The other person I met from Columbia in Midtown Manhattan in early 1971 while on the street delivering scripts for the Writers Guild-East Script awards contest was a tall, good-looking former African-American Columbia student named Frank. Although Frank was an African-American, prior to April 1968 at Columbia he seemed to have absolutely no interest in Black Liberation Movement politics, New Left SDS politics or U.S. anti-war movement politics.
In the two years before April 1968, Frank worked at the front desk in the lobby of Carmen Hall each weekday evening and he always wore a tweed suit and dressed like a white prep school student. In addition, whenever any Columbia SDS activist would be handing out leaflets in Carmen Hall, putting leaflets under dorm room doors or posting SDS leaflets on floor bulletin boards in Carmen Hall, Frank would often ridicule the SDS activist in a friendly, but supercilious, preppie way. And before April 1968, if you attempted to discuss issues like IDA, the war, or Columbia University complicity with the Pentagon with Frank, he would just seem to scoff at you in a condescending way, as if any Columbia student who was interested in those kinds of issues must be just some kind of weirdo.
But after observing the first police invasion of Columbia’s campus on April 30, 1968 and apparently observing how the New York City cops brutalized people indiscriminately in Carmen Hall where Frank worked at the dormitory front desk, Frank suddenly began identifying himself as a political radical. And between May 1968 and September 1968, Frank no longer dressed in a tweed, preppie way and devoted nearly all his spare time assisting National Lawyers Guild lawyers with all the legal work and legal details that had to be attended to in representing the 700-plus people arrested at Columbia, whose criminal trespass cases were now being processed daily at the Centre Street Courthouse in Manhattan. And being down in court so often around the Columbia Student Revolt preliminary hearings during the summer of 1968 seemed to further radicalize Frank.
But by the time I bumped into Frank on the Midtown Manhattan street in early 1971, Frank—although still identifying himself as a political radical—no longer was into any kind of left legal activism on a day-to-day level and had lost faith in the possibility of there being a Revolution in the USA in the 1970s.
When I explained to Frank my then-current, early 1971 social change theory, which predicted that a revolutionary feminist-led women’s liberation movement, supported by their male left lovers and male left political allies would soon make the Revolution in the 1970s by first taking over the U.S. mass media studios, Frank was skeptical.
“Most women workers in the 9-to-5 office world that I meet are still mindless and politically unconscious. Most women office workers in the 9-to-5 world will never follow any women’s lib leadership that calls for a Revolution now in the United States,” said Frank.
In retrospect, Frank underestimated the degree to which large numbers of women office workers would eventually become more politically conscious, increasingly college-educated and intellectual, less anti-feminist and less traditionalist during the 1970s and 1980s. But, in retrospect, Frank also did prove to be more accurate than was I in estimating how likely it was that a revolutionary feminist-led women’s liberation movement, supported by male left lovers and male left political allies, would be able to create a matriarchal socialist society in the United States before the 21st century.
And after bumping into Frank on the street in Midtown Manhattan in early 1971, I never heard what happened to him. Presumably, he just ended up spending much of his life as some lawyer for some corporate law firm in Manhattan or elsewhere, trying to earn as much money as he could, in order to personally escape, as much as possible, from being born African-American in an institutionally racist white capitalist and imperialist U.S. society.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Writers Guild Office Boy 1971 (xvii)
While out of the office taking my time delivering and picking up the contest scripts in early 1971, I only bumped into somebody I had known at either Columbia, Barnard, Richmond College, Queens College or Lehman College in Midtown Manhattan on two occasions. After 1979, I can’t recall bumping into anybody I had known in college in Midtown Manhattan until I bumped into my Furnald Hall roommate during my sophomore year at Columbia, Tom, after work one evening in June 1981.
The first person I knew from college that I bumped into on the street in Midtown Manhattan in early 1971, Steve, had been heavily into the WKCR radio station at Columbia and, by 1968, was also getting into filmmaking. I had first met Steve when we were both Columbia College freshmen during Freshman Week in September 1965 because he was in front of me on the long line of Columbia College freshmen in Columbia’s Kent Hall Registrar’s Office, who were all waiting their turn to officially register for their Fall 1965 courses.
Steve was a tall, good-looking and very friendly guy who had attended a Manhattan private school before enrolling at Columbia; and he seemed more sophisticated and more intellectual than most of the other Columbia freshman who had previously attended private schools or prep schools, instead of public high schools.
Talking with Steve on the long freshman class registration line ended up making the one hour wait to register seem to go by much faster. But during the next 3 years at Columbia, I did not talk much with Steve before April 1968. He was into WKCR and helping to set concerts up for people like Eric Anderson in Wollman Auditorium on one weekend afternoon, while I had been more into working in the Citizenship Council and building Columbia SDS on campus.
But during the month after the April 30, 1968 police invasion of Columbia’s campus, Steve had decided that I might be a good person to portray the typical Columbia College Citizenship Council idealistic student volunteer in a new recruiting film that Steve was making for Citizenship Council. So for a few days, Steve and I renewed our acquaintance somewhat at the same time he directed me and filmed me “working as a volunteer” with a local eight-year-old African-American grade school student from the neighborhood. Although Steve’s footage of me was never used since Cit Council felt it projected too much of an out-dated “white paternalistic” image for a post-April 1968 recruiting film, it was interesting to see, somewhat, how Steve had changed or not changed as a person between the Fall of 1965 and May of 1968.
While I felt Steve had become slightly more cynical, more careerist and less intellectual between the time I met him in 1965 and May 1968, he still seemed as friendly, good-natured, and non-snobbish as ever. I also then assumed that after graduating from Columbia he would probably end up as some kind of AM or FM radio rock music DJ in Manhattan like Scott Muni or Pete Fornecelli, since Steve had a radio professional-sounding cultured voice when he spoke to you either in-person or through a radio microphone or stage microphone.
But when I bumped into Steve on the Midtown Manhattan street in early 1971, nearly three years after I had last spoken to him in May 1968, Steve seemed dissatisfied with the job slot that had been assigned to him in one of the network radio or television divisions in Midtown Manhattan. Instead of letting Steve produce or host a rock music show for young people over one of their FM stations, Steve had been dumped by the radio or television network executives in some kind of dead-end, dull job which involved helping to arrange for the airing or broadcasting of “community” or “public service” announcements over a local commercial radio or television station. Although the mass media network job Steve had obtained after college in the early 1970s apparently paid a lot more per week in salary than the $100 per week that I was getting for being the Writers Guild office boy, it seemed pretty obvious—after I spoke with Steve on the street—that no matter how much of a salary they paid Steve, the mass media job he had in early 1971 was not one that Steve would ever feel like keeping for much longer.
After bumping into Steve in early 1971, I never saw him again. But a few years later I noticed he had gotten into rock journalism and was writing literate rock music reviews for 1970s magazines like Circus, Cream or perhaps Crawdaddy. So I mailed Steve a homemade “basement tape” of some of my early 1970s protest folk songs that I had recorded on my cheap cassette tape recorder, since I thought he might be interested in listening to some of the lyrics--including the lyrics to a protest folk song about a 1970s protest action against ITT following the CIA-backed September, 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically-elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende.
But by the time I next spoke with Steve over the telephone once in the mid-1980s, he seemed to have been forced by economic necessity to leave the world of rock journalism and radio broadcasting for the post-1980s world of computers and techie-computer journalism and techie-computer magazine publishing. Yet although Steve now seemed more into business and more entrepreneurial by the mid-1980s than he had been in the 1960s and early 1970s, he still seemed like a very friendly, good-natured guy in the mid-1980s; and he seemed much happier with his work life in the mid-1980s than he had been when he worked for the mass media network in early 1971 at his dead-end, unglamorous, dull, media job there.
The first person I knew from college that I bumped into on the street in Midtown Manhattan in early 1971, Steve, had been heavily into the WKCR radio station at Columbia and, by 1968, was also getting into filmmaking. I had first met Steve when we were both Columbia College freshmen during Freshman Week in September 1965 because he was in front of me on the long line of Columbia College freshmen in Columbia’s Kent Hall Registrar’s Office, who were all waiting their turn to officially register for their Fall 1965 courses.
Steve was a tall, good-looking and very friendly guy who had attended a Manhattan private school before enrolling at Columbia; and he seemed more sophisticated and more intellectual than most of the other Columbia freshman who had previously attended private schools or prep schools, instead of public high schools.
Talking with Steve on the long freshman class registration line ended up making the one hour wait to register seem to go by much faster. But during the next 3 years at Columbia, I did not talk much with Steve before April 1968. He was into WKCR and helping to set concerts up for people like Eric Anderson in Wollman Auditorium on one weekend afternoon, while I had been more into working in the Citizenship Council and building Columbia SDS on campus.
But during the month after the April 30, 1968 police invasion of Columbia’s campus, Steve had decided that I might be a good person to portray the typical Columbia College Citizenship Council idealistic student volunteer in a new recruiting film that Steve was making for Citizenship Council. So for a few days, Steve and I renewed our acquaintance somewhat at the same time he directed me and filmed me “working as a volunteer” with a local eight-year-old African-American grade school student from the neighborhood. Although Steve’s footage of me was never used since Cit Council felt it projected too much of an out-dated “white paternalistic” image for a post-April 1968 recruiting film, it was interesting to see, somewhat, how Steve had changed or not changed as a person between the Fall of 1965 and May of 1968.
While I felt Steve had become slightly more cynical, more careerist and less intellectual between the time I met him in 1965 and May 1968, he still seemed as friendly, good-natured, and non-snobbish as ever. I also then assumed that after graduating from Columbia he would probably end up as some kind of AM or FM radio rock music DJ in Manhattan like Scott Muni or Pete Fornecelli, since Steve had a radio professional-sounding cultured voice when he spoke to you either in-person or through a radio microphone or stage microphone.
But when I bumped into Steve on the Midtown Manhattan street in early 1971, nearly three years after I had last spoken to him in May 1968, Steve seemed dissatisfied with the job slot that had been assigned to him in one of the network radio or television divisions in Midtown Manhattan. Instead of letting Steve produce or host a rock music show for young people over one of their FM stations, Steve had been dumped by the radio or television network executives in some kind of dead-end, dull job which involved helping to arrange for the airing or broadcasting of “community” or “public service” announcements over a local commercial radio or television station. Although the mass media network job Steve had obtained after college in the early 1970s apparently paid a lot more per week in salary than the $100 per week that I was getting for being the Writers Guild office boy, it seemed pretty obvious—after I spoke with Steve on the street—that no matter how much of a salary they paid Steve, the mass media job he had in early 1971 was not one that Steve would ever feel like keeping for much longer.
After bumping into Steve in early 1971, I never saw him again. But a few years later I noticed he had gotten into rock journalism and was writing literate rock music reviews for 1970s magazines like Circus, Cream or perhaps Crawdaddy. So I mailed Steve a homemade “basement tape” of some of my early 1970s protest folk songs that I had recorded on my cheap cassette tape recorder, since I thought he might be interested in listening to some of the lyrics--including the lyrics to a protest folk song about a 1970s protest action against ITT following the CIA-backed September, 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically-elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende.
But by the time I next spoke with Steve over the telephone once in the mid-1980s, he seemed to have been forced by economic necessity to leave the world of rock journalism and radio broadcasting for the post-1980s world of computers and techie-computer journalism and techie-computer magazine publishing. Yet although Steve now seemed more into business and more entrepreneurial by the mid-1980s than he had been in the 1960s and early 1970s, he still seemed like a very friendly, good-natured guy in the mid-1980s; and he seemed much happier with his work life in the mid-1980s than he had been when he worked for the mass media network in early 1971 at his dead-end, unglamorous, dull, media job there.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Writers Guild Office Boy 1971 (xvi)
The work assignment at the Writers Guild-East office that I most remember from January and February 1971 involved receiving in the mail, delivering and picking up script manuscripts that had been entered in the Writers Guild’s annual television scriptwriting awards contest. Awards for the best scripts written during the year were given in different categories: an award for the best fictional teleplay script, an award for the best public affairs documentary script, etc..
A Guild member who wished to enter his script in the Writers Guild-East Awards contest would mail a copy of the script to the Guild union office. I would then assign a number to the script and make a photocopy of the entered script that did not indicate the name of the Writers Guild writer who had written the script.
Once a script’s author was no longer indicated and a number had been assigned to it, I would then put the copy of the script in a manila envelope, along with an anonymous evaluation sheet. Then I would hand-deliver the manila envelope to the Manhattan office or Manhattan apartment of one of the Writers Guild writers who had volunteered to be one of the Guild judges for the particular category for which the script had been entered.
After the script had been read by one Guild member-judge, it would either be sent back to the Guild office by messenger or I would return to the Guild judge-member’s office or apartment and pick-up the evaluated manuscript and evaluation sheet. Then I would deliver the manuscript to another Guild member who was on the judging panel for that entered script’s category.
Coordinating, recording, delivering and picking up the manuscripts for the Writers Guild-East’s script awards contest in early 1971 proved to be more interesting than the work I had been doing at the Writers Guild office between September 1970 and the end of December 1970. Besides giving me a chance to have some interesting conversations with a few of the television writers at either their network television offices or in their Upper West Side, Upper East Side or West Village apartments when I delivered and picked-up the contest scripts, it also gave me a legitimate excuse to stretch out the time I could stay out of the office and hang out on the street even longer than I was able to do during my previous 4 months as the Writers Guild office boy.
A Guild member who wished to enter his script in the Writers Guild-East Awards contest would mail a copy of the script to the Guild union office. I would then assign a number to the script and make a photocopy of the entered script that did not indicate the name of the Writers Guild writer who had written the script.
Once a script’s author was no longer indicated and a number had been assigned to it, I would then put the copy of the script in a manila envelope, along with an anonymous evaluation sheet. Then I would hand-deliver the manila envelope to the Manhattan office or Manhattan apartment of one of the Writers Guild writers who had volunteered to be one of the Guild judges for the particular category for which the script had been entered.
After the script had been read by one Guild member-judge, it would either be sent back to the Guild office by messenger or I would return to the Guild judge-member’s office or apartment and pick-up the evaluated manuscript and evaluation sheet. Then I would deliver the manuscript to another Guild member who was on the judging panel for that entered script’s category.
Coordinating, recording, delivering and picking up the manuscripts for the Writers Guild-East’s script awards contest in early 1971 proved to be more interesting than the work I had been doing at the Writers Guild office between September 1970 and the end of December 1970. Besides giving me a chance to have some interesting conversations with a few of the television writers at either their network television offices or in their Upper West Side, Upper East Side or West Village apartments when I delivered and picked-up the contest scripts, it also gave me a legitimate excuse to stretch out the time I could stay out of the office and hang out on the street even longer than I was able to do during my previous 4 months as the Writers Guild office boy.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Writers Guild Office Boy 1970 (xvi)
Rosemary was about my age, used less plastic-looking make-up and lipstick than Pat, and looked more like the kind of women college students and young Movement women in their 20s that I was usually most physically attracted to at that time than did the 38-year-old Pat. So after Rosemary kissed me at the Christmas party in the Writers Guild office, I, initially, felt her kiss would be the most memorable one I received from that 9 to-5 work scene in December 1970.
But when I surprised Sylvia by traveling all the way from the Bronx by subway down to Brooklyn to attend a late Saturday afternoon-evening Christmas party she was having at her apartment for both her friends and those Writers Guild office workmates who wished to attend, I was, in turn, surprised.
After speaking briefly to an older, late fortyish African-American male friend of Sylvia at her apartment party—who advised me that the secret of having a good time at dull parties where you might not know anybody else or have anything in common with the other guests was to “just blend in”—I had a few drinks and pretty much just waited until I could find some way to make my escape from Sylvia’s party in a graceful way.
Pat was the only other Writers Guild office worker, besides Sylvia and me, at the party. But she was busy spending most of her time at the party drinking heavily and flirting with a macho older straight Latino man in his early 40s, who seemed heavily on the make and seemed to be pushing Pat to spend the night with him after the party.
This macho, culturally straight older guy who was trying to pick up Pat, however, had a car. So when the now drunk Pat was ready to leave, he generously offered to drive Pat, a younger African-American male cousin of Sylvia in his mid-twenties, and me back into Manhattan; and he offered to drop me and Sylvia’s younger cousin off at a Manhattan subway station, before driving the drunken Pat back to her apartment on the Upper East Side.
So, after the older macho guy, Pat, Sylvia’s cousin and I left Sylvia’s party together, I somehow found myself sitting next to the now very drunk Pat in the back seat of the older macho guy’s car, while he was in the front seat driving and now conversing with Sylvia’s younger cousin, who was sitting in the front passenger seat next to him. And by the time the car, after being driven down Flatbush Avenue , had reached one of the bridges going into Manhattan, I was surprised to feel Pat, not only leaning against me in the back seat, but suddenly start to wrap her arms around me, press her large breasts against me and passionately give me a long erotic kiss with her lips.
Before Pat approached me in such a sexually arousing way in the back seat when she was drunk, I hadn’t really ever considered the possibility that Pat might be interested in having an out-of-office love affair with me, since she was approaching 40 and I was just in my early 20s. In the early 1970s, it still was considered unusual for a hip man in his early 20s to think of getting involved sexually with a woman in her late 30s, whose son was a teenager and who used make-up and lipstick-- instead of just having love affairs with the sexually emancipated hip women in their 20s of his own generation, who didn’t use make-up and lipstick, didn’t have children and were still resisting being permanently trapped at some 9-to-5 straight world job.
But while Pat’s lips were touching mine and she began pressing her breasts against me, I suddenly realized that Pat was as able to quickly turn me on sexually as much as were the younger women of my own generation.
Yet because of our age difference, I still felt reluctant in the back seat to get involved in a love affair with Pat. So I gently pushed her away, while whispering: “You must really be drunk, Pat.”
Pat then pointed to the older, culturally and politically straight, unhip, macho man in the front seat who was driving and, in a soft drunken voice, whispered back to me: “You’re so different than a man like that. You’re a new kind of man. That’s why I love you.”
I was touched a little by what the lonely Pat said while she was drunk. But again I just whispered: “I guess we all had too much to drink at Sylvia’s.”
Not long afterwards, the car reached a Downtown Manhattan subway stop on the other side of the bridge it had driven over from Brooklyn, and Sylvia’s younger cousin and I were dropped off and each got out of the car. The older macho man in his 40s then drove his car uptown toward the Upper East Side to drop off Pat, who was now half-asleep in the back seat, at her Upper East Side apartment.
By the following Monday, however, most of Sylvia’s Saturday night Christmas party was already forgotten. But in the Writers Guild office on Monday morning the now sober Pat whispered to me: “Hope you didn’t mind me getting so drunk the other night.”
“No. I didn’t mind,” I replied.
In retrospect, I probably should have asked Pat if she wanted to go out on a date with me, when we were both sober, some evening after work or on the next Saturday night. But because Pat had a teenage son and because of our age difference, I still felt ambivalent about attempting to get involved romantically with Pat at that time.
Because an older woman like Pat was probably more sexually experienced in early 1971 than were most of the women of around my own age at that time that I was likely to be involved with, it’s possible that we both would have found a love affair between us at that time sexually exciting, if I hadn’t closed myself off emotionally to that possibility. But, in retrospect, I’m still not sure that the excitement of making love to each other in the early 1970s would have been enough to overcome whatever relationship difficulties the difference in age and generational/cultural values might have created between us, if we had attempted to date each other or hang out with each other in a public way over a long period of time--given the way many people USA at that time tended to put down older women who became sexually involved with men who were over 15 years younger and the younger men who became involved with such older women.
So as 1970 turned into 1971 on January 1, 1971, I was not involved romantically with anyone either at the Writers Guild Office or anyone outside of my office-boy work scene. And, politically, I was pretty much waiting for revolutionary feminist Movement women to rapidly make the Revolution in the United States by non-violently occupying the U.S. mass media conglomerate’s television network studios in Manhattan in April of 1971--in the same way that anti-war students at Columbia had non-violently occupied Columbia’s campus buildings in April of 1968.
But when I surprised Sylvia by traveling all the way from the Bronx by subway down to Brooklyn to attend a late Saturday afternoon-evening Christmas party she was having at her apartment for both her friends and those Writers Guild office workmates who wished to attend, I was, in turn, surprised.
After speaking briefly to an older, late fortyish African-American male friend of Sylvia at her apartment party—who advised me that the secret of having a good time at dull parties where you might not know anybody else or have anything in common with the other guests was to “just blend in”—I had a few drinks and pretty much just waited until I could find some way to make my escape from Sylvia’s party in a graceful way.
Pat was the only other Writers Guild office worker, besides Sylvia and me, at the party. But she was busy spending most of her time at the party drinking heavily and flirting with a macho older straight Latino man in his early 40s, who seemed heavily on the make and seemed to be pushing Pat to spend the night with him after the party.
This macho, culturally straight older guy who was trying to pick up Pat, however, had a car. So when the now drunk Pat was ready to leave, he generously offered to drive Pat, a younger African-American male cousin of Sylvia in his mid-twenties, and me back into Manhattan; and he offered to drop me and Sylvia’s younger cousin off at a Manhattan subway station, before driving the drunken Pat back to her apartment on the Upper East Side.
So, after the older macho guy, Pat, Sylvia’s cousin and I left Sylvia’s party together, I somehow found myself sitting next to the now very drunk Pat in the back seat of the older macho guy’s car, while he was in the front seat driving and now conversing with Sylvia’s younger cousin, who was sitting in the front passenger seat next to him. And by the time the car, after being driven down Flatbush Avenue , had reached one of the bridges going into Manhattan, I was surprised to feel Pat, not only leaning against me in the back seat, but suddenly start to wrap her arms around me, press her large breasts against me and passionately give me a long erotic kiss with her lips.
Before Pat approached me in such a sexually arousing way in the back seat when she was drunk, I hadn’t really ever considered the possibility that Pat might be interested in having an out-of-office love affair with me, since she was approaching 40 and I was just in my early 20s. In the early 1970s, it still was considered unusual for a hip man in his early 20s to think of getting involved sexually with a woman in her late 30s, whose son was a teenager and who used make-up and lipstick-- instead of just having love affairs with the sexually emancipated hip women in their 20s of his own generation, who didn’t use make-up and lipstick, didn’t have children and were still resisting being permanently trapped at some 9-to-5 straight world job.
But while Pat’s lips were touching mine and she began pressing her breasts against me, I suddenly realized that Pat was as able to quickly turn me on sexually as much as were the younger women of my own generation.
Yet because of our age difference, I still felt reluctant in the back seat to get involved in a love affair with Pat. So I gently pushed her away, while whispering: “You must really be drunk, Pat.”
Pat then pointed to the older, culturally and politically straight, unhip, macho man in the front seat who was driving and, in a soft drunken voice, whispered back to me: “You’re so different than a man like that. You’re a new kind of man. That’s why I love you.”
I was touched a little by what the lonely Pat said while she was drunk. But again I just whispered: “I guess we all had too much to drink at Sylvia’s.”
Not long afterwards, the car reached a Downtown Manhattan subway stop on the other side of the bridge it had driven over from Brooklyn, and Sylvia’s younger cousin and I were dropped off and each got out of the car. The older macho man in his 40s then drove his car uptown toward the Upper East Side to drop off Pat, who was now half-asleep in the back seat, at her Upper East Side apartment.
By the following Monday, however, most of Sylvia’s Saturday night Christmas party was already forgotten. But in the Writers Guild office on Monday morning the now sober Pat whispered to me: “Hope you didn’t mind me getting so drunk the other night.”
“No. I didn’t mind,” I replied.
In retrospect, I probably should have asked Pat if she wanted to go out on a date with me, when we were both sober, some evening after work or on the next Saturday night. But because Pat had a teenage son and because of our age difference, I still felt ambivalent about attempting to get involved romantically with Pat at that time.
Because an older woman like Pat was probably more sexually experienced in early 1971 than were most of the women of around my own age at that time that I was likely to be involved with, it’s possible that we both would have found a love affair between us at that time sexually exciting, if I hadn’t closed myself off emotionally to that possibility. But, in retrospect, I’m still not sure that the excitement of making love to each other in the early 1970s would have been enough to overcome whatever relationship difficulties the difference in age and generational/cultural values might have created between us, if we had attempted to date each other or hang out with each other in a public way over a long period of time--given the way many people USA at that time tended to put down older women who became sexually involved with men who were over 15 years younger and the younger men who became involved with such older women.
So as 1970 turned into 1971 on January 1, 1971, I was not involved romantically with anyone either at the Writers Guild Office or anyone outside of my office-boy work scene. And, politically, I was pretty much waiting for revolutionary feminist Movement women to rapidly make the Revolution in the United States by non-violently occupying the U.S. mass media conglomerate’s television network studios in Manhattan in April of 1971--in the same way that anti-war students at Columbia had non-violently occupied Columbia’s campus buildings in April of 1968.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Writers Guild Office Boy 1970 (xv)
The only other significant thing I remember about December 1970 (after concluding in that month that an anti-imperialist matriarchal socialist society needed to be established in the United States) was being involved in celebrating Christmas at both a Writers Guild office Christmas party and a Christmas party at Sylvia’s apartment in Brooklyn, to which she invited her fellow workers from the Guild office.
At the Writers Guild union office, Pat told the rest of the union office workers in advance that she couldn’t afford to buy any Christmas presents for the rest of us; and that, therefore, we all shouldn’t buy any presents to give to her at the office Christmas party. The rest of the union office workers, however, each bought Christmas presents for each other, which we exchanged at the office Christmas party on the day before Christmas Eve.
I can’t remember what kind of Christmas presents I received from my office mates, because they were not things I really wanted or needed much. Maybe a pen or knick-knack or gloves or scarf or sweater might have been among the gifts I received.
Ms. Burkey, however, proved to be a generous Writers Guild Executive Director when it came time to give Christmas bonuses. Every office worker in the Writers Guild union office got a Christmas bonus equal to 4 weeks worth of salary in late December 1970. And even though Maria and I had only started working there in September 1970 and had worked at the Writers Guild office for only just about 4 months, we still were given the same 4 weeks worth of salary Christmas bonus that the Guild office workers who had been working there for years received.
Having received such an unexpectedly large Christmas bonus from the Writers Guild, I spent more money and time on buying Christmas presents for my fellow workers in Christmas 1970 than I would generally do in future Christmases in the 1970s and 1980s--when my future employers generally did not give their employees any Christmas bonus.
I gave Joe a copy of Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood Is Powerful anthology book, hoping to encourage Joe to become more supportive of radical feminism; and, hoping to also radicalize Eli the bookkeeper, I gave Eli a copy of the Phil Ochs In Concert vinyl record album.
For Sylvia’s Christmas present, I gave her a copy of Joan Baez’s Farewell Angelina vinyl album, while I gave Shirley a copy of a book about U.S. war crimes in Viet Nam for her Christmas gift, in order to encourage her anti-war sentiments. A copy of Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited vinyl album was my gift to Maria; and I gave the college student who worked part-time at the Writers Guild office, Rosemary, a copy of Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home vinyl album.
Because Rosemary, being just a part-time worker at the union office, had not given me or any of the other Writers Guild office workers any Christmas gifts, she was apparently surprised and touched that I thought enough of her to go out and buy her the Dylan record, which seemed to interest her. So after Rosemary unwrapped my gift to her, she spontaneously gave me an affectionate kiss for the first time, which surprised me somewhat. But despite her office Christmas party kiss, Rosemary was apparently still too involved with her steady boyfriend from her own neighborhood in Queens and wanting to prepare for a conventional straight working-class or straight middle-class life after college, to ever approach me in more than a formal business-like way after kissing me at the Christmas Party, during the rest of the time I worked as the Writers Guild office boy.
At the Writers Guild union office, Pat told the rest of the union office workers in advance that she couldn’t afford to buy any Christmas presents for the rest of us; and that, therefore, we all shouldn’t buy any presents to give to her at the office Christmas party. The rest of the union office workers, however, each bought Christmas presents for each other, which we exchanged at the office Christmas party on the day before Christmas Eve.
I can’t remember what kind of Christmas presents I received from my office mates, because they were not things I really wanted or needed much. Maybe a pen or knick-knack or gloves or scarf or sweater might have been among the gifts I received.
Ms. Burkey, however, proved to be a generous Writers Guild Executive Director when it came time to give Christmas bonuses. Every office worker in the Writers Guild union office got a Christmas bonus equal to 4 weeks worth of salary in late December 1970. And even though Maria and I had only started working there in September 1970 and had worked at the Writers Guild office for only just about 4 months, we still were given the same 4 weeks worth of salary Christmas bonus that the Guild office workers who had been working there for years received.
Having received such an unexpectedly large Christmas bonus from the Writers Guild, I spent more money and time on buying Christmas presents for my fellow workers in Christmas 1970 than I would generally do in future Christmases in the 1970s and 1980s--when my future employers generally did not give their employees any Christmas bonus.
I gave Joe a copy of Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood Is Powerful anthology book, hoping to encourage Joe to become more supportive of radical feminism; and, hoping to also radicalize Eli the bookkeeper, I gave Eli a copy of the Phil Ochs In Concert vinyl record album.
For Sylvia’s Christmas present, I gave her a copy of Joan Baez’s Farewell Angelina vinyl album, while I gave Shirley a copy of a book about U.S. war crimes in Viet Nam for her Christmas gift, in order to encourage her anti-war sentiments. A copy of Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited vinyl album was my gift to Maria; and I gave the college student who worked part-time at the Writers Guild office, Rosemary, a copy of Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home vinyl album.
Because Rosemary, being just a part-time worker at the union office, had not given me or any of the other Writers Guild office workers any Christmas gifts, she was apparently surprised and touched that I thought enough of her to go out and buy her the Dylan record, which seemed to interest her. So after Rosemary unwrapped my gift to her, she spontaneously gave me an affectionate kiss for the first time, which surprised me somewhat. But despite her office Christmas party kiss, Rosemary was apparently still too involved with her steady boyfriend from her own neighborhood in Queens and wanting to prepare for a conventional straight working-class or straight middle-class life after college, to ever approach me in more than a formal business-like way after kissing me at the Christmas Party, during the rest of the time I worked as the Writers Guild office boy.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Writers Guild Office Boy 1970 (xiv)
By early December 1970, I had finished reading Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood Is Powerful anthology of essays by a new wave of radical feminist intellectuals and activists and a pamphlet of articles that were being distributed by the Redstockings’ radical feminist group around this time. I also usually bought a copy regularly of the Lower East Side’s weekly underground newspaper Rat, which in late 1970 was now under the control of a collective of anti-imperialist revolutionary feminist women activists.
So,not surprisingly, I had begun to feel by December 1970 that, within the United States, the agent of anti-imperialist revolutionary change during the 1970s was going to be the then-politically powerless oppressed caste of U.S. women of all classes and racial backgrounds, who made up the majority of the population in the U.S.A..
In retrospect, I overestimated the revolutionary potential of U.S. women.
I was mistaken in my early 1970s belief that U.S. women alone—if united as a caste under the leadership of revolutionary feminist women—would be able to make the Revolution, regardless of whether or not U.S. men (other than their leftist boyfriends) supported them politically. Yet in early December 1970, the “Sex War Alone Theory of Revolutionary Social Change” that I had developed seemed a plausible one to me.
The political strategic approach I had come to believe would lead to an anti-imperialist Revolution in the United States which eliminated imperialism, racism, capitalism, sexism, heterosexism and classism all at the same time by the middle of the 1970s reflected the following early 1970s historical and strategic assumptions:
1. A mass-based anti-imperialist revolutionary feminist-led movement of liberated women and their leftist male lovers and political allies would non-violently occupy the U.S. network television studios in the 1970s and demand an immediate end to institutionalized male supremacy, militarism, racism, classism and heterosexism in the U.S.A..
2. Once control of the U.S. mass media television studios was non-violently seized by a mass-based revolutionary feminist-led movement, Movement women would use then their newly-obtained mass media power, as well as their control over other U.S. socializing institutions, to socialize U.S. women to become revolutionary feminist in their political consciousness and U.S. men to become non-sexist and revolutionary male feminist in their political consciousness.
3. Because the majority of people in the U.S.A. were women, women alone—if united as a revolutionary caste—possessed the political capability of overthrowing the oppressive U.S. social system of patriarchal capitalism, patriarchal imperialism, patriarchal racism, patriarchal sexism and patriarchal heterosexism.
4. Large numbers of politically left-oriented anti-war hip men who were involved in love relationships with feminist women would politically support a revolutionary feminist takeover of the U.S. mass media and the patriarchal U.S. corporate state if Movement people collectively organized around the “All Power To Our Sisters!” and “Seize Their TV, Then Speak Freely” strategy that I proposed in my December 1970 position paper.
By the mid-1970s, of course, the patriarchal corporate male-backed upper middle-class corporate and cultural feminist white liberals had pretty much taken control over the strategic direction of the post-1970s women’s liberation movement. And these upper middle-class, white “bourgeois feminist” liberals seemed to have been successful at converting the U.S. women’s liberation movement against male supremacy into a reformist "women's movement", not a revolutionary movement, that seemed to get co-opted by the patriarchal capitalist system in the United States. But in December 1970, large numbers of U.S. women still appeared to me to possess the kind of revolutionary rage that made me feel that U.S. women alone would be able to bring the Monster System down in the United States and free us all from 9-to-5 wage slavery, once and for all.
And when I dropped some mescaline in my Bronx slum apartment on Christmas Eve 1970, “the seize their TV, then speak freely” strategic notion came to me that, if the Movement in the U.S.A. non-violently occupied the U.S. network television studios in 1971 (in the same way Movement activists had occupied the buildings of Columbia University’s campus in April 1968) a Revolution in the U.S.A. could potentially happen before I was 30 years old. But, like I’ve previously indicated, I overestimated the long-term, long-haul revolutionary potential of the early 1970s women’s liberation movement.
So,not surprisingly, I had begun to feel by December 1970 that, within the United States, the agent of anti-imperialist revolutionary change during the 1970s was going to be the then-politically powerless oppressed caste of U.S. women of all classes and racial backgrounds, who made up the majority of the population in the U.S.A..
In retrospect, I overestimated the revolutionary potential of U.S. women.
I was mistaken in my early 1970s belief that U.S. women alone—if united as a caste under the leadership of revolutionary feminist women—would be able to make the Revolution, regardless of whether or not U.S. men (other than their leftist boyfriends) supported them politically. Yet in early December 1970, the “Sex War Alone Theory of Revolutionary Social Change” that I had developed seemed a plausible one to me.
The political strategic approach I had come to believe would lead to an anti-imperialist Revolution in the United States which eliminated imperialism, racism, capitalism, sexism, heterosexism and classism all at the same time by the middle of the 1970s reflected the following early 1970s historical and strategic assumptions:
1. A mass-based anti-imperialist revolutionary feminist-led movement of liberated women and their leftist male lovers and political allies would non-violently occupy the U.S. network television studios in the 1970s and demand an immediate end to institutionalized male supremacy, militarism, racism, classism and heterosexism in the U.S.A..
2. Once control of the U.S. mass media television studios was non-violently seized by a mass-based revolutionary feminist-led movement, Movement women would use then their newly-obtained mass media power, as well as their control over other U.S. socializing institutions, to socialize U.S. women to become revolutionary feminist in their political consciousness and U.S. men to become non-sexist and revolutionary male feminist in their political consciousness.
3. Because the majority of people in the U.S.A. were women, women alone—if united as a revolutionary caste—possessed the political capability of overthrowing the oppressive U.S. social system of patriarchal capitalism, patriarchal imperialism, patriarchal racism, patriarchal sexism and patriarchal heterosexism.
4. Large numbers of politically left-oriented anti-war hip men who were involved in love relationships with feminist women would politically support a revolutionary feminist takeover of the U.S. mass media and the patriarchal U.S. corporate state if Movement people collectively organized around the “All Power To Our Sisters!” and “Seize Their TV, Then Speak Freely” strategy that I proposed in my December 1970 position paper.
By the mid-1970s, of course, the patriarchal corporate male-backed upper middle-class corporate and cultural feminist white liberals had pretty much taken control over the strategic direction of the post-1970s women’s liberation movement. And these upper middle-class, white “bourgeois feminist” liberals seemed to have been successful at converting the U.S. women’s liberation movement against male supremacy into a reformist "women's movement", not a revolutionary movement, that seemed to get co-opted by the patriarchal capitalist system in the United States. But in December 1970, large numbers of U.S. women still appeared to me to possess the kind of revolutionary rage that made me feel that U.S. women alone would be able to bring the Monster System down in the United States and free us all from 9-to-5 wage slavery, once and for all.
And when I dropped some mescaline in my Bronx slum apartment on Christmas Eve 1970, “the seize their TV, then speak freely” strategic notion came to me that, if the Movement in the U.S.A. non-violently occupied the U.S. network television studios in 1971 (in the same way Movement activists had occupied the buildings of Columbia University’s campus in April 1968) a Revolution in the U.S.A. could potentially happen before I was 30 years old. But, like I’ve previously indicated, I overestimated the long-term, long-haul revolutionary potential of the early 1970s women’s liberation movement.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Writers Guild Office Boy 1970 (xiii)
As the Writers Guild office boy, I also sometimes delivered union contract negotiating proposals and counter-proposals in manila envelopes to television network executives like Robert Northshield in their plush network television corporate offices. So by December 1970, walking around the Big Media network newsrooms, studios and executive offices during the workday seemed like no big deal anymore and just reconfirmed my original impression that the folks who worked at the U.S. corporate television networks weren’t yet hip to the mass consciousness changes that had developed among U.S. youth between 1964 and 1970.
Besides giving me the opportunity to walk in-and-out of the television and radio network offices and studios frequently, delivering documents for the Writers Guild as its office boy also gave me a good excuse for getting out of the union office during the workday longer than for just a lunch hour. And sometimes, while on the way to deliver or to pick up union documents from the CBS, ABC, NBC or WNEW studios or offices, I would bump into people on the street whom I had known from my pre-1970 years as an SDS anti-war activist.
I bumped into the former head of the Staten Island Black Panther Party chapter, Neal, for example, on the street in front of the CBS Building one day in late November 1970. By then, Neal was no longer active in the Black Panther Party because of the COINTELPRO-encouraged faction-fighting. But, as an individual, Neal still hoped that there would be some kind of Revolution in the 1970s.
Yet by late 1970, Neal had become skeptical that African-American people were going to rise up in the short-run and make the Revolution in the short-run.
“How Black people can still let Nixon continue to rule over them is beyond me?” Neal said with a shrug, after we embraced on the street and explained what we had been up to since we had last talked with each other on Staten Island in early May of 1969. And before we each went on our way, Neal wrote his phone number for me on a piece of paper which he gave me.
A few weeks later, in early December 1970, Neal and his latest white womanfriend, then visited me in my Bronx slum apartment and spent a Saturday night getting high together, laughing, listening to music and recalling our year of 1968-1969 revolutionary activism together on Staten Island. But since both of us no longer had any anti-war left group like either Richmond College SDS or the Staten Island Black Panther Party chapter for whom we were a spokesperson or organizer, there no longer seemed much of a political or personal basis for us getting together again. And we vanished from each other’s lives.
Besides giving me the opportunity to walk in-and-out of the television and radio network offices and studios frequently, delivering documents for the Writers Guild as its office boy also gave me a good excuse for getting out of the union office during the workday longer than for just a lunch hour. And sometimes, while on the way to deliver or to pick up union documents from the CBS, ABC, NBC or WNEW studios or offices, I would bump into people on the street whom I had known from my pre-1970 years as an SDS anti-war activist.
I bumped into the former head of the Staten Island Black Panther Party chapter, Neal, for example, on the street in front of the CBS Building one day in late November 1970. By then, Neal was no longer active in the Black Panther Party because of the COINTELPRO-encouraged faction-fighting. But, as an individual, Neal still hoped that there would be some kind of Revolution in the 1970s.
Yet by late 1970, Neal had become skeptical that African-American people were going to rise up in the short-run and make the Revolution in the short-run.
“How Black people can still let Nixon continue to rule over them is beyond me?” Neal said with a shrug, after we embraced on the street and explained what we had been up to since we had last talked with each other on Staten Island in early May of 1969. And before we each went on our way, Neal wrote his phone number for me on a piece of paper which he gave me.
A few weeks later, in early December 1970, Neal and his latest white womanfriend, then visited me in my Bronx slum apartment and spent a Saturday night getting high together, laughing, listening to music and recalling our year of 1968-1969 revolutionary activism together on Staten Island. But since both of us no longer had any anti-war left group like either Richmond College SDS or the Staten Island Black Panther Party chapter for whom we were a spokesperson or organizer, there no longer seemed much of a political or personal basis for us getting together again. And we vanished from each other’s lives.
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