Bill Ayers

There’s something so very sad about the grizzled and the gray-haired sobbing from the dock, waving their hankies at a ship that long ago left the shore.

Ah, “the good old days,” they tell each other, that golden age when everything made sense and everyone was terrific. Well, not everything (war and racism were bad!) and not everyone (Henry Kissinger! Richard Nixon!). But we—bless us—were all smart as hell, doing our exemplary work, pretty much in harmony, and it was an all-around great time to be alive. Beyond compare, really.

It’s all nonsense, of course, so predictable and so tedious, don’t you think?

Rejection of the new and resentment of the young, the elders preaching about everything from how to raise the kids to how to organize a movement or engage in politics—“we did things better back in the day”—boring!

I always point out to my peers that they already raised their kids, that they likely did some things well and messed up some other things, and that maybe it’s time to shut the fuck up up and let the kids raise their kids in their own way. The old folks look right through me, shuffling along, scolding and hectoring and finger-wagging as they go.

Sometimes the nostalgia takes a deeply disturbing turn, leading to a more toxic generational jealousy—contentless name-calling, empty critique that adds nothing to the urgent question of what is to be done right here and right now—and a more destructive and threatening force is unleashed into the world.That should never happen—we should stop it.

But old people seem incapable sometimes of taking a deep breath, listening for a while, joining in and following along. They just got to have their say. And since 2018 is the 50th anniversary of “just about everything,” because, well, because it’s 50 years since the magic of 1968, the old people are extra-gabby.

Sometimes the chatter can be perversely amusing—for example, a bit of backward thinking lit up the internet recently in an exchange between old SDSers bickering about what happened with the student movement fifty years ago. As always, the chatterers stayed assiduously inside their SDS silo (no Black Freedom Movement is acknowledged, no SNCC or Black Panther Party, no Vietnamese revolution appears) and tellingly avoided exploring historic trends (the longterm decline of the US empire, for example). Bombast replaced content, name calling substituted for analysis, deep feeling stood in for evidence. And as usual, none of the commentariat is an active movement builder or community organizer today. Still each seemed urgent to croak out one last word—for the record!—before shuffling off this mortal coil.

One prominent former SDS leader grumbled the traditional old man complaint: today’s youth don’t listen to me at all, and  they’re so arrogant! The worm has turned.

The silliest bit of all was offered up by the self-styled CEO of “The 1960s, Inc.”, Todd Gitlin himself. Scholar, commentator, and talking-head, his phone number is first on the Rolodex of every reporter who covers the Left. (What? There are no Rolodexes?!) I’m determined to outlive Todd simply because I don’t want to read his dime-store comment about me, and no obituary of anyone from the student movement is complete without a glib and shallow “word from Todd”—which rhymes interestingly with a “Word from God.”

In the current back and forth Todd told his credulous compatriots that they must read Art Eckstein’s Bad Moon Rising—an “essential source” he claimed. And what makes it so important, you ask? Simple: “It’s …based on recently declassified documents, elaborating on FBI operations vis-a-vis SDS…” Wow!! Now we know the “true story,” according to Todd, the honest and authoritative account, because…wait for it: it’s from the FBI!

Wake the fuck up, people! The FBI is a criminal enterprise, and it always has been. Lying and misrepresentation, dishonesty and deceit are baked into its DNA. Disruption is its calling card, wreckage its signature, and murder its everyday practice. Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King, Jr.—the FBI left its fingerprints at every crime scene.

Former FBI director James Comey was usually quick on the draw when it came to labeling acts of violence “terrorism”—after all, he had an annual $3.3 billion dollar budget to counter terror—but he hesitated in the case of Dylann Roof’s massacre of nine African Americans in the Charleston Emanuel AME church on June 17, 2015. Why? It was “horrific,” he acknowledged, but “terrorism” is “more of a political act and . . . I don’t see it as a political act.”

Really? The perpetrator himself saw it as a calculated and willful political act. His “manifesto” was a thoroughly articulated political document, one filled with apocalyptic fantasies and white supremacist daydreams. And still Comey hesitated.

The farce of Comey’s ambiguity is telling: it reveals the selective and hypocritical deployment of “terrorist/terrorism” as propaganda by the paid agents of the ruling class. Comey’s FBI labeled acts of vandalism “terrorism,” including breaking windows, hammering on nuclear silos, disabling tractors in ancient forests or airplanes set to bomb civilians, freeing caged animals, and more. As a founding member of the Weather Underground in 1970 I know from close experience just how sweeping—and sticky—that label can become.

I’m reluctant to use the word at all—it flows so automatically into the rushing propaganda stream unleashed by the so-called war on terror, screaming insistently for a permanent state of war, more US aggression, more assassinations and torture, more ethnically based surveillance and repression, more suspicion and fear, more surveillance, more targeting of Arabs and Muslims. But I’ll make an exception here: Dylann Roof is a white supremacist Christian and a terrorist, his actions part of a long legacy of terrorism carried out against captured Africans and later their descendants. The history of organized terror against African Americans begins with the capture and kidnapping of Africans, tortured, raped, and transported to the Americas as chattel, none of them willing volunteers on the Middle Passage. This massive crime against humanity was state-sanctioned, legal terror.

Enslaved people ran away and resisted in a thousand ways, and after hundreds of years legal slavery was abolished. A decades-long campaign of terror against free Black people began immediately—pogroms, arson, displacement, false arrests and imprisonment, night riders, and thousands of public-spectacle lynchings. White gangs rampaged on a whim through African American communities in Chicago, St. Louis, Tulsa, Rosewood, and hundreds of other places, and the message was clear: white supremacy would police the racial boundaries and punish any transgression.

Dylann Roof’s murderous outburst can be located within that long history of organized violence against African Americans to accomplish a political goal: the maintenance of white supremacy.

The latest FBI invitation to murder and mayhem is its Counterterrorism Division report entitled, “Black Identity Extremists Likely Motivated to Target Law Enforcement.” This dirty, devious report directly targets Black Lives Matter, and it’s a demonstrably filthy lie, but it’s doing its evil work right now. Come on people, don’t give the FBI an inch.

Resist!

and it matters:

the phrase near the end should read “a society of oppression and exploitation as well as unearned privileges.”

i’ll figure out how to edit SOON

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

True, too true: this past year has been all conflict and contradiction, days of grind and times of glory, moments of dread followed by flashes of ecstasy. The pattern was set right at the start: Trump’s shameful and toxic inauguration, a day of infamy, cleansed and massively repudiated  24 hours later by the remarkable and luminous Women’s March, a day of world-wide jubilation. Twists and turns, heartbreak and hope, a breath-taking tangle of surprises, setbacks, and leaps forward. On and on: Steve Bannon with real clear fascism versus a growing popular resistance. And look up: the year ends with the first group of J20 protesters—the folks illegally arrested in Washington at the inauguration—found not guilty. The beat goes on.

Remembering Fats Domino (who left us this year): “It’s been a thrill!” What else can I say?

Well, for one thing I can say that we’re still here, aren’t we? And I can say that that fact really matters. I can say the fascists have not consolidated power despite their determination and undeniable power. I can say that we’re still living, still putting one foot in front of the other, still finding ways to resist, reimagine, and rebuild. As long as we’re here, there’s hope, and as long as we resist, there’s possibility.

I’m often accused of being an optimist, but that charge is simply untrue—optimists tend toward a kind of cheerful passivity because they think they know what’s up ahead, and I have no idea what’s coming. Pessimists are more cynical, but they, too, think they hold some magical crystal ball, this one revealing the dystopic future in all its exaggerated grimness. They are more cynical, but just as passive and just as delusional as their optimistic cousins. I choose instead to be hopeful precisely because I don’t know what’s next, and neither does anyone else. It’s worth remembering that the day before the kick-off of every revolution in history, common sense held that the revolution was impossible; the day after, the consensus was adjusted: now all the commentators agree: the revolution was inevitable.

Hope and fierce collective determination are choices; confidence is itself a politics. This year I’ll again choose hope and confidence, and I urge you to join me. I don’t want to minimize the horror we’re facing—capitalist planetary destruction; predation and exploitation; war and nuclear annihilation; white supremacy emboldened; gender oppression entrenched; the billionaires’ ball unleashed; settler colonialism in power from Indian Country to Puerto Rico to Palestine—but neither do I want to be sucked into its thrall. There’s also Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock, #MeToo and Undocumented and Unafraid. Hope is that thing with feathers, our antidote to cynicism and despair; it’s the capacity to notice or invent alternatives; it’s nourishing the precious sense that standing directly against the world as such is a world that could be, or should be. Whatever is the case stands side by side with what could be or should be the case. Without that vital sense of possibility, doors close, curtains drop, and we become stuck: we cannot adequately oppose injustice; we cannot act freely; we cannot inhabit the most vigorous moral spaces. We are never freer, all of us and each of us, than when we refuse the situations before us as settled and certain and determined—the absolute end of the matter—and break the chains that entangle us, launching ourselves toward the imaginable.

Remember that when slavery was formally abolished in the US, the former slave-owners assumed the posture of the aggrieved, and so their narrative held that they were the victims of a terrible injustice. Many sought, and some even won, reparations for lost property—unlike the formerly enslaved people (the former “property”) who instead of reparations got Black Codes, Jim Crow, regimes of lynch-mob terror, red-lining, mass incarceration, occupying police forces, and more. For those who’d been blithely enjoying their privileges while riding on the back of Black bodies, justice and fairness—equality—can always be made to feel like oppression. It’s not—it is instead a cruel if powerful illusion. But privilege works like that. Today young people are leading and building a broad and hopeful movement—the next step in the centuries-old Black Freedom Movement—demanding the end of militarized police targeting and occupying Black people and communities, the creation of decent schools and good jobs, the abolition of mass incarceration, reparations for harm done, and simple justice going forward. Black Lives Matter! To some privileged people it’s as if a terrible injustice has once again befallen them—and of course it hasn’t. To proclaim that “Jewish Lives Matter” in Germany in the 1930s would have been a good thing—those were the lives being discounted and destroyed; to say that “Palestinian Lives Matter” in Israel now would be to stand on the side of the downtrodden and the disposable. And to shout out that Black Lives Matter in the US today is to take the side of humanity. Every City Hall and every police precinct should hang a large Black Lives Matter banner over the front door, and then get real about the work needed to bring that slogan authentically to life.

Never for a moment doubt that your life matters, nor that joy in the face of horror can be made into an exuberant act of refusal. Never lose sight of the fact that this life is all you have, that your candle is burning, and that the light will be extinguished soon enough—too soon, in fact, and in the middle of things, your to-do list unfulfilled. So go ahead, suck the juice from every precious moment with uninhibited gusto. Day to day let’s meet up more, face to face, let’s work out more and break a sweat, let’s eat real food (mostly plants and just enough), and let’s be safe and keep each other safe. Let’s dive into the wreckage together and swim as hard as we can in the direction of our hopes. Let’s dial ourselves up to full volume, all the way turned up, all the way human.

In 2018 I’ll work to become a better organizer and to once more be guided by the eternal rhythms of activism: willfully opening my eyes and paying attention every day; allowing myself to be astonished at the beauty and the ecstasy in every direction as well as the unnecessary pain and suffering all around; I’ll rise up and do something about it, say something about it, act out, write it down, write it up; then I’ll try to be thoughtfully self-critical, to doubt, rethink, and start again. That’s my resolution.

I’ll try to be a good comrade and an active ally—listening harder and listening first, finding the wisdom in others, mobilizing other allies. In a deeper sense, ally is not the right word: I want to dismantle all the structures baked into law and custom, policy and politics that insure a society of oppression and exploitation as well as earned privileges. I want to make a revolution.

I’ll try to gather with people in my community and my family, to take the measure of ourselves in order to name and act within this political moment; talk to strangers every day; knock on doors; read everything; distribute information; display my politics in the public square; listen as hard as I can with the possibility of being changed and speak as clearly as I can with the possibility of being heard; learn from my mentors; follow the young; take to the streets; fight the power; kick some ass; encounter art; eat only what I need; ride my bike everywhere; house the homeless; dance the dialectic; stand up for joy and justice, peace and love. I’ll work to build a mighty social movement and never forget that  the Democratic Party cannot be the heart of the resistance to fascism, imperialism, or Trump. It’s up to us.

Another world is surely coming, but there are no guarantees that it will be a better world—work camps and slave states are possible, nuclear war an increasing possibility, planetary collapse on the near horizon. But peace and freedom are possible as well. The choices are stark: socialism or barbarism, chaos or community, the end of capitalism or the end of the earth.

I’ll do my best in 2018 to build the front against the Trump junta continues to try to execute its soft coup, to contribute to the movement for peace in this Spartan military garrison, for racial justice and freedom in this bastion of white supremacy, for economic justice in the heartland of predatory zombie capitalism, for women’s equality and gender justice in this male supremacist bazaar. And that’s not all…

Put this poem by Martin Espada in your pocket to start the year, and go forth with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. :

Imagine the Angels of Bread

This is the year that squatters evict landlords,

gazing like admirals from the rail

of the roofdeck

or levitating hands in praise

of steam in the shower;

this is the year

that shawled refugees deport judges

who stare at the floor

and their swollen feet

as files are stamped

with their destination;

this is the year that police revolvers,

stove-hot, blister the fingers

of raging cops,

and nightsticks splinter

in their palms;

this is the year that darkskinned men

lynched a century ago

return to sip coffee quietly

with the apologizing descendants

of their executioners.

This is the year that those

who swim the border’s undertow

and shiver in boxcars

are greeted with trumpets and drums

at the first railroad crossing

on the other side;

this is the year that the hands

pulling tomatoes from the vine

uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts

the vine,

the hands canning tomatoes

are named in the will

that owns the bedlam of the cannery;

this is the year that the eyes stinging from the poison that purifies toilets

awaken at last to the sight

of a rooster-loud hillside,

pilgrimage of immigrant birth; this is the year that cockroaches

become extinct, that no doctor

finds a roach embedded

in the ear of an infant;

this is the year that the food stamps

of adolescent mothers

are auctioned like gold doubloons,

and no coin is given to buy machetes

for the next bouquet of severed heads

in coffee plantation country.

If the abolition of slave-manacles

began as a vision of hands without manacles,then this is the year;

if the shutdown of extermination camps

began as imagination of a land

without barbed wire or the crematorum,

then this is the year;

if every rebellion begins with the idea

that conquerors on horsebackare not many-legged gods, that they too drown

if plunged in the river,

then this is the year.

So may every humiliated mouth,

teeth like desecrated headstones,

fill with the angels of bread.

Never lose sight of the fact of your own mortality—this brief crack of light between two infinities of darkness. And remember that everything must die—too soon, and always in the middle of things. Get busy!

Let’s gather, link arms and build a public square, talk politics and dance the dialectic with Eve Ewing, Kevin Coval, Rachel DeWoskin in Hyde Park:

https://www.semcoop.com/event/singing-dark-times-eve-ewing-rachel-dewoskin-kevin-coval-bill-ayers