IVIV BIG DISCUSSION [spoiler] Compare & Contrast section, P. 32

[kelber at mindspring.com]

We can blame the "kids" for not allying with the labor movement, but let's not forget what the labor movement already looked like by the 1960s:  the card-carrying commies, the Joe Hill-Guthrie-strummin' earnest folks had all been ousted or red-baited or marginalized (see Jesse Traverse's rant in Vineland), and those that remained didn't exactly want to be allied with by good-for-nothin' draft-dodging hippies.  The construction workers who beat up Pace College students who were peacefully protesting the war in 1970 -- they weren't randomly assembled, but were ordered there by their unions.  

A co-worker of mine in the IBEW in the '80s told me, with embarrassment, that he had been one of those construction workers. The union ordered a bunch of loyal union types to leave work and get down there to kick ass. He said he was personally all fired up to do just that, but was shocked when he got down there to see how young and un-hippy-ish the kids looked.  Since he was under pressure to do something, he compromised by grabbing a kid's camera and smashing it on the ground.  This was during the reign of our most progressive leader, Harry Van Arsdale.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>Sent: Sep 5, 2009 5:31 PM
>To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: IVIV BIG DISCUSSION [spoiler] Compare & Contrast section, P. 32
>
>rich wrote:
>>> So what should've the kids done?
>>
>> suffer
>>
>
>well, alice wasn't quite so bleak as all that...
>Philip Randolph was the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
>(and, though there's a humorous bent reading of that title that leaps out at me,
>that isn't quite the point) and arguably laid the groundwork (together
>with AJ Muste and Bayard Rustin) for the Civil Rights movement
>
>What alice is saying isn't something one doesn't wonder sometimes:
>if TRP is in fact a Roosevelt-loving card-carrying leftie, where are the
>expressions of solidarity for progressive social movements, for non-risible
>Counterforces?  Where is the line drawn, is his opposition of Life-force and
>Thanatos translatable into any political stance?
>
>I'd argue  it's implied - but why?  Why not explicitly support leftism?
>
>What this question (and alice) ignores is the tendency of leftist movements
>to also become authoritarian and thanatopsic.  Pynchon, or any one with
>life-affirming values who follows the news (dateline: USSR 1917-present, for
>example) can't so easily ignore this.
>
>
>
>
>
>-- 
>"A single nonrevolutionary weekend is infinitely more bloody than a
>month of total revolution." - Paris graffito