I walk in the door to a crowd I know well: Mostly white. Mostly old. Mostly liberal. Although disappointed so many voices are missing, I take my seat in anticipation (I will someday be old, white, and “liberal” after all).

When the movie starts, I am immediately uncomfortable. The film is mostly animated - cutting between pranks at the trial, hippies dancing on Lincoln Park grass, clever moments of confrontation, Abbie Hoffman performing stand-up, and real images of police violence. Everything is loud, flashy, and cinematic. And the audience seems to laugh the whole way through.

Abbie Hoffman calls a female police officer who is testifying against him a “dyke.” The audience laughs.

A black woman (the only person of color in the film who speaks other than Bobby Seale) is asked if she feels bad for the white DNC rioters and says “no.” No follow up context is provided for her comment. The audience laughs. Race is left screaming in a room that seems not to hear.

Kids are shown playing a new game called “police brutality.” One kid testifies: “sometimes its not fun being the protester because sometimes it hurts.” The audience laughs. I am shocked.

The movie climaxes in Bobbie Seale being gagged and chained for speaking back to the judge.

And Abbie Hoffman sums it all up as “total theater.”

But this is not theater. This is racism at its most vibrant and privileged activism at its most uncritical. This is a movie about a trial that put a black man in chains. In a time that saw Fred Hampton brutally murdered by Chicago police and 43 shot dead in the Attica Prison rebellion, the movie positions resistance as humor, fun, and hippie pranks. Something people just “forgot to care about.”

In the panel discussion afterwards, all three panelists are white men. None of them consider themselves to be current activists in Chicago. Tom Hayden begins by saying “it’s hard to contextualize this stuff,” which I appreciate, but no time is allotted for him to explain. None of the alliance work or related struggles that carved out space for the protest are mentioned. When my housemate brings up race, Hayden points to the movie poster’s gagging of Abbie Hoffman: “the trial was about the gagging of a black man. The poster is about the gagging of a white man.” Again, no time is given for response. Conversation turns to the war in Iraq, the genocide in Sudan, whether our votes still count. . .

Until we recognize the violence of the past, how can we begin to understand the violence of the present? Until we look at our own home, with a prison system that incarcerates 1 in 100 adults, immigration laws that violate basic human rights, a school system founded on structural inequality, and urban development that is displacing thousands, how can we begin to speak out on the war abroad? And until we acknowledge our different positions of privilege in political struggle, how can we begin to attempt truly collaborative work?

I want to believe in intergenerational dialogue, I want to believe in coalition-building, and I want to believe in crowds like the one that came to the Chicago 10. But I did not find the Chicago 10 funny, I do not think activism just “goes away,” and I do not think today is any less urgent than the past. It’s time we find better ways of engaging with discomfort and privilege than trying to laugh it away.

LINK
For our youth

Zelda is waiting for her hero LINK. Not anyone who I’d consider a *zink.
Like those who sell our kids drugs to drink; taking my daughter to an overdose brink.
Energy punch sounds good to our teens, who probably have heavy metal in spleens.
Parents try hard to make them eat greens. Big businesses spoil them by any means.
LINK is a pointer. Follow the direction. Do polio vaccines LINK to aids by reflection.
Viagra and cialis LINK to small man’s ejection. Does autism LINK to vaccines injection?
Some say we must prove what hurts our kids. Women have tried to pry open eyelids.
Men like a fight, after placing their bids. How many babies have now died of SIDS?
Does diabetes LINK to pesticide sprays? Toys LINK to lead as a child plays.
Cancers LINK to our hot sunny rays. Lets all follow LINK till the end of our days.
LINK points a direction we have to pursue. We must learn what is false and what could be true?
To save a future for my children and you, study the LINK. Lets think them all through.
Love Lora Bruncke

*zink - word changed to protect the innocent

Issues to look at: vaccines vs auto immune diseases, plastic bottles vs corrosive beverages, pesticides vs nervous system disorders (ie als), and lead vs learning disabilites.

My father, who died of lung cancer, always snickered when he heard the ‘rumours’ that smoking caused cancer. He claimed it had not been proven. When it was finally confirmed, he quite cold turkey, but too late.
We cannot let companies insist we prove their product kills. From now on, they must prove it is safe for children!!!!
And they can’t use our children for test subjects. At least not mine!

How long will we let our governments trick us into thinking our enemy lives in a foreign land when it lives here.