Post by david on Mar 23, 2009 16:22:28 GMT -8
There's a battle outside and it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
-- Bob Dylan, 1963
[/size][/right]The class of 1966.
Some put on uniforms, picked up guns and went off to fight a war in Southeast Asia. Some picked up textbooks and went to college. Some grabbed their surfboards and paddled out in search of the perfect wave. Some slung guitars around their necks and sought fame and fortune at bigger and bigger rock concerts. Some put flowers in their hair and headed for San Francisco. Some left everything behind and joined communes. Some just dropped out, tuned out and turned on. I followed my nose to an afternoon presentation at San Diego State and ended up on the banks of the oldest ditch in Colorado.
On a day like any day on campus – with tables weighed down by propaganda from the Students for a Democratic Society, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Public Interest Research Group and a host of other student groups ranging from the Greeks to science clubs all set up in front of the library; with a shared megaphone in operation on the north lawn of the student union and four or five students (and the occasional “outside agitator”) waiting for a turn on the soapbox; with the intermittent naked student and hundreds of others striving to be non-traditional, non-conforming, angry-young-man or –woman, and other age-of-Aquarians who, because of their swollen number, had finally become conformist; with the obligatory crowd gathering to provide the obligatory round of applause to the brave young man choosing on that day to burn his draft card – or a replica thereof; with many struggling to find their way in the new reality of a brave new psychedelic-drug, free-love, anti-war, never-trust-anyone-over-30, anti-establishment back-to-nature world – I entered the scene; taking it all in, if not directly participating, as I made my transition from one class to the next.
The Daily Aztec, attempting to chronicle changes still in progress, presented a challenge to student-journalists not yet informed by Woodward and Bernstein and still ignorant of the changing role of news-gatherers who would soon prize the title, “investigative reporter” and would provide much of the fuel for spreading wild fires that had been smoldering for a century as the poor confronted the rich, blacks confronted whites, doves confronted hawks and young confronted old – fires that didn’t burn out until the war was ended, poverty, racism, environmentalism and abuse of power were addressed and, finally, a president was forced from office.
This day’s Aztec announced an afternoon gathering for anyone interested in learning more about the Volunteers in Service to America. President Kennedy had challenged us to ask what we would do for our country and a new federal agency called the Office of Economic Opportunity taunted us further by declaring, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.” The program included screening of a CBS Reports special titled “The Harvest of Shame,” narrated by the venerable Edward R. Murrow plus a sales pitch for the two-year-old Vista program which was part of President Johnson’s War on Poverty.
Appropriately shamed by what I saw in the film and inspired by Murrow’s challenge to address the plight of the migrant farm worker; impressed by the energy-laden presenters and their glowing promise that I could learn to help people help themselves; happy to find an alternative to the growing of the hair, wearing of the beads, smoking of the pot, burning of the draft card and to the notion that the only way to create change was through violent revolution, I eagerly grabbed an application.
Later, when I examined the 10-page form, I began to feel the magnitude of a decision that had seemed rather simple just a few hours earlier. I was challenged to justify myself to an unseen bureaucrat or panel of bureaucrats, to convince them, somehow, that I had grown enough and knew enough, that I was capable and mature enough and that I was smart and wise enough to represent the United States of America in a effort to assist less fortunate citizens with a transition from poverty into the great middle class.
I was required to enumerate not only all of my work experience – which was as meager as one might expect for an 18-year-old college freshman, but also any other life experiences that might contribute to my worthiness as a volunteer. I was required to provide not three, but a full dozen references, including employers, co-workers, clergy, family and friends. I had to respond to scores of questions exploring my abilities and interests in detail; and I was asked to reveal just about every aspect of my medical, educational and legal history.
The comprehensive self-evaluation required by that form made it impossible to conceal that fact that my qualifications were very thin in many respects. I held out little hope that I’d be accepted into the program.
But early in the summer of 1967, about a year after I graduated with the class of 1966, I received a letter from the Office of Economic Opportunity inviting me to become part of the seventh cohort of trainees for Region Seven, set to gather in Denver a few weeks later.
I can’t point with confidence to a single lasting accomplishment made during that year of service. But becoming a Vista changed me. Forever. My decision to attend that gathering at San Diego State determined the direction of my life. It was a day, like any other day – a day filled with challenges and choices that changed history.