Ron Jacobs

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Ron Jacobs
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Eden Lowinger
Date of interview: 4 June 2019
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(Start of Interview)

SM: 00:00
Let us start, so are you ready?

RJ: 00:01
I am ready.

SM: 00:02
Okay. Very good. First off, thank you very much for doing this. When you think of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? You can use words or adjectives, and why do you pick these adjectives? So, what, when you think of those two periods, what do you think of?

RJ: 00:24
The first thing I think of is, is anti-war. And it is just because I was, that was pretty important in my life, being against the war and so on, and a lot of my friends was. And I think the other thing, I think, of is probably rock music, rock concerts just because they seem to me they kind of symbolize great, they symbolize like a certain kind of mentality where there is a lot of freedoms that did not exist before, and probably do not exist as much now, but still, you know, in the same manner.

SM:
01:04 You know, you make a good point here, because when you talk about the music of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, when you think of the (19)60s and (19)70s, you think of the background music, which is the music, but it was much more than background, it was actually at the forefront, because- could you talk about the music a little bit more detail like what your favorite groups were and why? And secondly, the messages that were often in the music is something that I do not see today, but there were very clear messages in a lot of that music.

RJ: 01:36
Yeah. My favorite bands were Bob Dylan, the Beatles, The Stones and the Grateful Dead and Creedence Clearwater. And I think I liked, I could not really tell you why I like the Beatles, mostly because they kind of reflected and led like the whole, to me anyhow, what it meant to be a hippie counterculture kind of person. You know, they gradually went into- they grad- they started off as just mop tops, and eventually started being spokespeople and reflections of the, of the greater counterculture movement [phone rings] that was going up around them among regular people [clatter]. The Rolling Stones, I think, mostly because what I think of is (19)68 Street Fighting Man and, and their songs about revolution. Because even if they were not revolutionaries, they did, their music riled up people and also going back to the message, the message was, you know, well, for example, say Street Fighting Man, you know, the message was that there was nothing else to do, the only way we were going to be able to move ahead is if we if we get out, is if we join a rock and roll band, but the rock and roll band in itself is a revolutionary statement. And Grateful Dead, I think the Grateful Dead to me just represented a place where if everything worked out okay, and the counterculture dreams, worked out, worked out the way they were supposed to everything, it was the world that we could be living in in another 10 years or something. I mean, obviously, it did work out. But that was kind of what in my teenage mind, that was kind of how I saw it and stuff. Bob Dylan, it is really hard to say, but because he was so much, I mean, it was when I first discovered him was probably in (19)68, when I was 13 and I heard Like a Rolling Stone. And, and then from there, I just got into his music because it was his voice was so unusual. And I liked the whole image that he presented on the wandering vagabond, the Woody Guthrie kind of guy, the, you know, I liked his cynicism. But at the same time, it was tinged with some kind of like hope. And then as he went on, I think what really sold me more than anything else was when he did the Rolling Thunder Revue in the mid (19)70s, which where he tried to revive, you know, the whole [inaudible] he did around Hurricane Carter, and his-his constant advocacy for African Americans and the working people and so on, even in his songs that were not overtly political, he was advocating for them. You know what he would do the biography songs. I will say, The Ballad of Hollis Brown, or William Zanzinger. And you know, some of the, and he did the song on George Jackson. And George Jackson was important to me, because I was a at the time I was hanging out with Black Panthers over in Germany. And so, you know, as a friend, and so they will you we read a lot about that. Creedence Clearwater as a [inaudible] since my father was in the military, that song Fortunate Son was really crucial to me where he attacks, "I am not no military son," and he was just attacking the whole war machine and the mentality of us making money off of war. And that kind of tied in with the country Joe song, "What are we fighting for, 1234, what are we fighting for?" Yeah.

SM: 03:30
Wow. When you talk about the music again of that era, you talk about sometimes the music even defines the year, let alone a specific event. And you were talking about (19)69, this is the 50th anniversary of Woodstock this year. And then of course, it was, I think it was (19)67 was the Summer of Love. And they are all defined by music. And even in the early (19)70s, when you think of the music change, George Harrison's music for Bangladesh, which is one of the first concerts to raise funds for a tragedy that was happening around the world, it was amazing how music brings people together for so many reasons. Just your thoughts on those three events.

RJ: 05:55
Yeah, the Summer of Love, I was just a kid, you know, I was like in junior high school. It fascinated me and the son- I think the song, the album that some of the albums that will always be identified for me are, is Sergeant Pepper's since that came out like that year at the beginning of June (19)67. (19)69, I mean, that was kind of the year when I really started getting into listening to a lot of albums and moving past the (19)45s, you know, into and when you think of a lot of the songs that came out, a lot of the albums that came out that year, it is kind of interesting. And then you toss in those two keynote events, at least according to the media, Woodstock and Altamont. You know, Woodstock still, it is, it is this, you know, it is this thing that everybody knows about. I can think of, I have nieces and nephews who are in their 20s now, but I am probably back in 19-, it must have been around (19)99 when they were like, you know, when they were babies, or three or four years old. And they had heard my older sister and I some of our friends and some of our siblings talk about Woodstock. They-they knew what it was, it was part of their consciousness in terms of like, oh, yeah, what I guess went on people got together, had a good time and loved each other and listened to music, you know. I mean, that is, that is the watered-down version. But that is what people think of when they think of Woodstock. And then Altamont is always, even if it was not the end of the counterculture which I do not think it was, it has this, it has all that darkness around it. You know, and you know, the concert for Bangladesh, I was living in Germany at the time, because my dad was in the military. And so I was, I think, a junior in high school, and when the movie hit over in Germany, and I had been reading about the concert, because on the military base where the high school that I went to was, there was a base library, and it got the Village Voice, and it got Rolling Stone magazine, and the GI who was the head librarian, him and I were friends so he would always make sure that I, he would set them aside for me so I could read them before he put them on the shelf. And I remember all the, reading all the articles in the wake of the Bangladesh concert. So, when the movie finally came out, I remember skipping school and I went to this movie theater downtown that showed movies in German and then sometimes they would have English subtitles. But it did not matter for that since that was a concert movie, it did not really matter. But I remember sitting there and watching it go through like three times just because I could not get enough of watching the music and just the combination of those musicians and kind of kind of trying to put myself there just which is what the Woodstock movie did really well, too. I mean, the Woodstock movie universalized the Woodstock experience, even if it was just a way for Warner Brothers to make money. It also kind of spread the whole Woodstock idea around the world.

SM: 07:33
Yes. Is there is there again, you have mentioned some events that really kind of impacted your early life. But is there one particular event and when you think of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, that stands out for you more than any other? And I say that, do you think that stands out for the generation that you are part of? And secondly, can you remember a personal event or experience where that really impacted you during that whole period?

RJ: 09:24
I do not know if I can remember just one. I think Woodstock is a key event. But I also think maybe more on the political side was either the moratorium in (19)69, or maybe even more so the Kent State, when Kent State happened.

SM: 09:45
Oh, yeah.

RJ: 09:46
And Kent State to me, I was in, I was a freshman in high school, and we walked out, you know, we walked out of classes and everything. This is over in Germany on a military base, but there were so many people, it just affected people in such a, in that kind of way. Personally, it would probably be Kent State, you know, and the aftermath of Kent State that that made the biggest impact on I think it really convinced me that no matter what I thought things were, there was, I could not trust the authorities.

SM: 10:24
Right. I think it is interesting, Ron, you mentioned that because that is the event that shaped my life in terms of when I was at the school Binghamton. I graduated, [crosstalk] I graduated in (19)70. And, and I went into higher education as a career because of what happened at Kent State. Because it was the epitome of what we saw for quite a while were students, and were not talking to faculty and students were, you know, some of the administration are in very bad relationships. And so I went into it to see if I can do it my small role in changing that. And, and so, you know, that is a very important event in my life. And that was when I was a senior in college.

RJ: 11:06
Interesting, yeah.

SM: 11:07
I wanted to ask you this question, too, and it gets real- what you hear today in the news many times is when we go back to the (19)60s, the culture wars that we are seeing today in our society, in (20)19, are definitely going back to that era, the (19)60s, they say. Do you still see divisions in the (19)60s in today's society? Some, some call it the ongoing culture wars. I would just like your thoughts on that.

RJ: 11:33
I do think there is divisions, but I do not think they are divided in the same- the divisions are not the same as they were before if you know what I-I mean, a lot of times back in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, it was always presented as generational, you know, and, and now I am not so sure. Because there is people like us, who it is generational, but in a different way. I mean, I know people like in their 60s and older, tend to be more conservative, even now that I just think because back when we were younger, there were more conservative people, they just went about their business. But I think I think that the key division that still exists, is ones having to do with women and their rights. And I think we are seeing it down south and all the all the recent abortion law laws that are going back to almost as bad as it was before Roe vs. Wade, in terms of restricting women's right to choose, and so on. And I also see behind that I see a basically a misogyny, a system of systemic misogyny that it is certain that some people cannot let go. And of course, you know, given who we have in office right now, who is obviously president who is obviously a misogynist in his own foolish way. You know, there is people who are a lot meaner, a lot, a lot more sharper and meaner than he is, and more political than he is, who are taking us to the next level which are these laws and these attacks on women. I do not know; the other stuff is harder to tell. I do not know if the racial divide is as big as it was. I think it is still there. But I think that with the exception of a small number of racists, I think individual racism: has almost gone. I mean, it is, it is more overt now than it was, you know, say under Barack Obama, or even George Bush or Bill Clinton. But that is because of the nature of once again, who's in power.

SM: 13:37
Right.

RJ: 13:37
But I, in terms of a lot of the generational stuff. I do not know that it is that big a deal. I mean, I just got finished teaching at a, working at a college last year. And now I just semi-retired, and got a part time job down at the local public library. And I was working with a lot of college kid well, obviously, working, I worked at the library, so I interact with a lot of college students. And I would say the biggest thing now is with a lot of the college- and this was a liberal arts Catholic school, in general, small like about 2000 students- I would say, in general, the overall politics are liberal. And so, and this is in Vermont, so that might have something to do with it. Overall, the and the social, the cultural stuff is nothing, I mean if they do not if they do not smoke pot, they do not care that it is legal. You know, they are they do not care about the gender identity stuff. They do not care about trans. They do not care about gay, straight, any of that stuff. So, I think a lot of those things, at least maybe in the generation coming up now like say 35 and under. I do not think that stuff is there at all, hardly, you know. But I would say there is still some strong divisions and like I said, I think the biggest one is around the rights of women.

SM: 14:53
Right. Very good point. Could you discuss a little bit of your background where you grew up, your relationship with your parents, experiences that shaped you when you were very young politically or socially or, and-and the any school experiences that you might have had?

RJ: 15:12
Sure. Well, I grew up, I was born in (19)55. My father was in the military when I was born. He had graduated from college the year before, he had gotten into ROTC so he would not be drafted into the Korean War. And then they decided, he decided, him and my mother decided that he was going to make a career out of the military. He was an officer, he, he went into what they call security service, which is basically gathering intelligence. He worked with NSA. He was he was one of the original officers at the founding of the National Security Agency in the late (19)50s. And so, we traveled around the world we got, we ended up we were stationed, after a few years of going from Texas to Alaska, back to Texas and so on, we ended up in Maryland, outside of Washington, DC in (19)60- (19)59 or (19)60. And then we went to Pakistan, because the military had a spy base there with-with satellites. And this also they used the joint- they shared an airport with the Pakistani military and the-the Pak- and the Pakistani civilian people that they used to use to fly U2 planes over the Soviet Union. In fact, it was where it was the base, where the U2 plane that Gary Powers was flying that got shot down, it was where it was launched. But they-they were not doing U2 planes anymore, because then by then they had better radar-radar technology. And so, it was a small base, we were there for two years. While I was there, there was a war between India and Pakistan. And so, they evacuated all the women and children from the base. We went to Turkey and spent three months on an airbase there. And this was right around the same time as they were starting to move all the US dependents out of Vietnam, because Vietnam was starting to really heat up, (19)65, fall of, fall of (19)65. And then we went back to the States, and we lived in Maryland for, my father every time he was stationed in a state where I was living with him, it was always- after he moved to Maryland the first time- it was always back to Maryland, because that is where his work was. And then we went to, then he went to Vietnam in (19)68, when I was 13. And he came back when I was 14. And over that cour- I was starting, I was against the war before he left, like I was, I campaigned for [inaudible] Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. I would just pass it out, you know, pass out literature and–

SM: 17:37
Right.

RJ: 17:38
-knock knocking on doors with the local Democratic precinct chair Catherine because she lived right up the street from us. And she was a family friend. My father was always a Republican, he always voted for Nixon, my mother was always a Democrat. We come from a big family, there is a total of 12 kids in our family.

SM: 17:57
Wow. [laughs]

RJ: 17:58
I am the second oldest, I have a sister who is a year older than me, and my sister and I shared a very similar trajectory in terms of our politics, our interests and stuff. I was probably a little more fringe than she was because it was easier for me to be being a white guy, and white male, I would could get away with more and so on, you know, especially back in the (19)60s, early (19)70s. And then when we-we got, my dad came back from Vietnam in (19)69. And I had been really following a lot, you know I would go to the antiwar protests in our hometown that were put on by some of the college students from University of Maryland, which was about eight miles from [inaudible]. And they were they were [inaudible] this is during the moratorium they were [inaudible] protests, we stood and we read out the names of the war dead and had peace signs and stuff you know, but you know, people drove by and threw stuff at us, you know, because it was a pretty redneck town, a pretty military town. And then we moved to- my dad got stationed to Frankfurt, Germany- and we moved there in March (19)70. And right when the Beatles Let it Be song was released, I remember listening to it in the, in the military airport before we took off to go to Germany. And so, I went to high school, I finished up my ninth grade and finished up high school out of milit- at a high school on a military base in Frankfort. It was a big high school, it is great high school, a lot of liberal teachers. And I think part of it was because a lot of the teachers wanted those jobs because then they could live in Europe and go skiing and visit you know all these different places. So, when I was over there, there was a bunch of rebels in the high school, and we worked together with them. Some anti-war GIS and stuff, we put out and we distribute an underground newspaper and I went to a lot of protests, and we worked with some Black Panthers and stuff. We help we help publicize when Angela Davis was arrested and in jail, her sister did a tour to raise funds to free Angela Davis. And they came to Frankfort and so we-we helped publicize that on base with some, you know, leaving leaflets and talking to different GIS and, and students and so on. And then when I came back to the, I graduated (19)73 came back to the States. And basically, I got involved. I went to Fordham University for a year and got involved there, just kind of there. First, I was just doing the impeachment stuff because that is when the impeaching Nixon thing was just getting warm. It was right, I was there the fall when the Saturday Night Massacre happened with when he fired all Archibald Cox and stuff.

SM: 20:42
Right.

RJ: 20:43
And then also, the coup against Chile happened. So, I was living in New York City so I was able to go to protests, it was kind of something that I wanted to do. Then I left there and went to University of Maryland for a while. And then I dropped out and just kind of worked and went to California. And was kind of worked when I felt like it living, hitchhiking around, living on the streets going to festivals. I was I was somewhat politically involved. You know and I sold pot, stuff like that, you know, just kind of living that kind of.

SM: 21:17
Did you ever live in a commune?

RJ: 21:20
Not really, I mostly just live with, like, most of the places I live in were kind of [inaudible] people I had good friends in the hog farm and I would crash at their house. But I never, I never wanted to join anything because I really did not want to usually because most of them you had to follow certain rules. And I did not want to commit myself to anything–

SM: 21:39
Right.

RJ: 21:39
-at the time. So, I was just kind of like an independent operator if you want to use a funny term or something, you know.

SM: 21:46
What is amazing about on the West Coast and then San, San Francisco area, the diggers are the big group out there. Yeah, and kind of [crosstalk] On the streets, and then they went, then when everything happened they all went off into the commune life.

RJ: 22:00
Yeah, and they, their-their, their reach is pretty far and wide. Down into Kizzy, the people that were connected to Kizzy with [inaudible] Kizzy and the Grateful Dead, because a lot of them ended up, you know, they ended up starting a hog farm, they ended up starting these other communes up north in Northern California. Peter Coyote was a digger. You know, he became a famous movie star and actor and stuff. And then there was some other guys who came back East. Some of them ended up joining up with the yippies, Abbie Hoffman, and those guys, even and you know, there was always kind of a running joke between the yippies and the diggers is that the diggers invented a lot of the stuff that the yippies made popular and sold to the world. And it is kind of true, the Free Store, and the free meals and all that kind of stuff, and how to, you know, drop the, you know, get free phone calls, all that kind of stuff. The diggers talked about it and did it but they did not write books about it. Whereas I would kind of argue that it was because the yippies were an East Coast phenomenon, you kind of did things differently on the East Coast because it was more populated, less, more impersonal as well.

SM: 23:13
Yeah, of course. The yippies had a pig for President. So [laughs]

RJ: 23:16
Right.

SM: 23:19
Pigasus. Pigasus the pig.

RJ: 23:21
Pigasus. Yeah-yeah.

SM: 23:22
When you think of the (19)60s- now, again, I am going to ask you, what do you think is the (19)60s. I have had many people say what they felt the (19)60s was, I have had people say, well, it was two parts. It was the part and the first three years when Ken- then Kennedy was assassinated, then you had the second part of the (19)60s which went through to the mid (19)70s. Then there is some that say the (19)60s should be (19)60 and (19)70, quit talking about all this (19)70s stuff. What-what, what defines the-the years for the (19)60s to you?

RJ: 23:58
I like to think of it in terms of the long (19)60s, when I think in France and in Germany, and a couple other European countries and basically what defines it is this: raised consciousness and spirit that was, that was infused with lot of hope that people could change the world and actually make it into a place where everybody had, truly had equal chances, because everybody had their basic things taken care of like food, education, health care, housing, that was all there. For, that was what everybody could afford that and then they could actually work on living, living out their dreams and, and, and kind of moving beyond the individualist, individualistic rat race that (19)50s kind of brought on you know, the-the prosperity. But at the same time, there was another part of it which was the forces of reaction, which basically took over in the late, well they Nixon, Nixon was the first one of those. But I honestly think that that really became popular under Ronald Reagan. And the forces of reaction, which kind of, it never wanted to see that hope that the (19)60s represented come to fruition, and are still trying to turn it back, which is, you know, even little symbols of it like Obama or something, how some people just still cannot even deal with that, you know, or women's right to choose who, who that what they are going to do and so on. But I think overall, that the (19)60s were, were a positive thing. And I think they moved the world, Western, I think the entire world but that definitely the United States and the rest of the Western world, I think, and probably the Soviet Union, too, but they move people forward in terms of learning that it was okay, that learning that you should not judge people, by the way they look, I think that was probably one of the key things, whether it was long hair, or whether were skin color, or whether it was like, you know, man, woman, age, whatever, fat, skinny, whatever, you know–

SM: 26:16
Would you say that, if you were to put a point where the (19)60s started, it is when the election of John Kennedy, because of the fact of his speech, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country?" And of course, we all know about the Peace Corps and VISTA. And you know, the people that did go into the service, you know, that whole feeling of giving back. And of course, then we lost him. And-and then, you know, some people are always saying, "When did the (19)60s end?" And some people say it has never ended, really, but-but some people think that the (19)60s ended when the helicopter went off the American Embassy in, in Saigon in on April 30, of (19)75. And that was really a very symbolic thing. And then others say that in the fall of (19)73, you saw a big difference on college campuses, because there were still protests through (19)72. And when streaking started on college campuses, if you remember that and fall of (19)73, streaking was [crosstalk]–

RJ: 27:24
Yeah-yeah.

SM: 27:24
-and no one was, activism seemed to die. It is like, it is the campus has totally changed. I just want your, what is your feelings are about, you know, Kennedy, streaking, the-the end of the Vietnam War, and we lost the war, your thoughts?

RJ: 27:41
I would say the Kennedy thing is probably sometime in the campaign is probably a good pinpoint. But also one could argue that the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which took place a couple years earlier was-

SM: 27:59
Ah, (19)57. Yep.

RJ: 27:59
-was the seed, that was the seeds of the (19)60s because it was the first time that there was that kind of mass organization to change an obviously very unjust law. And Kennedy, whether he was a great hero, or whether he was not a great hero, he represented a lot of hope to a lot of people across the board, and I would argue so that Bobby Kennedy. If I were to say sometime [inaudible] I guess (19)73 in the fall was the year that I started college, at Fordham. And there was still a fair amount of activism, but it certainly was not anything like it was two years previous. And there was a lot of streaking going on-on the campus that I was on. But I think a lot of the activism had moved out into the streets and off campus by then because a lot of the people who were the primary activists, had graduated or left after you know graduated like around your time, or the year after.

SM: 28:59
Yes.

RJ: 29:00
(19)70, (19)71.

SM: 29:01
Yep.

RJ: 29:02
And I also think Kent State scared a lot of people away.

SM: 29:05
Yep.

RJ: 29:06
Because they saw how serious the authorities would get if, if things got if things got more out of hand than they already were in their mind. It is I can see why people would say the April 30 (19)75 was the end because Vietnam was such a defining- I mean, it was the key reason for so much of the protests. And it was kind of like, what brought a lot of these different strains of protest together because it was the war that was causing the economic situation. It was the war, the structure of the draft was racist, that people who are dying at the highest rate were African American and Latino immigrants and so on, so I can see that it was also taking away a lot of young men.

SM: 29:51
Right.

RJ: 29:53
But then there is another possibility that it was Jimmy Carter's election because even though he was a big change from Nixon and Ford. It was a different kind of, he was trying to- remember what the he had the amnesty?

SM: 30:06
Oh, yes.

RJ: 30:07
For the draft resistors?

SM: 30:08
Oh, yes, yes.

RJ: 30:08
And I think he was trying to put that all to bed. And what he, what he brought in, a lot of people do not think, are just starting to talk about this in the last five or six years, is that he brought in the idea that the government that [inaudible], the idea that the government should provide medical care, the idea that the government should help people get on their feet with welfare and stuff like that. And he started saying that, and that he started the actual downsizing of the government and privatizing a bunch of the government that Reagan carried out to a great extent, and has continued ever since. So, so it is, but symbolically, I think it would be the end of the Vietnam War. You know, because that that was so crucial, and that just meant so many people felt relieved when they knew that that was finally over, you know.

SM: 31:02
Those are excellent observations. I appreciate what you just said. Very well thought out. What, we have, you already mentioned the whole issue of the spirit. I remember in some, many of the people that I have interviewed, one of them, in fact, was Richie Havens before he passed away. I did a phone interview, and I am trying to get his family to "okay" the interview, it is hard to get a hold of them. But there were several people that talked about this issue of spirit. Could you define the spirit of the 60s on and how would you define the spirit? What made it happen? And is it based on age and now I say age, because a lot of my interviews are on the boomer generation, those born between (19)46 and (19)64. But the front edge boomers are those born between (19)46 and say, (19)57. And they were involved in the activism and the protests because the others were kind of young-

RJ: 31:52
Right-right.

SM: 31:53
-during that. So oftentimes, we talk about this spirit in terms of age, but Richie corrected that with me. Richie said, I am a boomer and I was born in (19)41. And so, and it brought up a whole issue because most of the major activists were born in (19)39 to (19)45. [laughs]

RJ: 32:13
Yeah. Timothy Leary was born in the early (19)30s.

SM: 32:15
Yeah. So yeah-yeah, yeah. So- And Dave Dellinger was another one that was older.

RJ: 32:19
Right, oh yeah. He was a lot older.

SM: 32:21
Yeah.

RJ: 32:23
Yeah. And Bob Dylan was born in (19)41. You know, so yeah. So, I do not think age has, I think age had a lot to do with it in terms of who the bulk of the (19)60s spirit hit. But, but as always, it was a lot of the was our, you know, what they call it nowadays, they call them elders, who kind of showed the way. And some of them joined in 100 percent. And some of them just kind of apprec- say, someone like William Burroughs the Beat writer who never really had any use for hippies, you know that he appreciated the fact that his writings are so popular among them, and that he influenced so many people like. I mean, he influenced Bob Dylan, he influenced a lot of- Jim Morrison, he influenced Patti Smith. So, he influenced a lot of musicians and poets to in the way they express themselves. And the dark places or the light places that they went because he had gone there, he had kind of opened the door to those places. The spirit, I think, was mostly I still think it is hard to define, but I think it was basically one that was of a revolutionary hope. And I do not mean revolution, just in political terms. I mean, in like, in the fact that things were going to change 180 degrees, and they were going to be a lot better. And some people did it, some people just wanted to do it by changing their lifestyle like joining communes or hitchhiking around. Other people wanted to do it by become- you know, joining a new religion or finding themselves through yoga and the Maharishi or even Christianity, whatever. And then a lot of people wanted to do it, you know, and then as brought through political change and social change, other people did it. Like if you think about it in the early (19)70s, when, say, David Bowie, Lou Reed, and even Mick Jagger and stuff started doing some of the cross-gender stuff. And that, you know, that was a big following. I think it was bigger in Britain than it was in the States, given the differences in the cultures in relation to that kind of stuff back then. But I think that a lot of people were like, well we cannot, maybe we cannot change the world, but we can definitely change who we are. And that way maybe that will help make the world a better place, a more tolerant place or whatever, you know, and even if that is not an intentional thought, it is kind of like part of the zeitgeist of that whole desire to change and to express oneself in terms of-

SM: 32:26
Right. You are really you are, again, a tremendous analysis. As a personal person who was in that era, and I cannot even explain it, it was just a good feeling. I, you know, it is not an arrogance, it is not being arrogant. It is just a good feeling if I am riding on a bus, and I am a college student, or I am wearing my college sweatshirt, back in the (19)60s and (10)70s, wherever, when I went to undergrad and grad, it was just a feeling it was a different time I and there was a lot of trouble, you know, the protests that divisions in America, between Black and white and women and men, and in the gay movement, everything, there so many issues. However, there was a just a feeling that it was a good time to live in. And it was something to do with the spirit of the times that I never saw as a little boy in the (9)50s. And I have never seen since in my life. I do not know if you felt that way. Still there. Ron, still there?

RJ: 36:10
Yeah.

SM: 36:11
Oh, okay. You okay?

RJ: 36:13
Yeah, [inaudible] hear.

SM: 36:14
Okay. Any obser- anything to say on that?

RJ: 36:18
Yes. I agree with you that I have not seen it since. And I can say, as someone who is coming in you know, that many years younger than you like six or seven, I guess. That as a teenager, you had this feeling like you were going to go, you know, once you got into like high school, you were going to be part of this huge thing. And I mean, I honestly felt like I was part of this huge thing and that anything was possible. And some of that is just being young. But I also think part of it was just kind of the fact that maybe it was because there was such a critical mass of young people who are all and-and we all kind of we are think- our media was not so diverse, that we were all listening to a lot of the same records. And, you know, reading the same newspapers, and, you know, and then also there was really good communication through like the different underground newspapers, and at rock concerts and just going to places where young people went and stuff.

SM: 37:18
What do you think was the watershed event of the (19)60s? I think you have already said it, Vietnam?

RJ: 37:23
Yes. Yeah. I think Vietnam was, at least for, for most white people. Anyhow, I would be if I was African American, it might be something different. But I would say, but even though even though they were affected, like much more, you know, in terms of demographics and stuff, there might be something different for them. But I would say in terms of, of a white, in terms of white young people, Vietnam was the watershed event.

SM: 37:50
When you look at the whole era, the lessons of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, what are the lessons, the lessons that we hopefully learn from, not only so we will not make the same mistakes again, or things that we are we wish we could continue to multiply. Just lessons from that era?

RJ: 38:15
One lesson would be that you cannot give up. Sometimes- this is in especially in the, I am speaking in the political arena. You cannot give up because you think you won because the people who are opposed to change the kind of change you want, are always ready to pounce back and remove the changes that you have. And I think we have seen that over the decades as stuff has slowly gone back like the- I mean, some things are moved forward, like marijuana is legal in so many states now. And it is not a big deal. Other things have moved backwards. And so, but I would, and then other things I think maybe is that sometimes it might be better to give your opponents a listen. And try to find points of commonality instead of only looking for the points where you disagree. Because if you only focus on the points you disagree, it is going to be really hard to ever come to any kind of any move forward that makes everybody a little bit happy at least. Other than that, I do not know. You know, I cannot, you know, in terms of things that I wish we could keep on doing, I wish there was just a way that we could just keep the feeling of that we are all in this together. But I do not think that exists anymore. I just think it is because that is how our economy goes. Our economy likes to atomize everything and people, there is so more people and some people and people's life- I do not think people have the same idea that they are all living this, in the same, same concept anymore. I think the divisions, I think in some ways that we are going back to the divisions. Some divisions are deeper, like, between, maybe between the very rich and everybody else. And there are different divisions, but I do, you know, and like between the people who think there is nothing wrong say with some of the stuff that, you know, politicians do and those of us who think that politicians are completely on the wrong track, you know, like, especially the right-wing politicians or whatever, you know, the Mitch McConnell and those-those folks. But it is hard to capsulize in just-just, just a couple of things.

SM: 40:51
Would you would you be able to, for example, when you look at this Boomer generation, I mean, this is a question on the generation because of the fact they are part, they are the (19)60s in respect. Just a couple adjectives, positive or negative against the generation?

RJ: 41:10
Self-centered, that is the negative one on one. Innovative. Potentially, I think they are more caring, I would say more caring is a big thing. You know, no matter how they express it, they express it by working with charity by whether they express it through if they go to church through their church, whether they express it politically, or just, you know, how they think, think about other people. I also think that, overall, this is not, is that they are materialistic. More than you know, even though we tried to get away from it. I think that ultimately, we are materialistic. And I think that is just such an overriding part of our culture, it is almost impossible to get away from it. Unless you do not have the ways to have any material things. And even then, you might be craving them I do not know, you know. I am trying to think of–

SM: 42:17
That is pretty good.

RJ: 42:22
I think also, and this is just due to what happened. And I do not think we were always that way, because I think we ended up, started off very hopeful. But I think a lot of us ended up quite cynical. So that was just something that happened over time. And maybe it is because we are we have romantic ideas. And then when those romantic ideas either failed, or were quashed-

SM: 42:47
Right.

RJ: 42:48
-a lot of times you just become a cynic. Because you are kind of like, well, what is the point? Nothing is going to change anyhow, so why should I bother?

SM: 42:54
You know, when we see the news for the last, whether it be from 9/11, around (20)00, or any of the bad things that happen on the Daily News in our for the last 18 years in this news century, and then you go back to the (19)90s and everything in the (19)60s was supposed to end all that. The goal of young people is not to have war, and peace and the whole things. And then you see all these terrible things happening, school children being killed, people go into schools and shooting on people, going into synagogues and killing people. The Muslims are an endangered species in many parts of the country, we, you know, have we gotten worse, or you know, and most and then several books have been written by two of the people that I have interviewed, that we have had more war since World War Two, than at any time in the history of the world. And you know, World War Two was supposedly, you know, going into the (19)50s. And the Cold War started. And it is just like, you wonder, wow, we had this great feeling of great spirit for that short period of time and for some reason, these, this youth, the 74 million that were in the boomer generation, what had they done to make any kind of a difference? And some people will say nothing.

RJ: 44:14
Yeah. Oh, yeah. There is a lot of people will say nothing, I mean, I hear- you see those things. I do not know, if you use Facebook or anything. You will see the memes on there, blaming everything on the boomer generation, you know, and, you know, there is a validity to that, because it is people our age, but part of that, I think, is because people thought you know, when people think what they think, everybody was the same and they do not understand that there was always at least two opposing viewpoints, even among our generation, you know. A lot of people took, picked and picked and chose what they wanted from each side, you know, and I think that was probably what most people did. Whereas there are some people like myself more and more definitely on the left, and others people who are always definitely on the right. And so, part of that I think is the it was it was the whole thing was with the [inaudible] constant war, I think it was just the way, it was something that happened when after World War Two, and they decided that they wanted to maintain this permanent war economy because that was the only way they could keep everybody employed. And they were not, they were not creative enough to come up with a different way. I mean, you look at someplace like Japan, where they were forbidden to make any weapons, or even have a standing army for decades. And they ended up becoming a very wealthy country too. But only recently have they even been allowed to have a standing army. And so consequently, they spent a lot of their energy developing other stuff, you know, that-that did not require them to constantly go out. And or, did not require them to think that they needed keep on going out [inaudible] war, to get rid of the inventory, or whatever the reason is.

SM: 44:20
Yeah, I do. Right.

RJ: 46:07
And I do not think any other countries have the idea that they can save the world. Maybe the only other one that might have in its time, in our time, is the Soviet Union. And that was because of, you know, they had an agenda, as well as the United States to both of us was to protect, I believe, was to defend, ultimately, their economic growth for either-either country.

SM: 46:29
So, the, a little anecdote, when I lived in San Francisco Bay area, from (19)76, to (19)83, there was this religious minister on the radio, he had his weekly show, I listened to what he, you know, he was good at times, but I will never forget him making a statement one night, on the radio, it was late at night. And he said, he blamed all the problems of the world-- now this is in the late (19)70s, and early (19)80s, all the problems on the world on the boomer generation, and he basically made a- and he is a minister. And he said, "The world will be a much better place when-when we know the last member of the boomer generation has died." And that was across the board statement, whether you are conservative liberal or anything in between, because he was condemning that entire generation, for a lot of the issues that were going on in the Bay Area and the world at that time. And I just that is always kind of stuck with me. I wanted to get back to one other question here. We were talking about that question, a question, learning lessons. Of course, the biggest lesson is whether we as a nation, the United States, learned anything from the Vietnam War. You know, because we have been involved in other wars. I know, when the Gulf War came up in (19)89, a lot of Vietnam veterans are saying, "Do not go to war." Because you know, we are, we should not be going there. And just your and then, of course, we have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, just your thoughts on did, talking about lessons learned or lessons lost, did the United States of America learn anything from the lessons of Vietnam?

RJ: 48:07
I think what they learned, I mean, and Colin Powell said it back when he was working for Reagan I think, and he said that you should not go into a country. I mean, these are bad things to learn, I think, but it is what they learned because their military minds. And that is that you do not go into and into a country unless, you know, you can overwhelm them with superior force. And that was kind of what they did when they did that first war in Iraq like (19)91, or whatever, under George Bush, the father. And I think the other thing they learned was to them, was to not let people know what was really going on in the battle zone. And just by controlling the media, even more than it was ever controlled in Vietnam. And I think the other thing they learned was to never have a draft. Because all of those, I mean, all these wars and the war, I mean, we were we have been at war now since well, since they attacked Afghanistan after 9/11. And we do not even really know you and I and most of Americans, most people in the world do not know what countries the US is even fighting in other than Afghanistan.

SM: 49:21
Right.

RJ: 49:21
And, you know, and that has nothing to do even with, and that does not even begin to mention the places where we supply most of the arms, like in Yemen or something like that. So, I think the-the military establishment and the war establishment, learn very, learned those lessons very well. Basically, if you are going to be a war, do not tell the truth, which is kind of like, you know, that is the standard thing, the first casualty of war is the truth. But this way, they have just learned to not even begin with it, you know, and, and, I mean, if you think of the way we got into the-the (20)03 invasion of Iraq, it was Colin Powell was up there telling outright lies to the Security Council, you know, and he even admitted, yeah, I lied. And then there is this guy, Colonel-Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He is a retired Air Force guy. And he just put out a- wrote an article that he put out talking about how he, how he lied for the, to get the US into Iraq. And he is saying do not, we cannot let them do it again to go into Iran. You know. So, as far as the rest of us, I think there was a decent antiwar movement against the first invasion of Iraq, the deserts, I think that was Desert Storm.

SM: 50:36
Yep.

RJ: 50:37
And then I think there was a really good antiwar movement against-against the second invasion of Iraq, but I think the leaders of the antiwar movement did not, they thought that they could, they decided to go along and go along with the Obama campaign and join the Democratic Party to try to stop the war. And they should have known better because the Vietnam War expanded under-under the Democrats, you know, under LBJ, Kennedy and LBJ.

SM: 51:08
Right.

RJ: 51:08
So, and that, I think, so I am not sure the leadership of the antiwar movement learned anything, because basically, they allowed the antiwar movement to be led into the, into the, into the Democratic Party. And while Obama did diminish the number of troops in Iraq, there is still, there has always been troops there, and then he just stepped up the aerial and the drone wars and so on.

SM: 51:32
Right, right.

RJ: 51:32
So, so I am not- it is it is kind of a mixed bag, you know, and I do not know, like, now I wonder if, say, say they decided to invade Venezuela or invade Iran in the next year or two, I wonder how, how and what the any antiwar movement would look like. I mean, I stay in touch with a lot of people who were involved in all the antiwar movements since Viet- since Vietnam, and, you know, and all- whether they started back then or whether they were younger and came-came around- but it is just kind of people who have been, have kind of committed their life [inaudible] anyhow, you know.

SM: 52:15
Right.

RJ: 52:17
So, I do not, I do not know how many people would come and join any groundswell. It is really difficult to tell, because we are so removed from so many people's lives now.

SM: 52:26
Right.

RJ: 52:26
Since there is. since there is no draft, that that changes everything I think.

SM: 52:32
When you look back, there has been- I do a lot of reading and books and the some of the recent books have said, they are talking about how effective really was the student- I mean, not the antiwar movement as a whole, but the student protest movement on college campuses on ending the war in Vietnam. I would like your thoughts on, did they play a major role in ending the war? The critics will say that, "Oh, no, no, no, that they did not have that much, they were troublemakers, basically." And what really ended, the, when people started going against the war is when their sons came start coming home from the war from people that live in the Midwest and their sons came home in coffins. That is what changed the war. And your thoughts on the student protest movement during the (19)60s and early (19)70s?

RJ: 53:23
I think it was very important. I think that it was the bulk of the antiwar movement. I think if that if the student antiwar movement had not existed, a lot of those people whose sons did come home in the coffins, and so on, would never have thought that it was okay for them to be against the war. And they would have just kind of said, well, you know, he died for his country, and they would have gone along with that. But I think the fact that the antiwar movement, which was basically mostly student based because they were the ones, it was people their age was going to be set over there. I think that the fact that they organized the movement, that they helped the movement expand and so on, and that they were not afraid to stand up and deal with whatever they had to deal with, that is, that is, that is what held [inaudible] for antiwar idea, consciousness in the American people. And then I think, you know, I think of my father, he was a military man. He was a career military man. He went to Vietnam, he told me is- this is an interesting irony. But on the, I was 13. On the day that, on the day that LBJ said that he was would not run nor would he accept the nomination for his party for presidency. That was like March 31 (19)68. He, that was the day my dad told me that he had given-given orders to go to Vietnam.

SM: 54:51
Oh, wow.

RJ: 54:52
And I was just, I was 13. I was starting to I was I was I was precocious in terms of my awareness of the news and everything and, you know, so and I had already started campaigning for Gene McCarthy and I was switching over to Bobby Kennedy once he joined after the, after the New Hampshire primary there, but. But um, and I just remembered that and then he went away, he started starting in July of that of that year (19)68, he went away, because he had to go to these special trainings before we went over to Vietnam. So he was basically gone for like 18 months. And when he came back, I was pretty much hardcore antiwar, and so on. And he never told me this until after my son was born when I was 29. So sometime like mid-mid (19)80s. He, he said, "You know, when I, by the time I was in Vietnam, I knew that it was the wrong war for us to be in." And he said, "But I had no choice." He said, "I had a family to support. I had," you know, and, and basically, you know, that, as you can probably guess, that was a major source of contention between me and my father, the whole time I was in high school, and we would have some pretty intense arguments about it and stuff, you know, and it kind of made me question. You know, ee was a very, he was raised Catholic, he is a very traditional Catholic. So always made me question the morality of somebody who could be involved in that at the same time, the, the this, “Thou shalt not kill and all that kind of stuff,” you know what I mean, so. So, I think and I think he was on the conservative edge of things. And I think he [inaudible] when he told me that he said, "yeah," he says, "If I had been a civilian," he said, "I would not have gone to a protest." But I would have signed every petition, and I would have talked to congress people. But [inaudible] Kennedy [inaudible].

SM: 56:57
One of the kind of semi controversies, it is happening today, and I have seen amongst Vietnam veterans now. I go to the Vietnam Memorial a lot, and I listen to all the state and I- it is a nonpolitical entity, they talk about it is in remembrance of those who served and died. And, and they are heroes. When the when the Vietnam, it is well known fact that when Vietnam vets came home, they were treated terribly by this country as a whole. And but the question I have always felt, in my experience with the antiwar movement, is I never felt that the anti the genuine antiwar activists were against the troops, they were against the leaders who sent the troops. And there is still this perception out there that when they came home from Vietnam, it was the antiwar movement that treated them poorly. I do not think so. But could you correct me or your feelings on this? I thought it was. I thought it was America as a whole. Because of this perception that Vietnam vets were baby killers, the My Lai massacre, post-traumatic stress disorder, they are all crazy, all these things. And so, I thought that was the reason why, but you know, your thoughts.

RJ: 58:14
I think that I agree with what you are saying essentially, in terms of that it was the, it was the government of the United States that failed the, failed the veterans. Failed the guys coming back. It is for me, having grown up growing up in the military, and when I was in high school, doing a lot of work and hanging out with a lot of GIS who are against the war a lot. Where I was in Germany, a lot of the GIS were finishing up their two years enlistment because they were just draftees. And so, they would, they would have gone to boot camp, and then gone to Vietnam for a year. And then they would spend like their last 10 months being a clerk typist somewhere, you know, and a lot of us ended up in Germany In Germany. And so, I knew them through like, you know, rock music and, you know, to smoking pot, and just like, working with some of them on-on new antiwar stuff, and so on. And, you know, they were a select group, they were not the majority of, you know, just like most people that most people are not politically involved, these guys were politically involved. And, you know, what I [inaudible] them, is they were very clear that it was, you know, the people they did not like, was the officers and the politicians. And it was the politicians who could have treated them one way or the other. And they basically stalled for so long to even get the PTSD considered a valid psychological disorder, you know, and the only reason that really happened was because of who [inaudible] the war constantly lobbying and so on to, to get recognized by the APA as, to go into the DSM, whatever you think of the DSM that is, you know, that is what the where they have the list of disorders. So, I think Americans in general just wanted to forget about it, kind of the way they, right now I work part time in a public library. And a lot of the people who come in every day are people who do not have a home. And a lot of them are vets from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

SM: 1:00:23
Wow.

RJ: 1:00:23
And I see the same thing, I see the same thing happening.

SM: 1:00:27
Wow, that is really sad.

RJ: 1:00:28
People do not care about them. And these men, I think, probably have, I do not know, because I was never in war, thank God. But some of these men come in, and they have some incredible mental health issues, not to go not to say about other issues that they are just finding out, you know, cancers or something that happened from being in a war zone and so on. And they self-medicate on very heavy levels, you know, like, kind of like some of, you probably had buddies who did the same thing, who came back from Vietnam. I know I did. I had like two or three of my friends who are dead by the end of this, who two of them enlisted. And one of them got drafted. And they went to Vietnam. They were a couple years older than me in high school. And they all, one of them overdosed on heroin, the other two committed suicide. So that so you know, how the high rate of suicide now-

SM: 1:01:17
Yes.

RJ: 1:01:19
-among Iraq vets and so on. And so I kind of it is kind of, you know, American politicians love to make Bernie Sanders and I am not politicking for him or anything, but he will say, if you do not want to make if you do not want to take care of your vets, do not make wars, you know, and because his point is that, you know, Americans like their wars, but they do not really care about the vets. And when I talk with my dad about it, who used to be when he first got out of the military in (19)79, he used to be kind of [inaudible] on Vietnam vets who are complaining, but then he starts doing his church, he started doing counseling for vets who are applying to get back into the workforce. And, and, you know, he wanted to do it, because he was a vet himself that he, you know, he understands that military code and all that. And that, even if they even if GIS did not like the military, they still respect a man who had a higher rate. So, there is that whole thing that happens within the military training and everything. And it really changed his mind about it. He realized, like, No, you know, we did him wrong. I think that is part of what happened in Vietnam. And I think it is what is, you know, it happened in previous wars. But I think what the difference between previous wars and Vietnam was that Vietnam became such an unpopular war. But also, at the same time, there was a lot. It was the first time that a war had taken place where people continued to chall- where the challenges to it got bigger as the war went on as opposed to other wars where they were like, say World War One, there was a lot of opposition to the US going in and just all around the world. But once the war started, most [inaudible] did their thing. Same with World War Two. Whereas Vietnam, nobody really even knew it was beginning but by the time it was [cuts off]

SM: 1:03:09
Still there?

RJ: 1:03:10
Yeah, I am just going in and out. Are you there?

SM: 1:03:14
Yeah, I am here. Got it okay?

RJ: 1:03:19
My phone is funny, sometimes. I am trying to stay in one place, but I am not sure what is going on.

SM: 1:03:24
I hear you now.

RJ: 1:03:26
Okay. So, I think that the vets bore the brunt of it. You know, and I but I do not think it was the antiwar movement, any more than it was any other part of the United States.

SM: 1:03:37
Have you changed your feeling about the boomer generation over the years, just changed from when you were younger that spirit and now today, have you just devolved differently when you think about that whole generation? [phone rings]

RJ: 1:03:53
Well, not really, I still think that it played as you know, as a generation. It-

SM: 1:04:00
That is a noise in the background, forget it.

RJ: 1:04:02
Okay. As a generation it did, it took advantage of the time it was in and it made things it changed the world for the better- in substantial ways, mostly for the better, I think. I think I do not know, climate change is a tough thing to get a handle on, you know, get your head around. But I think in a lot of terms of people being able to fulfill their lives and people granting more opportunity for more people at least in the United States [inaudible]

SM: 1:04:42
Is your phone breaking up?

RJ: 1:04:48
I think this is, I am not sure why. Yeah.

SM: 1:04:50
You got enough power in your phone?

RJ: 1:04:53
Yeah. I am plugged in. I am plugged in.

SM: 1:04:57
We are about a little, about halfway through that okay?

RJ: 1:05:01
Yeah, yep.

SM: 1:05:01
Yeah-yeah. And I am going to get to some questions about your two books in a couple more questions. But I got a few more here that. Let us see here. Could you describe, a lot of times the boomer generation and the student- young people in the (19)60s used to say they were the most unique generation in American history is because of the attitudes they had, that they were going to be the best change agents for good in our society, was that arrogance on the part of the boomer generation and the students of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, that they were going to be different than any other generation, before or after?

RJ: 1:05:09
Okay. The I think it was era, it is not necessarily a bad arrogance, I think they would have been told that growing up, that they were special. And I think the fact that so many of them took it to heart and tried to do the right thing with it, it is actually it is kind of like trying to make that arrogance air out you know. But yeah, I think it is a little bit arrogant. I- it is hard. I think it is too early to tell whether or not it was true, to be honest. But I also, you know, I have a son who is 35 have a daughter who is 25. And, you know, their mom and I, you know, even when we lived in different houses and stuff, we were always involved in, very involved in their parenting and so on. And she is a few years younger than me. So, she is a little bit different generation a little bit later in the boomer generation. So, but I think that their values are the same, but I do not see them as intense on trying to change anything, they are just trying to figure out how to pay their bills and stuff like that. And part of it is because of the way college is structured now, you have some people kids owe more than that, they owe more than I ever paid for a house, just to go through college. So, you know.

SM: 1:06:58
What did you know, and I will close on this, this particular area of questioning what made the generation different beyond their size, we all know, everybody talks about how big, you know, the boomer generation after World War Two, you know, babies are booming like crazy? And we all know about the size. And that is what they talked about for years, it was in the (19)50s, how big this generation is, what made them so different?

RJ: 1:07:21
I think part of it was the media. And the advent of television and the fact that by what, (19)68 pretty much, so many homes had TVs in them. And the television industry at that time was so centralized. So, we were all seeing a lot of the same stuff. And there was only two or three out, there were CBS, ABC and NBC and Metro media. So, there was not a lot of different interpretations of what was going on. And then I also think that the school systems in most neighborhoods, mostly white neighborhoods, once again, I think we are very well funded. And a lot of the teachers who were teaching were people with a breadth of experience, and they wanted, you know, there was a lot of innovative stuff there for them to use. So that kind of expanded the way we thought. And I also just think the access that we had, it is nothing compared to what kids have now. But we were the first generation to have access to, you know, expendable cash. Um, so there is a whole culture that grew up around us, which did not really happen before. And they always talk about, you know, Chuck Berry, Elvis and Bill Haley as like being the beginning of the youth culture. And by the time, by the time of the late (19)60s, it was like the counterculture. And then by the mid (19)70s, it started breaking up into smaller subcultures. But still, we were buying the bulk of the records, and we were, we were determining what wrote what route the record company and the movies, we are going to go. You know, I mean, if you think of so many movies that were geared towards the youth, you know, the young generation at that time, whether they were silly movies, or whether they were more serious movies like Joe or The Graduate or something, you know, or Easy Rider, they were still geared because that was a market. So, I think it was a combination, the size definitely made a difference, because that meant that people who wanted to make money knew that they had, they could make a lot of money and they sold the right thing. And so then that spread it even more, but it also they that means they had to figure out a way to package the ideas that we were representing or that we were expressing and then sell them back to us and by selling them back to us, they spread it like I was saying earlier with what by the fact that they took the Woodstock movie, made Woodstock [inaudible] all over the world [inaudible] Woodstock generation that [inaudible], you know.

SM: 1:09:53
It has often so often been quoted in a lot of the history books, particularly the ones written in the (19)90s on the (19)60s that the, the-the boomers or the actually the boomer generation were truly activists or involved in some sort of activity linked to the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, the women's movement, the Native American movement, Hispanic movement, environmental movement, and the gay and lesbian movement, were that they were linked to the issues of the day, the saying that they were, there were only 7 percent involved. And I thought, well, that is still a lot of people when you are talking 74 million. But is it true? Or is this another way that some writers whether they be to the right, or people who are critical of the left, is this another way of lessening the impact that this generation or that 7 percent have had on American scene since the (19)60s?

RJ: 1:10:49
I think it is a way of lesson I mean, who knows what the real numbers were and who knows how they arrived at those numbers. I mean, if you think about if you try to take add together, people who went to protests or people who said they went to protest, or people who joined SDS, or people who were involved in some civil rights organization, or an Earth Day or the, you know, the lesbian, gay movement or something, it is, it is really hard to say, because what do they mean by commitment? I mean, everybody, most people were affected by it on some level, and some people might have gone to one protest, but never gone to another one. And, you know, so that that is hard. I think it is a way to try to diminish it, because I think it kind of takes away the fact that most major moments of social upheaval, are usually only involving a few people. Like the American Revolution did not involve most of the most of the colonists, the French Revolution and Russia revolution did not either. So, it is hard to, it is hard to say, but I, when I read those books, when I read those numbers and stuff, my first reaction is like, I do not believe it. And then my second reaction is, well, how did you come up with these, with that number, you know.

SM: 1:12:05
Very good, good, another good analysis there. I, this is a question that is one, been one of the most important one I have asked, during this whole process of interviewing people over all the years, I have been one that is always wondered about the healing process. Do you feel that the generation of boomers the, or the young people of that era and even America, and certainly Vietnam veterans, do you feel that this generation and the group, that healing as it relates to the war and other divisions of the time, that we have not gotten over it even today, and, and I asked this in terms of the Vietnam memorial was built to heal the nation. Remember, Jan Scruggs wrote the book, "To Heal a Nation."

RJ: 1:12:52
Right.

SM: 1:12:53
He is what he tried to do it to heal the Vietnam veterans who served in that war, their families, and the loved ones of those who died. And, and I think he is pretty comfortable that that wall has done a lot with respect to healing within that group. However, do you feel that we as a nation, and I know we are talking years, Vietnam now ended in (19)75. So, we are talking a long time ago. But do you think we are still having problems with healing? Or do you think a lot of the people still have not healed from that war and are going to go with to the grave with the animosity and dislike toward the people who disagreed with them over that their involvement in the war and the, you know, protests against the war? It is the whole healing process as a nation. You think, is it important, or is it, it is not an issue anymore?

RJ: 1:13:50
I think it is still going on. And I think every once in a while, a politician comes along, who breaks open the wound, and kind of pokes itself [inaudible] or whatever, and riles up people who, who they will never forgive on both sides. And then it starts all over and then we have this other moment of soul searching. But then the way I kind of look at it, too, is healing from a trauma like that is never going to be easy. And it is a long-time process. I think some of the people who poke the wound are people who were, who were not even alive at the time, but they have this idea, this ideological idea, and I think it is mostly from the right but I know also, it is also from the left, but and who will bring it up to try to because it is kind of like a shortcut, a metaphor for certain divisions that have always existed in this country between the you know, the left wing and the right wing, and people in the middle and so on. I mean, I speak personally and people, you know, my father and I had a big gap and we did not talk to each other for a few years and stuff like that and Vietnam was the crux of the issue and his role. But you know, we are, we are, we are way past that and like, I know that most of his friends that he stays in touch with from the military, you know, a lot of his lot of his friend's kids had the same kind of issue with their father. And that is long gone, you know, you, you know, you have their grandkids and things change, you know, so I think, I think, I think on a personal level, and I just think of like people that I talked to, or that I have talked to over the years, whether when I was organizing for, you know, stuff, and whether or not they supported me, whether or not they supported my side or still were on their side, I think that there is, we have, there is an ability to talk with each other now that did not exist then. And sometimes that might be all you can hope for, because talking is crucial to anything. But I think there will always be those on both sides, for good reason, in their mind, that will never let go. And they will go to the grave, angry at the stuff that went down, and the other side as they perceive them, and so on. But I do not it is kind of like the racial thing. I do not think the racial thing is as bad as it used to be either. I mean, you look around it, you see so many interracial couples, you see so many sports teams that, you know, kids are your kids or your grandkids or some relatives of yours, kids or whatever play on. And, you know, it is like, kids of all races, and they are, you know, they are playing together sports, and there is, and some of them are hanging out after school and stuff. So, so I think it is kind of changed. I am not saying it is gone, because I do not think it is. And like I said, I think there are those politicians and others who bring it up every once a while for-for their own reasons. And so, when they do that, it does get people riled up. I mean I admit, it gets me riled up when I see somebody. Like, Henry Kissinger still pisses the hell out of me.

SM: 1:17:05
Oh, yeah. He does everybody [laughs]. Yes.

RJ: 1:17:07
Yeah, and every time I see him on kind of, like, you know, someone you know, you know, I do not need- someone needs to drive a wooden stake through his heart because I think he is a vampire. But you know, you know what I mean? Like, if so, and Kissinger lives in his own world, so I do not think he really cares, because he kind of has such an arrogance. I do not think he thinks he is even human, but that is a whole other story.

SM: 1:17:26
You need to read, there is a brand-new book out called Reckless, you need to read it. It is about him.

RJ: 1:17:32
Oh, really? Okay. Thanks for the recommendation.

SM: 1:17:33
Yeah, it is called "Reckless." You will see it in the bookstores.

RJ: 1:17:36
Yeah sure, maybe my library has it. If not, I will order it. Yeah. Cool. Okay.

SM: 1:17:41
And he actually has written a book now called "Kissinger on Kissinger," when I go to Barnes and Noble I turn the book, I put the back side up on the book [laughs].

RJ: 1:17:51
Yeah-yeah.

SM: 1:17:53
The generation gap was something that was all talked about in the (19)60s, I mean, this generation gap. In fact, one of the people I interviewed was the guy on the front cover of Life magazine, who was had his picture with the glasses on talking with his father. And I actually interviewed him, had a great interview. And, but that was a really good book that he wrote too and they healed, I mean, but my main [inaudible] questions, you basically answered it, because the generation gap that we all heard about and experienced. And with respect, do you think it is really gotten a lot better between those people within families in particular?

RJ: 1:18:31
Yeah, I really do. I mean, I just think of things, you know, you get used to each other. That is one thing, you know. And then you know, something- I was I was down visiting my dad, he was in the DC area. I was down, visiting him last December and I happened to be over at his house when one of his old buddies came by, some- somebody who retired a couple of years before he did. And I had not seen him since he was still in uniform. And I was still I was, like, 22 years old or something. And he, we got to talking because he I was asking how I was friends with one of his daughters, and we got to talking about his kids. And he was talking about his grandkids and everything. And you know, and he looked at me and like, my hair is still really long. And he looked at me, he goes, Yeah, you know, he joked about it. I said, "Well, I will probably never cut it." He goes, "Yeah, that is because your father made you keep it short the whole time you lived at his house." And I said, "Yes, that is very true." And then my dad had him both, actually said to me, as our conversation went on, they go, "You know, Ron, you were more right about things than we were." And I thought that was interesting. I mean, he still has his opinions about the stuff that will never change, like about abortion and contraception and stuff like that, you know, but he said about the war and about-about who was really running the country and what-what the reasons they were, he said that they did not have the country's best interests in mind. And I used to get into arguments with him and that guy all the time. So that was kind of cool. Like, you know, to be, to be able to stay aware, study and look back on what you thought, and be able to change your mind. And I, and I have done the same thing. You know, there is some things that I was like really adamant about. And I was like, you know, really there is nothing, you know, they were right. There is something to be said about some of these things that have been around for generations and stuff, you know. So, it is kind of like, we will get to this point where he will say, "I grew up during World War Two." And you know, he was in high school during World War Two. And he goes, "I grew up during World War Two. And you know, there was a clear enemy. And then after that, we were told the Communists were the enemy." And he says that, "As it turned out, maybe they were not as big of an enemy as we thought they were, and what maybe we should have dealt with it differently." He said, "But when you are in the thick of things you do not know." And I said, "Yeah, well, that is kind of like the same thing for me." I was in the thick of things, and there were some things that I thought were great that I found out, well, maybe I should not have been champion, like, you know, Communist China or something, you know, what I mean, you know, that I definitely was, but you know, I would, I would just like to have, I would just to rile up my dad, I would have pictures of Mao on my wall, you know, just because just to make him see, you know, so you know, stuff like that. Now, I would never do that because, you know, Mao did great things, but he did a lot of terrible things, too. So, you know.

SM: 1:21:16
It is like me, when I first took a job at West Chester University in (19)87, the first person I met was a professor in political science, the chair, I went into his office, and he had a picture of Lenin behind his office. And he is, and then he had a picture of a man that was on his desk. And he said, before we even started the, to talk about it, because I was just meeting him for the first time he said, "The man be- on the wall behind me is my hero. And the man that is in that picture on my desk is the, is-is my enemy. I despise him." Well, that was the President of Bing- of Westchester University.

RJ: 1:21:53
Oh, really? Oh, that is funny. [laughter]

SM: 1:21:57
He was just rubbing me the wrong way, he just was testing me. He says, "I was only kidding." [laughter]

RJ: 1:22:03
That is great.

SM: 1:22:04
But, you know, it was a little bit of humor there.

RJ: 1:22:07
Yeah.

SM: 1:22:07
I have one other question, then I am going to get into your books. The-the Free Speech Movement in (19)64 and (19)65. How, how important was that movement in terms of the whole (19)60s era in terms of activism against, you know, the war and civil rights? A lot has been written recently about that Free Speech Movement, Ronald Reagan came to national recognition because of his war against the students at Berkeley. But your thoughts on that Free Speech Movement and the impact that it had on the (19)60s?

RJ: 1:22:42
I think the key thing, I mean, lot of the organizers were-were men and women who had been down doing [inaudible] registration out in the South. [cuts off]

SM: 1:22:58
Still there? Hold on.

RJ: 1:23:03
Okay.

SM: 1:23:04
Yeah, we are back. Yep.

RJ: 1:23:05
Okay. I think that it helped them see that the issues that they had been working on down South, were also related to issues that were their issues at home. And I think the whole time when-when they took [inaudible], and did the speeches for that 18 hours, or whatever it was, I think that was one of the most empowering things that young people could see that they could, that they could control the discussion for-for the while, and it kind of it was, in terms of empowerment, I think it was one of the key moments for the white student movement, especially.

SM: 1:23:44
You know, still there?

RJ: 1:23:46
Yeah-yeah.

SM: 1:23:47
You-you hit the word there, empowerment. When we brought Tom Paine Hayden to our campus, sadly, he is passed now. But six years ago, not six years ago, 10 years ago, I brought him just before I left Westchester. And he met with all of our student leaders, and we had dinner and he went to dinner and-and he was listening to what the students, he asked, "What power do you have? Do you have a voice here on campus?" And they all said, "Oh, yeah, we are involved in doing budgets, and we are on committees, we are appointed." And he is sitting there in amazement, he is shaking his head. No, he comes back and says, "I am not asking you about what power you have. I want to know if you are truly empowered." And then he went on to define empowerment. And they then they start shaking their heads. It is like, I do not know if I liked this guy. And so, it is a difference of generations here but what true empowerment means. Could you define the difference between power and empowerment, in when you discuss the (19)60s, especially those people who are in the antiwar movement?

RJ: 1:24:56
Power is something that somebody in my mind powers something that somebody else has. And some people try to take it for themselves. And they may or may not succeed, but you are not, empowerment is something that comes from within an individual and within a group. And when you realize that you as, as a group, or you as a class, or you as a gender or as a movement, have the power to change things without asking to do it. I mean, that is to me is kind of what I see. Whereas power is something you have to ask someone else to give you.

SM: 1:25:30
Very good. I agree. I am going to ask some questions about your book right now. I know you wrote the book, "The Way the Wind Blew." And there is a, there is a comment on the back of the book that I want you to respond to. You probably remember this. Jacobs argues that the group's eventual demise, this is the Weathermen.

RJ: 1:25:50
Yeah.

SM: 1:25:50
The group's actual eventual demise resulted in the, I will think I will read it from the book, I cannot read my own writing. My goodness. See here. He argues that the group's eventual demise resulted as much from the contradictions of his politics as from the increasingly repressive FBI attention. Could you go into detail on that?

RJ: 1:26:14
Yeah. In terms of politics, the original statement that you do not know a Weatherman statement was they basically, it is-I am trying to figure out a way to do without using too much jargon. They basically put the Black liberation movement as the as the vanguard of any revolution in the United States, above the working class, above any class. And then they also saw as, then they also saw themselves. And that is the fundamental basis of their, of their argument, and that they are the only that the thing that what the white movement could do was to support the Black liberation movement, especially as represented by the Black Panthers, and a couple other similar ultra-left organizations. Then after they did the Days of Rage, where they, they thought they were going to get 10,000 people, and they barely got 1000, at best, and they got in fights with, they started fights with the cops, and the cops beat them up and stuff like that. And then they went underground. And there, that was when they started calling. Everybody, except for people who agreed with them, pigs, and that if you were either on their side, or you are on the wrong side, and you know, you know, and that did not just mean policemen or politicians or businessmen or people who, you know, it meant the people who worked in the businesses, it meant GIS, it meant other students who disagreed with their politics or whatever. And then there was the whole contradiction when they decided to kind of, when they went underground. And there was a battle between, there was a strong debate between the different cells as to whether or not they should say whether or not they should use bombs to kill people. And as you probably know, like, they had the bomb that blew up in the townhouse in Greenwich Village, was intended to kill a bunch of soldiers at-at a dance at Fort Dix. Fortunately, fortunately, in the long run, and for those soldiers and their girlfriends, it did not kill anybody but three of the Weather Underground. But there is even within that group of people who are working in that townhouse, there was at least two of the four who did not agree with the idea to kill people, they just wanted to blow up, like, you know, like a recruiting office or, you know, put a bomb in the Pentagon or something like that, and call ahead and not and not kill, not hurt anybody. Because they wanted to have more symbolic attacks at that level. And then the other thing was when they came, then another contradiction that came up was when they decided to try to organize young people and the whole, they latched on to the counterculture and so on. And that became greater and greater, because there was two very different factions in the group. It is hard to say who represented who but I would say that Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and the California group were more into the counterculture. And the New York group with David Gilbert and some of those people, some of the people from Boston, were more into maintaining a hardcore Marxist Leninism and not-not bombing as much and trying to actually do other kinds of underground activities. And so, there was all these contradictions that were bubbling up and what they, they came to a fruition after the United States left Vietnam because that was the main reason why Weatherman- Weather Underground existed was because of the Vietnam War. I mean, you know, a lot of them had about half of them that started in the anti-racist movement. But when the war came along, they became many of the leaders in SDS of the antiwar movement. And they would tie the anti-racist and the antiwar movements together a lot of as anti-imperialist movements. But then, when, when that happened, when the United States left Vietnam in April 30 (19)75, the group was pretty small by then. And there was a lot of debate within the group about where they should go next. Some members wanted to, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, and a few of the other ones, some of the original founders who are still in the group, they wanted to go above ground. They wanted to turn themselves in, try to work out a deal where they only did a few months each or something. And then organize with the above ground or popular united front organizations they had to go into the working class and start organizing women workers, African American workers, Latino workers and young workers to try to create a new militant labor movement. But then there was this other faction that was led by an old guy who had, his name was Clayton Van Lydegraf, he had been kicked out of the Communist Party, kicked out of the progressive Labor Party, because he was too ultra-left. He was basically a guy who believed in propaganda of the deed, you know, so he convinced another group to go and start bombing again, and they got infiltrated. And that is how that group got arrested.

SM: 1:26:25
Wow.

RJ: 1:26:45
And then, you know, and so, so there are so many contradictions within the group. And then when you combine it with the fact that the Feds were kind of, the Feds were pretty close to catching them, and then they would not be because I think when the church committee hearings happened, a lot of those a lot of those investigations that were being conducted illegally had to be shut down, which is the only way you are going to catch someone like the Weatherman anyhow, because they had a very good underground network and so on. So, I hope that answers your question.

SM: 1:32:15
Yes, it does, I think Mark Rudd was in that group too, was not he?

RJ: 1:32:19
Yeah. And he left, he left back, like in (19)70 right after they were underground. He was underground for a little while. And then they, the women in the group asked him to leave the group because of his sexist sex- hardcore sexism. And basically, he left. And you know, he never snitched on anybody or anything. But he left. And you know, he is actually his book, he wrote a book.

SM: 1:32:42
Yeah, it is a good book.

RJ: 1:32:44
It is a very good book. And, you know, if you have the time, while you are reading, to check out a few of the different memoirs that have come out, they all, read them together, you kind of get an idea of the different, you know, they are all very intelligent individuals. And so, you get an idea of stuff that went on, within the group and so on. And then also on a personal level, Kathy Wilkerson's is very good too. She is one of the few women who has written-written a book on it. And it is a, it is a really good book, she sticks a lot more to the politics than some of the, some of the guys' memoirs do and stuff too.

SM: 1:33:18
Well, I have had a chance to meet Mark at Kent State. He is and I really liked him. He was a–

RJ: 1:33:22
Well, I heard he is a really nice guy. I have talked to him on the phone a couple of times, he helped me, like when I was writing my book, no one was talking about the Weather Underground. And they did not really know who I was. And my context, the guy who was like I was going to I had gone back to get my undergraduate degree. I was like, in my late 30s. And I wrote that as my senior thesis out at Evergreen College, and the guy who was my, one of my advisors, was a guy who had been in the antiwar movement in Boston. And he had been arrested down in San Diego, and charged with conspiracy to, the FBI tried to kill him and stuff. But um, and so but he had always disagreed with the Weather Underground. So, he only knew a couple people that would talk to me because most of them did not, they still had these grudges from the (19)70s, you know what I mean. But through him, so I was only able to talk to a few people, I was able to talk to Bill Ayers. And then I talked to a few guys who were still underground that I met actually two friends of mine, who knew them because they sold LSD to them.

SM: 1:34:29
I have met I have met Bill Ayers at Kent State as well. And-and then, of course, Bernadine, I interviewed her.

RJ: 1:34:37
Oh, that have been interesting. I have never really, I have met her like a couple of times, but I have never been able to sit down and talk with her or anything.

SM: 1:34:43
Well, I did a phone interview with her. And then I went to New York to take her picture along with David McReynolds, I mean, he just died last year.

RJ: 1:34:51
Oh yeah. Yeah-yeah.

SM: 1:34:52
And I took pictures of them together. It was, it is an interesting side note, I will send you an email on it, but I am still going to get her interview approval back. And of course, David died. So, I got to go through his brother. There is no question you feel that SDS died because of the Weatherman, correct?

RJ: 1:35:10
No, I do not, I think SDS was going to die anyhow.

SM: 1:35:15
Okay.

RJ: 1:35:16
I think it was, it had [cuts out]

SM: 1:35:23
Still there?

RJ: 1:35:28
You there?

SM: 1:35:29
Yep, I am here.

RJ: 1:35:30
Okay. In (19)68, you could see it when they started to go down the, when they started to become more Marxist, Leninist, and so on, they, they were going to automatically cut out a lot of folks who did not, who might-might have been interested in what Marx had to say, but we are not going to call themselves Leninists. You know, and they might have found Marx a good way to analyze capitalism, to find a fault with capitalism. But they were not going to, they were not going to say that they were pro, you know, dictatorship or proletariat, or anything. So, I think they were kind of at a at their end anyhow, it is too bad that nothing really came after them that had the popular groundswell of them and so on. Which is not to say that groups like Weather Underground and the progressive Labor Party cert- they certainly helped make that end come quicker, I think. You know, because I think if SDS had been around when Kent State happened as the SDS pre- Weather Underground, pre-progressive Labor Party, I think those protests might have taken a different turn. I do not, I think Kent State might have still happened. But [inaudible] they would have been able to sustain them past the original outrage and actually make it make a lot more of a long-term difference. But who knows, you know, it is one of those alternative history things.

SM: 1:36:53
One of the things you state in the book, I perused through it, I got to read it real, sit down, and really, I was reading it fast. Is that you talk about the, it is not about the personalities in the weather, weather men, it is about the political history of the organization. And there is a quote in there that the weather's insistence on an ant- what really affected you and you were influenced by them, is because of the weather's insistence on an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist analysis was fundamental to my political development. Is, is that a correct statement?

RJ: 1:37:30
Yeah, I think it is still true. I mean, then, because I used to read a lot of their, their newspapers and so on, especially when I was living in New York City, they were harder to get over in [inaudible]. But by the time I was living in New York City and stuff, and I was in a different group, but between their stuff, and some of the other groups, that was pretty fundamental to me becoming to choosing the politics, I thought, because they were trying to figure out a way to bring all three of those together. And some groups were more just on the anti-sexism. Others were more just on the anti-racism, and others were more just on the antiwar. And they, the Weather Underground and a couple other organizations that were on the, I guess they would be considered extreme left for sure. Not as extreme left as Weather Underground. But over definitely over in that direction. I think they were the groups that were trying to figure out a way to combine all those and make it fit to (19)73 America.

SM: 1:38:28
Yeah, I am going to go into your second book now, which was "Daydream Sunset, the Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies." Could you define, I have heard a lot of people talking about this counterculture. And could you define what you mean as a counterculture? And, and I noticed you mentioned it was centered on LSD and marijuana, it was crucial to the counterculture. Could you go on to that?

RJ: 1:38:53
Yeah, I would say the counterculture was a culture that was made up primarily of white middle classes at the beginning, and it spread to the working-class youth as time went on. It was founded in person, the idea of like an, it evolved from the Beats, the whole Beatniks and the Beat stuff, you know, and that is where they got the marijuana from, and that is where they got, you know, some of the other drugs from, but I think it evolved organically, or through a combination of economic situation at the time, to the fact that there are so many young people gathering together in different places, whether that was the workplace or college or high school, whatever. And then I really think LSD made a big difference. And I would say, in large part because of people like Timothy Leary, and Ken Kesey, who proselytized LSD, they both did it in their own way. But, so and then the, the easy availability of LSD for a while and the fact that places like Greenwich Village and the Haight-Ashbury in San Fran- in New York and San Francisco respectively, were gathering places for young for young kind of footloose youth who did not want to work much and so on. And those kinds of scenes just kind of gathered and they spread throughout-throughout the country and throughout the western world [inaudible] into other parts of the world. But I think fundamentally, it was a movement involved in personal freedom, and in discovering personal freedom, and at the same time, loosening the bonds of sexism, and [inaudible] periods of puritanism. And also, in trying to figure out a new way to live together in a postindustrial world.

SM: 1:40:48
You also mentioned, and you talk about the tragedies, particularly around (19)70 of Kent State, Jackson State, all happening in May of that year. And of course, that was all linked to Nixon and the Cambodian invasion, so many books have been written on it. Nixon still has stated it was never an invasion, we had already been in Cambodia before. And it was just, and it was not very, very long. But of course, the anti-war movement had different feelings on that. In terms of, were they part of the end of the counterculture?

RJ: 1:41:23
I think it was part of the politicization of the counterculture, because I think the counterculture kind of carried on for a while. It was like, it kind of went from sex, drugs, rock and roll and politics, just to sex, drugs and rock and roll. I mean, if you think of the mid (19)70s, you know, I mean you could kind of look at it in terms of the bands. You know, you went from bands that were political and intent to bands like Led Zeppelin, you know no, I mean, Led Zeppelin's fine, but they were definitely not a political band in any way, shape, or form, you know. And then, and then a lot, you think of some of the other music.

SM: 1:41:58
Disco.

RJ: 1:41:58
You know, some of the bands-

SM: 1:41:59
You got disco too. [laughs]

RJ: 1:42:02
Disco started coming in, disco started like, among the gays, and African Americans, you know, but then when it got taken over by mainstream America, pretty much with that [inaudible] Saturday Night Fever, was that what it was called?

SM: 1:42:15
Yes-yes.

RJ: 1:42:16
And that kind of, that all the sudden, you heard disco everywhere. And you know, I was not ever a fan of disco, because I really, it just was not for me. [inaudible]

SM: 1:42:32
Could you say that, could you repeat that again? I missed it.

RJ: 1:42:37
You know, as well as me that disco was everywhere, it was almost impossible to go someplace where there was not a disco club.

SM: 1:42:44
Right.

RJ: 1:42:44
So.

SM: 1:42:46
You also have it here, the and I, it is another quote, the period we call the (19)60s is as much a myth as it is a truth as much maligned as it is championed. Want to explain that any further?

RJ: 1:43:01
Yeah, sure. I mean, it really happened. That is the truth part. But what really happened depends on who you were and what you saw, and where you were, and how you [inaudible], you know. And in terms of history, it is definitely as you know, you read a lot of books and you know, from, you know, it depends on who's telling you the history. And so, and then the missed part is just the myth. You know, I mean, it is like, Woodstock was this great, wonderful festival. And it was, but at the same time, a lot of that is myth. And that is where it moves into that. And [inaudible], we have talked about that. It has continued to maligned. I mean, there are people who know from that preacher you hear, that radio preacher you are talking about all the way up to today like Pat Robertson and people like that who say, and Rush Limbaugh, who say that everything bad happened because of the (19)60s, you know.

SM: 1:43:55
Right.

RJ: 1:43:56
So, and then there is other people on the other side who champion it on a you know, who still live like with the rose-colored glasses. I think most people who are intimately involved in it- people like Wavy Gravy, people like the Grateful Dead, most of the band that made up the Grateful Dead, and all the regular stuff, they probably all have just people every day, [inaudible] I am, they all have their own different viewpoints, some less cynical than others, probably and some very jaundiced.

SM: 1:44:30
I want to I want to quote something from the front of your book, and I am going to put it in the record for the interview and I thought it was very well written here. It is about Jackson Browne. And this is about the disintegration of the counterculture. Do you mind if I quote this?

RJ: 1:44:45
Oh, go for it.

SM: 1:44:46
Yeah, it is, it is on the very beginning. In the introduction, songwriter Jackson Browne had a similar understanding of the disintegration of the counterculture. His two was both apocalyptic and lyrical. Brown's three songs cycle of "For Every Man," "Before the Deluge" and "Pretender" appears on three successive disks. And it is a story of a generation and a culture trying to change the world while facing an apocalypse of war and environmental devastation, and ultimately, a ceding to the hegemony of the world and the system that tried so hard to change. "The Pretender," which is the final song of the cycle is a depressing admission that the system of corporate television, war, and nine to five jobs was more powerful than the world of the counterculture hoped to forge if only because it had more developed Foundation. The song itself is a tale of surrendering to that world, and numbing oneself to the reality via sex, drugs and Rock and Roll. Well, I that you wrote that. That is great. Any-any other thoughts on that? Because, you know, this is again, the power of music, like go way back in our interview, how powerful music can be. You talk about Hunter Thompson in here too you, we really made it I mean, we have talked about, I always tell students, the dots, the dots that connect the dots, and music is part of that. And if you listen to a lot of that music of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, you will see the dots connected within the music. Any other thoughts on, that you wanted on Jackson Browne, in the, in the record?

RJ: 1:46:30
There is, I talk about him and you know, I think it is pretty, I think it is pretty clear in terms of [inaudible] to those three songs. The middle one is about people fighting against the environmental devastation. And he was very big in the anti-nuclear movement, which was big in the mid (19)70s. And so that is kind of what he is talking about in that song, but in a much greater thing, he is talking about the counterculture in that in that generation. And then obviously in the last song, as I mentioned, there, you know, it is a song about a guy who goes to work, comes home, puts his glasses on, does some cocaine, has sex, wakes up in the morning, gets back in his car, goes to work dah-dah, dah-dah, dah, you know. There is a, in that, later on in that those first pages of that book, I talk about Bruce Springsteen, and he kind of came on board. He his first like National popularity was (19)75, when the "Born to Run" album came out, and Bruce was never a hippie, he was informed by the counterculture. He grew up in a working-class New Jersey, his dad was a factory worker and so on. And I think Bruce represents the (19)70s better than any other popular musician because of the way he chronicles individuals' lives first. In Born to Run, it is about people trying to get away from their dead [inaudible] you know, taking the same job in the same place that their dad had a job or their mom and then just racing or fast cars and then leaving, or trying to leave and then and falling in love and like trying to hide out on the beach in the summer and smoke pot or whatever. And then the next- and for him, it is about becoming a rock and roll musician as his way out of, of that life. Then the next album is "Darkness on the Edge of Town," which is basically about the people who did who get into the car culture. The town, I live in Maryland, on and off, my dad was stationed there, and then after I left moved out of there, my parents’ house, our culture was real big and like best people spent their money on, it was almost going back to the (19)50s. And then he kind of gotten he just follows that transcript, transition all the way up to people getting married, and getting divorced, and so on, always brings some of that reality about working, although being a member of the working class, and so on. And I think he really, he captures that that what happened to most people who are in the United States, most young people who are in the United States and who were not on the trajectory of college, and who were not on, who were not in the military, but who, you know, who were just trying to figure out how to how to make a life for themselves. And the counterculture gave them a lot of those kids hope that they could try something different. And some of them left their hometowns and went up to San Francisco or hit the road or started going to rock festivals or following the Grateful Dead around or something. But ultimately, most of them ended up, you have to face the reality of.

SM: 1:49:39
Right.

RJ: 1:49:40
And that is that is that economic hegemony that, you know, it just had more power, it won in its own way, but there are still elements that still exist throughout, throughout our culture.

SM: 1:49:54
Yeah, we talk about the two events that really were the watershed events. All the movements were important, but in Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement, to me are the two that really make the (19)60s. Because with the Civil Rights Movement gave everybody experience and knowledge about how to protest. And, you know, they gave the kind of laid down some of the laws about protesting. And so those two, and I think, what is amazing about Dr. King is, when you think about Dr. King, he, he is one of the-the figures of the (19)60s because of the fact that he obviously, he believed in nonviolent protest, and he was involved in so many protests itself, the March on Washington, but it is that speech in (19)67, against the war in Vietnam, that links civil rights, and, and in the, in the anti-war movement in a very major way. Because toward the end of Dr. King's life, he was always talking about the economy and the economy. And he ended up dying, you know, in a city in Memphis, where the they were fighting for rights, the work was fighting for rights [crosstalk]

RJ: 1:51:04
Yeah, they were economic rights and to work yeah, exactly. To form a Union, yeah.

SM: 1:51:09
He is a, he is a major force, and he is a major force in my life because of who he is. And the mere fact that he lost a lot of friends in the civil rights movement for his stand on the Vietnam War. And so, it is a, it is, the (19)60s is just an amazing thing here. I have a question. A couple more questions. And then a couple of things to end. What are the most important books on the on the (19)60s that were written in the (19)60s or (19)70s that impacted you? I have a list here of a few, but what books did you read that had a great impact on you?

RJ: 1:51:43
Well, one of them was "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Another one was "The Greed of America."

SM: 1:51:51
Oh, yeah. Charles Wright?

RJ: 1:51:53
Yeah, yeah. Another one was, I am trying to think which one- "Revolution for the Hell of it" by Abbie Hoffman?

SM: 1:52:00
Okay.

RJ: 1:52:02
And then there was one by Tom Hayden, I cannot, I think it was about the Chicago 8 trial. I think it was just called "The Trial."

SM: 1:52:10
Yep.

RJ: 1:52:10
Those are, those are ones that come to my mind pretty much quickly. There is, there is got to be other ones, but I cannot think of them right now.

SM: 1:52:19
I have Hayden's books. All of his books were just amazing. I, the "The Armies of the Night" by Norman Mailer.

RJ: 1:52:27
Oh, yeah, absolutely. That is an incredible book. Yeah.

SM: 1:52:28
That was another one. Theodore Roszak's, "The Making of a Counterculture."

RJ: 1:52:30
Yep. Yep, that is yep, okay.

SM: 1:52:35
There was James Farmer's "Nigger," the book, that was very popular. Eldridge Cleaver, "The Soul on Ice"

RJ: 1:52:41
Soul on Ice, yep-yep.

SM: 1:52:42
James Kunen, "The Strawberry Statement," and Ron Kovic's "Born on the Fourth of July."

RJ: 1:52:49
Absolutely yeah.

SM: 1:52:50
And anything Tom Wolfe wrote.

RJ: 1:52:53
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" was-was crucial to me. So was "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" by Hunter S. Thompson. Yeah.

SM: 1:52:54
Because Tom Wolfe- Yep. And the, another question here is, there were a lot of you know, slogans from the (19)60s. What were the slogans that after that whole era, say from (19)60, to (19)75 slogans that you remember that had an impact on you that were so well known at the time?

RJ: 1:53:21
[whispers] Oh, man.

SM: 1:53:22
Slogans from civil rights leaders, African Americans, antiwar activists, politicians anything.

RJ: 1:53:30
Okay, right on the Black Power thing, Black Power right on.

SM: 1:53:34
Right.

RJ: 1:53:36
The 2,4,6,8- no, no, "Hey-hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

SM: 1:53:43
Right.

RJ: 1:53:45
Trying to take a couple of the other ones. I am trying to think there were some at the antiwar protests, but I cannot really remember right now.

SM: 1:53:57
Malcolm X had one, "By Any Means Necessary."

RJ: 1:54:01
Yes.

SM: 1:54:02
And of course, Jerry Rubin, "Do not trust anyone over 30."

RJ: 1:54:06
And "Do It."

SM: 1:54:07
Yeah.

RJ: 1:54:08
Just which-which Nike now uses I guess.

SM: 1:54:11
Yeah. I do not know how that some of these advertisers can get away with this stuff.

RJ: 1:54:14
Yeah-yeah, yeah.

SM: 1:54:15
I cannot believe that some of the people would approve, or their families would approve them to use some of these things.

RJ: 1:54:21
Maybe they it is it was not trademark, they cannot really do anything about it probably or something, yeah.

SM: 1:54:25
I would say that probably the one thing and this is just is that the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, even though as an organized group, they were not very large, I think they were one of the most influential antiwar groups in terms of moving regular Americans to start really challenging the war, besides the students, the students. I think, the VVAW, they are, it is difficult to measure how important they were in terms of changing middle America's mind about the war. I did not ask a lot of questions we were coming- we have now done two hours here, almost two hours. But I usually conclude by making some-some names for you to kind of respond to, but is there a question that you thought I was going to ask that I did not ask that you might want to respond to something that you want to state about the (19)60s or anything that I have been talking about, something that I have not asked? One of the things I noticed back then in the (19)60s to, you would have, I know, there was always the sexism within the antiwar movement and women in secondary roles. And that is a lot of the reasons why the woman's movement evolved. And even there was an issue with that with the nurses that served in Vietnam. I mean, it is a whole thing about when the wall was built, where were the nurses. So, it is like, there is a lot of that stuff. But one thing I did notice, and I would like your observations on this, too. When you look at the protests and the movements and so forth of the (19)60s, they would come together at protests, you will see, in the latter part of the (19)60s, you see, you know, the-the African American organizations, the women's groups, the gay and lesbian groups, and especially after (19)69, they would all be together in an antiwar movement. And they would come together. I asked David Mixner about this, I interviewed who was, you know, he was involved in both- the antiwar movement and-and he says, there is truth to this, that they are all separate now. The women's movement has their big rallies in Washington, the antiwar group, is basically the antiwar groups. It is, the gay and lesbian group [inaudible] their big events and so forth. And civil rights groups have those-they are not coming together, is-is my observation incorrect?

RJ: 1:56:54
I think it is more true than- no, I think it is pretty true. And I, I often wonder why that is, because when it comes to war, war affects everybody. And then also, I mean, I look over the years, and groups became more and more single issue in the late (19)70s, and going into the (19)80s, and into all throughout the whole (19)90s. And obviously, into the into this century. But I think part of it might be I mean, I-I am just filling stuff out there. I think part of it might be also because of the professionalization of a lot of the leaderships where they actually have these jobs and their organizations. Like back and back, like during the antiwar movement, there was only, there was only two or three antiwar groups that were at, that helped organize every single major antiwar demonstration. And even now, even those groups, the leadership was constantly changing, rotating itself. And they were not careers. Whereas I think a lot of times, nowadays, a lot of the social justice stuff, people make careers out of it. And you know, because it is done through an NGO or something like that. And that has a negative effect in one way and that it separates these groups. It also makes those groups more timid about joining things that might be more confrontational, because they might lose their funding from whatever philanthropic organization is giving them their money. So, there is, I mean, that is just one-one possibility, but I think that is absolutely true. I think they are more separate, even when there is big movements, like when they were going after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And there were some pretty big protests. But–

SM: 1:58:38
Yeah, well, when I, when I interviewed David, he is a producer in New York, I guess. And he, he brought it up and he says, "Yeah, we have these big rallies for the gay and lesbian bisexual community. And they are, they are not reaching out to other groups." And he says, like, "I will see what I can do about that." I, he is a powerful leader in that community. But he is also involved in a lot of other things. So, I do not know what. I am going to conclude this if it is okay with you with just some personalities from the (19)60s and early (19)70s. I have a bigger list than this, but I will try to go fast. All you have to do is just give me a one- or two-word response.

RJ: 1:59:17
Okay-okay.

SM: 1:59:19
Tom Hayden.

RJ: 1:59:22
Solid, revolutionary–

SM: 1:59:26
Jane Fonda.

RJ: 1:59:34
Personality who made a lot of unpopular but morally right decisions.

SM: 1:59:41
Lyndon Johnson.

RJ: 1:59:44
A man caught between the war machine and his desire to help the poor.

SM: 1:59:49
Eugene McCarthy.

RJ: 1:59:54
Don Quixote.

SM: 1:59:56
Bobby Kennedy.

RJ: 2:00:00
A man who might have been able to unite the voting population of the United States.

SM: 2:00:05
John Kennedy.

RJ: 2:00:09
Somebody who died way too soon.

SM: 2:00:11
Dwight Eisenhower.

RJ: 2:00:15
(19)50s Classic.

SM: 2:00:17
Gerald Ford.

RJ: 2:00:19
(19)50s classic.

SM: 2:00:21
[laughs] Okay. Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon

RJ: 2:00:26
Joe McCarthy with a less ugly attitude.

SM: 2:00:29
[laughs] Dr. Benjamin Spock.

RJ: 2:00:36
Very moral human being.

SM: 2:00:39
Huey Newton. Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, the Black Panthers,

RJ: 2:00:45
Revolutionary heroes who never had a chance.

SM: 2:00:50
Malcolm X.

RJ: 2:00:52
Another revolutionary hero who was fated to die.

SM: 2:00:56
Jerry Rubin.

RJ: 2:00:59
A clown.

SM: 2:01:00
Abbie Hoffman.

RJ: 2:01:03
A clown with better politics.

SM: 2:01:05
Rodney Davis.

RJ: 2:01:12
A metaphor for a lot of people in, of his generation.

SM: 2:01:17
Timothy Leary.

RJ: 2:01:21
Self-centered, arrogant and very, very interesting.

SM: 2:01:26
Ralph Nader.

RJ: 2:01:31
Understated champion.

SM: 2:01:33
Hubert Humphrey.

RJ: 2:01:36
He got screwed.

SM: 2:01:39
Barry Goldwater.

RJ: 2:01:42
The beginning of the racialization of the Republican Party.

SM: 2:01:49
George Wallace.

RJ: 2:01:51
Racist.

SM: 2:01:52
Martin Luther King Jr.

RJ: 2:01:55
Hero.

SM: 2:01:56
Muhammad Ali.

RJ: 2:01:57
Another hero.

SM: 2:01:58
Spiro Agnew.

RJ: 2:02:04
Sucker.

SM: 2:02:06
Gloria Steinem.

RJ: 2:02:11
Intelligent, middle class, feminist.

SM: 2:02:16
John Lewis.

RJ: 2:02:20
So, oh, John. No, John Lewis, the African American guy?

SM: 2:02:24
Yes.

RJ: 2:02:26
A hero who made too many compromises.

SM: 2:02:31
Byard Rustin.

RJ: 2:02:33
Same. Hero who made too many compromises.

SM: 2:02:36
Richard Daley.

RJ: 2:02:40
I cannot say anything good about him.

SM: 2:02:42
Robert McNamara.

RJ: 2:02:44
I cannot say anything good about him either. He was an intellectual who wasted his brains.

SM: 2:02:49
Daniel Ellsberg.

RJ: 2:02:51
He was a hero and an intellectual who did the right thing.

SM: 2:02:55
Woodward and Bernstein.

RJ: 2:02:58
Too, they, you know, I wanted to- I am a little bit of a journalist. To me, what they did was one of the more heroic things of that time. So, they are heroes.

SM: 2:03:08
Angela Davis.

RJ: 2:03:10
Also a hero.

SM: 2:03:11
Bella Abzug.

RJ: 2:03:14
Fascinating and militant.

SM: 2:03:16
Jackie Kennedy.

RJ: 2:03:23
One of the strongest popular personalities and woman, women that I can think of.

SM: 2:03:30
And I got about five more. Walter Cronkite.

RJ: 2:03:35
He was the bearer of the news good and bad, but he always did it with a sense of justice.

SM: 2:03:41
And then musicians. Jimi Hendrix.

RJ: 2:03:46
Best guitarist ever, died too young.

SM: 2:03:48
Janis Joplin.

RJ: 2:03:54
A true, true hippie who could think.

SM: 2:03:59
The Beatles.

RJ: 2:04:01
They were kind of like demigods.

SM: 2:04:05
Elvis Presley.

RJ: 2:04:08
Almost the dad- almost the daddy of rock and roll.

SM: 2:04:11
And of course, and there are other musicians that you would like to put in there, solo or groups that that should really define the (19)60s if you want to add a lot more on to there?

RJ: 2:04:24
Just a couple, I would like to add Bob Dylan as the-the poet and Nobel Laureate in real truth actually now but of the genera- of the time, and the Grateful Dead as the people, the torchbearers of the counterculture.

SM: 2:04:40
Yeah, I will I will add Richie Havens on to this because to me, he was the symbol of the spirit of the era.

RJ: 2:04:46
Yeah, that is, that is good. That, his version of freedom in Woodstock movie says it all.

SM: 2:04:53 Yep. And so, I, that is basically it. I am done here now. Do you want to add anything else or finished?

RJ: 2:05:03
I think I am done also, thanks. Yep.

SM: 2:05:05
Yep, well what will happen here is we have got the copier, and this is on the digital machine. Now the guy, young man, set it up, and then I will turn it off. You will get a copy sent to you Ron.

RJ: 2:05:16
Okay.

SM: 2:05:17
It will either be sent through the computer or it will be sent to your home address. And, and now, if you could email your home address to me again, I so that we can mail it to you. And then, or we will do it over the computer, we have your email, and we will go from there. And then there is a form you have to sign too, but you have to listen to it first and approve it before anything- Okay, sure- is okay. It has been an honor to talk to you, I apologize for taking so long to do this. I did not know I was going to tear my knee up. And I have still got my crutch here to the side. And I will be interviewing John Sinclair sometime in the next month, I hope.

RJ: 2:05:56
Oh, that would be fun.

SM: 2:05:57
I can work that out. And, and then I do need some pictures of you. I need a couple pictures that you can mail to me because of the 275 people that I originally did, I think about 230 I interviewed them in person, the rest I did over the phone, so I have to get approved pictures from them, that ones that are over the computer.

RJ: 2:06:19
Okay, so I can just send you a couple?

SM: 2:06:21
Yeah, send me a couple that they have been approved. And if somebody took the pictures of you, you have to tell me who the person is.

RJ: 2:06:27
Sure, sure. Okay.

SM: 2:06:28
They have to get the credit for the picture. And look at and we have a bio, if you could do a brief bio and send it to me, unless there is a bio on the on the computer. That would be helpful too. Because what is going to happen is these tapes will all be available for research and scholarship. That for students and faculty, and they will be, the center will open I think at the end of this year or the beginning of 2020. And they are going to let them available for research right now. And we have got 105 Already done of the original group we have got- 31 died since I started this.

RJ: 2:07:07
Oh, wow.

SM: 2:07:07
So, I have gotten about 15 of those who died, the families to approve, but some of the people I cannot find, it is a big effort. But anyways, but you are going to- it is your important because your name will far outlive any book that I might have done for an oral history interview book. Because they will be people- we looks listening to your voice.

RJ: 2:07:28
Right.

SM: 2:07:29
And the tape 100 years from now.

RJ: 2:07:32
Right.

SM: 2:07:33
So that is what makes this project even more important.

RJ: 2:07:36
Yeah, thanks for doing it.

SM: 2:07:37
Yep. And again, thank you very much, continued success in all that you do.

RJ: 2:07:42
Thank you same to you and I will send that, I will get find some pictures and so on and send you that my mailing address and we will go from there.

SM: 2:07:52
Okay, great. Thanks Ron, have a great day.

RJ: 2:07:55
Yep take care you too. Bye-bye.

SM: 2:07:56 Bye.

(End of Interview)

2019-06-04

Stephen McKiernan

Jacobs, Ron

Ron Jacobs is a writer and activist. He attended his first protest against the Vietnam war in 1969. Jacob is the author of The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground and a trilogy of novels called The Seventies Series. He has a Bachelor's degree from Evergreen State College. Jacob currently writes for Counterpunch magazine. He continues his activism against war, racism, and capitalism.

02:08:11

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

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Audio

Vietnam War, 1961-1975;
Peace movements—United States--20th century;
Jacobs, Ron--Interviews

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Rock and Roll, 60's music, Vietnam War, Anti-war protests, Germany, Freedom of Speech Movement, Political activism, Music influence on politics.