Letters to a Young Activist

Letters to a Young Activist

Todd Gitlin

Language: English

Pages: 192

ISBN: 0465033067

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


"Be original. See what happens." So Todd Gitlin advises the young mind burning to take action to right the wrongs of the world but also looking for bearings, understanding, direction, and practical examples. In Letters to a Young Activist, Gitlin looks back at his eventful life, recalling his experience as president of the formidable Students for a Democratic Society in the '60s, contemplating the spirit of activism, and arriving at some principles of action to guide the passion and energy of those wishing to do good. Through a series of letters, he imparts to a new generation of radicals and activists the passion he felt as an angry young man and the wisdom he has attained as a mature political writer, teacher, and father. Gitlin considers the three complementary motives of duty, love, and adventure, reflects on the changing nature of idealism, and shows how righteous action requires realistic as well as idealistic thinking. And he looks forward to an uncertain future that is nevertheless full of possibility, a future where patriotism and intelligent skepticism are not mutually exclusive. With compassion and hard-won insight, Gitlin invites the young activist to enter imaginatively into some of the dilemmas, moral and practical, of being a modern citizen--the dilemmas that affect not only the problems of what to think but also the problems of what to love and how to live.

Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918-1948

More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (Issues of Our Time)

Three Days in May: Sex, Surveillance, and DSK

The End of Apartheid: Diary of a Revolution

The White House Staff: Inside the West Wing and Beyond

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your riod. who criticism won't is attention getting, pe- change them. They promote the actions that you want them because you wish it. Their creativity is be held accountable for the impression to will not promote just meager. So you'll left by the whole —the ensemble that comes to be considered "the event" action, the official response, the images broadcast. Factually, you share responsibility with the other Practically, you'll Two be left players. holding the bag.

serviceable emotional climate for reform. So here as in other respects, the open-ended operations of a terrorist army committed to attacks on Americans, not to mention an open-ended war on terrorists or tyrants like Sadaam Hussein, would widen the breach between Americans and the rest of the world. However cosmopolitan, you are not exempt from the circumstances of your society, and ought to acknowledge that terrorists are in the distinction-denying business, do not inspect their

the very moment when we were becoming a national political force, the legitimate power urmerved us. very thought of Leadership was supposed to rotate (except in organizations run by people of color, where authoritarianism was excused). Power was supposed to be "local" and "community-based," horizontal, not vertical. Later, feminists leaders automatically too discovered that natural met with rancor, resentment and barely disguised envy. Talent often was questioned, viewed as a

full at of interested in the possibil- victims descended from workers and others from the Amer- Ku Klux Klan, civil rights some were Mexican busboys and others, Muslims. They did not canvass 354 firefighters for their views of American bases Had they known that one young man, Mark Bingham, who apparently helped bring down the in Saudi Arabia. second hijacked jet headed for Washington, was gay, they probably would have agreed with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson that he was one

plutocracy, who risk nothing, whatever the fortunes and mis- fortunes of their companies, and whose idea of sacrifice is that somebody low wages. We in a blue collar should perform it for should be questioning whether the most complete expression of citizenship and patriotic duty 163 is Todd Gitlin to head for the mall or Disney World, as Bush advised after ing that America president says we September is rightly at are, just And we should be 1 1 We . George W.

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