SDS

I started reading a book on SDS by Harvey Pekar. The first part of the book is a history of SDS. This was fun and nostalgic because I knew a bunch of the players because many of them went to Michigan. But after this trip down memory lane there were individual stories of what it was like to be in the movement in those days. One of the first stories talked about looking at the people on the other side of the line and seeing hate in their eyes. Wow! Not such a fun image. I remember that.

There was a lot of hate. Beside the obvious cases of police shooting at me or the national guard lobbing tear gas at us, there was the day to day hatred. I remember asking for directions in San Diego and no one being willing to answer me because my hair was too long. I certainly made a decision to drive from San Francisco to NYC through Canada because I had doubts about what would happen to me, my wife and my 4 year old daughter if I tried to drive through the middle of America.

This all made me realize that all of the red state blue state split and the upstate downstate split here in New York are not new and maybe not as bad as we make them out to be. They are certainly there, but are they as mean spirited as they were in the 60's and 70's. It may be that I don't see the hate as much because I am old enough that people don't perceive me as a threat.