Jason Schulman has just posted, on ASDnet, a piece by Stephen Zunes -- "Pelosi Win Not A Progressive Victory." It's well worth reading -- and I pass along the Link: http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1110-02.htm
But this is a late Sunday afternoon -- snow in Idaho -- word or two about the article's author. It's been a good while since I last saw him. But I do remember him, for sure. Just married, Eldri and I went to Mississippi in the late Summer of '61, where I taught at private Tougaloo Southern Christian College [Black] and she worked in the school's business office. We became involved immediately in the Magnolia State's then incipient Movement [remaining in the South until '67.] Tougaloo had some fascinating faculty and administration people. Rose Branch, the excellent dean of students, was an aunt of Paul Zuber, a very effective East Coast civil rights lawyer; Ethel Mae Taylor, who taught English, had a favorite radical nephew, David Sarvis, who played the Eastern mining boss in Salt of the Earth; Dr John Shannon [Education] and his wife, who had emerged from retirement to come and teach in Mississippi, had been caretakers of the Debs home at Terre Haute [his son, David, had written The Decline of American Communism and Dr Shannon's brother, Fred, had written classic stuff on the Populist movement in the United States.] There were many, many more extraordinary people of all sorts of races and backgrounds -- the only sour note being a Dr Jose Cid [Chemistry] who turned out to be a Batista supporter and who left after a year. [Many, many years later when we thoroughly inspected the files of the old State Sovereignty Commission, we learned that Dr Cid had become an informer for that secret police/spy agency, filing a number of venomous reports about me, an open member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee who used C. Wright Mills' fine pro-Cuban Revolution book, Listen Yankee, in my classes.] And then there was Stephen Zunes. He was a sharp and sensitive child of about five at that point -- who was a demonstrated non-conformist. His parents, John and Helen Zunes, were good friends of ours. John taught physics. Helen, by interesting coincidence, was a cousin of an old Arizona friend of mine, Bill Karnes, a vice-president of AFT [and an effective radical] who was a key leader in the quite substantial Phoenix Local 1010, of which I was its sole at-large member. The Zunes family left Mississippi after that first year but we saw them at a couple of points later on. Stephen at Tougaloo, as I recall, listened fairly well and spoke sharply on a wide variety of topics. He was not inclined to be thwarted. There were those who saw him as an arrogant little brat -- and others, like myself, who probably recognized a kindred spirit. And then there were those who worried about him As he spent one afternoon, repeatedly lying down on the main college campus street and forcing every vehicle in both directions to totally stop before he arose in leisurely fashion, let them pass, and then lay down again, Mrs Shannon, a dear soul, turned to Eldri and me and asked in a genuinely concerned fashion, "Whatever is going to become of Stephen?" I'm extremely glad all the cars did stop that afternoon in Mississippi. Hunter Hunter Gray [Hunterbear] www.hunterbear.org Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ and Ohkwari' _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
