MARTIN J. MURRAY / REMEMBRANCE / Larry Caroline disarmed critics without demeaning them

Posted on December 4, 2025 by Alice Embree
Larry Caroline and Friend. Art by Trudy Minkoff, The Rag, May 11, 1968.

By Martin J. Murray / The Rag Blog / December 4, 2025

I knew Larry Caroline for only a few short years in Austin. It was a memorable experience. My first recollection of Larry was at the Capitol Building around October 10, 1967. This tall, lanky guy with a big beard got up to speak. He put into words what I knew but could not articulate clearly. The guy — Larry — went through a long list of “wrongs” in America, persistent racial injustice, continued segregation in the South, corporate greed, political indifference.  He said “you can’t change things one at a time. The whole bloody mess (using a British phrase) has to go. Then more.

Wow. He put into words what I was thinking but was unable to articulate.

Soon after, I started going to SDS meetings. I saw Larry in action. He could formulate an argument so quickly. What I remember in watching him in dialogue with young people who did not share his views that he was never demeaning, dismissive, or arrogant. He showed with rational rigor the “wrongness” of their ideas defending capitalism and the war.  I have never forgotten his style of debate and have tried to emulate it ever since. Disarm your critics but never demean them as persons.

Larry was part of the “big three”: slightly older men whom I admired. Martin Wiginton was the ultimate tactician — focusing on what to do in building demonstrations. Greg Calvert was the strategist, thinking beyond the antiwar movement about how to build coalitions to challenge capitalism and its war fever. Larry was the great thinker, using rational thought and logic to work through big problems.

In Larry’s last term in the Philosophy Department (I believe Spring term 1969), I was his teaching assistant.  What a joy. I got to hear his lectures the whole semester. He was so smart

Frank Erwin was, of course, the Grand Inquisitor. But John Silber was his handyman.  Greg Calvert once likened Silber to the famous quote about Talleyrand –“he’s nothing but shit in silk stockings.”

Larry was done such a great disservice by Erwin, Silber, and the leadership of the Philosophy department.  Through it all, Larry maintained a high public profile.

In the time I spent with Larry before he started working at the alternative school Greenbriar, I learned how to think. I read his dissertation chapter named “Why be Moral?” It was so informed and erudite.

His legacy for me is straightforward: he got me to think and to be kind to others, even when we disagree with them.

Martin J. Murray is the author of Insurgent Politics in the Lone Star State: Remembering the Antiwar Movement in Austin, Texas, 1967-1973.

Rag Blog Afterword

Larry Caroline passed away on November 7, 2025. He was 85. An obituary shared by Larry Caroline’s family recounts his early life:

Born in upstate New York, Yisrael (Larry) grew up in a Yiddish-speaking home that valued Jewish identity but was not observant. The experience of facing discrimination as a Jewish child awakened in him a lifelong drive to stand up for those who were mistreated.

While studying philosophy at the University of Rochester, he became president of the NAACP chapter and a leader in the campus movement for civil rights. He organized protests against racist fraternities and became an outspoken advocate for equality and peace. His early ideals, deeply rooted in justice and moral clarity, shaped his work as a professor and public speaker.

After earning a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, he taught at Kentucky State College during the civil rights struggle. Later, as a professor at the University of Texas, he became known for his passionate opposition to the Vietnam War. His remarks at a protest rally, calling for “a revolution” to end the war, made front-page news across Texas and ultimately led to his dismissal from the university.

Barbara Hines, who was featured along with Judy Smith in the documentary Lone Star Three, shared this memory with The Rag Blog: “Larry’s philosophy course in the spring of 1969 made such an impact in my life.  Introducing me to Herbert Marcuse and Judy Smith.”

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ALLEN YOUNG / BOOK REVIEW / The Trees are Speaking

Posted on December 3, 2025 by Thorne Dreyer

By Allen Young / The Rag Blog / December 3, 2025

“The Trees Are Speaking: Dispatches from the Salmon Forest,” by Lynda Mapes, University of Washington Press, 2024.

Well, we all know that trees cannot talk. But we also know how important trees are. Just about everyone, no matter where they live, has admired a beautiful tree. It’s hard to imagine a landscape painting that doesn’t have at least one picturesque tree in it. We also know that trees give us wood for many uses, yield pulp for paper, and provide homes for wildlife. In addition, we’ve learned that trees can grow old and attain amazing height, can die from disease, can burn in forest fires – and more.

So when journalist Lynda Mapes entitled her book The Trees Are Speaking, she was using figurative vocabulary, filling 250 pages with good writing to educate us about these amazing living things that share the planet with us.

If you love nature, and especially if you are interested in environmental politics, this is a book for you.

The subtitle, “Dispatches from the Salmon Forest,” may seem a little strange, but we learn that there actually is a biological connection between the forest and the salmon that swim up fresh-water rivers (from both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans) to spawn and serve as food for wildlife.

Mapes is based in Seattle and recently retired from her reporter’s position at the Seattle Times, where her beat was both the environment and Native American affairs. She has won several awards, including the 2021 National Outdoor Book Award for Orca: Shared Water, Shared Home.

Author Lynda Mapes at the Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska. Photo courtesy of Mary Catharine Martin.

She continues her work as an articulate, creative journalist sponsored by foundations and other media outlets, recently exploring the enormous Tongass National Forest in Alaska.

Full disclosure: I established a friendship with Mapes a few years ago when she came to the Harvest Forest in Petersham, Mass., near my home, where she got to know professional foresters and ecology academics and authored a book entitled “Witness Tree.”

To accomplish her goal of understanding the message the trees have for us humans, Mapes spent considerable time in the Pacific Northwest (primarily British Columbia, Canada) as well as in the northeastern state of Maine.

With narratives in both of these locations, she introduces the reader to experienced foresters and forest ecologists as well as to Native Americans, all of whom share their knowledge, hopes and dreams. One of the writers she quotes is Henry David Thoreau, whose book on the north woods of Maine was previously unfamiliar to me, even though I was aware of other works by Thoreau.

Mapes is not reserved in her approach to the people, the trees and the rivers. This might be called participatory journalism. She climbed one of the ancient Douglas fir trees, for example, just as she slept one night in the oak that was the subject of her earlier “Witness Tree” brook.

Mapes plays with language, adding to our enjoyment.

For example, she juggles and alters nouns and verbs and adjectives, using them in unexpected ways to help the reader experience what she experienced.

Here’s a sample:

“Over their lifetimes these grand old trees self-prune, dropping their branches from the bottom up, resulting in long, straight, branch free trunks towering to a short crown with a wind-blasted top. The bark, as the tree ages, becomes more than a foot thick and deeply grooved and takes on a dark, rich, reddish-brown color. Its twigs are densely quilled with needles and the cones, two to four inches long, are perfectly symmetrical. They make fine food for animals, including chipmunks, mice, shrews, red squirrels, and songbirds that poach seeds right out of the cone.”

 In the Pacific side, Mapes paid special attention to the Douglas fir, writing this:

“As a living tree, it is the anchor species of the moist forests westof the Cascades. So this was royalty that I was about to encounter,a Douglas fir soaring more than twenty stories. Armored with thickplates of bark, the Discovery Tree glowered with gravitas. It has stoodfor some four centuries. And here stood I, hoping not to show that Iwas nervous. No. It was way worse than that. I was hoping to survive this encounter that loomed large as this tree in my tiny, short little marshmallow-soft mammalian life.”

 I felt a sense of relief when Mapes’ climb up this big tree came to a safe ending, whereupon she wrote: “With a thump, my feet were back on the ground. I unclipped from the rope and harness, bewildered at the abrupt change of worlds. The tree’s motion stayed with me, the same way being at sea stays in the legs. I was still feeling the sky river of wind.”

While calling upon academic research as needed, there is playful delight at times, as in this paragraph:

“A calypso orchid lights the gloaming beneath a gnarled cedar, its magenta and white blossom a vision of tiny perfection, from its striped throat to the delicate pink spray of its bloom. This orchid’s common name isfairy slipper. If there are fairies here, I am pretty sure this is wherethey live, donning fairy slipper blossoms for midnight ballets amidqueen’s cup lilies and lady ferns on full-moon nights.”

 And her choice of words creates a mood and a sensation, as in this excerpt:

“It was a perfect August day, the sea wind tangy, the water green glass.Rocky islets were hatted with forests and porpoises knifed the water.Trees along the shoreline were sculpted to the blow of the wind. The mountaintops were quilled with old-growth trees, their silvered andbroken tops spearing the forest canopy and giving the land a porcupine back.”

The messaging in the book is mildly anti-capitalist as she describes how paper mills in Maine led to so much damage in the woods and, upon closing, caused havoc and despair in the mill towns. We learn about the infestation of insects, past and present, crossing oceans via international commerce. These are the bugs that killed and are still killing millions of trees – Dutch elm disease in the early 20th century and the emerald ash borer and wooly adelgid of today (killing ash and hemlock, respectively).

The reader rides a roller coaster of sadness and joy. In early chapters, the focus is on old growth forests – how much has been cut down, and the struggles to preserve those that remain. Later in the book, there is progress to celebrate, as society benefits from the awareness of climate change and the pride of both Native American tribes and  tree-hugging environmentalists.

[Allen Young has lived in rural North Central Massachusetts since 1973 and is an active member of several local environmental organizations. Young worked for Liberation News Service in Washington, D.C., and New York City, from 1967 to 1970. He has been an activist-writer in the New Left and gay liberation movements, including numerous items published at The Rag Blog. He is author or editor of 15 books, including his 2018 autobiography, Left, Gay & Green; A Writer’s Life.]

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THORNE DREYER / JOURNALISM / Central to the new Rag’s voice is to retain the levity of the original

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Thorne Dreyer

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / December 1, 2025

Since editors Ava Hosseini and Kira Small — with the help of managing editor Grant Lindberg — started their seemingly modest endeavor to resurrect the underground newspaper, The Rag, that we published from 1966 to 1977 in Austin — ancient history, to most of you — their new zine, also tagged “The Rag,” has taken off like few could have imagined. 

This week I’ve seen front page feature stories and meaty thought pieces about the importance of this new journalistic upstart. “Disillusioned UT seniors choose satire as a salve,” headlined the Austin American Statesman. With the subhead: “Pair revives 1960s publication forged in a similar fraught era.” “Counterculture magazine revived after nearly 50 years,” added The Daily Texan.

The head on an article in the San Antonio Express-News reads: “Disillusioned by UT, seniors choose humor over outrage — and revive 1960s-era newspaper.” “Why UT Students Are Reviving an Underground 1960s Newspaper,” headlined Texas Monthly in a substantive feature article — then, as a subhead, added, tongue firmly in cheek: “Instead of stalking our ex-boyfriends online, we started a newspaper.”

Some of The Rag’s founders, now nudging their 80s (don’t tell them I told you), offered encouragement and nuts and bolts advice, especially my colleague Alice Embree. We had a gathering of old and new at the editors’ home/office, which I attended. Alice was quoted in Texas Monthly, after watching Small speak to a group on the UT campus, “I was amazed at her courage to speak out, her energy.” Then she approached Small to offer help.

“Central to The Rag’s voice is its commitment to retaining the levity of the original — something that seems to come naturally to Hosseini and Small, “wrote Texas Monthly’s Sasha von Oldershausen. “Anger burns really quickly,” Small told her, “Humor is more sustainable.”

The San Antonio Express-News, in a photo cutline, said that “The Rag co-editors-in-chief Kira Small and Ava Hosseini run the revived University of Texas underground magazine out of their apartment in Austin. Started in the 1960s to combat censorship on campus, the revived left-leaning magazine describes current events with humor, quality reporting and witty drawings.”

From left: The original Rag‘s Richard Croxdale, The Rag‘s managing editor Grant Lindberg, The Rag’s co-editors Kira Small and Ava Hosseini. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

Lily Kepner, who writes for Hearst papers the Austin American-Statesman, San Antonio Express-News, and the Houston Chronicle wrote a feature piece that appeared in all three papers. In Kepner’s article, which covers the better part of two pages in the Statesman, she wrote: “The Rag — a countercultural, progressive magazine — first published Oct. 10, 1966 as part of a national underground syndicate of progressive magazines, seeking to counter the pro-Vietnam perspective. The inaugural issue, opposing the new conservative editor at The Daily Texan, combined advocacy, facts and humor in an attempt to rally the campus during an increasingly grave political moment.”

In 1972, Laurence Leamer, author of The Paper Revolutionaries, called the original Rag “one of the few legendary undergrounds” and historian John McMillian tagged The Rag a “spirited, quirky and humorous paper whose founders pushed the New Left’s political agenda even as they embraced the counterculture’s zeal for rock music, psychedelics, and personal liberation.” There would be hundreds of underground newspapers and Austin’s Rag, the first in the South, was among the most influential.

The Rag’s contemporary version could do worse than emulate such efforts in its own unique voice.

[Thorne Dreyer was the original editor of The Rag in 1966, soon joined by co-editor Carol Neiman. He has since edited the digital rebirth of The Rag —  The Rag Blog — and the Rag Radio show which he hosts and produces on KOOP-FM in Austin. His latest books are Making Waves, published by the Briscoe Center for American History, and Notes From the Underground, published by the New Journalism Project.]

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SUSAN VAN HAITSMA / HISTORY / CodePink: Austin’s history is alive at the Austin History Center

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Thorne Dreyer

CodePink Austin at “I Miss America” pageant in Million Musicans March, March 17, 2007. Photo by Jim Turpin.

By Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / November 27, 2025

AUSTIN — With the current U.S. administration trying to excise and falsify U.S. history, we, the people who make history are more determined than ever to write, preserve, and make known our individual and collective experience as peace and social justice activists.  

I’ve been inspired by Rag Blog writers and publishers, Alice Embree and Thorne Dreyer, who have been carefully and persistently documenting through their writings and presentations the social justice movements they’ve been part of in Austin and beyond.  I was especially interested in Alice’s excellent memoir, “Voice Lessons,” since she is an Austin native and has been active in many intersecting movements here, including CodePink Austin, in which I also was involved.  

Her conscientious work in helping to establish and support the GI Rights Coffee House, Under the Hood (2009 – 2015) in Killeen was an important element of CodePink Austin’s activism.  Alice’s Substack writing continues to inspire me, and her archiving projects  — her own, The Rag’s, and now her late friend, Glenn Scott’s — have been part of the impetus to collect our CodePink Austin files into an archive.  

Alice’s archive is housed at the Briscoe Center for American History at UT, which has a Civil Rights and Political Activism section.  While considering that institution, I also thought about the Austin History Center (AHC) as a fitting archive for the CodePink Austin materials because I had seen an AHC display of local photographs called “Taking it to the Streets” at the Bullock Museum in 2020, shown in conjunction with the exhibit, “This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement.”  

Because our CodePink Austin actions had been all about “taking it to the streets,” I contacted the AHC to describe what CodePink Austin had done in our years of activity (2004-2014), and the AHC Collections Manager responded with interest right away.

At the time, the AHC was beginning its move from the older, smaller building on Guadalupe Street into the larger, former Faulk Central Library right next door, and they could not accept physical archival materials until the move was complete.  That gave me time to get together the folks who had been most active with CodePink Austin to share the files we had saved about our antiwar actions during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and compile the papers into a cohesive archive.  We met several times with the staff at the AHC, who were very helpful at every stage, and I am glad to report that the archive is now catalogued, partially digitized, and ready for anyone to research!

Most of the materials, such as fliers, meeting notes, news clippings, articles and physical photos taken before the use of digital cameras are organized in folders that one can only see by going to the AHC in person.  We also included artifacts, such as a “Pink Police” uniform, several banners, buttons, stickers, etc. as part of the physical archive. However, a number of PDFs and scanned photographs are available to see online as “born digital” descriptions of our CodePink actions, and one can see these by navigating the archive online.  For example, a descriptive PDF synopsis of CodePink Austin’s group history can be seen at this link: 

https://ahc.access.preservica.com/archive/sdb%3AdeliverableUnit%7Ce89ab6c4-a031-4a25-b78c-f7e1145c1b76/?view=render

International Womens Day March in San Antonio, March 2014, Jim Turpin, Marilyn White, Fran Clark, Heidi Turpin.

The Austin History Center held a well-attended open house for the public on September 7 as a “soft opening” of the Faulk Center space, and the reading room opened for limited hours, Thursdays through Saturdays from noon to five, with expanded hours expected soon.  I have been twice to the AHC since their reopening and have found it a welcoming, light-filled space. The first floor features displays of artifacts with plaques in English and Spanish explaining the archiving process.  The knowledgeable, friendly AHC staff in the reading room on the second floor help folks determine what they are looking for and retrieve the materials from the shelves of files in the upper floors.

For the past 20 years, the AHC has placed a special emphasis on Community Archiving, helping to preserve Austin’s Black, Latinx and Asian-American histories.  AHC staff have produced a number of excellent exhibits for our libraries and several outdoor venues helping to illuminate the local civil rights movements that have shaped Austin.  I am pleased that our Austin CodePink archive joins those collections. 

Every group and every movement for creative, nonviolent social change will develop their own methods of activism in response to the circumstances of their time.  Knowing what kinds of actions have been done in the past can inform and inspire in all kinds of ways.  Let’s keep these important People’s Histories alive.

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MICHAEL MEEROPOL / COMMENTARY / Sleeping Giant: Thoughts on the results of the November 4 elections

Posted on November 18, 2025 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from  Pix4Free.org.

By Michael Meeropol / The Rag Blog / November 18, 2025

The following is an expanded version of a commentary delivered over WAMC-FM on November 7, 2025, by Michael Meeropol, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. It has been edited for The Rag Blog. Meeropol and Alice Embree will be featured on Thorne Dreyer’s Rag Radio program on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin and streamed at KOOP.org, Friday, Nov. 21, at 2 p.m. to discuss this article and larger issues it raises.

I stayed up to watch the election results and was rewarded with evidence that the “sleeping giant” — the American people — had finally awakened to the danger that Trump and Trumpism poses to our society.   Yes, I saw the exit polls.  Most people claimed to be voting in favor of the candidate they voted for, not “against” anyone.  Yes, in two of the three major elections, the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey were won by so-called “moderates” — two “national security women.”   (Governor–elect Spanberger of Virginia served in the CIA before getting into politics.   Governor-elect Sherrill of New Jersey is a former Navy helicopter pilot who had graduated from the US Naval Academy.)

But I believe despite what voters told pollsters, there was an underlying goal for many of the people who came out to vote — and that was to “vote against Trump.”  The candidates running did not have to say it — the people answering pollsters did not want to say it.  But I believe that, for example, the people standing in line for hours in California to pass a ballot measure that they were very confident would pass without their votes — when there was no one on the ballot! — were there to make a statement against Trump and as one person told a reporter, voted “in defense of my freedom.” 

Meanwhile, the election of a Democratic socialist in New York City who brought out a hundred thousand young people who had never voted and probably wouldn’t have voted if he hadn’t been in the race has been considered an anomaly.  And this attempt to dismiss his victory as something totally impossible to replicate anywhere else has occurred despite the fact that he had to battle unbelievably strong headwinds. Once he won the primary, literally millions of dollars were spent by billionaires attempting to smear him as badly as any red baiters did in the McCarthy era.

The fact that Trump routinely called him a communist means almost nothing.  But the attempts to smear him as a radical Muslim – even hinting he would have celebrated 9-11 — did produce a fear in too many Jewish New Yorkers that the city would no longer be safe for them should he win. And this, of course, was despite the fact that he won the vote of young Jews.  Meanwhile, his campaign was focused like a laser on economic issues — which also had pride of place in the two gubernatorial campaigns.

And to return to the Virginia campaign, the Republican candidate for governor spent a tremendous amount of money running ads attacking trans kids in sports and bathrooms.  According to a Substack entitled Erin in the Morning [Check out “A Stunning Rebuke Of Anti-Trans Politics”—Dems Win Elections Nationwide Despite Anti-Trans Ads.]

“According to MSNBC, more than 57 percent of Republican ad spending in the Virginia governor’s race went toward anti-transgender messaging, an effort to revive what the party saw as a winning wedge issue in 2024. But a year later, with prices still high and anti-trans rhetoric solving none of voters’ real problems, the strategy appeared to backfire. Voters seemed tired of the culture wars and frustrated that Republicans remained fixated on scapegoating instead of governing.”

Both Democratic candidates for governor stressed economic issues in their campaigns — just as did Mamdani. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, three judges on the State Supreme Court were up for their 10-year “re-election” where the vote was Yes (keep them for another 10 years) or No (send them off the bench).  A very clever set of ads made it seem that voting “no” was a way of protecting the integrity of voting in Pennsylvania. In fact, knocking off these three judges would have created a right-wing majority which would have been ready to rule in favor of whatever ridiculous challenge Republicans would mount to steal the 2026 and/or 2028 elections. All three campaigns went down to ignominious defeat.

 And in California as I already mentioned, people waited in line for over an hour to vote for an idea, Proposition 50, which changed the State Constitution giving the Governor and State Legislature the power to increase the number of Democratic majority districts in California by five — matching exactly what the state of Texas did at Trump’s bidding — adding five Republican seats.

What does this mean? I saw one poll out of hundreds that tells it all.  Thirty percent of the population told pollsters they identified as MAGA — that is the Trumpified Republican Party — the people who waved signs at the Republican Convention calling for mass deportation — the people who have rushed to join the newly militarized ICE so they can snatch people with brown skin off the streets without warrants or accountability].

Guess what?  The same poll asked how many people identified with the No Kings protests.  That number was 43 percent.   Given that the No Kings movement has no national leadership — no nationally known face of the leadership — no agreed upon principles beyond defending American democracy against Donald Trump and his fascists and has gotten very slight coverage from lots of the national media — that number is remarkable.   

[For details see https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/poll-shows-no-kings-protest-movement-topping-maga-public-support-rcna241803

It is particularly remarkable because the Speaker of the House was all over national television calling the No Kings rallies “hate America” events and attacking the participants as Hamas supporters, terrorists, supporters of political violence and communists. (Not sure I got all his epithets but people can look it up!). The attack lines of Trump and his Trumpists did not work for that 43 percent and I consider that remarkable as well.

I am convinced that the reason the elections were blowouts is because the energy generated by the giant crowds at the No Kings Day protests carried over to election day. So many people at these rallies asked each other and the speakers what can we do? It is easy to give money. It is (relatively) easy to write a letter to an editor. It is harder to take a drive and stand in a crowd for a few hours with a sign. It is much harder to knock on doors for your preferred candidate. Yet thousands of people — in New York thousands of young people — did just that for the New York Mayoral candidate who Trump called a communist as well as for the two Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey.  And in California, people waited in line for over an hour for an idea — proposition 50 — in California.

America is back.  But — now is not the time to rest on our laurels.  These blowout elections are validation of all the work that’s been done exposing the atrocities of the Trump Administration and making sure at least the majority of the public sees through the administration’s lies.  But it is almost a full year to the 2026 midterms.  A lot can happen in that time.  It is essential that the people keep coming out to demonstrations and rallying around support for our immigrant neighbors targeted by ICE.

More importantly, lawyers, officials, etc., have to prepare to fight Trump’s and the Republicans’ attempts to steal the 2026 election.  We know they are planning to do that — only massive voter turnouts and massive vote margins will stop them — as will courts like the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.   

The people have demonstrated they understand the threats to our democracy posed by Trump and his enablers — we just have to keep it up for at least the next year.

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LAMAR HANKINS / COMMENTARY / Norman Finkelstein explains the Israel-Gaza conflict

Posted on November 13, 2025 by Thorne Dreyer
Norman Finkelstein. Image from The DePaulia / Flickr.

By Lamar Hankins / The Rag Blog / November 13, 2025

Norman Finkelstein was born in New York City in 1953, a son of Jewish parents who survived the Holocaust. His mother grew up in Warsaw and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp. And his father was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz. They met in a displaced person’s camp in Austria after the war and emigrated to the United States. 

Finkelstein received his PhD in 1987 from Princeton University as a political scientist specializing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2020, he was named the fifth most influential political scientist in the world.  He has written 13 books based on his scholarship, and has been viciously attacked for that scholarly work by apologists for the actions of the Israeli government.  Finkelstein argues that “the real issue is Israel’s human rights record.”

Recently, Finkelstein has given several public lectures and interviews in which he offered the facts about the Israeli-Gaza conflict from his scholarly perspective.  This article attempts to encapsulate his views, mostly using his actual spoken words, with minor editing to avoid repetition and enhance readability. I quote parts of an an AI-generated transcript of Finkelstein’s lectures and interviews.

“Do you condemn what Hamas did on October 7th?”

The British television personality and sometime friend of Donald Trump, Piers Morgan likes to begin any recent discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the question, “Do you condemn what Hamas did on October 7th?”  For Finkelstein, this is a complex question “not to be answered glibly.”  

“[E]vents in Gaza did not begin on October 7th. There is a long, let’s call it a prehistory.  I think a logical place to begin is 1948 when Gaza becomes a distinct entity. About 300,000 Palestinians were expelled [to Gaza] from Israel.  Altogether, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled. But 300,000 of those 750,000 ended up in Gaza.  And that I think is the point of departure of any rational understanding of the situation there, namely 80% of the people in Gaza from October 7th forward, 80% of them, are refugees or descendants of refugees.  It’s overwhelmingly a refugee population.  It’s also, [by] fully half, a child population under 18 years of age.”

The Gaza concentration camp

“In the early 1950s, when Gaza was under Egyptian administration, outside observers came to Gaza, some just to see the situation, others to work there. The image that constantly recurs, [such as from] E. L. M. Burns [a Canadian], who was the senior UN official in Gaza, describes Gaza as a huge concentration camp. Bear in mind, I’m talking from the very beginning, the 1950s.  Under Egyptian rule, Gaza is already being described as a huge concentration camp.”

“Most of the people in this room will remember Senator Al Gore, who ran for president in the year 2000.  His father, Albert Gore, Sr. had also been a senator.  In July 1967, right after the June 1967 war, when Gaza comes under Israeli rule, Senator Albert Gore, Sr., goes to Gaza. He then comes to speak before the Congress on what he saw.  He said Gaza is a huge concentration camp on the sand.”

“If you fast forward to 2002, a senior Israeli sociologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Baruch Kimmerling, writes a little book. In passing, he discusses Gaza.  How does he describe Gaza?– ‘The biggest concentration camp ever to exist.'” 

“[In] 2004, the head of Israel’s National Security Council, [who is] still active in government or in official capacities, Giora Eiland, [has] a conversation with an American official [and] describes Gaza: ‘It’s a huge concentration camp.’  That’s coming from the head of Israel’s National Security Council.” 

Hamas — 2006

“Now bear in mind, 2004, when [Eiland] makes that observation, that’s before Israel imposes the brutal medieval blockade on Gaza, which begins in January 2006.”

Finkelstein explains that in January 2006, the president of the United States was George W. Bush, who began what he called “democracy promotion.”  Bush demanded that Palestinians hold elections, but at that time “Hamas did not want to participate because it felt that the elections were part of a fake process begun in Oslo in 1993, what came to be called the Oslo process, [which began] in September 1993 when Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Bill Clinton began the process that was supposed to end the conflict. It didn’t, but we’ll leave that aside. In any event, Hamas didn’t want to participate because they felt it was part of a charade or farce.  But pressure was put on them to participate. They did.  They didn’t expect to win, but they did. They won on a platform, not on ideology, not on trying to destroy the state of Israel. That was not their platform. They ran on a platform of reform.”

Continue reading →
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ALICE EMBREE / MEDIA / A new Rag for a new generation

Posted on November 6, 2025 by Alice Embree
The Rag, October 10, 1966 and September, 2025.

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / November 6, 2025

Many of us have worked to keep The Rag flag flying since the 2005 reunion.  It’s hard to believe that was 20 years ago.  We’ve kept Rag history alive with The Rag Blog, Rag Radio, and a 2016 celebratory fiftieth reunion that featured a film and a book, Celebrating The Rag: Austin’s Iconic Underground Newspaper.  We’ve also been invited to University of Texas classroom presentations.  

It’s great to see a new generation, inspired by the elder Rag, decide to publish a contemporary version.

Some of the Old Guard, met with the creators of a new Rag on August 23, at the home of Richard Croxdale. When Kira Small mentioned that she was majoring in pre-law and theater, and one of the OG Ragsters said, “It’s good to have theater to fall back on.”

The gathering reminded me of what is wonderful about the Rag community of yore.  The quick wits were alive and well despite the prevalence of hearing aids and canes.  The three University of Texas students had all the audacious energy that gave birth to the first Rag.  How could we not embrace their enthusiasm?

Soon, the first issue made its debut in the campus corridors as a zine.

Although the original Rag grew up to tabloid size, it started small. The first 12 issues were on folded newsprint, about the same size as the contemporary version. What makes the new zine version newsworthy is that it so perfectly meets the moment when free speech is on the line at the University of Texas at Austin. And it does so with irreverent humor just like its predecessor. In an age overwhelmed by social media and driven by for-profit algorithms, it is charmingly analog.

Kira Small wrote under this headline in the first issue of the new Rag: “No, Social Media is NOT the New Public Square.”

Trump’s alliance with tech bros is about more than homoerotic Twitter fights and impressing Papa Peter Thiel. It’s about sweeping debate off the streets and onto social media. You can scream as loud as you want, so long as it’s into a void.

The new Rag’s humor and cartoons are reminiscent of its predecessor.  A cartoon in the November 2025 issue is titled, “Governor Abbott coming soon to a bathroom near you.” A student is pulling Abbott and his wheelchair down the hall while the governor holds a hall pass and a Texas flag. If a photo is worth a thousand words, cartoons may be word millionaires.

I think the new Rag is meeting the moment with a zine that is provocative. And what it provokes is conversation and laughter.  Not more screen time.

I’m sure the new Rag caught the attention of the university “powers that be,” but it garnered some great press as well.

Sasha von Olderhausen at Texas Monthly, wrote “Why UT Students Are Reviving an Underground 1960s Newspaper,” in the October 14, 2025, issue.

For more on the reincarnated Rag, read the October 15th Daily Texan article by Jack Polishook.

The new Ragstaffers say,

In the few days since we began distributing the first issue of the Rag’s revival, we’ve been totally overwhelmed by the support pouring in from around and beyond Austin… Our team is a small, self-funded band of undergrads, and we’re working hard to produce the magazine at the rate of its reception.

You can help. Learn how:

https://substack.com/@txragmag

[Alice Embree, an Austin writer and activist, is the author of Voice Lessons, published in 2021.  She is an editor of Celebrating The Rag, published in 2016 and Exploring Space City!, published in 2021.  She posts on Substack as well as The Rag Blog.]

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JOSHUA BROWN / LIFE DURING WARTIME SPECIAL / Remembering Dick Cheney

Posted on November 6, 2025 by Thorne Dreyer
Previous installments are archived at
http://www.joshbrownnyc.com/ldw.htm

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ALICE EMBREE / BOOK REVIEW / Insurgent Politics in the Lone Star State: Remembering the Antiwar Movement in Austin, Texas, 1967-1973

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Alice Embree

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / September 29, 2025

This review is a cross post from Alice Embree’s Substack.

Rag Radio with guest Martin Murray:

Alice Embree was cohost with Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio interviewing author Martin Murray on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin. Listen to the interview.

Austin Book Events featuring author Martin Murray:

4:00 p.m., Tuesday, October 7  / Briscoe Center for American History / Sid Richardson Hall, Unit 2 / 2300 Red River Street, Austin, TX 78712 / Doors open at 4:00 p.m.

1:00 p.m., Thursday, October 9  / Batch Craft Beer and Kolaches / 3220 Manor Road, Austin, TX 78723

Martin Murray’s Insurgent Politics in the Lone Star State provides an insider’s view of Austin’s antiwar movement between 1967 and 1973, exploring that period in depth through his own personal narrative, scholarly research, and a focus on surveillance.

Martin’s own story begins in California where he graduated from the University of San Francisco and decided to file as a conscientious objector rather than be drafted into the war. He arrived in Austin in the fall of 1967 as a graduate student.

His personal journey unfolds with a sense of urgency and unknown outcomes. As the Vietnam War escalates, the protests evolve and tactics change. Martin lets us view this from a participant’s vantage point – the moral outrage as the death toll mounts, the debates as the movement shifts from protest to direct action and disruption, and the organizing taking place on many fronts.

Martin also brings a scholar’s eye to the story, documenting pivotal events in Austin with well-researched detail. He covers the 1968 Don Weedon Conoco demonstrations, and devotes forty pages to two events in 1969 – the Waller Creek tree protest and the Chuck Wagon riot. No writer has covered this period with such detail. Researchers will appreciate his timeline and endnotes for years to come.

Martin writes that “The Austin SDS chapter operated on a model of persuasion and consensus, tapping into the deep roots of Texas irreverent populist traditions.”  Martin describes the unique character of the Texas movement and the cast of characters. At a protest of Marine recruiters, he remembers Dick Reavis responding to a heckler who tells him to “Go back to Russia.”

“Dick, who was holding his Coke bottle by the top of the long neck (as he always did), slowly spilled out his words in a distinctive southern drawl: ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m kind of partial to China myself.’” [p. 61]

Martin’s book adds to the Texas lore, something I always appreciate.

In one lengthy sentence, Martin provides this synopsis,

“The thread running through seemingly disconnected events – perhaps starting with the March 1969 SDS National Council meeting in Austin, followed by the 1969 Chuck Wagon uprising, the anti-ROTC demonstrations (spring 1970), the May 1970 mass mobilization after the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State killings, the Armadillo May Day Tribe and the May Days demonstrations in Washington, DC, (May 1971), the protests at the LBJ Library dedication, and the mass students strike in spring of 1972 — was increasingly heightened security presence.” [pp. 34-35]

The author’s expedition through surveillance was motivated, in part, by a desire to research his own life. What he found instead was a “Historical Doppelganger,” a ghostly representation of his life where he was frequently confused with his twin brother.

Martin’s focus on surveillance is thorough. He has the passion of a sleuth, tracking down material from the FBI through the Freedom of Information Act, and delving into sources at the University of Texas Briscoe Center for American History. He pored over the archived papers of Lt. Burt Gerding, the Austin Police Department’s head of Criminal Intelligence, Allen Hamilton, chief of the University of Texas campus police, and George Carlson, head of security for the University of Texas System.

Martin accessed thousands of pages from FBI reports. He shared some of those as he was finalizing his manuscript. I was surprised to read a lengthy description of Arkansas communes, many of them familiar to me. Martin uncovered some gems at the Briscoe as well, including a taped interview with Burt Gerding conducted by Briscoe archivist Sara Clark. Lt. Burt Gerding was in a class by himself — both blowhard and provocateur. He often bragged about the havoc he was able to create. Martin followed up with several targets of the havoc. They contradicted Gerding’s “intelligence.”

Lt. Burt Gerding in the suit. Photo by Alan Pogue.

What did the various agencies find out about activists through their surveillance, photographs, and network of informants? Martin argues that those who spied were hobbled by their own biases, always looking for an organization or affiliation to explain the scale of the insurgency. The surveillance apparatus missed the point. The antiwar movement was reacting to an escalating War in Vietnam, to the draft required to feed that war effort, to atrocities like My Lai, and to the official lies used to justify the war.

“The security agencies could not break from their underlying premise that the Austin movement was a creature not of its own making but an entity put in motion by some secret puppet master orchestrating our every move.” [p. 30]

I was eager to see this book make it into print. It describes the history that was adjacent to my own. I was involved in the early years of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the University of Texas at Austin. I left Austin in the summer of 1967, following a major free speech battle in which I was a central figure. Martin arrived in the fall. I missed a lot of the period Martin describes.

Martin was part of a later incarnation of Austin SDS. He documents the vibrant antiwar activity that took place with SDS leadership and continued even as SDS splintered apart in 1969. That is an important contribution for historians — a unique take on the continuity of antiwar activism.

Insurgent Politics in the Lone Star State is a great addition to the history of antiwar activism. What happened in the Lone Star State didn’t always get attention from the national press. Martin’s book is a timely read in an era that once again requires insurgent politics and faces new forms of surveillance.

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ALICE EMBREE / REMEMBRANCE / Sam Jones: antiwar activist, lover of music, builder of guitars

Posted on September 27, 2025 by Alice Embree
Sam jones in his workshop.

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / September 27, 2025

On September 7, 2025 at a memorial for Sam Jones, there was music.  Friends and families shared memories and sang along to songs Sam loved.  His younger brother told tales of Sam growing up in Arkansas.  Sam’s older daughter shared a poem she had written, Cedar of Lebanon; his younger daughter led a song Sam sang as a lullaby, Sweet Shiny Eyes.  She accompanied the final song, I’ll Fly Away, with flute.  Music carried the day, as Sam would have wished.

I’m sharing a few memories gathered from email as the news of Sam’s passing and memorial were shared.

Bill Meacham:  I’m going to a memorial service today for Sam Jones, with whom Gavan and Paul and Henry and I used to play music back in the day. We called ourselves The Transients, after a disparaging remark by someone in power about folks hanging out on the Drag.  Sad times. I’m grateful for those of us still here.   

Pat Cuney:  I am sorry to hear such a kind soul has departed this plane. I will never forget the night he, Jeff, and I had a car breakdown somewhere in the country in Arkansas that stuck us getting help from a local garage, attached to the family house of a group that is held in my memory as Ma and Pa Kettle and their large family. While I was consigned to the women and tortured to take sides in a preference in the great Rainbow Girls or the Daughters of Job debate; Jeff stayed as quiet as the proverbial mouse and did his best to fade into the walls, and Sam, long ponytail and beard, whipped that accent out and charmed all the men and boys, and we departed in good repair and warm feelings.

Martin Murray:  We are losing comrades pretty regularly now. I remember walking with Sam Jones once and a car hit a dog on the Drag. Sam, who was a medic in Vietnam I believe, jumped into action and did the right thing.

Sam would always greet you with these words, “Let me hug your neck.”  Then he’d ask about your adventures.  My favorite expression from Sam seems to sum up much of life, “If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs.”

He had fashioned the garage at his home into a craftsman’s delight.  It was filled with tools and vacuum hoses to remove dust.  He made beautiful guitars and other musical instruments there, adorning the necks with lovely inlays.

He also was an accountant.  He prepared income taxes for my in-laws for years, putting the reports into three-ring folders, a practice I copied.  Sam advised Carlos Lowry on how to pay Varsity mural workers, and helped prepare the forms that needed to be filed.  His daughter Alyssa said that he really liked helping musicians who often showed up with long gaps in reporting. 

He worked from home, holding down the home front, caring for children and later a grandson.  I took Victor Agosto to meet him one day because Sam was a Vietnam Veteran Against the War and lived nearby.  Victor, a soldier stationed at Fort Hood, was facing a court-martial for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan.  Sam, who was normally so laid back, straightened up to attention to shake Victor’s hand.  It was a moment of bonding over shared experience.  Then Sam showed off his woodworking space.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Photo from the Memorial for Sam Jones.

The following obituary was carried in the Austin American Statesman for Sam Charles Jones.

Sam Jones Obituary

September 8, 1942 – June 6, 2025

Sam Charles Jones, beloved husband and father, passed peacefully surrounded by his family. Sam is survived by his wife Regina Rogoff, daughters Sarah Jones and Alissa Zachary, son-in-law Billy Zachary, and grandchild Elijah Zachary. Sam was born in Pasadena, Texas on September 8, 1942 and was raised in Helena, Arkansas as one of six children born to Carol and Inez Jones. He became native to Austin as an active anti-war protestor after serving as a Navy Corpsman from 1962 to 1967. Sam’s life long love was making music and building guitars.

[Alice Embree, an Austin writer and activist, is the author of Voice Lessons, published in 2021.  She is an editor of Celebrating The Rag, published in 2016 and Exploring Space City!, published in 2021.  She posts on Substack as well as The Rag Blog.]

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HENRY MECREDY / REMEMBRANCE / Gavan Duffy was a scholar with a sense of humor

Posted on September 25, 2025 by Thorne Dreyer

By Henry Mecredy / The Rag Blog / September 25, 2025

Gavan with guitar. Photo by Alan Pogue.

Gavan Duffy was born December 8, 1949, in Massachusetts.  He passed away in Syracuse, New York, on September 6, 2025.  He graduated from the University of Houston and taught political science at the University of Texas at Austin.  At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gavan studied political science and artificial intelligence, earning a Ph.D. in 1987. He joined the faculty of Syracuse University in 1989, specializing in the field of conflict and collaboration. His wife, scholar and educator in the field of international studies, was L.H.M. “Lily” Ling who passed away October 1, 2018.  An obituary is available at this site.

Gavan was an anti-war activist and a contributor to both The Rag and Space City!  He is remembered by his many friends in Austin, Houston, and Syracuse for his sense of humor and love of music. Gavan’s musical talent is highlighted on a Youtube video. Gavan sings “Spinning Blue Ball,” a song he wrote.

When I met Gavan in 1970, he was new to Austin and was still splitting his time between Houston (where I think he helped create the newspaper Space City! with Thorne Dreyer and others) and Austin. He could often be found around the University of Texas campus though at the time, I believe, he was not a student. Then as well as later he knew many, many people. He was an inveterate name-dropper!

Gavan was on-air at KPFT, Houston’s Pacifica FM station, for a while.

During my acquaintance with Gavan, his time was roughly divided into his Austin-Houston period and his Syracuse period. He said without any rancor at one point that his move to Syracuse was in pursuit much more of his spouse Lily’s academic career than of his own. I do know that if he had moved to Syracuse alone he would have starved to death, as she was an accomplished and enthusiastic cook, and he was neither.

In Austin in the Seventies, we smoked Benson & Hedges Menthol cigarettes. We quoted Bob Dylan to one another. Late at night with the munchies we would eat waffles at 19th and Lavaca at a Dobbs House. He liked his soft and I liked crispy.

Gavan Duffy. Photo by Alan Pogue.

When the old YMCA building was still standing (at 22d and Guadalupe in Austin) we sort of practiced there to make a band at one time, along with Paul Spencer and some others. From my association in particular with Gavan and Paul I was dragged out of my faith in the Democratic Party and the liberal understanding of the Vietnam war, and into radicalism.

At one period we hung out together where I lived briefly, at a large boarding-house kind of place in the West Campus area (2202 Nueces, no longer standing) sometimes called the Yellow Bordello for some reason. Bob Bower, anti-war GI, lived there for a while and assorted other hippies and druggies were seen there. None of the people drifting in and out were strait-laced and all of them were open to drug experimentation. Gavan and I would often play guitar while Bill Meacham played harmonica; we would smoke grass to improve the sound of the music.  Along with many others in the Austin West Campus community Gavan worked on The Rag, Austin’s alternative, culturally and politically radical newspaper.

Once at the Yellow Bordello under the influence of cannabis and alcohol Gavan and I were sitting on the couch, both of us singing loud while I banged furiously on my old Martin guitar. All at once Gavan started singing even louder, roaring even, inspiring me to strum my guitar even more heartily, until I realized something was wrong. Keeping time by slamming his hand down on the couch arm, Gavan had hit a sewing needle left in the fabric, jamming it into his hand big-end first. He seemed upset when I could not stop laughing.

Gavan went to the Republican National Convention in Miami in 1972, somehow passing himself off as a journalist. When he returned he laughed to me that even some of the hippie-rad journalists there expressed shock at his sloppy and food-stained attire! I guess he was making a statement.

When I had young sons, they would have a great time during Uncle Gavan’s visits. He would accuse them of “crying to get your way,” and would give them “electric spankings,” in which he would rapidly slap their glutes with both hands to general laughter.

A period of time passed during which Gavan obtained some credentials, mostly at the University of Houston, UT and  MIT, that enabled him to teach Government at the University, which he did for several years until he moved to Syracuse University. He moved there with his delightful and ebullient wife Lily HM Ling (1955-2018), also an academic (at Syracuse and the New School). Before he met Lily Gavan ate only junk food.

They moved into a huge frame house a short walk east of the SU campus, some of whose rooms I never saw in spite of many visits there. Lily, from a Chinese family, would laugh wildly when Gavan would accuse her of speaking “Linglish” or attempt to imitate, actually parody, her walk.

By great good fortune, I traveled often to Syracuse for work, usually staying with Lily and Gavan, sometimes joined by our friend Carolina Jan Tulloss. They both made many friends in Syracuse.

In one of my visits, Gavan beat Lily and me at Scrabble, expending all seven of his tiles in one play and breaking into a shameless celebration, cackling and crowing like a demented grackle, and describing the suspense of waiting for the right letters.

He played guitar frequently with several Syracuse friends, including a gig or two at a coffee shop.

He loved baseball and watched it frequently on TV. Once, while he was still at MIT, I was visiting in Boston on a work trip and we watched the Astros in the National League Championship against the Phillies. As the last of the five games was nearing its end with the Astros ahead by one run, a Houston friend of Gavan’s called, giddy about the Astros going to the World Series, thereby putting the gris-gris on the team. Slamming down the phone, as we used to do, Gavan almost upchucked with rage and fear, and sure enough the Astros lost. Superstition… that’s what an advanced degree from MIT will do for you.

At some point in his Syracuse days, maybe after he retired from teaching, Gavan became obsessed with gambling and would spend endless hours at a nearby Oneida Indian Nation casino. I know they were endless hours because I went there with him once on the theory that he would play a few hands of poker and then we would leave. I became familiar with every gaming venue and garish advertisement, wandering around  in that vast casino, before he cashed out. So regular were his visits, and I guess so much money did he lose, that he and Lily were awarded a free weekend in a nice suite at least once. Possibly this was his way of boosting the finances of indigenous Americans.

As for Gavan’s scholarly work, I am surely one of the least qualified to comment on it other than to say that in thousands of conversations with him I learned far more facts and was stimulated by a far larger number of insights into America than he was. I was always proud if I could insert relevant opinions about, say, George Ball or Daniel Ellsberg into our chats. Otherwise he was far over my head. A thing I always admired was his inability to be awed by people of intellectual accomplishment, and his knack for summarizing and contextualizing their arguments.

Gavan didn’t go in for hugs, but this sometimes-dignified professor enjoyed devising goofy handshakes, of which his favorite was to start with the conventional hand grasp, then leaving thumbs interlocked, rotating the fingers free so as to wave to your esteemed acquaintance from 18 inches away.

Though naturally funny and friendly, even smart-alecky, he affected a certain reserve and was always careful to avoid effusion in his greetings, even of old friends after long separations. Once, having not seen him and Lily for a couple of years, I was eastbound on I-90 toward Syracuse and had sent along an ETA to him. I had with me in the car a tracking device, so Gavan was watching in real-time my travels into town and to the house on his phone. Their house had a big front porch several steps up, overlooking the driveway. As I pulled in I saw Gavan on the porch. I lowered the driver’s window and donned my finest Texas grin, prepared to shout out a happy greeting. He beat me to it: His first words were, “You took the wrong exit.”

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LAMAR HANKINS / COMMENTARY / The death and life of Charlie Kirk

Posted on September 21, 2025 by Thorne Dreyer

Charlie Kirk. Creative Commons image.

By Lamar Hankins / The Rag Blog / September 21, 2025

It should be axiomatic to any freedom-loving person that no one should be harmed for their beliefs, views, or opinions.  Yet our country, the supposed citadel of freedom, has experienced assassinations, firings, and other negative actions toward those who express unpopular ideas.  Upon learning of Kirk’s death, I thought of the period from 1963 to 1980, a seminal time of my life, and counted seventeen deaths, by guns, of people on the national stage who meant something to me.  We are a tragically violent society.

As a leading constitutional rights organization has said throughout most of its history, the answer to views you don’t like is not violence or intimidation or retribution, but more speech.

Before Charlie Kirk’s killing, he was barely known to me.  In fact, if you had asked me whether Turning Point USA, Kirk’s organization, promoted views right, left, or center, I could not have given you an informed answer.  Kirk was not on my radar.  Since his death, I have learned why; he was a youth-influencer.  He could not have cared less about those of us in our 80s.  Maybe that was because some of us who lived through the civil rights struggles of the 1950s to 1970s could have educated him about why Martin Luther King, Jr., was not an “awful” person.  King practiced non-violence, unlike the white people who killed four little girls with a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963, and the white killers of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman a year later.  Did Kirk ever read King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail?  Had he done so, his views about race in this country might have been changed.  Regardless, those of us with 80 years of living and learning could have explained to him that the term “awful” should be reserved for people who indiscriminately kill children because of their race, who murder peaceful civil rights workers trying to help black people register to vote, and those who kill people for what they believe or say.

We could have explained why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was essential to combat the virulent racism in which we grew up.  As a fellow “white” person, I could have explained that that law was not “an anti-white weapon,” but an effort to help black Americans become full participants in our society.  It is not apparent in what he said that Kirk was even aware of  the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was aimed at ending a century of unconstitutional black disenfranchisement by white racists, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which prohibited real estate advertisements that read “No blacks need apply.”  

I grew up in a time when black people had separate water fountains in our local grocery store, were relegated to sitting in the back of city buses, and could not attend school with whites.  I might have been able to fill in some gaps in Kirk’s education had I the chance to do so.  I could have explained that the 1964 law he opposed made it possible for a black friend to have a career as a pilot for American Airlines, in spite of Kirk’s misgivings about his ability to fly the plane, something he had done for years before as an Air Force pilot.

Had I been able to sit down with Kirk for a talk, I might have helped him see that the color of a person’s skin has nothing to do with that person’s abilities or achievements.  Perhaps I could have helped him see that an accomplished African-American woman on the Supreme Court was no more of a diversity hire than is the African-American man who sits on that court.  When I was involved with hiring in a job I had before going to law school, all affirmative action meant was that we made sure that minorities and women were aware of job offerings, and their applications for employment were wanted.  Discrimination on the basis of race or sex was forbidden. 

Of course, this explanation would have meant that I would have to address Kirk’s sexism as well as his racism.  He believed women should not have the freedom to work in occupations of their choice until after they stayed home and raised children.  “The biggest thing is this: more younger women need to get married at a younger age and start having kids. The single woman issue is one of the biggest issues facing a civilization.”  He even criticized birth control, claiming “It is awful, it’s terrible, and it creates very angry and bitter young ladies and young women.”

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