I joined the Religious Society of Friends in the l970s, partly because of their work against the Vietnam hell, and partly because I taught at a Quaker school that decade. At one point the Jewish Defense League (JDL) occupied the building, shutting down business because the Quakers had some of the same things to say about Palestine that I.F. Stone did when Israel as we know it was created. So a group of a few hundred from Brooklyn was going after a religious organization that numbered less than 3000 in the tristate area, and there was the usual heat without light, with respectful attempts at “dialogue” between traditions whose vocabularies held little in common, and whose rituals almost nothing except that they were differing routes to an inner enthusiasm that could result in action. What the media call fringe groups. But the JDL departed respectfully, and their right to demonstrate and shut the “good work” down for a few days was respected.
The same for the poets for peace wagons that went around the city: weird voices into “normal” neighborhoods, and I can remember Paul Blackburn with his “public pubic hair” of a beard and his black cowboy hat thrilled with the conversations he’d had in parts of town he didn’t normally get to. Fringe again. (In all senses!)
Well, with this post Wag the Dog War, such oddball actions seem less relevant in a world of media oblivious to real “dialogue.” But I think that if the actions aren’t taken and the statements aren’t made (and I’m urging myself onward here), the word “salaud” has relevance. Faithfully, Lou
