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>>Jonathan Andelson '70: A great snowball has begun—
so summed up the author of the fifth and final bulletin back to the campus on the activities
of a group of Grinnell College students who, on Monday, November 13th, 1961, had temporarily
set aside academics to travel to the nation’s capital.
Their purpose was to demonstrate in support of President Kennedy’s stated position at
that time not to engage in further nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
In effect, they were protesting the arms race and affirming peace.
For three days, they picketed and they fasted, taking only water.
And, meanwhile, back on campus, many students, as well as faculty members, expressed their
support through a shorter fast of their own. News media picked up the event, and it became
a rather big deal, leading three months later months later to a massive march on Washington
to protest nuclear testing in the atmosphere. Subsequently, a New York Times story stated
unequivocally, “The march had its origins at Grinnell.”
This morning, as the final part of the 2014 Alumni College Curriculum on Revolution, we
will hear from four alumni who took part in that trip nearly 53 years ago; and in a moment
I will ask them to introduce themselves. In the audience today are also some other
members of the Grinnell 14, and the panelists have asked me to ask them to please stand
up, and Paige will come around with the microphone; and please stand and introduce yourselves.
>>Doug Kaplan: I think we can probably speak loudly enough not to need the mic. I’m Doug
Kaplan. [inaudible]
[applause] >> Jonathan: Is Lorna Caulkins here?
Oh, that’s too bad. I was told she might come.
Lorna is the recently retired head librarian of our public library in Grinnell and also
the wife of Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Doug Caulkins.
And she was a member of the group from Carlton College that came shortly after the Grinnellians
to Washington. Several other colleges also sent delegations
after the Grinnell group—Bluffton, Overland, Antioch and Cornell Colleges, Syracuse University,
Cornell University, University of Chicago, among others—all part of the great snowball.
Would our panelists please briefly introduce themselves, including where you live now and
occupations you’ve had? Peter, go ahead.
>>Peter Coyote: We were worried when this event was set at 8 o’clock or 8:30 that
no one would come. [inaudible]
>>Peter: Thanks a lot. But we showed up. >>Unknown: Yes.
>>Peter: My name’s Peter Coyote. I’m a little embarrassed to be sitting here, because
in terms of the trip I feel like my biggest contribution was being the mechanic—one
of the two mechanics of the two old cars—but something I’m really proud of. And I would
like to say for the record, it should actually have been called “The Grinnell 16,” because
Ken Schiff and Phil Brown were left back here on campus doing a yeoman’s work, orchestrating
calls from other colleges that wanted to join us and realizing that they could be a clearinghouse.
And there probably wouldn’t have been this 25,000-march later if they had not created
this clearinghouse. So I live in Mill Valley, Northern California,
and I make my living as an actor. I describe myself as a writer who makes his living as
an actor. And I’m a dad—I have two kids and one grandchild. And my best day is today,
so I’m happy to be here. >>Sally Singer-Horwatt-Brodsky: I’m name
is Sally. My name was Sally Singer back in the day. It’s changed a couple times to
Sally Singer-Horwatt-Brodsky. And I am a clinical psychologist, doctoral level, with a post-doctoral
Master’s of Science in psychopharmacology. I have had a private practice. I’ve been
the admitting psychologist in the largest mental hospital at the time in the country,
St. Elisabeths, in Washington, DC. So I’ve had the honor of working with some very sick
people and watching them improve. Michael and I have two daughters and four grandchildren,
and I live in Rustin, and I think that’s… Right now I’m retired, but I do a lot of
other unremunerated work, including this is my last year on the governing body of the
American Psychological Association. >> Peter: Somebody put you next to me.
>>Sally: Yeah [inaudible]. >>Michael Horwatt: Good morning. I’m Michael
Horwatt. We were once related. We’re still close but not intimate. Can’t have everything.
>> Sally:[inaudible] understand the problem. >>Michael: It was, it was beyond our wildest
dreams that we would end up the way that we did on this trip. I’m, I also live in Rustin.
I am a practicing attorney, and June 6th will be 48 years, and I’m still going, I wouldn’t
say strong, so… >>Terry Bisson: My name is Terry Bisson. I’m
a writer. I live in California. And, like Peter, I was kind of not one of the organizers
of the trip, but it was, I was a freshman, and here we are.
>>Jonathan: Okay, thank you very much. We want this to be more a conversation than a
series of presentations, but it did seem useful to those of us planning this panel to ask
the panelists to somewhat set the stage, particularly for the benefit of people who were not on
campus at the time who are in the audience. And, after I pose a few questions to help
them do that, we’ll open it up for general questions and comments from the audience.
And I’d like to ask Sally to begin by telling us something about what life at the college
was like in 1961. What was on students’ minds? What were they paying attention to?
What were they listening to? >>Unknown: [inaudible]
>>Sally: Yeah, yeah. >>Jonathan: Yeah, okay. That hasn’t changed.
>>Sally: No. >> Jonathan: What were typical activities
apart from reading, whatever you think you’d like to…[inaudible].
>>Sally: Okay. I will go back even a little further. We are not, Michael and I are not
Baby Boomers. We are the old generation. And that time in high school was the Eisenhower
years, characterized by a lot of conformity, doing the right thing, studying hard, getting
into college. Lucy and Desi slept in separate beds on television. It was a very… The country
was getting back on its feet after the wars. They were scared to death of Communists. Ah,
it was either Better red than dead, or Better dead than red, and you took sides—there
was no middle ground. So when we got to Grinnell, actually, one
of the first things our class did was overthrow the student government.
>>Peter: We know which side you were on. >>Sally: Yeah, and we, we instituted instead
one of the most complex systems of government—even out does Israel. About three quarters of the
student body were officers. But we all went to college, you know, studied hard, and so
forth. And we paid attention in school. And then one day a man who’s not here… And,
by the way, I am not part of the 14. I worked hard in the background, but I did not go.
My father would have come out of his tree, and he… That was not something, quote, I
was allowed to do, but… And he was paying the bills. So Michael Montross, who’s not
here, came to Michael Horwatt. Oh, one more thing—we went to see movies
at the Strand, and one of the movies was “On the Beach,” and it was about a nuclear holocaust.
And when you come home from the Strand in those days—maybe it’s still true—it’s
dark and quiet. It’s Grinnell. It’s lovely. But after a movie on the nuclear holocaust,
it was terrifying; it was horrible. And so that was our background of abject fear of
anything nuclear, almost to an incredibly silly degree.
But, so Michael Montross came to Michael Horwatt and said, “You know, I’m gonna starve
myself on the White House lawn, because President Kennedy is thinking of resuming testing in
the atmosphere. The Russians have done so.” The way I heard about this is that I went
to Park Street to meet Michael to go to dinner, and in the living room was all of Michael’s
suitcases, his books, everything—he’s packing up to go to New Zealand. And he had
all these white bags of laundry that, I guess, they delivered in those days. And I go there,
and I say, “What are you doing?” And he’s going to get away because this is going to
be the ruination. And I said, did what every liberated woman does in that case—I sat
down and started to cry. And I didn’t say, “You’re leaving me?” You know, I didn’t
say that—it didn’t actually occur to me. I said, “You’re going without an education?”
That was like sitting down on public toilet seats.
In the meantime…, and this, I still think of this as an example of kindness. The laundry
man comes in and sees Michael’s books and everything packing to leave, sees me crying.
And I believe he thought I was pregnant, [Laughter]
because he put his arm around me, and he said, “Don’t worry, honey. It’s gonna be okay.”
[Laughter] And it wasn’t until much later that I laugh.
That kindness was so touching. In any case, Michael went… I sent him to
go talk to Paul Smith, who was our political science professor. And Paul said, “You can’t
run away. You have to stay and fight.” And I believe that was the beginning of people—Michael
Montross, Michael Horwatt, the… We used to call them in my year the beatniks if they
wore beards, but now they were hippies. And they came, and we said, “We, we want to
do something.” And one of the things I think I had a little
influence on was, I said, “You can’t go around with beards.” So the beatniks shaved
off their beards. I helped some of the women—Greenwald; I can’t remember her first name.
>>Michael: Ruthie. >>Sally: Ruthie helped some of the women do
the Jackie Kennedy bouffant to make themselves look as mainstream as possible and to heighten
the fact—because we were trying to convince people, not alienate them—to heighten the
fact that we were supporting our President’s reluctance. I don’t know that he thought
he was that reluctant. But we were supporting the President’s reluctance to resume testing,
and we were condemning the Soviet Union. And from there I think the rest can speak about
how it was organized. But to me that was the main thing. The idea was—We’re not different;
we’re regular Americans. The newspapers posed it that way; they even said he was a
regular American. So, next. >>Jonathan: Okay, thanks. Anybody else like
to keep the ball rolling? >>Michael: When... I was actually, I had a
very conservative reaction in comparison to Mike Montross. I was only going to New Zealand.
He was going to chain himself to the White House fence on the lawn and starve himself
to death. And I think it was Sally that engineered our going to dinner at Paul Smith’s. She
told him that we were… >>Sally: Going crazy.
>>Michael: Going off the deep end. I can see that now.
And, you know, basically, he said,
“You can run, but you can’t hide.” And it was the result of that, just conversation,
that we decided we needed to do something constructive. And for about two to three weeks
we met at Park Street. Peter and I were housemates. I think, Jack, you were in there. Ken Schiff
was there. _____, I think you were in that. And I had great support from my father. I
called him and told him that we were going to go march in Washington. And my father was
from the South, Southern Lithuania; we lived in Virginia. And he said, “You’re gonna
miss classes?” I didn’t tell him I was missing classes already. He said, “Who the
hell do you think you are—Don Quixote?” But we persevered, and this group… The campus
was, was fairly conservative. It was fairly mainstream, and we focused on not only what
we were going to say but how we were going to say it. And the focus was on the audience
and how do we reach that audience. And I proposed that we go to the college press office and
tell them that we were going. And we weren’t there to ask for permission, but they could
either make it easier for the college or harder for the college by paving the way, by helping
define us before we started. And at the time, Peter Hackes of NBC was a
very prominent alumnus, and he helped open the door. The Des Moines Register ran a number
of stories before we left. It got picked up by a lot of newspapers. We agreed that we
needed to remove the obstacles that kept people’s ears closed, and so that’s why we dressed
as we did. We collaborated. I would say that almost everything was by a consensus. We had
people that were in favor of immediate surrender. We had people… (I’m being facetious.)
we had people that were at all points along the continuum.
And we worked out a position that was very similar to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that
was adopted. And President Kennedy gave a very important speech at American University,
and that’s what led to the treaty banning atmospheric testing. Tom Hayden, who was one
of Jane Fonda’s husbands, gave a talk on the history of the Peace Movement at Yale
and said that our effort was the first and the beginning of the anti-nuclear Peace Movement
in the modern age—120 schools followed us. And President Kennedy was on a plane, and
he had just confronted the radical right, not too different from the one that we have
called the Tea Party and (maybe worse), but he wanted to encourage the kind of dissent
that he read about in the paper. And so he told McGeorge Bundy, who was then the National
Security Advisor, to invite us into the White House. We were told that that was the first
in modern times that that had happened. And McGeorge Bundy tried to corrupt us immediately
by offering us orange juice—and I think you, Peter, were the one that told him that
we weren’t going to do that. I’ll stop here.
>>Peter: That was also a consensus decision. So a couple years ago, or maybe last year,
Terry and I were collaborating on a piece for the alumni magazine about this. And, when
we were doing the research, I was not really aware of how skillful Michael actually was
and how politically sophisticated. Terry and I were kind of taking care of the cars, and
we were all part of these meetings in which these positions were hammered out but actually
was Michael and, I think, Jack that went to the student senate and got…
>>Sally: Bayard Katrin. >>Peter: Oh, good—thank you. Anyway, there
was a lot of political sophistication that went into shaping the message, shaping the
image of the messenger, that was way ahead of the curve. It was Michael that knew who
Sam Rayburn was. When we got to Washington, he had died, and Washington was emptied out.
And so Michael said, “We need to have a press conference.” And one of the two people
who showed up for our press conference representing AP or UP was Helen Thomas, who turned out
to be the Dorian of news reporters, and she gave us a big story.
So when we actually went into the White House, Michael was really the spokesman. And I was
not kidding—I was kind of the mechanic. But for some reason, when we got in the room
with McGeorge Bundy, he tapped me to make a statement. And it’s true that McGeorge
Bundy offered us orange juice, and we hadn’t had a chance to confer; we hadn’t had a
chance to do anything. And I don’t know, we just sat there for a minute and just sat
there. And at a certain point, I just felt—I don’t even know if I was the first to speak—but
whoever spoke correctly assessed the group Ethos. And we thought—No, thank you; we’re
doing this fast. And he was not a guy that was used to hearing, “No.” So he immediately
said, “Well, you know, Gandhi, drank fruit juice.”
>>Sally: We answer to a higher authority. >>Peter: Yeah. And we just sat there again,
and the feeling was—No—and whether it was me or whether it was someone else. And
I said, I mention that only because it was, it was kind of astounding. It’s not like
in the sixties we had a lot of interpersonal skills for communication and we had learned
about nonviolent speech and being careful with one another. And were just a bunch of
kids in the spotlight—and it was a serious spotlight.
And for me, what I got out of it was—I came to Washington thinking, straight out of high
school civics class, and I thought we had information from the hinterlands that we were
going to deliver to our representatives to help them govern more wisely and more justly.
Yeah, I mean, that’s what… >>Sally: [inaudible] it could only happen.
>>Peter: That’s what I believed. And I was in the front row, and I was about this far
from McGeorge Bundy. And I looked at him, and I thought—Holy ***. We are a problem
to be solved for this man. He does not care about 14 students walking around with signs.
He’s solving a problem for his president and his administration. He has a course charted
out. And I realized that the only way I, we were ever going to get this guy’s attention
was going to come back with an army. And in my thinking, and what took my life into the
counterculture was I thought that that would be the Army. And so that seemed to me—that
growing movement of the other 23 colleges and the thousands of people who joined us—that
seemed like the beginning of a mass movement that was worth putting energy and attention
in, to represent the feelings of all of us and damn well insist that we be heard.
And really I’d rather let other people speak, but that was a [inaudible] a lesson for me.
I said, “I’m never walking around a street again with a sign,” ‘cause I, I looked
into his eyes, and I… My dad was a pirate. I knew just what, who he was. And I thought,
okay, I’m going to have to adjust my take. But the fact that we did it so skillfully
and we had such able leadership and such… Even one of the articles that hit the paper
inspired an executive in Des Moines, an executive of a big insurance company. He gave us a brand-new
car to go to Washington. We had an old ‘48 Chevy and a ‘49 Ford that we raised the
money to buy. He gave us a brand-new car and three walkie-talkies. Yeah, those kind of
things happened. >>Jonathan: Terry, like to say anything?
>>Terry: Well, I don’t want to add much—just to say that you talked about the snowball
of all the other colleges going. But there was a… I don’t know about the snowball
image, but it was also in the context of a larger, building opposition—nine years later
was Kent State. They don’t [inaudible]. They didn’t get invited to the White House.
And so things were changing at an accelerated rate. There, we were part… Anyway, that’s
what I wanted to say. >>Sally: Could I add one more…
>>Jonathan: Sure. [inaudible] >>Sally: Just one more piece to that. Peter
mentioned going to the student senate. At the time we were, as I said, really an essentially
conservative, nice-guy campus. Nobody thought that the national defense policy was the specific
preserve of the Grinnell College Student Senate. But when Michael and Bayard Katrin, who is
not here, went before that body and in just five minutes each talked about why this was
important, it was like—of course, if I can get Radioactive Kishkas and you can get your
arms blown off in the war, we have something to say—and we will say it and say it and
say it until you hear it. And the student senate caught that and so passed a resolution
that the whole campus was doing a three-day sympathy fast. And Saga Bob got with the program.
I don’t know if you know Saga Bob. Okay, so it’s in the way you talk to an audience
that creates the power that makes people like Mr. McGeorge Bundy have to pay attention.
>>Jonathan: Could you say a little more about the attitude of the administration and the
faculty to your effort? >>Michael: It was amazing that the faculty,
by and large, irrespective of their political persuasion, were supportive of what we were
doing because of the way we were doing it. And, you know, we could have been bounced
out for missing classes; we could have bounced out, have been bounced out because we missed
exams—and that didn’t happen. There were very conservative students who were supportive
of what we did, not because they agreed with us but because of the fact that we were acting
responsibly. And I think that the composition of the people that were going were a cross-section
of the campus in many ways. And those people that were going helped amalgamate a consensus.
And the administration, really, it wasn’t hostile, and I think it…, we would not have
gotten the support we got from the press office if it had not been okay with the administration.
And I think the faculty senate was very supportive but not in an official way.
And I’ll never forget Sam Baron, who many of you probably had for history, who said
to me, “I wish I could be young enough to be as certain as you are.” Today I understand
that. >>Jonathan: The invitation to visit the White
House might have been the high watermark of your time in Washington, but what else went
on? How, how would you describe your days there?
>>Peter: Well, I’ll start. One of the really major commitments that people made was not
to do anything that undermined our credibility, you know, any departure—somebody getting…,
smoking dope. >>Peter: Getting drunk.
>>Peter: Thank you. I mean, everybody understood that there was a bigger cause and that, in
order to keep our credibility, we had to stick to the commitment. And so each morning we
were out picketing. We went to the Soviet Embassy. And I handed a petition to—I think
he was the custodian of the embassy—and talked about, you know, that we were protesting
the Soviet Union’s resumption of testing. And, of course, by doing that… I mean, we
were obviously sincere about that, but it also put us on the side of being patriots.
We were taking… Everything we were doing was supportive of our government, even as
we were seeking to change it. And that encounter was caught in a photograph that went throughout
the nation—and I think that was another factor.
And then one other thing I would mention is that I was interviewed by Peter Hackes—and,
Sally, you might want to talk about that. >>Sally: It was really… What is it called?
Monitor. It was like the NPR of today. It was the new station that you listen to. And
I turned it on, and I heard Michael’s voice, “Well…,” and he explained just this,
and I got goose pimples. It was really exciting. I don’t know what else there was, but I
think it just gave more street cred to, to the movement and, and the whole student movement.
>>Peter: Let me just say just one more thing. One of the things that I think was new, not
like we invented it, but if you just put yourself in a place of young people—we’re off to
college, most of us for the first time, and starting from an idea or a strong feeling
you had—we invented this way of getting together and having discussions. And underneath
it all was a kind of hopefulness, a kind of feeling that we counted, we could be empowered
and that, if we did it right, it would work. And that feeling actually carried all the
way through the counterculture, and it’s now kind of embedded in the majority culture—not
that it doesn’t have a shadow side, because you can have a lot of nutbag groups getting
together and having discussions working contrary to the national good, perhaps.
But that was what was stunning to me, was the power of translating a feeling into ideas
and into group activity and then everybody putting their small self aside and agreeing—yeah,
well, I would like to call for a Communist revolution, but I won’t; it’s not going
to serve the group, or, you know, I would like to call for something else.
And the other, the thing that I left out in my introduction is I am a Zen Buddhist priest.
And it’s something that I see in intentional communities where people go into church groups
or any kind of intentional group. It gives a frame for setting aside, putting your ego
on a long leash and being able to look at things kind of objectively and cooperatively
because there’s something far more important. And this was my first experience of really
doing that and having to grab my oversized and unruly personality and jerk its chain
and say, “Wait a minute—there’s something more important here.” And I’ve never gotten
over that. That was a real high-water mark of my education.
>> Jonathan: If I’m not mistaken, the group was in touch with groups at other institutions
that you were trying to coordinate an effort. Could you say something more about that?
>>Peter: One of the debates we had in terms of the timing of the trip was—Should we
wait until other schools had in effect signed on, so that there would be a continuous stream
of other schools that were coming? And it was clear that the logistics and the stage
of deliberations in these other schools was much too tentative, and we decided we were
going; and if others came, fine, if they didn’t, fine, but we were going.
>>Jonathan: Terry. >>Terry: People are talking a lot about how
we made a conscious decision to be responsible rather than irresponsible. I can’t imagine
what irresponsible would have been. I can’t imagine what choices we had that we rejected.
And also, fasting is radical—it’s not a petition. Going a thousand miles is radical;
not going to class is radical. And when we went to the Soviet Embassy, to me that wasn’t
patriotic—that was being internationalist. It was saying that the U.S. and the Soviet
Union were equally… So I think… I don’t think it was… Well, that’s what I’d
say. >>Sally: I would like to add to that a little
and maybe challenge it a bit. There are two examples that I can think of that are different.
One is the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which, as much as I sympathize with individuals,
it just annoyed the hell out of me. And then there was in Israel in 2011 another
movement, and it was very effective. It unite… I mean, Israel government—nobody can agree
with anybody about anything, and it’s a mess. But there was a man that was credited.
His name was Yitzhak Shmuel and he was in the United States at the time that he found
out that a woman named Daphne Leef was pitching a tent on Rothschild Avenue. And she wanted
to make the rent—she was protesting the increase in rents. And she said, “We want
to live in Israel.” And Yitzhak Shmuel came back to Israel, and he became the responsible
adult of that movement. And he had leadership skills, and he had communication skills. And
because of the way that he helped her frame that—I’ve got the number here, ‘cause
I find it hard to believe—300,000 Israelis picketed for a change in the rents. You don’t
get that kind of consensus, you know, in the streets. It was effective. The Occupy Wall
Street was not effective. And, again, there was a leader who didn’t
present himself as the one right way. He presented, he touched all the Hassidim; he touched all
the different subgroups and brought them in. It’s what now Ralph Nader and Grover Norquist
are starting to do with each other. They’re talking about the ways in which they agree.
Up until now, the Democrats are presenting themselves as the moral group and the others
are the selfish group. But there are ways that you can cast economic solutions in a
very practical, enlightened, self-interest way; and that, hopefully, is starting to happen
in this country. So, yes, they took radical action, but they
did it—the Grinnell 14—but they did it responsibly and with an eye to reaching people
and not just, as Peter said, not just demonstrating ego.
>>Michael: You know, I think, Terry, that your points are well taken, in that this was unusual
at the time. And I also agree with you that it was not just a political gesture to go
to the Soviet Union. But I think that, again, consciousness about getting your message heard
is the challenge of our time. I mean, if you look at income equality, if you look at climate
change, the problem is not in a repertoire of solutions; the problem is in getting a
political consensus to implement them. And we are at a point where there is such
a cleavage in thinking that people have a sense of reality that is totally at war with
others that disagree with them. And I think Ralph Nader and Norquist started out… They
finally agreed about what time it was, and then they moved on. But that’s important—anything
like that is important. And, when you’re angry and you’re feeling self-righteous
and you’re feeling—how could they be so stupid?—you are sure to do nothing.
And the challenge of our time is not technological and scientific. It’s how do we get to talk
to each other and understand each other and find a way that we can work together? It’s
very easy to be against coal, as long as you’re not a coal miner, as long as you aren’t
an owner of a coal mine, as long as you don’t depend for your livelihood on that. And finding
creative ways to take a policy that falls unevenly on people… Some people gain from
a policy, some lose from a policy, and some aren’t affected from a policy. And today
that’s as sharp as it’s ever been in the climate change area. And finding a way to
do that… I think the lessons of Grinnell 14, for the people that are in school now
and for us in our lives today is really applicable to any kind of change that’s going to occur,
because, as Peter said… And, incidentally, I recommend Peter’s book. It’s about the
counterculture, and it’s called Sleeping Where I Lie.
>>Peter: Where I Fall. >>Sally: Where I Fall.
>>Peter: Where I Fall. >>Peter: It’s close. Don’t be so picky
[inaudible]. >>Peter: Although it would have been redundant,
now that I think of it. And, but it’s about the counterculture and the problems of trying
to change things. And I think that is where all of us, you know, can gain. And I think
Terry discredits himself, because it took a lot of willingness not to be authentic in
the way that some people felt in being what they would not normally be, for a larger cause.
>>Peter: You know, it’s interesting that you were talking about dealing with people
that are going to be losers in policy. When Terry and I were talking the other day…
I’ve been working on a TED speech about this, and they’ve asked me to speak sometime
here this weekend, and that’s what I want to talk about is… And the Grinnell 14 is
a perfect kind of paradigm. I’ve been trying to kind of find the political practicality
in Buddhist practice; because, if you can’t put the practice to work, if it’s not efficacious
on the thorniest problems, maybe it just should be a hobby.
And so one of the things that you get out of the Buddhist understanding is that the
entire universe is one, interdependent system… That’s one half of the equation, and the
other half of the equation is, every person, every grain of sand, every blade of grass
is unique. And the problem is, language only lets us talk about one half or the other half
at the same time, and we tend to forget about it. So, once you kind of remember that it’s
all connected, if a country changes its policies, the first thing you have to do is take care
of the people that are going be the losers. Because the people that have been harvesting
timber or grazing cattle on public land or mining oil or pursuing wealth in certain kinds
of ways that were legal but are now considered against the public interest, they shouldn’t
be held responsible for that change. And they need to be protected; and, if they’re not,
there will never be a political way out of the solution.
And what we see today is a country that’s kind of divided by no one wanting to have
their ox gored, and the people who are on the side of what they consider self-righteousness
are not taking care of their opponents as if they were part of the same system. And,
when I look back at the Grinnell 14, somehow, even as very young people, we managed to do
that. We don’t know how we did it. It’s just maybe mutual affection or maybe, you
know, a commonality of point of view. But it stayed important to me, and the older I’ve
gotten, the more important it’s become. And so I think that’s what I’m going to
try to talk about. >>Peter: [inaudible]
>>Jonathan: I’m sure we’ll have opportunity to come back to the broader implications.
I’d like to ask one final detail question, and that is, what it was like to come back
to campus, how you were received by the college, and what was going through your own minds
at that time. >>Michael: You know, it was the lesson that
I did not want to learn. It was crushing, and I was depressed for a while about it.
As long as we were all wearing the same hat…, as long as we were all sharing the same goal—and
I don’t mean just the 14, I mean the campus—there was a cohesion and a feeling of goodwill.
My hope was that we would create a peace institute at Grinnell, that we would institutionalize
this, and that we would be looking at conflict resolution and the like. And everybody went
back to business as usual. There was no rejection or repudiation. I mean, people were very complimentary
and all of that. But being able to sustain change is just extraordinarily hard.
>>Sally: A marathon. That’s what… It’s actually said, when the grants were lowered
and the people went away, there’s still more work to do. But this is a marathon—it’s
something you have to keep doing all your life, and that’s hard.
>>Peter: I was a victim of our success. We came back and suddenly the in loco parentis rules
of Grinnell seemed folly. I mean, we couldn’t have a girl in the room, we couldn’t have
a beer. I had moved off campus in sophomore year. I was just intolerable. And so Michael
and I were talking, and I had such respect for Michael’s political acumen. And there
was a campaign going along for Council of House Presidents, and none of the issues were
being addressed. And Michael convinced me that we could run a dark horse candidate with
no intention to win, but we were going to raise the issues and force the other candidates
to challenge the college about enforcing state law and enforcing *** morality.
And, god, ten minutes of listening to him, I stepped up. And the only part where he was
wrong… We succeeded entirely by following his advice. The only thing that he left out
was we won. And by winning, I had to give up my apartment and move back on campus.
>>Sally: Yup. >>Jonathan: Terry, anything you’d like to
add about coming back to campus? >>Terry: No, I just, not really.
>>Jonathan: Okay, that’s fine. At this point let’s open it up to the audience for questions.
Paige, are you there with a microphone or…? Okay, somebody’s there with a microphone.
So if you’d like to make a comment or ask a question, we will get the microphone to
you and everybody can hear.
>>Audience: Obviously, it was very impressive,
what you did as such a small group. But my question is… And to be very frank with you,
I don’t remember that part of my years on campus. I don’t know what I was doing, but
it was obviously a very significant thing that was taking place. So my question is—Why
were you only 14? Why were you not 140? What kind of effort did you make to get other people
on campus involved? >>Terry: Well, you don’t want to drag 140
people to DC. [inaudible]
>>Terry: No. You know, I really think we’re forgetting that this was not a petition drive,
it was not a vote. It was a radical action. >>Sally: Right.
>>Peter: It was not a polite action, and it was a little bit scary. And I think it was
found that it was a small… It was never intended to be a whole bunch of people. It
was not a mass action. It was a little… It was a leverage action. And so I don’t
think there was ever an intention to get, to organize a bunch of people.
>>Sally: It was that, and we took names. We sat and we took names to get people to support
us, and I don’t know where that list went. But a lot of people signed the petition, and
the student government supported us, but everyone wasn’t packing off to go to Washington.
>>Peter: Well, tell what some of the people said to you when… People said, “Who are
you to represent our school? >>Sally: Yeah, oh, yeah. Well, I represent
our school. I just did.
[pause]
>>Audience: (I think I can say it loud enough.) How did it end in Washington?
>>Sally: At his mother’s house. [Laughter]
>>Audience: Did another school come before you left, or did you just kind of go away
After three days?
>>Peter: Ken, do you remember how you worked the brokering system? I think they came after we left.
[inaudible] >>Ken: I don’t even remember how this sentence began. [Laughter]
>>Sally: I like you. He doesn’t remember how his sentence began. Why don't you ask it again?
>>Peter: Well, Ken doesn't remember, but
he and Phil Brown did a great job, and they created a kind of calendar, and Larry Smucker
started it. I think he had a relative or a friend at Beloit, and this was before social
networking and Facebook. We just started calling friends, and friends started calling friends.
And the two people who stayed at Grinnell served as the nucleus of this hub, and they
kind of arranged for people to follow us, and they did.
>>Peter: There was a bulletin. >>Michael: I didn’t even know about that until
Paige sent ... a student unearthed a bulletin. There were six of them that gave progress reports
about what was happening. >>Peter: I think Larry wrote those.
>>Peter: Larry wrote them, but I don’t know how they got…
>>Sally: I don’t either, because he was there.
>>Peter: I don’t either. I never saw them until last week.
>>Peter: I didn’t either until… >>Sally: They made it up.
>>Peter: But in answer to your question—As you might imagine, the thing that was most
on our mind as this ended… >>Sally: Was dinner.
>>Peter: Was eating, even before any other drives. And we went to my mother’s house,
and she made the best hamburgers. I can still remember that, and I can’t… I look in
the mirror, and I’m trying to remember who the hell I’m looking at. But I remember
the hamburgers. >>Peter: Well, when we were fasting—there’s
some debate as to who they were, but Jackie thought they were young Republicans, and somebody
else thought they were the John Birch Society—there was a crew of kind of rightwing people who
were gorging on fried chicken while we were circulating in front of the White House, just
stuffing their faces with fried chicken. >>Sally: They’ve all died of heart attack
since then. >>Peter: Terry said that there was a school—and
I vaguely remember that now—that, just as we were leaving [inaudible]… We stayed at
a Quaker house. >>Peter: Aptly named as “Gaunt House.”
>>Michael: I’ve forgotten. And the Deputy National Security Advisor was Mark Raskin,
who became a major progressive force in the country.
>>Peter: Went to jail, actually. >>Michael: Did he?
>>Peter: Yeah, he went to jail for draft resistance, but he was McGeorge Bundy’s top assistant.
>>Michael: Yeah, which goes to show. And he came, and he’s the one that… He was really
excited because he was one of the major advocates within the administration for banning nuclear
testing. And he’s the one that told us about what happened on the plane and told us about
being invited into the White House. But that was at this Quaker house. And, as we were
leaving to go back to Grinnell, and to eat, a school did come in. I can’t remember which one.
>>Terry: I thought it was Earlham, but may,
you know, I can’t remember [inaudible]. >>Jonathan: The reports that were coming in
mentioned Bluffton as one of the very early following schools, Bluffton College. Other
questions out there? >>Sally: Bluffton. >>Michael: Oh, Bluffton, okay.
>>Peter: Buddy, and there’s someone here too.
>>Audience: Let me just stand up, because my knee is better if I stand up. So I’m
Ann Brenneman Anderson, and I spent 22 years in Psychologists for Social Responsibility’s
coordinator role, and I’ve been in Washington, DC, since 1964. So I want to underscore the
exquisite political acumen that you guys displayed. I can’t… I’ve lost track of how many
times I have stood in front of the White House or marched on the mall about anything—you
name it, I’ve marched. And the critical piece here is about thinking about your audience.
And I think you all did a fabulous job. And the point of supporting the White House in
trying to do something that you wanted them to do is like the… That was where you cut
through the mass and were able to make that happen. So thank you.
>>Audience: One of the things that I think we all noticed at the beginning was this sense
of, you know, we need to do something. There’s some pressure. We don’t quite know what
to do. We haven’t planned things. There’s a great deal of passion. And I’m curious
if, in your discussions, as you looked to the moved [sic] or going to Washington and
do this protest, you looked back at other historical events or individuals in various
protest movements. I mean, there had been labor movements in the early 20th century,
there’s the labor organizing, Saul Alinsky, who talked, evolved a lot about that, there
was civil rights protests. Was this consciously on your mind or any of these discussions,
or essentially was this a really fortuitous… Well, slash, fortuitous is probably not the
right word, but your sense of things came together without this careful, or, say, without
this look at history or reaching back in any of these areas.
>>Michael: That might have been a very good thing to do, but we didn’t think of it. [laughter]
What we did do was we did a tremendous amount of reading on the trip, forming our statement.
And we got it down to one page, and there were a lot of people that contributed to that.
And we had a tape recorder in the car that Peter was talking about from this insurance
company executive, and we played tapes of speeches that were going. I think, Jack, you
had a lot to do with that. >>Audience: I just remember those names—William
____. >>Sally: Yes.
>>Peter: That’s my job, to [inaudible]. >>Peter: Somebody had to.
>>Sally: You’re not dementing yet. >>Peter: But in any event, listening to different
positions and reading different positions and talking about those—we did a great deal of that.
[pause]
>>Audience: (Is it on?) I’m Jack Spence,class of ‘64. I would… Terry mentioned Kent State, and I would be curious to know.
We’ve sort of jumped from then to now. I would be curious to know, for the four of
you and also for Professor Andelson, where you were in your thinking about the event
that we’re now describing, when Kent State came along. It struck me that your comments
are sort of, on the one hand we were trying to express what we had in common with the
President’s policy, and on the other hand there were certain moments—I recall Peter’s
McGeorge Bundy moment—where the answer is no. So I’d be curious to know what you were
thinking about that trip to Washington around the time that Kent State happened. And the
reason I’m asking you is because I think, if I’m not mistaken, you were a student
here at that point. And if you could say something about what the campus was like at that point
where I think it was probably fairly easy to get a hundred people to go to Washington.
And I also know you’re a student of Intentional Community, so you might comment on that.
>>Jonathan: Jack, what year was Kent State? >>Jack: ’70, 1970.
>>Jonathan: Oh, okay, so I know exactly what I was doing.
>>Sally: I was having babies. >>Peter: So by 19… I also want to say
that the same month as Kent State, there were either 21 or 24 black students murdered at
a college in the South at the same time, that doesn’t get a lot of play.
>>Unknown: Jackson State. >>Jonathan: What?
>>Unknown: I think it was Jackson State. >>Jonathan: Yeah, Jackson State. Thanks very much.
Anyway, so by 1970 I had been through the peak of the “Hate Ashbury,” and we were
living in intentional communities and working out alternate economies. And the thinking
was a little naïve, and in retrospect a mistake, that the idea of a counterculture kind of
condemns you to marginality—because it moves you out of the mainstream and you develop
your own style, which is in very many cases at cross-currents with other people. There
were a lot of people who thought politically and economically like I did, but they didn’t
want their kids around our feral children and our *** practices and drug use.
But I was not surprised. You know, in the same way that I look at the fracking controversy
today and I think—Wow, well, America is finally being treated the way we’ve treated
the Third World all these years. So when the guns were turned on our own students, I thought,
yes, it’s really coming home. And from that, I think there was a big shift that a lot of
students realized you couldn’t go against the American political and military power
with force. And I think that’s what gave the early, initial impetus to the environmental
movement, and in my case cultural movements, that people were looking at the problem from
other ways. You know, maybe the weathermen were a little more old-fashioned, confrontational—we’re
going to blow up buildings to take moral positions—with which I’m in agreement. I wasn’t in agreement
with their strategy, because I didn’t think you could confront this machine with violence.
But I remember Kent State as a pivotal moment, and from there the environmental movement
kind of multiplied, logarithmically. And I think it had something to do with that revelation
that—“We’re warning you, we’re apt to shoot you if you push this thing too far.
If you get in the way of McGeorge Bundy’s plans (or whoever the figure in power was
then), we might just shoot you.” >>Sally: It seems to me—and the historians
in the crowd can correct me—but when I think back on all revolutions that I studied, which
was the French and the American, it was actually the middle class that advocated for revolution;
it wasn’t the poor who were just struggling to eat. And I have the feeling that the way
things are going economically in this country with people having a harder and harder time
just making a living, people with advanced degrees, people who are, you know, they call
them “the working poor,” that were headed towards something big now.
And my hope is that we can do it, and there are so many things that need to be done. You
know, if you read Piketty’s book, if you read Michael Lewis’ book about the stock
market, if you read…, you know, with fracking and what we need to do with the environment,
all of these things, my hope is that each of these movements develops their own responsible
adult who knows how to organize, who knows how to work, who can create a simple message
that draws people in and doesn’t just get themselves killed but actually works to effect
change. Because otherwise it’s just not going to happen, and it has to happen with
taking into account that we, our own enlightened self-interest is to keep everybody in the
circle and to… That’s all. >>Terry: … we respond to a question or…?
>>Unknown: [inaudible] >>Terry: Well, let me say, you know, we all
have our different views of this and why we took part. I took part not because it was
responsible but because it was radical. To me, fasting and going to Washington was a
radical thing, and I didn’t… We talk about Tom Hayden sort of, you know, sanctified us
as the beginning of the student movement. He wasn’t just Jane Fonda’s husband. He
was the founder of SDS. And I thought that the idea of supporting the government to me
was a tactical question, and at times it’s a good thing. But I also supported when people
started burning draft cards. >>Sally: Yes.
>>Terry: I supported it when they started carrying Vietcong flags, I supported… So
to me what was neat about the Grinnell 14 and everything we did was not that it was
different than what came later, but to me it’s a peace with a growing radicalism.
And there’s a time to bring people together, and there’s a time to split them apart.
And I didn’t see those as coming, as different things to me. So that’s how I saw the Washington
trip. >>Michael: I think that’s a very important
point. There isn’t a one… >>Sally: Size fits all.
>>Michael: …one size fits all. And I think that’s very right. And you just hope you
get the right size at the right time, and I think that it really is a critical point
that we could have overlooked. But what I wanted to say was—Peter, when you talked
about the fact that you looked into the eyes of George Bundy and saw that he had an agenda
and that we weren’t on it and that we had to try to persuade that, as much as he might
not have wanted to… Talking about a personality conflict—I did not like that guy one bit,
but he… >>Unknown: [inaudible]
>>Peter: Thank you. In a refined way, you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but he
was 24-karat *** part. But the change that’s going to come is going to have to come from
the grassroots. It’s not going to come from the top. There are people on the top that
want the change, but it’s going to have to come from us.
>>Peter: Well, you know, it’s funny. I certainly would never. Well, actually, why don’t you
give Jack the microphone? He’s been trying to speak.
>>Jack: No. One thing I’d like to correct on the historical record—When Michael Horwatt
talks about consensus, that’s his description of an edict. Because when Michael Horwatt
said, “Haircuts, coats and ties, period,” there was no discussion, there was no dissent,
and that’s what we did. In his mind, that was consensus.
The second thing I wanted to say was, the term “Grinnell 14” has always made me
uncomfortable. I mean, it was a phenomenon. There happened to be 14 of us who went to
Washington that created something that happened on this campus and on other campuses that
carried forward. But when did that term begin in use? Because at the time we were not the
Grinnell 14. For most of the last 50 years we have not been the Grinnell 14. Somebody
along the way decided, more recently, that it was the convenient way to describe what
it was. >>Sally: Right.
>>Peter: We needed a title. >>Jack: Because when you say “Grinnell 14,”
you know what it was, but to call it “the March on Washington,” “the fast in Washington,”
“the nuclear movement in Washington”—there’s no other easy way to say it.
>>Sally: That’s right. >>Jack: But to call it “Grinnell 14,”
I mean, puts it on a level that I think we don’t deserve. The other thing that I do
want to emphasize, though—it was Michael Horwatt who saw this unique combination of
behaving and making a statement that would have an impact, I mean, that made, that did
make it truly different from all the others that had their own right and own role. But
I take absolutely no credit for it. I went along, and I did my job. I remember William
_____’s name. >>Sally: I just want to say a little bit about
that background, because you’re right. Michael comes from a background where his father was
a victim of the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. And his father was a union organizer,
and his mother became so active in the Democratic Party that, when she died, she had in her
purse checks that she’d gotten like two, you know, a week before, from people for contributions
for the Democrats. I mean, if the Messiah comes and was a Republican… Anyway, so he
came from a background where they had to deal with the government.
>>Michael: You know, I have an iron-trap memory, Jack, and you were wrong. [laughter]
>>Audience: One of the interesting things about this process is that I began getting emails
from Peter saying, “Do you remember…?” And there were responses from all of us. He
was kind of choreographing the massing of this story that he was going to do something
with—who knows what? And it was for a book. >>Peter: Yeah.
>>Audience: Yeah, but I didn’t get that in the beginning. I just got the fact that this
was like the blind man and the elephant, because every single person would come up with a different
aspect of this event. And I think the results for each of us were slightly different. When
I… I followed Peter right exactly up to the McGeorge Bundy look. And he was a horrifying
creature. He was an aged WASP who had controlled everything all his life. And I looked at that
and what this… You know, I came to college sort of to get educated, as a side event,
and this was the major educational moment of my entire period at Grinnell. I looked
at him, and I said, “This is not gonna work.” This political thing is great—they can have
a lovely time doing it. Peter went looking for an army—I went looking for a studio.
You know, how are you going to change the world? And my conclusion was you’re not
going to change it by mass numbers. You’re going to change it one beautiful object at
a time. And so for me, of course, I had to leave Grinnell to do that; because, as a rule,
the better the college the worse the Art Department. And in Grinnell’s case, that was entirely
the fact. And so I lasted until the end of the next semester [inaudible]. But for me
it was educationally unparalleled. >>Peter: I wanted to say one thing about McGeorge
Bundy, not about him personally but the way we’re talking about it. And let’s just
be real about it—we’re all human beings, and we all come on this earth with the same
capacity for anger and delusion and greed and, you know, hatred. And one of the big
problems in all political events is that we divide ourselves up. So it was a Hell’s
Angel who once said to me, “For every finger you point at me, there’s three pointing
back at you.” We would be just like McGeorge Bundy if we were charged with those responsibilities,
if we accepted those premises, if we put ourselves in service of a state that was based on profit
and private property. We would be the ***. So I think one of the things that we have
to do is to separate the person from the behavior, and that when you’re having a conflict with
someone, to realize that the person you’re arguing with is you, that you have strict
positions, you have prejudices, you have the same capabilities and capacities for delusion
that he has. And if you accept that, it actually subtly but practically changes the way you
talk to that person. You don’t talk to them as separate, you don’t talk to them as an
outsider, you don’t talk to them as a judge. And from the intimacy that ensues from that,
sometimes things actually change—people will relax and start to listen. Doesn’t
work in a situation where people are shooting at you but when you’re talking. And so I
think it’s a useful practice not to separate ourselves from McGeorge Bundy. I’m the same
animal he is. I’ve dedicated myself to different premises and principles; but had I followed
his path, I’d probably be just as bad. >>Peter: I think that’s a great point.
>>Peter: I do too. >>Jonathan: I think we have time for one more
question, perhaps. >>Audience: I’d like to go back to what
Michael said about wishing to come back to Grinnell and start something that would feature
nonviolent conflict resolution and teach people that. And I’m just wondering if you know
about the Iowa Peace Institute that was founded. And I can’t give you the date that it was
founded, but it was founded by Republicans and Democrats in the State Senate and House
of Representatives and our governor. And eventually George Drake was the president, and I was
the vice president of our board. And eventually the Iowa Peace Institute had been able to
teach nonviolent conflict resolution to teachers and anyone in the state who wanted to learn
those skills. And I, fortunately, grew up with them because my mother taught them to
me. So it was just a natural for me, but, you know, it’s like you said—it isn’t
for everyone. Many have to learn it from scratch. And eventually the college, Grinnell College…
We were originally located just kitty-corner from the north campus, the edge of the north
campus. And eventually the college took over the Iowa Peace Institute, sort of absorbed
it into our curriculum. And, if you talk to George Drake, he can be more specific about
exactly how it works. >>Peter: Thank you.
>>Peter: Thank you. >>Jonathan: I can add just a little bit of
information to the last comment. The Peace Institute was renamed after a couple of years
at the college, and it now exists as The Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies Program. So
we’re honored—it took us 52 years to get. >>Sally: But it’s a marathon.
>>Jonathan: It is a marathon, indeed. I guess I’d like to close with one last question
for the panel. You were all twenty-something at the time, and of course the college is
still full of people who are twenty-something. And there’s still a lot to do, still a lot
that needs doing. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to respond to your question. You
kindly included me in it. Just a few days ago I gave a baccalaureate talk here on the
1970 situation and the fact that the college did not have a commencement my senior year.
And it was a moment of coming together. That was a time that the entire campus was quite
united in its anguish and pain over Kent State. >>Peter: You didn’t have a commencement
because of Kent State? >>Sally: No.
>>Jonathan: Kent State and Jackson State and the college was really falling apart at that
point. There’s a lot to say about it. I’m not going to use this opportunity, much as
I’d like to. But the point is, there’s still an awful lot to be done. There’s still
racism, there’s still sexism, and there’s still wars that are unreasonable. The environmental
situation is desperate. And I’m wondering what, if any of you see things, particular
issues today, that resonate with the nuclear testing at your time that could become a focus
for action by the twenty-somethings now at the college.
>>Peter: Yeah, I do. >>Jonathan: Please.
>>Peter: So I look at things in a kind of triage situation. There’s so much to be
done that you can just spread yourself so thin that you’ll do nothing. So I try to
look at… For me the set of all sets is the environment. Business fits within the environment,
profit fits within the environment. The idea of successful business in a degraded environment
is just not looking closely. So the first level of everything I look at are environmental
threats. And primary among them is nuclear issue, whether it’s nuclear weapons or nuclear
power, and climate change. But under that, what makes it complex and what makes it difficult
to deal with is, under that are very human impulses—attachments to comfort, so we can
call that greed, greed for comfort; greed for a kind of culture which is completely
unsustainable. I was asked to speak at a conference called
the ARE Day Conference in Aspen, American Renewable Energy Institute. And I came, and
there were 15 private jets on the runway, and all of these guys—we were talking, and
I was one of the last speakers, and I had to say, “You know, I’m hearing a lot of
‘how’ at this conference, I’m hearing a lot of how we’re going to make wind power
and how we’re going to make solar power and how we’re going to do this and that.
I’m not hearing a lot of ‘why.’ And if the purpose of all this is to keep this
totally indulgent, unsustainable culture afloat, we’re driving up the off ramp on the freeway.
And the next heroes are going to be the people that can teach us to live on 30 to 40% less
energy without going into squallier.” So the reason I’m kind of glad that the
counterculture has evaporated and we’re all in this together is that each of us has
a chance to press for change wherever we are. I mean, I don’t think that just changing
your light bulbs for LEDs is going to do it, but it’s something you can do. Not bringing
stuff home in plastic bags is something you can do.
>>Sally: [inaudible] Prius. >>Peter: Yeah, I drive a Volt. So I mean I
think the problem is so vast that, if we don’t do it… I’m shocked that we’re still
advertising 400-horsepower cars. I’m shocked that there’s still an industry that’s
casting doubt on the science of global warming. I don’t know any of these guys that would
cast doubt on the science of gravity and leap off the top of a ten-story building. So I
have to assume there are short-term financial implications that they’re sacrificing their
grandchildren to. So that to me is the issue. Nuclear testing was the same issue; it was
the first kind of global biocidal threat, and I feel that I’ve just stayed in that
track and I’m not quitting. >>Sally: My concern, along with that, is with
medical care, affordable Medicare for everybody and where you don’t have to wait until you
can fit into some network to get care that you need. And I can be specific about members
of my family. So somehow we have to join countries like Finland and like other European countries
that know how to provide Medicare to people. Our children also are the first generation
who are not going to live as long as we live. >>Michael: I think that the climate change
report that just came out hit me between the eyes. There hasn’t been anything that…
I haven’t read the whole report; I’ve read parts of summaries. I am going to read
the whole report. But to me that changed everything. I have four grandchildren and two daughters
we have. And to me this is life and death. This is the counterpart of testing in the
atmosphere. And I think that we need to try to get a carbon tax where the proceeds are
used to help the people that are going to be hurt and let the market take care of alternative
sources of energy. Because, unless we help the people that are going to be hurt, we’re
not going to get the change. >>Terry: Well, I’m sort of hopeful in the
long run. The big issue for me is the prisons, which in this country are so stuffed. But
I don’t see a student or otherwise movement dealing with that, but I don’t know what
to do. I’m an old man now, so… >>Jonathan: Well, Grinnell, as you may know, also has
a prison program, and students, many students are involved in going to the prisons and teaching
classes. And it is now possible for inmates who are about to be released to get credit
toward their college degree. >>Peter: One last thing. Here’s a kind of
capsule of the problem. I’m so grateful to hear Michael speak about taking care of
the people that are going to be hurt, because it’s the critical piece that’s left out
of all political dialog. But just think about this for a second as a problem:
The NASA scientists estimate there are 2700 gigatons of oil under the earth’s surface,
and that oil is the basis of the valuation of the wealth of the oil companies and the
stockholders and the investors. It’s an inconceivable amount of wealth. The same scientists
estimate that, if we burn 500 of those gigatons, there will not be human life on the earth.
So we have a culture that has incalculable wealth that’s dedicated to suicide, that’s
dedicated to using commodities which will end life on earth. So when you consider it
from Michael’s point of view, it’s a gigantic problem. How are we going to create economic
vehicles and social vehicles that are going to account for the countless people that are
going to have to reduce their wealth on paper? So, and a case in point is—I was one of
the people that was involved in this Chevron suit. I was one of the people suing Chevron,
and we won a 28-billion-dollar judgment against Chevron for polluting an area in the amazon
the size of Rhode Island and creating epidemics of previously unheard cancers among the Indian
tribes there, 143 Indian tribes, poisoning the water, driving off the game, giving their
kids cancers that are inconceivable. What are you going to do? Chevron has just said,
“We’re not paying.” And they have the wealth and the political power, because they’re
not going to lose. So this is exactly the kind of problem that
better minds than my own are going to have to think about. I’m not an economist, but
somebody is going to have to figure out ways of creating environmental bonds or funds whereas
these people can be made, if not whole, can be given enough that they will willingly not
use their wealth to create political impediments to this. And I just think it’s useful to
see the problem in that stark and large a context, because that’s what it really is.
>>Jonathan: We’re very grateful to the panelists and the others who were involved in this effort
to be here today, share your thoughts with us. Let’s give them a really warm round of applause.
[applause] >>Peter: Thank you.
[applause]
>>Jonathan: Before everybody leaves. I’d like to have Paige Everly come up and say her
final pitch. And let me add that Paige worked very, very hard to put this panel together.
I am just the front person for it. And she’s also responsible for some of the enlargements
that you can see of documents and newspaper stories related to this out in the hall on
your way out. But let me turn it over to Paige. >>Paige: Just real quickly at the conclusion
of Alumni College—Thank you for everyone who participated in Alumni College this year.
We will be sending out surveys, and I also will include links to video as well as PowerPoints
that were on some of the presentations, so that you can look at those and use those at
your leisure. One quick thing—I do want to say that this
is a fascinating story and it’s amazing, and I have been really drawn into it in the
last two years that I have been with the college. But it isn’t the only story. You all have
amazing stories here, and I want to give you two opportunities to tell us those stories.
One is the oral history project, which takes place in ARH, the Alumni Recitation Hall,
where the old Cinema was. And if you would go in there, you can see signs that will direct
you there. We would love for you to participate sometime this weekend in that. And also, Dana,
are you here, Dana? >>Unknown: She left.
>>Paige: Oh, she did, okay. If you see someone around with video cameras, she’s doing a
documentary on Grinnell College and sort of a video heritage of it. And so she would love
any of you to approach her with your stories. So thank you all for coming. And, once again,
this was amazing. Thank you. >>Jonathan: There’s a lunch at one at the
liberal arts…