Chorus of Refuge
A Sound Installation by Ann Heppermann, Kara Oehler, and Jason Cady
December 13th || 7-9pm

In collaboration with free103point9

Free Admission

Chorus of Refuge is a sound installation that transmits the stories of six refugees,
living in different cities across the U.S. to six radios. The voices of the refugees are
superimposed and coordinated in both rhythm and tonality to unite their narratives
of struggle, survival and triumph.

The first movement is called: AfghanistanBurmaBurundiIraqSomaliaSudan

Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler are public radio producers and media artists based
in Brooklyn and Boston. Their work focuses upon the overlooked stories of everyday
America, from the Mexican border to the South Side of Chicago, from people’s memories
of their first childhood songs to the experiences of refugees across the nation.
These stories and long-form documentaries have aired nationally and internationally
on public radio shows including: NPR’s Morning Edition and Day to Day,
APM’s Weekend America and Marketplace, BBC’s A World in Your Ear,
WNYC’s Radio Lab and Studio 360 and many others.

Their work has won awards from Peabody, RTNDA, NFCB, PRNDI,
Associated Press and the Third Coast International Audio Festival (TCIAF).
Currently, Kara and Ann are producers and hosts for Hearing Voices
from NPR and producers for APM’s Weekend America.

Jason Cady is a composer of dramatic vocal works and experimental
chamber music. His focus on the voice coincides with his interest in
combining mediums. In his recent operas, he has set colloquial
American vernacular, canned laughter, and Foley sound effects within
the context of Baroque operatic forms to reveal the unexpected in
the mundane. He balances his intuitive decisions with formalist
procedures to discover novel material and give shape to the amorphous.

Cady has an M.A. from Wesleyan University, where he studied composition
with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. His undergraduate degree is in
Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance from Arizona State University,
where he studied composition with Richard Lerman and Harold Budd,
in addition to training in visual art. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York

This sound installation is free of charge and is brought to you in collaboration
with Free103point9, as part of the Wave Farm Artist Residency.

Night of the Living Dead

In movie theaters across the country 40 years ago, terror took a new form: The flesh-eating zombie. “Night of the Living Dead” unearthed an army of ghouls to scare children and adults off their seats. It was so chillingly gruesome, in fact, that film critic Roger Ebert criticized the parenting skills of people who took their children to see it. Today as part of our series “This Weekend in 1968,” we talk with the people who made and acted in the film. And they tell how the events of 1968 have made people read much more into the film than the horror they wanted to create.

Editor: Ben Adair
Engineer: Rob Byers

Tape: There’s two of them out there, have you seen any more?

John Russo: I’m John Russo, I was co-author of “Night of the Living Dead” along with George Romero and I also played the part of a zombie that gets a tire iron in the head.

Tape: Ehhhh.

Russo: And I had a very memorable line: “Ehhhh!”

Tape: Ehhhhh.

John Russo in “Night of the Living Dead” playing a zombie who is eventually killed by a tire iron.

Russo: Well, I went to see every movie that came into town and I always wanted to see a good horror film, and you usually didn’t.

Tape: The beast from 20,000 fathoms!

Russo: And they’d have this thing like, “Attack of the Giant Grasshopper.”

Tape: The black scorpion destroys communication!

Russo: And they all had formulaic plots.

Tape: Well, call the National Guard back!

Russo: And in the end, the National Guard would come in and wipes it out with flame throwers.

Tape: Tell them we need some heavy equipment, guns, tanks, anything!

Russo: And so we wanted to make a movie that really paid people off for horror films.

Russ Streiner: It is basically, a storyline of people who are in a very rural setting.

Russo: Russ Streiner was co-producer of “Night of the Living Dead.”

Streiner: They’ve got two major ones that they’re dealing with. Number one are the unrelenting undead things that have surrounded the farmhouse that they’re holed up in.

Tape: There is an epidemic of mass murder being committed by a virtual army of unidentified assassins.

Streiner: And the second major problem they have is dealing their own reactions within the house.

Tape: You’re insane! The cellar is the safest place. I’m telling you they can’t get in here!

Streiner: In a nutshell that’s the hopelessness of their situation.

Tape: And so this incredible story becomes more ghastly with each report.

Russo: George Romero and I were both working on script ideas, and I said to George, “This is all really good, but who are these attackers?” and George said he hadn’t figured that out yet, and I said it seems to me that they could be dead people and he said, “Oh, that’s good.”

Russo: My idea was aliens were coming to earth in search of human flesh, and I said why don’t we use my flesh-eating idea and George said, “Oh, that’s good.”

Tape: Medical authorities in Cumberland have concluded that in all cases, the killers are eating the flesh of the people they murder.

Russo: You know zombies weren’t heavy-weight freight material like werewolves and vampires. Until we turned them into flesh eaters…then they became terrifying.

Tape: Test, are we back on, oh, we’re coming back on the air after an interruption due to technical problems.

Streiner: The cemetery scene is the very opening scene of the film. I’m Russ Streiner, I was the co-producer of the original “Night of the Living Dead.” I was also the character of Johnny, the annoying brother right at the very beginning of the film.

Russ Streiner as the un-dead “Johnny” in Night of the Living Dead

Tape: There’s nothing wrong with the radio. It must have been the station.

Judy O’Dea: I am Judith O’Dea. I played Barbara.

Tape: Which row is it in?

O’Dea: We’re coming up into an old, dark, gloomy cemetery.

Streiner: To put a wreath on our father’s grave.

O’Dea: We go to the gravesite.

Tape: You used to really be scared here, Johnny.

Streiner: They see an elderly person wondering in the cemetery.

O’Dea: He figures this is a wonderful way to play on Barbara’s fears.

Streiner: “They’re coming to get you Barbara.”

O’Dea: My line to him is:

Tape: Stop it! You’re ignorant.

Tape: They’re coming for you, Barbara. Look, there comes one of them now!

Streiner: Look, there comes one of them now.

O’Dea: But sure enough as I cross by this fellow’s path, he reaches out and attacks me.

Tape: OH NOO!!!!!

O’Dea: I scream.

Tape: Johnny!!! Help me!!!

O’Dea: Johnny comes to my aid. He is killed. And I run to save my life.

Judy O’Dea as “Barbara” in Night of the Living Dead

O’Dea: Children and adults were terrified by this movie. I can remember the Chicago Sun came out with an article that said at the beginning of the film, children were running up and down the aisle with their popcorn, they were so excited. Then as it progressed.

Tape: OOHHHH!!!

O’Dea: You saw them get quieter and quieter until at the very end, they were crying and hiding under their seats.

O’Dea: I’ve had several decades of family come up to me and said, “You scared me to death when I was a little kid.” The first thing out of my mouth is, “Oh, I’m so sorry”…And then I stop myself and say, “Well, I guess that’s what we were supposed to do.”

O’Dea: In 1968, when everything was going on with all the racial problems in the country…

Streiner: We made the decision to cast an African-American actor Duane Jones in the lead male role.

Tape: Don’t worry about him, I can handle him. Probably be a lot more them as soon as they find out about us.

Russo: Well we cast Duane Jones because he was the best actor that read for the part. But with that being said, I was very much aware of the effect Duane being black, especially in towns in the South where we still had white and colored water fountains and all that.

Tape: We have to wait for Johnny.

O’Dea: It was written in the script that Barbara was to smack Ben at least three times,

Tape: Please! We have got to go get Johnny! Please!!!

O’Dea: But this was a very sensitive issue for Duane Jones at that time and he said, “I can accept being smacked once. But I don’t want to play it the way that you’ve written it.” It was re-written…

Tape: Your brother is dead. No! My brother is not dead!

O’Dea: I gave him a smack–

Tape: [Slap!]

O’Dea: And he gave me the fist–

Tape: [Wham!]

O’Dea: Right in the face.

Tape: Oh!

Russo: And then she falls into his arms. And I know that a lot of the bigots in the country are going to be thinking, “Oh my God, now what’s he going to do? He’s got this white woman in his arms,” and lays her down on the couch and he unfastens her coat…and so I was aware that it might have those kind of vibes, but we were out to make a lot of noise we were out to be iconoclastic and we didn’t flinch. By the same token, we weren’t out to make a social statement. We just wanted to make the scariest movie we could possibly make.

Tape: OHHHH!!!!!

O’Dea: One of the most terrifying scenes for me was the scene where Barbara really comes out of her catatonia.

O’Dea: Somebody is breaking in or some bodies.

O’Dea: They’ve grabbed Helen Cooper by the throat or by the hair. Barbara snaps to, she pulls her away from the door, but in doing so these zombies are breaking in…

Tape: NO! GET OUT!!!

O’Dea: And what she sees at that door just completely blows her mind.

Tape: Johnny! No!

O’Dea: It’s her brother Johnny.

O’Dea: He grabs her…

Tape: Help me! Help me!

O’Dea: I’m literally swallowed up by these zombies and that, we assume, is that is Barbara’s demise.

O’Dea: Our film was different at that point from any other in that not even one of them survived. At that time, that was so frightening to so many people.

Tape: All law enforcement agencies and the military have been organized to search out and destroy the marauding ghouls.

O’Dea: There is a scene where there are all kinds of people, a huge posse walking with their rifles to shoot the zombies.

Tape: Chief, if I were surrounded by six or eight of these things, would I stand a chance with them? If you have a gun shoot them in the head, that’s a sure way to kill them.

Russo: I’ve never had a lot of confidence in people to act sanely especially when they’re in a mob, and certainly we were seeing mobs. Even at a peace rally, everybody is for peace here, you don’t know what they’re going to do.

Russo: And so that brought me to mention, that somebody would get killed and wouldn’t it be ironic if it were hero, Ben.

Tape: All right, Vince, hit him in the head, right between the eyes. Good shot, OK, he’s dead. Let’s go get him. That’s another one for the fire.

O’Dea: Does “Night of the Living Dead” reflect the time of 1968? Absolutely. It in a way mirrors so much of what was happening at that time.

Streiner: And I think when you put those circumstances together, coupled with the fact that it was a very good story. It’s still around 40 years after the fact, and it will be around, I’m convinced, a lot after we are not.

 

In this episode of Hearing Voices, we use our voices on the radio for the first time in years. And for the first time ever, we host TOGETHER! Listen here or visit the Hearing Voices website. Our boss, taskmaster Barrett Golding, first posted the blog entry that follows on that site.

Hearing Voices from NPR®:
030 Nine to Five— The Working Week
Host— Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler of Hearing Voices
Airdates— 9/24/2008 - 10/1/2008

Nine to Five (53:00 mp3):The work we do, from Wall Street traders to taxi cab drivers. People who work with brassieres, dead bodies, lost golf balls, and off-the-books in an underground economy. Part one…

The Ramones obviously believe “It’s Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)” (1980 Pleasant Dreams).

Meryn Cadell fills out a “Job Application” (1992 Angel Food for Thought).

In the 1950s Tony Schwartz conversed with The New York Taxi Driver about “A Temporary Job.” (This 1959 LP is on The Library of Congress National Recording Registry).

Steve Fisk recites some “Government Figures” (1980 Over and Thru the Night).

Grief and guts fill the work day of Aftermath,® Inc: Specialists in Crime Scene and Tragedy Cleanup, Trauma Cleanup, Accidental Death Cleanup. Interview with Tim Reifsteck by Laura Kwerel, produced by Nick van der Kolk; an excerpt from “Aftermath,” a Love and Radio podcast. (L & R’s slogan: “What Ira Glass might make if he showed up to work drunk.”)

Cilla Black’s boyfriend believes “Work is a Four Letter Word” (1968 The Best of Cilla Black).

Break music: Leroy Anderson “Plink, Plank, Plunk!” (1951 Leroy Anderson Favorites). Part two…

Retired school teacher Paul Neibuhr dons a full wet suit with air tank and transforms into a professional “Golfball Diver.” Produced by Jeff Rice, with music by Leroy Anderson (”Plink, Plank, Plunk!” 1951; theme for the TV game Show I’ve Got a Secret for 24 years; CD: Leroy Anderson Favorites).

Ken Nordine wants to be “The Bullfighter” (2001 A Transparent Mask).

A Radio Diary from “Selma Koch, Bra Saleswoman.” Sez Selma: “Nobody says the retail business was gonna be easy.” Produced by Emily Botein and Joe Richman with help from Ben Shapiro and Deborah George (2002 New York Works).

Tony Schwartz talks with The New York Taxi Driver about “Females” as fares.

“Open Outcry” is the trading technique heard on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange. This sound-portrait by composer Ben Rubin is a 2002 commissioned by Creative Time for Sonic Garden, World Financial Center, NYC. Features the voices of Madeline Boyd, J. Robert Collins, Jr., David Greenberg, John Hanneman, Vincent Viola, Elisa Zuritsky, and others.

John, the Medicine Man does the “Chicago Hustles.” An excerpt from our documentary on the city’s underground economy for the  2005 series Chicago Matters: Money Talks. This piece was produced with the help of production assistant Greg Scott and executive producer Julia McEvoy.

Reinhardt “Buck” Buchli makes a “Fortunate Decision” (2005). A story told and production by David Greenberger of Duplex Planet. Music performed by Bangalore, composed by Phil Kaplan.

The New York Taxi Driver waxes work philosophies with Tony Schwartz in “…The Way It Has to Be.”

Depeche Mode clocks out with Work Hard (1984 Singles Box 2).

And mixed in there is “Toner” by Cornelius (2006 Sensuous). A “collaboration with Takagi Masakatsu produced for Japan’s Sound & Recording magazine… inspired by inkjet printers!”

In September of 1968, a group of radical feminists protested the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. The event would be one of the earliest demonstrations of the Women’s Liberation Movement. It was also here that the term “bra burner” was coined, even though no bras were, in fact, burned. In this segment of “This Weekend in 1968,” we talk with two of the protesters as well as Miss America 1968 about their memories of the event and what it meant for the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Editor: Ben Adair
Engineer: Rob Byers

A still of the film “Up Against the Wall Miss America,” a short documentary of the 1968 Miss America protest. The woman wearing the sign is Kathie Sarachild (Amatniek).

JACQUI CEBALLOS: My name is Jacqui Ceballos. I’m the founder and President of Veteran Feminists of America. I went to college and I majored in music. I went to New York and I married a dashing Colombian and had a wonderful exciting life, lived in Columbia with maids and started an opera company.

But when push came to shove, I was a woman and my husband was very upset with what I was doing. A friend came and she just handed me Betty Friedan’s book “The Feminine Mystique.” I read it, and that was it. I started plotting my way back to New York to work in the movement.

CEBALLOS: 1967 NOW started, I joined NOW.

KATHIE AMATNIEK: National Organization for Women.

CEBALLOS: And then we started hearing about these radical feminists across town.

AMATNIEK: I’m Kathie Sarachild. Back in 1968, I was Kathie Amatniek.

CEBALLOS: They were younger women who had come out of the SDS and the young people’s movement and they had fought with the guys who were treating them like slaves.

AMATNIEK: We thought in terms of liberation.

CEBALLOS: They wanted to change the world. That’s why they said, we don’t want women’s rights. We want women’s liberation, you know?

AMATNIEK: We used to have what were called consciousness-raising sessions, and I think we were watching a movie about beauty contests…

TAPE: And now the time for the official judging has finally arrived.

AMATNIEK: Then we went around the room talking about how beauty contests actually affected our lives.

TAPE: The judging is by points, so many points for appearance in an evening gown, so many points for a bathing suit.

AMATNIEK: A very dear friend of mine, Carol Hanisch, in high school and probably even earlier, watching the Miss America pageant on television had been a very important part of her life. She used to say, “I cried with the winner.”

TAPE: There she is, Miss America

AMATNIEK: Carol had this idea. My gosh! That’s the symbol of everything! The Miss America Pageant! That should be our first symbol of everything. Protesting the Miss America Pageant.

CEBALLOS: That whole idea of that Miss America who got up on the stage and said, “All I want to be is a wife and mother.” It just got to me. And when I heard that they were going to the Miss America Pageant, I wanted to be on board.

TAPE: And starring 50 of the country’s loveliest young ladies, the charming and talented girls competing for the title of Miss America 1968!

DEBRA SNODGRASS: My name is Debra Barnes Snodgrass…

 Debra Dean Barnes Snodgrass is crowned Miss America 1968

TAPE: Debra Dean Barnes.

SNODGRASS: And I was Miss America 1968.

TAPE: Miss Kansas formally, now Miss America.

SNODGRASS: We were goal-oriented, education- oriented young women that were there to get scholarship money. So for us, talent being 50 percent of the portion when we competed…

SNODGRASS: My own talent was to play my own arrangement of “Born Free,” a piano solo.

SNODGRASS: I actually didn’t win the talent competition. Miss Indiana won and she was an Olympic ice skater. They made and ice rink about the size of my living room which is pretty small, and she did such awesome tricks, but I won swimsuit, that’s hard to believe.

TAPE: And what are the judges thinking?

SNODGRASS: I tried to forget what I was wearing and just look at the people had have a good time. I was uncomfortable wearing a swimsuit. The first week in September of 1968, I gave up my crown, which means that I crowned my successor Judy Ford, my duties were to be available for the contestants and also to make my going-away speech.

SNODGRASS: During that week, the women’s liberation movement were demonstrating outside the convention hall where Miss America pageant was held.

TAPE: Yesiree, boys step right up, how much am I offered for this number one piece of prime American property? She sings in the kitchen…

AMATNIEK: Many of us had become conscious that beauty standards have and dress codes how that cut into our daily lives and freedom.

CEBALLOS: Listen, let me tell you, I was considered very pretty in college. And I want to tell you that the main thing in my day, which don’t forget, was the 1940’s was who was the prettiest girl in the family? Who was the prettiest girl in school? It was unbelievable!

AMATNIEK: We had something called the Freedom Trash Can.

CEBALLOS: I was told to bring something oppressive to women.

AMATNIEK: At first we were going to burn all these instruments of female torture.

CEBALLOS: But we were not allowed to make a fire. So the story that we burned our bras is wrong. So what we did was, we walked around I think there were 50, 75 of us.

AMATNIEK: Everybody was lined up to throw something in and explain what they hated about it.

CEBALLOS: The young women had thrown away their bras. I never stopped wearing a bra, by the way, because I’m a 36 something whatever. And a bra is more comfortable.

AMATNIEK: And it wasn’t just bras. Bras in a way were the least of the problem. There were high heels that we were throwing in there.

CEBALLOS: And I threw my 16-year-old son’s Playboy magazines in. Playboy! With their boobs hanging out and I thought it was really anti-woman really. I still do.

TAPE: Ain’t she cute, walking in her bathing suit?

AMATNIEK: We have prepared songs.

CEBALLOS: Wonderful songs to other tunes you know.

AMATNIEK: Some songs we came to regard as anti woman, like–

“Ain’t she sweet, making profit off her meat.”

CEBALLOS: Beauty sells, she’s told, so she’s a plugging it, ain’t she sweet.

SNODGRASS: Just the fact that this group of women would say to us who were in the pageant competing that we were selling ourselves. And it was almost verging upon prostitution. It did really hurt my feelings because I felt that my femininity was something to be respected and to be celebrated.

AMATNIEK: We also planned as part of the protest, going inside the pageant…

MOVIE: Live from the Convention Hall in Atlantic City the Miss America pageant!!!

AMATNIEK: We all dressed up in high heels and gorgeous dresses to get inside,

AMATNIEK: We went up into the balcony,

TAPE: Now, let us give one last final salute of Miss America 1968.

CEBALLOS: And when Miss America was marching down to, “Oh, here she is, Miss America,” they unfurled this huge banner–

SNODGRASS: And then they started shouted during my going away speech.

AMATNIEK: –and shouted, “Women’s Liberation, no more Miss America,”

SNODGRASS: Uh, I really didn’t hear what they were saying.

CEBALLOS: For a split second, you could see the camera stop and everybody look up.

AMATNIEK: You know, it was not as militant perhaps as it might have been. We did not resist the police but we went along with them and then they shoved us out the side door.

AMATNIEK: And that was it, they just let us go.

TAPE: Ain’t gonna be Miss America no more…

SNODGRASS: I never know how to react to someone who finds out that I’ve been Miss America, and they say “Oh, you’ve been Miss America.” I don’t know whether they’re saying, “Ewww, you’ve been Miss America or “Oh wow! You’ve been Miss America.” Because I don’t know yet how they feel about the pageant. know that some of the things that the women’s liberation movement accomplished have made for me to enjoy what I’m enjoying now as a career women. I know that.

CEBALLOS: Male chauvinism started collapsing, like sand castles falling apart you know.

AMATNIEK: But it’s still the responsibility of family care is being primarily on women, it’s not being shared equally. That’s not what we meant by women’s liberation, the double day. Like we now say, like “Equal Free Time for women and men is as important as equal pay, you know.”

CEBALLOS: So we still have a long ways to go!

TAPE: No Miss America, no more!

In anticiption of 2008’s Democratic National Convention, we put together a sound collage of protests and protest music over the past 40 years for Weekend America.

Soon, we’ll post a list of all the archival sound we brought together. But for now, enjoy the mash-up!

Editor: Ben Adair
Engineer: Rob Byers

Acid. LSD. The Grateful Dead. Ken Kesey. Tom Wolf. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Editor: Ben Adair
Engineer: Rob Byers

Screen still from “Intrepid Traveled and his Merry Band of Pranksters Look for a Kool Place” of the Further bus. Image courtesy of Zane Kesey.

On August 16, 1968, people across the country cracked open a brand new book by Tom Wolfe called “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” In the mid-60s, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters hosted big parties where people got together, played music, and dropped acid. What happened at those parties spilled over into pop culture and ultimately defined the day-glo painted, summer-loving, acid rock, psychedelic ’60s.

Taking a sip of the Kool-Aid in the film, “The Acid Test.”  Image courtesy of Zane Kesey.

 

Forty years ago, at the end of July, 1968, the Ba’ath Party took over Iraq’s government. Saddam Hussein was a part of the regime, which stayed in power until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. We had some people share their memories and feelings about those events.

Co-produced with Ali Adeeb al Naemi
Editor: Ben Adair
Engineer: Rob Byers

They include:

Sulaiman (far left) and her friends at the University in Baghdad in 1974. Credit: Courtesy Mona Sulaiman

Mona Sulaiman, an Iraqi who now lives in Phoenix, Ariz. Sulaiman left Baghdad in 2002 just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq because she was receiving chemotherapy. When the invasion of Iraq became imminent, her doctor recommended she leave the country in order to continue her chemotherapy treatment.

Layla Abdul-Ghani (second from left), her husband, Farouk Saloum, and their children pose in Dearborn, Mich. Credit: Courtesy Layla Abdul-Ghani

Layla Abdul-Ghani lives in Dearborn, Mich., with her husband Farouk Saloum and their children. Abdul-Ghani is a social worker who came to the United States in the late 70s to attend graduate school in Kalamazoo, Mich., on a scholarship from the Iraqi government.

Nabil Roumayah left Iraq in the 70s and didn’t return in order to avoid possible persecution (his family suffered greatly under the Ba’ath regime). Roumayah currently lives in a Detroit suburb with his wife and children. He is the president of the Iraqi Democratic Union.

Ali Adeeb al Naemi (second from right) with friends and colleagues at the New York Times Baghdad Bureau. Credit: Courtesy Ali Adeeb al Naemi

Ali Adeeb al Naemi is an Iraqi journalist who was a news editor for the New York Times’ Baghdad bureau. He came to Michigan as Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow in 2007. Al Naemi will begin graduate school at NYU this fall.

---

Layla Abdul-Ghani: It happened early in the morning…Mona Sulaiman: I was at my aunt’s house. And we were still sleeping and my uncle came and he said, there is a revolution. And you know, Iraqis they usually run to the radio.Layla Abdul-Ghani: Every time we have a coup attempt, this music comes.Mona Sulaiman: But this one, 1968, we remember very well because it was a different kind of a revolution. It was called the “White Revolution.”Farouk Saloum: Really there is nobody killed.Abdul-Ghani: They announce that it’s the Ba’ath party, a lot of people were so afraid.Nabil Roumayah: My name is Nabil Roumayah. I was in Baghdad, Iraq in 1968 a young man, but I have to take you back a few years to tell you why I remember that day.We knew what Ba’ath was. We saw them in 1963. A very bloody coup. Thousands and thousands died, and my uncle who was in opposition to the Ba’ath and he was imprisoned in ‘63. My aunt was imprisoned, my sister was imprisoned. I was young, and me my two sisters had to leave the house for nine months, hidden somewhere else.

So yeah, I was at home, and I remember it because my uncle said, “Not again. Not one more. We cannot take this one more.” So he just drove out to try to get out of the country before they consolidate their power. But about eight hours [later], he was back because they close all the borders.

Sulaiman: I lived in Baghdad until 2003. Saddam means “clasher.” You know, when you have a car crash. It’s a Saddam. So Saddam is the one who crashes. Or clashes. That’s a very powerful name.

Abdul-Ghani: I am a social worker and we have been living in the United States for 26 years. Not everything that that government did was bad. I mean, they nationalized the oil. Art and literature became very important and free education and free healthcare. I mean, those are good things that that revolution brought to the country.

Sulaiman: Americans think that we used to live in horror, terror, you know, like, he kills left and right. But we were trained since we were children. And we train our children not to interfere with politics. If you want to live a good life, don’t meddle in politics.

Roumayah: There was a lot of struggle inside the Ba’ath Party to consolidate powers. And the move was led by Saddam Hussein and his gang, because he took over the internal security of the party. And eventually that secret organization took over the country and got rid of [then Prime-Minsister and Hussein’s cousin Ahmed Hassan] al Bakr.

Abdul-Ghani: The more he became totalitarian and a dictator, this is when you feel that this is not the same person and I respected and I liked. It’s a person who became blood-hungry.

Sulaiman: Gradually, we started hearing things. Like people disappearing. Started attacking the Communists. Anybody. Anybody who was against what he wants.

Ali Adeeb al Naemi: We’re related on my mother’s side to the late minister, Doctor Riyadh Ebrahim. He was the Health Minister in the late 70’s early 80’s. And we were very close and I used to call him ammo, you know, my uncle. Doctor Riyadh was a Ba’athist and he was very close to Bakr. So when Saddam took over, he just got rid of all the people who were close to Bakr and we received a phone call. I woke up and my mom was crying. And the phone call was simply saying that Doctor Riyadh has gone to visit his parents. His parents were dead. So that was the code, because they know that people were listening to phone calls. And we couldn’t really show our grief because you didn’t really know who was with the government at that time. Who was writing reports. Later on when my mom went and visited, she saw her uncle, who told her [that] when they went to the morgue and got the body and signed for it, he told us basically what he saw: They have taken off his nails. One of his eyes was gone. There were holes in his chest. The scene was horrible. And the death certificate said he died of a stroke. And this was one of hundreds of thousands of tragic stories in Iraq.

Roumayah: It was an organized terror by the government. Nobody was safe in Iraq.

Sulaiman: You can’t even tell a joke. Sometimes, I’m with friends and we’re laughing talking. And I say something, like a joke. And then I go home and I can’t sleep all night waiting for the door. You know…the bell rings and somebody will come and take me.

I left after Christmas 2002. I left to Amman, Jordan. I had chemotherapy and my oncologist told me to leave the country because if I stayed I wouldn’t be able to continue my chemotherapy if the war starts.

When I heard of the invasion, I was staying with friends and they were out and I just saw Baghdad burning. It was so, so sad. It was the saddest day of my life, I was so sad and I called my friends and I say, ‘Come back,’ and they say ‘Why?’ and I say, ‘Baghdad is burning.’

Roumayah: They had a great military success, two weeks and the country was gone. Great, but then what?

Abdul-Ghani: I think there are people who regret supporting [the] invasion of Iraq and they wish that they didn’t do it, because it put us in the situation where we have terrorists. We have drugs. We have fighting between religious sections. It’s a mess over there now.

Sulaiman: I remember the day he was caught. I was asleep here in Phoenix…

Roumayah: Spontaneously we had a little party going, celebrating end of era of Saddam, he was arrested and maybe things will happen better now so…

Sulaiman: But how do I describe it? It’s like a bitter feeling. It’s like Iraqis should have caught Saddam. Iraqis should have tried him.

Abdul-Ghani: I was at work when they hanged Saddam Hussein and when I came home and I saw the video of it. It was a mixed feeling, feeling that it was an end of era that finally there will be no terrors and no crimes and no killing, but then, it was also a sorry feeling for someone who, for a while, you were looking up to and felt that he was going to bring Iraq to the top of the whole world.

Roumayah: In 40 years of Saddam there was nothing, no progress in Iraq. What’s happening today is a result of the mistrust that he built in the people, the separation he did to the people, built in the people, led us to what he have now.

Abdul-Ghani: The psychological component of [the] Iraqi person had changed. They are afraid. They are hesitant. And Iraqi people are the nicest most generous people in the world. He changed them.

Roumayah: When somebody say, “I wish Saddam was back,” they say it out of desperation, out of hurt, not because they want Saddam back. The difference is very simple, I tell people. The difference between the Saddam era and this era is hope. In Saddam time, we did not have hope.

Sulaiman: Sometimes I feel hopeful that maybe things will change. I don’t know. There is this thing that all Iraqis say, things change from worse to worse. And it did happen now. Saddam’s gone and it changed. And it’s worse now.

 

People nationwide will celebrate our nation’s independence this weekend. There will also be hundreds of thousands of U.S. Servicemen and women hunkered down in Afghanistan and Iraq this Fourth of July. While life on the war-front is harrowing and unpredictable, the transition back to civilian life is one of the most difficult things about military service. In this latest installment of our series “This Weekend in 1968,” two veterans of two different wars discuss their experiences of serving in, and returning to home from an unpopular war.

Ed Vick in Vietnam

Ed Vick: I’m Ed Vick, I’m a Vietnam vet. I served with the navy’s river patrol force in Vietnam in 1968.

Paul Reickhoff: My name is Paul Reickhoff. I served with the U.S. Army in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 as a rifle platoon leader in the 3rd Infantry in the 1st Armored Divisions.

Ed Vick: The Fourth of July in Vietnam was just like every other day. You know, when you’re there in the middle of it, it’s not so much about patriotism. Things like the Fourth of July… just had a lot less meaning than they would have to a civilian.

Paul Reickhoff: Fourth of July in Iraq sucked. A lot of days in Iraq sucked, but I think holidays are especially tough. Because you know so much is going on back home and you’re stuck, sweating your butt off in a war zone getting shot at. So it was especially tough in my unit because we were told after the invasion that we’d we home by the Fourth of July. So I remember writing a letter to my brother saying “Hey, Fourth of July’s coming up. We’ll get together, go to a Yankee game, you know, check out the fireworks.” I didn’t think it would be the same type of fireworks I ended up seeing in Baghdad for the next couple of months.

Ed Vick: Every day and every night was a huge stress mentally, just like it is, I think, for these guys and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, we would go out at dusk in these 35-foot patrol boats. And we would usually set up our boats and shut everything down and stay there all night long by the light of the stars. Pretty much everywhere you were you were at risk. The whole river bank erupts in gunfire and you just never know where it’s coming from. You’re going out at night and the sun’s going down and it’s getting dark and you just sort of go through your mind, I wonder if I’m going to die tonight. And then you just sort of go “What the hell. Let’s go.”

Paul Reickhoff in Iraq

Paul Reickhoff: Our days in Iraq were pretty chaotic. If there was an average day, it was usually spent working 18-20 hour days, looking for insurgents, doing a ton of searches through homes and businesses looking for weapons caches and thinking about all the possibilities that can happen, so you’re prepared, whether it’s a car bomb or a sniper, or a kid with a grenade in his hand. You’re just trying to think about all of the possibilities constantly. One of my old soldiers told me once that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not trying to kill you. My lasting memory of the average day in Iraq is walking with my guys through the narrow streets, sweating, with a ton of gear, waiting to get blown up.

Ed Vick: I remember getting ready to go out on a patrol one day and this petty officer comes out and says that one of his guys just can’t go out. The officer said “What do you mean he can’t go out?” “He just can’t go out. He just can’t do it.” It was viewed as a disgrace, he got no treatment whatsoever. He was mustered out of the service and got no treatment whatsoever. And he got a discharge other than honorable. And that’s what happened in those days to these guys who today would be known as having post-traumatic stress.

Paul Reickhoff: There were a couple of moments that were really tough emotionally, but on Christmas Eve, our sergeant major was killed in a roadside attack. The sergeant major is an enlisted guy for a couple hundred folks and he is kind of like the Grandpa Bear for all the soldiers in the unit. And that was really a tough hit on morale. And my unit had been extended to I don’t know, three or four times already. The number of divorces in my unit stacked up. Guys were getting wounded, the insurgency was really starting to grow and we had had enough. It was time to be out of there.

I think part of the emotional impact of this war that’s unique is that you don’t know when you’re coming home. You hope your higher headquarters will at least tell you, amidst all of this chaos and carnage and frustration and the flood of emotions, that at least you could at least pick a day when you could come home and start planning the rest of your life. And I think it’s an especially tough part of this war that’s unique and that’s different from Vietnam.

When we found out that we were coming home we didn’t believe it at all. I mean, we had been told we were coming home, five, six times prior to that and the rug had got jerked out from under us. So when we finally got to that point where we were flying out of Baghdad the guys were giddy, it was like they all smoked weed before they got on the plane or something. I remember at some point, a pillow fight broke out. Like the most random thing, we were on the corkscrew plane going up and the guys just started throwing pillows at each other, these cheap airline pillows that somehow the Air Force got, and then it just kind of sank in. But when you come home it’s just a total overwhelming flood of emotion. You know the families are waiting for you there at the parade field and it’s almost surreal.

Ed Vick: I’ll tell you how I came home. I was patrolling up near the Cambodian border, and we were in a night patrol and we had some contact with some North Vietnamese, a little bit of a firefight, it wasn’t anything terrible. The sun was coming up and we took our boats in. Took a shower, got my gear packed, and a chopper came and took me to Saigon and within 24 hours, I was in Philadelphia. And that was it.

When I got back, I couldn’t get a job. I was a highly educated naval officer and nobody cared. I could barely get a job. I moved to Texas because I thought that I would be more respected there because it’s more of a right-wing state, and I got a job, finally, as a bill collector. It was about the best I could do. I went to graduate school. I went to Northwestern. The very first day I drove on campus there was a demonstration. They were burning books and desks right in the street and they were protesting the war. So I knew enough to not talk about having been in Vietnam.

My first day in class, a professor was going around saying, “OK, everybody, let’s everybody introduce themselves. Tell a little bit about yourself.” So we went around, did that. I said where I had gone to college and that’s about all I said. He was a reserve naval officer himself, so he said, “Oh, you’re forgetting something. Tell us about where you were for the past year.” So I sort of said something like, well, “I was in Vietnam for a year and I just got back.” And there was sort of silence around the room. And for several months thereafter, no one in this class would speak to me. No one would say hello, no one would say goodbye. I was completely ostracized by people I didn’t even know for no reason other than that I had been a Vietnam veteran.

Paul Reickhoff: My first week we were in Georgia at Fort Stewart and we had about a week of out-processing. I knew that if I came right back to New York City, it would be too much for me. I needed some time away from my family. I needed some time to just unwind my mind. My girlfriend drove my jeep down to Fort Stewart where she met me and we spent about a week-and-a-half staying in little hotels by the beach and just trying to absorb being home.

I remember wireless Internet was something that didn’t exist before I left. I came back and blogs, and all this new music and stuff had happened while I was gone. It just seemed like I was Rip Van Winkle and I just woke up and all of this stuff had been going on.

I remember that the week that I got home, the biggest story in America was Janet Jackson’s exposed breast at the Superbowl. It was kind of jarring to come home and see, “Wow, this is what people are focused on. This is what people are talking about.” The apathy is really what hits me in the gut.

I have a good friend got home in 2004 and called me two weeks ago and said, “I am really messed up. I need to see somebody.” It took four years and his girlfriend left him and he said, “I never realized it. I never realized how much pain I was in. I never realized how much I was going through until four years after coming home.” Thank God he got to that point, for some people it might take 40 years.

Ed Vick: Most Iraq Veterans say “I don’t want to be another Vietnam Veteran.” It’s hard for me to hear that, because for all of my experience, I’m a relatively high-functioning Vietnam veteran, and I know exactly what they mean. Because I’ve spent a lot of time trying to help those kind of Vietnam veterans. And what I think when I hear one of them say it is “God, I hope you’re right.” I hope you don’t end up like the stereotypical Vietnam veteran and I’ll do everything that I can to help make that be the case.

photo by constantine abatzidis

 

This post first appeared on Hearing Voices.

Hearing Voices from NPR®:
016 Bugs and Birds— For Summer Solstice
Host— Jeff Rice of Western Soundscape Archive
Airdates— 6/18/2008 - 6/25/2008

Jeff Rice of the Western Soundscape Archive hosts an hour of sounds for the start of Summer: an extinct woodpecker revives an Arkansas town, car alarms made from bird calls, breeding moths for their music, a morning walk with poet Jim Harrison, dancing with gnats, the seismic underground sounds of spiders, and the perspective of a pest controller. Stories by Long Haul Productions, M’Iou Zahner Ollswang, host Jeff Rice, and Scott Carrier; and recordings by Nina Katchadourian, Lang Elliot, and Dr. Rex Cocroft.

 

Produced with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Bugs and Birds (53:00 mp3):

All this week, you’ve been seeing and hearing coverage of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination 40 years ago. This weekend in 1968, Bobby Kennedy was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. His funeral was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City and the procession traveled by train from New York to Washington, D.C.

Coming just two months after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., RFK’s death, for many, was just too much. People talked about the end of hope — that the nation did not have enough grief. But Bobby Kennedy’s life continues to inspire others, and his presidential campaign resonates today, perhaps more than any year since his death.

Editor: Ben Adair
Engineer: Rob Byers

Robert Kennedy addresses a crowd at a campaign event in Ontario, Oregon, 1968. Credit: Wayne Cornell

Tim Roemer: Bobby Kennedy reminds our country of the good side of American politics and the hopeful side.

Robert Kennedy (archival tape): I run for the presidency because I want the United States of America to stand for hope.

Roemer: His was a candidacy of coalition-building, and the best promise of what people can do when they come together.

Kennedy: If you believe the United States can be changed, if you believe that we should start on a new course domestically and in our relationship to other countries, help me.

Crowd of supporters (archival tape): RFK!

(archival tape): Senator Kennedy has been shot, is that possible? Is that possible, is it possible ladies and gentlemen? It is possible, not only Senator Kennedy, oh my God…

(archival tape): Everybody please stay back, please stay back…

(archival tape): Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. today, June 6th, 1968.

(archival tape): I think it’s a terrible country we live in right now, that all these assassinations are happening and I don’t care, I’m not even voting this year. I don’t care what happens anymore.

(archival tape): Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world.

Roemer: My name is Tim Roemer, former congressman from South Bend, Ind., currently the president for the Center for National Policy. But back in 1968, I was in the fifth grade in San Jose, in a Catholic school. And I will always remember — I was daydreaming about kickball grandeur when all of the sudden my teacher riveted my attention back into the classroom. She was asking a question about one of my heroes, Bobby Kennedy.

(archival tape): Your generation, this generation can not afford to waste its substance and its hope in the struggles of the past.

Roemer: And she asked who would be willing to volunteer to run Senator Kennedy’s presidential primary campaign in the classroom and somebody else would do Eugene McCarthy. And when Bobby Kennedy’s name was mentioned, my hand shot up like a rocket ship going to the moon.

Kennedy (archival tape): I think the first thing we have to do here in the United States is face our problems and then take actions to deal with them — and that’s what I intend to do…

Roemer: I worked tirelessly to try to persuade them to vote for Bobby Kennedy.

(archival tape): Who’s going to be the next president of the United States? Bobby!

Roemer: And after buttons, proposals, speeches, twisting arms on the recess playground, I convinced enough of my fifth grade fellow students to vote for him — and we won! It was a victory.

(archival tape): Sock it to’em Bobby, yeah yeah! Sock it to’em Bobby, yeah, yeah!

Roemer: I later went to see Senator Kennedy speak at a local campus. And I’ll never forget the feeling there wasn’t so much that I understood every nuance of his policy…

Kennedy (archival tape): I think we can find peace with honor in South Vietnam.

Roemer: But it was really exciting, it was like rock concert with somebody proposing hopeful ideas that brought people together — that they all felt they could make a difference, and make America a better place. And they certainly chanted “Bobby, Bobby…”

(archival tape): We want Bobby! We want Bobby! We want Bobby!

Kennedy: If you believe that we should start a new path for peace in Vietnam, help me.

(archival tape) Advertisement: “For Robert Kennedy, staying in touch with the future is simply a matter of practice. California can make the difference.”

Roemer: I went to bed on the night of the California primary, and was just euphoric.

Kennedy (archival tape): And my thanks to all of you — and now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there.

Roemer: Because even that young in the fifth grade, this means that he might even be president.

(archival tape): RFK! RFK!

Roemer: My mom woke me up the next morning and came to my bed and said ‘Hey, I’ve got some really terrible news.’ And I thought, oh, the eggs are burned or I can’t have waffles. And she said, ‘Your hero was shot last night and he’s not going to make it.’ It was devastating, and I remember tears running down my cheeks and asking my mom, you know, ‘Hey, do I really have to go to school after I’ve lost such a friend like this guy.’ And she said ‘No, that’s one of the lessons — you’ve got to buck it up and go. And you know, you presented him in your classroom and you’ve got to go and be the fact of him, even in tough times.’

Edward Kennedy (archival tape): My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death what he wasn’t in life.

Roemer: It was certainly, for a short period, a very profoundly sad time. But there was kind of a flame that was lit…

Edward Kennedy (archival tape): Those of us who loved and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world.

Roemer: Bobby and my parents were the pillars for my decisions to go into a life of public service.

Edward Kennedy (archival tape): Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’

Roemer: I decided to run for congress in 1989 and I often thought about Bobby Kennedy, not just on the campaign trail, but as I went forward legislating.

Former U.S. Congressman and 9/11 Commissioner Tim Roemer

Kennedy (archival tape): We’ve been talking for years about ‘Tell it like it is.’ And I don’t know whether it’s going to have your approval or disapproval, but I’m going to tell you what I think.

Roemer: There were many times that I thought of Senator Kennedy — what he would do, what example he provided. One of the Kennedy legacies was the Peace Corps, and later in my Congressional efforts I helped start the AmeriCorps program. And so Bobby Kennedy, John Kennedy’s policy ideas continued inspire me as a member of Congress… and it lives on today.

(archival tape): We want Bobby! We want Bobby!

Roemer: He is present in many ways — you hear him in the words of one of the presidential candidates today.

Sen. Barack Obama: I know how hard change is.

Roemer: …talking about building coalitions and unifying the country and talking about hope. I was actually in Fort Wayne, Ind., campaigning with Barack Obama. Of course, Senator Kennedy is still popular in Indiana. So when Senator Obama was working the rope line it was amazing to me, standing next to him, the number of people in 2008 that were handing Senator Obama pamphlets, literature, mail from Bobby Kennedy’s campaign. And they wanted Senator Obama to sign something that Bobby Kennedy had given them 40 years earlier. It truly shows that Senator Kennedy will never be forgotten.

(archival tape): If we win here in Indiana, we’ll win in California as well, we’ll go on to the convention in Chicago in August and we’ll beat the Republicans in November.

Roemer: Well, it sounds almost like I’m a groupie. Well, you know now I was in the fifth grade and now I’m you know 51 years old and I still have Bobby Kennedy pictures hanging in my office or my study. But more importantly, it’s not busts or pictures, it’s this guy’s life.

(archival tape) Kennedy: Every time a man stands up for an idea or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends out a tiny ripple of hope… and those ripples build a current which break down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance.

(archival tape) Kennedy: This generation can not afford to waste its substance and its hope in the struggles of the past for beyond these walls is a world that needs to be helped and improved and made safe for the welfare of mankind. And the real question before you, before all young Americans, is whether we will help bring about that future or whether we will not help and stand by.

 

Ian Svenonius, formerly of Nation of Ulysses and Makeup, and currently of Weird War is a brilliant man. We first met him when collaborating on a story for Marketplace with a shorter version of Ian’s essay, “Rock ‘n’ Roll as Real Estate” from his book,The Psychic Soviet.Then, he told stories of Washington D.C. conspiracy for Kara’s interactive text message documentary film tour, Capitol of Punk. He needs his own show on public radio. Well, we can’t give him that, but we COULD have him host an hour of Hearing Voices. So here it is in all of its glory:

The following post first appeared on Hearing Voices.

HV014- Fans and Bands
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
014 Fans and Bands— Groupies, Gravediggers & Rock n’ Roll Singers
Host— Ian Svenonius of Weird War
Airdates— 6/4/2008 - 6/11/2008

Features a tribute to Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008)…

Host Ian Svenonius, of the band Weird War, introduces “The Groupies,” an album of 1969 interviews by producer Alan Lorber (Iris Music Group, Alan Lorber Orchestra). We visit with the pilgrims at Pere LaChaise cemetery, come to see “Jim Morrison’s Grave” (a sound-portrait by Mark Neumann of Documentary Works and Barrett Golding). John Denver’s anti-Christian conspiracy is exposed in the series “Song and Memory” from producers Ann Heppermann & Kara Oehler. And Bo Diddley blows up his mom’s radio in David Schulman’s series “Musicians in Their Own Words.”

Fans and Bands (54:00 mp3):

We’re bringing you an ongoing series called “This Weekend in 1968.”  Last weekend, we observed the anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign — an attempt to make poverty more visible.

So Americans turned on their TVs and saw people demanding economic justice. They saw clashes between citizens and police. It’s no surprise, then, that the following week brought a famous appeal for calm.
This weekend in 1968, Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon gave a radio address that became a pivotal moment in American politics. Nixon emphasized that most Americans did not stage political protests or riots — and he tried to make himself the candidate for these Americans. These people were, as he called them, the “silent center.” They were what would later become, the “silent majority.”

Editor: Ben Adair
Engineer: Rob Byers

Richard Nixon on a campaign stop in Philadelphia, July 1968. Credit: Ollie Atkins Photograph Collection, Special Collections & Archives, George Mason University Libraries

Here’s Nixon biographer Rick Pearlstein:
Rick Perlstein: You know, imagine what it was like to be kind of a white suburban family in the 1960s and see all of this chaos break out on your TV screen. Riots in city after city, blacks burning down their neighborhoods, students burning down their universities. The media was giving so much attention to these clamoring voices, clamoring for social change, clamoring for social justice. And there was just a lot of anger and resentment building up over that.

By 1968, the federal government comes out with a report — the Kerner Commission Report — which described the reasons for the riots.
And the preface of that report was very famous: It said “white” society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it and white society condones it. So this idea that ordinary middle American white people were being blamed for all of these problems was something that people were very sensitive to, and not many politicians were speaking to.

Right after the Kerner Commission Report, Richard Nixon got a very interesting memo from a young aide named Richard Whalen….

Richard Whalen: In my memo to Nixon, I suggest that a neglected social frontier exists. It is where the doors must be opened and the people prepared for the next great phase of the American experiment. It is suburbia.

In 1966 through ‘68, I was one of the small group of men around Nixon who wrote his speeches, gave him a steady stream of memos, ideas, phrases. At that point, there were three of us writing speeches: Ray Price, who was a very graceful liberal Republican; Pat Buchanan, who was a somewhat more pugnacious, very conservative Republican; and me, who is a sort of moderate conservative centrist.

Nixon referred to us as his bright young, men. When we were 33, we knew everything — and now that I’m 72, almost 73, I don’t think I know anything. But I never met a more confident group of people than the young people who organized around this veteran, battered loser and made him president.

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Perlstein: Nixon was in the middle of a primary fight, getting ready for the Republican convention that summer, against a much more liberal candidate — Nelson Rockefeller on his left and Ronald Reagan to his right.There was another candidate in the 1968 presidential election, George Wallace, who was this segregationist from Alabama. Whalen: And George Wallace was threatening a kind of authoritarian, law-and-order, tell the police to shoot on sight. Wallace was the voice of the aggrieved, almost panicky white middle class, threatened by black urban violence. We were trying very hard to put Nixon as the center, who could calm the racial storm and establish order without being a bully or an authoritarian.”Nixon’s the One” was our slogan — not that I liked it but it was the slogan. The writers kind of hung out together, and we would argue as though Nixon were a man who had a definite thirst for whiskey and we were the bootleggers. We’d argue what sort of good should we put on his doorstep and would he like it.Nixon liked phrases. He would tell us, “Look for that line that you can lift a speech with… the lift of a driving dream” — stuff like that. And I hate to say it, but writers read other writers. And in 1948, I believe, Arthur Schlessinger Jr. wrote an important book called “The Vital Center,” a marvelous title. So 20 years later, we picked it up. Guilty as charged.

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Perlstein: Nixon went on the radio and decided basically to answer the people who felt like the liberals were claiming that it was their fault that America was going to pot.Whalen: And the vital center becomes…Archival Tape: “The silent center, the millions of people in the middle spectrum who do not demonstrate, who do not picket or protest loudly…”Whalen: The audiences who listened to him were silent. These were people who were not ever going to demonstrate anywhere, who were never going to riot, white or black. But they were people whose weight at the center of the political spectrum could tip to the left or to the right.

Perlstein: Imagine if Richard Nixon’s soothing voice comes on the radio and says:

Archival Tape: “A great many quiet Americans have become committed to social problems that preserve personal freedom.”

Perlstein: All you people who feel humiliated and who feel talked down to by the liberals who feel like the world is exploding around you and you’re getting blamed for it — instead of the people who are rioting, you actually comprise a political constituency.Political speech is not very different from poetry, and often it can just be about the resonances of how the syllables sound together.

Whalen: And “silent majority”… tumbled out of my typewriter in the attic in Washington one night. And I looked at it and I said “That’s a pretty good phrase.”

Perlstein: He hit the sweet spot: the “silent majority.”

Whalen: The majority — often silent. Disinterested. Never says “Thank you.” The silent majority. Says “Yeah, that’s ok. That’s great. OK, next.”

Perlstein: And as soon as he said that, it was like, you know, rainbows pushed through the clouds and the sun shined. And basically the “silent majority forever more would become known as the coalition that Nixon spoke to.

Whalen: We gave Nixon language that carried him forward to the “silent majority” and to the role that we saw for him in that election.

Perlstein: The “silent center” speech that Richard Nixon gave in the spring of 1968 was basically the blueprint for Republican politics for the next 40 years — this idea that the moral backbone of America are the ordinary middle American hard-working families. A new political alignment was coming into place in which what Nixon would eventually call the “silent majority.”

Forty years ago, on this weekend in 1968, men and women were arriving from all over the country to Washington, D.C., as part of the Poor People’s Campaign. It was the last movement organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., just before his assassination.

Rev. King had the vision to bring together poor people of all races to make visible the plight of poverty. It was not to be a sit-it, but a live-in. They built “Resurrection City” on the mall on Washington — and the legacy of this city’s rise and fall lives today.

Editor: Ben Adair
Engineer: Rob Byers

This weekend in 1968 was the opening of Resurrection City. We start the story with Dr. Bernard Lafayette:

Dr. Bernard Lafayette: I got a call from Martin Luther King. This was in ‘67. He said, ‘I need you to come down to Atlanta and to move here and work full time. This may be my last campaign and we’re going for broke.’ And when I got to Atlanta, he appointed me the national coordinator for the Poor People’s Campaign. Now the idea originally came from Marion Wright Edelman.

Marion Wright Edelman: I was Marion Wright back in 1968. I had been working with Robert Kennedy on poverty in Mississippi, and he told me to tell Dr. King to bring the poor to Washington. To make them visible.

Lafayette: And the idea was that we would bring those people in front of the folk who make decisions and build this tent city and camp out until you get what you want. The two of us, we’re talking, so I said to MLK, ‘Well, you say this is a PPC. Well, black people aren’t the only ones poor — are you talking about getting Hispanics involved?’ He said ‘Yes!’ ‘What about Native Americans?’ ‘Yes!’ So I was getting to the final question, and that was the poor whites from Appalachia… He said, ‘Are they poor?’ He said if they were poor then this was their campaign.

Edelman: And so the planning began. I was with MLK on April 4, 1968.

Lafayette: I was there at the Lorriane Hotel in his room, 306. That morning, we were talking about the details now of the Poor People’s Campaign and the press conference we were going to have in Washington, D.C. So I got on a plane, and five hours later, he was assassinated.

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Walter Fauntroy: My name is Walter Fauntroy.Lafayette: Rev. Walter Fauntroy was the man who was operating between the government and the poor people.Fauntroy: And it took all we had to say. They killed the dreamer… ‘Come to Washington.’ So they came with some hope.

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Edelman: They came by bus, by train.Rev. Ruby Reese Moone: I am the Rev. Dr. Moone Reese Moone.

Edelman: They came in a mule train from the South, and the mule trains were very slow and very hard.

Moone: Thousands and thousands of people… From all across America.

Edelman: I discovered a map of Resurrection City recently that I didn’t know existed which is an aerial view. It looks like a refugee camp.

Stoney Cooks: A city of plywood, teepee-looking A-frames, houses. There were some people who really made their A-frame look like home. A little family would dig up flowers and put them around their A-frame.

Edelman: Between 2,000 and 5,000 people were crammed in there for May and June.

Cooks: I mean literally, every available spot was taken.

Lafayette: We had full facilities for a city. So we had to have a mayor.

Voice over loudspeaker: ‘I would like to introduce to you Dr. Ralph David Abernathy — the mayor of Resurrection City! Yeah!’

Fauntroy: There was adequate food, a City Hall.

Lafayette: Sewage.

Fauntroy: Health Care.

Lafayette: Schools.

Cooks: Every single day, we started with a demonstration at the Department of Agriculture. And then we’d branch out from there.

Fauntroy: People were organized in their areas of interest. If you were an Indian, you wanted to go to the Interior, to talk to people in Indian Affairs. Let them know that policy needs to change. If you were a farmer, you went to Agriculture. So it went — well, early on. Some despair drifted in when the people they talked to… seemed nasty. ‘I don’t want to be bothered with you poor people. You are a problem. You are tax eaters.’ That kind of foolishness. But we always picked them up when we got back. They have a good hot meal and some entertainment.

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Lafayette: Musicians came in the evening.Fauntroy: Oh my goodness!Cooks: Jimmy Collier.

Fauntroy: Peter Paul and Mary.

Lafayette: I think Pete Seeger came…

Fauntroy: And we got to singing…

Lafayette: So, always visitors coming through. Even when there was mud and everything else.

Cooks: Every day. It would be nice and bright and all of a sudden clouds would come through — and ha! The rain.

Moone: People got tired of living in the wet.

Cooks: There were even rumors that the government seeded the clouds.

Lafayette: Somebody counted and they said it rained for 40 days.

Fauntroy: Which sort of amplified the despair. And when you’ve got a muddy spirit and muddy eyes and a muddy future, you turn on one another instead of to one another.

Cooks: We had robbery, burglary.

Lafayette: Cooks probably didn’t tell you this, but some guy came in to rob and Cooks gave the person the impression that he was going to give him the money, but instead, Cooks knocked the gun out of his hand and the barrel of the gun fell out.

Cooks: It was 4,000 or 5,000 people, and all of their problems.

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Voice on radio: ‘Sen. Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. today…’Fauntroy: June the 5th, 1968.Cooks: To hear the Robert Kennedy was assassinated, it was like ‘My God, again.’

Fauntroy: It was hard, people just went crazy. They were cussing out nuns who were coming every day to feed because they were white. They were turning on one another — ‘You Hispanics are taking our jobs, you Indians should have beat the Cowboys.’ There was just a pervasive angryness.

Moone: The leadership of the Poor People’s Campaign were very disgusted. They were not getting Congress to listen. And they were saying, ‘You’re going to hear us before you leave.’

Fauntroy: And the Federal Government said, ‘Look, if you could control the people, put them in the kind of discipline we had when it was beautiful, fine.’ And as I said, all of a sudden. It just popped out!

Cooks: The bulldozers came in from the 17th St. entrance.

Edelman: I think it was June 24th.

Cooks: People were told move out or you’re going to be crushed over.

Fauntroy: And I went down there and watched it. Helplessly.

Cooks: This was demolition. They bulldozed it.

Fauntroy: The people I had been talking to didn’t have any prior knowledge of it.

Cooks: And in a very short period of time, there was no more Resurrection City.

Fauntroy: I think Resurrection City is remembered as a failure, but even its failure lifted us to higher ground. At least, that’s how I view it.

Lafayette: Whether it ended poverty, the answer is ‘No.’

Edelman: Change is a long, hard thing.

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Fauntroy: Martin Luther King put it this way: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it always bends towards justice.’Edelman: And I think it’s really important for people to know that, while they went back home in despair and depressed, a lot of follow-up occurred which did lead to major federal investment in nationwide nutrition programs, like food stamps and school lunches. So the Poor People’s Campaign struggle was not in vain.Fauntroy: So, I look back on the Poor People’s Campaign and that decade, as painful as it was, as what was necessary to awaken enough people to change public policy. (singing) ‘We shall overcome, deep in heart, I do believe we shall overcome’ …And that’s that.

 Hi all! We have a new series on Weekend America about 1968!

In 1968, the United States seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown — assassinations, riots, protests and war were tearing at the fabric of our society. It was a year that would shape the course of a nation for decades to come. This series uses 1968 as a lens through which to view our own era. By looking back, we see how far we’ve come and also where we’ve fallen short.

Hear the stories by visiting Weekend America.

This post first appeared on Hearing Voices.

Hearing Voices from NPR®:
008 About Aging— I Thought You’d Never Ask
Host— David Greenberger of Duplex Planet
Airdates— 4/23/2008 - 4/30/2008

Host David Greenberger of Duplex Planet presents glorious moments and observations from people in the last years of their lives: Dave Alvin discusses the song he wrote about his dying father, “Man in the Bed,” from the Western Folklife Center’s What’s in a Song? series. Comedians Bob & Ray are “The Whirleys”. From StoryCorps comes a remembrance from Richard Craig of his days as a dance host on cruise ships. In Sound Portraits “The Ground We Live On” journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc faces mortality in recordings she made during her father’s last months alive. And host David Greenberger shares some stories told him over the years by the elderly, including “Growing Old in East L.A.”

About Aging (53:00 mp3):