💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › abbie-hoffman-reflections-on-student-activism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:07:17. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Reflections on Student Activism
Author: Abbie Hoffman
Date: February 6, 1988
Language: en
Topics: education, students
Source: Retrieved on October 12, 2011 from http://spunk.org/library/writers/misc/sp000190.txt
Notes: Speech to the first National Student Convention, Rutgers University, February 6, 1988

Abbie Hoffman

Reflections on Student Activism

I guess you can’t see my button. It says, “I fought tuition.” It’s a two

part set, actually. The second button says, “And tuition won.”

You should know that over 650 students have registered as delegates

here, representing over 130 different schools. You have come despite

freezing weather and hard economic times to do something that I’m not

sure anybody is yet ready to comprehend. I’m absolutely convinced that

you are making history just by being here. You are proving that the

image of the American college student as a career-interested,

marriage-interested, self centered yuppie is absolutely outdated, that a

new age is on the rise, a new college student.

There’s been a lot of talk about comparing today to what went on in the

sixties. I would remind you that in 1960, when we started the Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to fight in the South in the civil

rights movement, less that 30 people came together to begin it. The

famous Students for a Democratic Society, which we’re all reading about,

was formed in 1962 with exactly 59 people. No one before this has done

anything this bold, imaginative, creative, and daring to bring together

this many different strains of people, who all believe in radical change

in our society. It is just an amazing feat. And I wish you the best of

luck today, and especially tomorrow, when you have to decide whether to

go forward or backward. I’d also like to take this moment to salute our

glorious actor-in chief: Happy Birthday Ronald Reagan! I don’t believe

anyone in here believes its “Good morning in America” tonight.

I have a lot of speeches in my head: On the CIA, urine testing, nuclear

power, saving water — that’s my local battle. We’re fighting the

Philadelphia Electric Company’s attempt to steal the waters of the

Delaware River for yet another nuclear plant. A local battle? I don’t

know. One out of ten Americans drink from that river. I also speak on

the modern history of the student protest and on Central America, where

I’ve been five times. Every time I get before a microphone I’m extremely

nervous that chromosome damage and Alzheimer’s will take their toll.

I’ll come out foaming at the mouth, accusing the CIA of pissing in the

nuclear plants, to poison the water, to burn out the minds of youth, so

they’ll be easy cannon fodder for the Pentagon’s war in Central America.

Actually that’s probably not a bad speech.

On Tuesday I had to give a speech at the local grammar school to nine

year-olds. I said, “Go ahead, pick any subject you want.” They wanted to

hear about hippies. My 16-year old kid, America, heard me give this

speech about how you can’t have political and social change without

cultural change as well, and he said, “Daddy, you’re not gonna bring

back the hippies are you? The hippies go to Van Halen concerts, get

drunk, throw up on their sweatshirts and beat up all the punks in town.”

I said, “Okay, no hippies.” That was last year, this year he’s changed

his mind. His mother and I were activists in the sixties, and he heard

all the anti-war stories over and over again, never believed any of it.

Then one night last spring he saw the documentary “Twenty Years Ago

Today” about the effect of the Beatles’ Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts

Club Band on us all. It’s about the only thing I’m ever going to

recommend to anybody about the sixties, a simply brilliant documentary.

He sat there watching cops fight with the young people in the streets,

people put flowers at the Pentagon in the soldiers’ bayonets, and the

Pentagon rise in the air, he saw it move just like we said it did. Tears

cam streaming out his eyes, and he called up and said, “Daddy, why was I

born now? I should have been a hippie.”

When I went to college long ago there was a ritual that we all had to go

through at freshman induction. We were herded into a big room and the

dean of admissions came and gave us a famous speech, “Look to your

right, look to your left, one of you three won’t be here in four years

when it comes time to graduate.” I’m going to say to you, “Look to your

right, look to your left, two of you three won’t be here in four years.”

That’s about the attrition rate of the left. I’m sure that many of the

people who want to organize interplanetary space connections have got

everything worked out with Shirley MacLaine, and it’s Okay with me that

they become moonies and yuppies and then borne-again Mormons. They’re

not the ones who keep me up at night. But I worry about the good

organizers, the successful organizers. You’re the ones who know you can

actually get better at this, that you can get good at it. You know that

being on the side of the angels, being right, isn’t enough. To succeed

you also have to work very hard with lots of cooperation from those

around you. You have your wits about you continuously, show up on time,

and follow through. These are the things that take place behind the

scenes that keep you aimed a goal, at victory, at success. And I worry

because somehow on the left, all too often, it’s like three people in a

phone booth trying to get out. Two are really trying to kick the third

one out, and that’s how they spend all their time. The third one’s

always called some dirty name that ends in an “ist.” It’s been a

movement that devours its own. I look out at you and I think of my

comrades, not the people you saw in The Big Chill, but people that were

great movement organizers. You know some of their names, and many others

you don’t know. They risked not just their careers, marriage plans, and

ostracism from their family, but their lives. They faced mobs with

chains and brass knuckles, the clubs of the police, the dirty tricks and

infiltrations of the FBI, and the CIA, Army intelligence, Navy

intelligence, and local red squads all around the country. They had

pressure put on their families. They were prepared for all this from the

moment they decided to go against the grain and take on the powers that

be. They were not prepared for the infighting. They were not prepared

for a movement that devours itself. That has got to cease. I remember a

very free and open democratic meeting in a room in New York City in

1971. All the various strains were there. There was one group that

disagreed with the decision making structure that had been set up. They

wanted to settle their differences with the majority so they came armed

with baseball bats. I can’t remember the groups name — it was the

National Labor Committee or Caucus — but I do remember the name of it’s

leader, Lynn Marcus, better known today as Lyndon LaRouche.

The movement has had its share of other problems. We are too

issue-oriented and not practical enough. We debate issues endlessly,

Deciding whose issue is more important than whose other issue, and so

letting the moment of opportunity in history pass. By that time there’s

another issue There that’s outstripped the other two. We debate which

“ism” is more important than which other “ism”, and I agree that all the

isms lead to schisms which lead to wasms. We need a new language as we

enter the next century.

We need to be rid of the false dichotomies. There’s been a big

discussion going on for the last couple of days here about whether the

organizing focus should be local, regional, national, or interplanetary.

I have never seen a national issue won that wasn’t based on grassroots

organizing and support. On the other hand, I have never seen a local

issue won that didn’t rely on outside support and outside agitators.

Another false dichotomy is one that I call “In the system/out of the

system.” Between inside the system and outside it is a semipermeable

membrane. And either-or is only a metaphysical question, not a practical

one. The correct stance, especially now in these times, is one foot in

the street — the foot of courage, that gets off the curbstone of

indifference — and one foot in the system — the intelligent foot, the

one that learns how to develop strategies, to build coalitions, to

negotiate differences, to raise money, to do mailing lists, to make use

of the electronic media. You need that foot too. The brave foot goes out

into the street to strike out against the enculturation process that

says: “Stay indoors,” “Don’t go out into the street,” “You lose your job

in the street,” “There’s crime in the street,” “You’ll be homeless,”

“It’s terrible,” “Yecch.” Civil disobedience — blocking trucks, digging

up the soil, occupying the buildings, chaining yourself to fences (I

spent my summer vacation chained to a fence) — can be a necessary act of

courage, but it doesn’t take a hell of a lot of brains.

Decision making has been a problem on the left. In the sixties we always

made decisions by consensus. By 1970, when you had 15 people show up and

three were FBI agents and six were schizophrenics, universal agreement

was getting to be a problem. I call it “The Curse of Consensus Decision

Making,” because in the end consensus decision making is rule of the

minority: the easiest form to manipulate, the easiest way to block any

real decision making. Trying to get everyone to agree takes forever.

Usually the people are broke, without alternatives, with no new

language, just competing to see who can burn the shit out of the other

the most. There must be a spirit of agreement and in this way most

decisions _are_ made by consensus, but there must also be a format

whereby you can express your differences. The democratic parliamentary

procedure — majority rule — is the toughest to stack, because in order

to really get your point across you’ve got to go out and get more people

to come in to have the votes the next time around.

My vision of America is not as cheery and optimistic as it might be. I

agree with Charles Dickens, “These are the worst of times, these are the

worst of times.” Look at the institutions around us. Financial

institutions, bankrupt; religious institutions, immoral; communications

institutions don’t communicate; educational institutions don’t educate.

A poll yesterday showed that 48% of Americans want someone else to run

than the current candidates. The last election in 1987 had the lowest

turnout since 1942. There are people that say to a gathering such as

this — students taking their proper role in the front lines of social

change in America, fighting for peace and justice — that this is not the

time. This is not the time? You could never have had a better time in

history than right now.

My fingers are crossed because I hope that you won’t let the internal

difference divide you. I hope that you’ll be able to focus on the real

enemies that are out there. In the late sixties we were so fed up we

wanted to destroy it all. That’s when we changed the name of America and

stuck in the “k.” The mood is different today, and the language that

will respond to todays mood will be different. Things are so

deteriorated in this society, that it’s not up to you to destroy

America, it’s up to you to go out and save America. The same impulse

that helped us fight our way out of one empire 200 years ago must help

us get free of the Holy Financial Empire today. The transnationals —

with their money in Switzerland, headquarters in Luxembourg, ships in

tax-free Panama, natural resources all over the emerging world, and

their sleepy consumers in the United States — do not have the interest

of the United States at heart. Ronald Reagan and the CIA are traitors to

America, they have sold it to the Holy Financial Empire. The enemy is

out there, he’s not in this room. People are allowed to have different

visions and different views, but you have to have unity.

You also have to communicate a message and to do that you have to have a

medium. We know television as the boob tube. We know educational

television as an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. We know it from

reading fake intellectuals like Alan Bloom and his _Closing of the

American Mind_, or from reading good ones like Neil Postman, whose

_Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbiz_ is

a wonderful book. Bloom wants us to shut off the t.v. and start reading

the Bible, and Postman just wants us to shut off the t.v. They are

critics of t.v., but they are not organizers. A lot of people say,

“Abbie, you just perform for the media, that’s your duty, you

manipulate,” a lot of things like that. This is a misconception. I have

never in my life done anything for the media.I’m speaking to you through

a microphone because my voice is soft, and I couldn’t reach all of you

unless I used it. That’s why I use the microphone. But my words are not

for this goddam microphone. If you want to reach hundred of thousands or

millions of people, you have to use the media and television. Television

has an immense impact on our lives. We don’t read, we just look at

things. We don’t gather information in an intellectual way, we just want

to keep in touch.

As bad as it is, television has the ability to penetrate our fantasy

world. That’s why the images are at first quick and action-packed, very

short, very limited and very specific, and afterwards vague, blurry and

distorted. How can these images not be very important? They determine

our view of the world. We in New England would not have known there was

a civil rights movement in the South. We would not have known racism

existed, that blacks were getting lynched, that blacks were not getting

service at a Woolworth counter, if it hadn’t been for television. We

weren’t taught it in our schools or churches. We had to see it and feel

it with our eyes. You have to use that medium to get across that image

that students have changed. YOu have to show it to them. Let the world

watch, just like we watch students in the Gaza strip fight for their

freedom and justice, students in Johannesburg, in El Salvador, In

Central America, In the Phillipines fight for their freedom.

One hundred and thirty schools represented here today out of 5,000

colleges and universities in America reminds us that going against the

grain at the University of South Dakota or Louisiana Stat is a very

tough, lonely job. You have to feel that you’re part of something

bigger. You want to know that there’s a movement out there. That’s where

the role of a national student organization becomes so important, giving

hope and comfort to people that are out there trying to make change at a

grassroots level.

The student movement is a global movement. It is always the young that

make the change. You don’t get these ideas when you’re middle-aged.

Young people have daring, creativity, imagination and personal

computers. Above all, what you have as young people that’s vitally

needed to make social change, is impatience. You want it to happen now.

There have to be enough people that say, “We want it right now, in our

lifetime.” We want to see apartheid in South Africa come down right now.

We want to see the war in Central America stop right now. We want the

CIA off our campus right now. We want an end to sexual harassment in our

community right now. This is your movement. This is you opportunity.

Be adventurists in the same sense of being bold and daring. Be

opportunists and seize this opportunity, this moment in history, to go

out and save our country. It’s your turn now. Thank you.