Activists From The United States

"The U.S. could seek to acquire the moral authority to act as a healing presence in the world. Our role could be to adjudicate disputes, support "all-win" solutions to international problems, and make our resources available to people, groups and governments that were willing to help themselves. ... We could seek to play a catalytic, rather than a dominant, role in the Third World. We could pay more attention to what the poor themselves want. We could concentrate less on funding massive projects, and more on building up the capacity of indigenous institutions to do for themselves. We could pay more attention to the context in which our aid is given. This may be a highly unconventional approach to foreign aid. But it could also be highly popular. It combines the traditional left's emphasis on equity and the traditional right's emphasis on self-help."

"Thoughtful conservatives are not unattracted to holistic providers' emphasis on self-care and personal responsibility. Thoughtful liberals and socialists are not unattracted to holistic providers' emphasis on environmental factors in disease. But neither left nor right has ever acknowledged that the holistic health movement carries within it the seeds of a whole new approach to a national health care program for this country, with its own coherent ideas about finance, delivery, research and education."

"Typically, "progressives" and change agents have demanded more money for social programs. But today it's clear that the way we do things needs to change – and that if things were done more appropriately, more humanely, more intelligently, we might end up spending less on social programs than we do now. Take education ... . Over the last 10 years or so, a handful of education reformers have ... come up with exciting new ideas for changing the ways our schools are administered, the ways our children are taught, and the kinds of things they're taught. And nearly all their ideas would cost no more than our current practices cost. Some would actually save us money!"

"There is an emerging alternative to the big government-big business-big labor kind of "rebuilding" of America. Its basic strategy is to get investment capital out of the hands of the big banks ... and into the hands of the communities. Its greatest champions are neither politicians nor oppositional political groups, but – remarkably – bankers; or, more specifically, those few bankers who describe themselves as "community development bankers.""

"Because of the consensus on full employment, certain observations rarely break in to the public political dialogue. These include: ... that even if full employment were possible, it might not be desirable in the new kind of society we are entering; and that even today, most of the useful work we do is not structured into paying "jobs.""

"The participants in the Second American Experiment have differing views of the First Experiment. Some ... think it was a noble and brilliant experiment that is no longer sustainable. Others ... think it was ignoble and wrong-headed from the start. ... But the larger point – and the point that concerns us in this book – is that all participants in the Second Experiment are convinced that the First Experiment is no longer wise. Here are some of the questions they've been asking:"

"The First American Experiment began in the mid-1700s, and by its own criteria, at least, has been a smashing "success":"

"By [refusing] to work for a traditional revolution we would not be "giving up the struggle". As we saw in the previous three chapters, we would be struggling – nonviolently – against the Prison [of consciousness] and its institutions, which are more responsible for the sterility of our lives (and our society) than "human nature" or "capitalism". But even if we can't do any more than embark on the stage of self-healing, even if we can't get a strong group together, or if all our group efforts fail to heal society, we would still be learning to preserve our worth as human beings. And that is an essential part of the political process today. For without life-oriented people ... there can be no New Age evolution. And only New Age evolution can take us off of the production-consumption continuum and out of the Prison."

"There are two defining political choices that every society must make ... and neither of them is covered by the old political categories "left" and "right". The first choice has to do with this. Do we want our society to encourage us to seek rich individual experience and to be of service to others – or do we want our society to encourage us to seek material riches in the form of possessions and status? ... The second choice has to do with this. Do we want our society to extend state and institutional control over our lives (for whatever reason) – or do we want our society to encourage us to be self-reliant and self-determining?"

"You can't say that New Age politics is "left wing" or "right wing". It is perfectly compatible with public or private ownership of the means of production, and it speaks equally much to rich and poor, young and old, white collar and blue."

"In Part II I argue that the Prison is institutionalized by the "monolithic mode of production" which creates effective monopolies not for its brands but for its products ... institutionalized medicine; the universal, compulsory school; compulsory heterosexuality; ... In Part III ... I propose a class analysis that sees us not as ruling-class, bourgeois or proletarian, but as life-, thing- or death-oriented. In Part IV ... I suggest that the new worldview implies four "primary" New Age ethics – the self-development, ecology, self reliance-cooperation and nonviolence ethics. ... In Part V I try to suggest what "New Age society" might be like. ... It would foster "localization" – community and regional decentralization (to whatever extent the various communities wished). And it would foster "planetization" – planetary cooperation and sharing. ... In Pat VII ... I argue for a strategy that would involve ... (a) healing self, and (b) healing society."

"At the root of our troubles is a cultural complex whose six main elements make up a "Six-Sided Prison" that traps us all. In Part I[,] I try to name and describe the six sides of the Prison: patriarchal attitudes, egocentricity, scientific single vision, the bureaucratic mentality, nationalism, and the big-city outlook. Capitalism and socialism are, I argue, both rooted in the Prison (which predates capitalism by hundreds of years) – though neither needs to be. (Racism, militarism, exploitation, ecocide, etc., are also rooted in the Prison.)"

"More and more of us have, over the last 10 years or so, become deeply involved in one or more of the movements mentioned above. At the same time, though, the radical political movements of the 1969's seem to have collapsed. Could there be a connection? I believe that the radical political movements declined as soon as they began to promote a doctrine of us-against-them, of "we have all the answers", of separation rather than healing. As soon as they began to promote a dogmatic Marxism that overstressed our need for things and tried to make us feel guilty about our deeper needs, which are emotional, psychological and spiritual (and which are what got us into the radical political movements in the first place)."

"A new way of seeing and a new politics is arising already in bits and pieces, here and there, across the continent. ... The new politics is arising out of the work and ideas of many of the people in many of the social movements of the 1970's: the spiritual, environmental, feminist, and "men's liberation" movements; the human potential, simple living, appropriate-technology, and business-for-learning-and-pleasure movements; the humanistic-transformational education movement and the new nonviolent-action movement. … Each of these movements ... has something to add to the new politics. Their contributions come together like the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle."

"The politics we need in North America today will not and cannot come from liberalism or Marxism, or even from just muddling through. The situation we're in is so new – so unprecedented – that we need a whole new way of looking at the world. A whole new way of seeing things and thinking about things (especially political things)."

"After dinner my father asks me into his study. ... Then he slams the door so hard that I nearly jump out of the chair. He tells me that he's been ashamed to invite anyone over since I "came back" because of my "long" hair and my clothes. ... "That's all right," I say after a tense silence. "I'm leaving for New York tomorrow. And I'm leaving for Canada, as soon as I get my immigrant status!" His expression breaks first. He urges me to "reconsider." I am afraid to say anything at all. He says, "Ever since you left home your life has been a series of blunders, and this is your biggest; your most fatal. ... You tried to destroy society and you couldn't. Really, you were trying to destroy me. Now you're going to destroy yourself instead.""

"I turn out the kitchen light and sit down at the kitchen table, my head buried in my arms. I try to tell myself that I feel sick from having had to write all those lies on my application. I'd commit suicide if I really saw myself as Keith's "assistant"! But I know that isn't the half of it. ... If I do "choose to finish my B.A." I'll end up like Keith. But if I don't "choose" school I'll end up in Canada! And if I don't "choose" either – wouldn't I end up in Vietnam?"

"The subject," I say, suddenly unable to hold myself back any more, "is the SDS leadership's alienation from its followers. Not just here! Not just you!" Suddenly, horribly, I begin to sob. You could have heard a pin drop as people waited for me to continue. "I didn't want to be an SDS leader! And I don't think I've been a good one. But there's some things I'm proud of – ." Finally I manage to turn and look at Jean. "Why are you all so intolerant? Why are you all so vindictive? Why is it getting so that you only listen to people if they can quote from Father Karl or ... or Father Leon? ... Why are we giving up on trying to develop an analysis of our own? And for ourselves not just for others? Why? Why?"

"How long, Lord, O how long will it be before I can f--k someone like the girl sitting at the SDS literature table?"

"Scott wants us each to talk about "the kind of society we'd like to live in." ... From the start I am very nervous. Phil goes on about "the redistribution of wealth"; nearly everyone comes out for "socialism" of one kind or another; Brick even hints at "another revolution." When it is my time to speak I am moved to say, "I think people's tolerance is the main issue, even more than socialism. I mean, look at the people who are for the war. Look at the courthouse square." I am afraid to go on and say what I don't like about socialism. ..."

"Not long after Miles and Eric hitch to St. Louis, Graham turns to me and says, "Let's hitch to Chicago!" "Right now?" I ask, peering up from my American government text. "Why not?" says Graham. "You've got to learn to do things when you want to; otherwise you'll be just like one of the plastic people, the dead people." So by one A.M. we are on the road. ..."

"FBI agents have told some parents that their sons can be returned. This is not true. Rumours have been circulated by U.S. authorities because there is no other way the government can keep young Americans from coming. One recent AP wire had it that 71 "fugitive warrants" had been issued for young Americans in Canada. The story implied that the warrants were valid in Canada. They were not; they cannot be. ... Public officials, amateur draft counsellors, lawyers who do not specialize in draft work, and, unfortunately, the "underground" press are notorious sources of misinformation. Read this handbook again and again, and contact a Canadian anti-draft programme if need be."

"The toughest problem a draft resister faces is not how to immigrate but whether he really wants to. And only you can answer that. For yourself. That's what Nuremberg was all about."

"It can not be overstressed that draft resisters will probably never be able to return to the U.S. without risking arrest. This applies even to family emergencies. When a draft resister's father died last summer, two FBI agents showed up at the funeral."

"We have not tried to sell you on Canada – our chapter on climate is chilling – but the truth is that Canada is a nice place to be. There is little discrimination by Canadians against draft resisters, and there is a surprising amount of sympathy. Most Americans lead the same lives in Canada they would have led in the U.S. Americans who immigrate are not just rejecting one society; they are adopting another. Is it really freer? Most draft resisters – and most Canadians – think so."

"There is no draft in Canada. The last time they tried it was World War Two, when tens of thousands of Canadians refused to register. Faded "Oppose Conscription" signs can still be seen along the Toronto waterfront. The mayor of Montreal was jailed for urging Canadians to resist – and was re-elected from jail. No one expects a draft again. It's a different country, Canada."

"Slowly at first, and now in growing numbers, from Maine to Alabama to California, from ghettos, suburbs and schools, young Americans are coming to Canada to resist the draft."

"I do not think we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith based community in Georgia of which my family and I are a part of for all of our lives."

"We do not have a belief, in my way of looking at religion, that says we have to discriminate against anybody,” he said, noting that Jesus Christ reached out to the social outcasts of his time. “If you were to apply those standards to the teaching of Jesus, I don’t think they fit."

"Both Mark Satin and Jerry Rubin speak of legitimate mystical experiences where good and evil dissipate into the One. [Marilyn] Ferguson claims that good and evil are transcended by an awareness that "unites opposites." ... But what is left of ethics? The New Age is morally unfit to lead us politically. It lacks any absolute standards that would tell us that the outcome of the great transformation would be more good than evil."

"The themes of New Age politics were first articulated in the late 1970s by Mark Satin, who had fled the Vietnam War draft for Canada. There it dawned on him that "the ideas and energies from the various 'fringe' movements – feminist, ecological, spiritual, human potential and the like – were beginning to come together in a new way." Drawing on decentralist and feminist theories of the early 1970s, Satin's New Age Politics called for an escape from the "six-sided prison": patriarchism , egocentricity, scientism, bureaucracy, nationalism and urbanism. In its place Satin advocated a "third force" which would transcend the traditional divisions between Marxism and capitalism, liberalism and conservatism, Democrats and Republicans. Still seeking that synthesis, Satin publishes the Washington-based newsletter "New Options," which has criticized both the Sandinistas and Reagan's policy in Central America while searching for a "different" ground from pro-life and pro-choice forces on the abortion issue."

"The do-it-yourself spirit also moved Mark Satin – a young American draft resister living in Canada – to write, design, and even typeset his own book, New Age Politics: The Emerging New Alternative to Marxism and Liberalism. The book sold 10,000 copies, which Satin mailed from his basement before he sold reprint rights to a mainstream publisher – to secure, he explained apologetically, more money and wider distribution for his work."

"Mark Satin is one of the few profound political thinkers of our day who has grasped the significance of both spiritual practice and psycho-spiritual growth. ... The author's active political background, and more recent involvement in self-growth, make him uniquely qualified to draw together ideas which up until now have remained isolated from one another. ... Satin sees North Americans to be in a unique and unprecedented situation. Rather than relying upon ready-made economic or political systems (Marxism, socialism, capitalism, etc.), we could evolve an entirely new way of perceiving and thinking about political reality. New Age Politics is an attempt to delineate this emerging perceptual and conceptual framework. While reading Satin's book, I was reminded of Yaqui Indian Don Juan's teaching that one must learn (or re-learn) to "see.""

"Some surprisingly ordered thinking has been going on in the counter-culture. The evidence at hand is a book called New Age Politics. ... In 60,000 words Satin has made a comprehensive critique of North American society and outlined a Utopian society to replace it. There's no comfort in Satin's analysis for anyone who believes that our present way of life is worth preserving. ... Society would be transformed by a bloodless – but thorough – evolution. For instance, the nuclear family (mom, pop and the kids) would have to go. ... Bigness in government, in business and in all human organizations would have to go too.... Utopian defence policy is what one might expect from a pacifist draft dodger. … It's a question of how one views man's nature. Are we born naturally good but corrupted by civilization? Or are we born with a devil as well as an angel inside us?"

"The young men who came to Canada rather than take part in the Vietnam war always impressed me with their singleness of purpose. ... Probably a more honest statement about the complexity of the feelings that caused them to reject their homeland in the turbulent days of the sixties is expressed in Mark Satin's Confessions of a Young Exile. ... Satin's emigration wasn't dictated totally by his idealism. More often than not, he talked himself into radical positions and situations as a result of trying to impress his peers or his girl friend, or rebelling against middle-class parental authority."

"His [Satin's] most important contribution to draft resistance was editing the TADP Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada which he compiled from his own well-researched knowledge of Canadian immigration and from material submitted by a number of Canadian and American contributors. The ninety-page book contained every conceivable piece of information that a young American could possibly need to know about moving to Canada, including the demolition of a number of myths. All of it was presented in a strikingly thorough and concise format. It is excellently written. .... If a resister had any doubts about going to Canada before he read the book, he seldom had any after finishing it. ... By mid-1968 the TADP manual had become the first entirely Canadian-published best seller in the United States."

"In a major bid to encourage Americans to evade military conscription, the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme plans to put into the mail next week about 5,000 copies of a "Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada." The 132-page soft-cover book contains detailed advice about how to qualify as a Canadian immigrant, and information about Canadian jobs and school opportunities, housing, politics, culture and climate. The book is one of the manifestations of the growing organizational apparatus and financial strength of the Anti-Draft Programme, which deliberately uses the British spelling of "program." Other such signs, as reported by Mark I. Satin, the 21-year-old director of the "Programme," are: ... A list of 200 Torontonians who have offered to shelter and feed draft dodgers. ... Establishment of an employment service to help the youths find jobs. ... Mr. Satin's office gives cash grants to draft resisters who are without funds."

""Are you here to help?" soft-spoken Mark Satin asked the trio of young girls sitting on the worn sofa with the apple strudel in their laps. The girls nodded happily and Satin, 21, went off to find a knife to cut the cake. He returned with a metal bookend, sliced off a few chunks, and soon the Toronto anti-draft office was filled with a gentle munching. Most people – and there were plenty in the office yesterday – were Americans. "I'm not against the draft," Satin said, leaning on a desk where he's typing a form letter telling Americans how to avoid it. "Defensive armies are all right, but not the way it is right now." ... Two workers were telephoning people willing to house newly-arrived draft evaders. ... Two youngsters in the outer office were talking seriously about ... substitute teaching. ... "I have a feeling we'll be open rather late tonight," Satin Said."

"Mark Satin has thrown himself, as much as any man can, into helping his draft-evading contemporaries. For the first time in his twenty years, he has found a cause he can believe in. Seven days a week, from nine in the morning until, often, very late at night, he runs the SUPA Anti-Draft programme. ... On my first visit, there were ten to fifteen young Americans drifting in and out of the SUPA office. Some were settled for the evening in the elderly but comfortable furniture (all donated). They were reading, napping, gassing; some writing letters, one strumming a guitar. There was a mail basket and someone to take and pass on messages; a hot plate, an assortment of instant foods. There's always someone's baggage lying around. ... All the young Americans seem to respond to Mark Satin. His enthusiasm for the job and general air of unflappability seem catching."

"Mark Satin ... looks and sounds just like a boy many a citizen of Wichita Falls, Tex., would love to give a good spanking to. He has long hair. ... He has a yellow button announcing DISSENT in the lapel of his rumpled jacket. Dissent is certainly what he is about, and he has had a great chance to exercise it since he joined SUPA last month as a $25-a-week counselor for draft emigrants from the United States. "That godawful sick, foul country; could anything be worse?" he asks, his frayed sleeve bumping against a loaf of sliced bread on the desk. ("My breakfast and lunch," he explains apologetically.)"

"Most of all, I was angry all the time. Angry for righteous political reasons, but also because I'd rejected so much of what makes a long life beautiful and bearable. Usually my anger expressed itself subtly and indirectly (re-read Parts One and Two of this book), but you've also seen it on full display, from my hysterical shrieking about [the theft of] my clothes at Freedom House in Mississippi in 1965, to my tossing Sandra's suitcase out my door in 2005. And not to cast stones, but I was often surrounded in this book by equally "dedicated," equally "selfless," equally obsessed, and equally angry activists. There is no way around it. No matter how dire the political situation may seem to us, we must take the time to become decent and whole human beings if we want to truly change things for the better. … Only by making a conscious effort to heal ourselves—be it through church services and groups, spiritual practice, individual or group therapy, community volunteer work, deep apolitical friendships, or some lovely combination of these—can we supposedly visionary and healing activists ever gain the capacity to take this nation beyond poisonous Us-against-Them type politics. Only by becoming kind people can we create a kind world."

"Something that may surprise if not unhinge you about this [book] is that I tell you as much about relationships as about politics narrowly defined. Using myself as a more or less representative lens, I pay special attention to … activists' often difficult relationships with parents, our often contentious relationships with [movement] colleagues, and our often shaky relationships with lovers. Marx and Madison didn't write about that stuff. But you can hardly understand the perils of visionary, unconventional politics without paying compassionate attention to those aspects of our lives."

"What happened to all [those] groups and initiatives [that sprang up between 1970 and 2000] and the visionary, beyond-left-and-right perspective they sought to advance? Why did the [New World] Alliance and New Options disappear, and the U.S. Greens turn into just another left-wing protest party, and terms like "transformational" get taken over by Sixties-style socialists? In this tough-love [book], you will be able to discern many, many, many answers. One of my volunteer reader-critics, a nice guy from Minnesota, was astonished by all the awful behavior I describe in and around the organizations covered here. Suffice it to say that, if you are ever going to create a healing new politics, you are going to have to dwell on what went wrong with us … and then act differently from us. It may be harder than you think."

"Many of us like to call ourselves "post-socialist" radicals now. (We also use terms like "radical centrist," "creative centrist," and "transpartisan.") It's not that we're unhappy with socialists being out there. It's just that, when formulating policies, we draw from diverse other perspectives as well. To us, everyone has a piece of the truth, right populists and left populists, libertarians and Greens, Biblical Christians and Islamists, Turning Point USA and Black Lives Matter … everyone. And the more "radical" you are, the more willing you are to listen to, respect, and accommodate everyone's most vital interests (as distinct from their emotionally expressed public positions on issues)."

"[M]any of us are buying into an agenda that would neither unite nor heal us. It's all around us now. Forget balanced budgets. Condone illegal immigration. Defund the police. Don't go hard after street crime. Don't institutionalize the mentally ill. Dismantle the nuclear family. … None of this stuff is original to the 2020s. All of it goes back to the latter half of the 1960s, when the Vietnam War was tearing us apart. It's been dredged up again by a variety of socialists, often deeply caring people whose passion keeps them from seeing that other sorts of people hold to equally valid truths (and half-truths). It rarely occurs to them, just as it rarely occurs to other passionate activists across the political spectrum, that what the social change movement in America needs today isn't an us-against-them strategy—"we're right, they're evil"—but a strategy for healing and uniting. That's an even more radical strategy, in its way. It would have us listen empathically to everyone's deepest needs and fears … and then find ways to address everyone's core interests."

"Our country is struggling. The left and the right are tearing each other apart. Meanwhile, none of our major domestic and global issues are being properly addressed. We desperately need a new political perspective for the 21st century, one that can unite and heal this nation. And we need a political movement backing it up."

"These 100 books do not agree on everything – and that's OK too. You don't need total agreement when you're an open-hearted, decentralist, experimentalist New Ager. After the Prison and its institutions lose their hold over us, you won't even want such agreement. Within the parameters of certain life-affirming values, you'll want a hundred flowers to bloom. Synergy is all; cooperation and coordination is all."

"Few political authors employ the term New Age anymore; however, ... many use equivalents or near-equivalents such as communitarian, evolutionary, green, holistic, integral, post-socialist, radical centrist, spiritual, transformational, and transpartisan, and that's OK. Perhaps the new generation, not being ego-attached to any of these, will finally come up with a term we can all say "Aha!" to."

"What Keys, Laszlo, Falk, and many other New Agers are proposing … could be called a "planetary guidance system." ... A planetary guidance system would regulate the world, not run it. ... Does this chapter strike you as impossibly idealistic? In 2011, Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation argued that a decentralized planetary guidance system is currently arising outside the confines of the United Nations. To Khanna, it consists of an ever-changing (depending on the issue) array of representatives of governments, non-governmental organizations (nonprofits), corporations, super-wealthy individuals, and universities. Although Khanna, a buttoned-down radical centrist, doesn't use terms like "synergic power" and "win-win approach," it is obvious from his text that that's exactly how (some of) these entities are beginning to operate in the global context."

"Lorian Press could have simply reprinted the first edition of New Age Politics, from 1976. I liked its length (only 50,000 words), it covered almost all the ground I do here, and I wanted to prove to you that the perspective I synthesized – the perspective of many people in the social change movements of today – goes back to the Nixon-Ford era, when the traditional left and right both lost their way. It was not spontaneously generated by any single social movement of the last 40 years. Rather, all our movements have been re-inventing, adding to, and deepening a perspective that already in the 1970s stood as our only real alternative to More Of The Same."