The Revolution Will Not be Televised

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news
and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.
--The Revolution Will Not be Televised, Gil Scott-Heron

___________

Never underestimate the power of protest.

One of our local professors has coauthored a recently released book titled, Books on Trial; Red Scare in the Heartland. It is the story of the arrest and subsequent release of book store owners and Communist party members Bob and Ina Wood in 1940 Oklahoma City.

"While prosecutors claimed that Wood and his cohorts advocated violence, destruction of property and murder, they proved only that he consorted with African Americans and Jews and sold books.

"Protests from 'thousands (if not tens of thousands) of private citizens poured into the offices of the county attorney, the state attorney general, and the governor.' Newspapers across the country editorialized in favor of free speech, free assembly and fundamental civil rights. Finally, in 1943 the Criminal Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s opinion.

"The Wiegands note the parallels between the 'paranoid politics' of that day and the present 'chain of civil liberties violations.' Even with the world at war, when the civil rights of a few citizens were threatened, people across the nation got it—their rights, too, stood in harm's way (Paranoia in Power, review in FSU Research in Review.) "

An animated number citizens was able to secure the release of improperly incarcerated citizens, by voicing their dissent.

It is reminiscent of the lessons from another protest, during an even more repressive regime.

Another FSU professor, Dr. Nathan Stoltzfus, wrote on the Rosenstrasse incident. If you are unfamiliar with it, the link will bring you to a thorough review of the book. It begins:

"Day and night for a week in early 1943, hundreds of unarmed German women did something that was unheard of in Nazi Germany.

"They stood toe-to-toe with machine gun-wielding Gestapo agents and demanded the release of their Jewish husbands from Adolph Hitler’s murderous grip. The men were locked up in the Jewish community center in the heart of Berlin, victims of Hitler’s final roundup of German Jews.

"The women's courage and passion prevailed: As thousands of other Berlin Jews were crammed into cattle cars and transported to Auschwitz, the Jews married to 'Aryan' German women were set free.

"But even today, more than 50 years after the Nazi reign of terror, few Germans acknowledge the significance of protest on Rosenstrasse, the street where the dramatic showdown took place. To admit that unarmed women saved 1,700 Jews from deportation would be to challenge postwar Germany's consensus that ordinary citizens were powerless to curb Hitler's anti-Semitic rampage (The Day Hitler Blinked.)"

The revolution will not be televised.

--Lisa