tangled up in blue revolution in the air welcome once again to the radical imagination i mean host your brother knows i'm a sociologist who's taught to john jay college here in new york city the port huron statement written collectively by social and political activist tom hayden and a small group of student activists at the university of michigan in one thousand nine hundred eighty two became a powerful manifesto of movement building for more just society half a century ago it starts in this way we are people of this generation bred in at least modest comfort housed now in universities looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit began to see complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding america although mankind desperately needs revolutionary leadership america rests in that stalemate its goals ambiguous and tradition bound instead of informed and clear it's democracy system apathetic and manipulated rather than of by and for the people our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living the statement could easily be mistaken for a call to action by student counterculture of the civil rights movement anti war movement the women's movement and many other movements that tried to radically transform america and the world culminated in america in the assassinations of martin luther king and robert kennedy having three major events celebrating and debating the tamil to student rebellion in one thousand nine hundred sixty and we too at the radical imagination want to dialogue about that monumental year and we'll have several shows during the year doing just that mark rudd a leader of the columbia revolts will be on next week's show but today we're very pleased and excited to start that narrative with mitch have a door a brilliant and militant oral history of the one nine hundred sixty eight uprising in france has led to a forthcoming article in new york times where he will discuss the many maids during may sixty eight a worker may a student may and a may have conservative friends his circles are expanding rapidly wider and wider as he remains a proud and true third generation brooklynite and before we meet met mit here's a brief clip of the events of nine hundred sixty eight in france the columbia strike may have reminded people of the paris commune but may sixty eight in france was the real thing what began as a student protest for reform of the archaic authoritarian french university system sparked a general strike that electrified the country they were anarchists most of them that was the spirit of the slogan was all power to the imagination that you can do anything you know that we don't have to live with all the various forms of repression which were used to so it was anti capitalist but that was just part of his general complete sort of cultural revolution that the french students were anticipating and so it's interesting that although they were the furthest out in any way politically that was also the one place where workers joined with students and almost topple the government tenth that night at the barricades twenty thousand students marched in the latin quarter police and students clashed street fighting went on for weeks the rioting and marches about to half a million people frighten not only president the goal but the french communist party as well the old left thought this new left was out of control they had impossible dreams the two principles slogans i think were quotations from marx and in the excitement well there was a sense of strawberry brotherhood and sisterhood there was this capacity to embrace people in the streets there were couples kissing there were couples that fell apart because they did not share political views paris was divided by the river sand as never before on the left bank you had left the revolutionaries the dreamers on the right side you have the conservatives you had the gall you had revolutionary explosion from time to time eventual eat them a uprising subsided the powerful trade unions controlled by the communists refused to take part and police kept up relentless pressure but over time the students did succeed in reforming and modernising the french educational system and they reduced unaided the socialist party which a decade later became the elected government of france it became a great gigantic fraternal feasting which everybody was kissing everybody and bracing everybody patting everybody on the back and say how happy they were and how free they felt and this was contagious it was marvelous and i don't think we'll ever see it again which then became the famous chant we are all german jews right ok but it was the march twenty second movement on march twenty second the students did not there where he was a student where he was a student occupied the administrative offices ok and this was after some students from the interior had been arrested after smashing a an american express office near the opera ok and they were going to be expelled right so the students they protested already been a number of protests at nanterre all of which involved the neo con been did and the causes that they were they were fighting for example over causes familiar to us the i was fighting over women boys and girls having a right to visit each other in their dorms right and convent did himself was nearly expelled for confronting the minister of youth and sport believe it or not it was a minister of youth and sport youth and sport who had t kids give it give give trump time we may have that here too where we are right anyway sorry and who were and who had said told the stories of this so obsessed with with swimming then maybe they need to all like just go for a swim right paris to decongest the latin quarter intensional in a more working class not really was it was it was if you were from if it was the western part of paris that was where you now we went ok and so i mean i interviewed many people who were at non tariff who took part in the occupation on march twenty second and fact one of my favorite stories in the book is the young woman who was  nanterre and so they knew they were occupying march twenty second the occupying in the evening and it was her mother's birthday and so they were going out to take mom out for birthday dinner so she told her parents we like go out a little bit earlier and they will all have dinner together and they you drop me off at school and i'll go occupy and i was just with what they did so so march twenty second there was th occupation there's all kinds of stuff going on in ontario was closed down temporarily and in may there was going to be the disciplinary council it was going to decide the fate of these students from so this was it this was in may and so on may third the cops invade the serb own and the students from the so burn end from nanterre who were there everybody told me who was there they have no idea why what happened happened it was just enough was enough and they started throwing stones at the cops and that was well again years and spontaneous there was absolutely nothing planned nothing going on nothing's going on and so the  responded and this was the beginning so nothing much happens over the weekend the following week these demonstrations really picking up the week of march fourth fifth sixth so these demonstrations all week and it's all just students the workers in fact it was on may third that map cherie from the communist party had called combine the german anarchist had condemned the students as the children of the and accuse them of adventurism in this work you should have nothing to do with this and even earlier they'd say we got to keep the students out of the way from the factories they're going to want to come and make trouble for the french communist party's leadership the french  the workers right so but we could come back to that because of the work of our workers you know we shouldn't say they had no role to play in in that also anyway so stuff goes on and then on may tenth and this was in that clip that we just saw the students they had marched all around paris and they get back to the latin quarter and they already they dispersed every night when the cops etc dispersed they disperse for some reason on may tenth the students said no at this point the students were pretty angry with the leadership which had risen spontaneously right you know that you know  we it's one of the things that this is the english is maybe sixty eight from something like occupy is where it's occupied made a fetish of horizontality and the leadership very quickly leadership spontaneously grew out was an anarchist ok and a conscious anarchist ok he was part of a group called luzhin wild and he had of really thorough political education for his brother who was a teacher in the center there working class leftwing city in brittany so he was a thoroughly educated politically educated figure he knew just what was going on but right they were marxists they are the barricades as we saw and the communists meet the over the weekend the communist leadership meets over the weekend and that takes us the eleventh and twelfth and on the thirteenth they call a strike to decide what to do what is their main and they did this point had already decided the they were going to keep themselves still protect themselves from the students try to take everything over but they were discovered through my conversations with people who participated in both the planning and who participated in this that a little bit of revisionism is needed because the work of the students everything that they said or trying to make them so precisely that all and there was any was such an ingrained part of every segment of the french left because you know the advocates movement they flew the red in the black flags and it was a real working class oriented movement even if there weren't many workers in it and the communist party had been well implanted many people had transited through the communist party moved o every sunday said they was within marxism worker isn't really was really essential to them so the students who are constantly talking about the working class the working class the working class you know if you see  films of the march is there or is always something about work or student unity and they're also always singing the international and they were ready to subsume their own energy but he told me that even though they marched together the students in the workers they never marched for the same thing so in essence they were physically in the same place but politically they weren't and in fact throughout may with the exception of young workers and you know everybody said were the be young workers what i would ask what happened when you talk to workers that were the so all of the slogans yeah that we've come to think of as being representative of may you know be realistic demand the impossible and you know all power to the some economic wherewithal precisely and but they were also challenging the roots of capitalism right they were calling for control of means of production well they were right they weren't there was years nuff right and they wanted they would they they wanted to go all out which probably leads into why they supported the call they didn't object to the call for new elections that the goal made  know the all those demands are for example with stars in their eyes a student they go exactly where the us exactly we are real revolutionaries right and and when the students regularly marched out the factories you know and this is like a really important point in a real bone of contention about about may and it's something that universally people who were students then say when they went to the factories one the factories were occupied but it wasn't like in one nine hundred thirty six where there would also be a general strike where the popular front was elected because they said in thirty six it was the workers who occupied the factories whereas in sixty eight it was really the union bureaucrats and the communist bureaucrats who occupied the factories now granted i didn't interview people from every factory in france but i did interview enough workers because there was important you know most people they think of may they think of paris but it was the whole country was paris against the rest of the country well that's so that was that now before the paris commune in this case it wasn't ok there were places that were more every bit as if not more occupy a factory so the students would go out to the factories to show their solidarity and in most places not all but almost all the workers told them to get lost what did you do when the students came out of the naval shipyard he said we kicked the many errors and similarly when convent went to visit his brother in centers there and wanted to speak they didn't want to speak and he actually ended up having to speak on the beach so there was so there was this huge split so the question is who is responsible you know when people say you know this that it was the union leadership that wanted to keep everybody apart that the workers really wanted to unite with us but they weren't allowed to i've not seen much evidence of that and except among young workers and the fact is the workers to say that the workers wanted to but they didn't or they wanted to but they couldn't and that's the only reason we couldn't unite with them as a way exculpating the workers for everything that happened for the revolution not happening is really i have to say and the worker because it denies the agency  workers if they supported the communists they supported them because the communist spoke for them and what you do so brilliantly and i really i know you're biased on this but this is incredible best again work you are doing all history in the in the finest traditions you're listening to actually and not coming in there with some preconceived preordained paradigm as to what should or what was happening you are actually listening to the people and figuring out the different sides and putting it together in a masterful way that again generations can look at and because we've got to figure this out because this is a monumental opportunity wasn't it and i mean  you know i thank you for your for the words but what happened was i went in you know i started doing this book or i had the idea for this book and you know it's just a personal anecdote may sixty eight was and but in the morning you know i was typical american household with a t v on at seven o'clock and there would be the footage of the previous day they've seen the previous day's demonstration and i was completely swept away by it and so that was where it first discovered marxism in you know the real left and it was a couple years ago and that's in part why we're showing this to another generation because young people today can is this real is this sort of like some us as nine hundred sixty eight was from the trenches of world war one yeah and somebody needs to talk to these people and i think it should be me i think it should be and i think it was but also i went  went into with kind of like the story i think that you said at the beginning because this really was such an essential event for me now of course like everybody else i've become considerably more cynical since then nevertheless may sixty eight was still for me life experience coming in ard on the left right and it was in the west which is right it's a how do you define translate that you know the bit what it is what it was was it was clearly nobody support for the system we have but massively now what was so then what is a revolution what is and revolutionaries need to have that vision and well as some sort of what program  and what we're talking about we'll talk about workers and students no longer all on strike i understand then clearly what you have is something bigger than just an event ok and yet it failed and yet it failed because of again the the brute force of but but was it the brute force i mean we want to get a little bit ahead of ourselves ok but all the alternatives ok let me talk about the help let's talk about brute force and this is actually a really important element in  everyone sort of went but everything everything like figured out you know but the fact is there were one in something that how many people were killed is a subject of debate right friends right because there was one heart attack right there with a heart attack there was a policeman who died he was run over it was thought he was in the so he was run over by a truck he went to jail for it but later on it was determined he died of a heart attack i spoke to the person who's the head of the march twenty second movement in new york is still very defensive about this there was one other person around this time and innocent bystander who was who was killed accidentally ok so that takes us in the month of may these two people then in june there is a high school student who drowns who went to a real factory influence he was cops were chasing him he ran he jumped into the river didn't know how to swim sunk and he died there were two workers at sochaux at a preacher factory who was shot and killed just flat out killed and then later on there's one other death kind of after the events their electoral campaign a communist putting up electoral posters was was killed by a bunch of right wing thugs we're not talking about the eight days where twenty thousand people lost their lives were killed react to the paris commune right it is also that we are making a very nor are we talking about so obvious even america after kent state exactly or mexico city you know the hill in the summer right so the even though people beat up and people told me interesting stories about how you know the cops were you know they were bad but they weren't all that bad and people usually compliment the  of again burying the failure this time burying it linguistically because it was an event and there were some people as opposed to insist it was an event it was not a revolution because  revolution real important point you make but it really and i don't and i don't necessarily think i mean i say many things some of which i agree with but some of the stuff i say i don't agree with and i'm just trying to find the struggling to find the answer a lot of the stuff about may i still you know haven't really satisfied myself it's sometimes i write and i speak just in the hope of something coming out that i had ordered or we're all in the same boat and i course i was it's a film essay on may and the starting point of the film is all the central question of the film is what happens when happiness dies that when hope dies when what you thought was going to happen doesn't so he starts with footage about his mother visiting china in one thousand nine hundred sixty six or sixty seven i can't remember and which leads him to me and his mother was happy and later she wasn't and then he goes to paris and you have the sheer joy like what colors front they said about the kissing everybody talks about their on street corners everybody argue everybody discussed people talk to strangers that they never never were they never did it before and they never did afterwards and feeling the camaraderie and if it's rather humanity and if you know when you watch films of the year of a simple you know william klein's great film back when everything seemed possible and you know and that's what the film is about and that's part of the tragedy of may sixty eight because everything did seem possible and then it didn't happen and so it's something that shows in the film he has clips from another absolutely brilliant film on the french left and i'm a sixty eight c who committed suicide you know and the film is about somebody who was a leader in the in the trotskyist movement who himself committed suicide after daring a dedicate himself heart and soul to the movement because the revolution was you know up next wednesday and next wednesday never seems to come and in may sixty eight it looked like it had come and then when may sixty eight ended now i'm thinking about it when may sixty eight ends and the assumption is that it failed something on the left that it failed only because of the communists then people have all the more hope because if you say that was the fault of the communists then it's not the fault of the working class this could have happened had the communists in the way if we now go to the working class this is all going to happen and so many people go to work in factories the ma go work in factories you know call it ugly implants and they all go work in factories and they live a life they give up their educations they give up everything to go work in factories because you know the work is if they didn't play the role they were supposed to play they will next time but then next time doesn't come you know there were people who said to me the question about ninety five you know we viewed even then we viewed may as  was the moment and this is also something that i think is important in in the intense now because he has in the film a moment they really got me to think about this thing about the many maze of may sixty eight in the film there are scenes of the funeral of the high school student the maoist high school student there with their only students at this at the funeral was a huge funeral but the parallel is the big famous cemetery and they marched through the streets of paris with their clenched fists and singing the international but you look at the crowd is not a single worker  and then this footage also of the funeral of one of the workers killed at sochaux pier below is not a student at it it's nothing but students and the third nothing but workers but there's also forage of the other france which is the one that gets left out and talks about it in the film take its left out in the left wing narrative and i give you know it well credit for putting it in the film there's footage of the funeral of the policeman killed in leo and that's the other friends and it's the one that the left forgot about it's the friends of people who went to this funeral with suits me but it was france yes and another thing you know and something that i asked most of the almost everybody about when i interviewed them was on may and there were some who dismissed it well you know it's just the bridge was the he was one person even told me i heard that it was the same people just walking around in circles but if you see footage of it yeah there's a lot of people you know and those people the students were so focused on themselves on their dreams and on the whole system certainly cystic you know that that's the way we can look at it now exactly well or is it they were young and they saw what they want to see i mean if i was young you know and that was my question i said when people say oh you know we didn't think it was going to lead to anything i would say place you know you were eighteen years old you were sixteen years old you were twenty two years old don't tell me you didn't think this was right but the reality was the goal continues right and we in america had it so there was and with every phone call  rebellion there's going to be a counter movement yeah and i think those of us who are interested in these sorts of things scholars writers filmmakers activists or got to realise that i mean we're not living in some sort of self barber poor people's move movement and fusion politics and how can we bring people together who we have pretty much rejected and humiliated also we're not going to get them back by calling them names either you've got to reach out and understand where they're coming from right right and or work but you know even people you know one of the person who i came out of may sixty eight the thinker who i came out of a sixty eight the most attracted to was somebody named realities who was the founder of the group called socialism or barbarism and he came to realize that the working class was no longer a revolutionary class you know it was k ok ok we were constantly doing work with the rank and file somebodies and all that but while we were doing this the socialist party recant constituted itself the right re mobilized working like crazy wh didn't and while we assumed intellectual hegemony this is the post may sixty eight we didn't notice that the bosses were reorganizing in modernizing that there was new management we missed the central axes which leaves us in the situation we're now in and i think that if there is a lesson i'm a sixty eight because we're never going to have that kind of revolution here no will they ever have again it was this it was they were so focused on their their own michigan us song and it's untitled when i'm gone i just sort of forget for a moment there because it's a beautiful song we'll see you again next week on the rack imagination phil ochs when i'm gone