Left in the West

Literature, Culture, and Progressive Politics in the American West

Gioia Woods

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781943859948
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria

In this edited collection, Gioia Woods and her contributors bring together histories, biographies, close readings, and theories about the literary and cultural Left in the American West—as it is distinct from the more often-theorized literary left in major eastern metropolitan centers. Left in the West expands our understanding of what constitutes the literary left in the U.S. by including writers, artists, and movements not typically considered within the traditional context of the literary left. In doing so, it provides a new understanding of the region's place among global and political ideologies.From the early 19th century to the present, a remarkably complex and varied body of literary and cultural production has emerged out of progressive social movements. While the literary left in the West shared many interests with other regional expressions—labor, class, anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism, the influence of Manifest Destiny—the distinct history of settler colonialism in western territories caused western leftists to develop concerns unique to the region.Chapters in the volume provide an impressive range of analysis, covering artists and movements from suffragist writers to bohemian Californian photographers, from civil rights activists to popular folk musicians, from Latinx memoirists to Native American experimental writers, to name just a few.The unique consideration of the West as a socio-political region establishes a framework for political critique that moves beyond class consequences, anti-fascism, and civil liberties, and into distinct Western concerns such as Native American sovereignty, environmental exploitation, and the legacies of settler colonialism. What emerges is a deeper understanding of the region and its unique people, places, and concerns.

I

LEFT MOVEMENTS

Institutions and Ideologies

1

“Activism Brings Out the Best in All of Us”

Toward a History of Peace and Justice Movements in Utah from the 1960s to the Present

JOHN S. MCCORMICK

Utah has a long history of peace and justice activism. This surprises many people, but it should not, because the existence of a hegemonic political and social order does not predict whether or not opposition to that hegemony will exist. It does not necessarily prevent opposition to prevailing beliefs, values, and practices. We can begin to discover the nature and motivations of opposition when it does emerge in such a social order by listening to the voices of activists as they work to find points of entry into the dominant discourse, to challenge, interrupt, and disrupt it, to push back, to think and act outside the boundaries of the “permissible.”

This essay is an overview of peace and justice movements in Utah from the political left, in particular the radical left, during the last half of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first. It is based in large part on the more than 125 oral history interviews with peace and justice activists now on deposit at Utah Valley University’s George Sutherland Archives that are a substantial part of its Oral History of Utah Peace Activists Project. Though the interviews took place between 2006 and 2009, historians and others have not made much use of them, and they remain largely untapped. They are by no means exhaustive; they do not include many peace and justice activists. Even so, they allow us to say more about peace and justice movements in Utah than was previously possible. At the same time, they are such a rich resource that this essay is only a sketch of what could easily be a much longer account of both individual activists and the organizations of which they were a part. The interviews raise, and offer insight into, a range of questions—among them: What brought people whose social milieu was shaped by a conservative political climate and a dominant religion to radical belief and activity? What has it meant to be an activist, in particular a radical activist, in a conservative state where the influence of the Mormon church cannot be ignored and where what Rocky Anderson has called a “culture of obedience” exists (Anderson 19)? What sustained their commitment? At what costs? What does it take to be effective under such circumstances? What relationship did Utah radicals and radical groups see between peace and justice? Between anti-militarism and, for example, environmentalism? How did they confront the challenge of living in a way consistent with their values? What led Deanna Taylor, for example, to co-found a Utah chapter of the international group Radical Cheerleaders, and C. T. Butler and Keith McHenry to found Food Not Bombs, whose intention was both to provide free meals to the hungry and to call into question an economic system based on profit and militarism and the political system that supported it? What brought Utah Phillips to singing and storytelling and Alex Caldiero to poetry and performance as forms of radical action, and Archie Archuleta, Dayne Goodwin, and Diana Lee Hirschi to lifelong radical commitment? What led to the formation of Word Warriors, whose goal was “Confronting Oppression with Expression”? And to the founding of publications like the Desert Sun: Utah’s Peace News; buzzkill: salt lake’s occasional anarchist rag; the Utah Free Press: A Socialist Monthly; and the Mormon Worker, a “socialist, anti-war newspaper from a Mormon perspective, loosely modeled on the Catholic Worker” (Van Wagenen 3). What led to the founding of Mormons for Equality and Social Justice (MESJ), a national organization with several dozen chapters throughout the United States that addresses a range of issues, including gender and racial equality, militarism, and environmental justice? How did the answers radicals gave to such questions influence the ways they thought about their activism and the impact they might have? In other words, the interviews allow us to examine what might be called “the making of a radical,” and in some instances, the “unmaking,” in general and in Utah specifically.

In this regard, what is clear from the interviews is the emphasis Utah radicals placed on creating and sustaining a community of people engaged with others in a common enterprise in Utah and across the country and the world. Acting with like-minded people created powerful bonds, a feeling of belonging, a realization that a person was not alone. Such a feeling of connection to others and to a cause gave them a sense of their combined strength, helping them to sustain their vision, nerve, and the confidence that they might make a difference, helping to combat loneliness, isolation, discouragement, and a sense of impotence.

As part of this, as a way of sustaining a sense of possibility and a culture of opposition, many Utah radicals stressed the importance of a variety of approaches and range of activities, the importance of activists speaking, marching, rallying, distributing literature, organizing concerts and festivals, holding poetry readings and art exhibits. That is, they emphasized the importance of what Barbara Ehrenreich has called “festivity.” Such activities, she argues, both empower those who participate in them and threaten ruling parties who seek to maintain their dominant position (Ehrenreich 94).

The challenges radical movements on the Left have posed to the status quo in the United States have been stronger at some times than at others, but they have always existed. This has been true in Utah as well (McCormick and Sillito; Berman). Beginning with the arrival of Mormons in 1847, and continuing to the present, Utah has a long-standing tradition of individuals and groups calling into question the fundamental principles on which American society has been organized; calling for thoroughgoing changes; seeking to get to the root of problems, rather than dealing with symptoms; and challenging existing assumptions about what is good and what is moral.

The Mormon church was one of dozens of utopian communities, both secular and religious, founded in the United States in the early and middle years of the nineteenth century, and Mormons saw their immigration to Utah beginning in 1847 as an opportunity to escape the country’s deeply rooted inequalities and begin anew. Subsequent groups of Utah radicals included the Liberal Party of the 1870s and 1880s; the Knights of Labor in the 1880s; the Populist Party in the 1890s; anarchists, Wobblies, and Socialists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Communists in the 1930s; old and new leftists in the 1960s; and numerous groups since then, among them the Wasatch Coalition for Peace and Justice; Vietnam Veterans Against the War; Military Families Speak Out; and the Brown Berets.

Specific features of this radical tradition include the election to public office of at least 115 members of the Socialist Party of America in more than a dozen Utah cities and towns between 1901 and 1923; mass marches and demonstrations of the unemployed through the streets of downtown Salt Lake City and other Utah cities during the 1930s that Communist Party members and sympathizers had organized; and the “One-Man Revolution” in the 1960s of Christian anarchist and pacifist Ammon Hennacy. The 1980s and 1990s saw the founding of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES); the Central America Solidarity Coalition (CASC); a Utah local of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); the Great Peace March for Nuclear Disarmament in 1986; and the near election in 1991 of a member of the Socialist Workers Party, Nancy Boyasko, to the Salt Lake City Council. Her goal in running was to “be a voice for the struggles and rights of working people in this city. And a link to struggles of working people around the world” (“Vote Socialist Workers”). Among the features of Utah’s radical history in the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century was a rally in August 2005 to “End the Unjust War in Iraq”; the first annual Imagine Peace Fest in 2006; a Liar’s Convention in downtown Salt Lake City in March 2007 to protest the Bush administration’s continuing prosecution of its war in Iraq and to remember those who had died as a result of the war; a Salt Lake City Main Street Plaza Kiss-In in 2009; the 2009 founding of the Revolutionary Students Union, with chapters at the University of Utah, Utah Valley University, and Salt Lake Community College; the annual observance, beginning on April 1, 2010, of Fossil Fools Day, sponsored by the group Peaceful Uprising; and an art show in 2017 at the Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts in Salt Lake City entitled “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” which explored “themes of police brutality and violence against underrepresented groups” (Staker).

The 1960s in the United States, the period from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, was a significant focus of the Oral History of Utah Peace Activists Project interviews. It was a volatile and passionate time when virtually every aspect of American life was challenged and called into question. Utah was very much a part of the ferment. A number of peace and justice groups founded earlier continued to be active, including chapters of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF); the Fellowship for Reconciliation (FOR); the War Resisters League (WRL); Women Strike for Peace; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); the Socialist Workers Party (SWP); and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In addition, beginning in the 1960s, and continuing to the present, more than one hundred peace and justice groups have been founded.¹ Not all of them were radical groups, though many were, but they all had radical elements and radical potential. Some were short-lived; others lasted longer; some have continued to the present; and new ones continue to be established. Many were chapters of national organizations; others were local. Some were part of religious groups, while others were secular. Their members and supporters included a range of people in terms of race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation. They included those whose involvement was short-term and those whose commitment was lifelong. They linked peace with other concerns, including, increasingly, environmental issues. They organized countless marches, rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins, teach-ins, picket lines, vigils, and encampments. They undertook long-term letter-writing campaigns, engaged in civil disobedience and direct action, and were arrested. They took part in guerrilla street theater. They organized an “alternative commencement” at Brigham Young University in spring 2007 to protest its decision to invite Vice President Dick Cheney to speak and award him an honorary degree. They occupied Salt Lake City as part of the nationwide Occupy movement. They worked to stop the Carter and Reagan administration’s plan to construct a nearly 100,000-acre MX missile base in Utah and Nevada. They sponsored an annual Tooele County “Toxic Weekend” encampment—“A Raging Shindig Against Air, Water, and Ground Pollution”; sent delegations of Utah women who traveled to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s for a series of meetings with Russian women to promote peace; and supported Iraq War veteran and military journalist Marshall Thompson’s walk the length of Utah in 2006 to protest the war. They mounted an “Eyes Wide Open” traveling exhibit that consisted of a pair of combat boots for every American soldier and Iraqi civilian killed in the Iraq War. They staged protests against a proposed coal-burning power plant near Capitol Reef National Park and a proposed nuclear waste site near Canyonlands National Park, which included a “U-235 relay race.” U-235 is the atomic weight of uranium, Bruce Plenk, one of the participants, explained, but 235 miles was also roughly the distance from the proposed nuclear waste site to Salt Lake City, and opponents of the site participated in a relay race to the state’s capital city, passing a baton with petitions opposing the site rolled up inside it (Plenk 15–16).

Over a period of years Utah peace activists working to ban nuclear testing joined with activists from Nevada and other states in organizing regular protests and a long-term “peace camp” at the 1,360-acre Nevada Nuclear Test Site (NTS) sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas. Between its establishment in 1951 and 1992, the site was the primary location for testing U.S. nuclear devices. During those years 1,021 nuclear detonations occurred there. One hundred of them were “atmospheric,” or aboveground, explosions that created the characteristic mushroom clouds that became synonymous with the explosion of nuclear bombs. Beginning in the late 1950s, and in particular during the 1980s and early 1990s, the NTS was the site of regular protests and acts of civil disobedience, including on the anniversaries of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From 1986 through 1994, 536 anti-nuclear protests were held. They involved more than thirty-seven thousand participants and led to nearly sixteen thousand arrests. Most of the demonstrations were sponsored by either the American Peace Test (APT) or the Nevada Desert Experience (NDE). The biggest protest took place in March 1988. Held over a ten-day period, nearly three thousand people were arrested, including more than twelve hundred in a single day.

Deb Levine participated in many protests at the NTS. “We were there,” she said, “because we really believed that this was wrong, that building nuclear weapons was wrong, and that. . .if you don’t test them, then you’re not going to use them” (Levine 5). Dee Rowland took part in a number of protests and was arrested three times. “I couldn’t be true to myself if I did not speak out against this,” she said. What particularly drew her to the protests was that they were not just aimed at stopping a particular war but were part of a “comprehensive type of peace movement” (Rowland 8). When arrested and tried for trespassing, protesters at the NTS often employed what Bruce Plenk, a lawyer in one of the cases, called the “necessity defense,” arguing that “in order to stop this nuclear testing. . .yes, we trespassed but it should be excused because of the significance of preventing nuclear war, violating international treaties, and violating the rights of the Western Shoshone people” on whose land the test site was located (Plenk 7). That argument was not successful in defending protesters at the NTS, but it was at the January 1990 trial of protesters at the gates of Hercules, Inc., a Utah company that built engines for Trident missiles. When three protestors were arrested and tried for trespassing, the jury agreed with their lawyer, Ron Yengich’s, “choice of evils” defense that what Hercules was doing was a “crime against humanity” that required them to break governmental laws in the name of a higher law (Yengich 7).

Several dozen groups working for peace and justice in the 1960s began as “anti-war,” or “peace,” or “peacemaking” bodies protesting the Vietnam War. Even though a majority of Utahns always supported the war, and Utah sent to Vietnam the fifth highest percentage in the nation of males eligible for the draft, a significant anti-war movement emerged in the state. The anti-war movement in the United States involved a range of political positions and philosophies, but radicals were a significant part of it, and it is fair to say that radicalism in Utah was revitalized in part through opposition to the Vietnam War. Activists argued for the necessity of not only stopping a particular war, but eliminating an economic and political system that made war inevitable. As Hans Ehrbar put it: “in order to solve the issues of peace, justice, environmental issues, etc., we must become a different kind of society” (Ehrbar 10).

Utah’s first anti–Vietnam War protest march took place in downtown Salt Lake City in fall 1964. Paul Wharton was one of about ten participants. “We were jeered, we were heckled, mustard, ketchup, you name it thrown at us, epithets of all kinds and descriptions,” he recalled. “But after the first one you get used to it” (Wharton 4). A march the next spring, on April 18, 1965, attracted about forty participants. Four and a half years later, on October 15, 1969, as many as seven thousand demonstrators joined in a full day of protest, beginning with a “teach-in” at the University of Utah and continuing with a march to the Federal Building in downtown Salt Lake City where speakers read the names of Utahns killed in Vietnam and called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from the war. The last major demonstration was on May 15, 1971, when several thousand protestors gathered at the State Capitol building for a rally and then marched to Pioneer Park, where six hundred more people joined them for another rally. Leading the march was a group of active-duty military personnel carrying a banner that read, “GIS AGAINST THE WAR.” Following them were members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War wearing worn fatigues with their combat service medals attached. Founded in 1967, the VVAW expanded rapidly nationally, and in Utah as well, as soldiers returned home. It was a key group in anti-war efforts in Utah, as it was nationwide, and it has remained an important anti-war presence ever since.

The demonstration had been sponsored by the Wasatch Peace Action Coalition. One of its founders was Dayne Goodwin. From its earl...