Radical Citizenship in Wartime, from Vietnam to Iraq
Struggles over civic status have been said to characterize youthful rebellion, especially that of the Sixties. Such battles over who counts as worthy of which human rights are, of course, all the more urgent in times of war. So it is worth interrogating the concepts of youth protest and radical citizenship as we plot our way out of the course set by the current power brokers.
It is particularly appropriate to be having this conversation today, December 4, the thirty-seventh anniversary of the Chicago police murders of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, two young, energetic, and brilliant organizers who gave life and meaning to what society is supposed to be about: empathic people deeply engaged in how the world does and could function. A dynamic speaker and humble leader, Hampton was 21 years old and poised to enter the national leadership of the Black Panther Party at the time of his murder. His murder in 1969 had a chilling effect on not just the Black Panther Party but the radical movements of the period overall. The blatant pride with which the Chicago police carried out the murders was the visible manifestation of J. Edgar Hoover’s then-classified note in an FBI memorandum around the time saying that African Americans needed to understand that a Black radical was a dead radical, as far as the state was concerned.
