Future Hope Column: Dealing with Government Repression

 

By Ted Glick 

“Ultimately, what I have learned is that government repression can have a disruptive impact on our work, but we can turn a negative into a positive. The extent to which we can creatively, intelligently and fearlessly demonstrate the truth of what we are about when responding to what they are doing to us is the extent to which we will strengthen and build our movement.”

-from my book, Burglar for Peace: Lessons Learned in the Catholic Left’s Resistance to the Vietnam War.

(Much of what follows is an edited version of a section in the concluding chapter of the Burglar for Peace book.)

My first years of progressive activism and organizing took place during the presidency of Richard Nixon, without doubt one of, if not the, most repressive Presidential administrations we have experienced in the US in the modern era. It was under Nixon that the Republican Party with its “southern strategy” began its move toward becoming the kind of ultra-rightist entity that allowed pathological liar, racist and sexual predator Donald Trump to be elected President in November of 2016, and again two weeks ago.

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Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.