by stickdog99 » Tue Sep 26, 2006 4:18 pm
Here is an interview with Al Lewis (Grandpa Munster) that I think sheds a lot of light on our current dilemma.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://mediafilter.org/shadow/S43/S43grand.html">mediafilter.org/shadow/S43/S43grand.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>SHADOW: What about the National Maritime Union? What was it like organizing among seamen back in those days?<br><br>LEWIS: You were more on home ground on the port than organizing in the south, even to this day. Even John L. Lewis, who organized the United Mine Workers. He didn't get very many Southern mine workers. American history -- people don't know it. You know who his organizers were? Communists from the North. He writes about it. Went down south to Harlan County Kentucky, Hazard Kentucky. Many of them got blown away. Just step off the train, they blow your head off. You don't know what fear is. (Laughs)<br><br>...<br><br>SHADOW: So when did you start becoming political, when did you start becoming in touch with things going on the the world?<br><br>LEWIS: I guess having been in my mother's household I was probably political at five or six. I don't know what you mean -- what is "political?" It's all bullshit terminology. You're aware of bread and butter issues. How could I not be aware during the Depression that people were starving? And I was helping my mother sell apples. How could I not be aware? Forget that philosophical bullshit terminology, "you become aware." It hits you in the stomach and then a cop hits you on the head (laughs)--you become aware!<br><br>SHADOW: So what was the first political activity that you were ever involved with?<br><br>LEWIS: I don't know. Probably when I shit on the grass in Prospect Park, I don't know. I don't know what that means. What is a political activity? What does it mean?<br><br>SHADOW: The first demonstration, for instance?<br><br>LEWIS: I was very young. My mother used to take me to Mayday parades. That was big in New York. It used to culminate in the old Union Square, not the shit they have now, where they've built it so you can't have a demonstration. But they used to have a hundred thousand people there in Union Square Park. I remember my mother used to go on the parades for the Scottsboro boys. Those guys were arrested in Alabama on the testimony of two prostitutes -- we struggled to free them. I remember participating in demonstrations, and Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings, the so-called bombing of the "Preparedness Day Parade." And then during the Depression, people were getting evicted, ten a day. We used to come along and break the lock and put the furniture back in again. We would storm the Home Relief Centers {what the Welfare offices were called then--Ed.}, that or this person didn't get a check for eight dollars or something, and get hit on the head.<br><br>SHADOW: In the demonstrations back in those days were there ever problems with the police? Did they try to attack people?<br><br>LEWIS: Did you just come to this country? (Laughs) What are you talking about? The police are here to protect property. They're not here to protect the public! So, what the fuck are you asking me? Of course! Name me a period when the police...(laughs)<br><br>SHADOW: So these demonstrations for Tom Mooney, and labor demonstrations...<br><br>LEWIS: Warren K. Billings, organizing the CIO, and District 65, and the UE, and NMU. All that was going on and the police were there to see that you didn't do it. And if they could get away with it, they'd beat the shit out of you.<br><br>SHADOW: And people would resist?<br><br>LEWIS: Well obviously. And unions were created. We used to have a saying: "If you don't get the asses of the masses out in the street, forget it." And you get enough of them out there, the ruling class gets scared. That's the only thing they're afraid of, is numbers. Numbers! See, one thing you have to understand. There's very few people understand, especially people who deal in outlaw newspapers and magazines. The ruling class is smarter than you, and they're more creative. And if you forget that lesson, you go down the drain. Because if they weren't, they wouldn't be around as long as they have been and as strong as they have been. It's not an accident. Not an accident. Never underestimate your opponent. They'll tell you that if you're a fighter. Never underestimate. You can poke fun at 'em, you can do satire, but they work 24 hours a day. It's like Lord Acton said: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." I say that power works 24 hours to remain in power. Throughout history. Go back to kings, feudal times. The same thing. While you and I, here we're bullshitting, and then we go out: "Tompkins Square, blah, blah, blah..." Their fucking machine works 24 hours a day, man. It grinds, it grinds. Otherwise they don't stay in power, they topple.<br><br>SHADOW: So what do you think people can do in response to that power? What do you think we have to do?<br><br>LEWIS: First of all, (laughs) you have to agree that these people shouldn't have the power. Go on Eighth Avenue and 35th Street and ask what the junkies do. They're looking for a fix. What do they do? You see, a junkie once told me an unanswerable question. He said: "I take this junk so the shit that's in front of me and the shit that I smell disappears. What are you gonna replace it with?" What do you replace it with? A tract? "Jesus loves you?" What? "Socialism is your answer?" The guy's looking for $15 to hit you and I on the head with a lead pipe to meet the man to get the fix. I have no answer for that. He has to find that answer. I can deal with somebody who's not in that kind of position and try to talk, and I do the best I can. You see, the thing is, and I don't mean this in a denigrating way, but you're "Johnny-Come-Latelies." Like in the Sixties, there was a thousand underground papers. I read them all. I used to have them all sent to me in California. Everybody in this society wants the quick fix, like the junkie that we just talked about. So do the radicals, whatever you want to call them, a bumper sticker. Put it on your car. "I'm a radical," "I'm a lefty," "I'm a progressive," "I'm left of center." It's all bullshit. I learned a long time ago -- I've been in the struggle over seventy years -- it doesn't bother me I may not win.<br><br>SHADOW: So what keeps you going?<br><br>LEWIS: What keeps me going? My belief! (Laughs) You see, what happens with you "Johnny-Come-Latelies" -- and I'm not personalizing -- is like you take people of the Sixties. After five or ten years, they didn't get the victory, "Oh, fuck it, man, I'll take this job down on Wall Street and make the fuckin' money. I didn't get the immediate fix." See, the junkie is better off than them. He gets the fix. As long as he's got the bread, he gets the fix. "We didn't win!" America only knows the "win."<br><br>SHADOW: But what do you think about the people of the Sixties who didn't go along with that but made money and used it for good purposes?<br><br>LEWIS: I haven't found that species. (Laughs)<br><br>SHADOW: There are some interesting characters, like the George Soros types...<br><br>LEWIS: Ah, bullshit. Everything he gives away is tax deductible. I'm too fuckin' old for that shit, man. That's like Ted Turner giving away a billion dollars. You know how much he winds up giving away? About a hundred million dollars. All the rest he deducts from his taxes. You know who gives it away? You and I are giving it away. Otherwise, we'd be taking his tax money.<br><br>SHADOW: But what's your formula for changing the world, for improving things?<br><br>LEWIS: I don't know what that means; that's all bullshit. Life is specific. Even if you're not political, that's political! You can't shoot buckshot. You wanna be a millionaire? Fine! Put on the blinders, like a fucking horse. If you shoot buckshot, you gotta go for the target.<br><br>SHADOW: Let's say we're talking about specific issues: police torturing people in police precincts, or people being evicted from housing, or gardens on the Lower East Side being bulldozed and replaced by condominiums. We put out a newspaper to try and convince people that things like that are not in their interest. Do you think the alternative press is a valuable counterweight to the mainstream press?<br><br>LEWIS: Everything is viable. But don't expect results.<br><br>SHADOW: Maybe we're being naive, but maybe we serve some purpose...<br><br>LEWIS: There's nothing wrong with being naive. But, after doing x amount of time or years, don't throw your hands up in the air, because, you see, everybody wants the "the win," they want it today. It doesn't happen. The struggle goes on. The victory is in the struggle, for me. And I accepted that a long time ago. You write about police brutality. Go back to 1909, you'll see about police brutality (laughs), it's not something new. People don't really understand their role in society. I'll take this where your newspaper goes: the destruction of the gardens. And they're gonna be destroyed, there's no question about it. The powers that be have so convinced the mass of people -- "Fuck the gardens, those fucking freaky people carrying that horse shit and fertilizer. A building is more beautiful than a fuckin' flower" -- you have to say the mass of people are bought. The day that they attempt to bulldoze the first garden, if ten thousand people are standing there, the garden will never be bulldozed. You have to understand, the power structure and the errand boys, the guys who carry the bedpans for the power structure, the politicians, councilmen, congressmen, senators, whatever, they only understand one thing: numbers. It's numbers of voters. You get fifty people out, "Fuck 'em. Get the local precinct, hit 'em on the fucking head." Get ten thousand people out? God, that's four hundred cameras, it's all over European television. Scary. Numbers are scary. Your problem is to get ten thousand people out on the street the first time they go to bulldoze that garden. And you won't. But that's not a defeat. Because all you can do, all I can do, is, I do a show, I influence those people. Hopefully they'll carry that message forward. That's all I can do. I don't own a newspaper, I don't own a radio station. That's it. I don't feel bad about that. I understand the limitations. I fight against them; I stretch 'em out. I'm not out to save the world. <p></p><i></i>
