REFLECTIONS ON STUDENT ACTIVISM
Abbie Hoffman
Speech to the first National Student Convention, Rutgers University,
February 6, 1988
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centered yuppie is absolutely outdated, that a new age is on the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.