Assata
My life and career have forced me into meaningful contact with a wide variety of religious, political, ethnic, and geographical people. I have had Chinese, Jewish, black, and Korean roommates. I have taught in a rural high school, a Big Ten Suburban University, an inner city State University, worked summers on a Grounds Crew, been a Chauffeur, a front end loader driver, a clerk In a Sears Roebuck store, mower of the fairways on a golf course, a high school track and cross country coach, set a course record, earned 8 varsity letters in college, been fired from a job once, an attempted firing once, received teacher of the year awards in three different educational institutions, lived in the hills as a kid, lived in rented rooms for years, lived in apartments for years, lived in high rises, lived for 20 years lived on a two and a half acre highly landscaped home in a rural area, and for shorter or longer periods have formed friendships with simply all sorts of people of every race, political bent, religious bent, sexual orientation----poor, middle class, and extremely rich.
Anyone who knows me knows I like to write, and with the background above there is much to write about. Let's just say, like many others, I have seen a lot in life, and more important, have seen life through the eyes of diverse players on life's stage. The terminational years, for me, are spent in large part putting all the experiences together to form perspectives on life, which, of course, will upon my death mean absolutely nothing. Life, in my case, continues to mean a lot and be interesting as long as I can be out and about in nature, and have the mental where-with-all to gain new understandings about different facets of life.
I just finished reading a book titled Assata. She was a young blk revolutionary during the sixties caught up in the turmoil which only those who lived in the 60's remember. The book is interesting because it depicts the personality and thought processes of the young in any revolutionary movement. It is hard to get any revolutionary movement going if there is no truth at all to their cause. It is hard to get progressive change in any society without revolutionary movements. Revolutionary movements, by nature, create a lot of young victims, and not too often any victory for them in the normal sense of victory. Women's lib, blk power, union power, religious crusades, gay power, etc never change society without bloodshed, and many young lives will be destroyed in the struggles BUT society does change as a consequence and these lost lives are not totally in vain.
I was teaching in a major metropolitan area during the sixties, myself young then and energetic too. I knew many young people like Assata----wide eyed, bright, energetic, very verbal, emotional, determined, brave, likable, independent, impatient, dogmatic, vulnerable, angry, careless, brave, stubborn, anti authority, and foolish. They invariably had tunnel vision and could see the wrongs in society all blown up until that is all they could see. You were either with them or you were against them and that was about the sum of it to them. Like their opponents the world was simply divided between the good guys and the bad guys. The conflict was usually about some sort of tyranny by the majority. They sought justice and the status quo sought rule and order. Young people like Assata thrived on excitement and all the planning and the comradeship within which they found themselves cocooned. Like strong believers in just about anything, violence follows when stymied or frustrated by the realities of injustices. The Have's always have the power, the wealth, and laws, including the police and army power to win any direct confrontation. What the revolutionaries have is always nothing much to lose, anger, and the freedom to destroy property and lives of authority figures. People who have things don't really like to see riots in the streets and police and other authority figures being killed. For most of the young revolutionaries, if they don't get themselves killed, they will end up in jail or at best delusional, penniless, and unemployable. It is a rough life.
It would be too long a tale to recount the specifics and experiences of Assata. There was a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. Assata was severely wounded and eventually was sentenced to prison for her part in the murder of a state trooper. I am sure at that time I was all for hanging her and all those of her kind. I know, at this time in my life, that such acts are not justifiable or tolerable. Of course neither is injustice. In societal conflicts of this sort good people die on both sides, good people on both sides do unfair despicable things. Emotion rules the day, sides are drawn, and the raw emotional actions by so many on both sides are not pretty. In societal conflicts it is almost always the young who cannot stand the oppression and turn it into an immediate life or death struggle. Older adults with authority and power feel a need to defend the status quo at any price and teach protesters a hard lesson or two. on who is in control.
A lot of life is pure tragedy. Everything that happens on both sides is understandable but simply seeped in tragedy. Assata escaped from jail and was given asylum in Cuba. She is still there. The evolutionary process may produce amazing results in the long run, but the script is a bloody one, a merciless one, an ever on going situational challenge of Tails you lose, heads someone else wins. Most of us never have the guts or stupidity or whatever to lay everything on the line for our beliefs. Of course we never change the world either.
