RIK: I have a comment on your questions as well
uh, uhm. I think that during one period, the
early part of the 60's there was a real movement
that started around the bomb shelter thing
and the whole civil defense movement. Uh,
that was gaining a little bit of steam. It
was gaining a little bit of steam and what
I think distracted America, and Americans from
that quite quickly was the incursion in Vietnam.
Because everybody, remember the biggest, the
largest group of young Americans living in
history, were also living at that point. The
baby boomers, okay? Bernie's my age and and
kids somewhat younger than us, all of whom
were more eligible. The largest group of young
Americans ever to exist, Almost outweighing
the ones that were older than them in terms
of numbers and I think what happened was is
that this caught, even though it was slow
as Bernie said, 63-64, it caught the nation
so much, people were temporarily distracted
from the nuclear fear. Okay? Every night Walter
Cronkite, every night talked about the body
count and I'll tell you, that after about
one year, I couldn't turn on television. I
could not look at it. I could not think about
it. I would get on an airplane and stick the
radio thing in my ear and I couldn't listen
to it! Because everyday it was a body count.
So I think one thing that went on during that
early period is the media shifted it's attention
and once a year the president/congress, budget,
bang! The Russians are there, let's keep filling
it up. No one paid any attention. We paid
our taxes we did our thing, but all the focus
was on that one little country during that
period. So people forgot temporarily about
it, they were yelling about peace but they
were yelling about stopping killing our boys.
SANDERS: So I think , if one also…let's
take a little tangent…if one thinks about
the 60's and I said well what would be the
significant thing about the 60's? Probably
if one understands that today, give you an
example. As you know in elections about half
of the people vote in America and plus people
don't vote in local elections often you have
a lot less than that voting. The truth of
the matter is, most people are not active
politically active. Most people, y'know depending
on the area and the time. The vast majority
of the people are not active in trying to
shape the social environment they're living
in. It's always a small number of people.
What happened in the 60's all over the place
is that people themselves became far more
involved. Instead of sitting and allowing
other people to make decisions for them, they
began to get up and you saw that all over
the place. Certainly for many many years,
there had always been a black movement, a
civil rights movement, for many years it was
conservative, middle class,  NAACP and then what happened
is the movement spread to the young people
and in the area of the black muslims, and Malcolm
X and so forth, it spread to the ghettos.
Black people who had been oppressed for many
many years, were afraid to stand up, now stood
up with a rage. And women in the same way
who had felt oppression in a variety of ways,
for many many years, they began to stand up
and students who had felt academic oppression
if you like. I was reading this briefly in
the in the anthology, it's a wonderful thing,
a fellow named Mario Savio, do you remember
Mario Savio? Out at the University of California
at Berkley, and what you had there at Berkley
you have a tremendous, 30-40 thousand students
out there. It's like a factory and what he
said is, you know, it is a factory. We are being as
students, being treated like factory products,
no one cares about what we feel, no one cares
about what we want to learn. What our aspirations.
Teachers are not telling us what we want to
know. They're not working with us, we're little
slots in the machine. And of course the students
themselves began to demand changes in the
University and then that started the whole
student movement. All over the place. All
over the place, more and more people were
making demands upon the system and that was
probably the most important and exciting aspect
of that period because if one believes in
democracy, basically the most important thing
you're believing in, is the right of people
to control their own lives. The right of people
to participate in the process. The whole word,
participatory process came out of "How do
we make decisions?" Well I'm the leader and
you're the follower so, I'll tell you what
to do. Well, people were saying, no that's
not the way we want to do it. We want democratic
participation and people were talking about
well maybe that should take place not only
in academia, maybe we should give some of
the faculty and students some decision making.
Maybe it should take place in the workforce as well. Maybe we should begin to challenge the system where the boss makes all the decisions
and the worker does all the work. But I would say it was the exciting aspect
