USA Elections: A Revolutionary
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Freedom Summer Orientation
On the Road to Freedom
Personal Diary, Moss Point
Mississippi
Unifying the Movements: Looking Back at Today's
Uprisings, 2020
Thanks to Deborah Rand, also of Moss Point, Miss project in 1964, Zephyr Press found me for its 2007 edition of Letters from Mississippi. In the 2002 edition, I was listed as deceased, a confusion with the Ron Riden(h)our — who exposed the My Lai massacre — who had died.
Following the Freedom Summer, I remained active in SNCC in Los Angeles for a time and other anti-racist groups. I dedicated most of time, however, to the anti-war movement until the Vietnamese regained their sovereignty.
Viseral disgust for racism led me away from the "American Dream" my white body was born into. It led me to appreciate the Cuban revolution. The fight against racism and solidarity with Cuba led me to see a better world is only truly possible by making a revolution, one based on collective ownership of the economy and technology, on equality and liberty for all.
I took up the pen to struggle while also keeping my body on the picket line. I left the US after our movements fell apart and Reaganism took over. I married Grethe, a Danish woman, and we lived in her country for several years. I worked in solidarity for the Sandinistas and FMLN both in Denmark and in their countries. I lived in Cuba and worked for the Ministry of Culture and Prensa Latina (1988-96). I then returned to Denmark where I have lived unmarried since. There haved also been long trips to Island, Cuba and Venezuela. I continue to be active against US-imperialism wars now against the Middle East, albeit activity in this mostly indifferent, self-centered nordic culture is a rarity and mainly passive. So, the pen — or now the computer and internet — is my main tool.
I miss the energy and determination of the civil rights and black/brown/native american power movements. It is not simply that youth transformed to elderdom. It is that the times are not as magical, not as hopeful for most of us of all ages in the "first world". I identify completely with what Julian Bond — my communications director in SNCC — wrote in the "Letters" introduction:
"It was a time when nobody stopped to wonder, `What is the meaning of my life'?" Unfortunately, I cannot escape from asking that question in the late of my life.
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