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This episode is part two of our series of interviews with Isaac Cronin where we discuss his interesting life. This episode discusses the peak of Berkeley’s activist past and the struggles around the Vietnam war and whatnot.
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Isaac’s stories keep getting better and better! I was laughing out loud at some of them this time around, especially “I’m an old cowpoke and I don’t smoke”.
I gotta say, I was pretty skeptical of this particular aspect of the new format for this season but I think it has really come together and the point of it and how it fits in with the overall goals of the podcast is quite clear to me now.
This is extremely important . Thanks Isaac!
Compelling oral history. Helps me understand why this hyperreal world lacks first-person experiences.
What caught my attention:
How Telegraph Ave used to be buzzing with dialogue, bookstores, and record shops – much more conducive to building social movements and comraderie.
How the vietnam war-era draft REQUIRED subversive measures of starvation,. feigned illness, and ultimately, direct action – kept people on their toes, imaginative.
How “living in the world” meant tangible, hands-on interactions with people, places, and objects. Feet on the ground, eyes on the streets, and hearts on the sleeves, especially with the influence of the Free Speech Movement, People’s Park, and the Civil Rights Movement.
How the 60s was the age of costumes – us and them. Cogs, hippies, leftists, the elite, panthers….all were ovbvious – a visibility that I have trouble even fathoming.
Interesting bit about the Black Panthers and reformist policies. Reminds me of the concept that the people who make change are rarely the ones that benefit from it, only future generations, if even that.
In-between thoughts:
How history gets obliterated with the absence of inter-generational, inter-cultural, inter-racial dialogue. How these rich, personal, oral histories become unfathomable to people who grow up in entirely different times, with different income-levels, with different forms of struggle, you name it…and with minimal interaction with alternative demographics.
How gentrified thinking mimics this erasure of history – people see themselves and their choices as neutral, natural processes. As opposed to understanding the body/ies they’re evicting/erasing with their actions. The histories they ignore when they rent a room in Oakland, or walk through People’s Park, look out at UCB’s Sproul Hall, etc.
Anyway, thanks for this engaging episode!!!