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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

This interview of Abe Osheroff by Robert Jensen from 2005 is fourteen pages long. But there's good and important stuff on every page. Since I haven't been posting much lately, you have plenty of time to read it.

I'd be very interested in seeing your comments and responses.

http://thirdcoastactivist.org/osheroff.html

Excerpt from the introduction:

Osheroff certainly could play the hero if he liked. At age 90, he's participated in some of the most important political moments and movements of the 20th century -- from fighting with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, to the U.S. civil rights struggles in the segregated South in the 1960s, to the contemporary antiwar movement. And he's right out of central casting for the role of the aging-radical-who-never-gives-up: The white-haired rascal who moves seamlessly between passionate political analysis and anecdotes of past struggles, all in his gravely Brooklyn-accented speech peppered with enough profanity to set off a fire alarm.

But instead of a hero, in Osheroff I found something far more valuable: An ally and a friend. I found someone who was interested in being honest and self-critical, both about his life and the political movements to which he has belonged. Osheroff has little time for the politeness that constrains so much internal political discussion on the liberal/left. He sees one of his contributions to left/radical politics today to be mentoring younger activists, and in that endeavor his preferred tool is an intellectual hammer. He pounds away at political points with the same force that he drove nails as a working carpenter.

Osheroff loves to tell stories about the past, and it doesn't take much to start them rolling. But he's not mired in the past; conversations loop back to his personal history not to revel in the glory days, but to extract from those experiences lessons for the struggles ahead.

Enjoy!

(You have to click on the line in bold type at the bottom of each page to get to the next page.)