Interview with Michael Donnelly

Donnelly, Michael ; McKiernan, Stephen

Michael Donnelly is an environmental activist, author, and one of the founders of Friends of Opal Creek. Donnelly has been writing on environmental issues and stories focused on Native American and indigenous peoples in the northwest. He is a member of the American Indian Movement.

2010-03-16

In copyright

2018-03-29

McKiernan Interviews

136:34

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Michael Donnelly
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 16 March 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:03):
Testing one, two. Could you give me some background in terms of where you were born, your early influences in terms of the people who had the greatest impact on you, and any role models or heroes that inspired you when you were young? Because I know you are a very important activist on the environment.

MD (00:00:27):
Okay. I was born in Flint, Michigan, and I grew up in Flint, Michigan. And I guess the biggest important influence on me is the Catholic Church. From an Irish Catholic family, and went to Catholic schools through 12th grade, and I was in a Catholic seminary in Detroit, Michigan for 9th and 10th grade or seminary. And a lot of my early influences were people in the church. And I have the whole clan structure of our family. I had a lot of great influences, my grandparents and aunts and uncles and so on. And my dad was a huge influence on me. And he was a junior college English instructor and baseball coach who got his doctorate degree and eventually became president of the college and was pioneer of community colleges in the country. And he was, I guess you could call him a Roosevelt liberal type.

SM (00:01:41):
How did you end up going from Michigan to Oregon?

MD (00:01:49):
At Michigan State University I met my wife in grad school there. And she had gone to undergraduate school at Lewis and Clarke College in Portland. Before that though, when I was a junior in college in 1970, my dad was hired to set up the community college system for the whole state in Nevada. And so that was the first time. Yeah, he set up five colleges in seven years there. Now they have more students than the whole rest of the college system in the whole state. And so, the first time I ever saw the West was when I caught a plane, which was rare back in (19)70. I never caught any planes. But at Christmas break in a blizzard in Canton, Michigan... And then went off in Reno. The first time I had seen the West, and I loved it. So then when I met Nina, my wife, was [inaudible] college, she-she had grown up in Marin County, California, and we had come to Oregon. My God, Oregon.

SM (00:02:53):
Well, obviously this is the (19)60s and the (19)70s.

MD (00:02:58):
Yeah.

SM (00:02:58):
We are talking about here? And again, I got really a lot of specific questions, but there is also some broad ones too, and this is one of the broad ones. When you think of that time when you were in college, those experiences, I think you graduated from a community college and then you went off to Michigan State and then you were off to Oregon. Do you remember about those times? Was there something in those times that inspired you to become an activist or you just started seeing things with a bigger lens?

MD (00:03:31):
When I was young, I was growing up in inner city Flint, as it shifted from being white neighborhood to [inaudible], and that had a huge impact on me. And I got involved early on with the Urban Coalition, which was an attempt to bridge the racial divide in the area. I was one of the youngest people involved in it. When I was in the seminary, Dr. Martin Luther King came to Detroit and gave a speech, fabulous speech.

SM (00:04:02):
And you saw it?

MD (00:04:03):
Yeah, I saw it.

SM (00:04:03):
Oh, wow. You are live. Wow.

MD (00:04:04):
Yeah, so all of us seminarians, we made signs and we rolled out and joined all the neighbors and everybody, and we all walked downtown to see the speech. And that was pretty moving to me. I saw my first [inaudible].

SM (00:04:15):
What year was that?

MD (00:04:16):
It was in (19)63.

SM (00:04:17):
Okay.

MD (00:04:18):
Three. Oh, no, it must have been (19)64. Because LBJ was president and Nicholas Katzenbach was the attorney general then.

SM (00:04:29):
Yes.

MD (00:04:30):
They were protesting though. And so that had a big impact on me. I grew up, part of my Catholic upbringing is being pushed into athletics. So athletics was really... For anything about athletics, the best thing about it was it broke down a lot of race barriers. [inaudible 00:04:52] A young guy, he wanted to play with the best athletes and did not matter to us what color you were. So I got involved that way. That was my first.

SM (00:05:03):
That you are the third only person of all the people I have interviewed outside the politicians who met him, but actually you saw him speak. How close were you to the stage or you were up in the audience someplace? How long did he speak?

MD (00:05:20):
He spoke I think at least an hour. And he was speaking from the steps of a church. And the crowd was just surrounding all the blocks all around there. I was probably a half a block away. I could barely see him, but they had speakers set up and you could hear.

SM (00:05:40):
Oh, so you heard the speakers then?

MD (00:05:42):
Yeah, I basically heard speakers. I could not really see any expressions. I could just see little tiny people up there. But it was incredible.

SM (00:05:52):
Yeah. I know about Flint because when I was at Ohio State, I went through Flint on the way to Oakland University. I think I had a friend there, that worked there, and I remember being in the bus station downtown Detroit and Flint, and I believe that is where, what's his name? Earvin, the great basketball player came from there.

MD (00:06:17):
Oh, Magic Johnson?

SM (00:06:18):
Yeah. Magic Johnson. Yeah.

MD (00:06:21):
He was from East Lansing.

SM (00:06:22):
Yeah, he was from the area. Okay. Now you are an athlete, you are in a Catholic school, now you are in a seminary. You saw the differences between black and white, which was one of the biggest issues of the day. And of course, Dr. King. As a young person, were you one of the youngest people that was as a white person involved in this?

MD (00:06:42):
Probably. Certainly when we set up the Urban Coalition in Flint, I was the youngest. I was certainly the youngest white person, and there were not that many white people at first you know.

SM (00:06:53):
What was the purpose of the Urban Coalition?

MD (00:06:55):
It was to try to try to just deal with the race disparity, calm things down. I mean, it was a rather dangerous time to be a teenager, whether you were black or white in a situation like that, because there was a lot of stuff going on. That is why I got involved in it, mostly cause of that. And then try to get local businesses to hire some of the young black guys in the neighborhood because there was just no jobs for most teenagers. And if you were black, you did not have a chance.

SM (00:07:29):
Right. We all know what happened when Dr. King was assassinated. All the things that happened in the cities was pretty sad.

MD (00:07:40):
We kept a [inaudible] on that. We had a huge memorial, and rally, and a march. And rioting did not break out in Flint. Then it did during the same time as Detroit Riot, though, so it got pretty scary then. But yeah, I think it worked out.

SM (00:08:01):
What were your thoughts at that time on the Vietnam War? Were you one of those individuals like I was? And the many that were subject to the draft? Or your number was high, or how did that work out?

MD (00:08:14):
Well first, when I first started hearing about Vietnam, it was actually, I was hearing about Laos because some of the older guys I know were going into the service and they were going to be sent to Laos. So, it was like, I did not know what Vietnam was at first. Then by the time I graduated high school in 1967, it was a pretty well-known thing. And then I went off to college and some of my friends enlisted, and a few of them came back wounded and had all kinds of stories. And then I was in the first draft lottery that year, 1970, and my number was number 32.

SM (00:08:53):
32?

MD (00:08:54):
Yeah.

SM (00:08:55):
That is not good.

MD (00:08:56):
No. So I immediately got drafted, and so I applied for conscientious objector status at that time and still got drafted. And then I went through about, oh, from about mid-1970 to the end of (19)72, where I was just in the back and forth battle with the draft board. And I had to appear before the draft board. My argument [inaudible] any type to begin with. And then after about, I was, what did I call it? My draft status went to 1AO. 1AO. Objector. And they kept telling me that they were going to find a spot from me to where I could work alternative service, dealing with finding wounded guy's hospital facilities near their hometowns. And about two or three times that was getting it and started in the process, and that just never happened. And then all of a sudden out of the blue, they just discharged me.

SM (00:10:10):
Wow.

MD (00:10:11):
I guess it was they had enough of me. One of my uncles, my dad's brother, Dr. Bill Donley, he was a pediatrician in Pontiac, Michigan, and he was one of the people that, he was a role model to me because he was involved in the open housing movement in early days. [inaudible] suburban pediatrics practice. So he just opened up an inner city one. But he also, he was a World War II Navy officer, and he was totally opposed to the war, and he was involved with the people that put on the moratorium, and he was also involved with the bunch doctors that were helping people get medical deferment.

SM (00:10:58):
Oh, wow. And yeah, the moratorium, I think was (19)69, I think, if I remember.

MD (00:10:58):
Yeah. He had been involved helping on that. He was a great guy. And my dad too. My dad was one of the first college presidents that telegraphed LBJ to end the war.

SM (00:11:14):
Well, that is something I want to hear about. Because your dad was involved in the community college system in Colorado?

MD (00:11:22):
Nevada.

SM (00:11:23):
Nevada. And he was the president of what now?

MD (00:11:26):
Well, he worked his way up from being an English teacher and baseball coach. He is another World War II vet that used the GI bill to further his education. And then he became the president of Flint Junior College. And then that was at the point when community colleges were being invented. And he and Charles Stewart Mott. Know who he is?

SM (00:11:52):
Charles... No, I do not.

MD (00:11:54):
He was the top shareholder in General Motors. He has got foundations that have outlived him, and he was a very instrumental guy. He was a person that is a role model. He's one of the greatest philanthropists ever in my mind. And he was totally loyal to Flint. He served as mayor for seven years, and he had an instrumental role in getting the sit-down strike settled peacefully. And the union being recognized, and General Motors being the top corporation [inaudible] over 40 years. But he also, he and a friend of his, Frank Manley, are the guys that invented community schools. And it started in Flint. And so, when [inaudible] community colleges, [inaudible] called Mott Community College, donated the land for it, and shook down all of his industrial cronies for money to build the college. And he and my dad were partners on that. And then in 1970, Nevada wanted to get a college, [inaudible]. Howard Hughes knew CS Mott, so CS Mott recommended my dad. Howard Hughes gave a $250,000 donation. And that is how the community college system in Nevada got started.

SM (00:13:07):
Oh my gosh. That was around the time he was, was that when he was kind of hibernating? And the whole...

MD (00:13:12):
Oh, yeah. My dad never, ever met him. He went through intermediaries. But these industrial philanthropists saw the potential of community college. Then my dad, because of that... He was the President of the Association of Community College Presidents and helped get them accredited all over the country. He traveled the country getting community colleges set up.

SM (00:13:40):
Wow. That is a very important phenomenon during the time when boomers were young. Because I actually went to a community college for two years, Broome Community College in Binghamton. And then I went to Binghamton University to get my history degree, and then I went off to Ohio State. But I know how important community colleges were because it was an excellent education for less money.

MD (00:14:06):
Oh, yeah.

SM (00:14:07):
Now your dad sent a letter off to the president. Did he ever get a response?

MD (00:14:14):
I do not think he did. He sent a couple different tele... the only reason I know that, is there is this famous incident when students took over his office, the president's office about the war. And my dad just opened up his door and he said, "Hey, look, I have already sent the telegrams. Here you go." But he was ahead of them.

SM (00:14:38):
Now, obviously you are an activist today. We are going to get into that about the environment and the forests and everything. But now you are not an activist yet. You are a very involved person. You are working together, bringing people together, and then going off to college and everything. What did you think of the anti-war people that you saw on your college campuses?

MD (00:15:04):
At the community college there was not a whole lot of activity, though the Chicago Convention, sure amped that up. The (19)68 convention. And quite a few of the people that were active in the anti-war movement were people that I'd gone to Catholic school with. And so I liked them and they were able to reach me pretty easily. But when I went off to Michigan State, it really got amped up. Because Kent State happened during that time and all sorts of stuff. The invasion of Cambodia. I should say, that also was a very interesting event in Flint that I went to. The SDS, the Weathermen, when the Weathermen broke off from the SDS, they held a thing called the War Council in Flint, right before they went underground. And they rented this place in the inner city, one of the black clubs, and they had this event. So I and a few of my friends went down to it. And that was an eyeopener. That was something totally different than any of us had ever thought about.

SM (00:16:08):
Explain what happened there.

MD (00:16:11):
They basically ranted and raved and ranted and raved and called for armed insurrection. That is, it basically. And I do not know, I am way too much of a pacifist for that. I was completely shocked by that.

SM (00:16:30):
That was Bernardine Dohrn was not it? She was the president, I think.

MD (00:16:34):
Yeah, she was there. I think Mark Rudd [inaudible].

SM (00:16:37):
Yeah, and Mark Rudd. And there were...

MD (00:16:40):
Quite a few people there.

SM (00:16:41):
Her husband too, I think was in that group. Bernardine Dohrn.

MD (00:16:45):
Yeah. It was very strange. And I remember that one of the more radical inner city churches, Sacred Heart Church, allowed all these people to sleep in their gym and this and that. Anyway, so that was the way more radical fringe as an anti-war movement. And then I went off to Michigan State. There was a very big movement, but there was a lot of infighting going on because of the, you know, you had your Marxist wing, you had your pacifist wing. I had gone to a few organizing meetings for demonstrations, and I just could not deal with it. I do not know what it was. It was just too much of an intellectual exercise and a lot of people making points and self-aggrandizing and so on. I went to these major anti-war rallies that were going on during that time. And then the student strike in 1970 took place there, and there were thousands of students out the street. Took over the main thoroughfares and cut off traffic, and fought it out with the cops there too. The people did. And there was a lot of tear gas craziness. But by that time, things were getting pretty polarized. It carved out strong positions on the war. And of course that was before I got drafted. But by the time I was drafted, I was thoroughly opposed to the war.

SM (00:18:20):
Now you were there through (19)71?

MD (00:18:23):
Yes.

SM (00:18:24):
It is interesting because I was at Ohio State in (19)71, (19)72, and I remember one of my friends at Ohio State's best friend was in grad school at Michigan State. And we drove there, and as we were coming into the campus, we were asked to get out of the car. They thought we were infiltrators, right?

MD (00:18:41):
[inaudible]

SM (00:18:42):
And that was in the (19)71, so it was still happening there, and the students were on the streets protesting and everything.

MD (00:18:50):
Yeah, it was a big deal because Michigan State University has a huge police science academy there, and they were training [inaudible] for the South Vietnamese for a while. And so people really wanted to shut that down. So, I think it was pretty polarized.

SM (00:19:08):
These interviews are all about you and all the people I interview because I get into the basic questions that I ask everybody, but it is the personal stuff that is most important to me. During your years there at Michigan State, whether it was two years or whatever, you obviously saw the protests and went to the protests, but were there any great speakers who came in to address the campus that you saw? Any programs that you went to that had really an impact on your life?

MD (00:19:38):
Yeah. Senator Wayne Morse came to the Michigan State.

SM (00:19:41):
Big time.

MD (00:19:42):
And he was one of the only two people to vote against the war. So we made all these signs, Wayne Morse for president, and we went. He was... That was highly impressive to me.

SM (00:19:54):
He is from Oregon.

MD (00:19:55):
I know. Maybe one reason I came here, I do not know. That and Ken Kesey.

SM (00:20:01):
Right.

MD (00:20:01):
And my wife, of course. So, I think Wayne Morse was probably the greatest speaker I saw at address the war.

SM (00:20:12):
Did he speak in a gym, or in a room?

MD (00:20:18):
It was a, like a theater kind of performing arts hall, probably 3000 people.

SM (00:20:26):
Was it an evening or daytime program?

MD (00:20:27):
An evening, yeah.

SM (00:20:29):
Was it tense?

MD (00:20:29):
It was right by my dorm, so it was pretty easy.

SM (00:20:32):
So it was packed? Was he the only speaker? Did he have a Q&A too after he spoke?

MD (00:20:42):
No, he did not. But another time I saw Dick Gregory speak, he did have a Q&A after.

SM (00:20:47):
Oh, he is another big one.

MD (00:20:48):
And he was another really good one that influenced me. I was really impressed by him.

SM (00:20:54):
And what was, if you can remember, it has been a while, but I remember all my speakers too in college. What was the main thrusts of Senator Morse's speech?

MD (00:21:06):
Basically that the war was illegal and needed to end immediately, and it violated all American principles and democratic principles. And he just laid it out simply that I think he's the first person I heard ever say that, that Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese had used our constitution as their model.

SM (00:21:33):
Which is true.

MD (00:21:35):
Yeah, I believe that is true. I have always been told it was true, because I heard Senator Wayne Morse say it was true.

SM (00:21:41):
And also he admired Thomas Jefferson. He was a big Jefferson fan.

MD (00:21:46):
Oh, yeah.

SM (00:21:47):
Truman missed an opportunity there.

MD (00:21:52):
Yeah.

SM (00:21:53):
How about, were there any bands or performers that you saw during those years at Michigan State that were?

MD (00:22:00):
Oh, yeah, there was. I saw all kinds of musicians and performers that were in that time. But I think the ones that were the most political were, I saw the Jefferson Airplane and John Sebastian. Along with a number of other groups in an outdoor concert. And they hammered away at it. They had a decided anti-war platform they were putting out.

SM (00:22:30):
When Kent State happened, your school was still in session, correct?

MD (00:22:34):
Yes.

SM (00:22:35):
How did you guys find out about it?

MD (00:22:38):
Oh, it spread like wildfire through the dorms and to the college. Lots of misinformation too. I mean, the misinformation had police getting killed and all sorts of stuff. So it took a little while to figure it all out. First we all went and hit the TV to find out what was going on. And I think it was almost just immediately there was a huge protest. Calls for [inaudible] strike.

SM (00:23:07):
And did your school shut down early because of it?

MD (00:23:12):
The school kept going. The student’s kind of forced the strike.

SM (00:23:16):
Okay.

MD (00:23:17):
Students took over the administration building. The police came. It was a wild time. I think it was more of a voluntary, it was voluntary. Whether you abided by the strike or not, the school kept going.

SM (00:23:32):
Who was the president of Michigan State then? Do you remember?

MD (00:23:35):
I cannot remember.

SM (00:23:37):
Because that person [inaudible]

MD (00:23:40):
Right. I cannot believe I cannot remember his name. He was the first black president, you know? I could undoubtedly look it up.

SM (00:23:51):
Yeah. But those were sometimes, I will tell you. What do you think when you think of the (19)60s? And again, I say the (19)60s went right until about (19)73, (19)74, because... What do you think were the watershed moments that, in your opinion? When did the (19)60s begin in your eyes?

MD (00:24:18):
I think they probably began with the assassination of President Kennedy. That opened up a lot of peoples' eyes to hey, things are not quite what they seem.

SM (00:24:29):
And when did you feel personally in your life that the (19)60s had ended?

MD (00:24:40):
I do not think they have, in the sense that, I think the major contribution of the (19)60s was a rise in consciousness. A willingness of people to challenge the dominant paradigm, and to figure it out on their own without some authorities interpreting. And being the middle man and what reality is, and I think that was blasted out forever by the (19)60s. That was a big peak.

SM (00:25:12):
Is there one, you have already mentioned quite a few that could have had an impact on you. Is there one event that had the greatest impact on you personally when you were young?

MD (00:25:33):
Yeah. The funny thing is, I think it is LBJ's resignation.

SM (00:25:38):
Explain your reasoning for that.

MD (00:25:41):
Because I felt it was the first time that the government was held accountable. That [inaudible] the government was acting badly, and the person behind it all was going to take the fall for it. It was something that all of us really wanted to see, and it actually happened.

SM (00:26:03):
What do you think, when we are talking about boomers, at least one third of the people I have interviewed are not boomers? They were born before (19)46. But when you think of the 1950s, we are talking now about the (19)60s, but in the (19)50s, the boomers were really in elementary school. Well, they were in... Post-war, of course, they were in diapers in the first five years. And then because in the (19)50s, they were in elementary school or beginnings of junior high. Your thoughts on, what was it about the (19)50s that created the (19)60s in your view?

MD (00:26:49):
Oh, maybe rock and roll. I mean, things were starting to shift. There was rise of... The cultural stuff was changing. Rhythm and blues was happening. Black culture was getting more play. It existed. The big part of it, I think, I think there was a cultural shift that was starting in the (19)50s. So I was kind of completely ensconced in the Catholic Church. I still feel that the reverberations going on around that things are starting to change.

SM (00:27:33):
Well, you're talking about going to the Catholic Church. You know, the (19)50s, one of the observations we find is that many of the boomer children are going to church, synagogue. They were going every Sunday. And then as we got to the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, that was not happening anymore. Many were not going. They went inside themselves more. Like the spirituality changed. And that was part of the communal movement too. But your thoughts on just, if you're devout Catholic, just what happened to the attendance and why it all of a sudden, fewer were going to church as they got older?

MD (00:28:19):
Well, I think the Catholic Church got on the wrong side of the two greatest moral issues of the day. And one was population, and the other is the war. I think they were on the wrong side of it, and I think they lost a lot of credibility. I do not think they ever recovered. I was taught, when I was applying for my conscientious objector status, I met with Monsignor Sheridan, who had been my pastor all my life. He pushed me into the seminary and everything. And while he agreed with me that I was a conscientious objector, he was going on and on about, "But do not you realize we're over there in Vietnam defending the Catholics from the north?" And then he closed with a rant about abortion. It was like... I mean, it was clearly, there was a shift that took place that the church was on the wrong side of. When I went into the seminary in the early (19)60s, John Kennedy was President, a Catholic president. John Paul the 23rd was Pope, a very popular Pope. Church was in a heyday. And there were 242 guys in my freshman class. And four years later, only 14 graduated. And a big shift took place right there in the middle of the (19)60s. And I think that the church was not very forceful on civil rights either. They should have taken a much bigger lead than that, I think.

SM (00:29:45):
Yeah. I can remember my grandfather was a Methodist minister, so we went every Sunday. And then I went off to school and it was more logistics than anything else for me. But there was something about the messages also within the church. This is just my thoughts on your thoughts. The messages in the (19)50s within the churches was... They were just moral messages or they were more simple messages. They were not worldwide messages. And Dr. King was such a rare breed because he was talking about, the black ministers were talking about justice in their churches. And I am not sure if the white churches were, or the synagogues. I do not know what they were doing. And so, the social conscience became part of the message of many of the religious leaders as we go into the (19)60s. And at the same time that was happening, more and more young people were not going to church or synagogue or... I find it ironic that that was actually happening. Just your thoughts on that? Is my observation, right?

MD (00:30:59):
Yeah, but I think the individual ministers and priests and rabbis were... there was the Berrigan wing of the Catholic Church. But then you have your right-wing wing too, that was sporting the status quo. And social justice did not really matter, even across the radar. And it became, to me, it just seemed like it was exclusionary and elitist that the church became. That all this stuff was going on that had a huge real-world impact. There were very moral issues and the church was not addressing them, or if it was, it was getting on the wrong side. And that is what blew me out of it.

SM (00:31:47):
The one minister that seems to have been a constant through all this was Billy Graham. He seemed to be an important voice no matter when, throughout the last 50 years. So, he is one of the rare constants. The boomers have been thought of as also the TV generation. Were you influenced by TV? It certainly brought the Vietnam War home in the (19)60s, but what were your thoughts on the TV of the (19)50s? The black and white television shows?

MD (00:32:17):
I was not so much into TV, and I think it might have been because of the sports. And I did not watch a whole lot of TV. I cannot remember. I'd watch Soupy Sales when I was a kid, and the cartoon shows, and the Three Stooges, things like that.

SM (00:32:33):
You were not a Musketeer fan?

MD (00:32:36):
Nah, not really. Did not watch much of that. I do not know. My parents were, they were fairly strict around that stuff. I could not watch stuff like Gunsmoke or anything like that.

SM (00:32:48):
Oh, okay. Yeah. All the westerns.

MD (00:32:50):
Yeah, they would not allow that. And so I never watched much on TV other than sports. And then I really started getting into watching the news. Walter Cronkite I really liked to watch. [inaudible]

SM (00:33:04):
Yeah. Was that back, you mentioned that important event where Johnson decided not to run as being the probably the most important events in your life. Well, Walter Cronkite, he made a comment about Walter Cronkite. "Well, if Walter Cronkite's against the war, so that is all over for me." Or something like that.

MD (00:33:26):
In fact, I watched that. Johnson's basic resignation speech with my dad. And my dad, it really bothered him because Johnson had been so good for community colleges. He was so good on so many things, the great society programs and everything. And the war just undid him.

SM (00:33:46):
I am asking, where were you when you first heard John Kennedy was killed?

MD (00:33:51):
I was in the seminary. I was in class. All of a sudden, we got told that we had to go to assembly in the main assembly hall. They did not tell us why. And then everybody went over there and they began with a prayer. And then one of the priests came up and said that the president had been shot and he was in the hospital and we were going to pray for him and so on. And then even before that assembly got over, we were told that he was dead and that they were arranging, calling our parents to come and us take us home for a few days.

SM (00:34:21):
All right. Do you remember where you were when you heard about Martin Luther King's death?

MD (00:34:31):
Yes. Yeah, I was in Flint. I was at home at the time. That is when I was in, yeah.

SM (00:34:41):
Did they break into the TV or just radio or?

MD (00:34:45):
Yeah, I heard, yeah, it was all TV. It just came out all over the TV.

SM (00:34:52):
And how about the Bobby Kennedy assassination two months later to the day?

MD (00:34:57):
I was watching TV when that happened. I was watching it. Yeah, I was...

MD (00:35:03):
I was watching it. Yeah, 1968 probably was the most influential year in my life. I have to say that. There's so many things happened. I mean, you had Dr. King, Robert Kenned, you had the Chicago convention and just everything just blew up.

SM (00:35:23):
Ted was that year, too.

MD (00:35:29):
That is what happened. It was mind boggling. I mean, it was such a shift from the quiet 50 and growing up in Flint.

SM (00:35:37):
Did you ever think, some people have said that outside of the Civil War, this was the most conflicted period in American history, that we were close to a second civil war. Some people made those comments. Do you believe that?

MD (00:35:54):
Yes, I do believe that. And I mean, there was the racial tinder box that going on, and there was just, like I said, you had these radicals on the anti-war side that were willing to blow stuff up, had people on the other side who were awful, and there were movies that were glorifying the people who were pro-war and opposed all the poor hippies and stuff. And then of course, we had Merle Haggard song, Muskogee, even though that was the satire, some people took it seriously. So it was polarizing things. There was intentional polarization going on. And one of the things I witnessed that really had an impact on me is when I was at Michigan State, and I think it was 1969, there was a big anti-war march down to the state capitol in Lansing. And some guy driving, they had three lanes blocked off with the marches, and they were trying to get the traffic on the other lanes. And some guy just went crazy. And he just drove his car right into the crowd, even hit a motorcycle cop that I just was talking to, right by me. And I know I was just in shock. I was broken down in tears on the side of the road. I did not believe that.

SM (00:37:17):
Were any students really hurt?

MD (00:37:19):
A number of people got hurt, nobody got killed. The cop had a couple broken legs and a few other things. And then of course, some people just went crazy and started pounding and beating on the guy's car. And the police came and dragged him off.

SM (00:37:33):
Was he drunk or was he just did not like the protestors?

MD (00:37:36):
Did not like the protest. He just lost it. He snapped. And so, I could see where it has been real close, the people being pushed to start a civil war. There was always people that were, "We got to get guns, we got to get weapons, we got to be prepared and that." There was that whole faction always, but most people did not take that seriously. Yeah, I do not know. But I do think that people intentionally polarized the situation.

SM (00:38:10):
This question oftentimes is difficult to answer, but we are talking about 78 million people here who are the Boomer generation in which you are one. One of the criticisms, there's actually been a couple, but one of the criticisms of the generation is that, well, only 15 percent were ever involved in any kind of activism. 85 percent, just like anybody else, they did not do anything, just went on with their lives. But when you look at the 15 percent, that is a pretty big number out of 78 million. But just your thoughts on the Boomer generation, and maybe I am commenting on the 15 percent of the activist because it's hard to generalize on everybody. What do you think were some of the strengths and weaknesses of your generation?

MD (00:38:58):
Well, I think the greatest strength was the willingness to challenge the dominant paradigm, the accepted definitions of reality. And I think that goes on through today. Willingness to step outside of the status quo and take some risks that way. That I think that is probably the greatest strength of the whole Boomer generation. I think we had a more collective view, a collectivist view of the world that we are all in it together, it is not just me against the world or you and me against the world, and we are all in this together. I think that came about. I think the boundaries of community went from the local neighborhood to the state, to the country to encompass the whole world. And I think that brought about in our generation. That was a big strength, actually.

SM (00:40:05):
I know that politicians like Newt Gingrich and commentators like George Will, oftentimes when they get a chance, they take a shot at the (19)60s generation or that era in the (19)60s and (19)70s is the reason why we have a lot of problems in our society today. I know Newt Gingrich talked about this when he came into power in (19)94. He may run for president again, by the way. There is rumors that he may run against Obama.

MD (00:40:32):
Well, there is one of the problems with our generation. There is a lot of self-absorbed self-promoters. And I see that as undermining a lot of the good our generation has done.

SM (00:40:46):
Can you give some more examples of that?

MD (00:40:49):
Oh yeah. The whole nonprofit sector is just filled with people who are self-promoters. They attach themselves to a cause and it is not necessarily that it is their deep-seated beliefs in the cause of the matter. It is just a way for them to rise their star. And I have noticed that dramatically in the environmental movement. I have written about that a lot. And I think it kind of permeates non-profit culture, which is something that pretty much is a child of our generation too. Did not really exist until this much. And I do not know I what you do, I have been fighting that forever in the environmental movement with a lot of people, is how do you keep the issue being the main focus and not people's personalities and their need to lead or at least pretend that they are leading some movement and this and that. And that was going on in the peace movement too. And I just do not know. I think that may be our greatest weakness as a generation is we have not figured out how to deal with the self-promoters that undermine us.

SM (00:41:58):
You raised a good point here because obviously when you think about the environmental... I see that in other issues beyond the environment and also about politicians who latch onto an issue. And that is why Senator McCarthy is always in question. He was obviously deserving of what happened in 1968, but then all of a sudden he just dropped out. I know Bobby Kennedy was killed. But your thoughts on in Earth Day, which was a monumental happening on the 22nd of April in 1970, were you at the first Earth Day?

MD (00:42:32):
Yeah, I went to something at Michigan State University. There was some kind of tree planting ceremony and people playing Frisbee and flying kites and so on, and talking about the environment.

SM (00:42:43):
Well, I know the Earth Day in Washington it was just unbelievable. I know Dennis Hayes, who I have interviewed for this book, and of course Gaylord Nelson, he's passed away, but he was the former senator of Wisconsin. They were the two leaders of Earth Day. I think it was actually Gaylord Nelson's idea. And of course, he sat down with the anti-war movement to make sure that we are not challenging your anti-war movement, so there was a working there. But your thoughts on people like Dennis Hayes, who has been involved in this for his whole life, and certainly Gaylord Nelson, who was the senator who is the father of Earth Day, and he has done unbelievable things in Wisconsin. I went to his funeral and I cannot believe what he did there for the environment in Wisconsin. He seemed like the real deal.

MD (00:43:36):
Yeah, I really liked Earth Day. I wish we would get more in tune with the rest of the world. But the UN on the spring equinox is coming up this weekend, northern hemisphere, and the fall equinox in the southern hemisphere. I wish we were more in tune with the rest of the world on that. But obviously Earth Day is a great event and overdue. And of course it needs to be Earth Day every day. But I personally have some bad feelings toward [inaudible] so I do not know if it should go into that.

SM (00:44:08):
Me, I got to turn my tape here too. Can you hold on one sec? Individuals. I respect everybody's views. And of course I know Rachel Carson was another one, even though she's passed on. She was kind of a God. And I read her book and I do not think she was into self-promotion. She was just a great writer.

MD (00:44:32):
No, Rachel Carson was one of my all-time hero. Without a doubt. Her book influenced me a lot. My thing with Hayes, back in 1993 after Clinton was elected, and I was one of the people that was instrumental in starting the ancient forest protection movement. And Clinton was coming out here to hold a forest summit, as he called it. And so obviously there was going to be only a few people that had been on the summit. If there were thousands and thousands of actors that we had actually mobilized in order to get that issue made into a national issue. Which is one of my piece with institutional environmentalism today, they think that mailing lists and sign on letters constitutes activism. To me, it is mobilizing people. So it came to me. We had a big meeting of activists down the national park that when this happened, Portland, we need to throw a free concert and rally and get people there. And so, I drew up a plan for that. I started to shop. I was the vice president of the Oregon Natural Resources Council at the time, which was the statewide coalition. And so I drew up the plan, the proposal, and started shopping around everybody work, get the money to do this. And then I know some musicians, Baby Boomer musicians. So we contacted Carol King and Kenny Loggins and Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Brown. And I said, "Okay, are you guys into this? You are willing to help, da-da-da-da-da." Okay. And finally, Dennis Hayes, through the Bullet Foundation, got involved. And I got pitched overboard as well as most of the activists. And when the final day came, 70,000 people showed up. It was the biggest political rally in the history of Oregon. They surpassed this recently when Barack Obama came during the campaign. And it was incredible. And Neil Young, all sorts, David Crosby.

SM (00:46:39):
Oh, wow. You got them. I know how difficult they are to get anywhere.

MD (00:46:43):
Oh, I know. They were on our side. And so, then I have a friend who is, he is now the editor of Autobahn Magazine. At the time, he was one of the editors at Time Magazine, David Seidman. He had written a book about our efforts at Opal Creek called Showdown at Opal Creek. And so he came out to the rally and got to interview Neil Young and everybody. But Dennis Hayes went up and spoke to the people about the issue, which he was not really involved in. And then he actually had one of his minions tell David Seidman that the whole idea for the concert had come to him in a green dream that he had. And I am telling you, there is a paper trail as to where the idea came from. And so, David, of course, told me that, could not believe it either. So, part of me wonders what poor hippie Dennis Hayes stole the Earth Day idea from.

SM (00:47:43):
Well, I think it was Gaylord Nelson.

MD (00:47:44):
I know.

SM (00:47:45):
Yeah. Because Gaylord was the one that really came up with the idea. But he was also big anti-war. And he knew it could cost him his senatorial position, and he lost his senatorial position.

MD (00:47:58):
Well, anyway, that that is the sour taste in my mouth. And the fact that Clinton came out here and he restarted ancient forest logging, we had it stopped with an injunction and he got it be going now was the upshot of his. Well, the whole thing is in the history of our activist context, it is not that great.

SM (00:48:18):
But you are, when you hear the Gingrich's and the Wills make those comments about the Boomer generation, because he is referring to the increase in the divorce rate, the drug culture, all these negative things that he thinks had been gone into society. And even Barney Frank wrote a book called Speaking Frankly, and he was Mr. Democrat, who said that the Democratic party and McGovern had to get away from those kinds of people if they wanted to survive as a party. And he wrote that in the early (19)90s. Just your thoughts on those kinds of comments. They happen all the time.

MD (00:48:56):
Well, like I say, there are a lot of self-promoters that have had fairly free reign. There does not seem to be any way to check and balance them. So, I can see where there is a legitimate criticism there. The things that you were talking about specifically, Will bringing up the rise in the divorce rate. Well, I would say the dominant paradigm around relationships has totally shifted in my lifetime. It used to be that people got together and they stayed together even if they hated each other.

SM (00:49:29):
That is the (19)50s.

MD (00:49:31):
And then now you have this serial monogamy thing where people are with someone until death do your part. But that means the death of the relationship. And I do not know. I see a lot of people are not satisfied that either. So, I think we are still working on that one.

SM (00:49:49):
What are your thoughts? A lot of the Boomers thought they were the most unique generation in American history. When you hear people say that, what are your thoughts?

MD (00:49:59):
Oh, I just think that...

SM (00:50:04):
Because they were going to change the world, they were going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, bring peace to the world. That was the communal, the community feeling back.

MD (00:50:15):
Yeah. I feel like we had great ideals. Often, we were not very practical or pragmatic in carrying them out. And then a lot of times I think that we're up against such an established order that it is pretty hard to carry any of that out. I think that any of the positive changes that have happened have happened because of pressure. I do not think that power changes without pressure and cultural things do not change either without pressure. I always thought that it is a conceit that we are somehow the most unique generation. I mean I look at what my parents and my in-laws, that generation, the World War II generation was phenomenal. You look back, how about the people of the time of the Civil War. I mean, some it is apples and oranges things too. Each generation has to react to the challenges that happen during their lifetime. And some of them have.

SM (00:51:24):
What are the things that we have to admit though about this era? The times that Boomers, when I say they are young, I am talking about really the (19)50s, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, and the (19)80s. I mean, I am talking about people in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s, because people are still young then. When you look at the period of all the movements, because obviously the civil rights movement was ongoing from the (19)50s. And the other movements learned from that movement, including the anti-war movement. And I have talked to people in the gay and lesbian movement, the Chicano movement, the Native American movement, Blacks movement, Black power movement, and certainly the environmental movement. These are all very important. And there seem to be a sense of community within these groups so that if, for example, an environmental protest was happening, these other groups were there. The winds movement too. And I do not know if there is a camaraderie anymore between these groups. They all still exist in some way. But what has happened to the movement?

MD (00:52:34):
There has been more fragmentation there. And some of that I attribute to identity politics where people were so tied to their own identity thing that they cannot jump out of it enough and keep the connection with people in other things. And sometimes that just gets stirred. I have been involved with the American Indian movement too all along. I forgot to mention that. And so that is a huge part of the environmental movement still.

SM (00:53:12):
Did you go into that relationship, because I talked to Paul Chaat Smith on Washington. He wrote a book on the American Indian movement. And the American Indian movement heyday was (19)69 to (19)73. Those are four very powerful years. But I think it is very important, just what you said, the linkage between the Native American movement and the environmental movement. Expound on that, please.

MD (00:53:34):
Okay. Well obviously, there is some romanticism toward Native Americans and they live in harmony with the land and everything else. But in reality, most Native American cultures have a spiritual and social viewpoint that you do treat the earth as primary. So that fit right in. Some of my friends in the American Indian movement, John Trudel and Calvin Akaka and others clearly have an environmental views and have always been there and been on the side of the environment. It is always there. It is still there. The Native American movement, of course, that had a heyday and it kind is not officially any movement anymore. But people were there. And a lot of the people, some Boomers too, we are all same. And I think that is always been there. The threat of the land based on Native lands that Native people will control. And sacred lands that are now public lands that are being... So there's this natural symbiosis. There's an environmental law conference called the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon. It is the oldest one in the world, was out of Europe. And always there is a huge contingent of Native Americans that come and speak and are welcome. And I heard a whole gathering of Native elders talking about all the problems on the reservations and what's going on. And they are actually using the term extinction now to describe what's happened to their culture. I have never heard that used that before.

SM (00:55:22):
This is in the last couple years?

MD (00:55:24):
Just in the last couple years.

SM (00:55:25):
That is sad.

MD (00:55:29):
Yeah, I know. So that bond is there, that connection is there. It is tough because it is a different culture. And my grandfather's half [inaudible], and so was his mother and his father. And even though I was not raised in that culture at all, and my great-grandmother got forced to move to Oklahoma when she was a kid, but I did get to know her because she lived to 99. And so, I have an interest in it that way, but I am not from that culture. But maybe it's because I grew up being a minority in the minor neighborhood. I do not have that much of a problem. I can understand the various different cultures, but there is a lot of ways where white people just despite being just unconscious and insensitive, are awfully to Native people, even when they are on the same side. So, there is that friction, but the movement is there. The other movements involved, that I see the connections with, the radical environmental movement has been fragmented by the identity politics stuff. People who, for them being transgendered or the bisexual, gay, lesbian or even some other identity, whatever they got, hardcore women's movement, this and that. And they want to bring all the social justice issues to the forefront of the environmental issue. And it hamstrings the movement when you bring the movements together. And then the one movement only will participate if their cause is primary.

SM (00:57:16):
Yeah. You mentioned too, and I read something on the web that even groups like the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club are who are, well, for the environment, obviously but they're afraid of non-violent protest.

MD (00:57:32):
Yes.

SM (00:57:33):
Even if the goal is nature. now, that is amazing because Gaylord Nelson was a lawyer for the Wilderness Society for many, many years until he passed. Could you say a little bit, why is it that these I guess the main line or mainstream environmental groups have issues with this? I think they would be praising.

MD (00:57:57):
I think it boils right down to the fact that they are preachers of the Democratic party and of the foundations that kill their coffers. And those entities are status quo entities. And so, they do not want to risk their access as they call it. Whether meaningful or not, they want to have access to politicians. And they also, of course do not want to risk their bottom line of their grant portfolios. So, it is one of those things follow the money, follow the power. It has been going on a long time. There's numerous books written it. There was an article in the Nation just last week about it. Jonathan Hari, H-A-R-I.

SM (00:58:38):
Oh, I subscribe to the Nation now. I think I have the issue. I have not read it yet.

MD (00:58:42):
Okay. It is called The Wrong Kind of Green. And Counterpunch has been writing about it for years. Jeffrey St. Clair wrote a book called Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green To Me.

SM (00:58:57):
Oh wow. It was interesting because Gaylord Nelson was a lawyer at Wilderness for golly, God in a long time. But I took students to see him and all he talked about was the environment with the students, all the other issues... He kept saying, "Okay, we got problems between different cultures and different races, okay, but none of us would be here if we do not have an environment." Now, Gaylord Nelson to me was such a rare breed. And when he came to our campus twice, he talked about the fact of overpopulation. He kept saying this overpopulation is a big issue. And I am not sure if a lot of people were listening to him. He was kind of a guy out there...

MD (00:59:43):
Oh, you cannot get the big environmental groups to touch overpopulation with a 10-foot fall now.

SM (00:59:49):
That was one of the central pieces of his life.

MD (00:59:53):
Yeah. Yeah. I think what happens is these organizations, once they get, as a friend of mine once said, once an organization gains a life of its own, it will go down hard just like any other life form. And they become ossified. They have to maintain their empire, an empire building. The interest of the institution become primary over the cause.

SM (01:00:20):
Right.

MD (01:00:22):
And then that is the drawback in [inaudible].

SM (01:00:23):
Did you have a generation gap between you and your parents?

MD (01:00:28):
I had a little bit of one.

SM (01:00:30):
What were the main issues between... The main issues?

MD (01:00:34):
Oh, mine were probably around the Catholic church. And I mean we were pretty much in agreement on the war. We were definitely in agreement on race. We were one of the last white families in the neighborhood. Everybody just disappeared. And my parents were not about to do that. So I guess the gap was more social stuff. Of course I was into experimenting with pot. After I was done with my athletic stuff. I was one of those classic your body is your temple. I did not even drink anything until I was 21.

SM (01:01:16):
Did you see amongst your friends that they were having issues with their parents?

MD (01:01:20):
Oh yeah. A lot of them were just totally at odds with their parents.

SM (01:01:29):
Yeah, obviously that was one of the main characteristics of that period. What are your thoughts, I know you cannot talk about 78 million people, but the Boomers that you have known in your life, do you think they have been good parents and good grandparents? And I say this, number one, have they shared the experiences of when they were young and do you think their kids were listening to them? And number two, have they kept their idealism or have majority of them you think moved on like all other generations? They go raised families, make money and survival and security's number one over ideals.

MD (01:02:11):
I think we may have been a more indulgent generation as parents in that we hover around kids more, are more protective. When I was a kid, I was outside all the time, running up and down the streets doing whatever, carrying on. And then I see my generation being way more protective of, was the other kid. Of course now with their grandkids. And I do not know, I think there was more of that kind of my generation, people who get a kid and they treated was the first child born in the Western world. There was too much of that in our generation, I think. And that can lead to self-absorbed people.

SM (01:03:03):
It is a term that I love and that is the word activism, but it is just me. I have this perception that universities did not learn from the activism of the students from the (19)60s and (19)70s, just like maybe they did not learn from the students of the 1930s that were very active on college campuses. As someone said to me, no matter what era, they are always going to be afraid of activists. But do you feel that the universities are afraid of student activism today on university campuses for fear that it may be similar to what transpired in the (19)60s and early (19)70s or where there was disruption? And of course, in this day and age, there's so many things wrong with our society that money's the bottom line that they cannot have activism because it could threaten the money flow.

MD (01:04:03):
I definitely think that is part of it. I was talking about that public interest environmental law conference at the University of Oregon. It used to be way more activist oriented and now it is more about collaboration with industry. And a lot of that is tied to big donors and corporations in the state leaning on the president of the university to tone it down. And they did. So, I have seen that work. It's hard to know. I know quite a few young people in their 20s that have come out of the university system that are activists. So, I think it is still happening, educating people and people making the right choices and trying to make change on the world look better and trying to keep having a collective view of the planet. But I do think that university has got scared off a bit. And I know I go to the universities now and it is all about building the buildings and it is all that kind of stuff.

SM (01:05:14):
But see, volunteerism is very important. I would be one to say that probably over 90 percent of college students are involved in volunteer of some sort. Some has required within fraternities and sororities and certain organizations. But then a lot of them do it on their own.

MD (01:05:33):
Well, I think that is key.

SM (01:05:35):
But see, that is volunteerism. But I have always been a believer that activism is the step beyond volunteerism, which is activism is more 24/7 or as volunteerism might be two to four hours a week or something like that. Your thoughts on that thought?

MD (01:05:51):
Well, I think that real successful activism is carried out by volunteers, people that are volunteering to do something because it is something really special to them. And it may be 24/7, and it involves a lot more organizing with people. It is one thing to be a volunteer, or be an activist that shows up at a rally. It is another thing to plan that rally and get other people out. And so that kind of activism... And I feel that this goes back to the whole thing of the big bean groups getting ossified stuff. Because I think they lose track of the fact that... David Brower had the statement that he felt you had to have at least 1000 members to justify one paid staff. And when he was strict this year, and I think that people gotten away from that. And the way I think it needs to work is you have to have a mass base of volunteer citizens who are active to jump and then you have to have a paid staff to carry out the will of the mass base. But that is been turned on its head. And now you have people who, because they have a paid job, they feel entitled to make decisions top down for the movement. And that does not work. I just see it never gets the good. Whereas volunteer citizen activism, maybe even involving non-violent direct action will get the good occasionally. But I have really seen that. So I think that volunteer citizen activism is the key. It is great that there is volunteerism going on and people are getting the taste of it. But yeah, you are right. It needs to be if you are going to be an activist it is 24/7.

SM (01:07:38):
Yeah. Yeah, I reflect a lot on my university experiences because the people that run the universities today are Boomers and generation Xers, the young generation. And what's interesting is that the Boomers experience the (19)60s and they know what it's all about in the universities and the generation Xers overall never really liked the Boomers. And so this is like, well, we're going to do it our way kind of mentality. So, I see a little bit of both. I have a question here too. And this is on healing. I took a group of students to Washington, DC quite a few years ago to see Senator Muskie. Of course, he was the vice-presidential running mate for Humphrey in (19)8. And the reason why we asked this question was similar to the one we were asking you about whether we were headed toward a civil war. And he responded to kind of unique way. But here is the question. Do you feel that Boomers are still having problems with healing due to the extreme divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth, divisions between black and white, between men and women, division between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not? Do you feel the Boomer generation will go to its grave, like the civil war generation not truly healing? Are we wrong in thinking this? Or has 35 or 40 years made the following statement true? Time heals all wounds. And then of course then we ask, has the Vietnam Memorial played any role in the healing process, not only for veterans, but the nation as a whole? Your thoughts on whether the Boomer generation, whether we are talking the 15 percent that were really activists, the people who served their country, Vietnam veterans, anti- war, all these movements we are talking about, even the conservatives that were young Americans for freedom, that we have a problem with healing as we head into old age.

MD (01:09:44):
Yes. I think there is a problem with the healing. But I think it is more of an institutional thing that there is people that have a stake in keeping the divisions going and sowing fear. Personally, I am very good friends with people that.

SM (01:10:03):
I am very good friends with people that are Vietnam veterans, and they do not hold anything against me for being a conscientious objector. I do not hold anything against them. In fact, I am saddened and angered about what happened to my brothers and sisters that had to go over there. I feel that, I think it is tragic. I do think the Vietnam Memorial has helped a lot for all of us. It is an incredibly moving place. I have been there. I have a brother who works for the Pentagon. I have good friends that are in the military. My father-in-law was a retired Air Force colonel. My father, my aunt, all my uncles are Vietnam, I mean, World War II vet. I do not have any problem with it, but I think there's an institutional thing [inaudible] keep us polarized that way in order to maintain power. It is the same people that are sowing fear all the time, maintaining power. I think there's, got a lot stacked against us as far as being able to pull that off.

MD (01:11:17):
Could you, you said, yeah, we have not healed. Could you be a little more specific on what are the areas where we have not healed?

SM (01:11:27):
Oh, I think it is incredibly hard still for people with different races just to be with one another, just to be. Just to be themselves and not have that be an issue. And politically. Whether you are a pacifist or whether you support the government, it is hard to get beyond that. I mean, I have, even within our families, [inaudible] and I think it is going to be very difficult and maybe to heal all that. There is a lot of acrimony that went on too.

MD (01:12:10):
I find it is interesting that even though President Obama, he tries to make a point that he is not a member of the Boomer generation. Yet he was born in, I think, (19)62, so he was only two years old. But a lot of people criticize him as being, well, this is the return of the (19)60s generation. They look at him as the return, and of course he denies that he has anything to do with it. So, you got to, denial, and then you have got people saying that he is carbon copy.

SM (01:12:45):
Well, I know if it was not for the (19)60s generation and the changes that happened, he had have never been elected.

MD (01:12:50):
Right.

SM (01:12:51):
Well, I just see him as another Ivy League elitist myself.

MD (01:12:59):
Well, I got to give him more time, but he cannot keep giving in. That is the only thing. If it means his election, then that is the way it is. The politicians, if they believe in something that they fight to the end, and if the vote voters throw them out, then they throw them out. But one of the, Senator Muskie said something interesting. His response to that question, because he was not well, he just gotten out of the hospital and he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War." He did not even comment about the (19)60s. And he went on to mention that over 400,000 men died in the war. Almost an entire generation passed away during that war. So, he talked about that the Civil War generation had not healed. So that is how he responded. And I think there's, what are your thoughts on that? You still have-have not healed since the Civil War?

SM (01:13:57):
I do not know. I think things were pretty unified after World War II. People were, it is pretty unified, and the center in American politics in an American culture was, it is certainly not where it is now. There was a lot more civility, and people, they had a shared, they just had a shared destiny that went on. And I think it got exacerbated during the (19)60s. I think the rise of the US as a global empire and all that that meant really kind of blew that out.

MD (01:14:37):
Did the college students play an important role in the war in Vietnam? And why did the war finally end, in your view?

SM (01:14:45):
I think college students played a huge role in ending the war. And I think it ended because it became obviously untenable. The internal contradictions just came to the surface, and it was bankrupting the country. And I think that it certainly had a huge role in ending the draft, which may have had consequences, too. I mean, now that college students do not have their lives on the line, they are less likely to speak out against the war. But I think what went on in the college campus was highly instrumental. I think all the demonstrations collectively helped lead to ending the war. And ultimately, and part of it was just a pure financial decision by the government. They just could not maintain it anymore.

MD (01:15:47):
It is interesting that the protests going on right now in California. I kind of admire the students because this is a pocketbook issue, just like the draft was an issue. And when they see something directly linked to them, and actually they are willing to pay a heavy price for their protests. So, I do not believe in the violence aspect, but I do, I admire them for speaking up and fighting 17 percent increases in tuition. One of the other issues that is very important is the issue of trust. I feel, my perception is that the Boomer generation is a generation that does not trust and did not trust for a lot of reasons, because so many of the leaders lied to them, whether it be Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin, whether it be Watergate with Richard Nixon. I remember even when Gerald Ford was going to pardon Richard Nixon, no one trusted him. They thought it was behind the scenes deal. Even Eisenhower lied on the U-2 incident. And even President Kennedy, they questioned whether he was involved in the coup to overthrow a Diem, even though he gave the order to do so. But he was really upset when he found out they were killed. Your thoughts on, you know being a student of that period that the Boomers did not trust university presidents, they did not trust governors, they did not trust politicians-

SM (01:17:08):
[inaudible]-

MD (01:17:08):
They did not trust anybody in the positions of leadership, no matter who they were. You think? This is a very negative quality for the generation, and have they passed this on to their kids and grandkids? And I preface this by saying that any good person who majors in political science is taught in political science 101 that not trusting your government is healthy because it is a sign that dissent is alive.

SM (01:17:37):
Yes. There is certain costs. When our basic trust was taken away from us by all those incidents over and over and over again, being lied to and misled, at one point, it is healthy because at least you are not naive. It gets you out of your naivete and gets you thinking more in the larger scale of things actually going on. I mean, that is how it worked with me. It was quite an eyeopener. And all of a sudden, I realized, wow, that does not make sense. That is not true, and that is not what ought to be happening. So, there is a positive aspect to it, but deep down, I would like to be able to trust more. But I think that wounded me. Probably I will go to my grave having doubts and distrust of people in positions of authority. And when I myself am put in position of authority, I am really-really-really careful. And that is another good part. I take those real seriously.

MD (01:18:46):
Were you influenced at all by the Beat generation, those writers in the late (19)50s, like Kerouac and Ginsburg? Because they were the precursors to the anti-establishment attitude of the (19)60s. Were they an influential at all on you? Did you read it or any of your friends read them?

SM (01:19:03):
Yeah, I did. Ginsburg, Kerouac, yeah, they were instrumental in my [inaudible]. There was kind of a, I do not know, as I got into my late teens, there was just a required reading list that you ended up reading, and they were part of that. But then I actually met and got to know a few of them, like Hugh Romney, Wavy Gravy.

MD (01:19:30):
Oh, you did? And you also knew Ken Kesey, did not you?

SM (01:19:33):
Yeah. I barely knew Ken, but I know Wavy from, I helped plan Rainbow Gathering.

MD (01:19:39):
Explain what that is.

SM (01:19:41):
Well, from about (19)71 to about (19)81, and Wavy was always involved in that. And so was Ram Dass. Ram Dass was another-

MD (01:19:51):
Yes.

SM (01:19:52):
... good guy. He was an influence on me. And then of course, Ken is a friend of theirs. And...

MD (01:20:00):
Now what was, you helped organize this for 10 years?

SM (01:20:03):
Yeah, there is a whole crew of people that would get together and be the planning council and plan it for the year in advance and make sure everything worked. And then-

MD (01:20:11):
Where did it take place?

SM (01:20:13):
Well, they take place on National Forest Land every year on the 4th of July for a week. Called the Rain [inaudible]. A huge counterculture event. And still goes on. It's gotten huge, tens of thousands of people now.

MD (01:20:32):
Does it never come east?

SM (01:20:33):
Yeah, it has been in Michigan a couple times.

MD (01:20:36):
Oh, shoot. July 4th... When is the next one?

SM (01:20:40):
It will be this 4th of July.

MD (01:20:42):
I mean, where? Do you know where?

SM (01:20:45):
I am not sure where. You can go online, even have a website on it now.

MD (01:20:48):
And some of the people you worked with again were Wavy Gravy and Ram Dass?

SM (01:20:53):
Yeah, they were involved in the Rainbow Gathering. Wavy was the emcee for many years.

MD (01:21:03):
Oh my gosh. And Ram Dass, my God, his writings are so [inaudible].

SM (01:21:06):
Yeah. And Ram Dass I got to note through that, plus Breitenbush Hot Springs out here in Oregon is an old hot springs resort that a group of friends of mine and I restored and run as a, it is an intentional community that Oregon allows you to have a worker-owner cooperative corporation. That and about 30,000 people a year coming at the-

MD (01:21:31):
Wow.

SM (01:21:32):
Kind of a conscious thing. You have everything from navel gazing exercises to workshops on massage and yoga.

MD (01:21:39):
Are they mostly Boomers or young?

SM (01:21:42):
Getting a lot younger, but-

MD (01:21:47):
Well, that is good.

SM (01:21:47):
Started out mostly boomers. It has a website too. Breitenbush, B-R-E-I-T-E-N-B-U-S-H.

MD (01:21:53):
Okay. I have got to check that out.

SM (01:21:54):
Yeah, you can check that out. Ram Dass is very good to us all along. He would come and hold big events there. 200 people would show up and they go on for a week. So yeah, I got the, basically, it is on the new age [inaudible] that I got to meet everybody.

MD (01:22:16):
Wow.

SM (01:22:16):
[inaudible].

MD (01:22:16):
I have read quite a few of your articles. How did you get involved with Counterpunch? Because, and Alexander Cockburn, is he the kind of guy, I'd love to interview him. Would he be available for an interview, do you think?

SM (01:22:28):
He might, yeah.

MD (01:22:28):
How do you get ahold of him?

SM (01:22:28):
I will send you his email.

MD (01:22:37):
Okay. Yeah, because now I am reading those all the time.

SM (01:22:39):
Okay.

MD (01:22:39):
Because I find you are a very good writer, in my opinion. And I like the one you did on Carrie, and I like this one I just read recently where you talked about criminalizing dissent.

SM (01:22:53):
Yes.

MD (01:22:54):
Where you talked just briefly about, well, you had mentioned about the Wilderness Society of Sierra Club, but then you talked about the rat inflation. You compare COINTELPRO to what happened in the (19)60s to what is happening now with the environmental groups with Operation Backfire.

SM (01:23:11):
Yes.

MD (01:23:12):
And please explain that. Please, people that are reading this do not know a lot. So, you will be reading these interviews. First off, explain what COINTELPRO is in the (19)60s, and of course I know what it is. And then how you see the link between the environmental activists of today.

SM (01:23:34):
Okay. So COINTELPRO in the (19)60s was an FBI undercover operation where they were planting operatives in all the progressive movements of the day. And famously doing stuff like writing letters between the Black Panthers and other groups disparaging each other, phony letters. One of them led to a famous shootout at the UCLA campus, even. And they did stuff like that. They would plant this information, they would plant people who had snitched on people, and they would also plant agent provocateur. I know that some of the famous incidents were ROTC buildings were burned during the (19)60s, that those were actually agent provocateurs of the government that set those up and did those.

MD (01:24:23):
Think that was Kent State, too?

SM (01:24:25):
I do not know about Kent State, but I am pretty sure the University ROTC and the Michigan State University ROTC were agent provocateur led.

MD (01:24:35):
Okay.

SM (01:24:35):
There were always people that were trying to get people to be more radical, more violent, more this and that in order to dispute [inaudible] movement. And a lot of that came from within the government itself. And then now in honor days, we have an active radical environmental movement where people are willing to go out themselves with bulldozers, blockade roads, do whatever, to try to stop degradation of the environment. And then all of a sudden it took a little bit more of a violent wing and people started burning stuff down. And then when it came out, finally, and who was behind all this? There were agent provocateurs from the government involved. There were undercover officers from the government involved, egging people on, breaking them to do more violent stuff. And it just smacks with COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO also infiltrated the American Indian movement and famously planted the false information that Anna Mae Aquash was an informant, which got her killed, American Indian movement. So, I see a real similarity there that anytime anybody's advocating radical change that challenges the status quo and the financial interest of the government, the government is going to put undercover operatives in, and one of the things they do is to try to get people to, people are upset and they are angry and try to get them to do something crazy and more violent.

MD (01:26:08):
Well, I know they were involved in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, and I think in some respects, even the women's movement.

SM (01:26:17):
Yeah, it is a way to sow dissent and bring movement down and get people, everybody looking over their shoulder and being suspicious of their comrades and other allies.

MD (01:26:30):
I was really, in reading some of the literature that the two most investigated people with the FBI files, well, actually there is three, but Martin Luther King-

SM (01:26:44):
I know one of them.

MD (01:26:44):
Huh?

SM (01:26:44):
I know one of them.

MD (01:26:44):
Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of them. Eleanor Roosevelt had the second largest FBI file. Can you believe that?

SM (01:26:51):
I can believe it.

MD (01:26:53):
And John Lennon. John Lennon had a big file. Those three I know are man of files.

SM (01:26:59):
My friend John Trudell has a 17,000 page [inaudible].

MD (01:27:03):
He has a what?

SM (01:27:04):
17,000 page FBI file. John Trudell. He was the chairman of the American Indian Movement.

MD (01:27:10):
Oh my God.

SM (01:27:11):
And he was involved when they took over Alcatraz.

MD (01:27:13):
Yeah. Let me change my tape here. Hold on one second. Yeah. One of the questions I have here, too, is the music of the period. Obviously, the music of the (19)60s and (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s was very influential because of the messages within the music. What was the most important music to you? And when you talk about the environmental movement of today, are they using music? Because music seems to be very important in sending messages. Just so I am talking about music from the (19)60s' influence on you, and then whether the movement is using music today.

SM (01:28:06):
Oh, huge influence on me. And of course, I still listen to the same music. I get accused by my younger friends never changing it. But yeah, Stevie Van Zandt gave a great speech last night at the inducting the Hollies into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And he totally touched on that, the power of the music of the (19)60s.

MD (01:28:28):
That was in Cleveland, was not it?

SM (01:28:36):
I do not know where the-

MD (01:28:36):
Yeah, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland.

SM (01:28:36):
Yeah. I do not know where they hold the ceremony, but-

MD (01:28:38):
The Hollies-

SM (01:28:39):
... I saw Jackson, Jackson was there. He was inducting David Geffen in, and then Iggy Pop got inducted, which is great.

MD (01:28:49):
Oh, that is great.

SM (01:28:50):
But yeah, the (19)60s movement music was... Growing up a kid in Flint, of course, Motown was the type of music I listened to growing up. And then all of a sudden, the stuff that, the song that shifted my perspective on music was For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield. And that really impacted me.

MD (01:29:18):
What was that song? The words?

SM (01:29:20):
Oh, the one. There is something happening here-

MD (01:29:23):
Oh-

SM (01:29:23):
... exactly clear.

MD (01:29:24):
There is a man with a gun over here?

SM (01:29:25):
Yeah.

MD (01:29:26):
Yeah. That, okay.

SM (01:29:26):
Yeah, it was about protest down in LA that took place. So yeah, those guys impacted me immensely. And then Woodstock. It was a cultural, spiritual, and political event. I passed up on a ticket to go, I could have gone, but I never did. But it was an incredibly moving event. And so there was this cultural just flashpoint that took place, even though things were, it seemed like the darkest hour with leaders being assassinated and the war going on, there was this music that was speaking to a larger perspective, a commonality of humanity and how we could get through it all together and how we are all in it together. And it was a huge shift. It was not just a, oh, boy, girl, boy, girl, love you till the end. Oh, broke up, the stuff of... Marvin Gaye put out the album What's Going On.

MD (01:30:30):
Oh, yes.

SM (01:30:30):
It was staggering to me. Occasions of that.

MD (01:30:34):
1971.

SM (01:30:36):
Yeah. And I mean, things were really shifting. Questions were being asked, and they were being asked by the best musicians of the day, too. So they were getting the airplay. Joni Mitchell, and there were some incredible musicians that were addressing the stuff that mattered to me. They were speaking the stuff that mattered to my generation and to me.

MD (01:31:05):
When you think of the period, there are often quotes or famous lines that were used that signified a period. I want you to react to something that I have been asking about the last 20 people. I did not do with some of the early ones. And that is that there are three, and then someone told me a fourth, there are three well lines that I think kind of exemplified the Boomers. The first one is Malcolm X, when he says, "by any means necessary," which kind of defines the militant activism, the black power, possibly the onset of violence. Then you got Bobby Kennedy's using Henry David Thoreau's quote, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not." And that symbolizes the activist mentality, the questioning act that you talk about in the environment movement and elsewhere, that activists taking a stand on issues from justice and what they thought was right in our society or wrong in our society. And the third one was a Peter Max painting that most people had not heard this quote, but it was very popular on college campuses in 1971 when I was at Ohio State. And on the poster it said, "You do your thing. I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful," with symbolized a more kind of a hippie counterculture mentality. And the fourth one that was brought up to me was the civil rights, "we shall overcome." And then someone mentioned, John Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Those are the kind of four, three, four five, that kind of symbolize the Boomer generation. Are there others that might have had an influence on you? Other quotes?

SM (01:32:51):
Oh, I like those quotes. John Kennedy had one that I really like, first. And that is that "War will be with us until the day when the conscientious objector has the same status as the hero," or something to that effect. And of course, he had some thereafter, but that was a great-

MD (01:33:11):
That was Robert Kennedy, right?

SM (01:33:12):
No, it was John Kennedy.

MD (01:33:13):
Oh, John Kennedy.

SM (01:33:15):
Yeah.

MD (01:33:15):
Okay, I did not know that one.

SM (01:33:17):
I will look that up and email that to you, too.

MD (01:33:18):
Okay.

SM (01:33:19):
Great quote. But yeah, I like all those quotes. By any means necessary one is a little threatening to me because I think people can justify all kinds of being-

MD (01:33:30):
Right. Then of course, Eisenhower had the military industrial complex, which was-

SM (01:33:35):
Right, that one.

MD (01:33:36):
That was right on too. There are pictures. Pictures are often say a thousand words. There is three that came to mind with me, but I am not going to mention them. When you see the pictures of the first say, 40 years of the Boomers' lives, what are the pictures that come to your mind that really, if someone were to look at them, they would say, yep, that was that era.

SM (01:34:00):
Oh, photos?

MD (01:34:02):
Yep. Pictures that were in the news.

SM (01:34:05):
Oh, I would probably say a real big one was pictures of the atomic bomb test in Bikini Atoll. There is the picture where the South Vietnamese officer executed the guy on the street. That really had a huge impact. And then, I do not know, for me, almost any of the pictures of Woodstock, especially the ones that of just people holding themselves together and going through that. Those are pictures that impacted me.

MD (01:34:42):
The three pictures that I had picked was the girl running down in Vietnam with a burn.

SM (01:34:50):
Oh, right. Yeah.

MD (01:34:50):
And then the girl over the dead body at Kent State.

SM (01:34:53):
Yeah, that is another one.

MD (01:34:54):
And then the three athletes in with the black power fist, Tommie Smith and John Carlos.

SM (01:35:00):
John Carlos, those guys are heroes. That really impacted me.

MD (01:35:08):
I have got some other things here. I am just trying to make sure, before I go into a section where I just ask your opinions on names and personalities. Make sure I got all my questions here. Robert Reagan, in 1980, when he came into power, he said, "We are back." And I think he was making a reference to, we are beyond the (19)60s and the (19)70s now and all that stuff. And the breakdown of the military. We're back. And then George Bush in 1989 when he became president, he said, "The Vietnam syndrome is over." And those were two Republican presidents back to back. Your thoughts on Reagan and Bush and their thoughts on, because now the Boomers are in their (19)40s, and just your thoughts on those two and what they said.

SM (01:35:58):
Well, I think that the Imperial presidency in the US's Empire was fully under underway when Reagan got elected. And so I just see them as basically the emperors that were Imperial policy. And so I think they felt the need that they needed to put to rest a lot of the issues that were raised by Vietnam. But I do not know, the Vietnam syndrome to me seems contrived. And I think the same stuff is still going on. Same Imperial overreach is going on, the same corporate takeover of the government. All that is happening. And I think they were trying to diffuse that, trying to push that aside and become more ascendant with the corporate Imperial stuff.

MD (01:36:55):
If you are a Boomer and you are in a conversation and we get involved in a confrontation in any part of the world, when you bring up the word Vietnam or the word quagmire, it seems to always get a reaction. And I get a feeling like, please shut up. We're living, the reaction I feel when I bring it up or others is, come on, this is the year 2010. Quit talking about something that happened back in 1975, Vietnam and the quagmire, that is past history. So I feel guilty, and I wonder how many other Boomers feel the same way. It is like we do not learn history's lessons, so if we bring up history, they do not want to be reminded of it. I do not...

SM (01:37:40):
Oh, I can understand why they would not want to be reminded of it. But to me, that is all the more reason why you need to bring it up more so that it is not lost and the lessons are not lost because the same mistakes are being made over and over again. So if you can, one good way not to learn from history is to suppress the history. And so, I think there is institutions that have a stake in suppressing it, so they have conditioned people that way. No, but I can understand why younger people might want to say, "Oh, I am tired of that. That happened way back then, and let us deal with what is going on now." But I also run into a lot of younger people that really want to know, they want to know more of the history.

MD (01:38:25):
Well, the millennial students are the ones in college now, and we did programs on bringing Boomers and Generation X together at my university in the (19)90s, and Generation Xers, I cannot speak for them all, obviously there are good ones. But they had problems with the Boomers in many ways. And of the two panels that we had made up of university and regional faculty members and the college students of Westchester is that they responded in two ways. Either I am sick and tired of hearing about what it was like then and quit talking about it and move on with your life. And the other ones would say, geez, I wish I had causes like you had. We do not have any causes or issues today. And that was the kind of reaction that Generation Xers had. And Generation Xers did not seem to get along too well with Boomers. I do not know if you have noticed that in your life.

SM (01:39:24):
Well, I think it might be that 15 percent, 85 percent lifting again, and basically in all generations there is going to be 15 percent that really do have an altruistic view and want to do something outside of self. And I find them, I have got a number of friends in their twenties now, close friends, partly through my association with Breitenbush, and I really like them. And they are, by and large, are the ones that are trying to expand their conscious and reach out and have a larger worldview. And so we have very much in common. I do not even feel like the age difference matters.

MD (01:40:05):
That is good. Could you talk-

SM (01:40:06):
I think it is just going to, there is going to be a percentage of every generation. It is just like I was honored in my life to know some people who were part of the original Red Scare that were called before the House on American Activities Committee. There was a certain percentage of people in that generation. So, I think every generation has, and then a lot of people are just, they do not want to rock the boat. The whole idea of rocking the boat and challenging the dominant paradigm is scary to them. So, they just assume not hear it.

MD (01:40:41):
Your-

SM (01:40:42):
One more thing, I can understand some of the antipathy toward the Baby Boomers because the Baby Boomers are now the bosses. They are the people that own, they're in charge of your job. So the younger people have to deal with that. And so that is always going to be a friction. And I do not think it relates specifically to Baby Boomer generation. It is just whenever you have an older generation and those kind of [inaudible] power, I think that that kind of disparity will always cause a little friction.

MD (01:41:14):
I think what has happened is that sometimes when the Generation Xers and who are now also in power, just like Boomers, they are also bosses now, too. If they are going to blame Boomers on things, they need to blame themselves, too, because they are now in leadership as well. Yeah, before I finish up here with these names, could you talk to how important it is for the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, and to get a better understanding for people that read this, how important these activist groups are? I admire you for the comments that you have made, that you do not like terrorism and violence, and you have already brought that up into your articles because that often sends wrong messages, just like Black Panther Party and the Weathermen did in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. Your thoughts on how important those two movements are today?

SM (01:42:11):
I think those movements are important in the fact that they are kind of like the gateway movement for getting more younger people involved. If there is a lot of passion in those movement, so a lot of younger people get involved. At the same time, I am appalled that there is some glorification of violence that goes on, and partly because I do not like violence, plus I challenge the efficacy of doing that, do not see how that ever works. But at the same time, they are important parts of the activist movement, certainly in the environmental movement. I understand the frustration of people in both those movements. I know some of the people, I know people that are in prison right now because they acted upon their beliefs there. They did not make the right choices. But I understand their position, and I think they are right. I think we have to get away from our anthropomorphic, anthropocentric viewpoint, I guess you would have to call it, yeah, anthropocentric viewpoint and look on the world as being one part of a larger hole. I think those are the people that are onto that. So yeah, I think it is a way for, I do not know, there is a lot of young people that are angry about looking at the future, the future of the Earth that is going to be here as they get older.

MD (01:43:49):
What are your thoughts of Al Gore and the Inconvenient Truth?

SM (01:43:52):
Well, part of me thinks that Al Gore's a profiteer profiteering on the corpse as it goes down with all his carbon cap and trade and carbon credits. I mean, buying carbon offsets to me is like the church in the Middle Ages selling indulgences. So, I do not particularly like that, and Al Gore is making a lot of money off of it, but I am completely in agreement that the level of carbon in the atmosphere is at a dangerously toxic level. And it is going to really change things if we do not get our act together and do something about it. So, I guess I like the message more than I like the messenger.

MD (01:44:37):
Yeah, because somebody says he flies in a private plane. I do not know.

SM (01:44:41):
Oh yeah, I know, he's cut to Utah. I mean, my friends Jeff St. Clair and Al Cockburn wrote a book called Al Gore: A User Manual back in 1998, and I think they nailed it.

MD (01:44:55):
I like his story, though, because as a Boomer, as a young man in Harvard, he was influenced by a professor. That is a very good start.

SM (01:45:01):
Yeah.

MD (01:45:03):
And I-

MD (01:45:03):
That is a very good story. And I also liked, from reading one of the books, about how he challenged President Clinton in a meeting after the second year. It was monumental, first time they had ever had friction, and where he told him, "You are doing absolutely nothing on the environment." And boy, he got mad. And of course, I do not think there is any love lost between those two now.

SM (01:45:27):
Yeah, I just kind of wish that he was not such a cartoon figure, because it allows the other side to discredit the message. And that he was not also making so much money off of it. In each case, it allows them to discredit the message.

MD (01:45:45):
Good points.

SM (01:45:45):
But yeah, I think he is right on. Level of carbon in the atmosphere is a huge, huge threat. It is a fact, existential threat.

MD (01:45:52):
I am at the part, which is the last part of the interview, which is just to respond to either terms, events, or personalities of a period. You do not have to go in any in depth.

SM (01:46:03):
Okay.

MD (01:46:04):
What do these mean to you? What does, again, the Vietnam Memorial mean to you?

SM (01:46:14):
It means to me, oh, I cannot even think about it without even crying. And I think it cost our generation enormous, Vietnam did. And the memorial is a huge step in trying to heal that. But...

MD (01:46:32):
What does Kent-

SM (01:46:33):
We lost a lot of really, really fine people, Vietnam.

MD (01:46:38):
Yes. We did, 58,000. And one of the things we learned from that war, too, is we must care about those on the other side, 3 million dead.

SM (01:46:48):
I know it.

MD (01:46:48):
That is very sad. What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you?

SM (01:46:53):
Well, it means an end of innocence for me. That really shocked me out of my college jacket, intellectual, innocence, those events.

MD (01:47:09):
What does Watergate mean to you?

SM (01:47:20):
Oh, it means that it just shows how corrupt the government was. But at the same time, I think it was overplayed. I think Nixon committed far more crimes than that, far worse ones. That seemed to be the way that they could get him.

MD (01:47:31):
What does Woodstock and the Summer of Love, two different events, one in (19)67, one in (19)69.

SM (01:47:37):
Right, the Summer of Love. I had no idea that it even was going on, because I was in such a cocoon, back in school in Flint.

MD (01:47:42):
Right?

SM (01:47:44):
But when I look back on it, I see that that is a remarkable awakening in our culture. And I think Woodstock as well. I think those are incredible cultural events. Hopefully there is a future in a hundreds of years from now, people will be studying them.

MD (01:48:00):
What does the term counterculture mean to you?

SM (01:48:05):
Oh, it is a grab bag term that describes people that wanted to see something else other than the work working for the establishment as being your future. 2.3 kids, and a dog, in a house in the suburbs, there was an opportunity to do something else.

MD (01:48:26):
What do the hippies and yippies mean to you?

SM (01:48:30):
I think the hippies to me were less political than the yippies. The hippies were more the cultural wing of the movement, and the yippies were more of the political wing of the counterculture. I like both entities a lot. Hippies and the yippies.

MD (01:48:58):
What does SDS and The Weathermen, two separate things, even though they became one?

SM (01:49:04):
Right. Well, I think SDS was a remarkable organization. The founding principles were fabulous, and I think it really did shift the politics on the campuses around the country. I think The Weathermen was going a bit too far. I think The Weatherman, people just got so frustrated, and angry, and they went over the line. And I think that The Weathermen was a reason for the government to use the backlash against the counterculture.

MD (01:49:40):
How about the Vietnam veterans against the war?

SM (01:49:44):
Oh, one of the great organizations ever founded. Yeah.

MD (01:49:51):
How about the Young Americans for Freedom? I do not know if you knew that group.

SM (01:49:54):
Yeah, I know who they are. I actually caught a couple of their lectures at college. I knew, Rockwell, was that his name?

MD (01:50:01):
Yeah.

SM (01:50:03):
Yeah, he came to college when I was there, at the junior college, the community college. I thought they were rather racist, and elitist, and did not have much of a collective consciousness, that is for sure. Or a democratic consciousness.

MD (01:50:24):
How about the Black Panthers and Black Power?

SM (01:50:29):
I thought the whole Black Power Movement and the Black Panthers, they certainly had a point. But at the same time, once again, I think they went overboard. And being someone myself who was highly involved in Civil Rights Movement stuff, I think one of the out growths of the Black Panther, the militancy of it, was that people like myself who had the wrong color of skin were kind of driven out. And it became unsafe for me to be as involved as I had been.

MD (01:51:03):
What did you think of the enemy's list?

SM (01:51:07):
Oh, Nixon's enemies list?

MD (01:51:07):
Mm-hmm.

SM (01:51:09):
Oh, I figure that they always existed. I think they probably still do. And I think that it was an incredible evidence of the amount of paranoia that occurs in an empire.

MD (01:51:28):
How about My Lai?

SM (01:51:28):
My Lai?

MD (01:51:28):
Mm-hmm.

SM (01:51:28):
Oh, just awful. I do not know, one greatest injustices of all time.

MD (01:51:37):
Tet?

SM (01:51:37):
Ted?

MD (01:51:40):
Tet, T-E-T.

SM (01:51:41):
Oh, Tet.

MD (01:51:42):
That really began (19)68.

SM (01:51:44):
Right. Tet is very amazing to me, because it was a case where the National Liberation Front lost the battle and won the war. And it just showed me that all the other rules of wealth warfare did not apply anymore.

MD (01:52:09):
1968, I think you already made comments on this.

SM (01:52:12):
Yeah, I think 1968 was, certainly in my lifetime, is the watershed year.

MD (01:52:20):
Okay. Now these are personalities, and again, just quick responses. Tom Hayden?

SM (01:52:28):
Are you hearing a buzz on the phone?

MD (01:52:28):
Yeah, I am. It could be the FBI.

SM (01:52:30):
Let me check. Let me try this other phone.

(01:52:37):
Hello?

MD (01:52:38):
Yeah, it is happening here too.

SM (01:52:41):
Oh, okay. It is in both phones.

MD (01:52:42):
It must be my phone.

SM (01:52:43):
Yeah, right?

MD (01:52:44):
Well, I am on the FBI's... I am not on their list. Tom Hayden? Still there?

SM (01:52:54):
Well, I just see him as a kind of a political gas line.

MD (01:52:58):
Jane Fonda?

SM (01:53:00):
Same thing. Yeah, I think that Jane Fonda had a lot of good things to say. And I think she has been unfairly excoriated.

MD (01:53:13):
John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy?

SM (01:53:17):
I think they were our last hope. Last great hope. They were, what are the Gracchi Brothers of America.

MD (01:53:26):
Eugene McCarthy?

SM (01:53:29):
Oh, I like Eugene McCarthy a lot. I think he had a lot of courage, and I kind of wish he would have stuck it out more.

MD (01:53:36):
George McGovern?

SM (01:53:38):
Same thing. I do not know what happened. They stood up for all the right principles and then disappeared.

MD (01:53:44):
Sargent Shriver and the Peace Corps.

SM (01:53:47):
Oh, I think the Peace Corps and other great society programs are one of the greatest contributions we have ever made. It is unfortunate it only head start in the Peace Corps and the Job Corps bill exist, but I think all of them collectively were one of the great social justice experiments ever.

MD (01:54:03):
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X?

SM (01:54:08):
Both great leaders. Martin Luther King, Jr. might be the greatest leader in my lifetime that I have known or heard about. Malcolm X, again, I had problems with his religious bent and his militant bent. Other than that, I think he was a great leader as well. Incredible points. I read his autobiography and I was very moved by it.

MD (01:54:38):
Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford?

SM (01:54:43):
Oh, Ronald Reagan, I see him as kind of the solidifier of the end of the US being a democratic republic and moving on to being a corporate empire. So, I do not have a lot good for Ronald Reagan. Though even some of his stuff. One of the greatest quotes of all time, I think is his quote, "Trust, but verify."

MD (01:55:06):
Oh yeah.

SM (01:55:07):
I totally buy that. I think it is of the great quotes. But Gerald Ford, I have softened a lot on Gerald Ford over time. I actually think Gerald Ford was a good guy.

MD (01:55:19):
How about Jimmy Carter and Dwight Eisenhower?

SM (01:55:27):
I like Jimmy Carter. And I like him a lot more as an Ex-president than I did as President. I think he is a great role model. Dwight Eisenhower, another one. The guy was a hero, and he also was willing to take on some of the powers to be. And at the same time, he was part of the whole power structure. But I think Eisenhower was okay.

MD (01:55:54):
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew?

SM (01:55:57):
Oh, okay. Well, Spiro Agnew, I have hardly anything good to say about. I think the guy was a crackpot. But Richard Nixon, mixed bag. I think he is the greatest environmental President. He basically saved more land than any other President. Cast far more environmental laws than any other President. I signed them. At the same time, he was a war criminal and a paranoid war criminal at that.

MD (01:56:25):
Then of course, LBJ and Hubert Humphrey?

SM (01:56:29):
Okay. LBJ, socially maybe certainly the greatest President of my lifetime, as far as comes the social causes and getting that part right. At the same time, undone by the war in his inability to control the Pentagon. Hubert Humphrey, part of me sees him as a political hack. Was it Hunter Thompson said he had the greatest case of blue balls for the presidency ever?

MD (01:57:04):
Yeah.

SM (01:57:04):
I think he would have done anything just to get elected. I worked for him when he was running. Because while he was the only one running. By that time, in (19)68. And I was just real disappointed when he lost.

MD (01:57:16):
If he had gone another week, he probably would have won. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the yippies?

SM (01:57:24):
Oh, a mixed bag. I like them bringing a lot of stuff to the forefront, but I think they were pretty relentless self-promoters. And that eventually detracted from the message.

MD (01:57:38):
Chicago Eight or Chicago Seven?

SM (01:57:41):
Yeah, Chicago Eight, that had a big impact on my life. I think all those people were incredibly well-meaning, incredibly good people. They were on the right side. They did everything right, and the government trying to destroy them the way they did was, it focused our generation, or at least the activist part of it.

MD (01:58:04):
How about the women leaders, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, that group. Shirley Chisholm was in there too.

SM (01:58:12):
Yeah, there were a lot of great women leaders at that time. Same, has kind of a checkered little history there, being lovers with all these rich, wealthy men, and possibly some ties with the CIA. But the rest of them, I really liked. Betty Friedan was great. Germaine Greer, there were a number of women leaders that, I read their stuff and I really agree with it. Still do.

MD (01:58:37):
How about the Black Panther individuals, because there unique? There's Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, David Hilliard, and the one that was killed in Chicago, I think it was Norman?

SM (01:58:55):
Fred Hampton.

MD (01:58:55):
Fred Hampton. All different and unique.

SM (01:58:58):
Yeah, some of the Panthers were tireless, self-promoters. And some of them never could get out of the street, like Huey Newton and Cleaver. They kind of became cartoons. But a lot of them were real well-intentioned people, and set up some really good programs, and really helped out.

MD (01:59:18):
How about-

SM (01:59:21):
Same bag. You had your mix of self-promoters and people that were really solid on the issues.

MD (01:59:27):
Communes?

SM (01:59:29):
Oh, I think the commune movement is one of our better experiments. I was part of the whole Back to the Land movement. Of course, Breitenbush Hot Springs was an intentional community and still going strong.

MD (01:59:43):
How do you relate to people who say it was a bunch of dropouts, that they went from being we to nothing but me? So that is a criticism of the communal movement.

SM (01:59:59):
Yeah, I would say there is a certain amount of self-absorption and me first stuff that goes on in the communal movement. But to me, just the fact that people are willing to take the challenge, and take the risks, and try to find something that might work better, is just the experiment itself has value. Whether people stick it out or do not stick it out, I think it is a huge part of the landscape and a huge part of what happened. And I am glad it happened, glad it is still going on. Certainly, it is less than it was. And at Breitenbush Hot Springs, in the (19)80s, we used to have communities conferences, where once a year we would get people from all the various communes in the northwest together, and come and make it... It was a great event.

MD (02:00:43):
The male liberation movement came out of that too, did not it?

SM (02:00:46):
The what?

MD (02:00:47):
The male liberation movement came out of that in the early (19)70s.

SM (02:00:50):
Oh, the male?

MD (02:00:51):
Yeah, where men would start taking care of the kids more as a shared.

SM (02:00:56):
Yeah. Yeah, that is true. In our early days, we required all parents to do a childcare shift a week with all the kids. We did all that, yeah.

MD (02:01:05):
Yeah. Dr. Benjamin Spock.

SM (02:01:09):
Oh, Dr. Spock was a great hero. And then, I do not know so much about his childcare rearing books and techniques, but just the fact that he was so forceful on the war, and social justice causes, to me, makes him one of the all-time heroes.

MD (02:01:25):
How about Daniel and Philip Berrigan?

SM (02:01:29):
Oh, two of the heroes for me, for sure.

MD (02:01:31):
I met them both and knew them both.

SM (02:01:33):
Wow. Way to Go. Being a Catholic boy and stuff, it was always great to have that wing of the church represented. And they did it more eloquently, and they were willing to put their own selves on the line more than almost anybody ever saw. Just a great model of passivism.

MD (02:01:52):
Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers?

SM (02:01:55):
Oh, that was one of the most heroic acts of all time.

MD (02:02:02):
Woodward and Bernstein?

SM (02:02:07):
I like what they did. I am not so sure over time that they themselves stand the test of time.

MD (02:02:14):
Does not seem like we have the investigative journalists anymore.

SM (02:02:17):
Yeah.

MD (02:02:18):
The original seven astronauts?

SM (02:02:20):
Well, I do not know, I never quite got into that much. Obviously, they were pretty heroic. And right there, and some of them use the opportunity to speak about the earth and then the fragility of the planet. And I really like that about them.

MD (02:02:42):
Robert McNamara and John Dean, two different people.

SM (02:02:47):
Oh, I think John Dean is the hero. And I think he still is. Robert McNamara, I think he is one of the great war criminals and economic criminals in history.

MD (02:03:00):
Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali?

SM (02:03:05):
Oh, two of the great towards and social people of all time. Muhammad Ali might be one of the greatest people of our generation. Certainly you go around the world and everybody knows who he is. And he is highly respected. Probably he and Bob Marley are the only two people like that.

MD (02:03:24):
How about Bill Clinton and George Bush II?

SM (02:03:33):
I think both of them collectively brought an enormous amount of disrepute on the Baby Boomer Generation. I am embarrassed that they're the first two Baby Boomer Presidents.

MD (02:03:43):
Explain that.

SM (02:03:47):
I feel that both of them are examples of what the worst of what we were talking about, the first aspects of the Baby Boomer Generation. They were in it for personal gain and expediency, and they just did not share the deep-seated values of the generation.

MD (02:04:11):
How about Angela Davis and Timothy Leary?

SM (02:04:20):
I got mixed feelings on both of them. I think Angela Davis did a lot of stuff, but I think she flirted too much with the violence that was going on, and bought into that. Leary, some of Leary's stuff is brilliant. I think he might be one of the smartest people in his generation. I read stuff that he wrote that was absolutely brilliant. And at the same times I have got all sorts of problems with the way he died and all the things around that. I think that was out of line.

MD (02:04:50):
How about Attica and certainly George Jackson who was linked to Angela Davis in the prison reform movement? Prison rights.

SM (02:05:00):
Yeah, I think that prison rights needed to happen, and it is a tragedy that the way it happened with Attica. And I think that the government incredibly overreacted and a lot of people died, both guard and prisoners, that did not need to happen. But it did focus on the whole thing on the prison movement. I think that issue has been put on a back burner and it is nowhere near resolved.

MD (02:05:25):
A lot of people think George Jackson was set up.

SM (02:05:29):
Yeah.

MD (02:05:30):
And he was murdered right there, or killed right there in the prison. John Lennon and the Beatles? I separate John Lennon from the rest of the Beatles, but John Lennon himself, and then the Beatles?

SM (02:05:46):
Well, I think John Lennon is a hero. The guy never backed down in his quest for promoting peace on the planet. Yeah, peace and love, and a lot of good things that came about because of John Lennon, the music and the way he lived his life. The Beatles themselves, obviously phenomenal, great musicians. And they were some of the first that took it from the boy meets girl, the love forever, into actually speaking about social causes that mattered. And I will always respect them for that.

MD (02:06:28):
How about Barry Goldwater and William Buckley?

SM (02:06:33):
Oh, they are two of the conservatives that I would actually listen to. I think they had a lot of integrity, and they could speak intelligently, and they were not just out there fanning the flames of fear, which is what I see the conservative movement has evolved into.

MD (02:06:51):
The Little Rock Nine?

SM (02:06:55):
Oh, you mean the students that were?

MD (02:06:58):
Yeah, the high school.

SM (02:07:01):
Oh yeah, they are great heroes. Without a doubt. No doubt about it, that took an enormous amount of courage.

MD (02:07:08):
How about the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the (19)60s?

SM (02:07:15):
I am glad it happened. I do not know a whole lot about it. I think it jump started the whole questioning of authority and challenging things.

MD (02:07:25):
And then of course, the Port Heron Statement, which was the...

SM (02:07:28):
Right. That is, when I was talking about, yes-yes. If you read that, there is some brilliant stuff in there. That was a brilliant manifesto.

MD (02:07:37):
And we were talking about the American Indian Movement, and I have not said this to too many people, but when they took over Alcatraz and the Wounded Knee Incident, those were two major events in that (19)69 to (19)73 period. Just your thoughts on that?

SM (02:07:54):
Well, I think their taking over Alcatraz was a brilliant move. And at the time they did it, it was because they were basically delisting tribes. They were taking away their status, did not exist anymore. And they were able, because of the taking over Alcatraz, got so much attention. And then they did the Longest March, where the American RCC took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters. And they were able to roll back all of that. And tribes were re-certified. And there was a number of anti-native pieces of legislation that were going on. And all of them got defeated after Alcatraz. The Wounded Knee Incident, I think it was a mistake. I think that when people left the BIA headquarters in DC and went to Wounded Knee, I agree with John Trudel, that it was not a surprise move because it was out in the hinterlands, and the media was not there, and they were not able to control the media, and it was just a disaster waiting to happen. At the same time, it brought massive attention to the inequities on the reservation. But it really did not stop the killings of natives there. That is why they started it. In a way, it was not effective in what it set out to do.

MD (02:09:16):
When the best history books are written, or the sociology books, or once long after the last Boomer has passed away, what do you think historians and writers will say about this period? Because they did not live it. They study it, but they did not live it.

SM (02:09:40):
Right. I would say that it will be seen as a shift in consciousness, that it was clearly an attempt to take on a more expanded global consciousness among all cultures on the planet. Planetary consciousness shift. I think they will see it as that. And that well-meaning people really tried to roll back the negative impact of our society. And I guess by definition that means they will have succeeded some, if there is a future with historians.

MD (02:10:14):
Well, one of the great pictures of this period was the picture of Planet Earth.

SM (02:10:20):
Yes.

MD (02:10:21):
From the space capsule. And when college students, say a hundred years from now, when we are all gone, look at that picture as one of the pictures from the (19)60s, and they read all this stuff about coming together, and fighting for people's rights, and the sense of community. And then all they hear about are the divisions, will they look at that picture and say... Because the astronauts said that if you look at Planet Earth, we are all in this together. That the Boomer Generation did not understand that in the end. Do you think people will be that critical?

SM (02:11:01):
Well, I think that if there is people a hundred years from now and they can look at that picture, that will mean that we did succeed.

MD (02:11:05):
Very good. Very, very good. Is there any question that I did not ask you that you thought I might ask you?

SM (02:11:16):
No, you covered a lot pretty well. Yeah. I guess the one question is writers, you talked about the people.

MD (02:11:26):
Oh, yeah. Well, I did not... Yeah, the writers, but also the books.

SM (02:11:32):
Yeah.

MD (02:11:32):
Most influential writers. I got so many questions here. Who are the most influential writers and books that you read when you were young?

SM (02:11:41):
Oh.

MD (02:11:41):
And throughout your life?

SM (02:11:45):
And throughout my life. Yeah.

MD (02:11:48):
And let me change the side of my- Okay.

SM (02:12:01):
Well, Ken Kesey was a real instrumental writer, and my influential writer. Rom Dass, influencer writer, we talked about them.

MD (02:12:09):
What did Rom Dass say that was so important? And what did Kesey say that was important to you?

SM (02:12:15):
Kesey, in his book, Sometimes a Great Notion, basically, he shows how all these tragedies befall this family because they put their individual family above the common good. And that had a big message to me. His other famous book, Cuckoo's Nest, really took apart the thing of the benign institution, where this may hurt, but it's for your own good. How there's a certain maliciousness in that. And brought that out. And I like that about his books a lot. Rom Dass, in his book Be Here, Now was able to show me the connection between what all various spiritual traditions of the past, the connections between what they were saying and how they actually met the same things here and there. And that really helped.

MD (02:13:23):
What was the name of that book?

SM (02:13:24):
Be Here Now.

MD (02:13:25):
Be Here Now.

SM (02:13:26):
Yeah.

MD (02:13:27):
Okay.

SM (02:13:29):
That had a huge impact on me when I was in college. Other books that I read that mattered. There's the classic, On the Road, by Kerouac. There's various books like that, that mattered. And I like a lot of fiction too, with the Kesey books and various other pieces of fiction. Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy gave me a real political perspective on what's going on. Arthur Clarke, he had Childhood's End.

MD (02:14:06):
Oh yeah.

SM (02:14:07):
Another great book that really impacted me. Yeah, things like that. Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail's, one of the best political books I have ever read.

MD (02:14:22):
Did you ever read Greening of America by Charles Reich?

SM (02:14:24):
Yes.

MD (02:14:25):
That was a great book, yeah?

SM (02:14:26):
That was a really good, that was an excellent book.

MD (02:14:28):
And then The Making of a Counterculture by Theodore Roszak. That was another good one.

SM (02:14:33):
Yes.

MD (02:14:34):
And I think another one that was very popular was that Love Story by Eric Siegel.

SM (02:14:42):
I did not like that book.

MD (02:14:42):
Yeah, he just passed away recently.

SM (02:14:44):
Yeah.

MD (02:14:45):
Any other books? Any other writers? Any poets? Any...

SM (02:14:49):
Oh God, I cannot even off the top of my head. I cannot remember. There is a lot of them.

MD (02:14:55):
Of all the environmental people that you have been connected to in your life, you already said that Rachel Carson was.

SM (02:15:03):
Yeah.

MD (02:15:05):
But who are the environmental people that you just truly admire?

SM (02:15:12):
Well, David Brower. I cannot say enough about David Brower.

MD (02:15:16):
And what is his position and title?

SM (02:15:18):
Well, he was the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club.

MD (02:15:22):
Okay.

SM (02:15:22):
He got drummed out of the Sierra Club for being too radical. And then he founded the Friends of the Earth. And then he founded the Earth Island Institute. He was just an uncompromising, amazing character. He was a World War II hero, because he invented all these types of mountain climbing, trained all these troops on how to do it. Climbed most of the western mountains first in the United States. And he died about 10 years ago. He was about 90 when he died. Phenomenal guy. And then I actually had, a guy who is not that well-known home, Homer Roberts, who was the founder of the Michigan Audubon Society, and who was involved in the efforts to save the bald eagle, and the Kirtland's warbler, and so on. And he was the guy that first taught me about ecosystems before I ever even heard of the word. I wonder what is going on with my phone.

MD (02:16:21):
Ah, yeah, there you go.

SM (02:16:23):
Anyway.

MD (02:16:25):
All right.

SM (02:16:26):
Those are the early environmentalists that really impacted me.

MD (02:16:30):
Well, that is my last question. I will turn my tape-

(End of Interview)

2010-03-16

Stephen McKiernan

Michael Donnelly

Michael Donnelly is an environmental activist, author, and one of the founders of Friends of Opal Creek. Donnelly has been writing on environmental issues and stories focused on Native American and indigenous peoples in the northwest. He is a member of the American Indian Movement.

136:34

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

Environmentalists; Authors, American--20th century; Indigenous peoples--United States; Donnelly, Michael--Interviews

Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.