During the summer of 1961 at the age of 14 I spent a week in the San Bernardino (CA) mountains at a camp run by an organization called, at the time, The National Conference of Christians and Jews. The camp was called “Brotherhood USA”. This was a special time in my life, it was instrumental in forming the opinions, feelings, belief's, faith and instincts of the man I became.
The camp brought together kids from all over the Los Angeles area. Hispanics, blacks, whites, Jews and Christians (there weren't too many Muslims in LA in those days that I know of - I probably did not know one).
This was a week of “Kumbaya”, “We Shall Overcome (some day - ay, ay ay....)” and “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land” and the experience had a profound effect on me.
I was young and impressionable and at the end of that week I was greatly inspired. “Civil Rights” seemed a completely normal state, discrimination repugnant and racial division unnatural.
As the bus bringing us back into the LA basin approached the parking lot where our parents were to pick us up, a black guy and a white girl, both about my age who had met at the camp and fallen in love were told by one of the counselors that they’d need to stop holding hands. I will never forget that counselor’s words; “you need to stop that" he said, "we understand - but your parents won’t”. Hearing this shocked me.
Sometime later I told my parents that I was going to join The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “snick”). My parents were shocked and forbade me from joining (it wasn’t that they were bigots; they remembered the McCarthy hearings of just a few years before when association with the wrong groups led to big trouble). That was the last I thought of it.
On September 15, 1963 the nation was shocked when four little girls were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama.
It was Later that year, just before Thanksgiving, a Friday mid-morning during my junior year of high school; at around 11 AM we all became aware that something terrible had happened, President Kennedy had been assassinated.
One evening the next summer my best friend and I were “cruising” Van Nuys Blvd. near the famous Bob’s Big Boy drive-in restaurant. The news of the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” came over the radio and my friend and I both agreed that if America went to war because we’d been attacked that it was our duty to enlist in the Army to defend our country.The Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law that year.
1965 was a tumultuous year. Dr. Martin Luther King led the Selma to Montgomery March's and the nation was shocked at the brutality of the reaction of Sheriff Jim Clark and the Alabama State Troopers.
I graduated high school and turned 18 in that year, the year that The National Voting Rights Act became American law. Think of it - 43 years ago we needed to enact a law that guaranteed every American their God-given natural right to vote in a free election.
Sadly, for so many years, many would not exercise their right to vote and many would still be denied that right because of continued discrimination, ignorance, greed and immorality.
Turning 18 that summer I was obligated to sign up for the Orwellian misnamed “Selective Service”, otherwise known as “the draft”.
In September of that year I started college while the U.S. was pouring troops into Vietnam. By 1966 opposition to the war was raging, America was divided and my father, who had served in World War II (and came home after 18 months in a German prison camp with a Purple Heart), like the fathers of so many others, was furious with me for not enlisting and going off to “defend your country”, something that by then I had no intention of doing. "Your country right or wrong" and "Love it or leave it" seemed absurd ideas to me.
By 1968 I was an anti-war activist, marching in local protests and doing everything I could to avoid the draft. I supported Eugene McCarthy the “anti-war” candidate for president and continued to appeal against my draft board’s repeated attempts to conscript me.
On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated. Bobby Kennedy had announced his candidacy for president and I had become an ardent supporter of his. Then on June 6, just after accepting his victory in the California presidential primary, Bobby was shot down in the kitchen of The Ambassador Hotel, then a Los Angeles landmark. That night was a turning point for me. That was the night I became totally cynical politically and lost faith in the U.S. government and in the American people's ability to self govern rationally and fairly. I hadn't lost faith in our system as it was intended by our forefathers, but in our ability as a people to do the right thing.
Then came Tricky Dick, Watergate, the continued bombing of Vietnam and the disclosure of the secret bombing of Laos and the invasion of Cambodia. My cynicism stiffened.
On the evening of May 4, 1970 I met my father for dinner at The Sizzler Steak House on Wilshire Blvd. in West Los Angeles. I was distraught as 4 students had died and 9 others wounded that day, shot on the campus of Kent State University by Ohio National Guardsmen during a campus protest against the invasion of Cambodia. Dinner with Dad didn’t last long; shortly after we sat down at the table he made the statement that “they should have shot more of them.” I left the restaurant, a wound having been cut between my father and myself that would never be healed.
The war ended in April 1974 after thousands upon thousands of American's were killed and wounded both physically and emotionally. The emotionally wounded included those like my father and me who’s relationship would never heal from the bitterness that terrible mistaken war had created. But the war did not end that day, it raged and raged on in the discourse in America and continued to pervade our society and politics for years and years to come.
I commented recently to my partner that I thought the Vietnam war would not end until our generation died out.
These were painful times for so many. For me, the loss of Bobby was a seminal event in my life. It would be 40 years before I was inspired again by a candidate for president.
For forty years, while always voting, there has not been one candidate that I could really believe in. I thought Al Gore would have been a great president but that didn’t work out well and the way it ended made me even more of a cynic. The last eight years has only reinforced what I already believed and felt.
About a month or two after September 11, 2001 an employee of mine asked me why I wasn’t displaying the American flag on my car. I explained to this person that back in the late ‘60’s and early '70's the flag was used as a club by some people; it was the time of “America, love it or leave it”, a time of great turmoil in our country and great bitterness amongst our people. We all know what has happened since-how our political leadership intentionally divided us for their own selfish, misguided, evil political gain.
But I think the Vietnam war has finally ended tonight. I think we have overcome our racial and political divisiveness tonight. Tonight I am proud to be an American again. Tonight I believe in the American promise again. I didn’t think that I would ever see what I’ve seen today. “God Bless America” - our flag belongs to all of us again - not just to those who would use it to divide us.
Tonight I am moved. I am moved by the grace of the American promise. I am moved by where we have come from and what we are as a people. Tonight I am truly proud to be an American again.
God Bless America. God Bless The American People. And God Bless Barack Obama. Tonight "someday" has come. Tonight, we have finally overcome.
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