A piece in the NY Times — (8/28/18, "‘The Whole World
Is Watching’: The 1968 Democratic Convention, 50 Years Later") —
consisting of recollections by participants in the protests at the '68 Democratic
National Convention, begins with this:
MARILYN KATZ, then 21, S.D.S. security chief: I was pretty
exuberant. We were having a good time. We had Allen Ginsberg and all these
adults who were our idols coming to say how wonderful we were. It wasn’t just
in Chicago — it was Paris, Mexico City, Prague. We were part of a worldwide
youth movement, and we really thought we were the future.
It concludes with this less enthusiastic assessment by Todd
Gitlin, (former S.D.S. president, then 25):
I think once you step back, what really happened here was
not the beginning of the revolution but the beginning of the counterrevolution.
. . .
Back then, I was in the demographic fully swept up into the exhilaration
Katz expresses. We were irresistible and contagious — we were viral avant la
lettre: Chicago, Berkeley Columbia, Paris, Mexico City, Prague and beyond.
Or as Kesey put it on his Magic Bus: "Further!"
Gitlin was noting and/or foretelling a different future, one
involving the Southern strategy, Nixon, racism, xenophobia, escalation in
Vietnam. And to continue beyond that time frame to today, Orban, Erdogan, Putin,
and not least of all, Trump.
The question I'd ask Gitlin if I were talking to him now is:
given your accurate reading of the future, how have you managed to maintain your
activism, to the high degree which
you have done?