[Amerikkka] Books, notes, scribbles

[Ron Edwards]

I just finished reading The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, by Tendler & May (1984, revised for 2007), to discover that the shadowy narc-and-loot business of Ronald Stark connected at one point to Musa al-Sadr, in Lebanon during the early 1970s. These readings are wonderful. It's like eating a really good meal on a regular basis, and also occasionally finding a very yummy jelly bean left there for you by the thoughtful chef.

Other thoughts: from last year, my notes for Amerikkka included a levels breakdown of the term "The Sixties," in part to help abandon the long-standing decade-designations which are doing none of us any good. It runs something like this.

1. The Movement, including but not limited to the New Left, which was rooted more in white participation in 1950s civil rights than in the intellectual post-Spanish Civil War Left and broke from it sometime around 1961, about the time of the Port Huron Statement. So, CORE, SNCC, SDS, then draft resistance and a panoply of splinter efforts. These efforts were always embattled with the many technical communist and socialist groups, which were older and generally stuffy and inactive except as activism-spoilers.

2. The grassroots rights groups, too many to list here, but way more than people think, e.g. there were no less than three distinct Black Panthers and several other black activist groups, there were three distinct Weathers, there were two different centers of radical gay activists,  the feminists can be described as a whole taxonomy of origins and methods and goals, there are the Chicano groups, the Puerto Rican groups, the American Indian groups of which AIM was a distinct late-comer, and don't forget the non-student neighborhood white groups who often made common cause with their immediate neighbors, to form coalitions which have (as far as I can tell) been thoroughly stamped into forgetfulness.

3. The Haight-Ashbury scene, specifically 1966 and a bit of 1967, specifically excluding the bummer-days of the Summer of Love, which despite some root-connections with the Beats actually surpassed and overwhelmed them easily; it might even owe as much to the surf-rock coast culture. Not one thing about this scene was confined to it alone, but in many ways, it provided a focus and an opportunity for coherence which supercharged the corresponding locations (e.g. London) with symbols and examples. I also think it's important less for what it was, than for what it did to #1 and #2 above: the sexual revolution, psychedelics, and the somewhat more robust and lasting counterculture knocked everything sideways, taking (e.g.) SDS and the Black Power movement just as much by surprise as it did the mainstream white culture.

4. The immediate latch-on to all of the above, especially #3, in two ways: (i) to cherry-pick for symbols and life-style details to express one's own life-choices and political views, and (ii) to mine assiduously for marketable items and terms. The mix of genuine change and commercial co-option is completely impossible to separate. This is, I think, "the sixties" as most people experienced it and categorize it, although it didn't really happen across the country until the 1970s proper. It's also more than mere symbols-kitsch; the personal life-style changes are a very big deal and correspond to a sea-change in both the corporate landscape and the formal political culture. Activism actually skyrocketed rather than declined, especially at the level of dedicated community effort and long-term political force.

So I'm reading a lot about the Haight, the California coast in general, and about the psychedelic saga. It's extremely eerie for me, as there are many parts for which I was actually present, as with my readings about intentional communities last year. Have I told you guys about Synanon yet?

P.S. Leary was an asshole.