The Rhythm Of Being An Activist Today

It Was The Democratic Party, It Was The Presidential Election. We Elected A President [barack Obama]; We Didn't Elect A King. So All The Speculation In The Next Three Months - People Camped Out At His House, And Wondering Who's Coming To Visit, Who's Going To Be The Secretary Of State - That All Struck Me As Inane And Stupid.

All That Means To Me Is That People Who Have A Vision Of A Better World Have A Responsibility To Open Their Eyes, To Pay Attention, To Act On What The Moment Demands, And To Be Humble About That Action.

I Thought In 1965 That My Job Was To Convince Most Americans To Be Against The War. So I Spent Summers Knocking On Doors, Handing Out Literature, Trying To Talk To People Who Didn't Agree With Me, Trying To Get Them To See The War Was Wrong. And By 1968 A Majority Of Americans Did Oppose The War.

But The Frat Boys Were All Frivolous And Idiotic In Our Minds Now, A Bunch Of Conformist Fools Going Through The Motions Of Hip.

The [vietnam] War's Gone On For Three Years. And We'd Thought We'd Ended It Because We'd Done Exactly What We Were Told And What We Told Ourselves We'd Had To Do. We Had A Majority. We Were Against The War And This Created A Crisis For Democracy And A Crisis For The Antiwar Movement.