Painting Obama with the broad brush of 60's radicals will backfire on the right wing. After all, everything activists ever said that was good about Civil Rights and wrong with the Viet Nam War have come to pass. Now we have a society that can actually contemplate electing a black American to the White House, and we're trading with and touring a peaceful, united, commie/capitalistic Viet Nam. As far as radicals and bombings... that's so much bullsh*t.
I was involved in 60's activism too... all the way up in the court system to the Supremes (Rivard, Bucolo, et al...). And that court business was directly attributable to events that happened because of government sponsored people not associated with our activity (we college kids had an underground newspaper called Florida Free Press in 1967). We were set up for bogus obscenity charges in right wing Palm Beach county but eventually beat the case anyway. Plenty of others around the country faced the same kind of government sanctioned crap. Accordingly I'm more than leery of most of the violent and unsavory things that happened in the 60's like those bombings, and more suspect people working for the government who wanted to turn public opinion against citizens working for peace and civil rights back then (and probably now too). 99% of the time about the worst we ever did was hang banners from water towers and throw dollar bills down onto the floor of the Stock Exchange (Abbey Hoffman, Aug 24, 1967).
So I've seen my share of wide-eyed 60's radicals, but if we could ever know for sure, I'd bet dimes to dollars that the very few dangerous ones, the real nutters, were paid punks working on behalf of US police and security interests. The evidence is certainly there. For instance we can know for sure that news media was (and certainly still is) used to some extent by them (Mockingbird) and that provocateurs from Washington were used extensively by the FBI and others (search FBI at that link) during the Civil Rights and anti-Viet Nam War movements (search FBI at that link too). Check any of them in Wikipedia, Google, etc. Why should we believe that otherwise completely sane and intelligent people would do anything as ridiculous as bombing a post office or whatever? We shouldn't.
The only ones who benefitted from that criminalization of the peace and civil rights movements were those sad souls in our own government who needed excuses for their own departmental budgets and authoritarian agendas and world views. And none of them were ever held accountable for their treachery against US citizens exercising their constitutional rights and duties. But that day may yet come.
I maintain it is certainly a citizen's duty to monitor and correct our government when it gets off track. And if you agree with me this far, you may also agree that it is Un American and Anti-constitutional to impede or harm Americans exercising their rights and responsibilities. It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to the government... especially when it tries to warn you off their backs with jail and heavy fines.
I believe in honoring ALL of our patriots... and I'm looking forward to the day when peace activists are honored for their service to the country; and our Justice Department holds government hacks responsible for the harm they did (and still do) to their fellow citizens who work for a better America.
Bill Bucolo has trained and worked in newspapers, public relations and magazine publishing since the 60's. During the Viet Nam War he was active in the Southern Student Organizing Committee and Students for a Democratic Society, and one of the publishers of the Florida Free Press which eventually prevailed in a 1st Amendment case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Since November 2000 He has been active in the fight for election system reform and against conservative excesses and writes frequently on these issues.
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