“I Want to Be Your Friend, You Black Idiot!!”: The Dynamics of Majority Involvement in Minority Movements
speakers' biographies
Howard Machtinger
Students for a Democratic Society and Weathermen
I arrived in Chicago in the fall of 1966, just after King’s unsuccessful attempts to combat de facto segregation in Chicago and a sit-in against the use of class rank to decide which students were subjected to be drafted. I came as a graduate student in the sociology department at the University for Chicago. I soon joined the university chapter of SDS who had helped lead the anti-class rank sit-in of the previous spring. An abortive sit-in in the spring of 1967 led to me being ‘exiled’ from campus. During my semester ‘exile’, I went to the 1967 World’s Fair or Expo in Montreal where as an SDS representative I met with the National Liberation Front (NLF) of Viet Nam, known by Americans as the Viet Cong. I vividly recall their confident assertions that they would defeat the US. I then went to California where I participated in the large Stop the Draft Week demonstrations in Oakland. Then I journeyed to Copenhagen as SDS delegate to attend the second session of the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal where I heard testimony about US torture techniques and the use of chemical agents such as Agent Orange.
Upon my return to campus I became more active against the war and in the anti-racist movement. I introduced Muhammed Ali when he spoke out against the Viet Nam war to a crowd of more than 1500 at the Field House on the U of C campus and helped organize Viet Nam graduation for the class of 1968. In the summer of 1968 I was an active participant in demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I was part of a small organizing project on Chicago’s West Side. In the spring of 1969 I was one of the leaders of a sit-in in support of the tenure fight of sociologist Marlene Dixon, a feminist radical. I was subsequently expelled.
I had already become active at the national; level in SDS (whose national office was located on West Madison Street). I saw myself as a militant anti-imperialist and joined the Weatherman faction of SDS. My evaluation of this experience is at http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4251/you_say_you_want_a_revolution. I lived as a fugitive for most of the period from 1970 until 1978 when I turned myself into government authorities.
Since then I have remained politically active while working successively as a computer programmer, high school teacher, and director of a teacher training program. I am now retired.
