SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND ACTION OF BRINTON'S TIME.
(39;03) Brinton: .......So what problems of people…yeah,,…..how to engage with people in creating in creating more church worlds. And….when I got out of college, It was very clear to me that I wanted to be a part of a large of social movement changes. Not that I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or Indian chief.
Hieu: You graduated in 1970.
Brinton: Right. Uh huh…..
Hieu: I saw a picture of you with a long …..long hair
Brinton: (smilig)..yeah…uh…uh….that me….that me…..uh huh……
Hieu: I recognized you……
Brinton: (smiling and knocking her head……)
Hieu: I have a question, in that year book. 1970……it ‘s unique……it shows anger, anti-Viet Nam war……, social movements.
Brinton: Uh huh….uh…huh………yes…..
Hieu: And there’re pictures anti-VN war……in one picture, you were all standing like this…..and take the “shadows”……having the flag …cut…….it was very interesting to me.
Brinton: yes! Uh….huh……
Hieu: So, can you tell me more bout that? How social movements, anti-war?
Brinton: Well, I would say…..there were a lot of things that ….(.PAUSE)…….That 40:46….(pause)……..that feels clear to me of ….of my own development. …my own life is that ……it’ mirrors…. or echoes……or I understand who I am , not only in terms of the individually experience that I had…….but different broader social processes that were going on as I moved through my own life chronologically . So When I was 41:16growing up in New Orleans, the 1954 Brown versus boarder education decision…..the beginning effort to desegregate schools… I was in school in the south when that was happening. When I was in high school the Archbishop of New Orleans excommunicated the …..What would……the equivalent of the….. Mayor of Blackmen Parrish. Because he refused to integrate public school….and the Catholic school in …….Blackman. Parrish???............................um. ( 41:42?????)
When I went to colleges, um…. and live in Paris in 1968. There was a huge set of social movements…some of them happened live in France … right now….um um…….. students doing with …..workers, protesting any inequality …….., protesting materializations …um…and it was deepling ……inform by understanding of …a……maxims and of a need for a socialist revolution. Um,,,so that my up bringing in Catholicism where I have been kind of drawn to the issue to of social responsibility being responsible for my younger siblings, being responsible to bring X’mass baskets to the poor , being responsible to visit people in the hospital, being responsible to teach kids ..um…om the weekend. All of that I began to think about…. much more in terms of change rather than charity, much more in terms of re…..alignment of economic resources , much more as a problem that system as nonstructural not a problem individual being good people or bad people. I think when I was growing up, I had the idea that if I did enough good things I would be a good person and If I died I would go to haven. And I think in my college years, I began to see that as much as I thought, I still continue to think…… if I do today, that it ‘s important how I live my own life. I do have a lot of individual responsibility; I still have a very strong street…of that. But I don’t think that...that’s enough. I think that the way in which our society is organized. Ummmm I think that ….(pause) for example, the fact that you can be multibillionaire in United State and you have to pass a majority of population doesn’t have enough to live ……and to get help health care, and to send their kids to schools, and to go to college. I think that‘s structure in justice, I think we need to change policies and practices that allow society that one of the wealthy society in the world to have such a gap between the rich and the poor. That’s NOT good for democracy, in my judgment. And I learned some of that in Paris. I learned that ….that in order for things …to change people to have to organize …to gather that kind of group collectivities that I was raised with Neither to be brought broad in a societal way and ………I was surrounded by people who have formed the organizations and who took the street ……to the what they wanted. Now that occurred to me..I mean that was I meant …I was white gloves; Southern girl….I was never occurring to me that you never demand somebody …..You would likely ask for things that you wanted …..You would demonstrate how….demonstrate not to ……on the street but through argument, through sort of sit down conversation, through working behind that scene, through volunteer and ….what I began to understand ….only the beginning to understand what ……there are power forceful in the world ….that operate to protect people who earn a lot of money and ….um ….control a lot of resources …..and they don’t want to let go of those. And so that experiences in Paris was ordinary powerful and then visiting Eastern Europe. Visiting Soviet Union and seen society at least ….at that time in my life which I did not continue to believe but I did think at the time or attempting to guaranty health care, guaranty education, organize in different ways. I don’t think I was that clear about political depression and Soviet block…..I was so more coming mesmerized by the possibility of ….of the different form of organizing. And by also traveling to Turkey around, and saw whole different cultural experiences, um….so I think for me PROTEST was about RECOGNIZING that people in power make mistake. And …that …the…..sometimes they don’t want to hear that…. they making …mistakes… the only way can…to help them see that they making mistakes is to demonstrate a lot numbers of people.
So when I came back to United State…..when I was in France…um……Robber Kennedy was killed…..Martin Luther King was killed, and those experiences had a huge impact on me but not nearly as huge as some of the students protest going on in Paris at the time. (47:40)And then I was in the Soviet Union and Soviet Union based on Zech Savakis um?…..and all of those things, help radicalize me in a way taking some of the notion of Christine charity and transforming them into a notion of organizing and protest. So when I came back to the United State , the U.S was involved in what increasingly look to me like… A WAR of AGGRESSION…..another nation…a war in which large numbers of poor, working class and African American used for losing their lives ………were…..kids with I grew up with, or my own brothers who had deferment to go to schools…and to….you know .…hurt back…sore…near-sightedness…or whatever…….that got amount of military and where increasingly absolutely clear we have ….you know gotten involved again internal affair to another countries. And taking a position that was not…one that you can just defense, so I was by that point then caught up with a relatively a small group of people but not ……at least at college we were small. But we were close enough to watching the ….that we were sle…up and to a much more sort of clerical protest.