TROUBLEMAKER: A Memoir From the Front Lines of the Sixties, is a great book, and Bill Zimmerman is a major hero.
From 1960 to 1975, as a radical political activist, he helped shape history, inspiring what has come to be the best in our world. Open to daring escapades, he always sought the most provocative games, and I bow to his courageousness.
In fact, there’s nothing like heroism or creativity or love to inspire us. We leapfrog over one another as we tumble toward enlightenment – think torus, as in THRIVE, in everyday operation.
In light of Occupy Wall Street, hearken to this, where Bill was making this prescient reflection about the 60s even before the upheavals in Europe had come about:
“Capitalism was here to stay. Revolution, I realized, was an inappropriate offensive strategy; people who thought as I did lacked the resources to do anything by play defense. Even if the resource problem were overcome, we had no credible revolutionary strategy, nor did I see a way to create one. After much soul searching, I finally understood that it would not fall to my generation to make a revolution. We could do little more that resist, or make trouble for the worst aspects of capitalism.”
And here’s how the book ends:
“It will fall to future generations to create a society fully committed to those ideals. It fell to mine to keep them alive so that someday they can. I hope the fire of our commitment, however bleak the times we lived through, will help inspire future activists to erase the injustice and poverty that need no longer have a place in our world. What I learned along the way is that performing good works, political or otherwise, with no expectation of recognition or reward, was for me the secret to leading an honorable and happy life.”
Stand on Bill Zimmerman’s shoulders by reading his book. And it’s for everyone, not just the young folk. I am the older generation, and it has inspired me.
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