man
before him, Mayfield left the gospel choir for Loves a Woman") were prominent among the
the secular world of popular music, there to new chart toppers. Echoing the spirit of the
become, in the words of Nelson George, emerging new militance, their recordings were
"Black music's most unflagging civil rights raw, basic, and almost angry in tone, as com­
champion."6 With his pop/gospel trio, the Im­ pared to the cleaner, brighter Motown sound.
pressions. Mayfield utilized full studio produc­ Striking differences between Motown and
tion to achieve major pop successes with a Southern soul can be seen in a comparison of
series of "sermon" songs like "Keep on Motown and its chief competitor, Stax. Both
Pushing" and "Amen" in 1964, and "People founded in 1960, Motown was as secretive and
Get Ready" in 1965. In 1964, Sam Cooke, in- tightly controlled as Stax was open and

Marfh/l and Ihe Vandellas. /rom Rock Archivn.


19

<
Arefhu f;ullklill, 1968. David Guhr photo.

disorganized. Stax was originally a white­ ways, it was the very simplicity and straightfor­
owned company; its creative functions were as wardness of Southern soul production which
likely to be handled by whites as by Blacks, and gave the music its claim on authenticity. When
the "Memphis sound" which they spawned was this music crossed over into the pop market, it
almost invariably the product of cross-racial wasn't because the music had changed, it was
teamwork. Initially the credits on all Stax record­ because Black pride had brieny created a
ings read simply: "produced by the Stax staff." climate wherein unrefined rhythm & blues
Motown was not only Black-owned, but vir­ could find mainstream acceptance on its own
tually all of its creative personnel-artists, terms.
writers, producers, and session musi­ With Southern soul in its ascendancy, unen­
cians-were all Black as welL It was clearly a cumbered production was soon joined by social
haven for Black talent. Paradoxically, Motown consciousness in Black popular music. In
is remembered as being "totally committed to January, 1967, Aretha Franklin was signed to
reaching white audiences," while Stax recor­ Atlanlic Records, and after one legendary ses­
dings, by contrast, were "consistently aimed at sion in Muscle Shoals, she found her sound.
r&b fans first, the pop market second.''' In Later that spring, she cut a version of what had
context of Black pride, Motown's lavish use of been Otis Redding's signature tune. "Respect"
muili-track studio production to achieve a more was instantly "transformed from a demand for
"pop" sound seemed somehow oul of synch conjugal rights into a soaring cry of freedom. '"
with the search for African roots. "Motown Shortly thereafter Aretha was crowned "Lady
does a 101 of overdubbing, " commented Stax Soul." The vocal and emotional range of her
artist Otis Redding just before his death in early Atlantic releases ("Baby, I Love You,"
1967. "At Stax ... (wJe cut together, horns, "Natural Woman," "Chain of Fools, " and
rhythms, and vocal. . . . Unlil last year, we didn't "Think," to name a few) uniquely expressed all
even have a four-track tape recorder. You can't the passion and forcefulness of the era. Fitting­
overdub on a one-track machine.'" In many ly, the summer of 1967 was dubbed by Ebony
.

20
as "the summer of 'Retha, Rap (Brown), and ed us that the more radical elements in the
revolt.'''o struggle for Black liberation had already been
When James Brown had his first Top Ten hit neutralized. The confusion and disillusionment
with "Papa's Oot a Brand New Bag" in 1%5, of the period were evident in Marvin Oaye's
he billed himself, with some justification, as "What's Ooin' On?" and " Inner City Blues,"
"the hardest working man in show business. " both of 1971. On a more positive note, Aretha
By 1968, h e was "Soul Brother # 1 . " His string Franklin's recording o f Nina Simone's
of uncompromising Top Ten hits ("l Oot "Young, Gifted, and Black" that same year
You," "Cold Sweat," " l Oot the Feelin' ") captured the spirit of a community that
made fewer concessions to mainstream sen­ weathi:red a storm of urban violence. Her stir­
sibilities than any other music in the pop ring celebration of Black pride provided the
market. During this period, according to critic musical capstone for a decade of civil rights
Robert Palmer, "Brown and his musicians and struggle.
arrangers began to treat every instrument and As radicalism in the Black community was
voice in the group as if each were a drum. " I I systematically repressed, there was a correspond­
The connection to African roots and Black ing decline in the popularity of the more mili·
pride was made explicit as his 1968 hit single, tant sounding rhythm and blues from the deep
"Say It Loud-I'm Black and I'm Proud," South. By (he early 19705, Stax had begun its
became an anthem in the struggle for Black descent inlo bankruptcy, the other pioneers of
liberation. the Memphis-Muscle Shoals axis were no longer
By 1968, socially conscious texIS were com­ producing rhythm & blues, and even Atlantic
mon in popular music, as artists of all styles got had changed direction to focus on its British
on board the civil rights train. However, the rock acts. Atlantic's Jerry Wexler commented
assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4, that radio stations didn't want to "burden"
1968 left a clear void in the leadership of the their listeners "with the sound of breaking glass
movement. "The civil rights struggle was not in WailS or the sirens coming from Detroit,
dead, but its energy was increasingly which is what r&b music meant at the timc. . . so
scallered," writes Nelson Oeorge. "The Black they took most of it off the radio." ,J Reflect­
Panthers embraced communism. Ron ing the "quieter" mood of the early 1970s, the
Karenga's U.S. organization advocated an Black popular music which came to the fore
Afrocentric cullural nationalism . . . .Black was the "sofl soul" sound pioneered by the
Power came to mean whatever its user needed it
to .... The assimilationists pressed on . . "11 This
. .

fragmentation was evident in the range of


themes which found their way into popular
songs. Releases such as Dion's "Abraham,
Martin and John" (1968), the Rascals' "People
Oat to be Free" (1968), and "Everyday
People" by Sly and the Family Stone (1 969)
were reminiscent of the more moderate Ihemes
of the early Civil Rights Movement. Curtis
Mayfield continued his run of socially con­
scious hits with "We're a Winner" in 1968, and
"Choice of Colors" in 1969. Even Elvis
Presley's "In the Ohello" (1 969), a rather
unlikely entry, went to #3 on the pop charts.
Recalling the heyday of the Black Panthers,
John Lennon's exhortation "Power (0 the Peo­
ple" (1971) provided another upbeat anthem.
Bob Dylan's tribute to the memory of slain
Black leader " Oeorge Jackson" (1971) remind- Otis Redding. 1968. Jim Marshall photo.

21
Philadelphia-based writer-producer team of thai, and to have been a part of that, is more than
Kenny Gamble and Len Huff, and producer­ anyone can ask. I .
arranger Thorn Bell. Joining forces with Sigma
Sound Studios in Philadelphia, they developed The battles of the '60s were hard fought, but in
the style in the late 1960s, working with artists popular music as elsewhere, they were not
like Jerry Outler and the Intruders . The withoul their victories.
Delfonics' classic 1968 hit, liLa La Means I
Love You," was a harbinger of sounds to
come. But the Philadelphia enterprise didn't hit FOOTNOTES
its stride until 1971, with the formation of
Philadelphia International Records (PIR) and a 1 Bernice Reagon. "Songs ThaI Moved the Movement."
distribution deal with CBS. Employing lush or­ Civil Rights Quarterly, Summer. 1983.
chestral arrangements over a polite rhythmic lNelson George, The Deoth oj Rhythm &: Blues. Pantheon
pulse with groups like Harold Melvin and the Books, New York. 1988. p. 69.
• Peter Guaralnick. Sweet SoulMusic. Harper & Row. New
Blue Notes ("If You Don't Know Me By York. 1986. p. .50.
Now"), the 0' Jays ("Back Stabbers," "Love • Billboard, Deccmber 22. 1956. p. to
Train"), the Stylistics ("You Make Me Feel , Chuck Berry, interviewed in the Taylor Haekford
Brand New"), and the Spinners ("Could It Be documentary. Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, 1987.
• George. op cit" p. 8.5
I'm Falling in Love"), the Philadelphia pro­
, George. op cit., p. 86.
ducers set the standard in Black pop for the , Rolling Stone, January ZO. t968. p. IS.
next few years. Other artists like the Chicago­ • Guaralnick, op cit. p. 332.
based Chi-Lites ("Oh Girl") and the ever­ .. ibid" p. 34.5.
changing Isley Brothers ("That Lady") soon " Robert Palmer. "James Brown, "in Jim Miller. ed.. The
Rolling Stone Illustrated History oj Rock &: Roll. Rolling
followed suit. Even Southern soul yielded the
Stone Press, New York, 1976. p. 1 3 6.
velvety smooth Al Green ("Let's Stay " George. ap cil., p. 98
Together," "I'm Still in Love With You"). " Billboard. November 20, 1971. p. to3.
Even with the movement in disarray, civil " Guaralnick. op cit.. p. 20.
rights themes had not yet disappeared com­
pletely from popular music, but they were on
the decline. In 1971, the Chi-Lites had a pop hit
with "Give More Power to the People" and
War scored with "The World is a Ghetto" in
1972. But after 1972, only Stevie Wonder's
"Living for the City" (1973) was noticeable in
the pop market. More to the point, the softer
production style of the ascending Philadelphia
sound clearly signalled the end of an era of tur­
moil, ferment and rebellion. Interestingly, in
1972, an all time high of 44 percent of the best
selling singles of the year were by artists of col­
or.
Curtis Mayfield offered the following sum­
mation of the previous decade:

You know, to talk about the '60s almost brings


tears to my eyes. What we did. What we all did.
We changed the world-me, us. Smokey Robin­
son, Jerry Butler, the Temptations, Aretha, Otis,
Gladys Knighl, James Brown. We really did. Bar­ Reebce Garafalo teaches at the College of
riers broke down for us. And for all black musi­ Public and Community Service, UMassl
cians afterwards. I mean, to have lived through Boston, Boston, MA 02125.

l
22

-
LOOKING
BACK
AT
THE
SIXTIES
Newsweek remembered the
sixties by wondering, "will we
ever get over them?� Television
gave us a chance to remember
(he sixties through the eyes of
yuppie "thinysomethings· and
their problems with divorce, r0-
mance, and child custody. Mean�
while, Hollywood blessed us
wilh, n i some cases anti-war, but photo, Skip Heine
for the most part more shoot­
'em-up versions of the white They by no means make up a coherent retro­
American soldier's ordeal n i Vielnam. And cor­ spea.ive. In fact, the gaps are striking, and
porate publishers asked the movement's "lead­ caused us some dismay. Despite our best ef­
ers- 10 reflect on the time, some of whom, like forts, mostly white men responded (Oour solic­
Tom Hayden, for example, felt the sixties rep­ itation; this collection includes only four
resented the moment when they came tragi­ women, one of them Black. Weconsidered nOl
cal!y dose to losing faith in the American running such an unbalanced selection of re­
political system. membrances. But we finally decided to go with
As the mainstream media rallied its re­ it, partly because the pieces we got were pro­
sources to write the history of the sixties, we at vocative and valuable to our readership, and
RadicaJAmerlca began to think about the pol­ partly because there is a lesson even in this
ities ofremembering. How do we reflect on that skewed presentation of that period. Who is it
pivotal moment in US history? What are !.he who feels connected enough to the period to
epiphanies, snapshots, and glimpses we would be able to reflect on it? Who looks back on (he
offeras our memory of the time? How does our time and sees themselves n i the center of it,
experience of that time shape our current p0- empowered by it? The process ofremembering
litical work? has left us with these questions. We encourage
Wi!.h these questions in mind, we asked a feedback on this series and any new recollec­
wide range of activiSts, ni tellectuals, and other tions you have to offer as we continue this
assoned RA readers to think back on their series over the next few issues.
participation in !.hal decade. We came up Wilh
the compilation of ret1ections that follows.

2l
=======�-- ...,

Then . . .
':;M.

w . a"f . 7
(l;,/'e �
.,f) ....'l.Z..Uuri.
..
ad . do vOl....
-n*. Jdli..
� Uo/WL y. 10m J,a,,-( ",".c.f<><S
<.(�<-{ ,fi.n
""" � "if J2'� ""'-� 'fA"� A u....y
S.u...V!�d
. . ..ufJ,-/u.... so..u. I,... � T(uRia"
a!'..:/. Ula.).{';o ..M4 I."�/ ��...<r,,-t"'�..bkL


••
(.
V .i:"
� .U10t00:!)041..... <V�� '14. C:lw/
j...._..r .A.<:t. 'l<L tl..:> ,-u.ptJ.¥--t UJ,c( �''l.a
o...,� ,a,,-:.,,- ,'1'" 9 ,)u.:�"'M � 2:t Hu 'i�",
.. ..
'jP-0 .... ��(;� {.it? .... <...£4-r....c
. · - (/J."--- •.-.c..

Letter toMike Hanmbanftomjobn Demeter, August 7, 1969

The Sixties and Popular Memory


Jon Wiener
·Will We Ever Get Over The '60s?" Newsweek asked
in a recentcover story. The m i plication, ofcourse, is that
getting over the sixties is something we ought to do; the
sixties are a hang-up, a drag, an era that would be benet
forgotten. The editors were thinking about Dan Quayle,
who had just been nominated as Republican vice-presi­
dential candidate, "the first member of the Big Chill
generation nominated for national office.· Quayle a
sixties person? He spent the sixties gOing 10 fraternity
parties and playing golf. At least he didn't bum his draft
card, George Bush said. Instead he called on his influ­
ential fami l y to help him avoid fighting in a war he
supponed.
What were -the sixties"? The opposing sides from
that decade continue to struggle today to define what
happened, to shape popular memory. The right has

PRNTHERl
been espedaUy obsessed with attacking the meaning of
the sixties. The Newsweek cover story indicates how
1
L RCk corporate publishing is working on popular memory.
The sixties were an era of assassinations (photos of a

p
grieving Jackie Kennedy-but not a grieving Corena
V Scot! King); an era ofrioting(photosofcopsbashingkids
in Chicago outside the '68 Democratic National Conven­
tion); an era of war (photos of injured American troopS
in Vietnam); an era when young people rurned to drugs
and sex (photo of grubby hippies naked in lake), when
blacks turned to violence (photos of Black Panlhers with
guns).
The magaZine laid out the effects of the sixties: MaU
presi dents Since LyndonJohnson have been hampered
i the conduct of U.S. foreign policy by the legacy of
n
Vietnam.» Let's put it differently: American imperialism
was crippled by the anti-war movement, which made
-No More Vietnams!- a rule that policymakers dare not
violate.

AssoctatedPresspbolo

24
Another lesson ofthe sixties, according to Newsweek,
�infinitely damaging to our political system,· is that "po­
itical
l leaders cannot be trusted.· Let's put that differ·
ently: the movements of the sixties gave critidsm of
injustice and oppression a new legitimacy and gave
democracy a popularforce it had not had forthe previous
two decades.
What were the sixties? We need to challenge the
rewriting of our history which has been going on since
the decade ended. We need to reassert that the sixties
constituted an explosion of democracy, a popular chal·
lenge to established authority in the state, the university,
and the fami
l y, a renewal that, in its sweep and n
i tensity,
ranks beside the era of Andrew Jackson and the New
Deal.
We need to examine again the political problems the
New Left faced: how to maintain a position that is
independent and critical of undemocratic governments
like Hanoi's, while fighting to end America's imperialist
interventions; how to balance militant tactics with an
appeal to the undedded, how to tum oUll'age into organ­
izing; how to understand what student radicals can ac­
complish in the absence of an organized adult left.
We need to know more about the spread ofpartidpa­
tory democracy beyond SDS, through the rest of the New
Left, into the counterculture, to draft resistance groups,
health clinics, law communes, free schools, feminist
groups, underground newspapers, drug crisis centers,
food co-ops: all tried their hand at partidpatory democ­
racy. As Todd Gitlin writes in his book, The Sixties,
"anthropologists declared their independence of the CIA,
city planners consulted for community organizations,
priests and nuns married, solcliers confronted officers,
reponers confronted editors, patients confronted doc·
tors, wives confrOnted husbands, children confronted
parents.- This broad process of democratization, this
assertion ofrights, this challenge to injustice and oppres­
sion, constitutes the real history of that decade. No
wonder Newsweekhopes we will get over it
Jon W'JenerteacheshlsloryaltheUniversityof CaHfomia, Irvine,
and is a conlributing editor 10 The Narum.
Cfvll disobedience spot/SOl'f!d by NartoFUlI Mo­
biUzation, October 21, 1967;pbatoMaury En­
g�-

"
Looking Forward to Looking Backward
Paul Buhle
Tracy Chapman comes onto my cassette Best by me common herd, and'by herd in­
player these days, as I'm taking a 6:30 am run, stincts (thatseems to beJane Fonda's snivelling
and she sounds pretty damned good. What I excuse) gone mad. I don't remember it that
like best is that she has the politics without way.
toting anyone else's agenda. She is spreading Here's my snapshot of the Movement's pre­
the word, and to a new generation: it's time to origins. In the middle Ot's only my picture,
get on the move again. remember) is me and my friends. The Civil
Ten :years ago, I found it almost impossible Rights movement barely touched down in my
to get people to write about the 1960s. Admit­ hometown; it was great, but quickly gone,
tedly, I was only handing out space in a mar­ leaving behind essentiallyintact the same racist
ginal left cultural magazine. Still, the feeling I structures and attitudes. The Ban the Bomb
came away wiEh was lhat people who could movement was almost underground. Fair Play
write well onjust about anyothersubjea found for Cuba was a newspaper advertisement. The
a coming-co-grips with their own experience Young Democrats were said to be active (se­
psychologically very painful, and conceprually cret sociasts,
il burrowing from within the sys­
almost m i possible. Suddenly. at the end of tem) but you didn't see much of them.
Reagan's reign, you can hardly look over a Fall I had the feeling I was born too late-for the
booklist without running into another sixties Beat Generation, that had come and gone a
srudy. few years earlier, leaving �hind a trail of p0-
There's one great problem I see in nearly all etry books and a mini-bohemia. My initiator
these books, a problem magnified by the dis-. was a 21 year old lesbian who had lived, for a
cussion of them n i the mainstream and liberal summer, n i Greenwich Village. Around her
press. The founders of lhe Movement are por­ ranged concentric circles offolk song fans On­
trayed as Nice Boys and Nice Girls who started cluding a few musicians), blue-collar back­
out with great ideals, somewhere (but not too ground kids who went to college by day and
far) from Kennedyesque rhetoric. They raised drank hard at night, gays, and the only drug­
up hopes for the nation. Then their movements takers I'd ever met personally. We were, to put
were seized, taken over, by drug-taking Mao­ it mildly, cynical. And self-destructive a woke
ist-terrorist totalitarian-symps who alienated up one morning with a blurry head and a
the American masses and brought on Nixon near-bursting appendix; there were also at­
and finally Reagan. tempted suicides, but more cases of suicide­
I'm caricaturing, of course. But I have the on-the-inStallment-plan).
definite feeling that the 1960s is being remem­ Just exactly a quarter century ago, as I write
bered as the betrayal of the Brightest and the this, some of us had moved our scene to San

I
.-

26
Francisco where we got, at least, a sense of But at least I had a sense of how much hun,
cultural solace. I heard about the socialist how much wasted time and wasted life go into
movement for the first time. I also chewed the passion of a mass movement arising.
Heavenly Blue morning glory seeds-which As we look at the scene today--ecological
then had a legal, mild, assimilable hallucino­ collapse amid a torrent of urban-suburban ug­
gen-listened to Leadbelty records and expe­ liness, to say nothing of the monstrous
rienced revolutionary fantasies. When two schemes of imperialism, the homeless, etc.­
years later back in the midwest the forces of we can't avoid a sense ofhow desperate, ironic
resistance had staned to gather, I found what and utopian by rums, any new movement has
I'd been waiting for however unconsciously. gOt to be.
That's what snapped me out ofcynicism at last. 1 1tUst that movement will establish its own
When things began to move fast politically dialogue with the experiences of the 196Qs,
and culturaUy, I brought along into my activi­ based upon a fe-evaluation of everytbingfrom
ties and judgments everything I'd been through acid (and Cock) Rock to draft resistance and
in the post-Beat, bohemian, experimenting un­ campus occupations. That re-evaluation has
derground. Maybe I understood the despera­ only begun.
tion of the times better than the clean-cut kids Tracy, I'm listening.
of the Pon Huron convention. Maybe I didn't. Paul Buhlc was a foundlng t!(!i[or of Radi=fAmerlca.
His latest book is CLRjames: tbeArtist QJRevolutio"ary.

27
Kilroy's Still Here I I
Pat O'Connor
For those ofus who are old enough this has Who could respond sanely to the burned
been a year of remembering the sixties. My and broken infantry officer who asked me to
days didn't feel like history then. But today, get him two Valentines, one for his wife and
twenty years later, Sitting on a sunny bench in one for his daughter, then turned his head to
a Lowell riverpark, a bench on which an anon­ the wall and died? I stood there devastated. I
ymous veteran has recently scrawled, "I got had been too naive to recognize the man was
fucked in Vietnam screw your ass,� they do. dying! I had done my rounds alone. Nobody
This angry trooper and 1 share not only a park had talked to me about him. There must have
bench on which to scribble our thoughts but been somebody attending, but what I recall is
also a violated youth, a corning ofage we may that this man died among strangers--young.
never completely son out. For him as well as used, and unaware. I lived to question and
for myself, it's a remembering Ehat needs to be revalue my life. He never got the chance.
done. Finally, there were the 8-52 crews. Their
Twenty years ago I was living in Okinawa, world was not dangerous and bloody but pale
an s
i land seventeen miles long and three miles as first light. Night after night they took offfrom
wide which housed 26 separate military facili­ Kadena Air Base for Vietnam. Theywere crews
ties and was the back porch to Vietnam. 1 was of technically elite nice guys. Death flowed
employed as a civilian schoolteacher. My stu­ from their fmgers and rolled beneath their
dents were Air Force kids. Yet, when I think heels but they remained nine miles up and
back to those days, it's not the normalcy ofkids disconnected. Morning after morning they
but the parallel realities of B-52 bombers and came &home- to Okinawa, touchingdownover
the camp Kue Army Hospital I see. the chainlinks into the island's several realities
My volunteered "donut dolly" weekends at as myfirst+graders ran outto recess. Manywere
the hospital put me into the war in a way I had veryseverelydepressed. A guy ejected himself
never expected. My job involved meeting on takeoffone night; nobodyreaUybelieved it
newly arrived wounded from 'Nam and it still was an accident. ;rnese bomber crews were
comes back in a kind of emotional surrealism. young too, mostly White, and new to the Amer­
For example, my first weekend, I'm standing ican middle class. Chi l dren of the baby boom,
alone in a corridor near a set of double doors like me, Ehey'd readily accepted America as
which burst open. Two bathrobed troopers they found it-upwardlymobile. They saw lhe
screamingobscenities roll at my feet. One man Air Force as an honorable career and like their
is trying to kill the other. I know there were parents viewed those of our generation who
others there but I recall myself in this event as were beginning to question this as spoiled
shocked, scared and alone. aggressive children. Some changed their
Perhaps this is what Henry was feeling. Day minds, most stayed with Eher careers.
after day he lay in his clean white bed without For those of US who are old enough this is a
a word and stared at a spot on the wall. He had year of remembering, but the images 1 carry
no legs. He came from small town rural pov­ with me rome in detached fragments and parts
eny. He was nineteen. One day I offered to which can never be successfullyre-membered.
share half of a Mounds Bar with him and he it's as if the mutilated young lives and bodies I
accepted. This became our only communica­ saw there are permanently outside a unified
tion. After several weeks Henry was Stabilized sane construct of reality and the Significant
and sent back to San Francisco for rehabilita­ truth is-tlley are.
tion. Before he left, during our final candy bar, Pat O'Connor has been teaching !n Massachusetts
he said, "I don'twanl to go home. I want to die. public schools since leaving DOD's overne:u schools In

What kind ofUfe can 1 have like this?" 1 had no 1970. She is presently wolklPg on a novel set In Oki­
nawa during the Vietnam War. Her poems have ap­
answer, but I had begun to question every­
peared in Ecboes, Pegasus, and forthcoming Oak
thing. Square.

"8-52 GoHome, • Okf'mwa; photo amJ lmnslatf01I, Pat O'Comwr,- scnen drawing, KriSten 8jark

28
"
. . .and if you•re a
chick, they need
typists"
Ann Popkin

The point of direct-�zap·­


actions was not to organize
women into the movement, but
rather to set ideas n
i their minds,
ideas for later rumination. One
zap action which involved a
large, cross-cutting group of
women took place at WBCN, a
Boston counter-culrural radio sta­
tion. The offending incident was
an advertisement for a local drug
program which ended with uand
"Protest agaInst IlnaJmfOlWbIe, bMvy, square-lookfng furniture!
if you're a chick, they need typ­ Talie a postNon in IbtI revoilltumary new AlXlnt-Garde Inflatable
ists.· Thiny angry Bread and Scu1ptureSeat.-R.amp:uts, April, 1970.
Roses women ·stonned� the sta­
tion Mprotesting its male chauvinism." The much about on WBCN. Hip culrure and
statement they presented explained, values are supposed to be more real and
honest than centerfolds or Doris Day, but
The male supremist (sic) assumption was it's not so. The old dream Images dressed
that "chicks" by theirvery narure type; we up slicker or funkier are no more liberat­
do flfteen words a minute at birth and
ing than their American midcult Origi­
work our way up. Many phone calls later, nals. . .
they modified it to, "lfyou're a chick and
can type, they need typists." No men
The women presented the station manager
need apply. It's beneath male dignity. . . with eight baby chicks, "painting out that
Could a radio station get away with an ad women are not chicks." They demanded, "in
that ran, And if you're Black, we need

partial reparation, an hour of prime evening
janitors?" time on. . .Intemational Women's Day, to pres­
ent a women's liberation program:
The women were especially insulted by the
advertisement (written by WBeN) because This will require use of recording facili­
they had hoped for greater suppon fonn the ties, adequate to our needs and free ad­
alternative media. They were continually dis­ venising the week preceding, with
appointed. The statement continued, publicity spots wrinen and recorded by
"',
And it's not just that ad, which only rep­
resents one of the many oppressive ste­ The station manager agreed to their de­
reotypes and assumptions that comprise mands.
AM Popkin was a founding member of Bread and
the currency of rock culrure---the so­
Ro<e>,
called ·cultural revolution" we hear so

a.CKERLEY

Billboard, Boslon, MA; pboIo, CynlbflJ Peters


29
. . . and Now
An Afro Isn't a Hairstyle and Neither are Dreads
Eve1ynn Hammonds
Since the mcdill began to focus on the new zations until the 1970s and I cared as much
books that have come out about the sixties, I about Motown as I did about Bob Dylan.
began to realize how skilled the process of But the events ofthe sixties---the Civil Rights
cultural and historical annihilation has become and anti-war movements-the protests and
n
i this country. I like many others view the marches I watched on TV; the books I read; all
reminiscences of the small group ofwhite men shaped myidentity. Yet it was much more than
whoa re prominent among the authors of these that. Growing up n i Atlanta during segregation

I
books, with disdain and anger. I too with many meant I had little daily contact with whites, little
others have a view of the sixties that has little direct personal confrontation with radsm. In
to do with the demise of either my political and ninth grade ' took a class in world geography.
ideological views nOf the downfall of SOS. On one exam I received the highest grade in
One of the most important legacies I carry from the- :.:..tiS. I was the only Black student in the
the sixties is nOl lO truSt white mcn's definition class. As the teacher passed back the exams he
of anything when i( contradicts my own reality. called me to the front of the room and turned
In 1968 I was fifteen years old, living in to the rest ofthe class and said, "Ifshe can make
Atlanta, Georgia. Every weekday at 7:15 in the an A on this test, what is wrong with you
morning I boarded a bus that took me and people?�
about thirty other Black teenagers across town It was momenlS like that that made racism
to Therell High School. A white high school in real for me-as real as the pictures of the four
the Southwest section of Atlanta. Some might young Black girls murdered on Sunday morn­
say ,'wasn't a part of the SOCial movements of ing in a Birrninghamchurch; as real as the hoses
the sixties because I was too young to march in and billy dubs used on the protesters at the
demonstrations (nor did my parents take me to Democratic National Convention. To help my­
them). I didn't do drugs or rebel against my self understand, to make some sense of the
parents and teachers or join any radical organi- madness, to create for myself a vision, an iden­
tity, I turned to those people around me who
did march. I read everything I could get my
hands on by those who challenged the estab­
lishment and advocated participatory democ­
racy and SOCial change. I sought support and
models. I moved into the seventies with the
biggest afro I couId grow.
Thesixtiesdidn'tend forme in 1968 because
I have defined my poliical t and social identity
from that time. It's still where I come from. 1
am still following those people who were in
that moment n i a more active way than I was.
Many ofmy teachers and mentors were radical­
ized in the sixties and through them I learned
how to live as a politically conscious and com­
mitted Black woman.
You don't know their names. James Bal­
.... _- - dwin, Ella Baker, Angela Davis, yes. Howard
-

Zinn, Bob Moses, Tom Hayden, yes. But you


don't know my physics professor, a young
Black man radicalized in the sixties whoin 1974
at an ill-equipped and underfunded Black col­
lege, taught me that science was political. You

- � ,..
-bi..,�
..ll �
·. ...... ...
",......
,
"..·.m"...,... .. _".,
"'-''' ' < ...
,m_ ..,_"
.
""
don't know my friend, who was the first Black
woman I knew who tramped around Europe
with a back pack, read Marx, Marcuse, and
FBlposter

30
Fanon, listened to Hendrix, Dylan, and Nina
Simone, wore black turtlenecks and an afro.
Who was always n i a fight with her landlord or
tlj:;Wl';
AN E N D

professor or some sexist male colleague. Who


always said to me, "What did you do about it?" T O B IAS
What we're talking about is who owns the
sixties. Those white men who mourn its so­ NOWl
called death in 1968 are lamenting their own
failed vision andcourage and trying to denythe
rest of us access to an ownership of that mo­
ment. They also fail to acknowledge the legacy
ofthe sixtiesfor those ofus whofollowed-illld
those who carried forward and transformed
what they knew was just begun at that time.
In 1989, I sit n
i a darkened theatre with my
white Jewish friend who teaches a course on
the sixties at an elite New England college. I
am intensely twisting one ofmy dreadlocks as
we watch the final scene of "Mississippi Burn­
ing." "MissisSippi Burning" purports to tell the
Story of the investigation of the murders of
three Civil Rights workers n i Philadelphia, Mig.
sissippi in 1964. In the film the three men--tWo
white, one Black-have no names. No Black
character has a voice. The movie shows us a
banle of wills between two white FBI agents
and the stereotypical southern male rednecks
they battle against. This is not a movie about
the sixties. This is a degrading and dis­
honest Hollywood fantasy created to
facilitate the process institutionalized in
the Reagan years, of erasing the real
people and events of that histOrical mo­
ment from our colleclive memory.
But those of us who carry the goals
embodied in the social movements of
the sixties will expose the lies of "Mis­
Sissippi Burning" and show our stu­
dents "Eyes on the Prize." We will tell
them the names of Schwerner, Good­
man and Chaney and we'll tell them
about the heroism of others, young
people whose names were not re­
corded because they didn't gain fame
through death.
Evelynn Hammonds is on the editorial
board of RadfcaIAm(!rica.

"BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR"


THE NATIONAl BOAAO a REVIEW

.... 0IV0l'fi.::....
� ___c-_ ..
__
. .. _

31
An Activist/Scholar Remembers
Alan Wald
The single most important-and trea­ political and personal struggles of those years
sured-fact of my political, intellectual life to I forged an alternative set of values that I have
date is that r had the good fortune to be a retained to this day.
college student during the mid-1960s. Today, I recall the 1960s as far more intellectual
the bulk of my scholarly work, and the axis of than seems to be communicated by recent
my SOCialist activism, are critical extensions of depictions ofthe era. One popular m i age ofthe
the theory and practice absorbed and lived in 1960s is that of mindless hedonists in a youth
that decade. rebellion, rejecting the �Old Left- in toto in a fit
For me, that perioo probably began in 1962 of arrogance. Here my experience was just the
at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was a opposite. It was only n i the context of 1960s
junior at Walter Johnson High School n i activism that I learned about the �Old Left- and
Bethesda, Maryland, and was startled by the the whole legacy of the struggle of working
news that several seniors had refused to coop­ people, women, people of color, and radical
erate in an air raid drill. We had been ordered intellectuals, in the United States and around
by our teachers to practice a retreat to the the world. I vividly remember an early Antioch
basement of the school building for ·protec­ SOS meeting where a student member read
tion� in case a nuclear bomb were dropped by aloud passages from joseph Freeman's 1938
the USSR on the nation's capital-which was AnAmerican Testament, pointing our ways in
all of seven miles awayl which Freeman's experiences paralleled out
Some time afterwards, I saw a newspaper own. I eagerly took courses where we studied
photograph of students from Antioch College writings by Randolph Bourne,john Reed, Rich­
in Yellow Springs, Ohio being hosed down by ard Wright, and Lincoln Steffens. We launched
police as they demonstrated against a local a successful literary-political journal and
barber who refused to cut Black people's hair. fought to get Carl Oglesby, recently president
I knew then where I wanted to go to study. of SDS, to be hired by Antioch College as
After a year devoted to creative writing, "Activist Scholar in Residence.· Under
sexual initiation and drug experimentation, I Oglesby's tutelage, our reading shuttled from
became active in the local chapterofSDS n i the Fanon and Marcuse toMelville and the Marquis
fall of 1965. I then moved to Cleveland in deSade.
January 1966 where I was affiliated with SDS's Emanating from SOS, and, later, in a more
Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP) organized fashion from the Young SocialiSt
led by Paul Potter, Cathy Boudin, and others Alliance, was a steady series of study groups
on the West Side. later, whi le n i England, I and o£her educational activities. Even at Anti­
became convinced that I should belong to a och, where all education was touted as "rele­
socialist organization. Shonly after returning to vanl,� the kind of study that took place in this
Ohio in 1967, I became a "candidate" member fonnat-organized by ourselves and aimed at
of the Young Socialist Alliance, whose Antioch helping us act more effectively to change the
members haduntil thenworkedelTectivelyand world-was by far the most vital and memora­
in a non-sectarian manner inside the local SDS. ble. The fusion of intellectual work with polit­
In the 1960s, I recognized the hypocricies of ical practice made me far more curious about
liberalism, the doctrine in which I had been the world than all of high school and the regu­
schooled by my family and which seemed a lar dass instruction that I undertook. Moreover,
pragmatic extension ofmy middle-classjewish it was in these groups and not academic
background. courses that I first began to read feminist writ­
I also saw how mass movements were built, n
i gs as well as literature by and about people
how £hey were sometimes derailed, and how of color.
the competition of political orientations A number of the leading activists in YSA
worked their way out within them. I learned were drama majors while others possessed a
about the interconnectedness of world af­ contagious enthusiasm for history and philos­
falrs-something captured vividly in a pam­ ophy. The Cleveland ERAP developed a radical
phlet called �Detroit is Vietnam: written by theater that performed adaptations of Brecht
Antioch professor james O. Crockcroft n i the plays (the names of characters and settings
wake of the 1968 Decroit ,rebellion. From the were changed, but not the politics) free of

J2
charge in a storefront for the white Appalachian socialist politics required for the 198Qs..-me­
-.so
community. The Antioch SOS newsletter con­ thing that J uy to canyout today in my work for
tained poems on war and other political-per­ the political organization Solidarity and for lhe
sonal themes by myselfand others. In shan, the journal Against the Current.
intellectual-culrural dimension of the 60s was Alan Wald is a Professor of English Literature and
crucial to my own experience, and has helped American Culture at the University of Michigan, and is
author of a number of books on the U.S. cultuml Left.
Significantly to shape my vision of the kind of
the ffiOSI: recent ofwhich is 1beNew YorkInteIJa;fuQls.

The Forgetting of Napalm


Nora Mitchell

She runs on a dark-wet clay road,


a child running in a photograph.
She wears no dolhes. has no pubic hair,
and hangs her hands away from her body
as if she does not know what to do with lhem.
In lhe background her village burns.
I have always hoped
that after he snapped his picture, the cameraman
threw down his camera, folded her in his arms,
and listened to her cry.

The lhings we forget: how the leaves look


when me lCees first bud.
Not by day (J remember that well enough),
but at night under a streetlight
I always forget how they rum
pale as foam, trees in flower.

Napalm s i no longer in our daily t.alk


and some of those who did not watch each night
its dark orange blossom inVietnamesefields and hamlets
have never heard the word at all. The fire
that dings and bums, the fire I thought
would never let us go.

Perhaps napalm does not exist


unti
l we remember just what it was:
the gel in gasoline, its only use
to make sure things burned.
As personal as the shin of a dead friend,
war has its intimate moments,
when the fire hugs, holds, and won't let go.

Nora Mitchell lived in South Korea with her family from 1966 to
1968. Her poems have appeared ni a number ofmagazines, includ­
ing CaO«, DtIrkflorse, HawattRevIew, PIowsbares,and Sojourner.

Reprinted with pennission from YOllr SkIn ts a Country by Nora


Mitchell CAlice)ames Books, Cambridge, MA 1988).

3J
From New Left to New Social Movements
Carl Boggs

The sixties was a unique period of critical of the feminist, gay, peace, ecology, and urban
engagement, mass upheaval, and social movements, which from time to time have built
change; the energy unleashed was simulra· massive constituencies in the United States and
neously intellectual and moral, political and Western Europe would be indecipherable
erotic. Activism was infused with a sense of without reference to the sixties.
moral urgency and existential will so great that The new movements uphold, in different
political involvement took on, n i Jim Miller's ways, the ideal of transfonning dally life that
words, a "mythic stature.H The year 1968 alone was only mi plicit in the sixties; they carry for·
was more explosive than any since World War ward the legacies of direct democracy, cultural
II: from France and Mexico to the United Slates, renewal, and personal politics. Some move­
from Berkeley to Chicago to Columbia, insur· ments-feminism, ecology-intersect with
geney against the postwar order stimulated a progressive currents of the holistic revolution
rebirth of long-dormant radical traditions. Only in therapy, healing, and health care that grew
the imagination seemed to impose limits on out of the counterculture. They have also
what could be achieved. helped to revitalize community institutions,
Yet most observers, including sympathetic build local electoral coalitions, and keep alive
ones, agree that the new left entered into cata­ a subversive cultural and intellectual life. The
clysmic decline sometime between 1968 and growth of a radical intelligentsia since Ihe late
1970. Amidst the chaos of total defeat, the 1960s intersects with the proferation
il of social
-movement- is said to have disintegrated vinu­ movements. Today feminism, Western Marx­
allyovemight, giving way to cooptation, privat· ism, social ecology, critical political economy,
ized retreat, religiOUS cults, bizarre therapies, and cultural radicalism converge in many ways
and the return to traditional ifestyles.
l This with a grassroots activism thai is galvanized by
poses a rather intriguing question: could many of the same concerns: ideology and con­
"mythic· s[ruggles of the sixties have vanished sdousness, social relations, the problem of
from the public sphere so quickly and so com· domination.
pletely?That there could be any sort ofideolog· Such elements of continuity call inlO ques­
ical continuity from the turbulent sixties tion the "total break� thesis according to which
lhrough the reagan era is often dismissed as the "radical· sixties was followed by the "qui­
fantasy. Yet, the possible linkages between escent" seventies. The inclination to devalue
past and present deserve closer scrutiny. post·sixties movements corresponds to an
Severalauthors challenge the myth that new equalLy exaggerated romanticizing of the new
leftists were simply affluent students whose left itself. Of course the sixties became a huge
"alienation" soon gave way to high·powered political spectacle, and this, along with inflated
careers, large incomes, and righH>ling conver· revolutionary claims and the centrality of the
sian. For example, Richard Flacks and Jack Vietnam war, brought enonnous media alten-
Whalen found that most
ex-activists remain ded­
icated to social change
and that many of those
who are disengaged
could be described as
"passive radicals."
Yet such persistence
of new-left ideology
does not exist in a social
VOid; it must b e under­
stood within the evolu­
tion of more durable
post-sixties forms of
protest-the new social
movements. The logic

SDSand$NCCs1f.in atNew yOtt�Cbase.ManbaltanBank toprotest tbe1rloan 0/S50


million to lbegovemmetlt o/SOutb Africa, March 1965; pbotoDtaM Davies

34
tion. Although most new move­
ments have been more ·moderate�
and less disruptive, infact they carry
forward a mature elaboration--not
a reversal-of important sixties
themes. Thus feminism alone has,
since the late 19605, probably ex­
erted a deeper impact on popular
consciousness, daily life, and policy
reforms than all new-left struggles
combined.
From the vantage point of 1989,
then, the new left can perhaps best
be understood as the anticipation,
in embryonic fonn, of the future Dartmouth studentsprotesting their scbooJ's/allure to divest SOuth
shape of political opposition in the
Africa boIdlngs. Photo, Steve Young
industrialized countries. Surely the continued which originally inspired the new left have
presence of grassroots movements for social scarcely disappeared.
change, on a large scale, within the bosom of Carl Boggs teaches at the Univers![}' of SOuthern
Reagan country shows that those social forces Califomia and is the author of tbe Tu.o Revolutions:
Gromsci and tbe DI/emmo o/western Marxism.

Notes on Not Being Able to Step into the


Same River Twice
Jim O'Brien
I want 10 muse a liltle bit about the ways that product of a manipulative, top-down, deeply
I've thought about the sixties while I've been racist and sexist society with an astonishingly
doing Central America solidarity work and par- arrogant ruingl class. That was all new to me
ticipating in local political campaigns. For five back then. In years of working against US Cen­
years I've been ni volved in a big, Boston-based tral America policy I don't think I've learned a
all-purpose Central America solidarity group. single thing that was strikingly new(though the
It's been the hubor a hotbed ofCentral America extent of the administration's ability to manip­
activism in area since the early eighties. My ulate the media has surpassed my expectations
Central America work has SOrt of relieved me several times).
from having to feel responsible for attacking Part of the difference, maybe, is geographic
everything that's wrong with the society. The and cultural. Vietnam was so far away (from
New Left had an awfully imited
l altention span, civilians, at least), and seemingly so different,
andnowit feeis good topickouta specificpart that we developed a mental shorthand for
of the mosaic of evil and work to change it. I thinking about it. We could be satisfied with
sometimes feel thaI I never got as angry as I vague, often highly romantic abstractions
should have about the Vietnam war, because about Vietnam, and we could concentrate
as an SOS member I was quick to see it in an chiefly on what the war had to tell us about our
overall context. We used to say that Vietnam own society. With Central America, it's differ­
was "not an aberration,» and ofcourse it wasn't, ent. It's dose at hand, the language is related,
but personally I think that argument shielded refugees abound n i the major North American
me from the raw outrage that the war properly cities (during the war, not afterwards), and
invoked. We used to distrust the liberals who probably well over a hundred thousand North
seemed narrowly concerned with stopping the Americans have been there to see for them­
war, but now I think it's a great thing they were selves in the eighties. If the watchword of the
on the job. Vietnam anti-war movement, at least 'its left
But I also miss the sense of discovery that edge, was "resistance," the corresponding
we had n i the sixties, when new ideas about watchword now is "soJidaricy.· The difference
how society works were a dime a dozen. The bespeaks a basic orientation to helping the
Vietnam war wasn'l an aberration, it was a Central Americans rather than opposing the

J5
status quo in the United States. 1 don't quarrel I wish I could find an easy forinula for trans­
with the new orientation, but I miss the old one. lating taday's issues ni to the world-spirit of the
I especially miss the kind of energy that sixties New Left, while still retaining leday'S
comes from a fusion of different sources of ability to focus. BUI it still seems to me that
inspiration and anger. In the sixties a demon­ some things we acted on (or acted out) in the
Stration might be about one panicular issue but sixties are pan of my way of making sense of
really be about a much broader range ofthings. the world today: the sense that issues are ulti­
I fondly remember a Willie Murphy cartoon in mately connected; the sense that the United
the underground press that screamed, "All. States has a social hierarchy from which a host
our FOR mE APRIL 15 MARCH AGAINST of seemingly disparate problems emanate; the
ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!� Today, what sense that when people are in motion they can
you see is what you get-demonstrations are change their lives and can affect the social
more a maner of duty than a funnel for aUf context of those lives. There was a lot of fum­
emotions. bling around in the dark in the sixties, but we
The one exception I can think of in all our hit a few light switches too.
years of Central America demonstrations Jim O'Brien is a longtime political activist.
around BostOn is one thatwas organized in two
days in March of 1988 when US troops were
sent to Honduras in response to a dreamed-up
Nicaraguan "invasion.· It gOt a much bigger
turnout than any of the demonstrations which,
over the years, had been laboriously planned
months in advance with long lists of ·spon­
sors," "endorsers,� etc, And it was an emotional
march: anger at the administration, ecstasy at
the numbers, pleasure in the really creative
banners and cardboard cut-outs that disparate
people had thrown together for the occasion.
For once I had the feeling tha't this was a social
movement making its feelings emphatically
known.
That was juSt one demonstration, of course.
And the planners themselves subsequently
helped to diffuse the mood by calling for the
exact same demonstration a week later, when
of course it drew a much smaller crowd.
I keep missing the power that comes when
different issues and concerns are fused to­
gether and focused in a common enterprise.
The last time I felt this effect in a sustained way
was n
i the campaign of the Black: radical Mel
King for mayor of Boston in 1983. Because he
had been a key actor in all manner of social
causes foryears, and because of the symbolism
of a serious Black candidate for mayor in a
racist, three-quarters white city, the King cam­
paign became a magnet, Activists in a wide
range of social movements---black, Latino,
women's, gay andlesbian, anti-war, plus lotsof
radical hangers-on such as I was at that point­
felt that the campaign expressed a kind of
synthesis of our hopes. For me, the emotional
boost of the campaign was what got me ener­ photo, Er1c Rasmussen
gized to work in the Central America move­
ment afterwards.

J6
WOMAN/NATION/STATE:
The De m ogra p h i c Race a n d N at i o n a l
� Rep rod u cti o n I n I s rae l
r

Nira Yuval-Davis

Nations, as Ben Anderson points out, I are imagined communities. In the case of Israel, the
imagined community has been a direct product of the dreams, as well as the actions, of the
Zionist movement which established the slate. This does not make it any less historically real
than other nations, but it might make it mOTe historically pretarious.
This article explores Ihe ways in which the boundaries of the Israeli Jewish collectivity
have been defined and reproduced, in relation to the Jewish people on the one hand and to
the Israeli society on the other. Specifically, it looks at the ways in which Jewish women and
childbearing have been ideologically constructed to play certain roles in the above process,
and the consequent effects of this on the social and legal position of women in Israel.
The issue of national reproduction in Israel, both in terms of its ideological boundaries
and in terms of the reproduction of its membership, has always been at the centre of Zionist
discourse. In recent years, it has gradually come to overshadow even the issue.of security as a
precondition for Israel's survival. As Shimon Peres, the Israeli Labour ex-Prime Minister
stated in October 1987, " The demographic problem has become the strategic problem of the
state of Israel. " 2 An extreme expression of this position can be read in the introduction to
Rabbi Kahane's book Thorns in Your Eyes (Kahane is the leader of lhe fastest growing polit-

An earfi!'r \'I'f$ion 0/ fhis articll! appI'(lred ;n khamsin, Spocial lssue on Women. In the Middle East (Zed Books: London.
1987), Paris Two and Three will appear in Woman/Nation/State. I'd. Nira Yuval·Davis and Floya Anlhias, forthcoming/rom
Macmillan.

ical power in Israel, the Kakh pany-a neo­ As Kahane says, Israel was established for a
fascist party, although many, especially his sup­ specific purpose, and as an achievement of a
porters, see it as the most consistenl of the specific political movement-Zionism. While
Zionist panies). According to Kahane: the definition of boundaries of national collec­
Each Jew should ask himself the following tivities and their relationship to the state is very
question: I am the son of a people thal . . . unlike often problematic, in Israel it is especially so,
other peoples, was not allowed to develop in its
because of the specific historical construction
body and spirit in its own country. Today,
following the death of six million and with
of the Jewish people, as well as the settler col­
God's help, we do have a state which embodies onial character of Israeli Jewish society.
our sovereignty, defends itself with our army, Exploring these issues will be (he purpose of the
and follows our culture. Am I prepared-in first part of this article.
peaceful conditions and with the Arab rate of
population growth (my emphasis) which is
transforming a minority into a majority-to
to cancel the Law of Return which entitles each
Jew an automatic right of entry and citizenship
. . .and peacefully and democratically to end the
Jewish state?'
Kahane is not alone asking the question.
Golda Meir, then prime minister of Israel, had
confided in the early 1970s that she was afraid
of a situation in which she "would have to
wake up every morning wondering how many
Arab babies have been born during the night !"

"Whose Survival, Whose Future"


New Arrivals
A " demographic race" between the Jews and
the Arabs in Israel is seen as crucial then for Symbolic reproduction of the Israeli Jewish
the survival of Israel-Israel, not as � stat� ap­ national collectivity depends on the availability
paratus for the population living in it. but as of people "of the right kind" to "man" it. One
the state of the Jews all around the world. of the basic concerns of the Zionist movement,
Revealingly, the official aim of the Israeli especially the Labour Zionist movement, since
demographic cenler which was established as a the beginning of the Zionist settlement in Pales­
unit attached to the Israeli prime minister's of­ tine, has been the creation of a Jewish majority
fice in April 1967, was "to act systematically to in the country as a precondition for the estab­
realize a demographic policy directed at lishment of the Jewish state there. In the early
creating an atmosphere and the conditions for period of Zionist settlement and up until the
encouraging a birth rate, which is so vital to the early 196Os, the major form of the supply of
future of the Jewish People." (my emphasis)! "human power" (0 the yshu'IIi , the Zionist set­
More than 75 percent of world Jewry, tler society, has been by a/iyah, the immigration
according to the statistics produced by that of Jews to the country. Gradually. however, the
same demographic cenler, live outside Israel. objective and subjective conditions for a/iyah
On the other hand, 17 percent of Israeli citi­ have dwindled. and Israeli Jewish national
zens, and about a third of the people under the reproduction has come to rely more and more
direct cOnlrol of the Israeli government (inelud­ on Israeli-born babies. Another implicit, and in
ing those living in the territories occupied by certain historical periods not so implicit, alter­
Israel since 1967), arc not Jews. How is it, then, native has been to create and safeguard a
that the Israeli government, portrayed for so Jewish majority by lowering, by various means,
many years as "the only democracy in the Mid­ the number of Palestinians in the country.
dle East," is worried explicitly, nOt about the Demographic policies often seem to be deter­
demographic future of its own cj.vil society, bur mined by worries about the existence of suffi­
about the Jewish people? cient labour power for the national economy,

J8
. ,

and indeed feminist literature often assumes same relationship between state and nation in
reproduction to be the complementary facet of Israel as in any other Western country. It does
economic production or rather a precondition not-as the rest of this section will attempt to
of it.' A closer examination of national demo­ show.
graphic policies (as well as slate welfare poli­ The legal expression of the relationship be­
cies), however, will often reveal that national tween Israel and the Jewish people has been the
political rather than economic interests lie Israeli Law of Return (mentioned by Rabbi
behind the desire to have morc children, or Kahane) according to which all Jews, wherever
rather more children of a specific origin.' In they come from, are entitled automatically to
Israel, where economistic calculations have Israeli citizenship, while according to the Israeli
never seriously determined major political deci­ Nationality Law, non-Jews, even if born in
sions (even in the heart of an extreme economic Israel, unless born to Israeli citizens (residency
crisis'), Ihis has been especially true. The sec­ and settlement are not sufficient for that pur­
ond pari of the article will therefore examine pose), are not. This special relationship between
the nationalist angle in the ideological debates the Israeli state and the Jewish people expresses
and policies which have surrounded the ques­ itself in many other ways as well-symbolic,
tion of the birthrate of Israeli children. legal and administrative. (Not least among
The last paTl of the article will focus on the them is the functioning of the Jewish Agency,
ways in which the political and ideological pres­ the executive arm of the Zionist movement, as a
sures on defining and reproducing the national parallel state distributive apparatus, operating
collectivity in Israel have constructed and af­ exclusively for Jews). "
fected Israeli Jewish women as its national This relationship makes the criterion accord­
reproducers. ing 10 which people are included or excluded
from the category of Jew to be of central and
The Israeli "Nation" and lis Boundaries vital importance. Subjective and cultural identi­
fication are by no means sufficient.
There is no space here to recount in detail the
history of the Zionist movement and its internal Who is a Jew?
divisions.' Suffice it to say that the basis of its
widest consensus is renected in the 1948 Israoli The modern ideological and legal debate on the
Declaration of Independence, in which Israel is definition of "the Jew" had already started by
seen as the state of all Jews. Israel was never the time of the French Revolution, when the
meant to be a political expression of its civil question of the legal emancipation of the Jews
society, of the people who reside in its territory came to the fore. It focused on the Question of
or even of its citizens. It was meant to be the whether or not the Jews cOnstituted a nation, or
State of the Jews, wherever they are. And in merely shared a religion. In a way, this debate
that respect it was immaterial (albeit highly has not been fully "decided" until today-at
inconvenient) that only 55 percent of the popu­ least two Israeli governments fell as a result of
lation in the Jewish state proposed by the 1947 disagreements on the question of "who is a
UN resolution were Jews, and they owned only Jew" and last year the debate even shook the
about five percent of the land there, or that present Israeli government. I I
even today the Jews in Israel constitute less Historically. in the Estate society of feudal
than a quarter of world Jewry. E u r o p e where "classical J u d a i s m "
In October 1985 the Knesset (the Israeli par­ crystallized," the Jewish communities, the
liament), by passing what is ironically known as kehiiOt. were often organized around the more
the "anti-racist " law,'o gave a more specific or less specific economic role the Jews had as a
interpretation to the consensus expressed in the middle caste between the landed nobility and
Declaration of Independence. It defined Israel the peasantry or the urban poor. As such, they
"the state of th usually had a certain degree of autonomy and
as
. �e Jewish people," and not
JUSt as "the Jewish state"-which Zionist liber- self government and their religion expressed
als would have liked to believe represented the itself more as a total way of life, than as a belief

39
in certain religious dogmas. Part of their reli·
gious culture was the tradition of a common
origin and history, which included political
independence before the destruction of the sec­
ond Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. Like
many other ethnic collectivities therefore, in
Europe and even more so in the Third World,
the dichotomy of nation/religion has not suited
the historical construction of the Jewish people.
Zionism, it is important to remember, has only
been one response, and for a very long time a
minority one, of the Jews in the "modern"
world to this history, and to their displacement
and persecution with the rise of capitalism and
nationalism in Europe, in which their tradi­
tional mode of existence could no longer
survive.
The two large Jewish political movements in
the 20th cenlury which attempted to resolve the
"who" or, rather, "what is a Jew" dilemma by
constructing Jewishness inlO a nationality, have
been the Jewish Bund and the Zionist move­
ment. The Bund, which was the dominant Jew­
New Arril'Qfs
ish national movement i n Eastern Europe
before World War II, saw the Jews there as ism presented a successful strategy against anti­
constituting an aUlonomous nalional collectiv­ Semitism and Israel a secure refuge for perse­
ity, with its own language and cultural tradi­ cuted Jews. The superpowers supported this
tion. They aspired for a multinational state presumption of the Zionist movement, and the
structure in Eastern Europe in which the Jews, establishment of the Israeli state, because it was
like all the other national minorities, would more convenient for the USA to send the post­
have a national and cultural autonomy." war Jewish refugees 10 Palestine than to have to
The Zionist movement aspired to the absorb them en masse in its own postwar soci­
"normalization" of the Jewish people, by ety. I t was also a way for the Americans and the
establishing a Jewish state in an independent Soviets to penetrate the Middle East, an area
territory in which, ideally. all Jews would even­ which up until then had been controlled by the
tually settle. After long debates and the pro­ British and French.
posal of various alternative locations. it was As a result, the Zionist movement came to be
decided that Palestine, which in the Jewish lra­ the hegemonic movement in World Jewry. To
tition had been the "Land of the Fathers" and the majority of Jews, Israel has become. at least
the "Promised Land," would be the territorial to an extent, their post fuclo homeland. Send­
basis for this state. Colonialism and exclusion­ ing money to Israel has become an easy way of
ary practices against the native population of being Jewish, especially for the non-religious
Palestine have been, therefore, an integral part Jews who still felt the need, especially after the
of the Zionist endeavor. It became historically Holocaust experience, to express their Jewish­
successful due to the specific historical config­ ness. Israel has also become an emotional
uration in Europe and the Middle East post­ "insurance" policy, as a potential refuge from
World War I, and especially in the aftermath of persecution. (In reality, of course, Israel's very
World War II and the Nazi Holocaust. The existence is dependent to a very large extent on
physical extermination of such large numbers the political and financial support of the Jewish
of European Jewry, combined with the survival Diaspora.) Concurrently, the Establishment of
of the Zionist settlers in Palestine (which the the various institutions of the organized Jewish
Nazis never reached), created a myth that Zion- communities has become very dependent on its

40
tion in order to justify its claim than Palestine
was its homeland, rather than the land of its
indigenous population; it also needed the recog­
nition of at least major sections of the Ortho­
dox Jewish communities, as the Zionist move­
ment claimed to represent all Jews all over the
world.
This is why, (in addition to more ad hoc
government coalition calculations), there has
always been a partial incorporation of Jewish
religious legislation into Israel's state legisla­
tion. A central aspect of this incorporation
relates to the kind of criteria whereby one can
be considered a member of the Jewish national
collectivity. A Jew-as defined by the law, fol­
lowing the traditional religious construction-is
"anybody who is born to a Jewish mother or
has been converted to Judaism" (the question
of which forms of religious conversion will be
recognized by the state is still being debated)."
The Israeli Law of Return, the Nationality Law
and various administrative regulations use Jew­
ish ness as a criterion for entitlement to various
privileges in Israel (in spite of its supposed par­
liamentary democratic welfare state structure),
Ne.... Arri�Qf.�
such as automatic rights to citizenship, loans
housing, etc.
relations with Israel, in terms of channels of The incorporation of the criterion of reli­
power and prestige. One of the results of this gious conversion in state legislation has created
process, especially in the last ten to fifteen a situation in which religious conversion is used
years, has been the dissociation of Jews, espe­ in instances which in other states would have
cially young Jews, who do not want to be iden­ been dealt with by simple acts of naturalization.
tified as supporters of Zionism and Israel, from An extreme example of this is that of the Black
any association whatever with the structured American Olsi Perry, a professional basketball
Jewish community. This phenomenon, plus the player. He had to undergo circumcision as part
high rate of mixed marriages (up to a third) of his supposed religious conversion in order to
among young Jews has raised a debate among be able to play in the Israeli national team.
demographers nOt only about how many Jews On the other hand, Jewish national ideology
exist in the world, but also about who should be is explicit in placing a greater emphasis on the
defined as such. In Israel itself, religious legis­ right "genetic" origin than other national
lation has been chosen as the criterion for mem­ collectivities. A couple of years ago, there was
bership in the Jewish collectivity. an outcry in Israel when it was discovered that
This requires explanation, as the Zionist childless couples who despaired of getting
movement has generally presented itself as a babies for adoption were using the services of
"modern alternative" way of being Jewish, as private American agencies to import Brazilian
opposed to the traditional religious one. How­ and Columbian babies. The outcry was that, as
ever, in spite of the fact that the majority of it was done illegally and secretly, these babies
Zionists were, at least originally, vehement sec­ will grow up as Jews, without "really" being so
ularists, the Zionist movement never complete­ (since they were not born to a Jewish mother
ly broke away from Jewish Orthodoxy. The and had not been converted to Judaism); this
Zionist movement needed the religious tradi- will create havoc in the reproduction of the

41
Jewish collectivity when they marry and pro­ attempt to control the boundaries of the Israeli
duce children as if they are Jewish, when they collectivity and its patterns of reproduction in a
are "really" not." homogeneous way by incorporating severe
To be born Jewish, however, is more than Orthodox religious law into Israel's state legis­
purely a genetic mailer. To be a Jew, one has to lation has, therefore, nOt really succeeded.
be born to a Jewish mother in the "proper" All this means that the boundaries of the
way-otherwise one is considered a mamzer Jewish national collectivity which Israel claims
(bastard). cannOt be considered a Jew, is not to represent are not clear at ·all. On the one
able even to become a Jew by conversion, and hand. they are definitely wider than the boun­
one's descendants cannot marry other Jews daries of the Israeli Jewish national collectivity,
"for ten generations to come." Bastardy in but on the other, there clearly exist many
Judaism is not a question of being born outside organized (mainly Orthodox and some Social­
wedlock . since according to Jewish religious ist) and especially unorganized segments of the
law sexual intercourse is one of the ways in world Jewish population who less and less
which marriage can be contracted (as long as it recognize Israel's claim to represent them.
is with another Jew-rapes during pogrom did Moreover, the historical past of the Jews as a
not receive such a "sanctification," but on the religious civilization with separate histories in
other hand, they are the historical reason why different parts of the world has presented con­
Jewishness has come to be defined via the tradictory pressures on the Zionist movement
mother rather than the father in classical Juda­ when it attempts to construct the national
ism). Bastardy is rather a question of being boundaries of its collectivity without at the
born to a woman who is having a forbidden same time breaking radically with its ideology
relationship of adultery or incest-and that of religious/ethnic construction.
includes even women who have been divorced But contradictions in and challenges to the
by civil (rather than religious) courts, which. determination of the boundaries and nature of
unlike civil marriages, are nOt recognized by the the Israeli national collectivity have emerged
religious court. Their children by their second not only in relation to world Jewry outside
husbands would be defined as bastards. Israel, but also in relation to divisions and
The major ideological justification which has struggles within it.
been given for the incorporation of Orthodox
religious personal law into Israeli legislation, Internal Israeli Divisions
and for accepting its definition as to "who is a
Jew," has been that doing otherwise will "split The problems concerning the nature and boun­
the people." It was claimed that accepting the daries of the Israeli national collectivity get yet
authority of other Jewish religious denomina­ another twist when we look at the internal eth­
tions, such as Conservative or Reform Juda­ nic divisions within its Jewish collectivity, espe­
ism. let alone secular legislation, would make it cially the major division into Occidental and
impossible for Orthodox Jews to marry anyone Oriental Jews. The ideology, the leadership and
but other Orthodox Jews, for fear of incorpor­ the overwhelming majority of the Zionist set­
ating unintentionally the forbidden mam'l.ers tlers and supporters of the Zionist movement
into their family. The paradox is, of course, until the post-World War 1 1 period came from
th�t in reality no Orthodox Jew would marry a Europe, especially Eastern Europe, and origin­
non-Orthodox Jew (or even newly "born ated from among the Ashkenazim.
again" Orthodox Jews who come from secular The Jews from Arab countries mostly arrived
families)-exactly because of this fear. More­ in lsrael after the establishment of the state in
over, outside Israel the majority of Jews do 1948. Unlike the Zionist settlers from Europe,
marry and divorce in a non-Orthodox fashion, they usually came not as single individuals but
even if they are married by a rabbi, and in Israel as whole families and communities. Also differ­
itself private cOntracts in lawyers' offices have ent from most of the European Jewish commu­
become more and more popular as an estab­ nities, they were not exterminated during
lished alternative to official marriages." The World War 11, but their situation began to
.-
..

42
-

COn/raCI day laborers/rom GaUl in Nazareth. Lena Rifkin

worsen dramatically with the growing conflict the process of change had started gradually. but
between the Zionist movement and the Arab would probably not have transformed itself as
world as a whole. When they arrived, the Ori­ it did without the major shift in the Israeli soci­
ental Jewish communities, as they became ety as a result of the 1967 war. The entrance en
known collectively in Israel, came into an masse of Palestinian labour power into the
already well crystallized political structure, with Israeli labour market not only involved a rela­
its pre-established supporting economic under­ tive upward shift for the Israeli working class,
pinnings. The task of absorbing the new immi­ which after the 1950s was overwhelmingly Ori­
grants was given to the various Zionist parties ental; it also supplied markets and cheap labour
according to their relative size in the Jewish for those among the Oriental Jews who started
Agency." These new immigrants and their their own enterprises and/or engaged Palestin­
families came to make up the majority of the ians as workers in their fields in the moshavim.
Israeli Jewish population . Autonomous Orien­ In spite of occasional complaints that the set­
tal Jewish panies, unlike Palestinian ones, were tlements in the Occupied Territories were
not forbidden by law, but (at least until the diverting money from the rehabilitation of ur­
1970s), they were nOI allowed sufficient access ban slums and underprivileged development
to independent economic and political levers. towns where the majority of Oriental Jews
�ithin the old party system, the national polit­ lived, the mass of Oriental Jews came to sup­
l�al leadership, with very few exceptions, con­ port the Likkud party and panies even funher
tlllued to be composed of Ashkenazi Jews to the Right. They saw these panies as serving
(especially East Europeans) and their children. their class interests, as well as satisfying their
As in the case of the Palestinians in Israel, growing expressed hostility to the former domi-
..

43
nant Labour Zionists who had acted as their port from outside Israel. A growing active con­
comrolling patrons since their arrival in IsraeL I t cern for the Jewish communities abroad was
Their challenge, however, was not only polit­ the other face of the growing Israeli hegemony
ical but also cultural. They were revolting in the international Jewish communities. More­
against the underrating and suppression oT over, the debate on the Occupied Territories
Oriental Jewish culture which had been part of (between those who wanted a Greater Israel
their "absorption" process-whereby modern­ which had subordinated Palestinians within it,
ization was equated with westernization, and and those who wanled an Israel which was per­
Jewish nostalgia was focused on the East Euro­ haps smaller, but as far as possible "purely"
pean shIell of Fiddler on the Roof rather than Jewish) raised again the whole discussion about
on "Our village in the Atlas mountains. "la The the nature of the Zionist endeavour, as live an
quotable Golda Meir not only lived in fear of issue as is the relationship between the Jewish
Arab babies being born, but, it is said, also people and Israel.
cried in relief when Russian Jews began arriving
in Israel in the early 1970s: "At last real Jews
are coming to Israel again. . . . "
In the last few years, however, the power
struggle which has been taking place in Israel to
challenge western exclusivity and supremacy
concerning culture, education and political
structures, has to a certain extent become en­
meshed with the power struggle of the religious
sector to reinstate religious tradition as the
legitimate basis for social and political action in
.
Israel.
The sabras,lI the "New Jews," grew up feel- ­
ing themselves to be a positive alternative, and
completely differenl, to the Diaspora Jews.
After the establishment of the state, the term
"Zionism" itself became in Israeli slang a
euphemism for meaningless waffle. There was a
feeling (contradictory political and financial
reality notwithstanding) that the Zionist move­
ment had finished its task with the establish­
ment of the state of Israel and the mass immi­
gration in the first few years of its existence. However, the changes went deeper than that.
There even developed ideological movements The 1967 war, in which the Wailing Wall and
which attempted to classify the Israeli Jews as the other Jewish holy places were captured. was
part of the ancient Semitic region in which also endowed with a religious interpretation-it
Israel's long term future lay." Diaspora Jews was a "miracle," the "hand of God." (The
were looked at a bit contemptuously, and as an defeat in Lebanon was also to be seen as the
ongoing source for cOnlributions of money hand of God-this time as a punishment for
given in order to salve their conscience for not not keeping to the reigious
l code .... ) The ideo­
having come to settle in Israel; religious Jews logical trend which has seen the establishmenl
were looked on, to a great extent, by the domi­ of the Jewish state as a religious mission was
nant majority, as an anachronism left over strengthened. And this was by no means con­
from the "Diaspora period." fined to religious circles. It is not incidenlal that
The 1967 war changed all that. It suddenly after 1967 new Israeli soldiers began to swear
became clear (and even more so in the 1973 allegiance to the army no longer on Masada. U a
war) that Israel is actually dependent for its symbol of national liberation warfare, but in
existence on Jewish financiarand political sup- front of the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of

44
the Jewish Temple; nor that by now so many cess; it also accelerated it. The religious parties,
kibbutzim, traditionally strongholds of secular­ Zionist and non-Zionist alike. switched their
ism in Israel, have synagogues. allegiance as government coalition partners
But the more far-reaching changes have from the Labour Party to those who were closer
taken place in the politics and the position of to them politically and who also gave them
(he Zionist religious sector itself. The Zionist much larger economic resources for their
religious parties have always been the tradi­ specific institutions. As a result, it is claimed,
tional coalition partners in Israeli governments. Israel now has more "Yeshiva Bokhers" (reli­
Until 1967, they willingly accepted the Labour gious scholars who are kept by the community)
parties' military and international policies in than existed in nineteenth-century Poland. The
exchange for economic benefits for their insti­ process of seulement in the Occupied Territor­
tutions and keeping the status quo on religious ies, as well as the militancy of religious circles in
legislation more or less intact. After 1967, how­ all spheres of Israeli life, are growing all the
ever, and especially among the younger genera­ time. The reconstitution of the Labour Party
tion, the product of religious state education, for two years as the head of a national coalition
they started to develop their own poli�ical line. government has nOt seriously affected Ihis
This focused on the issue of annexation and set­ process. ,.
tlement of the West Bank and the other territor­ It is important to note, however. that not all
ies of the "Promised Land" as a religious duty. the growth of the religious sector has taken
From occupying a secondary and inferior role­ place in the nationalist camp. The ideological
both in the eyes of the dominant Labour Zion­ crisis, combined with the economic crisis in
ists and in the eyes of non-Zionist Orthodox Israel since the 1970s. has led many to turn to
Jews-they saw themselves (and were seen by religious fundamentalism, not as a messianic,
others) as occupying a pioneering front-line nationalistic, if nOI fascistic movement, (para­
role in Zionism and religious affairs as a whole. llel to fundamentalist movements in the Muslim
The rise. in 1977. of the rightwing Likkud party world) but as an escape from all the moral and
was partly prompted by this pro- political dilemmas that Zionism (which most of

I
Menachem Begin (II the Wailing Wall.
4'
7
them see as having failed) has presented to con­ tween Israel and the Jews, both in and out of
temporary Israeli and non-Israeli Jews (a Israel. However, as I said previously, about 17
phenomenon common to disappointed youth percent of Israel's citizens are not Jewish, and
all over the West). Studying the Torah and the figure reaches about a third of the popula­
keeping the Halakha seem to many, mostly lion when we include the people who have lived
Ashkenazi but also Sephardi sabras, as the only for the past twenty years under the control of
valid way for Judaism to continue to exist, and the Israeli state in the Occupied Territories. The
for them to live as Jews and to find emotional latest statistical scare has been that more non­
security and certainty. Jewish than Jewish babies were born in areas
The intermeshing of the power struggles of under the control of the Israeli governmenl.1l
Oriental Jews and the religious Jews has meant The overwhelming majority of those non-Jews
that in Israel there is a growing body which sees are Palestinian Arabs.
western culture and values as a threat (if not as The Palestinian Arabs have been "threaten­
a contemptible anachronism-I did hear a stu­ ing" the Zionist endeavour in more ways than
dent on a bus one day being teased for being so one, even before the Intifadah (Uprisings) when
dumb as to still believe in Darwinism). Corre­ the Palestinians have shown their total resis­
lated to these developments is the considerable tance to the Israeli occupation and that time is
growth of an Israeli neo-fascist movement, in not on Israel's side. Their presence is a contin­
which the class grievances of poor Oriental ual reminder that Palestine has not been an
Jews are combined with nationalistic religious empty country "waiting for two thousand years
myths, and in which democracy is seen as a trap for its sons to return," as the Zionist myth puts
invented by the ruling Labour Establishment, it; it is also a continual obstacle as regards
from which only they and the Palestinians, the reconciling the ideological conSlructs of a west­
national enemy, could benefil. ern-type welfare state (the model which Israel
What was challenged here, in different ways, has attempted to follow, but in which by defini­
is not so much the boundaries of the Israeli na­ tion all citizens are supposed to be treated on a
tional collectivity, bUI the nature of the collec­ universal basis) with Zionism, which demallds
tivity itself. Whereas at the beginning of the exclusive rights. or at least a privileged posi­
Zionist endeavour the dominant trend had been tion, for Jews.
to create in Israel a nation state in the western This contradiction remained in "manage­
mode, as "normal" as possible within the con­ able" proportions until 1967, with the Palestin­
straints of the Zionist mode, there are now ians constituting no more than 13 percent of the
more and more voices calling for Western­ Israeli population. Furthermore. for many
dominated values to be driven out of Israel, and years the Palestinians in Israel were made to
for the cOuntry to be turned into an ethnic live in relative geographical isolation. They
collectivity united by religious traditions and were concentrated in two major areas-Galilee
practices, with modern stale powers to enforce and the "Triangle, " and they almost always
and exclude others. The inherent contradiction lived in separate settlements. Military govern­
between Zionism and democracy, instead of be­ ment operated in Israel until 1965 (two years
ing seen as a major weakness of the structure of before Israel came to occupy the Wesl Bank
the state, is seen as its redeeming value. In turn, and Gaza strip) and this meant that Palestinians
these challenges to the nature of the Israeli Jew­ had to obtain special permission in order to
ish collectivity affect approaches to the ques­ travel outside their home zones. Up until the
tion of reproduction of the nalional collectivity 1967 war, the Israeli Palestinians were suffi­
itself, its relationship with world Jewry, and its ciently segregated from the Jewish collectivity,
attitudes towards those in Israel who are not to enable the feasible operation of the Israeli
Jews. state in most of its facets in a supposed univer­
The Israeli National Collectivity and
sal fashion. However, even within these con­
tainments, the long term contradictions started
the Palestinians
to emerge.
The continuous pressure for expropriating
Up to now I have discussed the-relationship be-

46
Palestinian lands, both for positive reasons-to especially in terms of a growing dependency on
expand Jewish seulement-and negative-to Israel, as a supplier and consumer as well as an
prevent the emergence of excessive concentra­ employer. But the most important effects of the
tions of Palestinian enclaves within Israel­ occupation have been the emergence of a segre­
have had the paradoxical result of integrating gated Jewish sellier society on lands confiscated
the dispossessed Palestinians into the Israeli from the Palestinians; a continuous military
labour market. The Palestinians have under­ presence; deprivation of civil and legal rights; a
gone a process of proletarianization and were continuously active resistance movement and a
incorporated as a class fraction at the bOllom growing cycle of terrorization. The overwhelm­
of the Israeli class structure, especially in un­ ing majority of the Palestinians on the West
skilled and manual work in the private sector. U Bank see their future in terms of an aUlOno­
Consequently, not only were they brought in­ mous Palestinian state headed by the PLO-a
w closer social and economic interaction with political movement which has also gradually
Jewish society, but this change also brought become more and more popular among Pales­
more education and more money to the Pales­ tinians who are Israeli citizens, and who find
tinian villages. One result of this process, and themselves excluded from a future Palestinian
of the numerical growth of the Israeli Palestin­ state which would be in any way acceptable
ian population, has been a relative strengthen­ even to the most "dovish" Zionists. There has
ing of their political power as Israeli citizens, been a lot of sympathy and solidarity towards
especially as a voting bloc, no longer fully con­ the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories by
trollable by traditional mediators sponsored by the Israeli Palestinians, but apart from a few
the authorities. This has somewhat improved cases, the delineation between the structural
their collective bargaining power. Unsurpris­ placements of the two groupings has remained
ingly, however, there is only a very small very clear.
improvement in the representation of Palestin­ The Zionist "doves," the Left of the Labour
ians in real political power positions, and all at­ party, want Israel's withdrawal from most of
tempts at independent Palestinian political the Occupied Territories and the establishment
organization continue to be blocked. II More­ of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in these
over, the basic apartheid-type discriminations areas, thus keeping the Jewish character of the
and exclusions in the supply of amenities, state Israeli state without having to deviate too ex­
resources and supplementary benefits continue tremely from normal practices of western type
to operate, in an atmosphere in which inter­ democratic states. They would like to see the
personal racism towards the Palestinians has Israeli Palestinians as a small minority within
been growing all the time. Until shortly before Israel, with civil but no collective rights, and
the lnrifadah started there were several cases of the bravest among them even talk about the
actual pogroms against Palestinian students eventual full assimilation of Israeli Palestinians
and workers living in Jewish neighborhoodsY into Israeli society. "
One consideration in the growing racism is Such an assimilation, of course, negates not
the fact that the differentiation between Pales­ only the subjective feelings of most of the
tinians who are Israeli citizens and those who Palestinians in Israel, but also the fundamental
are in the Occupied Territories is very problem­ existence of Israel as a Zionist state. It abso­
atic and has been the subject of debate within lutely depends, as most of those who hold this
Israel among both Jews and Arabs. The Pales­ position from within the Zionist camp admit,
tinians in the Occupied Territories have never on the continued existence of the Palestinians in
received even formal civil rights, having been [srael as a small minority. Hence a growing pre­
under straight occupation for the past nineteen occupation with "the demographic race" (as
years. Unlike the Palestinians who remained in we shall see below).
Israel after 1948, they have several urban cen­ However, the differentiation between Pales­
ters and a much more heterogeneous class tinians who are and those who are nOt Israeli
structure. The occupation has affected social citizens pales in significance next to the growing
and economic relations within the West Bank, majority of Israelis who are claiming the Occu-

47
Pr.-June 1967: 2.83 MlmOll hl.lllnl."1

_ < 1 7 ,,,,,, 63'4 in HSIoric Paln,''''

I__-"'
=:�:-
:' :;::;;i)"
lll.2'1 - ( 1
178.300 81'.000

�­ ...
- 3e.""
(8�1 ( 1a·w..1
183.000 371.000
'852: 1.1 MIllion hl4I.tlni8nl
7""" � HoIIOrlC Poo,"",,,.

1961 , 2.2 Million PIIlntlnl.n.


� ," f.k""'� """01,,,.

",.
Palesti nian -
(12.1'''1
_ (171'1

Journey
....
3'I,:!IlI

1 952-1 987
STRUCTURE OF PALUTlNIAN LAIIOR fORCEI'lloj
"
" ' ''' ,,..

- .... - .... - ....


... ..... .....
Agriculture "', 21.S .., 21.1 '" ..,

"'�'" "., 17.0 14.1 13.1 , .. 17.6


••
C •
•""'
,.,, .. ... 'U ., 2•.2 "..
So...... 17.3 ,., ".. '''' "-, '"
""'" ", ,., 14,1 ,., .., .,
_. � '.'. "'7'U'I_� "" _ _. ""
,__ COooonoI _ "' __. ' _ _ -'

Poll- June 1961: 2.7 Mll11ol1 Palestinian.


GAP tl7,OOO) 5O'!Iio ,n HISt on C
Pale,'iM
In t.MI In a.a
(4ft) (54'110 )
Agrieull,," 19.6 1M
Ind�try 11.9 11.1 17 1 __ 11l.l'1ol
CoMIl'UelIon 51.0 os.I I.S �..,
� (Ind. 21.3 17.2 519
--

__ 116''''')
t37.4.00

1M12: 4 . 5 Million Pal.,tlnlllni


" "" '1'1 .... SI0� PIIlftli M

....6."
. ,2' ...., ...... (12�1 1987: 5.1 MIllion PalestinIans
\ 152 000
&015,000 42'10 ,n H..,OflC P.'"'ir>e

UI,a """'1»1«1 by IA.. lIo.Jj.,


r,..;�� b. lh<k An<l<non
pied Territories, especially the West Bank "Demographic Holocaust."
which includes the Jewish religious sites, as an Traditionally, as a settler society, immigra­
exclusionary Jewish territory. From this posi­ tion (o/iyoh) was considered to be the quickest,
tion, the boundaries of Israeli civil society in­ as well as the cheapest and most efficient,
clude not only Israel's citizens but also the method of increasing the Jewish Zionist pres­
inhabitants of the Occupied Territories, who ence in Palestine. Not that the specific composi­
constitute a third of the overall number of the tion of the Jewish immigrants was without its
Israeli population, and all of them are thus per­ own internal contradictions. As the character
ceived as a threat. Containment, exploitation, of immigration changed from being predomi­
oppression and ultimately expulsion are the nantly young, single, ideologically motivated
various means suggested and used against the East Europeans, into bringing whole migrant
Palestinians, especially in the Occupied Terri­ communities, especially from Arab countries in
tories. The aim is to include the territory but ex­ the 50s, with age compositions, ideologies and
clude its people from inclusion in the Israeli na­ skills which were very different, so too the over­
tional boundaries. all character of Israeli society changed. This
The relationship between the Israeli national demographic change took place many years
collectivity and the Jewish people has made its before it began to challenge the Israeli power
overall boundaries blurred and indefinite, and structure, as the later immigrams. mostly Ori·
the criteria for "membership" for "Jews" in ental Jews, were tightly controlled by the Zion·
the collectivity open to both ideological and iSI institutions which were responsible for their
legal debate. The relationship with the Palestin­ absorption.
ians, both those who are Israeli citizens and When we look at Ihe demographic policies in
those under its occupation, has opened a debate Israel aimed at encouraging higher birth rates.
on the basic premises according to which the we have to examine not only when they were
Israeli national collectivity will, in the long mostly introduced (which corresponded with
term, reproduce and defend its boundaries as a the periods, overall, when outside sources of
Jewish collectivity. Demographic policies stand Jewish immigration were blocked), but also at
al the heart of these debates and struggles. the debates which developed in Israel concern­
ing who should be encouraged to reproduce and
how. To an extent there has also been the
Demographic Policies and the"Need" for debate as to whether this question is at all in the
Jewish Majority domain of public debate, or whether it is an
individual decision of the families involved, or
Now I want to look at the implications that the even only of the women involved, as the small
factors we have been discussing have had for Israeli feminist movement has been claiming.
demographic policies in Israel. The lack of clear policies concerning aborlion,
Basically Ihese policies, although reflecting for example, up until the 19705, has been just
all the ambiguities. contradictions and tensions one symptom of the conflict between a liberal
described above, have had two hegemonic goals: democratic ideology which saw decisions con­
-the first goal has been to maintain and if cerning child bearing as basically pari of the
possible increase Jewish domination in Israel, private domain and an ideology which saw it as
both via the establishment of a numerical a patriotic duty. The change in the relative
majority and via the pursuit of military and hegemony of each of these ideologies is but one
technological superiority over the Arabs; symptom of the more general shift in dominant
-the second goal, which is increasingly occu­ value systems in Israel. It is not a coincidence
pying the minds of Israeli policy makers, has that when Efrat, The Committee for the
been to reproduce and enlarge the "Jewish peo­ Encouragement of a Jewish Birth Rate in Israel
pIe" all over lhe world and to ensure that Israeli was first established in the 1960s, it was a bit of
Jewish mothers produce enough children to a public joke. Uri Avneri, for example. the edi­
"compensate" for the children lost in the Nazi tor of the weekly Ho'% m Hazeh which consis­
Holocaust and in what is called in Israel the tently supports civil rights in Israel. accused
-

Opposile poge, :'fERIP, /o.1o)'·June. 1987


.,
those who advocated this line of thought of under Israeli rule either escaped during the bat­
having "the psychology of rabbits." These tles and were never allowed to return, or were
days Uri Avneri himself writes editorials which expelled by force. This, plus the major Jewish
explain the unavoidable need for a Jewish immigration to Israel in the first few years of its
majority in Israel.lo existence from postwar Europe and from the
The "need" for a Jewish majority has always Arab countries, h-ad reduced the Palestinian
been a cornerstone of Zionist thinking, of minority in Israel in the early 1950s to no more
which Avneri represents the most liberal wing. than 1 1 percent. Still, in the hope of reinforcing
Ben-Gurion, debating in the Knesset in 1949- this ratio, Ben-Gurion initiated in the early
during the war which expanded Israel's terri­ 19505 rewards (of 1L.100-even then with more
tory way beyond the territory allocated to it by symbolic than substantial value) for "heroine
the UN-cxplained: "A Jewish state...even if mothers"-Le. those who have had ten chil­
only in the West of Palestine is impossible, if it dren or more; he was continually calling on
is to be a democratic state, because the number Israeli Jewish mothers to have more children .
of Arabs in the western part of Palestine is The birthrates of the Jewish and the Palestin­
higher than that of the Jews ... we want a Jewish ian populations within Israel were not, how­
state, even if not all over the country."l' ever, evenly balanced. In the early 1960s, there
The Zionist strategic priority of a Jewish was, on the one hand, a halt in the mass Jewish
majority in Israel has been one of the issues immigration to Israel, and on the other hand
debated all along between the Left and Right of the birthrate of the more traditionally oriented
the Zionist movement, especially before the Israeli Jews began to fall. At the same time, the
state was actually established, and after 1967. Palestinian birthrate in Israel did nOt decrease
In the time of the yishuv, the crucial thing for significantly, while their life expectancy
the Zionist Right, led by Jabotinsky, was increased (by 1967, the Arab minority in Israel
Jewish sovereignty over the whole of Palestine. constituted 15 percent). A government commit­
Once this could be established, it was assumed tee was set up to review the demographic situa­
that the Jewish masses from all over the world tion, as a result of which the Center for Demog­
would come and fill the country. The Labour raphy was established in 1967, and was
Zionism that dominated the yishuv, on the attached to the prime minister's office (until
other hand, saw Jewish settlement and a 1978, when it became part of the government
consolidation of a Jewish majority in a grad­ Work and Welfare Ministry) in order to devel­
ually expanding territory as a precondition for op suitable long term policies to deal with the
the establishment of the Zionist state. How­ issue.
ever, even they were prepared 10 accept a The "ultimate threat" of the gradual growth
majority of only 55 percent in the first instance, of the Palestinian community in Israel and the
as was the situation in the planned Jewish state erosion of the Jewish majority kept on growing
in the 1947 UN partition plan (which never ac­ as a political issue, especially after the 1967 war
tually materialized, due to the 1948 war), and and the public debate about annexation of the
planned various ways of expanding that Occupied Territories with their massive Pales­
majority.J1 tinian population. But concern has also been
Plans for a transfer of the Palestinians out­ growing in relation to the Palestinians who live
side the Zionist state have existed in more or within the 1949 borders, who are Israeli citi­
less muted form throughout the history of zens, and who, for the first time in the last elec­
Zionism, as one way of resolving the political tions began to count, in sheer terms of num­
contradiction of a Jewish state with too many bers, as an important electoral lobby.ll
non-Jews in it. During the 1948 war, Israel By 1976, this issue had already become a
enlarged by more than 50 percent its allocated focus for widespread public paranoia in Israel,
territory, having divided the planned Palestin­ when a secret document written by Konig, the
ian state with Jordan. This could have meant a civil officer responsible for the Israeli Nonhern
Jewish state with an overwhelming Palestinian District, was leaked to the press. Galilee, with
majority. However, most of the,... Palestinians its concentration of Arab population, has

50
always been a cause for concern to Israeli policy
makers. In the mid-1960s, {before the 1%7 war
and around the time of the establishment of (he
demographic center) major confiscations of o
Arab lands were carried out in Galilee, in order
to establish in the heart of that dense Arab pop­ 'y
ulation, a new Jewish city, Karmiel. The offi­
cial aim of this policy, initiated by Levy Eshkol,
then prime minister, was to "Judaize Galilee. "
Konig expressed in the 1976 document his
alarm that these policies had failed and that in
the foreseeable future, the Arabs would consti­
tute a majority in Galilee. Konig suggested var­
ious ways of combating this tendency, includ­
ing selliing Jews in areas densely populated by
Arabs; encouraging Arabs to emigrate from the
country by limiting their prospects of employ­
ment and studies. and cutting their child
national insurance benefits and more. Since
then, the "demographic race" and the annual
Jewish and Arab birthrate continue to be dis­
cussed prominently in the Israeli national press,
accompanied with gloomy demographic predic­
(ions and/or attempts to refule them.

Paleslinians and the Demographic Race

Israeli Palestinians have not necessarily been Morrocu,j Fumily. MERIP. Nov/Dec 1980

reluctant participants in the "demographic ity rate has come down; and together they have
race." The fact of having large numbers of chil­ reversed the beginnings of a trend towards a
dren, especially boys, has always been impor­ falling birthrate. H
tant in Arab rural society, which is organized In addition, since the 1 970s. family size has
around the extended family. It made possible a become a conscious political weapon among
dignified existence for the old parents; it Palestinian nationalists. This has been true for
brought social honour to the mothers of sons; it the whole of the Palestinian movemenl. The
also made possible a pooling of resources in training of children in refugee camps to be the
times of economic hardship. The gradual prole­ next generation of fighters has been very central
tarianization of the israeli Palestinians was to it. War orphans. for example. have not been
somewhat eased by the fact that while the men allowed to be adopted by outsiders (unlike Viet­
commuted to town to work, (he women and namese orphans in similar circumstances), but
other men of the family, stayed together in the are reared collectively for their national role. In
village; in times of unemployment they consti­ Israel, the "war on the baby front" became
tuted a buffer against its hardest effects. Never­ especially bitter in the "post-Konig" period.
theless, gradually, especially with the rise of a Slogans like "The Israelis beat us on the bor­
new intelligentsia and the polilicizalion of the ders but we beat them in the bedrooms. . . "
YOunger generation, the authority of (he started to be heard. and poems, a traditional
homulos (family clans), which the israeli mobilizing means in Arab societies, were writ­
authorities have also cultivated as efficienl ten in this spirit.JJ The Israeli authorities more
means of control, has begun to diminish. in or less admiued that none of the aClive popula­
terms of population growth, however, modern­ tion control policies which are used in other
ization has had an immediate and contradictory Third World countries have any chance of
effect-life expectancy has gone up; the morlal­ meeting cooperation among either the "tradi-
=

51
tional" or the "modern" elements in the Arab things stand, Palestinians who are Israeli citi­
sector. Nevertheless, social welfare clinics were zens have been receiving some child benefit
set up, and Palestinian women are the only allowances, and the Druze and Bedouins who
women in Israel who can obtain free contracep­ do military service have been even receiving the
tives. I was told by a social worker that as long enlarged allowances that Jews receive. On the
as these clinics were headed by Palestinian other hand, some Jewish families, especially
women, they tended to cooperate with the among the extreme Orthodoxes, have no mem­
Israeli authorities on family planning policies bers of their family who have done national ser­
(although from a very different motive to theirs vice; thus, under the euphemistic regulation,
-care for individual women rather than con­ they have been entitled only to the reduced
trol of overall numbers). In the last few years allowance. The Jewish Agency has in fact sup­
Palestinian men have become heads of some of plemented the allowances in such cases, first
these clinics and il is rumoured that attitudes secretly and then openly; then, in the early
towards family planning have changed 1980s, the Ministry of Religion began to take
considerably. over this role.
Since the Israeli government is unable effec­ Another line of argument against these poli­
tively to control the number of Palestinian chil­ cies was that, while promoting national goals,
dren being born, quite a lot of its policies have these policies do not take into account the class
concentrated on bringing in more Jews from (and therefore also intra-Jewish ethnic) divi­
abroad, and, when fewer and fewer actually sions in the Israeli society-inasmuch as it is the
came, promoting and encouraging a growth of number of children rather than size of family
the Jewish birthrate in Israel itself. income which is used as the qualifying criterion
for child and housing benefits.
Encouraging "Quality" Births This line of opposition in the 1970s renected
After its establishment in 1967, the Demo­ a growing concern with issues of poverty and
graphic Center commissioned coodinated stud­ ethnic antagonism within the Jewish collectiv­
ies on demographic trends in Israel and in the ity. Studies were published which showed that
Jewish Diaspora, and promoted various pro­ class differentiations between Ashkenazi and
natal policies. This was done both by propa­ Oriental Jews in Israel had grown rather than
ganda work and by material incentives, such as shrunk in the course of the 1 960s. >6 (This situa­
"The Fund for Encouraging Birth" which was tion changed somewhat in the 1970s, due in
set up in 1968 by the Housing Ministry to subsi­ large part to changes in the Israeli labour mar­
dize housing loans for families with more than 3 ket after the innux of a large number of Pales­
children. These benefits, such as increased child tinians from the Occupied Territories, and the
allowances, were given basically only to Jews, consequent economic upward mobility of sec­
under the euphemism of "families who have tions of the Oriental Jews. Nevertheless, the
relatives who have served in the Israeli army." Jewish poor in Israel today are still overwhelm­
Clearly the value of all these policies has been ingly of Oriental origin.)" Growing popular
more symbolic than practical, when we take in­ protest movements within what is often called
to consideration what is actually involved in "The Second Israel" (the best known but by no
bringing up a child. But even at this symbolic means the only one being the Israeli Black Pan­
and auxiJiary-practical level, these policies were thers) have brought this reality into the political
not universally approved of in Israel. One line arena as well, especially since the Oriental Jews
of objection was raised by militant liberals and have become a majority of the Israeli electorate.
leftists. They joined the Israeli Palestinians in The Government committee which was set up
pointing out the racist character of using the to examine these issues discovered an important
state apparatus to discriminate against Palestin­ and relevant fact. They found that, in Israel 75
ians and to block their access to a whole line or percent of children who grew up in Israel in
state benefits. Rightwing nationalists, however, economic deprivation come from large families
also objected to using the state apparatus for of four or more children, mostly from Orienta!
that purpose-they would have preferred the Jewish families, and that they constitute about
Jewish Agency to take on this�unction. As 40 percent of all Israeli Children. JI It pointed

52
out the continuous and possibly growing class The Abortion Debate
and ethnic divisions within the next generation
of Israeli Jews, and also the shift in ratio be· In fact, this legislation has become one of the
tween those belonging to the various different major mobilization factors of the growing
classes, as a result of the much larger number of rightwing nationalist and religious camp. They
children among people at the bottom end of the see not only abortions, but also family planning
income bracket. in general and anything which results in fami·
It is important to note in this context that lies smaller than four children, as objection.
although maintaining a Jewish majority in able. Indeed, the secretary of the Efrat commit·
Israel has been a prime concern of the Zionist tee explained to me when I interviewed him
movement, Zionists are also always aware that that, since so many Israeli Jewish women get
in the Arab East it will always be a very small married and start bearing children only after
minority. The petty-bourgeois socio-economic completing their military service (at the age of
background of most of the Zionist senlers twenty), any family planning aimed at limiting
before the establishmenl of the state; techno· child-bearing to once every few years would
logical and organizational superiority over the necessarily severely limit the number of children
underdeveloped Arab world; imperialist sup· such women could have before menopause.
port of Israel as the most consistent local ally; For large sections of the pro-natal lobby in
and a nationalist myth of "there is no alter· Israel, having many children is not just an
native" -these are what has enabled the contino inevitable outcome of keeping religious codes
uous success of Israel in its wars against the concerning procreation, or an expression of
Arabs (at least until the Lebanon war). Quality, Jewish traditional values, or even a means of
then, rather than quantity has been the crucial making Israel stronger by enlarging the number
factor. (Over the last few years the situation has of potential soldiers. It is not even a question of
been changing, and Israeli newspapers report keeping a Jewish majority in Israel. Having
with anxiety that there is a much higher number large families is seen as also a way of reproduc·
of university graduates in the Arab world than ing and enlarging the Jewish people which has
in Israel;'and, on the other hand, that there is a dwindled, first as a result of the Nazi Holocaust
growing deterioration in the quality of the (caused by anti-Semitism) and then by the
human material available to the Israeli army,H) "Demographic Holocaust" (caused by assimi­
It was therefore, again, primarily national lation and intermarriage)."
concern, as well as an attempt to appease the The lobby which organized lhe pro-natal
growing protests of the "Second Israel," which politics of the early 19805 revived the "Efrat
brought about a significanl development in the Committee for the Encouragement of Higher
direction of welfare policies in Israel in the Jewish Birthrate" which had been dormant for
19705-measures such as the introduction of most of the 19705, In the 1980s, it became
social security, "slum rehabilitation" pro· powerful enough to establish centers and
grams etc. For a while the (Jewish) family's branches all over the country and to incorpor·
economic situation, rather than the number of ate in its ranks major elite figures from all pro·
its children, became the official criterion for fessional fields, both religious and secular, and
housing support. This political trend, resulting to gain official status as a governmental consul­
from the fear of too many children growing up tative body on natal and demographic policy
in poverty-stricken households in Israel, can committees (together with the official women's
also be said to be one of the major factors organizations).
which, combined with ideological pressures, Efrat gained a lot of its public power by link·
have brought about abortion legislation in ing the debate on encouragement of the Jewish
Israel. For years there have been no official birthrate to the public campaign around the
policies on the malter, because of politicians' abortion issue. As part of its coalition agree·
fears of running into political trouble whatever ment with the religious panies, the Begin gov·
decisions were taken.-o ernment, when it came to power in the late

"

.
fecls of the overall economic, political and
ideological crisis in Israel in the last few years
have been making their mark on the various
policies which have been used in the "demo­
graphic race." The effectively reduced state
incentives have to a great extent lost any practi­
cal effect that they might have had a few years
ago. This, plus a growing negative net migra­
tion to and from the country, have gradually
and increasingly turned attention to the option
of transferring Palestinians out of Israel, as the
only possibly valid long-term solUlion if Israel
is to keep its Zionist character. Thus it is no
more an issue promoted by extreme marginal
nghtwing leaders like Meir Kahane. Prominent
national leaders, like ex-general Rehavam
Ze'evi and the deputy minister of Defense,
Michael Dekel, have declared publicly and
organized conferences for the promotion of the
idea of "Transfer"-the mass expulsion of
Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, as
the only effective solution to the demographic
predictions that within 30 years, Jews will be no
1970S, abolished the one category in the abor­ more than 52 percent of the population.
tion law which enabled legal abortions to be According to Ze'evi, "If last year only 30 per­
carried out on the grounds of "social cent of the Israelis supponed the idea of Trans­
hardship" (the other categories are: the fer, this year it is already 70 percent. " O J
woman's age; the pregnancy being a result of The Palestinian political strategy in response
"forbidden relations"; the health of the fetus has been "Zumut"-holding on, resisting pres­
and the health of the woman). This angered the sures to emigrate. And encouraging Palestinian
feminist lobby bUi was not enough to appease women to bear more children. A recent saying
the anti-abortion lobby, especially as liberal on the West Bank is that "Every woman should
social workers on the abortion committees have have at least five sons: Two to go to prison, one
tended to apply the woman's health category to die, one to go to Kuwait to make money and
instead.u In addition to the usual reasoning of one to do what he wishes to do. . . ."

the anti-abortion lobby, who treat abortions as


murder, came an emotive call to Jewish Jewish Women and 'The Nation'
mothers to do their national duty and replace
the Jewish children killed by the Nazis. An ex­ We have seen how Israeli Jewish women, like
treme (and narrowly defeated) example of this Palestinian women, have been "recruited" in
ideology was a suggestion by the then Advisor the "demographic war" to bear more children,
to the Minister of Health, Haim Sadan, to force this being seen as their national duty to the Jew­
every woman considering abortion to watch a ish people in general and to Israeli Jewish peo­
slide show which would include, in addition to ple in particular. It is debatable to what extent
other horrors such as dead fetuses in rubbish the ideological pressures, or the formal and
bins, piclUres of dead children in Nazi concen­ material collective measures such as child bene­
tration camps. After a large public campaign fits are the deciding influences in whether to
this specific proposal was defeated and Sadan have a child or, when an unplanned pregnancy
eventually resigned. Nevertheless. "the war on occurs, to keep it. The emotional needs of peo­
the demographic war" continues. ple in a permanent war socielY, when husbands
It is worth remarking, however, that the ef- and sons might get killed at any moment, and

'4
cultural familial traditions probably play a was more to do with its qualitative aspect (of
more central role than anything else. Whatever producing the "New Jew"-the sabra-the
the deciding factor, however, the fact is that antithesis of the "Diaspora Jew" whose nega­
Israeli Jewish women, especially professional tive image the Zionist movement shared with
middle class women, do tend to bear more chil­ European anti-Semitism), rather than necessar­
dren, than their counterparts in other advanced ily with quantity of children. The role of Israeli
capitalist societies.'· And their role as suppliers woman was to participate in the national strug­
of children to "the nation" has a direct effect gle, mainly in supportive roles, U and, in addi­
on the availability of contraceptives and abor­ tion, to produce proud, rooted and "normal"
tion. As I say, there are no free contraceptives children (whose characteristics would be
in Israel except for Palestinians, and abortion " earthiness," military strength, and, of course,
legislation is a focus of major public political the " Jewish genius" . . . ).
debates-not unique to Israel, but with a very The development of the specific ideological
explicit nationalistic emphasis, in comparison construction of women as national reproducers
with campaigns in other countries where the in Israel has had a lot to do with the specificity
"Moral Right" has been fighting against abor­ of the historical development of the I sraeli soci­
tion legislation. ety as a permanent war society. The ideological
Historically-until the 1960s, and since the placement of women in this respect was best
beginning of the Zionist movement-it was summed up by MP Geula Cohen, a member of
mainly Jewish mothers in the Diaspora who the nco-fascist Tehiyah party and an
"supplied" the human power for (he Zionist ex-member of the Stern gang in the pre-state
settlement (0 go forward. The Zionist endea­ period:
vour can be described as an organization with The Israeli woman is an organic part of the
clear international division of labour-in the family of the Jewish people and the female
constitutes a practical symbol of that. But she
Diaspora, the members and supporters of the
is a wife and a mother in Israel, and therefore
movement supplied financial and political sup­ it is of her nature to be a soldier, a wife of a
pOrt and human power, and in Palestine, at the soldier, a sister of a soldier, a grandmother of
"front," these resources were used to promote a soldier. This is her reserve service. She is con­
the Zionist project of imposing an exclusively tinually in military service."

Jewish society on Palestine. OJ This division of There have been many myths concerning the
labour continues to date, and without the role of Israeli women as soldiers (and I have ex­
financial and political support of the Jewish panded on it in another place"). Basically,
Diaspora, Israel could not have continued to however, and to a great extent as in the civil
exist. In the supply of human material, how­ labour market, women in the army serve in
ever, the balance has gradually shifted and the subordinate and supportive roles to that of
discussions today focus, as we have seen, on the men, unless they are in welfare and educational
role of Israeli Jewish mothers in replacing the roles which directly correspond to Ihe ideolog­
membership of the overall shrinking Jewish na­ ical tradition of women as mothers (rather than
tional collectivity all over the world rather than, as wives and mistresses). The few women who
or in addition to, the other way around. are engaged in combative occupations are doing
Within the Zionist yishuv itself, the pressures so in order to release men for front duties, from
on Israeli Jewish women to bear more children which women soldiers are officially banned.
date from the beginning of the limitation on Also, as Geula Cohen says, women, unlike
Jewish immigration to Palestine under the Brit­ men, are released mostly from reserve service,
ish mandate (I myself am a "historical which is the mass popular base of the Israeli ar­
product" of Ben-Gurion's call for "internal my. Men serve at least one month a year in the
aliyah" (immigration) in the early 1940s when reserves until they are fifty years old, and this is
the news of the Nazi Holocaust started to ar­ their most important national role. The
rive. . .)
.
women's national role then becomes to produce
However, initially, as I suggested earlier, the babies who would become soldiers in future
main emphasis of Jewish motherhood in Israel wars. War widows (and parents) are perceived

.
not only as people who have suffered the loss of legal constraints within which this role of theirs
their nearest and dearest, but as people who is being constructed.
have made an active national contribution in Jewish women in Israel, and for that matter
their own right. It is on this basis that the value in the Diaspora as well, are being incorporated
of war widows' compensations is set: they actively in the Zionist endeavour, not only in
receive an income from the state, along with supplying humanpower to the national collec­
other privileges, all of which bears no relation tivity, bUI also legally and symbolically, as
to the income of the late husband before his markers of its boundaries. As I said in the
death, and is comparable to a senior govern­ beginning of this article, a Jew, according to
ment office" (although, since the Lebanon war the Law of Return, is somebody who was born
and the economic crisis, the real level of to a Jewish mother (or is a religious convert). It
widows' income has been seriously eroded, as is motherhood, therefore, rather than father­
have most other Israeli state benefits). hood that determines membership in the collec­
tivity.
Women's Weapons However, this matrilineal tradition does not
mean, by any means, that Jewish society is a
This ideological construction can explain matriarchal one. It is not even fully matrilineal
why groups like "Women against the War" -since children take the family name of their
and "Parents against Silence" have been so father, not their mother. The adoption of col­
effective in their protest against the Lebanon lective matrilinearity as a means of determining
war (lOgether with Yesh Gvul, the first serious who is a Jew was suitable in the context of the
draft resistance movement in the history of Jewish community as a persecuted minority, in
Israel). They touched the heart of the ideolog­ which pogroms and rapes were historically a
ical assumption that Israeli Jewish society is
• recurring phenomenon. In such a context,
fighting only because "there is no other alterna­ motherhool was a safer way of determining
tive" if continuous collective survival is to be inclusive boundaries, and tight measures were
assured, and therefore the individual's sacri­ taken in the religious code to secure the legit­
fices (constructed specifically according to gen­ imate reproduction of the boundaries of the
der and age and to a certain extent class and Jewish collectivity marked by its women.
ethnic origin) are willingly made. Similar acti­ Jewish women in the Diaspora can, in princi­
vism has been shown by "Women against the ple, choose whether or not to remain subju­
Occupation" and "Women in Black" since the gated to the religious code. Not so Israeli
beginning of the Inti/adah, but lheir innuence women. The Israeli state apparatus has added
has been less specific. This is both because there its coercive power to the traditional voluntary
is less unity about the desired action by the Jewish communal power in several crucial in­
Israeli government to the Inti/adah than there stances, such as marriage and divorce, and gave
has been concerning Lebanon, as well as it monopolistic rights.
because of the nature of women's participation Several auempts have been made since the
in the IfIli/adah which has desensitized to a cer­ establishment of the state of Israel to guarantee
tain extent the Israeli differential response to equal rights for women in terms of employment
women. ("The Arabs' women and children and payment, as well as protecting their rights
have been uansformed into a weapon pointing as workers when they become mothers. This
at us, and must therefore be treated not as legislation suffers from limitations similar to
women and children, but as someone coming to other legislations found in this area in Western
kill us. " 1 0) When we look at the efrects of the states, in which women are constituted in law
national reproductive role of Israeli Jewish primarily as wives and mothers. Another simi­
women, however, it is important to remember larity with other countries is that this legislation
that we are dealing here not only, and even not fails to alter the basic segregation and inequal­
mainly, with effects which relate to the actual ity between women and men in the labour mar­
"' kel." What is more specific to Israel, however,
number of children they produce and for what.
We are also concerned with the ideological and is the fact that all attempts to guarantee

56
women's overall equal constitutional rights in latter, most particularly. constructions of what
principle have failed. This has happened not so should be the proper duties of a wife are exclu­
much as a result of dir�t intervention by the sively decided by a small reactionary patriar­
religious parties, but more by the preventive ac­ chal group of Rabbinical judges. (If she is
tions of the other Zionist parties, who feared proved not to have fulfilled them she is likely to
that the religious parties would withdraw sup­ be declared a "rebel" and thus lose mainte­
port from their coalition governments, and who nance rights.) The inequality between the two
also feared that any "split of the people" sexes also affects the women whose husbands
would damage the Zionist claim to be "the disappear-in peacetime and even more so in
representatives of the Jewish people." So, we Israel's continuous wars. Unlike men, women
have Rabin, the Labour prime minister in 1975 are not allowed to remarry until some proof can
declaring that a Fundamental (:: quasi-consti­ be brought that their husbands are in fact dead,
tutional) Law of Women's Equality would and if they decide to live with anOlher man and
never be passed in Israel; moreover, already in have children by him. the laner are declared as
the 1930s, at the height of the ideological zeal mamzerim, outcasts from the Jewish national
of the self-styled s�ular Labour Zionist move­ collectivity for ever.
ment, people were ready to give up women's
right to vote, in order to prevent withdrawal of The Fate or the Zionist Dream
(he extreme religious communities from (he
yishuv institutions (the Zionist settler commu­ Women's position and women's roles then, are
nity). What "saved" the women then was the thoroughly affected by Zionism's central con­
fact (hat the extremist religious parties with­ cern for the reproduction or the Israeli national
drew anyway. . . . !j col1�tivity as Jewish. This article has examined
Women do have the right to vote in Israel, some of the factors determining this relation­
although in recent years they have been pre­ ship, and the series of debates which have
vented from doing so in local elections in some accompanied various demographic policies that
extreme religious settlements, especially among have attempted to reinforce it.
the seulers in the Occupied Territories (such as I began by quoting Rabbi Kahane when he
Immanuel). But in the 1950s, Golda Meir was stated that the issue of the Jewish character of
prevented from becoming a candidate for the Israel is the most central issue in Israeli politics
Mayorship of Tel-Aviv, because it was -more important even than security. II is no
claimed that, according to the Halakha. coincidence, therefore. that the first proposal
"women are not allowed to govern men." (This for a private member's bill that Kahane has
position never changed; Golda was subsequent­ raised in the Knesset related directly to the con­
ly "allowed" to become prime minister trol of women's national reproductive role. He
because, it was argued, her role there is formal­ proposed to pass a law forbidding sexual rela­
ly that of "first among equals" . . . . ) tions between Jewish women and Arab men.
The most serious effects of the incorporation (There have been reports in the press on the
of religious law into state legislation on abuse that women who used to be married 10
women's status relate to women's position in Arabs suffer in the "home" his organization
family law, where control of their constitution has opened for them to move to. H ) What is
as bearers of the national collectivity is most even more revealing, however, are remarks that
carefully guarded. They are not allowed to come from so called "dovish left" Zionists, like
become judges in the Orthodox Rabbinical ex-general Prof. Harkabi who leaches Inter­
state courts which have the decision-making national Relations at lhe Hebrew University.
monopoly in issues of marriage and divorce; He obj�ts to Transfer and calls for peace and
furthermore, women's evidence. as a rule, is even for dialogue with the PLO: "If we don't
not accepted, especially if there are male wit­ reach some agreement, there is going to be hell
nesses. Questions of guardianship of children here and not a Jewish state. We shall not be
and maintenance are dealt with by two parallel able to keep two million Arabs under curfew.
court authorities-secular and religious; in the The rebellion will continue and I cannot see
..

l7
how we could castrate every Arab male in the 21. "Sabra" is the nickname given to the Jews who were
born in the Yishuv and in Israel. It is the name of a �actus
West Bank and Gaza strip in order to prevent
which was widespread in Palcstine. The Sabras are sup·
them from multiplying naturally."" posed to be like the fruit of the cactus-thorny on the out·
Is it the case that the dream of (he Zionist­ side and swect inside.
Imagined Community has, in fact, become a 22. There is still no good summary of this political trend in
nightmare? Israel although Maxim Ohilan tried to do it in his book
How Israel Lost its Soul, Penguin, 1974.
FOOTNOTES 23. Masada is the name of the fortress mountain in the
Judea desert in which the last rebels against the Romans
I . Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communilie:;, Verso, 1983. resisted foreign rule to the end and committed colleclive
2:Ha'aretz, October 27, 1981. suicide rather than give themselves up the enemy. It became
3. Rabbi Meir Kahane, Thorns in Your Eyes (Hebrew), The a Strong nationalist symbol of the Zionist revi�al: it is not
Institute of Jewish Ideas, 1983, p 9. incidental that Masada is also the nickname given to Israel's
4. Quoted by Kahane. Ibid. p 51. atom bomb.
S. Demographic Centre. Gools and Means 0/Demographic 24. An exlreme example of the development of this political
Policy, (Hebrew), Labour and Welfare Ministry. 1919. lrend, focused around Gush Emunim and the settlers in the
6. See, for example. F. Edholm, O. Harris and K. Young, West Bank. is the way that the religious underground has
"Conceptualizing Women," Critique oj Anthropology, been conspiring to bomb lhe Al Aqsa Mosquc in order to be
3:9; O. Haris and M. Stivens, "Women & Social Reproduc· able to rebuild the Jewish Temple and bring about the ad·
tion," unpublished paper; and M. Mcintosh, "Gender & vent of the Messiah.
Economics," in Young, Wolkowitz & McCullugh (eds.), OJ 25. Israel Stalislicaf Abstracts, 1985.
Marriage and rhe Marker, CSE Books, 1981. 26. See H. Rosenfeld. Thl'Y "'ere Peasants (Hebrew),
7. See, for example, Sir William Beveridge, Rl'port on Hot�a'at Hakibutz Hame'uhad, 1964 and his later article in
Social Insuranel' and Allied Services, HMSO, 1942, P Booklelsjor Research and Critique, no. 3, 1978; sec also S.
154:·"With·its present rate of reproduction, the British race Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel, Institute of Palestine Studies,
cannot continue; means of reversing the re<:ent course of 1968.
birth rate must be found." And in the Soviet Union, like in 27. In the last elections there was an allempt to block The
Israel they rewarded "Heroine Mothers" for those with ten Progressive List for Peace, although it was an alliance be·
children and more, (Guardian, March 1979). tween Palestinian nationalisu and Israeli Jewish liberals
8, For further details on the initial reasons of the crisis see and leftists; its Palestinian MP. M, Mi'ari had his parlia·
my paper, "The current crisis in Israel" Capital &: Class, mentary immunity taken away and there are all the signs
no, 22, Spring 19&4. that they will not be permilled to enter the next elections
9. For a summary of the main differences between the two even in this formal.
tendencies, see Theodor Shanin. " The price of suspension" 28. The press is every day full of new facets of anti�Arab
in U. Davis, A, Mack & N . Yuval�Davis, Israel and tile racism. To give just a couple of examples from the samc
Palestinians. IIhaca Pres,,;, 1975. week: the Chief Rabbi forbade Jews to sell their apartmcnts
10, A correction of the Knes,,;et Fundamental ( quasi con·
_
to non�Jews (Ha'aretz 17 January 1986) and survey results
slitutional) Law no. 12, 1985. revealed that 42 percent of Israeli Jews want thc mass emi·
11 .'See U, Davis, Israel: Aparfheid Slale, Zed Books Ltd.. gration of Palestinians from Israel (Ha'aretz 14 January
1987. t986).
12. At this stage, the debate is nOt about using the religious 29. See, for example, the articles by Gershom Schoken,
definition itself, but whether or not conversions carried out "E�ra's Curse," Ha'arett. 29 August 1985 and Yehoshua
by non�orthodox rabbis abroad should also be re<:ognized. POTlll, "The state of the Jewish people or the Jewish statc,"
13. Sec A. Leon, The Jewish Question. a Marxist Interpre­ Ha'arl'tz, 6 October 1985 (Hebrew).
tation, Pathfinder Press. 1970; and I. Shahak. "The Jewish 30. Editorial in Ha'ofam Hazeh (Hebrew), 24 April 1985.
religion and its attitude to non�Jews," Khamsin nos 8 & 9. 31. Protocols oj the Knessel, 4 April 1949.
14. See my paper on " Marxism and the Jewish Question." 32. See y, Bailin, The Price 0/ Unification: the Israeli
History Workshop Journal, October 1987. Lobour Party until the Yom Kippur War, (Hebrew),
15. On the debate around this law sec A. Orr, The Unjewish Revivim, 1985.
Stale. Ithaca Press 1983. 33. During the last election campaign, for the first time the
16. Reported in Ma'ariv (lHaeli daily) 29 March 1984. declion campaign by the major Zionist parties in the Arab
17. See Dovar (lsraeli daily) 6 May 1985. sector in israel did not take place mainly via traditional
18. S. Svirsky & D. Bernstein, " Who worked in what. for Hamula heads, This was especiaUy true for the party head·
whom and for What." (Hebrew) Booklelsjor Reseurch and ed by General Ezer Wei�man.
Critiqul'. no. 4, 1980. 34. Haim Ronen, "Israeli Arabs mulliply faster than the
19. See the articles of Emmanuel Farjoun and Avishai Ehr· Chinese," Bamakhane. army weekly (Hebrew), 17
lich in Khamsin no. 10. November 1982.
20. Fiddler on Ihe Roo/ is a famous musical based on the 35. In May 1976, the poet Owani Sawit was arrested afler
life of the East European shlCtl; "Our village in the Atlas reading some of his poems on the "Day of the Land"
mountains" is a famous song by the Moroccan singer of the mcmorial. including a poem in which he promised - "Hey.
Natural Selection group. murderers! Do you really believe that you can murder my

"
people?! This is an impossible mission/ If you murder sill., publications, 1977.
we shall bring to the world sill.ty on that same day" (Arabic). 52. Sarah Azaryahu, The Organization 0/ Hebrew Women
36. S, Smooha, Israel-Pluralism and Conflict, RKP. 1978; for Equal Righls in Ihe Land 0/ Israel (Hebrew), Karen
stt also the articles by S. Svirsky and D. Bernstien leelrat ha'isha. 1977.
(Hebrew) in Booklels/or Research and Critique, nos. I & 4. 53. Reported in AI-Hamishmor daily, 27 February 1986.
37. See the articles by E. Farjoun and A. Ehrlich in Kham­ 54. Ma'ariv, 13 March 1988.
sin 10.
)8. Report of the Prime Minister's Committee on Children Nira Yuval-Davis has been involved in anti­
and Youth in Dis/ress, 1974 (Hebrew). racist and ami-sexist struggles in both Israel
39. See, for example, Ari Shadt's article "Is Israel with­ alld Britain. She is a member oj the editorial
drawing from the army?" (Hebrew) Ko/ere/ Rashi/, 1 5 May
collective oj khamsin. She teaches sociology at
1985. Other similar articles appeared around that time also
in Ha'aret,- and Ha'olam Ha,-eh. Thomes Polytechnic in London.
40. Y. Yishai, "Abortion in Israel-social demand & polit­
ical responses," Policy Sludies Journal, vol. 7, no. 2
Winter 1978.
4 1 . Professors Baki and Dela Pergulas of the Hebrew Uni­
versity are continually quoted in the press, predicting the
shrinking of world Jewry from the present 1 1 .5 million to 8
million by the year 2000 and to 5 million by the year 2200,
and pointin8 out that by now 43 percent of world Jewry
births arc taking place in Israel (although less than 25 per­
cent of world Jewry actually live there).
42. The table in the Ejral bulletin (no. 15-16) shows that in
1979 there were 15,925 legal abortions in Israel, of which
1,665 were granted under the category of the age of the
woman; 4,465-forbidden relations; 2,165-danger to the'
embryo; 1.299-danger to the woman and 6,331-the
social situation of the woman; the last category was abol­
ished in 19SO and in [980 the number of abortions came
down to 14,703. However, in 1982. the number of legal
abortions was 16,829. 1,775 for age; 6,632 for forbidden
relations; 2,626-danger to the embryo; and 5,7%-danger
to the woman. Clearly the last category has been used by
the abortion committees as a substitute for the category
which was abolished.
43. Hadoshot. March 1988.
44. The average number of children to Jewish women in
Israel in 1984 was 2.7, while it was less than 2, iF not I , in ,...
., .
.;:
,._.. -"�".-..
' '''''''. '"-' '' '''''''..," ..._."" ...-.
most WeStern countries. For systematic comparison of the .. - - - - - - � .. .-- -.- -� ,-- -- -- ..., -
,
situation of women and the family in Israel and in other - .... ..-. ....."'"
- ,,, - , - ' .. !!..-::.::.
----"
-

eountries SC(' Y. Peres and R. Katz, " Family and Familial­ •

ity in Israel," (Hebrew) Megamot, 26.1. pp 30-43.


*-{{;i.':';""i'fiI
45. See D. Hecht & N . Yuval-Davis "Ideology without
. .... ... ... _'u __ ...

.. . ",�3)
.. ..""
· . -_
, .. 8'"
-
- --- - - - -
. .. . -....
--

revolution: Jewish women in Israel" Khomsin 6 and A. , :;'";:".":- 1,8 7,


.-
Ehrlich, "Zionism, demography and women's work,"
I· ::.":.::" ::0::: -...... ". -.. 2.223
Khamsin 7. • _ ... • .. kn .... .. _...-. . .. ..... ... ..
" -,,
_ ... _
.... . _ .' ... ..
>.'0 2f1
46. See my booklet, · ..... ... .._. -
Israeli Women and Men: Divisions
1. ._
_ .<- .
3,ot'" 6,97
2.
Behind Ihe Unity, Change publications 1982 and my article . .., _ ........ .

j - .. .. - -, - .� . ....
. ----
,H'l lru
"Front and Rear: The sexual division of labour in the
290
Feminist Studies, vol. I I , no. 3, Fall 1985.
ISTlleli army," I.-... ,-�� ,,-,--
., i>""--
2ft(

47. Geula Cohen, quoted in L. Hazelton, Israeli Women­
The Reafily Behind the Mylh (Hebrew) Idanim, 1978.
' - - "' - - "
--- ---

.. _ .. .. ,-
�'i/'.
'"," - - -
48. See my article "Front and Rear," op. cit.
49. L. Shamgar, Wor Widows in Isroeli Society, (Hebrew),
Ph.D. thesis, Hebrew University, 1979.
SO. Naomi Frenkel, a settler writer, Ho'aret:.. March 10,
1988.
5 1 . See, for example, Hilary Land, "Sex role stereotyping
in the s(X:ial security and income tax system" in J. Chel­
Wynd &0. Hartnett (eds.), Sex Role Systems, RKP, 1978 &
Elizabeth Wilson, Women andIhe Welfare State. Tavistock
=

,.

,,;
PREFACE:
The A I DS Move m e n t a n d Its C h a l l e n ge

1988 marked the beginning of a new national grass roots movement, an AIDS movemenl.
Spearheaded by the direct-action, treatment-focussed group in New York City, ACT UP
(AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), formed largely from the gay community in 1987.
similar groups have sprung up in more than 30 cities creating the national ACT NOW net­
work (AIDS Coalition to Network Organize and Win).
ACT NOW's convergence on Washington, DC from October 8-1 1 , 1988 challenged
"business as usuar' at the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) and the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA). The rally at the HHS, from which we publish Vito Russo's
speech, and the disruption at the FDA that closed operations down, gave national focus to
the needs and alternative policies with which AIDS activists confront the current administra­
tion.
Demands on the welfare state are new to many segments of the gay male community and
certainly to gay male politics. If anything, given a history of repressive legislation and police
entrapment, the view of the state that has dominated the movement is "Get the State Off
Our Backs." Gay men like most Americans with a modicum of privilege have looked to the
market to meet their needs. But when health care couldn't be bought and discrimination
=

Civil disobedience ot the FDA. Debra SamdperU photo.


61


meant lack or refusal of services, gay men ex­ transigence that fuel the epidemic and pro­
perienced the limits of the marketplace and nounce a death sentence on those already in­
were forced to turn to city, state and federal fected with the virus. The women's health
governments for support. Thus the recent ex­ movement, the AIDS movement's most im­
perience of gay men joins the histories of the mediate predecessor, also moved against drug
poor, people of color and women in demanding companies, the medical establishment and
that the state recognize and meet the needs of government agencies with like passion, produc­
its citizens. ing alternative knowledges (like Our Bodies,
The insights that have grown out of these Our Selves) that gained a grass roots legitimacy,
histories must engage each other if a coll�tive became a watchdog on drug trials and
strategy that represents all those affected by the transformed, most especially, the delivery of
AIDS epidemic is to develop. This is the reproductive health care. In their analysis in
challenge and promise of the AIDS movement. 1971, the Women's Health Book Collective ex­
All this must take place in a context of daily posed the FDA as a regulatory agency "well
crises of literal survival. As Vito Russo asks, regulated by the pharmaceutical industry."
"Will this mean I get the drugs I need on Tues­ While the women's health movement fought
day?" for and supports stringent regulations on drug
The tension between responding to "a state trials and the AIDS movement is calling for a
of emergency" and developing a more detached relaxation of such regulations, their views of
analysis of US institutions plays itself out the FDA and drug companies are not as con­
within the AIDS activist organizations. Russo's tradictory as they may seem. Roben Massa in
reference to an opportunist Left makes the case his article. "Why the FDA," takes up the
in point. At ACT-UP meetings, leftists, often history of the FDA and clarifies how the
from Marxist-Leninist parties, repeatedly raise demands of the AIDS movement are about
the demand for socialized medicine. The de­ making drug trials good health care.
mand itself is not the issue. The frustration
comes in the seemingly abstract character of the The AIDS Movement Debates
goal, since no concrete strategy is outlined and
meanwhile the death toll is climbing toward Many debates exist among AIDS activists, in
50,000. answering questions on how to conduct scien­
We think Russo's anger and dismissal of left­ tific/medical research, how to represent all
ists in the AIDS movement raises a challenge to those at risk for AIDS and how to transform
those on the Left. Is raw outrage perhaps popular consciousness.
always a n�essary political emotion, too readi­ ACT UP/NYC has led the fight against drug
ly sidelined by the traditions of the Left. Jim trials thai use placebo controls or those that re­
O'Brien poses a similar question in his reflec­ quire a participant to use only the' one drug be­
tions on the New Left's response to the war in ing tested. ACT UP'� slogan on research is "A
Vietnam, printed in this issue. He wonders Drug Trial Is Health Care Too. Others within
,t

whether the very strength of the New Left, its the movement, especially some who do medical
ability to see the war in context, rather than as a research, argue that participants in drug trials
tragic aberration, didn't at the same time block must make sacrifices, that effective research
the outrage at the war itself. An openness to the demands such controls. But within these
place of passion in politics and a concern for disagreements, fundamental agreement ex­
meeting day-to-day needs as well as seeing the ists-such decisions belong to the communities
"larger picture" have been more associated in need and their allies among physicians and
with feminism than the traditional Left and the scientists.
questions raised here echo feminist challenges. As the demographics for the epidemic
With no cure in sight, with hope resting on shift-iv drug users and their sexual partners
expanded, effective education and more prom­ account for most of the new seroconversions
ising treatments, AIDS activists move against and women now make up 10 percent of the
the walls of discrimination and government in- caseload-different needs join those articulated

62
by gay men. Issues around clean needle ex­ they could not become HIV infected through
change and drug treatment programs become casual contact with People with AIDS (PWAs)
critical. As women move from caretakers to or those HIV positive at their workplace, about
themselves becoming ill, lack of childcare and one-half favored the firing of those with the
other allernatives to women's family respon­ virus. Or another example. Most people agreed
sibilities deepen the crisis of illness. Questions that their child would not be at risk if a child
of reproductive rights and reproductive health with AIDS was in their class and that children
become central to the politics of the epidemic. with AIDS should be allowed to attend
Even at the level of diagnosis and treatment, it school-yet about half of those who had this
appears that women manifest this syndrome basic information would remove their child
differeOlly from the patterns now recognized in from such a selling.
gay men and iv drug using men. An enormous The fear of contagion is legitimated by
effort to educate primary health providers to popular media every time they use the language
recognize that the frameworks for medical care of "AIDS carrier" or every time a conservative
and service delivery developed by the gay com­ initiative formulates the problem as one of con­
munity and embedded in the established AIDS taining the populations at risk rather than the
organizations will have to be transformed to ad­ virus.
dress the very different needs and resources of
these populations. A Challenge To Us All
Whether the goals and demands of the AIDS
movement are affecting popular consciousness Thus the AIDS movement confronts an enor­
is a key and open question for the movement. A mous task. Not only must it continually
"common sense" fear of contagion pervades broaden its base, beyond the gay community.
popular consciousness. Homophobia, racism for example, and make AIDS a genuine na­
and class bia� are infused in this fear and tional priority, it also must face the emergency
available to be used to gain support for of a mounting caseload. Crises of access to
repressive politics, legislation and referenda. A treatment and social services are pressing daily
recent survey of the general population showed realities.
that even though most people understood that Clearly the movement cannot achieve these
goals without other community support.
Broadening the base of the movement requires
solidarity and initiative from many groups in­
volved in community organizing. It requires
that groups organized around central America,
for example, know that their constituencies are
informed and supportive of the demands of the
AIDS activists just as those activists support
Central America work. In order to break
through the bigotry and apprehension that sur­
rounds AIDS, progressives need to hold
forums. disseminate literature or include ar­
ticles in their newsleHer. And importantly,
organizers in general need to confront the homo­
phobia and often the racism that lives in their
community base. The right wing is perched,
preparing repressive initiatives and legislation.
Any gain made by the AIDS movemeOl cannot
be sustained without popular support. Suppor­
tive initiatives have rarely come from the Left.
The challenge of the actions in Washington,
DC is a challenge to us all. -Ed.

Arrests at the FDA. Debra Samd�ril phQ/a.


63
STATE OF EMERGENCY
A Speec h from t h e A I OS Move m e n t

Vito Russo

A friend of mine has a half fare transit card which he uses on buses and subways. A few
months ago when he showed his card, the token attendant asked what his disability was-he
said, "I have AIDS" and the attendant said "No, you don't. If you had AIDS you'd be
home-dying. " I'm here to speak out today as a person with AIDS who is not dying
from-but for the last three and a half years Quite successfully living with-AIDS. Members
of my family who get all their information from reading the newspapers and
watching television know two things about me-that I'm going to die and that the govern·
ment and the FDA is doing everything in its power to save me. I think they've been lied to.
If I'm dying from anything it's from homophobia. If I'm dying from anything it's from
racism. If I'm dying from anything I'm dying from Jesse Helms. If I'm dying from anything
I'm dying from that moron who calls himself the President of the United States. If I'm dying
from anything I'm dying from the sensationalism of newspapers and magazines and televi·
sion shows w)1ich are interested in me as a human interest story only as long as I'm willing to
be a helpless victim but not if I'm fighting for my life. If I'm dying from anything it's not
from opportunistic infectipns as much as from opportunistic politicians and crazies on the
right and the left who are using AIDS to push their bullshit ideology by

Text of a :speech givl'n at the ACT·NOW rally infront of the Di'ptlrtml'nt ofHealth and Human Servius. Washington, D.C.,
October 10. 1988.
exploiting ACT UP's numbers for their own them-because it isn't happening to them so
non-AIDS related agendas. ' If I'm dying from they don't give a shit. And they don't have their
anything I'm dying from the fact that not houses burned down by bigots and morons;
enough rich, white, heterosexual men have got­ they only watch it on the news and then they eat
ten AIDS for anybody to give a shit. their dinner and they go (0 bed-because it isn't
Living with AIDS in this country is like living happening 10 them so they don't give a shit.
in the Twilight Zone. Living with AIDS is living They don't spend their waking hours going
through a war which is happening only for from one hospital 10 another, watching the peo­
those people who are in the trenches. Every ple they love die slowly of neglect and
time a shell explodes you look around to bigotry-because it isn't happening to them so
discover that you've lost more of your friends. they don't give a shit. They haven't been to twO
But nobody else notices-it isn't happening to funerals a week for the last three, four or five
them-they're walking the streets as though years so they don't give a shit. It's not happen­
we weren't living through a nightmare. ing to them.
Only you can hear the screams of the people dy­ We read on the front page of The New York
ing and their cries for help. No one else seems Times that Dr. Anthony Faucci says that all
to be noticing. It's worse than wartime because sorts of promising drugs for treatment haven't
during a war the people are united in a shared even been tested in the last two and a half years
experience. This war has not united us-it's because he can't afford to hire the people to test
divided us. It's separated those of us with AIDS them. We're supposed to be grateful that this
and those of us who fight for people with AIDS story has appeared. Nobody wonders why some
from the rest of the population. Two and a half reporter didn't dig up that story and print it two
years ago I read a Life Magazine editorial on years ago, before Faucd went public with his
AIDS which said it's time to pay attention to complaints before a congressional committee.
AIDS because "this disease is now beginning to How many people are dead in the last two years
strike the rest of us "-it was as if I wasn't the who might be alive today if those drugs had
one holding the magazine in my hand. Since been speedily tesled? Reporters all over the
then nothing has changed to alter the percep­ country are busy printjng government press
tion that AIDS is not happening to the real peo­ releases. They aren't covering the FDA in an in­
ple in this country-it's not happening to us in vestigative way. They treat Frank Youngl as
the United States-it's happening to them, to though he was god. Anything he says they
the disposable populations of fags and junkies print. They don't give a shit-it isn't happening
who deserve what they get. The media tell peo­ to them-meaning that it isn't happening to the
ple they don't have to care because the citizens real people, the world famous "general public"
who really matter are in no danger. Twice, we all keep hearing about. Legionnaire's
three times, maybe four, the New York Times disease was happening to them because it hit
has published editorials saying, "Dan', panic people who looked like them, sounded like
yet over AIDS," it still hasn't entered the them, were the same color as them-and that
general population and until it does we don't fucking story about a couple of dozen people
have to give a shit. hit the front pages of every newspaper and
And the days and the months and the years magazine in the country and stayed there until
pass by-and they don't spend those days and the mystery was over.
nights and months and years trying to figure All I read in the newspapers tells me that the
out how to get ahold of the latest experimental mainstream heterosexual population is not at
drug, and which dose to take it at, and in what risk for this disease. All the newspapers I read
combination with what other drugs, and from tell me that i.v. drug users and homosexuals
what source and for how much money­ still account for the overwhelming majority of
because it isn't happening to them so they don't cases and those at risk. Then can somebody
give a shit. And they don't sit in television please tell me why every single penny allocated
Studios surrounded by technicians who wear for education and prevention gets spent on ad
rubber gloves and refuse to put a body mike on campaigns directed almost exclusively to white,
-

.,
Vito Russo speaks in front of {he Deparlmenl of H(!(Jllh and Human Serl'ices. Oc{o�r 10. 1988. Oebm Same/peril photo.

Why the F DA
Why the FDA? A more likely target might be compromised by an intransigence that serves
the National Institutes of Health, which coor­ the drug industry's long-term profit goals
dinates federal AIDS research, or the Office of rather than the needs of desperate AIDS
Management and Budget, or Congress­ patients. "Other agencies sin by omission; they
especially in an election year. The FDA, after aren't doing enough," exlains ACT UP's FDA
all, is a product of liberal reform, painstakingly Action Handbook. "Only the FDA sins by
constructed through decades of legislation to commission; it is doing the wrong things, and
protect the public from having dangerous or they are deadly wrongs."
useless drugs foisted upon it by profit-hungry The activists draw on criticisms leveled
pharmaceutical companies. The present system against the agency by physicians. independent
dates from 1962, when Congress acted in the researchers, consumer watch-dogs, and even
wake of the thalidomide scandal to tighten the president's AIDS commission to argue Ihat
regulation of experimental drugs. Manufac­ the FDA's response to the epidemic-years of
turers were required to prove not only that their sluggishness and reams of paperwork-is inex­
drugs were safe but that they worked. cusable. To block the release of promising, safe
In its role as consumer advocate, the FDA drugs against AIDS with the same zeal the
acts as the liaison between public and private agency applies to headache remedies or
research. This places it in the best position to treatments for baldness is immoral, since, in the
speed AI DS-drug development. But the activists' words. "no drug could have a graver
agency's critics charge tllat its mission has been endpoint than the untreated disease itself."
--

66
heterosexual teenagers who they keep telling us so-called sophisticated gay men are abysmally
are not at risk for this disease? Can somebody ignorant about AIDS. If it is true that gay men
tell me why the only television movie ever pro­ and Lv. drug users are the populations at risk
duced by a major network in this country is not for this disease we have a right to demand that
about a young man with AIDS but about the education and prevention be targeted specifical­
impact of the disease on his straight, white ly to these people and it s i not happening. We
nuclear family? Why for eight years has every are being allowed to die while low risk popula­
newspaper and magazine in this country done tions are being panicked-not educated­
cover stories on AIDS only when the threat of panicked inlo believing that we deserve to die.
heterosexual transmission is raised? Why for AIDS is not what it appears to be at this mo­
eight years has every single educational film ment in history. It is more than just a disease
designed for use in high schools eliminated any that ignorant people have turned into an excuse
gay positive material before being approved by to exercise the bigotry they already feel. It is
the board of education? Why in the past eight more than a horror story 10 be exploited by the
years has every single public information pam­ tabloids. AIDS s i a test of who we are as a peo­
phlet and videotape distributed by establish­ ple. When future generations ask what we did
ment sources ignored specific homosexual con­ in the war, we have to be able to tell them that
tent? Why is every bus and subway ad J read, we were out here fighting. And we have to leave
and every advertisemenl and billboard I see, a legacy to the generations of people who will
specifically not directed at gay men? Don't come after us-remember that someday the
believe the lie that the gay community has done AIDS crisis will be over. And when thaI day has
its job and done it well, and successfully come and gone there will be people alive on this
educated its people. The gay community and earth-gay people and straight people, black
i.v. drug users are not organized, politicized people . and white people, men and
people living in New York and San Francisco. women-who will hear the story that once there
Members of minority populations, including was a terrible disease, and that a brave group of

SmOKe Bedfellows AIDS drugs are now in experimental trials; the


activists mention JO by name. But just how is
The politics of AIDS makes strange safety to be determined? Drugs which have long
bedfellows. ACT UP's militant demands on the been used for other illnesses may cause com­
FDA seem to place the activists in line with the plications for a pa1iem with a compromised im·
deregulation frenzy of the Reagan years . Citing mune system. And some AIDS drugs are brand
AIDS, big business advocates from The Wall new-they may pass preliminary safety checks
Street Journal to George Bush have called for but cause problems after long-term use. Dr.
changes to streamline Ihe drug approval pro­ Mathilde Krim, who has long advocated
cess. The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Quicker release of AIDS drugs, thinks the deci­
think lank, goes even further: it urges repeal of sion should be made on a drug-by-drug basis,
the 1962 reforms, and would reduce the FDA to but some activists believe the patient alone
issuing seals of approval like Good Housekeep- should decide what risks to lake.
ing. The balance clearly has tipped in the direc­
But ACT UP doesn't want the agency to tion of caution. Thcre's a widespread consensus
open the floodgates and abandon its rigorous among AIDS researchers that most drugs the
licensing standards. Instead, the activists de­ activists name (such as aerosol pentamidine,
mand "conditional release" of drugs for pa­ dextran sulfatc, and AL 721) are safe enough to
tients with life-threatening conditions while be more widely distributed.
trials continue. Under such a program, an In response to agitation and several congres­
AIDS patient could obtain any promising drug sional hearings, the FDA has made some pro­
Ibat has passed preliminary safety testing cedural changes. For example, until recently,
before it has been proven effective. About 160 the only way a patient could obtained unlicensed
-

67
people stood up and fought and in some cases
died so that others might live and be free. I'm FOOTNOTES
proud to be out here today with the people I
love and to see the faces of those heroes who
are fighting this war and to be a part of that , RA asked Vito Russo to elaborate on this comment for
our readers. Russo responded, " ...on the Right I was refer­
fight. To steal a phrase from Mike Callan's
ring to the opportunism of George Bush and the CUrrent
song, "All we have is love right now-what we
Administration which is using the AIDS epidemic as an ex­
don't have is time." cuse and a smokescreen to push for deregulation of the
Like the unsung, anonymous doclOrs who FDA which is their real agenda. On the LeFt. I have had the
are fighting this disease and are so busy putting sorry e)(perien� of The Revolutionary Socialist Workers
Party coming to gay demonstrations in Ihe past, trying 10
out fires that they don't have time to strategize,
lalch omo the gay movement in order Ihal it might seem
AIDS activists are stretched to the limit of their
that gay people as a group support their political ideology.
time and energy, putting out the fires of bigotry They don't want to fight for gay rights as much as they
and hatred and misinformation when they need wanl to claim us as numbers in their battle to appear suc­

10 be fighting for drugs and research money. cessful as an ideological movement. The same has been true
of the New Alliance Party, especially in regard 10 ACT-UP.
We need luxury time to strategize the next year
The New Alliance Party is not a political party but a
of this ballie and we need our friends to join us cull....They simply wish il 10 appear that they are sup­
so we can buy that time. And after we kick the ported by greater numbers of people than they are actually
shit out of this disease I intend to be alive to supported by. To do this they have been wasting their time

kick the shit out of this system so that this will (and ours) by pushing II phony and unnecessary "AIDS
Bill of Rights" which docs nothing Ihat isn't already man­
never happen again.
dated by law."
Vito Russo is aUlhor of The Celluloid Closet , Frank Young is currently Director of the Food and Drug

i published by Harper & Row and writes


which s Administration (FDA).

aboul Jilm for many national and local pubica·


lions. He lives in New York City.

drugs without being a part of a formal experi. mechanism that would make experimental drug
ment was to have an attending physician plead testing less rigid and more attractive to smaller
for special consideration. Last year, the FDA competitors. Most troublesome of all to
implemented a new system for dispensing unap· manufacturers is that Treatment IND regula­
proved drugs, called Treatment IND­ tions provide no protection from liability. In a
Investigational New Drug. Run out of major leller last month to Otis Bowen, secretary of
hospitals, the program hasn't worked the way Health and Human Services, the Pharo
AIDS advocates hoped it would. So far, only maceutical Manufacturers Association stated
one AIDS drug (trimetrexate, used to treat and its position unequivocally: (We] would oppose
prevent pneumocystis pneumonia) has been any sort of 'conditional approval' of a new
made available through Treatment IND-and drug application."
only to about 100 patients. Activists have dubbed David Barr of Lambda Legal Defense, an ad­
Treatment IND "a fast track with no trains." viser 10 ACT UP, says these obstacles are sur·
mountable: "Treatment IND could be made
Why the System Fails more attractive through liability protection and
tax incentives. The FDA could agree to expedite
Why has the system failed? Largely because licensing applications for companies enrolled in
ii's up to the company holding rights over a INDs. Finally, recognizing that AIDS is a na­
drug to make it available to Treatment IND. tional emergency, it could request from Con­
Manufacturers may hesitate for several gress the authority to demand that companies
reasons. They resent regulations which prohibit enroll or risk losing exclusive rights over a
profiting from drugs dispensed through the drug." Given the FDA's symbiotic relationship
program. Larger companies oppose any with the pharmaceutical industry, this is the

--

68
Passion Play at the F DA
We all suffer from AIDS by now, or al least began crossing the street to shout at one or
from onc of the related disorders-worsening another entrance. Seeing Red stalked the front
health care, bigotry, exhaustion, relentless loss. doors in bloody lab coots. Livid Lesbians yelled,
On Tuesday, October 1 1 , 1200 of us encircled "Tie me up, but not with red tape." The
the Food and Drug Administration in Candelabras fell limply to the street holding up
Rockville, Maryland to demand some fast tombstones, "I got the placebo-R.I.P." and
relief; the doctor, FDA commissioner Frank "Women with AIDS die twice as fast." Names
Young wasn't in, so we shut his big office Project volunteers held up a 1 2 x 1 2 quilt with
down. By the end of the nine-hour blockade, two stark names at the bOrlom, "You" and
176 of us had been arrested, and by current "Me." FDA workers pressed against upper­
estimates. 18 more Americans had died of story windows to watch this expressionist
AIDS . . . theater; some waved and smiled, because
For weeks, ACT NOW had been meeting theater arouses longing.
with lOp FDA officials to present demands, and To enter such a play does require a leap of
with Montgomery County police 10 negotiate faith: the structure is all but invisible. Indeed
terms. Wild rumors circulated among FDA "choreography" was the final agenda item at
employees: we were going to throw blood and our packed pre-action meeting the night before
urine; 15,()(X) of us were planning to camp out in D.C. 's All Souls Church. We had agreed
for days. The police looked ready for us as the upon non-violence guidelines and a list of
crowds began to galher at dawn. Some 350 were demands. but all the decisions on how to carry
poised in squad cars, busses, and watchful lines them out were ours: who would risk arrest,
at the open entrances on three sides of the what to communicate, how (0 "seize control of
18-story black box. SWAT teams in visored the FDA." Wave 3 intended to take over an of­
helmets and rubber gloves stood at a discreet fice, establish a New Center of i)rugs and
distance. One amnity group after another Biologics, and issue revised policy on FDA sta-

leal likely option of all. for AZT, for example; drugs safe for men may
The activists make several other demands, cause complications in women. "After a drug is
spriDging from their conviction that, in AIDS, licensed, it can be used on anyone and these
r.arch is health care. ACT UP insists that problems will show up," FDA spokesman Don
'IObmteers be informed of results as soon as McClaren says. The reason for the discrepancy,
they are available; the FDA replies that he insists, is to maintain the purity of an experi­
....ture release of findings could bias the ment. " If you keep adding variables, that only
raalts or frighten patients into leaving a study. slows the process, which doesn't serve
ACI' UP urges that HIV-infected people be anybody."
placed on safety monitoring boards; the FDA The heart of the matter is whose interest is
RIpODds that the composition of these boards being served? "Our iment is not to provide
is determined by centers conducting the trial public health in clinical trials," McClaren con­
and is "not very much in our purview. " cedes. "If you did that, you might have great
And ACT U P insists the trials be open t o the public health, but no drug development."
entire range of people affected by AIDS. AI Besides the afnicted, the FDA serves
J)I'eIent, gay white men reportedly make up manufacturers, whose interests aren't always
over 95 percent of those in federally financed compatible with those of their customers. The
draa studies, though nonwhites and women FDA, for example. declines to publish a com­
IIIb up more than half of New York City's prehensive list of drug trials because of federal
AIDS cases and an increasing percentage laws protecting the confidentiality of a corpora­
IIdoov.1de. Activists call this situation not only tion's property. Likewise, the agency has taken
IJiIJhIIl. but unscientific: Patients with a history no steps to discourage price gouging of AZT (at
artv..use are known to have a lower tolerance $10,000 per year, the most expensive drug ever
-

69
tionery. The Forget-Me-Nots planned to read selves surrounded and swept toward a
names of the dead in Frank Young's office, as second bus-great God almighty, busted at
some had read names at draft boards 20 years last.
ago. But getting inside was starting to look im­ Now is supposed to come the boring part-in
possible, and the cops were clearly inclined to the hands of the law, waiting like school­
lake as few of us into detention as they could, children for the recess bell. But we were a pretty
dragging some from the scene only to let them obstreperous busload. A hearing-impaired
go. How to mix up this polile two-step? member of PISD wouldn't cooperate, nor
"What's the country coming to," lamented one would we, until the cops leI his imerpreter on
of the United Fruits, "when a screaming faggot board and agreed to pay him. As the driver
has to wait in line to get arrested?" started a slow three-point lurn to pull away, we
By 8 a.m. all bUlthe main entrance was closed. hollered "Block the road ! " through one
Then Queer and Present Danger staged a die-in cracked-open window, and dozens swept in to
at the doors, outlining their bodies in chalk. lie down in front of the wheels, chanting, "You
Police encircled them fast and began a first block the drugs-we block the bus." After
busload of arrests, but now these doors too nearly half an hour, some of the sick on board
were impassable, and aU arriving employees were ready for bathrooms and rest, so we called
were advised to go on home. The FDA was sealed off the blockade and look the lO-mile ride to
shut; two people affixed a sign to the doors the county Police Academy. I had almost wrig­
reading "Federal Death Administration." One gled out of my plastic handcuffs when a cop
man in black was hoisted onto the central por­ spotted me-"Going somewhere?"-and made
tico to unroll and tape a giant Silence = Death them good and tight. Officer McNally, a well­
banner; he set off little smoke bombs to rein­ trained, affable comrol queen, claimed not to
force the slogan. Toward 9 a.m., 1 9 members be prejudiced against gays like "some of these
of PISD [People with Immune System hard asses on the force. " One cop said, "I'm
Di�ordersJ and five of our group found them- with you," although he wasn't entirely: he was

marketed) or pentamidine (the cost has risen placed on hospitals by dying AIDS patients, not
300 percent since the epidemic began). But the to mention the loss of productivity from an
FDA is hardly, as commissioner Frank Young epidemic that attacks people in their prime.
has claimed, "above economics. " As with all ACT UP's critique cuts right 10 a fatal flaw in
federal regulatory agencies, there exists a rather our for-profit health care system. The HIV
busy revolving door between the agency and the virus may not be within our control right now,
industry. The FDA reportedly has a 20 percem but that system is.
staff turnover every year. And in the end, patient-centered drug
Ultimately, this is a debat.e about economics, development would benefit everyone. Each of
not science. As of June, the FDA had only 127 us will someday be a patient.
officers tracking the 162 AIDS drugs in trials;
some involve paperwork of up to 100,000
Robert Massa
pages. When human trials are completed, it
takes an average of two to three years for the
agency to review the results. If research
facilities were adequately funded, experiments
could be more nexible and the results could be
analyzed more quickly. As things stand, the
patients' interest must be sacrificed in the name
of efficiency.
The irony is that the present system will be
even more expensive in the long run. Expanding "Why AIDS Activists Target the FDA, " Excerpts
drug research can't be costlier than the burden from Village Voice, Oct. 18, 1987
..

70
=
Diary: FDA Action
trying to get my real name, and I kept giving
him Brian Keith's.
Monday: At the demonstration in front of the
As we were getting booked some news came
in over a walkie-talkie: a basement window had Department of Health and Human Services. we
beell broken during a scufne, and four people put the Reagan Administration on trial. The
had hopped into the building, Later we learned verdict is definitely "guilty." This demonstra­
that 12 members of Seeing Red had entered an tion is our chance to articulate a broader
adjacent building and held a conference in the politics of the AIDS activist movement, but the
FDA's Ethics Office. OUT group was released al media fails to pick up on this and covers the
3 p.m. and made it back as the seventh and demonstration as a pre-FDA rally. . .
final busload of detainees rode off. A small After a quick bite t o eat we go off to the
picket line was still carrying on, but the stand­ "pre-action" meeting al All Soul's Church, to
off was complete: dozens of frustrated souls make final plans for the Civil Disobedience
hadn't managed to get arrested all day. A final (CD) at the Food and Drug Adminstralion .
chant went up-"Wc'lI be stronger, we'll be Used to leaving things to the last minute, our
back"-as a cleanup crew arrived for business Mass Act Out affinity group makes its
as usual lOmorrow. preliminary decisions at this meeting, and
agrees 10 scope out the situation when we get to
Dan Bellm the FDA and make more detailed plans ttu � n.
The group doubles in size when folks from
Boston Act Up, Boston PWA Coalition, and
several Rhode Island AIDS activists put aside
differences in order 10 be part of a bigger
Excerpts from Village Voice, "A Power &: Passion group. There are about 20 of us now, equally
Play, " OCI. 25. 1987. divided between men and women. We agree to

-
all wear bright yellow gloves (to mock the a kiss-in in front of a bus load of arrestees. We
police). We've named our affinity group chanl "Purple Rage in my hair, pardon me
"Nobody's Nasty Lillie Secret," but we while I kiss this guy/gal." We notice that the
become known as "Yellow Gloves. " Our plan bus driver of this particular bus is a sympathetic
is to meet in Rockville, Maryland at the ungod­ woman with several "Silence "" Death"
ly hour of 6:45 a.m. No one gets much sleep. stickers on her jacket. Everyone applauds her
and she gives the thumbs up ...
Tuesday: Images and sounds take over my Throughout the day I chat with building
senses. Brightly costumed affinity groups begin employees who have 001 been able 10 get into
to gather in the parking lot across from the work. Some of them work at the FDA, many
FDA and in front of the building. San Fran­ work in other departments the building houses.
cisco ACT UP is wearing tie..ctyed t-shirts with People from the Mental Health Department are
"Purple Rage" scrawled across the front. The very sympathetic to the protest. One man stays
PISD caucus of ACT NOW has formed an af­ around all day, and points out 10 us a "Silence
finity group. They have on white shirts and :: Dealh" poster a co-worker of his has put in
headbands. A New York ACT UP (AIDS Co­ his office window, many flights up. I have a
alition To Unleash Power) "Seeing Red" af­ long conversation with an off-duty police of­
finity group is wearing lab coats with red paint ficer who says she is out as a lesbian to everyone
splallered across the front and red gloves. They but people in her department, and has come to
can be seen throughout the day walking around support us i n the way she can-by just being
chanting 'The government has blood on its
• there and watching.
hands, and I'm seeing red." Everyone is chant­ At the end of the day. those of us still left get
ing "Act Up. Fight Back, Fight AIDS" and on the Metro back to DC. We are exhausted
"History will record, Reagan and Bush did and exhilarated. We are talking loudly and un­
nothing at all. " I notice many lesbians from containably about the action. An FDA
around the country who were once active in the employee approaches us, wanting to discuss the
Reproductive Rights National Network, and protest. She is so excited by the conversation
am not surprised by their presence here. thai she misses her stop and stays on for two
The whole demonstration has more the more stations to continue the conversation.
flavor of the sixties than the '80s. People are Mostly we ask her Questions. What did you
being spontaneous and creative. The bwilding is think of the protest? What do you think of the
soon draped with "Silence Equals Death" ban­ Reagan administration's response to the AIDS
ners and many different posters. All the en­ epidemic? We learn from her that burning an
trances to the building are blocked. No one else effigy of Reagan was a big hit inside the
can get in to work. There is more media at this building. She tells us that employees have been
demonstration than any I've been to lately. The discussing the protest for the last week, and
way to get arrested at this CD is to lie down in that today very little work got done because
front of the main entrance. Those lying down in everyone was completely captivated by the pro­
frony of other entrances are left alone. Those test. As they watched affinity groups approach
who lie down in the street in front of a bus-full an entrance, do an action, and then pull back to
of arrested demonstrators are also allowed to discuss their next move, her co-workers would
stay put. Finally the arrestees themselves ask exclaim, ' " wonder what they will do next?"
Ihe demonstrators to move. They don't want to We huddle together in a hotel room to watch
sit in the bus all day. They want to be processed the news. We are with Ihe men from "Purple
and released, so they can return to the FDA. Rage" again. The local news does extensive
"Yellow Gloves" hooks up for most of the coverage. The demonstration makes the na­
day with "Purple Rage." We become a bi­ tional news . . .
coastal action team, roaming around the Nancy Wechsler
building forcing the closing of entrance after
entrance. We are pushed around by the police, This article is excerptedfrom Resist Newsletter,
but most are not arrested. Our two groups stage November 1988.

72
- ,

SPECIAL OFFER
buy 3 books, gel 2 books free

1984 AND AfTER QUEBEC AND RADICAL


edited by Marsha Hewitt and SOCIAL CHANGE
Dimitrios t. Roussopoulos edited by Dimitrios Roussopoulos
Perspectives on authoritarianism and its Perceptive essays on radical movements
libertarian ahematives. Contributors and manifestations in Quebec polities by
include Gtorge Woodcock, NOirn qu.!bCois II1\3lysts. A study of radical
Chomsky. Murray Bookchin, Claire elements and their implct on the
Culhane, and Yolande Cohen. politicil development of Can.da's
ISBN: O·!nOO57-29-2 $14095 nation-province.

ISBN: 0-919618-51-0 $5.95

THE TRADE UNIONS


AND THE STATE
by Walter Johnson
CHINA
Johnson illustrates the mechanisnu of The Revolution is DeM·-I,on.g
Canadian laboura)nfliclS andcompares Li�'t tht Rtvolution
the effectiveness of direct leilOn to edited by Tbe 70's
collective bargaining or Slate
intervention as an instunnent of labour PORTUGAL Pteviously untranslatoo writing, of
Th Impossible RnoludOll non-Marxist Chinese revolutionaries.
militancy.
presenting their views on the HGreat
ISBN: 0-919618-76-6 $9.95
by Phil Mailer
Proletarian Cultural RevolutionH.
A signirtcant, disturbing book reeo­on
ting the eVCflI$ and the aflCmlath or"\he ISBN: 0·91.9618·37·5 $9.95
revolution ofthe camations.H
An. exposilion. of 1M impact ofpopular
power in a country which is "drifting 10-
IWUdsSlalt capi/olism."
Sunday Times or London

ISBN: 0-919618-33-2 $9.95

.11 HZ THE BOLSHEVIKS AND


WORKERS' CONTROL
1917-1921
by Maurice Brinton
This innovative analysis of the Ruuian
revolution and its implications for wor­
kers' aUlOnomy demonstrates how his­
edited by
lOrieal precendent can gcnerate fresh
l""AWn
DURRUTI
insights in10 conlemJXlTary problems.
ISBN: O-!H9618-69-3 $5.95
WAllERSTEIN
The People Armed
by Abel Paz CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
translated by Nancy MacDonakt by Christian Bay and WORLD INEQUALITY
Here is an exhaustive biography of the Charles C. Walker edited by Immanuel Wallerstein
legendary Spanish rcyolutionaIry Bue.
Examines the political, social, and moral A selection ofarticles constituting an in·
navcntura Durruti, an unoompromising
foundations and the practical applications ternational debate on inequllity and de.
anarchist.
of driect action. velopment.
ISBN: o.919618-74-X $14.95 ISUN: 0-919618-56-1 $4.95 ISBN: 0-919618-65-0 $7.95

Send your order to : BLACKROSE BOOKS


3981 SI. Laurent Blvd., Suite 444, MOn/real, Quebec, Canada H2W Ir5 (514) 844-4076

BLACK ROSE BOOKS


VOL. 20, NO. 5. SPECIAL ISSUE ON "RACE
& COMMUNITY CONTROL, MEDIA, POLITICS" with
'Slueprint for Tomorrow: The fight for community control in
black and Latino Boston,' 'The Mandela Campaign: An
SACI( I
overview: 'Community & Kinship, History & Control: Two SSUE
S OF
organizers view development and Basion's

;;;i�;:;:���j;\
111i;;;1i;;;fR1$l@O©
neighborhoods,' 'Winter i n America: Noles on media and
race,' 'Anti-racists and other demons: The Press and
Ideology in Thatcher's Britain.' Also Included, ' I n
ll. �"�I}:mJ�E��IRI�O�©�j;\�';;;,1
Search of Common Ground: A Review Essay'
James Green's searing critique of the P u l itzer
Prize history of busing in Boston.
Vol. 20, N o. 1 . �Women & WarN issue featuring
'Conflict, Fear, and Security in the Nuclear Age: The
Challenge of the Feminist Peace Movement in Itaty: 'Her
Story of War: Demilitarizing Literature and Literary Studies:
'On the German Question: Left, Right, and the Politics of
Nalional ldentity,' 'US Media and the "Election Coup" i n the
Philippines: as well as 'Letter from Berlin: and a tribute to
Genet.
Vol. 19. No, 6. �Technology: The Tarnished
Promise" featuring 'Reproductive Engineering and the
Social Control of women,' 'Border Wars: The Science and
Politics of Artificial Intelligence,' 'Notes for Reproductive
RighlS Activists,' the new Hollywood Red Scare, and
"David Horowitz: The Politics of Forgetting."
Vol. 1 9 , NO. 5. SPECIAL ISSUE ON WEST
GERMANY TODAY with articles on Bitburg, Fassbinder,
Anti-Semitism and the Left, Crisis in the Greens. Also a
report on elections in Guatemala, and interviews with
Nicaraguan coffee workers.
V o l . 1 9 , No. 4 with "Bananas, Bases, and
Patriarchy: Women and the M i litarization of Central
America" by Cynthia Enloe.
V o l . 1 9 , Nos. 2·3. SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE
BRITISH MINERS' STRIKE OF 1 984-85 with articles by
John Field, Bob Sutcliffe, and Larry Goldsmith and Brian
Flynn; Also, articles on the IWW, and the working class 1n
the academy.
Vol. 19, No. 1. SPECIAL ISSUE-
"QUESTIONS FOR THE PEACE MOVEMENT :
ANTI-INTERVENTIONISM & ANTI-MILITARISM" with
articles by Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmed, Susan Levene,
and Dan Smith.
Vol. 1 8, NO. 6. SPECIAL ISSUE ON
CULTURE AND YOUTH" with articles o n "Women i n Pop
Music," Punk and Hip Hop Subcultures; Rock against
Sexism, and "Zool Suits and Style Warfare, and

89 0'3/ 99 LO 0 U l
"ConlE'!ssions of a 'movement OJ'.M Illustrated galqfA:-
:,
For l isti n g o f other back I � t);L! �7 /
details of RA's SP C i � 1 subscription 01
.
IOserts i n t h i s Issue.
� �� �� ���� R N
C NG
ARY , '

STO NEH ILL COLL EG.E


::.-;.:.:: ::::::..... : .- .:..::'.::::::::.::::':::-.::-\:.. :. ::':::'::::::::.:::.' ::..::::::::.:::: ::::::::::::::::::::::: MA 02357
: : : : . .
: ::: }}::: \\::::::::::::::::.:::::i.:::::::.",.::::: :::,:::::::::.:.:.:.:.:.:::::::::::::::::::.:::.:::,, :,: . : : : N EASTON

You might also like