N. 18 - Giugno 2009
(XLIX)
c’ERA UNA VOLTA L’AMERICA DEL DISSENSO
incontro con Ralph Young
di Leila Tavi
Ralph
Young è il maggiore studioso di Storia del dissenso
negli Stati Uniti d’America. Docente alla Temple
University di Philadelphia, è stato un attivista del
movimento di protesta contro la guerra del Vietnam. Il
suo libro Dissent in America ha riscosso un
grande successo negli Stati Uniti.
1)
When
did
you
decide
to
write
your
book
Dissent
in
America?
During
my
course
at
Temple
University
starting
in
2002
I
did
a
lot
of
research
about
dissent
in
the
U.S.
In
February
2002
an
editor
came
to
interview
me
and
some
other
colleagues.
She
asked
me
if I
had
ever
thought
about
writing
a
textbook.
I
said
“No,
but
I
would
like
to
see
somebody
write
a
book
on
dissent
and
protest
movements
in
America.”
She
replied,
“why
don’t
you
do
it?”
And
that
started
the
whole
idea.
The
book
originally
was
published
in
2004
and
then
the
publisher
suggested
it
should
really
be
available
to
the
general
public
and
not
just
college
history
students.
So,
in
2006,
Dissent
in
America:
The
Voices
That
Shaped
a
Nation
was
released
to
the
general
public.
In
2008
a
“concise”
(edited
down)
version
was
published
in
paperback
for
protestors
who
were
taking
up
the
mantle
of
dissent
in
the
first
decade
of
the
twenty-first
century.
The
book
is
an
indispensable
reminder
of
the
centrality
of
dissent
in
American
history.
2)
What
is
dissent
in
America
today?
Ultimately,
the
definition
of
dissent
has
to
be
somewhat
fluid,
because
dissent
is
central
to
American
history.
Not
a
decade
has
passed
without
voices
being
raised
in
protest
against
policies
and
decisions
made
by
legislators,
governors,
and
presidents.
Even
before
the
United
States
was
established,
there
was
dissent.
During
the
seventeenth
century,
religious
dissent
played
a
significant
role.
In
the
eighteenth
century,
political
dissent
in
the
thirteen
colonies
eventually
led
to
the
open
rebellion
that
resulted
in
the
American
Revolution
and
the
creation
of
the
United
States.
In
the
nineteenth
century,
dissenters
demanded
the
abolition
of
slavery,
suffrage
for
women,
and
fair
treatment
of
Native
Americans,
while
others
opposed
the
War
of
1812,
the
Mexican
War,
the
Civil
War,
on
both
side,
and
the
Spanish-American
War.
In
the
twentieth
century,
dissenters
not
only
demanded
rights
for
workers,
women,
African
Americans,
Chicanos,
gays,
and
the
disabled,
they
also
protested
against
every
war,
declared
and
undeclared,
fought
by
the
United
States,
and
they
demanded
regulations
to
safeguard
the
environment.
In
the
twenty-first
century,
dissenters
continue
to
protest
against
NAFTA
and
the
Free
Trade
Area
of
the
Americas,
globalization
and
the
World
Bank,
the
Iraq
War,
and
the
Patriot
Act.
In
contemporary
America
the
communications
revolution
brought
about
by
modern
technology,
the
mass
media,
and
the
Internet
has
created
new
levels
of
dissent.
The
career
of
Michael
Moore
illustrates
this
new
reality,
with
a
bestselling
book,
Stupid
White
Man,
and
three
films
has
become
an
international
phenomenon
– a
“celebrity
dissenter”.
Like
many
dissenters,
such
as
the
nineteenth-century
abolitionists
who
were
intensely
contentious
and
blatantly
disruptive,
Moore
has
used
hyperbole
and
selected
factual
evidence
to
advance
his
cause.
3)
I’m
very
familiar
with
the
dissent
phenomenon
in
the
U.S.S.R.:
a
bunch
of
intellectuals
persecuted,
imprisoned
and
tortured
by
the
Soviet
state.
A
peaceful
and
silent
protest
which
started
after
the
De-Stalinization
(although
some
student
movements
began
already
in
the
1930s,
during
the
hardest
period
of
the
Stalin
era)
and
went
on
until
the
collapse
of
the
Soviet
Union.
The
only
possibility
they
had
to
express
their
opinion
and
ideas
was
the
samizdat,
a
clandestine
publication.
On
the
contrary
dissent
in
America
is a
constant
feature
in
American
history,
it
grew
and
developed
itself
in a
parallel
way
to
institutional
and
social
history,
why?
Dissenters
are
those
who
go
against
the
grain,
disagreeing
with
the
majority
view.
Historically,
they
were
often
marginalized
people
who
lacked
power
and
who
had
a
legitimate
grievance
against
the
way
things
were.
Although
most
American
dissenters
have
criticized
the
United
States
from
the
left,
dissent
can
come
from
both
ends
of
the
political
spectrum.
There
were
those
who
sought
more
equality,
such
a
feminist
Elisabeth
Cady
Stanton,
workers’
advocate
Mother
Jones,
and
gay
rights
militant
Harry
Hay;
those
who
sought
more
moral
rectitude,
such
as
temperance
campaigner
Frances
E.
Willard,
social
gospel
exponent
Walter
Rauschenbusch,
and
the
Christian
Coalition
of
America;
and
those
who
sought
more
freedom,
such
as
abolitionist
Frederick
Douglass
and
civil
rights
activist
Fannie
Luo
Hamer.
Some,
however,
were
not
political
but
social
and
cultural
dissenters
who
criticized
societal
values
and
attitudes,
among
them
reproductive
rights
advocate
Margaret
Sanger,
literary
artist
Henry
Miller,
poet
Allen
Ginsberg,
LSD
guru
Timothy
Leary,
spiritual
sage
Ram
Dass,
and
Christian
morality
crusader
Reverend
Jerry
Falwell.
There
have
also
been
those
who
simply
strove
to
gain
political
power
through
dissent
as
well
as
reactionaries
who
resisted
change
and
wanted
to
maintain
the
privileges
and
supremacy
of
their
class,
race,
or
gender.
For
example,
when
abolitionists
demanded
the
end
of
the
slavery,
anti-abolitionists
argued
vehemently
to
preserve
the
institution.
Similarly,
when
feminists
sought
suffrage
and
equality
for
women,
antifeminists
sought
to
preserve
male
dominance
and
the
subjugation
of
women.
Some
dissenters
who
were
vilified
by
their
contemporaries
are
now
esteemed
as
visionaries.
Yet
others,
no
matter
how
hard
we
try
to
understand
their
point
of
view,
are
still
dismissed
as
crackpots.
American
dissenters
have
achieved
different
levels
of
success,
inviting
various
types
of
trouble,
from
angry
debates
to
arrest
to
beatings
and
even
death,
as a
result
of
their
views.
Despite
those
threats,
they
kept
hammering
away
at
the
powers-that-be
until
those
powers
began
to
listen.
Public
opinion
was
swayed.
Laws
were
made.
Slavery
was
abolished.
Unions
were
organized.
Women
got
the
vote.
The
Jim
Crow
law
were
invalidated.
And
today
many
of
those
who
were
demonized
in
their
time
have
now
been
consecrated
by
history.
4)
Is
it
correct
to
say
that
inside
dissent
movements
in
America
there
were
other
protest
movements
led
by
minority
groups,
like
Indians
for
example?
Can
you
explain
us
the
importance
of
this
movement?
The
indigenous
people
of
the
New
World
faced
a
grave
crisis
with
European
settlement.
From
their
first
encounters
with
Columbus
and
the
Spanish,
their
culture
was
profoundly
threatened.
The
Indian
population
dropped
so
precipitously
through
disease
and
murderous
onslaughts
that
the
results
might
as
well
be
labelled
genocide,
although
not
all
that
befell
them
was
intentional.
The
term
dissent
does
not
adequately
describe
Native
American
resistance
or
the
valiant
attempt
to
preserve
their
disappearing
way
of
life.
Though
they
expressed
their
grievances
against
the
conquerors
in
petitions
and
speeches,
few
such
documents
have
survived.
The
reason
for
this
is
twofold:
Much
of
their
resistance
and
protest
took
the
form
of
warfare,
and
the
Indian
tradition
is
primarily
an
oral
one.
Few
of
their
speeches
or
petitions,
especially
in
the
sixteenth
through
nineteenth
centuries,
were
written
down.
Those
that
were
often
were
transcribed
by
Europeans
who
rarely
understood
the
nuances
and
subtleties
of
the
Indian
perspective
or
who
intentionally
distorted
what
the
Indians
wanted
to
express.
Then
in
the
1970s
the
American
Indian
Movement
(AIM);
from
November
1969
to
June
1971,
approximately
a
hundred
Indians
from
several
different
tribes
joined
AIM
in
reclaiming
and
occupying
Alcatraz
Island.
Wanting
to
call
attention
to
the
plight
of
Native
Americans,
they
occupied
the
island
in
the
name
of
the
Indians
of
All
Tribes,
demanded
the
deed
for
the
island,
and
insisted
that
they
be
allowed
to
set
up
an
Indian
university,
a
museum,
and
federal
government,
President
Nixon
ordered
the
island
retaken.
In
the
1972,
AIM
sponsored
a
march
on
Washington
billed
as
the
Trail
of
Broken
Treaties.
AIM
members
occupied
the
Bureau
of
Indian
Affairs
(BIA)
headquarters
and
issued
a
20-point
proposal
for
President
Nixon
to
consider.
The
following
year,
elders
from
the
Lakota
Sioux
nation
requested
AIM’s
assistance
in
dealing
with
BIA
and
tribal
council
corruption
in
South
Dakota.
This
led
to
AIM’s
occupation
of
Wounded
Knee
(site
of
the
last
armed
Indian
resistance
in
1890)
and
an
infamous
71-day
standoff
between
armed
Indians
and
federal
marshals.
The
Indians
demanded
that
the
1868
Fort
Laramie
Treaty
guaranteeing
the
Black
Hills
to
the
Lakota
be
honoured.
They
also
wanted
an
end
to
the
strip
mining
at
the
Pine
Ridge
Reservation.
At
the
end
of
the
siege,
however,
the
federal
government
made
no
concessions,
and
the
Indians
were
removed.
5)
Another
important
period
in
the
American
dissent
history
is
the
“anti-imperialism”
with
such
people
as
Jane
Addams
and
Mark
Twain.
Could
we
consider
the
Spanish-American
War
and
the
Treaty
of
Paris,
which
transferred
the
control
of
the
Philippines
to
the
USA
in
1898,
as
the
beginning
of
American
imperialism?
In
some
ways
yes,
but
in a
sense
American
imperialism
began
with
the
Mexican
War.
When
hostilities
with
Mexico
broke
out
in
1846,
there
was
little
doubt
in
anyone’s
mind
that
the
war
was
going
to
be a
war
for
expansion.
Many
Northerners
were
aware
that
the
South
had
set
its
sights
on
the
northern
provinces
of
Mexico
as
suitable
territory
into
which
slavery
could
be
expanded
and
out
of
which
new
slave
states
could
be
carved.
But,
on
the
whole,
there
was
widespread
enthusiasm
and
patriotic
fervor
in
favour
of
war.
Two
hundred
thousand
men
volunteered
for
the
army,
while
politicians
and
newspapers
claimed
that
the
war
would
be a
blessing
for
Mexico
by
bestowing
the
American
benefits
of
liberty
and
equality.
Abolitionists
and
some
clergymen
and
politicians,
however,
raised
their
voices
in
opposition
to a
war
that
would
expand
slavery.
The
Spanish
American
War
and
the
acquisition
of
the
Philippines
at
the
beginning
of
the
twentieth
century,
of
course,
was
a
major
step
toward
the
involvement
of
the
United
States
in
imperialism.
6)
The
working
class
protest
in
America
started,
like
in
Europe,
together
with
the
transformation
of a
rural
into
an
industrial
and
urban
society.
Workers
exchanged
their
labour
for
subsistence
wages,
in
difficult
conditions
and
unsafe
factories.
But
the
struggle
in
Europe
was
harder,
why?
Perhaps
European
workers
didn’t
feel
there
were
as
many
options
open
to
them.
And
many
of
those
who
were
discontented
began
emigrating
to
other
countries
like
the
U.S.,
Australia,
and
South
America
7)
In
this
present
economic
crisis
people
are
losing
their
jobs,
have
not
enough
money
to
get
through
the
month,
but
I
got
the
feeling
that
they
could
never
find
the
strength
to
band
together
in
order
to
fight
for
their
rights
as
in
the
past,
because
people
nowadays
aren’t
a
society
anymore,
but
isolated
and
lonely
individuals
who
could
not
oppose
an
unjust
State.
What
is
your
opinion
about
this?
Well,
I
think
you’re
right
in a
way.
People
do
not
connect
today.
But
in
the
past
they
didn’t
connect
that
well
either,
at
least
until
there
was
a
cause,
like
Civil
Rights,
or
the
War
in
Vietnam,
that
caused
enough
of
them
to
reflect
and
think
about
their
role
in
society.
Problems
usually
have
to
escalate
to a
point
where
you
cannot
ignore
them
anymore
before
people
band
together
to
voice
their
opinion,
or
dissent,
and
try
to
force
the
powers-that-be
to
respond
to
problems
in a
new
way.
If
people
are
just
trying
to
fend
for
themselves
and
just
“get
by”
it’s
hard
to
look
at
problems
in a
broader,
more
encompassing
way.
That’s
not
to
say
that
it
won’t
happen.
People
have
a
high
sense
of
tolerance.
They
tolerate
their
difficulties
until
it
becomes
impossible
to
tolerate
them
anymore.
Then
they
act.
8)
If
you
had
to
choose
the
most
representative
figure
in
the
American
dissent
history?
In a
sense
Martin
Luther
King
is
an
icon
of
American
history.
He
is
recognized
as
one
of
the
most
influential
and
significant
figures
of
the
twentieth
century,
but
his
career
on
the
public
stage-from
the
beginning
of
the
Montgomery
bus
boycott
in
December
1955
to
his
assassination
in
April
1968-only
lasted
13
years.
Developing
his
own
Weltanschauung
as
he
studied
for
the
ministry,
Martin
Luther
King
Jr.
drew
his
inspiration
from
many
sources-from
the
teachings
of
Christ
and
the
Social
Gospel,
from
Locke,
Jefferson,
Rauschenbusch,
and
Reinhold
Niebuhr.
He
first
came
to
public
attention
during
the
11-month
Montgomery
bus
boycott.
In
1957
he
founded
the
Southern
Christian
Leadership
Conference
(SCLC),
a
grassroots
civil
rights
organization
whose
membership
consisted
primarily
of
members
of
black
congregations,
as
distinct
from
earlier
National
Association
for
the
Advancement
of
Colored
People
(NAACP),
which
had
been
founded
by
intellectuals
and
lawyers
in
order
to
overturn
segregation
through
the
legal
system.
After
less
then
a
decade
of
political
activism,
by
1963
King
was
widely
understood
to
be
the
leader
of
the
civil
rights
movement.
That
year
he
urged
President
Kennedy
to
issue
a
new
emancipation
proclamation
and
to
come
out
forcefully
for
civil
rights,
and
he
was
deeply
disappointed
when
Kennedy,
at
first,
did
nothing.
In
April
1963,
King
brought
the
movement
to
Birmingham-the
most
segregated
city
in
the
South.
The
events
that
followed
proved
the
catalyst
for
finally
convincing
the
president
to
use
the
power
of
the
Oval
Office
to
guarantee
civil
rights
for
all
Americans.
Newsreel
footage
coming
out
of
Birmingham-of
Police
Chief
Bull
Connor’s
men
loosing
dogs
on
the
demonstrators,
of
the
city’s
fire
department
hosing
protestors
with
enough
force
to
roll
them
down
the
street-convinced
many
that
segregation
had
to
go.
These
disturbing
images
made
about
the
plight
of
African
Americans.
In a
nationally
televised
address,
President
Kennedy
called
civil
rights
a
“moral
issue
as
old
as
the
scriptures”
and
declared
“race
has
no
place
in
American
society”.
He
announced
that
he
would
send
a
sweeping
civil
rights
bill
to
Congress
that
would
outlaw
segregation.
This,
of
course,
is
what
King
and
the
movement
had
been
hoping
to
accomplish
throughout
their
long
campaign.
At
one
point
during
the
Birmingham
demonstrations,
King
was
arrested
and
jailed
for
eight
days.
Meanwhile,
a
group
of
white
Alabama
ministers
put
an
ad
in
the
New
York
Times
condemning
King
as
an
“outside
agitator”
whose
poorly
timed
campaign
was
itself
the
cause
of
violence.
King’s
eloquent
reply,
written
in
the
margins
of a
newspaper
and
on
scraps
of
paper,
is a
persuasive
statement
of
the
necessity
of
nonviolent
direct
action.
Like
Thoreau
more
than
a
century
earlier,
he
argues
that
while
just
laws
must
be
obeyed,
unjust
laws
must
be
broken.
But
King
is
only
one
of
many
dissenters
in a
long
line
of
American
dissent.
Washington
and
Jefferson
and
Adams
dissented
against
British
policy.
William
Lloyd
Garrison,
Frederick
Douglass,
and
John
Brown
were
just
three
of
the
thousands
of
abolitionists
who
protested
vehemently
against
the
institution
of
slavery.
Susan
B.
Anthony,
Elizabeth
Cady
Stanton,
and
Lucretia
Mott
devoted
their
lives
to
fighting
for
women’s
suffrage.
There
are
many
people,
famous
AND
unknown,
who
figured
prominently
in
the
long
history
of
American
dissent.
So
it’s
not
really
possible
to
choose
just
one
who
stands
out
above
all
the
rest.
Martin
Luther
King,
like
all
the
others,
were
just
part
of a
long
tradition.
9)
In
your
book
Dissent
in
America
you
also
analyze
“protest
music”;
could
you
give
us a
short
excursus
of
this
phenomenon,
which
had
a
huge
impact
on
American
society,
especially
during
the
Vietnam
War.
During
the
latter
half
of
the
1950’s
a
number
of
coffee
houses
and
folk
clubs
opened
in
New
York
and
San
Francisco.
This
was
partly
an
outgrowth
of
the
popularity
of
the
Weavers
folk
group
as
well
as
the
growing
Beat
Movement.
Beat
pots
often
gathered
in
these
smoke-filled
clubs
to
exchange
ideas,
denounce
the
conformist
social
atmosphere
of
the
1950s,
read
their
poetry,
and,
in
some
cases,
sing
their
songs.
The
result
was
the
folk
music
revival.
In
1958,
when
the
Kingston
Trio’s
“Tom
Dooley”
raced
to
the
top
of
the
charts,
folk
music
became
a
force
in
popular
culture.
By
the
early
1960s,
numerous
performers
such
a
Peter,
Paul,
and
Mary,
Joan
Baez,
Phil
Ochs,
and
Bob
Dylan
were
appealing
to a
rapidly
growing
audience
of
baby
boomers.
Folk
songs
tell
a
story.
A
story
can
be
political.
Many
of
the
songs
performed
at
the
clubs
were
critical
and
probing
explorations
of
the
problems
facing
the
nation:
civil
rights,
the
cold
war,
the
uptight
conformity
of
crew-cut,
gray-flannel-suit
America,
and
the
arms
race
that
seemed
to
be
pushing
the
world
to
the
brink
of
Armageddon.
In
the
1960s,
as
these
songs
proliferated
on
the
airways
and
young
people
flocked
to
record
stores
to
buy
the
latest
albums,
the
effect
was
to
unify
student
activists
around
the
country.
Students
from
New
York
or
Chicago
or
San
Francisco
–
when
they
arrived
in
Washington
for
an
antiwar
demonstration
–
all
shared
familiarity
with
the
songs
of
The
Doors,
Bob
Dylan,
Country
Joe
and
the
Fish,
Simon
and
Garfunkel,
Jefferson
Airplane,
and
the
Beatles.
And,
as
in
the
civil
rights
movement,
many
songs
would
be
sung
during
the
demonstrations,
adding
further
to a
sense
of
unity
and
common
purpose.
By
the
mid-1970s,
the
innovative
and
political
aspect
of
popular
music
had
succumbed
to
commercialism.
Songs
were
losing
their
power.
With
the
Vietnam
War
coming
to
an
end,
songwriters
were
no
longer
writing
antiwar
songs.
Disco
came
on
the
scene,
and
rock
and
roll
seemed
stale.
Punk
and
later
grunge
were
efforts
to
inject
some
life
into
music,
but
the
jaded
messages
that
were
being
put
across
lacked
the
passion
and
freshness
of
earlier
protest
music.
African
American
rap
music
and
hip
hop,
and
artists
like
Talib
Kweli,
The
Coup,
and
Public
Enemy,
however,
brought
more
fervor
and
excitement
in
their
lyrical
condemnation
of
life
in a
racist
society.
Recently,
many
performers
have
begun
to
take
on
broader
issues,
such
a
globalization
and
American
diplomacy.
10)
Dissent
in
America
also
deals
with
racism
and
xenophobia.
You
wrote
that
in
American
history
we
can
find
a
sort
of
underlying
institutional
racism,
can
you
explain
this?
In
the
Nineteenth
century
it
was
common
for
most
people
to
assume
that
blacks
were
inferior.
Even
among
those
who
believed
that
all
people
were
equal,
there
were
many
who
believed
that
for
historical,
cultural,
and
social
reasons
the
enslaved
people
of
the
United
States
were
not
equal
to
those
who
were
never
enslaved.
In
the
early
twentieth
century
there
was
the
phenomenon
of
“scientific
racism”,
i.e.,
scientists
were
looking
for
explanations
that
would
fit
in
with
Darwin’s
theory
of
evolution
that
would
“prove”
that
non-European
races
and
ethnic
groups
were
inferior
to
Europeans.
It
took
a
long
time
for
these
pseudo-scientific
theories
to
be
debunked.
11)
Ralph
Waldo
Emerson,
an
American
transcendentalist,
wrote
in
1841:
“…Society
everywhere
is
in
conspiracy
against
the
manhood
of
every
one
of
its
members.
Society
is a
joint-stock
company,
in
which
the
members
agree,
for
the
better
securing
of
his
bread
to
each
shareholder,
to
surrender
the
liberty
and
culture
of
the
eater.
The
virtue
in
most
request
is
conformity.
Self-reliance
is
its
aversion.
It
loves
not
realities
and
creators,
but
names
and
customs”.
I
find
that
this
excerpt
could
fit
our
contemporary
society,
too.
What
do
conformity
and
self-reliance
mean
for
you?
To
me
they
mean
living
an
authentic
life.
So
many
people
today
just
try
to
“fit
in”
with
their
peers
and
they
don’t
understand
that
being
concerned
with
fitting
in
somehow
diminishes
their
own
lives,
diminishes
their
ability
to
achieve
some
sort
of
sense
of
self
realization.
Each
individual
needs
to
look
within
themselves
and
try
to
determine
what
it
is
that
gives
them
joy,
what
it
is
that
has
meaning
for
them
in
their
lives,
and
if
and
when
they
can
find
this,
then
to
pursue
their
own
dream,
and
not
submit
with
society’s
expectations
of
what
they
ought
to
be.
Follow
your
own
dream,
not
someone
else’s
dream
for
you.
