Echoes of inspiration

In the past week I had the opportunity to hear two speakers and see a movie that reminded me of the richness of the many waves of progressive struggle I have been privileged to witness and support in my lifetime.

What happens when aging revolutionaries turn into hippies? Kendall Hale, whom I remember as a singer in New Harmony Sisterhood, a popular Boston women's political band of the 1970s, has now written Radical Passions, a memoir of her life in the antiwar, new communist, women's, housing, and solidarity movements. As became apparent when she read from her book at a Boston event last week, she has now discovered her spiritual side. "We didn't have the tools back then to deal with the problems we faced," she says. "We didn't know about mindfulness." Hale has not given up on the socialist ideals of her youth, but is striving to fuse them with the soulful energies that are the flip side of the 60's consciousness which formed our generation.

A italk by Helen Caldicott reminded me of the anti-nuclear struggles of the 1980s which ended the cold war, tellingly recounted by James Carroll. She was hosted by WAND, the liberal women's peace group, which drew an affluent suburban crowd. Caldicott showed her familiar incisive, fearless ability to analyze the dangers and opportunities in the current situation. The baby which she held aloft to dramatize the instinctive human desire for peace in a memorable photo years ago attended the talk, now a young adult. To tell you the truth, my sharpest memory of Helen Caldicott from the 80's was her verbal assault against kleenex. I have carried a cotton handkerchief every day of my life since I heard those words.


The movie Battle in Seattle memorably dramatizes the anti-globalization protests at the 1999 WTO conference. Can tree-huggers, turtle-lovers and anarchists stop the rape of the planet by governments doing the bidding of amoral corporations? In this film, protest rallies are treated as an extension of the war-movie, cop-show genre. Both sides are humanized as a plot weaves together protesters with a love interest, a policeman and his pregnant wife, the mayor, the Medecins sans Frontieres representative, and the African statesman who angrily denounces the developed world's monopoly on trade. After fiercely resisting daily police assaults on the right to protest, the demonstrators win as the WTO summit adjourns in disorder. The scenes of violence against protesters seem all too real after what we saw last month at the Republican Convention in St. Paul. While the political issues at stake are not examined in depth, they are presented, and the movie site links to Who Controls the World?, which is rich with anti-globalization resources.

With this rich legacy of struggle as a backdrop, the battles of today are pressing. The rejection by the House of Representatives of the Wall Street bailout, then its passage four days later, are a memorable series of events that indicate the fluidity of the political situation. A "teachable moment", says Dennis Kucinich. "The American people are bitter. They are angry, and they are confused," says Bernie Sanders. The confluence of a presidential election and a financial crisis are bringing to the surface questions about the nature of the capitalist system which have rarely before been debated so openly. An economic system which cannot stabilize itself and cannot provide for the well-being of the people who live under it, is suddenly exposed as irrational, ungovernable, and unreliable. There is much to discuss.