Harvard Law Review cites Pynchon

[kelber at mindspring.com]

My mother was a feminist anti-war activist during the 60's.  She belonged to a group called Women's Strike for Peace, and dragged me to Ban the Bomb demonstrations up until about 1964, when they become anti-Vietnam War demos.  She was also a stodgy middle-aged. middle-class lady who used to embarass the shit out of me by trying to cover up my ears when Country Joe started chanting: Give me an F, etc.  She was a 60's activist.  The tripped-out hippie chicks dancing on the grass of  the Washington Mall next to us were "counter-cultural."   Both types were necessary to help bring the war to an end (the Viet Cong kind of helped too). 

-Original Message-----
From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
Sent: Apr 30, 2005 11:38 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Harvard Law Review cites Pynchon

On Fri, 2005-04-29 at 22:08 -0700, Bekah wrote:
> At 4:05 AM +0200 4/30/05, Otto wrote:
> >To fresh up an old quarrel:
> >
> >>
> >>   it inaccurately describes Zoyd as "a former '60s activist"
> >>
> >
> >Why inaccurately? It seems to me that the term "'60s activism" includes more
> >then just the SDS, the Black Panthers or the the Civil Rights Movement. Back
> >in those days music and drugs were part of the political scale.
> 
> 
> 
> In the late 60s, early 70s, the saying was  "Everything Is Political" 
> and the radicals, the leftists, the movement people saw it that way. 
> It was due to the polarization over the war.
> 
> The way you wore your hair and the kind of clothes you wore was 
> political.  If you did any kind of drugs,  or if you didn't; if you 
> ate meat or if you didn't; it was all a political statement.  The art 
> on your walls, or that you made, was a political statement,  the 
> music was political,  the sex was political.  The TV shows you 
> watched were a political statement.   In the minds of the radicals, 
> people were living statements of their politics.  There was nothing 
> outside the political.
> 
> So by the definition of the radical minds,  Zoyd was a political 
> being in the same way that everyone was a political being.  Even 
> Brock was a political being (well of course he was).
> 
> But were Zoyd  and Brock activists?  This takes the term "political" 
> a step further, transforming it into a conscious effort to be 
> involved in actions directed at opposing the war.    Brock is 
> obviously not an activist in that sense.   He was probably a 
> reactionary while Zoyd  was probably in the "stoned and I missed it" 
> category  (as the old song went).
> 
> Bekah
> ex wanna-be theoretician (sigh)
> 


Zoyd's activism (such as it is) isn't confined to the sixties.

The opening incident at the Log Jam is as gay activist as it gets.

Or maybe feminist activist.

I guess I was a mild form of activist in the sixties.

Marched on the Pentagon and such things.

P.