Volume 9, Number 5 · September 28, 1967
They'd Rather Be Left
By Andrew Kopkind
To be white and a radical in America this summer is to see horror and feel impotence. It is to watch the war grow and know no way to stop it, to understand the black rebellion and find no way to join it, to realize that the politics of a generation has failed and the institutions of reform are bankrupt, and yet to have neither ideology, programs, nor the power to reconstruct them. This should be a summer of despair, of flights to Italy or trips on Haight Street. But although there is some of that, it is a time of engagement, not withdrawal. The energy of movement has been not only conserved, but generated. Suburban housewives canvass for anti-war referenda, students counsel their fellows on avoiding the draft, peace candidates gather support, professors plot demonstrations of protest and non-cooperation. Organizers for a hundred causes roam across Appalachia, through urban hillbilly slums and into white suburbs.
Feature, 4349 words
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