Re-Create ’68?
Hi. It’s Sunday night and we just finished dinner here at Jerri’s house where Lynn Goldsmith has now joined us for the week. As the actual Convention inches closer, and I finished the final exam today for Journalism, I’m starting to feel those pangs again without Hunter. So, it’s a blessing to be witnessing this (hopefully) historic DNC with two amazing women and listen to them talk, over a shared Pad Thai stir fry tonight, about their experiences at the1969 protest in Washington. [more…]
They both bused in from University of Michigan, although they didn’t know each other at the time, to join the rest of the 600,000+ protesters to protest the Vietnam War. This was a year after Chicago 1968 ,which is a shared experience that although turned into a bloody nightmare, was a special time in America. Of course, the following year would end in the massacre at Kent State.
But so intense was the1968 DNC nightmare that there seems to be a nostalgia that surrounds it, and makes those of us who were not alive or around at the time almost envy it. Why? The group in charge of today’s protest even call themselves “recreate 68. “.
I listened to Jerri and Lynn talk about their experiences, who are now both successful women who remember that era of American history. It was indeed bizarre to listen to the stories of 1968, ‘69, ’70, not just from Hunter over the years, but now with Lynn and Jerri, while surrounded with DNC press gift bags sponsored by Qwest, AT&T; and other mega brands.Jerri and Lynn work full time for those values of the 60s, despite the fact that the DNC is a corporate event.
As I watch the journalist bloggers and photographers, videographers, protesters, even tourists in Denver this weekend, it brings up one of Hunter’s passages:
There is probably some long-standing “rule” among writers, journalists, and other word-mongers that says: “When you start stealing from your own work, you’re in bad trouble.” And it may be true. I am growing extremely weary of writing constantly about politics. My brain has become a steam-vat; my body is turning to wax and bad flab; impotence looms; my fingernails are growing at a fantastic rate of speed – they are turning into claws…People are beginning to notice, I think, but fuck them. I am beginning to notice some of their problems too…
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.
Until next time, your friend,
Anita Thompson
