May 18, 2018

"The Madison Reunion will be a nostalgic homecoming for lefty activists who called Madison home in the 1960s. But it won’t be the only game in town."

Isthmus reports.
“We heard about the Madison Reunion being organized from people telling us, ‘I don’t see anything I’m interested in here, this isn’t the radical Madison I know.’ It’s organized as an academic conference,” says Sarah White, a member of the local Gray Panthers and an organizer of the Radical Perspectives teach-in....

[There will be] a dozen workshops planned for Saturday, June 16, ranging from “Women Unmasking Power & Building Movements” to “The New Left’s Radical Legacy For Today.” There’s also a kickoff event the night before, including Max Elbaum reading from his book Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che.

“I’d say there’s a Marxist throughline to what we’re doing that you haven’t heard in a few decades,” White says....

The approach at the teach-in will be hands-on, with an emphasis on connecting older radicals with young people who are active today. “It’s about passing the torch,” White says. “We’re old, we can’t march in the streets anymore, we have to pass the torch to other people. People are really eager to engage in dialogue with young activists.”

That’s why there are several panels on high school activism....
IN THE COMMENTS: Referring to the topic — from an earlier post — of ambiguous headlines ("crash blossoms"), rehajm writes:
Women Unmasking Power & Building Movements

There’s your crash blossom.
And I said:
Good observation.

And now I'm picturing a building that shits.
And I realize that I can picture a building that shits, because I've seen a lot of great anthropomorphized buildings drawn by one of my favorite artists Mark Beyer. Example:



From "Life and Times of Thomas House," by Mark Beyer.

49 comments:

rhhardin said...

It will be free love all over again, so they need the young babes.

rehajm said...

As if young lefties are paasively but eagerly waiting marching orders from these raisins.

robother said...

But will there be giant puppets? Where are the giant puppets? Don't bother, they're here.

steve uhr said...

Maybe Leo Burt will make a surprise appearance.

rehajm said...

Women Unmasking Power & Building Movements

There’s your crash blossom.

Rob said...

The mother and child reunion is only a motion away.

tcrosse said...

This could be hilarious. I hope someone takes pictures.

Ann Althouse said...

"There’s your crash blossom."

Good observation.

And now I'm picturing a building that shits.

Darrell said...

All the young dudes
Carry the news
Boogaloo dudes
Carry the news

tim in vermont said...

Yeah, I saw the ad for it in Nostalgia Today.

Tina Trent said...

Grannies of the crude and self-indulgent Grey Panthers giving mass murderer Mao lessons to school children. And nobody sees the horror in this because it is couched in the same Creedence Clearwater, Clearwater Sloop, Big Chill protective coloring.

Might as well bake cookies with kulak blood and hand out crocheted Mein Kampf homilies to the rug rats. Also teach children to do the fork-in-the-belly symbol Bernardine Dohrn used (was that in Madison or at their next gathering?) to celebrate the grotesque torture-murder of nine-months pregnant Sharon Tate. Dohrn's other culinary adventure, by the way, recently revealed in Dave Garrow's underappreciated Obama bio, was that she and Bill Ayers, rather than just being people Obama vaguely knew, had dinner with the Obamas several nights a week for eight years. Let that sink in. That nobody has challenged Obama to explain his lie or his forming an upscale commune with Maoist terrorist bombers and cop killers is utterly beyond belief. Thanks, Madison, where this death culture decanted its ideology, protected by the usual trappings of existentially destructive academia posing as our betters.

gerry said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
gerry said...

Is Mark Beyer still alive? The sample from "Life and Times of Thomas House" was really stupid. If representative of the body of his work, it looks pointless and depressing. Perhaps it was entertaining to drugged assholes at some time in that sad past.

chickelit said...

There will be a candlelight vigil at Sterling Hall to pray for the last victim of government persecution, Leo Burt.

Wilbur said...

I've yet to wish for a sinkhole to open up or a meteor to crash in a particular spot, but this gathering could convince me to do so.

Original Mike said...

”Maybe Leo Burt will make a surprise appearance.”

Christ...

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

What can be said that isn’t glaringly obvious? Privileged (and, no doubt, overwhelming White) middle-class douches who’ve made a comfortable (and, no doubt, unproductive) living on the government tit, glorifying some of the most hideous mass-murderers of the 20th Century. Grotesque hypocrisy doesn’t begin to describe it. They’re the embodiment of the failure, destructiveness, and laughable self-indulgence of their generation.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Will they blow up a campus building and kill a few people, just for old times' sake?

Ralph L said...

Power movements from Andrew Sullivan, power bottom.

Ralph L said...

It will be free love all over again
No worries about pregnancies this time, just incontinence, dryness, and prostate trouble.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Be a real shame if someone bombed the event and blew the old Lefty geezers up, huh?

gerry said...

No worries about pregnancies this time, just incontinence, dryness, and prostate trouble.

Don't forget the bonus of prolapsed uteri...

Rick said...

Left wing diversity: inviting both the far left and the insane left.

gilbar said...

i'm confused; i thought Thomas was a tank engine?

Big Mike said...

Do they plan to celebrate by bombing some more buildings and murdering physics post docs? Seven years in prison doesn’t seem like much of a sentence for taking the life of someone’s husband, someone’s father.

chuck said...

> connecting older radicals with young people who are active today

Ha, I recall old communists in NYC trying to do the same with the 60's radicals back in the day. It was rather sad, the times were different despite some superficial similarities. You cannot be young again.

Original Mike said...

”Do they plan to celebrate by bombing some more buildings and murdering physics post docs? Seven years in prison doesn’t seem like much of a sentence for taking the life of someone’s husband, someone’s father.”

As a graduate of the UW physics program, I take it personally. The fuckers should be rotting in prison.

Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...

“We were marching for the right to wear pants to school."

The more important right is the right to not wear any pants.

"Students today are marching for the right to go to school in safety,”

US Murder rate:
1960 5.1
1961 4.8
...
1968 6.9
1969 7.3
...
2013 4.5
2014 4.5

Rick said...

we have to pass the torch to other people. People are really eager to engage in dialogue with young activists.”

That’s why there are several panels on high school activism....


...we have to get to people before their life experiences contradict everything we say.

Roughcoat said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
JAORE said...

Aging Boomers: We're still relevant! We created your movement.

Today's activists: Who ARE these old people? And why are they so alt-right?

LordSomber said...

Gray ponytails and aging fauxhemians are realising they lost a mojo they never had.

http://pungeon.blogspot.com/2012/02/when-it-rains-it-snowballs-maculate.html

Lucien said...

What’s a “Power and Building” movement?

tim in vermont said...

Despite the song, the truth is “I was so much younger then, I’m older than that now.”

narciso said...

Well kattletin Armstrong is Norwegian blue, so he can't make it, (He blew up the math resource center)

narciso said...

Or maybe he isnt

https://www.google.com/amp/host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/sterling-hall-bomber-armstrong-arrested-after-cash-found-in-vehicle/article_c5da4e80-a38c-11e1-a02f-001a4bcf887a.amp.html

hawkeyedjb said...

"Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che"

So, you hold up mass murderers as your exemplars, then wonder why the rubes want to keep their second amendment.

narciso said...


meanwhile the same adorers of the revolutionaries,

https://babalublog.com/2018/04/07/che-guevara-idolizor-and-castro-regime-friend-and-collaborator-benicio-del-toro-to-star-as-bay-of-pigs-hero-and-subsequent-mobster-jose-miguel-battle-in-forthcoming-hollywood-movie-based-on-book-b/

Curious George said...

"Maybe Leo Burt will make a surprise appearance."

Robert Fassnacht won't.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

People who refuse to recognize that their "sell by date" has long passed.

Seeing Red said...

But but but the environment! Shouldn’t they be in nursing homes by now?




"Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che"
They forgot Friend of Obama and Kerry Bill “children, kill your parents to start the revolution” Ayers. That scarred me for life. I internalized that. I thought when I heard it on the TV or the radio when I was a wee child why would I want to kill my parents?

Rick said...

But but but the environment! Shouldn’t they be in nursing homes by now?

Remind me, did they put Boxer out to pasture?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_(Animal_Farm)

Huxley was more on point regarding the outward trappings of authoritarianism than Orwell. But Orwell understood how systemic decision making works and predicted quite a few things accurately.

YoungHegelian said...

"I’d say there’s a Marxist throughline to what we’re doing that you haven’t heard in a few decades,” White says....

Modern Marxists are deeply aware & pained by the fact that, basically, Marxism is dead. Yes, there's a very active political Left, but it's all post-Marxist. Post-Marxist Lefties irritate the true-believin' Marxists as much as they bug Conservatives.

Matter o' fact, I just read a book on the topic.

Fred Drinkwater said...

At a big book fair at Berkeley a couple weeks ago, I was wandering past the Revolution Books tent (RevBooks has been a fixture in town since the 60s). A middle age guy addressed a younger man passing with "have you heard of marxism?"
i literally lol'd - it sounded so much like the "have you heard of Jesus christ?" supposedly typical of evangelicals.

Big Mike said...

@Fred Drinkwater, do you think that bookseller knows the difference between Marxism and Naziism?

Ans: No one ever says that the only thing wrong with Naziism is that it has never been implemented properly.

Sal said...

Women Unmasking Power & Building Movements

Jeez, ladies, when you're pushing 70 and still haven't figured this out, it's time to take up knitting.

walter said...

rhhardin said...It will be free love all over again, so they need the young babes.
--
Must be a reference to:
"The approach at the teach-in will be hands-on, with an emphasis on connecting older radicals with young people who are active today."

I hope these folks have a break out session to determine an update to the Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho anthem.

gadfly said...

This post brought back memories of another post in Althouse about the Sterling Hall bombing and reader Michael Haz's response here.

gadfly said...

So Madison will have a '60's reunion which would be incomplete without memories of the Sterling Hall bombing. Ann covered the bombing in 2010 and received reader Michael Haz's response which she republished to highlight it.