The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant

Wasn’t that same person also a musician or a teacher and a

husband and a father? The patrilineal approach was the only

approach in those days, liberal or conservative. I thought it

was probably wrong to hate people for their politics unless

they were doing evil, as Mr. Kane was. The argument remains

alive; the stereotypes persist, veiled now in a postcommie

rhetoric; I think that hate crimes are real crimes against groups

of people, imputing to those people a lesser humanity. And

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Young Americans for Freedom

even though I’ve lost debates since the one with Mr. Lewis

III, I still think it’s worth everything to say what you believe.

There are always consequences, and one must be prepared to

face them. In this context there is no free speech and there

never will be.

I think especially of watching William Buckley, on his Firing

Line television program in the 1960s, debate the writer James

Baldwin on segregation. Buckley was elegant and brilliant and

wrong; Baldwin was passionate and bril iant and wore his

heart on his sleeve - he was also right. But Buckley won the

debate; Baldwin lost it. I’l never forget how much I learned

from the confrontation: be Baldwin, not Buckley.

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Cuba 2

The bad news came first from Allen Young, a gay activist: in

Cuba homosexuals were being locked up; homosexuality was

a crime against the state. A generation later I read the work of

Reinaldo Arenas, a homosexual writer who refused to be

crushed by the state and wrote a florid, uncompromising prose.

I read the prison memoirs of Armando Val adares and heard

from some friends raised in Cuba and original supporters of

Castro and Che about whole varieties of oppression and

brutality. There was also more recently a stunning biography

of Che by John Lee Anderson that gave Che his due - coldblooded kil er and immensely brave warrior. Of course, the river of blood and suffering makes it hard to say why so many

of us, from David Smith to myself, saw so much hope in the

Cuban revolution. Batista’s thuggery was indisputable; his

thievery, too, from a population of the exceptionally poor and

largely illiterate was ugly; but the worst part of it was U. S.

support for his regime. That support made many of us challenge the political morality of the United States. Castro claimed he wanted an end to poverty and il iteracy, and I believed him.

Castro up against Batista is the mise-en-scene. With Castro

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Cuba 2