Public Enemy (34 page)

Perhaps that explains why I couldn’t summon the get-up-and-go to leave the park. The Obamas were long gone, the crowd drifting away, slowly at first and then in big waves, park workers and Streets and Sanitation cleaning up and breaking down the fences and the scaffolding, and still we held on. Breathe in the good air, breathe out the bad. Of course we knew the sun would come up tomorrow, reality would impose its harsh order, and the magic would burn off soon enough, but not yet, not quite yet. “Let us have this night,” I said out loud, a brief sighting of the world I want to live in—a bit more peaceful and balanced, with an enlarged sense of participation and possibility, all of us arm in arm together, recognizing one another as inherently valuable and fully human beyond class or color or condition. I was on my back in the grass looking at the stars, Bernardine standing nearby on her cell phone with our far-flung children, when a young cop approached me smiling. “Bill,” he said softly, “it’s time to go home.” He helped me to my feet, asked for a picture of the three of us together, and then walked with us to Michigan Avenue. I knew we might meet one another one day in the future on opposite sides of an angry barricade, but not tonight: “I love you man,” I said. “Love you back,” he replied. It was two in the morning.

There are a zillion reasons not to write a book: laziness, for starters; insecurity; a recognition that you are incorrigibly self-deceiving and self-justifying, leading to a distaste for interrogating your own ignorance and a sensible aversion to digging too deeply into your own wretched soul; fear of falling short or being exposed for the fraud you surely are; and, of course, the terrible realization that you’re neither Hemingway nor Morrison. Add to that vast catalogue one more: once you start writing your book, you will drive the ones you love away with your petty obsessions and your silly distractions. I know; I’ve indulged the whole set.

As to the relatively few reasons, on the other hand, to persevere in the delicious agony of assembling words on the page, I’ve long found George Orwell’s four-part taxonomy, outlined in his essay “Why I Write,” elegantly simple and particularly compelling: all writers, he claims (and he included himself without apology), are motivated in the first place by the most predictable and pervasive sentiment of all: complete conceit and run-away egoism. Guilty! The desire to be talked about and to be remembered after death, to appear clever or to settle scores—it’s difficult to deny. And of all the available genres, memoir stands out for its unvarnished narcissism, careening through a brightly lit house of mirrors, entirely out of control.

Include two more possible explanations, fairly straightforward: aesthetic enthusiasm, including searching out the beauty in good prose and “words and their right arrangement,” as well as historical impulse, the desire to see things in their true and luminous complexity and preserve them for posterity. Guilty, guilty.

And finally Orwell’s number four: “Political purpose—using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.” That says it all for me: guilty as hell.

The despicable American war in Viet Nam (“Shoot anything that moves!”), combined with the power and promise of the resistance and the courage of the Black Freedom Movement, rocked my world: I had a political purpose, and I knew where I stood. From then on I’ve tried to live up to that purpose—there had to be something important to say, some aspect of social life to praise or to criticize, some war to end or some injustice to oppose. I plunged into the wreckage headfirst and tried to fight, and to write, my way out. And I was never alone.

I’m most grateful for my everyday comrades in arms in the battles (large and small) for peace and freedom, joy and justice in Chicago: Alice Kim, Barbara Ransby, James Thindwa, David Stovall, Lisa Lee, Therese Quinn, Erica Meiners, Kevin Kumashiro, Martha Biondi, Adam Green, Harish Patel, Tessie Liu, Tom Mitchell, Susan Klonsky, Jessica Disu (FM Supreme), Randolph Stone, Jeff Haas, Prexy Nesbitt, Peter Sporn, Hazel Rochman, Bill Watkins, Simmie Baer, Steve Saltzman, Susan Gzesch, Beth Richie, Kevin Coval, Fred Klonsky, Bruce Boyer, Hymie Rochman, Mike Klonsky, Carol Lee, Haki Madhubuti, Pat Handlin, Jennifer Richardson, Camille Odeh, Cathy Cohen, Jan Susler, Elena Sznajder, Dima Khalidi, Lynette Jackson, Flint Taylor, Daniel Tucker, Monica Murphy, Jamie Kalven, Ann Klonsky, Patsy Evans, Quentin Young, Michelle Lugalia, Iasha Sznajder, Joey Mogul, Julie Biehl, Yoko Noge, Mary Scott Boria, Cynthia Estes, Randolph Stone, Ryan Hollon, Marv Hoffman, Adam Kuranishi, Janise Hurtig, Isabel Nunez, Rosellen Brown, Crystal Laura, Janice Misurell, Bill Schubert, and many others.

In writing this book I’ve benefited from all kinds of help, including from friends and family who read bits and pieces of the narrative in its various incarnations. Knowing that it was being constructed on nothing more than the chimera of chaos and confusion called
memory
—scandalously fly-by-night, sketchy, and undependable—each nonetheless took his or her precious time to offer advice and helpful perspectives: Malik Dohrn, Chesa Boudin, Lisa Freccero, Eleanor Stein (twice!), Mona Khalidi, Jeff Jones, B. J. Richards, and Kathy Boudin. I’m indebted to each of you. Bernardine Dohrn read every word again and again, caught and corrected each tendency of mine to lurch instinctively toward the ultra-left or, on the other hand, to collapse into the seductive and welcoming arms of the liberal-right, and kept me focused always on the bigger picture. Rick Ayers has been a tireless editor, coconspirator, and sometimes coauthor forever, and his judgments at several turning points were invaluable. Zayd Dohrn has cheerfully read my attempts to write for close to twenty years, and his perceptive reading, consistent encouragement, and astute interventions were once again indispensable, and Rachel DeWoskin generously weighed in with her incisive comments and brilliant intuition at just the right moment leading to a complete overhaul and reorganization. Of course, none of them is responsible for the deficiencies, gaps, and foolishness herein—those belong to me alone.

I am again grateful to Helene Atwan, as fine an editor as there is anywhere, whose vision and support made this book possible in the first place, and whose shrewd interferences—knowing when to indulge my ramblings and when to cut the crap and get to work—improved the book immeasurably. My awe and appreciation is boundless, and it extends to the dazzling team she leads at Beacon Press, starting with my first editor there, Andy Hrcyna, and including the brilliant Pam MacColl, the mighty Tom Hallock, and the wondrous magic-maker, Crystal Paul.

And I need to say again how thankful I am for Bernardine, a gift to the world and for forty-three years my partner in crime (I can hear her now: “Please stop saying that, darling”); I am, as always, overwhelmed by my dumb luck. Thanks to our three incomparable sons, Zayd, Malik, and Chesa; to our magnificent-good-fortune daughters-in-law, Rachel and Lisa; and to the coming whirlwinds, Dalin and Lightie and Jacai.

Perhaps the passionate choices, everyday experiences, and consequential errors of our fighting past can help illuminate a way forward. In any case, I’ve never been more hopeful for young activists the world around. For humanity and for the future, we must change ourselves; we can change the world.