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CSUDH - Habermas - UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan, Transcend Art and Peace
Created: November 13, 2001
Latest Update: November 25, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

I certainly don't mean to give you the impression that this has been a devastating experience. It's been great good fun. It's just that having won the race, made it to the top of the mountain, you look back and wonder why some of it was so hard, why you didn't know all along that you were going to win.

Yes, I wish I had done more for Elizabeth and J.B., but they were a delight to work with and we all enjoyed what we accomplished. I could never have done that without the whole kit and kaboodle of them. Sue Kirsch brought the thread of record and files. She knew what was happening, when we needed to be alert. She was wonderful. It was almost like having another Marian Rosser. There was Bill who brought so much in the way of calm cool expertise. So he got a little upset with us at times. But once we pointed out that he was expecting a lot, he simmered down and perked us up.

In the beginning there was Carol. Carol, bright-eyed, eager, inventive, with three kids whom she ended up supporting. Hers should have been a genuine liberal arts education. There were professors in her genealogy, but she hadn't had the chance to pursue a Ph.D. because she was a girl. From our first field studies classes, from which the Center was put together, we traded instrumental and socio-emotional roles. We were usually so busy that we didn't get out until late at night. The closer we got to pending deadlines, the nervouser and nervouser we got. But teaching went on all the time. Carol and I soon figured out that one of us should deal with people, and one of us with the deadline. I still remember her walking into the office and sighing with relief, "Thank God, Carol's here. I don't have to deal with people anymore."

By the time we liberated the big room in the basement, Carol was ready to go to UCLA for her doctorate. She taught special classes with me. She was talented and could write in Stanford English. But she worked with me, and so she, too, was treated as though she wasn't one of the brightest students we ever had. No one bothered to investigate what she did teach and offer. They just "knew" that what we did was less than substantive.

I'd worry that this was paranoid on my part, except that one day Carol herself told one of my classes, "Oh, I don't do that "touchy, feely" stuff." I guess she meant that I did. If you don't demand standard English before you're willing to engage the intellect, then clearly you're "touchy, feely." Once at UCLA, Carol became a more "serious sociologist," and barely worked with me anymore. Too bad the department didn't know that. They continued to label her as one of me. Even after she completed her Ph.D. at UCLA. Amazing how labels stick. "Knowingness," again.

None of those early years would have been possible without Carol. Odd how the structural context sometimes pulls apart those who are attuned to one another. And that's another way we kill the revolutionary. Take the bright lieutenant and invite him/her into the traditional fold. The price: acknowledge how your revolutionary ways need to be repented and deny your former revolutionary pals.

I remember how excited I was when Carol got into UCLA. Now she had access to all the stuff I never had. She would find out how to submit articles, to make the right contacts, to publish. Yippee!

Yeah! well once again, it didn't work like that. Carol was hardly at school anymore, for obvious reasons, like UCLA. So Aging Wolf and the new directors kind of ignored her. We lost that whole part of our team. The new group kind of fforged a whole new center of their own.

J.B. was gone then, too. And Sue had graduated and gone on to work for one of the local city groups. Of course, at a phone call they all appeared to deal with crises. But the daily routine missed them all. I missed them all. Elizabeth missed them all. What was it we missed? I wonder . . .

Maybe that was a part of the difference. We had been a community. If anything went wrong, and lots of things did, one phone call would bring us all together, like a family. And every one of us pitched in to right whatever was wrong. That wasn't a rule we made up. It just was. Like that time someone was taking pictures and there was absolutely no one white around. Every single person in the office was black or brown. It was going to look like we were an African American Center. J.B. and I took off, and fifteen minutes later came back dragging some of our white students. We had diversity again.

Then four months later, ten students marched in complaining that all our directors were white. We were racist. One phone call, and J.B. appeared. He sat them down and told them how he and I had to go out and round up white students just a few months ago. The complaining students had just come on board. None of them had had time to reach director status. Crisis averted.

They were right, you know. I had just hired Lois and Joanie. Both of them were blondes. Every one of our black directors had graduated. And Lois and Joanie just happened to be there. Lois and Joanie weren't part of the Aging Wolf group either. It's not like they were excluded. They simply didn't fit. They were the start of a whole new group of students with their own agendas, like Carol who had gone on to UCLA and Susan, who had gone on to Berkeley.

Lois was heading for UCLA and her own social development program for street kids victimized by the system. Our center offered a place to work on her data, plan her program, and move toward publishing her data as a dissertation. And our center had been "home" to her since she was 17. I still had fond memories of schlepping her and Carol and Sandy and Darlene to San Francisco for the first National Hooker's Convention in San Francisco with Margo St. James. We had stayed at the Mark Twain hotel, right across the street from the Methodist Church that hosted the convention.

Now Carol was at UCLA, Lois, too, had gone on to UCLA, though still teaching for us in the center, Darlene had gone on to Atlanta and a social work job, and Sandy had graduated. But those memories still held us together. Lois had stayed in touch with Margo St. James and became active in Coyote, while developing her program.

We were all intensely committed to the community work we had chosen. This wasn't just a job. It was our lived reality. And that bound us together. But maybe we didn't look like we were together, because we scattered all over the country. Well, yes. But that was how we grew.

Lois came flying in at odd moments, excited, pouring out some story about what had just happened, and rushed off to do whatever she was doing in teaching then. Joanie usually came with her. Joanie, a stewardess by profession, kept the same pace Lois did. Exuberant, fascinated by the night life of LA, brilliant and restless, they never lacked for fascinating adventures. And they showed little interest in the discussions with Aging Wolf. So we had these two separate groups operating in one space.

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Notes to finish:

Lois and Joanie - agendae of their own. Just like Marlene and Jaime. Susan - off to Berkeley. Nothing as clear as the bullies of whom Duncan Kennedy complains, but none the less, hierarchical control.

Students could discuss, but couldn't lead argument. Bourdieu - academic discourse - how could I have it when I wasn't having it myself?

Helped that I had never had such entree so I didn't know the rules. I set about to create my fantasy of what "they" must have had.

Learning has to start with what you want to talk about - Lenard, Rousseau and Emile.

But learning also means discipline. C's simply say you haven't succeeded. The self-esteem stuff says we need support. So we began to write in this direction.

The kid who asked you mean you want me to know not just T F, but why?

the bra

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Word Count:

428 words. Former word count: 16100. Total word count: 16100 + 428 = 16528