Reading Neil Gordon’s novel and then viewing Robert
Redford’s film, The Company You Keep,
a fictitious portrayal of the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), led me to
re-read Thai Jones’ book on his family – his mom and dad WUO people Eleanor
Stein and Jeff Jones, as well as their parents, Albert Jones a Quaker and WWII
conscientious objector and Annie and Arthur Stein, labor movement people and
both members of the Communist Party.
While I actually liked Redford’s film and the book even more, A Radical Line is much more encompassing
as it portrays generations and real lives in the continuing struggle for a
democratic, socialist America – yes, Eleanor and Jeff and I think Thai, as well
as many of their WUO comrades and their children, continue the fight today.
I had no intentions of writing a review as I began to re-read
A Radical Line. The story, though, is so engrossing, and Thai
Jones’ combination of detail, thoughtfulness, and drama, pull you in as words
bring depth to his extended family as well as collective, progressive struggle
in the United States. Jones’ craft as a
writer combined with depth of story are poignant in the first two pages of the
book as he describes his parents arrest through reflections of his own memories
of the event as a four year old child.
There had to be something I could
do to help my parents. I made a fast
survey of my possessions: a cowboy outfit, a coloring book, a stuffed
Tyrannosaurus. I opened the drawer of my
little desk and picked up my child’s scissors.
The ends were rounded, and the blades were covered by blue plastic
guards. Bouncing them in my hand and
snipping at the air, I considered putting on the cowboy hat and charging into
the hallway with scissors blazing to defeat these men who had come to hurt our
family. Even then, I knew it was a
battle against long odds. But I didn’t
realize it was a question that many in my family had already faced. They had chosen to fight.
Throughout A Radical
Line the progressive fights of Thai Jones’ extended families, WUO and
earlier, are connected to the collective struggle against class disparity,
racism, and the Viet Nam War. Jeff Jones
was raised in southern California and his father worked for Walt Disney
Corporation. But as already noted,
Albert Jones was a pacifist, and his experience working as a conscientious
objector at Civilian Public Service Camp #37 in Coleville, California during
WWII is itself a story. His path was not
easy as his father disapproved and church people at the Methodist congregation
that nurtured his views abandoned him – Camp #37 became home: “He was
surrounded by pacifists. Each Sunday
they held a silent Quaker meeting, and that was the only time in the week that
the men were not in heated discussions about their faith. Coming here, Albert finally felt welcome.”
Jeff Jones’ early lessons were pacifism and peace and not a
long leap to the civil rights movement and opposing the Viet Nam War.
Eleanor Stein’s parents were much more political. Annie was introduced to socialism in high
school and was politicized even further as a student at Hunter College. Thai Jones describes her early participation
in the National Student League and the communist party. It was Annie who politicized Arthur. Initially she was disheartened because her
husband was apolitical, but she began leaving copies of The Daily Worker around their apartment and soon Arthur was attending
meetings and demonstrations.
Like Albert Jones’s life-long commitment to non-violence,
Annie and Arthur Stein never stopped fighting class disparity and racism. While Thai Jones is much more descriptive on
their lives than I can be in this short review, it is his description of their
lives, including Albert’s assertion to Jeff before the Days of Rage: “Son, I believe very strongly in your goals. But if you set out to hurt somebody, I would
hope and pray that you are hurt first.” Concurrently, Eleanor was clearly
nurtured by Annie’s work with civil rights stalwart Mary Church Terrell and her
political work on education in NYC. She
was also nurtured by her father’s labor activism, his founding of the Fair Play
for Cuba Committee chapter in Brooklyn, and his appearance before the HUAC
where he was represented by Victor Rabinowitz, the attorney who also
represented Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger.
Annie and Arthur sent Eleanor to Camp Lakeside, a Red Diaper summer
camp. Eleanor recalled her mother’s expulsion
from the CP over China and mother continued to lecture daughter throughout
Eleanor’s WUO years:
“Look,” Annie would tell Eleanor,
“I lived through the 1930s when the capitalist system was on the ropes. Labor unions were strong and men were out of
work, on breadlines.” Pausing for
effect, she would light a cigarette, sip her scotch and soda, and go to the
bookshelf for her copy of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? It was obvious in 1917,” she would say,
waving the book in her daughter’s face.
“The workers were in the streets.
Who is going t0 run the means of production in your revolution? The hippies? You’ve got to be kidding.”
The heart of A Radical
Line, however, is Jeff and Eleanor’s lives in SDS and the Weather
Underground and their coming together as a couple. There are rich photographs in the center of
the book – especially one of Eleanor wearing her lamb’s wool jacket with a
raised fist salute in front of Columbia University Law School. Most endearing is a page with portraits of
both Thai, as a very young child, and Jeff in running gear. We learn about Eleanor quitting law school
after participating in the Columbia University student takeover in 1968 and of
Jeff joining SDS while a student at Antioch.
There are other events that have been written about by Mark Rudd, Cathy
Wilkerson, Bill Ayers, and others; but Thai Jones presents a different take,
new insights, and of course issues that still leave us with questions about WUO
and the struggle in general. We learn a
great deal about WUO life underground but for the purpose of this review I
would like to address one particular issue.
It begins in early July 1969, when Eleanor was part of
delegation that went to Cuba to meet with representatives of the National
Liberation Front and North Vietnamese government. Others on the trip included Bernardine Dohrn
and Diana Oughton. The North Vietnamese
had invited Eleanor and her comrades so that they could interact and learn how
the anti-war movement in the United States might help to end the War. One of the first lessons was on the lack of
focus of American activism. The teacher
pointed out that day that anti-war slogans and chants:
No Move Vietnams v. Two, Three, Many Vietnams
No More Wars v Bring the War Home
Long Live the Victory of the People’s War v. Make Love not
War
were contradictory – what was the goal?
The Americans traveled Cuba with their Vietnamese mentors
and one man, Nguyen Thai stood out – the man from who Thai Jones inherited his
name. There were hours and hours of
discussions and Eleanor and the other Americans became focused on taking one
message to the masses back home – “End the War Now.”
When they returned to the U.S., however, they were informed
that their leadership had decided to form small collectives – their job was not
to organize the masses. Thai Jones
writes, “Before Eleanor had even clanked down the gangway to the shore, Nguyen
Thai’s plan for an all-encompassing mass movement was sunk.”
And I would argue, that it was at this point, before the
forming of the Weather Underground, before the Townhouse Bombing, before the
manifestos and armed propaganda, before freeing and then being betrayed by
Timothy Leary, and before the break-up of WUO, the youth movement for social
justice & equality in the United States was doomed. That is, doomed as a movement. While the Vietnamese represented and spoke of
a people’s movement, people on the ground weren’t included in the United
States. The people of WUO and the anti-war
movement in general were young – we didn’t take the lessons that others taught
us. We didn’t pay attention to how
different Fidel and Che’s revolution in Cuba was to Che’s adventurist foray
into Bolivia – we didn’t know how to organize a people’s war.
My analysis, of course, is only a small part of Thai Jones’s
book. And the people that he writes
about, particularly his parents Eleanor Stein and Jeff Jones, as well as their
WUO comrades, have continued, maybe not as a movement, but nevertheless
continued, the fight to end class disparity and racism in the United States and
throughout the World. Their mistakes as
well as their continuing commitment and passion offer important lessons. As does Thai Jones’ book, A Radical Line.
