Wednesday, July 31, 2002

What This Blog is About What This Blog is About First, about myself.  For the blog, I start with my political history.  After spending two years in Africa, I came back home in 1968-  in time for the Chicago democratic convention, SDS, the peak of the anti-war movement, the harvard strike and into a 'movement' which defined my experience.  For the next ten years, I was an activist, working on the "Old Mole", publishing a labor newspaper in Boston ("the People's Voice), working on the Guardian, and organizing with Teamsters for a Democratic Union.  Around 1978 I began to get disgusted with the factionalism and disfunction of leftist politics, and went back to graduate school and into a business career.  Since then, my best friends have mostly continued to be "movement" people--and I have never lost that sensibility, despite all the outlandish errors and mistakes we made. Second, about this Blog.  I am part of a group called the Lexington Justice and Peace Committee.  We formed spontaneously by word of mouth after September 11th, mostly to organize our thoughts at a time when we thought people were afraid to speak out critically about the war on terror.  Since then, we have held a number of public events in Lexington, and affiliated with other local justice and peace groups in the Boston area.  The main purpose of our public events was to make room for dissent--to show that people could oppose the war on terror, that a public opposition was possible. I am very engaged in the problem of organizing a local anti-war movement when the majority of activists in our town are in their 50's.  I thought a blog that explored the issues around local organizing, what a left opposition might look like, and how "movement" people come to terms with our current political environment might be interesting for me to write, and perhaps for you to read.   12:05:54 AM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 3/5/2003; 5:15:49 PM.