The Rag Blog

Bernardine Dorhn: Never the Good Girl, Not Then, not Now

An Interview with The Rag Blog

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog

Bernardine Dohrn will be Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM (and streamed live on the Internet), Friday, Oct. 21, 2011, 2-3 p.m. (CDT). Also, go here to listen to Thorne Dreyer’s Oct. 7, 2011, Rag Radio interview with author/activist Jonah Raskin.

Who doesn’t have a reaction to the name and the reputation of Bernadine Dohrn? Is there anyone over the age of 60 who doesn’t remember her role at the outrageous Days of Rage demonstrations, her picture on FBI “wanted posters,” or her dramatic surrender to law enforcement officials in Chicago after a decade as a fugitive?

To former members of SDS, anti-war activists, Yippies, Black Panthers, White Panthers, women’s liberationists, along with students and scholars of Weatherman and the Weather Underground, she probably needs no introduction.

Sam Green featured her in his award-winning 2002 film, The Weather Underground. Todd Gitlin added to her iconic stature in his benchmark cultural history, The Sixties, though he was never on her side of the ideological splits or she on his. Dozens of books about the long decade of defiance have documented and mythologized Dohrn’s role as an American radical. Of course, her flamboyant husband and long-time partner, Bill Ayers, has been at her side for decades, aiding and abetting her much of the time, and adding to her legendary renown and notoriety.

Born in 1942, and a diligent student at the University of Chicago, she attended law school there and in the late 1960s “stepped out of the role of the good girl,” as she once put it. She has never really stepped back into it again, though she’s been a wife, a mother, and a professional woman for more years than she was a street fighting woman.

Since 1991, she has served as the director of the Children and Family Justice Center at the Northwestern University School of Law. At the same time, she has never been admitted to the bar in any state in the United States and has never practiced law. Her past might not haunt her, but it certainly has haunted character committees established by the legal profession to keep lawyers in line.

I first met Dohrn in the late 1960s when she worked for the National Lawyers Guild, and from afar began to follow her radical activities as reported in underground newspapers. It wasn’t until she was on the lam, a fugitive, and went by the name Molly that I spent days with her in discussion and debate about all the global and local issues of the 1970s, and began to see the woman behind the image.

She turned out to be much more vulnerable, nuanced and sensitive than I had been led to believe. Since then, I have heard her speak at conferences, visited her in Chicago, and continued our conversation that began more than 40-years ago.

I don’t know any other woman of her generation who has been as controversial, as optimistic and hopeful, and as committed to what I’d have to call “political struggle” as she. The word alacrity fits her better than any other single word in my vocabulary.

While many of the men around her — her husband, Bill Ayers, her former Weatherman comrade, Mark Rudd, and her own son, Zayd — have written accounts of their experiences in, around, and after the revolution, Dohrn never has and perhaps never will. Probably someday someone will write her biography and attempt to reconcile what The New York Times described, in an article about her published in 1993, as “the seeming contradictions” in her life.

That author might also attempt to show how her own personal contradictions have reflected the larger contradictions of the society to which she belongs and at the same time has opposed, confronted, and aimed to reform as well as overturn. On the cusp of her 70th birthday, I asked her if she’d be willing to be interviewed. “Sure,” she said without missing a beat. “Love to have a reason to be in touch with you.”

A Rag Blog interview with Bernardine Dohrn:

What would you say is the predominant thread that runs through your life?

The great good fortune to have come of age at a time of revolutionary upheaval at home and abroad, which opened a path to lifelong justice and antiwar activism. The equally predominant thread is the joy and challenge of raising our children and now, grandchildren.

Why is 2011 not 1968?

U.S. economic and social domination of the world is now obviously declining, although fierce military dominance continues to exercise a cruel grip. We now know that the damage done to the planet from unlimited plunder and exhaustion of oil, coal and non-renewable resources may not be reversible. That reality weighs more heavily, perhaps, than the bomb in our childhood. As Dr. King said in 1967 — “the greatest purveyor of violence on this earth is my own country.” That gives us all a great responsibility.

How do you think living and working in Chicago has shaped you?

I’m such a Midwest gal, summer lightening over the lake, city-stopping snowstorms, the spirits of Ida B. Wells Barnett, Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Terkel — all the real deal, unpretentious and intrepid. Always an immigrant city but characterized by Black and white, and now Chicago has one million Mexican-Americans, plus newcomers from everywhere. Here, you can make a difference. Visiting the coasts and the south is essential but this is home.

What are your main impressions of Occupy Wall Street?

Smart, savvy, horizontal, participatory, resisting leaders, spokespeople and demands, growing, listening, innovative and zesty. I’m in!

How have your feelings about Obama changed over the past four years?

The President was and remains a centrist, intelligent, compromising politician, first in Illinois and since in DC. As the highly financed hard right, finance titans and the military machine have gained influence and consolidated power, politicians who try to occupy the center move right. Howard Zinn explains it perfectly, writing about JFK.

In what ways does this generation of protesters remind you of yourself and the young rebels of the 1960s?

They are smarter, more global, curious, courageous and diverse, and open to elders at the get-go. But yes, they do remind me of our generation in their determination to act, to make meaning, to be smitten and inspired by Tunisia and Egypt, Madison and Greece but to be local, to make art by shifting the frame of the possible.

Once upon a time we read Che, Mao, Marx, and Malcolm. Who do you read now that gives you insights and inspiration?

Vijay Prashad, Barbara Ransby, Adam Green, Martha Biondi, Grace Lee Boggs, Rashid Khalidi, James Bell, Charles Dickens. Lots of murder mysteries and spy novels.

What lessons about an underground organization do you think are worth remembering now?

I have no idea. Maybe that what looks invincible and dominant can be also vulnerable.

Sexism, racism, imperialism seem awfully powerful today. What differences, if any did we make on the society?

We helped remind people that white supremacy is tenacious, takes new forms, and has not been uprooted. The big “we” could not end the Vietnam War, but our resistance helped limit U.S. military intervention options from 1975-1990. Ditto modest constraints on the FBI and CIA, totally unleashed since 9/11. And our progeny have transformed the world we know: women, LGBTQ, Native Americans, the disabled, environmental activists, new stirrings among labor.

Why do you think Americans are so docile and so deferential to the 1% that owns 99% of the wealth?

Not docile, I don’t think. Mad, cheated, scared, self-doubting, and envious. But also poking fun, using humor to ridicule the 1%, savvy about the naked theft. The trick is to avoid cynicism. Ordinary people have the wisdom but they don’t know they have the power.

You’re about to celebrate your 70th birthday. How has aging surprised you?

Are we really still on our feet? Aren’t you 35 Jonah?

I never understood why so many 1960s radicals became lawyers and judges. Can you explain that for me?

Lawyers, teachers and midwives, I thought. Because we needed great lawyers and we cared about justice. Law’s a great place from which to fight the power. I still love our work of representing individual youth accused of crime and delinquency and working to downsize, close and abolish the mass incarceration/prison system.

What is your most vivid memory of the 1960s?

Meeting with the Vietnamese in Budapest and Cuba. Grasping the gravity of our location and our responsibility.

Jonah Raskin is a regular contributor to the Rag Blog and a professor at Sonoma State University.

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The Rag Blog

Bernardine Dorhn: Never the Good Girl, Not Then, not Now

An Interview with The Rag Blog

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog

Bernardine Dohrn will be Thorne Dreyer‘s guest on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM (and streamed live on the Internet), Friday, Oct. 21, 2011, 2-3 p.m. (CDT). Also, go here to listen to Thorne Dreyer’s Oct. 7, 2011, Rag Radio interview with author/activist Jonah Raskin.

Who doesn’t have a reaction to the name and the reputation of Bernadine Dohrn? Is there anyone over the age of 60 who doesn’t remember her role at the outrageous Days of Rage demonstrations, her picture on FBI “wanted posters,” or her dramatic surrender to law enforcement officials in Chicago after a decade as a fugitive?

To former members of SDS, anti-war activists, Yippies, Black Panthers, White Panthers, women’s liberationists, along with students and scholars of Weatherman and the Weather Underground, she probably needs no introduction.

Sam Green featured her in his award-winning 2002 film, The Weather Underground. Todd Gitlin added to her iconic stature in his benchmark cultural history, The Sixties, though he was never on her side of the ideological splits or she on his. Dozens of books about the long decade of defiance have documented and mythologized Dohrn’s role as an American radical. Of course, her flamboyant husband and long-time partner, Bill Ayers, has been at her side for decades, aiding and abetting her much of the time, and adding to her legendary renown and notoriety.

Born in 1942, and a diligent student at the University of Chicago, she attended law school there and in the late 1960s “stepped out of the role of the good girl,” as she once put it. She has never really stepped back into it again, though she’s been a wife, a mother, and a professional woman for more years than she was a street fighting woman.

Since 1991, she has served as the director of the Children and Family Justice Center at the Northwestern University School of Law. At the same time, she has never been admitted to the bar in any state in the United States and has never practiced law. Her past might not haunt her, but it certainly has haunted character committees established by the legal profession to keep lawyers in line.

I first met Dohrn in the late 1960s when she worked for the National Lawyers Guild, and from afar began to follow her radical activities as reported in underground newspapers. It wasn’t until she was on the lam, a fugitive, and went by the name Molly that I spent days with her in discussion and debate about all the global and local issues of the 1970s, and began to see the woman behind the image.

She turned out to be much more vulnerable, nuanced and sensitive than I had been led to believe. Since then, I have heard her speak at conferences, visited her in Chicago, and continued our conversation that began more than 40-years ago.

I don’t know any other woman of her generation who has been as controversial, as optimistic and hopeful, and as committed to what I’d have to call “political struggle” as she. The word alacrity fits her better than any other single word in my vocabulary.

While many of the men around her — her husband, Bill Ayers, her former Weatherman comrade, Mark Rudd, and her own son, Zayd — have written accounts of their experiences in, around, and after the revolution, Dohrn never has and perhaps never will. Probably someday someone will write her biography and attempt to reconcile what The New York Times described, in an article about her published in 1993, as “the seeming contradictions” in her life.

That author might also attempt to show how her own personal contradictions have reflected the larger contradictions of the society to which she belongs and at the same time has opposed, confronted, and aimed to reform as well as overturn. On the cusp of her 70th birthday, I asked her if she’d be willing to be interviewed. “Sure,” she said without missing a beat. “Love to have a reason to be in touch with you.”

A Rag Blog interview with Bernardine Dohrn:

What would you say is the predominant thread that runs through your life?

The great good fortune to have come of age at a time of revolutionary upheaval at home and abroad, which opened a path to lifelong justice and antiwar activism. The equally predominant thread is the joy and challenge of raising our children and now, grandchildren.

Why is 2011 not 1968?

U.S. economic and social domination of the world is now obviously declining, although fierce military dominance continues to exercise a cruel grip. We now know that the damage done to the planet from unlimited plunder and exhaustion of oil, coal and non-renewable resources may not be reversible. That reality weighs more heavily, perhaps, than the bomb in our childhood. As Dr. King said in 1967 — “the greatest purveyor of violence on this earth is my own country.” That gives us all a great responsibility.

How do you think living and working in Chicago has shaped you?

I’m such a Midwest gal, summer lightening over the lake, city-stopping snowstorms, the spirits of Ida B. Wells Barnett, Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Terkel — all the real deal, unpretentious and intrepid. Always an immigrant city but characterized by Black and white, and now Chicago has one million Mexican-Americans, plus newcomers from everywhere. Here, you can make a difference. Visiting the coasts and the south is essential but this is home.

What are your main impressions of Occupy Wall Street?

Smart, savvy, horizontal, participatory, resisting leaders, spokespeople and demands, growing, listening, innovative and zesty. I’m in!

How have your feelings about Obama changed over the past four years?

The President was and remains a centrist, intelligent, compromising politician, first in Illinois and since in DC. As the highly financed hard right, finance titans and the military machine have gained influence and consolidated power, politicians who try to occupy the center move right. Howard Zinn explains it perfectly, writing about JFK.

In what ways does this generation of protesters remind you of yourself and the young rebels of the 1960s?

They are smarter, more global, curious, courageous and diverse, and open to elders at the get-go. But yes, they do remind me of our generation in their determination to act, to make meaning, to be smitten and inspired by Tunisia and Egypt, Madison and Greece but to be local, to make art by shifting the frame of the possible.

Once upon a time we read Che, Mao, Marx, and Malcolm. Who do you read now that gives you insights and inspiration?

Vijay Prashad, Barbara Ransby, Adam Green, Martha Biondi, Grace Lee Boggs, Rashid Khalidi, James Bell, Charles Dickens. Lots of murder mysteries and spy novels.

What lessons about an underground organization do you think are worth remembering now?

I have no idea. Maybe that what looks invincible and dominant can be also vulnerable.

Sexism, racism, imperialism seem awfully powerful today. What differences, if any did we make on the society?

We helped remind people that white supremacy is tenacious, takes new forms, and has not been uprooted. The big “we” could not end the Vietnam War, but our resistance helped limit U.S. military intervention options from 1975-1990. Ditto modest constraints on the FBI and CIA, totally unleashed since 9/11. And our progeny have transformed the world we know: women, LGBTQ, Native Americans, the disabled, environmental activists, new stirrings among labor.

Why do you think Americans are so docile and so deferential to the 1% that owns 99% of the wealth?

Not docile, I don’t think. Mad, cheated, scared, self-doubting, and envious. But also poking fun, using humor to ridicule the 1%, savvy about the naked theft. The trick is to avoid cynicism. Ordinary people have the wisdom but they don’t know they have the power.

You’re about to celebrate your 70th birthday. How has aging surprised you?

Are we really still on our feet? Aren’t you 35 Jonah?

I never understood why so many 1960s radicals became lawyers and judges. Can you explain that for me?

Lawyers, teachers and midwives, I thought. Because we needed great lawyers and we cared about justice. Law’s a great place from which to fight the power. I still love our work of representing individual youth accused of crime and delinquency and working to downsize, close and abolish the mass incarceration/prison system.

What is your most vivid memory of the 1960s?

Meeting with the Vietnamese in Budapest and Cuba. Grasping the gravity of our location and our responsibility.

Jonah Raskin is a regular contributor to the Rag Blog and a professor at Sonoma State University.

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The Rag Blog

OCCUPY AMERICA

By David Van Os / The Rag Blog / October 18, 2011

The young people who started and grew the Occupy Wall Street movement have given their country and the world an incredible gift. We should all thank them a million, billion, trillion times.

I’ve participated in Occupy Austin several times at the Austin City Hall Plaza where the Austin branch of Occupy Wall Street has its nerve center. It is inspiring to experience people of all backgrounds coming together through their natural human rights to speak freely and assemble in public places because they hold common grievances against an unresponsive political-economic system and have decided in common that enough is enough.

It is especially inspiring to experience the horizontal decision-making processes of the movement, showcasing full participatory democracy without ego-tripping leaders or control hierarchies.

The right to revolutionary change is deeply rooted in the American psyche. For example, the Bill of Rights of the Texas Constitution (Article 1, Sec. 2, TEXAS CONSTITUTION) states that “all political power is inherent in the people”, and that the people have “at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient.” This inalienable right is subject only to “the preservation of a republican form of government”, i.e., self-government by the people. Various other state constitutions contain similar confirmations of the inherent sovereignty of the people.

Respectfully, I submit that the articulated mission statements, demands, and goals of the movement need to call for change of a more revolutionary nature. The movement should demand not reform of the established order, but its downfall. I submit the demands should deliver a message that the entire oligarchy controlling the unresponsive political-economic system has to be peacefully removed and replaced to give the people a fresh new start. Listed below are some demands that I suggest. (My endnotes are simply commentaries. They are not part of the demands themselves. A mass movement’s demands must be basic and plain. The final details evolve in the people’s ongoing self-government of the movement in response to the fluidity of situations.)

1. That every member of the U.S. Congress resign and new elections be held in every state and district, with open access to the ballot and equal access to free airtime on broadcast media.[1]
2. That every director and officer of every Wall Street bank permanently resign.
3. That every Wall Street bank’s charter to do business be revoked.
4. That the banks be broken up in order to get new charters.
5. That the new charters place strict caps on executive compensation.
6. That every corporate charter be amended to prohibit corporate contributions to political parties and candidates.[2]
7. That the old usury laws be restored: absolutely no interest greater than 10% per annum can ever be charged on any transaction.
8. That the Federal Reserve Board be abolished and no individual private bank or group of private banks ever again be given a monopoly over the issuance and control of the nation’s currency.
9. That the president and vice president resign and the replacement elections take place through a speedy election process that reduces the influence of money. [3]

In other words: Replace the government, Break up Wall Street, Disarm the bankers, End the power of money in politics, End corporate contributions, and End the Fed.

A mass movement’s demands must be continuously repeated and the mass occupation and peaceful street action and guerilla theater must continue, grow, and escalate until the demands are met. The established order will not fall overnight. But if we stay true to ourselves and resolve ourselves to fight till hell freezes over and then on the ice, it will fall.

Power to the people.
Revolution now.
OCCUPY AMERICA.

[David Van Os is a populist Texas democrat and a civil rights attorney in San Antonio. He is a former candidate for Attorney General of Texas and for the Texas Supreme Court. To receive his Notes of a Texas Patriot — circulated whenever he gets the urge (and published on The Rag Blog whenever we get the urge) — contact him at david@texas-patriot.com.Read more articles by David Van Os on The Rag Blog.]

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The Rag Blog

Religion:
The elixir of Republican politics

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / October 18, 2011

An elixir is a substance taken to cure one’s ills, or it’s a substance used to carry an ingredient to do its intended purpose. Both definitions seem to fit the role religion has played in this year’s Republican politics (though Democrats are not averse to using it, as well).

Most reporters and commentators on the political scene seem to have missed that religion has no constitutional role in U.S. politics, but that hasn’t kept it from being an unnecessary diversion at times, and from being ignored when it should be examined.

The latest unnecessary diversion about religion is the persistent inquiry into Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. CNN host Candy Crowley insisted recently in an interview that two candidates for the Republican nomination for president state whether Mitt Romney’s Mormonism made him a Christian.

What nonsense. Whatever Romney’s religion, it is irrelevant (as those candidates said) to the political position he seeks, because he’s not running for president as a Mormon. He is running as a Republican. And he is a candidate with experience as a governor and as a businessman. Those are relevant qualifications, not his religious views.

As most readers know, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” This is what makes Romney’s religion — whether Christian or not — irrelevant politically. Yet Candy Crowley, in a recent interview, insisted that both Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann give us their opinion on the question.

Cain responded, “I’m not running for theologian in chief. I’m a lifelong Christian. And what that means is that one of my guiding principles for decisions I make is I start with ‘do the right thing.’ I’m not getting into that controversy.”

But after more prodding, Cain finally satisfied Crowley to some extent by declaring that a candidate’s religion was a “valid concern.” It’s not, unless the candidate makes it part of the reason that candidate is running for public office. Romney has not done so.

If Cain had just stuck to his decision not to get involved with the “Mormons as Christians” debate, I would have new-found respect for him. But when he decided that it was important to point out that he is a Christian, he revealed that his earlier statement was just a convenient ruse for letting his Republican base know that he is one of the good guys.

And a few days ago, Cain went even further. In an Associated Press interview, Cain pointed out that he has been a Christian since age 10. While he claims falsely not to mention religion often in public settings, he said, “But people can see it on my website, and when they read my credentials they can see that I’m a staunch Christian conservative.” I guess the Constitution doesn’t really mean much to Cain.

To her credit, Bachmann refused to take the bait in her interview with Crowley, even after Crowley suggested that refusing to answer the question would be perceived as dodging a direct question. Bachmann stuck by her answer: “We have religious tolerance. We understand that people have different views on their faith, and I have a very sincerely held view on faith and I think we just leave it at that.”

Crowley should have taken the hint that being Christian is not required to hold public office. Constitutionally, any religion or no religion is fine. She could have asked whether the candidates agree with that statement, which is a relevant matter under the Constitution.

Crowley typifies the mainstream media’s propensity to focus on the irrelevant but titillating. If one’s religion is not a prerequisite for political office, there is no reason to deal with it unless the candidate has made it integral to his or her campaign.

Both Bachmann and Rick Perry have done so. The mainstream media should be asking these two, along with Herman Cain, their views on the separation of church and state. If there were ever candidates who used religion as a political elixir, it is these three candidates.

But it would be fitting to ask all of the Republican crowd whether they agree with then-candidate John F. Kennedy’s statement about religion and politics: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.”

That last point is interesting. In fact, it is illegal for a pastor to tell his congregation how to vote. This ban from such politics is the price churches, along with all other tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations, pay for their tax-exempt status. While the IRS is not terribly diligent in enforcing the politics ban against churches, it does occasionally take legal action against a few churches for overstepping the non-political rules.

My knowledge of Mormonism is limited. I know a few Mormons. I’ve talked with Mormons and listened to their critics and detractors. Nothing I have learned has convinced me that whether one is a Mormon has any relevance to holding political office.

Perhaps the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would be asked to sing at the inauguration of a new president who is Mormon. If so, I would probably enjoy the music, just as I enjoyed hearing Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen perform at one of President Obama’s inaugural events. Beyond that, I can’t see that presidential governance would be any different with a Mormon as president, any more than it was affected by Richard Nixon’s Quaker upbringing or John Kennedy’s Catholicism.

Nothing that Romney did as Governor of Massachusetts seemed related specifically to his Mormonism.

Religion is relevant only if the officeholder tries to fulfill the responsibilities of office by following his or her religious precepts and dogma by applying them to the public’s business. Based on their previous positions, this possibility does concern me with the candidates Rick Perry and Michele Bachman, who tend toward a theocratic view of governance.

Perry’s official sponsorship as governor of the prayer rally held in Houston in August is one example. Some have even called Perry and Bachmann Dominionists — conservative Christians who want to influence or control secular civil government by imposing their biblical beliefs on the country.

While there isn’t enough evidence for me to call them Dominionists, we do know that both Perry and Bachmann say that God has called them to be president, or at least run for that office. Now, Anita Perry, Rick Perry’s wife has gone further, explaining in a campaign speech in South Carolina why her husband should be president: “God was already speaking to me, but he (Rick Perry) felt like he needed to see the burning bush. I said, ‘Let me tell you something: You might not see the burning bush but other people are seeing it for you.’”

The Perrys, along with some of their friends, want the rest of us to believe that Rick Perry is the chosen one — chosen by God for the US presidency. Michele Bachmann must feel betrayed since God previously chose her, or so she said. It is wiser probably to ignore all such self-aggrandizing proclamations of politicians and their supporters and pay attention to their actions, their positions on the issues, and the work and views of those close to them.

At the recent Faith and Values Conference, Perry chose the Rev. Robert Jeffress to give his formal introduction before he spoke. Jeffress said that Perry was a true Christian. Jeffress also told the press that he believes Mormonism is a “cult,” and that Mormons aren’t true Christians, views that were well known to Perry and everyone else who has paid attention to Jeffress. Perry refused to repudiate the injection of such irrelevant and offensive views into his presidential campaign.

What appears to be happening in this political season is that Perry and some others are using religion to send messages to their evangelical supporters and curry favor with the religious right.

Perry may be sincere in his religious beliefs. I can’t judge that. What I can judge is the ways in which he uses religion for political benefit. In this, Perry has no peer. When it comes to using religion for political benefit, Romney is a no-show. For that, Romney should be commended.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

400 richest Americans having more wealth than half of all Americans combined – Amy Goodman