A DIFFERENT PENETRATION

Shortly after I retired from full-time and from part-time work as well as from much of the voluntary work I had done for decades, I saw a documentary film(1) entitled The Weather Underground. I felt a certain nostalgia as I watched this television documentary since the complex and historical origins of the group at the centre of this TV doco, the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization, could be traced back to the 1960s and particularly my second year at university, 1964-5, when I was a history and philosophy student at McMaster University in Canada.

The Students for a Democratic Society(SDS) was first formed in 1960 and the Weathermen was a split-off from the SDS in 1969. The academic year, 1964-5, was the year of the free speech movement centered at the University of California, Berkeley, the SNCC: Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee and other groups concerned with civil rights and anti-Viet Nam protests. Although I never joined any of these groups, I did take part in two demonstrations in Hamilton and Toronto in the spring of 1965. I attended one conference in Ottawa concerned with civil rights, voter registration and specifically the treatment of Negroes in Selma Alabama, among other concerns. As a result of an all-night vigil I took part in on the steps of the American embassy in Toronto I got my picture on the front page of the Hamilton Spectator. It was the only time in my life I made the front page of any paper. -Ron Price with thanks to (1)“Hot docs: The Weather Underground,” SBS TV, 10:00-11:35 p.m., August 15th 2006 and Pioneering Over Four Epochs, August 16th 2006.

By the time you1 got going
in that summer of ’69 I was
heading for Cherry Valley to
teach kids from the farms of
southern Ontario in grade 6
and play soccer at recess….
and the world was on its way
to the moon.

You were right, the revolution
was on its way and you played
your part by blowing things up
and I played mine by working
within the nucleus and pattern
of a new world order born in
the Siyah Chal in 1853 ground
in the mill of adversity, such a
different scene than yours.

And, yes, the revolution goes on,
quietly in some places, noisy in
others, largely unnoticed, in the
hearts of millions with no commitment
to the status quo and who spiritually
dropped out with a withdrawal that
is almost deafening from a world
they have long found to be meaningless.

The revolution goes on just about
entirely out of our control as we
work to produce a new pattern
of human life, little by little,
day by day with a social model
and a vision that penetrates
to the very purpose of life.2

1 The group known as the Weathermen.
2Douglas Martin, “The Spiritual Revolution,” World Order, Winter 1973-4, pp. 14-21.

Ron Price
August 16th 2006
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