“You can talk about your Julie and your Peggy Sue
You can keep your Miss Molly and your Mary Lou
When it comes to the Chicken or doin’ the Bop
I got a gal they call the Queen of the Hop”
When I started out on my socialist path 57 years ago, I had high expectations about the kind of people socialists were. I read about the anarchists in Spain and how joyful they were. You can see this in many of the pictures of them. When I first started to go meetings of an anarchist group that was working with War Resisters League in Manhattan, there was this one guy in the group who stood out, Lin Dodge. When Lin spoke in the group he didn’t speak as an authority figure in lecture mode, he just pointed things out in the present about how the group was functioning along with an invitation to improve things. He was more interested in the quality of the process of the meetings even more than the political content. He had a twinkle in his eye as he spoke and the group was energized even if people disagreed with him. I thought his ideas about how to bring more socialism into the War Resisters League were insightful, practical and well thought out. But more than that I thought to myself “I wanna be like him”. I hung around him whenever I could in the hopes that some of it would rub off. It didn’t but I just knew I wanted to be like Lin.
In the same time period, I encountered the relatively famous anarchist, Murray Bookchin then in his 40s. Murray was a very magnanimous person, and though he had no formal education, he always had a trail of young people following him around and conspiring with him. Murray also had a way of uniting generations. I remember hearing Murray speak at what was called the Libertarian Book Club on the West Side of New York one Thursday night. Before the meeting the older comrades at the clubhouse would argue among themselves about how they knew Trotsky was wrong and the anarchists were right. But once Murray’s lecture began, they kept their mouths sure and listened. Murray stood at the podium uniting the old generation of 1900 with the new generation of the 1960’s. Perhaps the turnout was about 75 people encircled Murray. Murray’s book Post Scarcity Anarchism was just coming out. Both generations understood Murray was special. Please see my article for a full account: Intergenerational Socialist Solidarity: Face-to-Face vs. Facebook on our website.
What is this article about?
This piece is an extension and application of an article my partner Barbara MacLean wrote one year ago. How Not to be A Crabby Socialist: Thriving by Not Minding My Own Business.
In that article Barbara discussed how she talked about socialism with the workers and shoppers in two grocery stores and one bakery, both inside the store and in parking lots. She also discussed how she engaged with people on our walks every day in the neighborhood and at the Olympia Senior Center where I teach. Barbara’s point in that article was to take seriously not only that we are social beings, but that everyday life presents opportunities to be super-social beings by discussing capitalism and socialism as a matter of course. Her way in was to pose three questions:
- How is work? (class struggle)
- How is capitalism treating you?
- How about all those socialists winning elections?
The implication is that if you are a socialist you can be as happy as I am while demonstrating as part a discussion.
Turning Harbor Days Into a Dance
Setting of stage
Once a year on Labor Day weekend, Olympia Washington sponsors something called “Harbor Days”. Festivities include boat races, kids’ games, the selling of arts and crafts, musical acts and terrible food for the whole over-stuffed family. Harbor Days begins on Friday nights and carries through Saturday and Sunday. Musical acts begin on Friday night and they rotate across two stages Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings. The music varies from rhythm and blues to folk to Celtic music. We like to watch a Celtic band we had heard and danced to before, a group called “Slainte”. We invited two of our friends, Marty and Rebecca, to attend the show from 5:30 to 7:30. The performance is very informal. The band faces a public with a few picnic tables scattered around on browning grass, stubble and rocks. Like others we brought canvas chairs which dotted the perimeter of the stage. There was plenty of room to dance and people were right out there from the very first song in the set. A few couples knew how to Irish dance but most didn’t. A few danced as couples but most danced alone. Since we were just off the downtown area some homeless people wandered over and checked out the scene.
Going to a Go-Go Stag
As we were setting up our chairs I said to Becky “where’s Barbara?” Becky pointed to Barbara already. This has happened before. Barbara doesn’t say to me “do you wanna dance” like normal people so we would go out and dance together. No, the extrovert-on-steroids Barbara comes out in full stag and begins dancing on her own right near the front of the stage. She waves to the band as if she has known them all her life. Barbara is 83 years old, has arthritis problems, a bad back and missing one lobe of her right lung, but when the music starts her convivial spirit overrides all this. Not satisfied with dancing by herself she starts dancing with other solitary dancers. It doesn’t matter to her whether they are men or women or even dogs running around. Everyone is part of her spirally, rollicking boogie.
Who’s on the Floor?
I am no wallflower when it comes to dancing except when I go anywhere with Barbara. After a little while I hear a song I’d like to dance to and we dance together. Of course, the musicians prefer that people dance because they feed off the energy of the dancers and it demonstrates that people are involved. There were maybe 10 – 15 people dancing all the time throughout the set, although they were usually different people. There were enough people so that no one would stand out and be inhibited because others are watching, nor were there so many that the “dance floor” becomes a blur of dancers, the way it was with an old-fashioned version of American Bandstand.
Making an offer you can’t refuse
Not content with engaging other dancers Barbara begins to try pull people sitting on the picnic table benches and canvas chairs out on to the grass. Some reluctantly come out to appease her for a couple of minutes While others (not many) resist. One woman laughed and told Barbara she hasn’t got her husband on the dance floor in 20 years, but he did with her. What’s her secret? My answer is her joy in living.
“I have to pee, nah I don’t”
After sitting with us wallflowers for about 15 minutes Barbara announces she has to go to the bathroom. By now there is a fair amount of people standing up while either talking or dancing. Since there are only portable toilets staked out in not easily identified locations the path to get to the toilets is not clearly marked. Before she left, I pointed out how she could line up in her imaginary eye where the toilet was in relationship to our seats. Barbara disappears into the crowd. So for the next ten minutes my attention is split between watching the musicians and dancers and keeping an eye on Barbara’s return. After about 20 minutes I start to be concerned and turn to Becky and say do you see Barbara?”. Without hesitation she points to the “dance floor” with Barbara at the front of the stage dancing with a five-year-old girl. She returns to our seats. I asked her, “did you go the bathroom?” “No”, she says “I guess I didn’t have to go”. In our normal life Barbara has to pee about every 40 minutes. Today the Fates had other plans for her.
“Do you remember when we used to sing …?”
The highlight of the set for me was went Slainte played Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl. We danced together and then two other female dancers asked to join us. What was inspiring was that virtually every person there knew that song and we all sang together. It reminded me of some of the rock and roll revivals where the audience knows the song so well they act as background singers for the musicians. “Do you remember when we used to sing, sha-la, la- la-la la-tee da-la tee da.” Yes we do, Van.
Casting a spell for Socialism
After that song Barbara went back to our chairs and grabbed her purse. She took something out of it and disappeared. The next thing I knew she was making the rounds handing something out to all the people sitting on the picnic tables and beach chairs. When she returned, I asked her what she was handing out? She showed me our cards “Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism” with the link to our website, Facebook page and Twitter address. I asked her, “We never hand any of these out, why not start now?” I later found out that Barbara planned none of this. It was spontaneous. Did anyone approach us after she distributed our cards? No. But what matters is to leave people with the feeling that whatever this socialism business is there are some pretty cool people involved. I first met Lin Dodge and Murray Bookchin 57 years ago and I have met and conspired with many socialists a number of whom are extraordinary. It has only been in the last five years that I’ve come to realize that my own partner, Barbara, embodied that same convivial, irresistible “let’s make a new world” that I experienced with Lin and Murray all those years ago. As the great Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti wrote, “We carry the new world in our hearts. It is growing this very minute”. Durruti would have loved Barbara.
Bringing down the house: the Fourth Wall collapses
As the set was winding down the lead singer in the band hopped off the stage and began singing and mixing with the people still on the dance floor. He came over to us and threw his arms around Barbara. That I could understand. She pulled him to her, hugged him and asked if it was ok for her to kiss him on the cheek. Then he threw his arms around me. Then it dawned on me that maybe I had been more involved than I thought. We packed up our stuff, left downtown and were home in ten minutes. It was about 8 pm and I was settling down to read. Barbara was working feverishly on her iPad.
We’re not done yet
I think to myself “what’s next?”. She tells me that she had found Slainte on Facebook and is texting with the lead singer of the band. As Goethe once said, “what you wish for in youth, you get in droves in old age.” If this is what socialism will ultimately be like, I’m sold.