WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?

"There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt." That was written by mid 20th century poet, writer and feminism activist Audre Lorde. She must have assumed she was having an original thought when she wrote it. She wasn't. In his biography, it is reported that Mark Twain said, about 100 years or so earlier, “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.” It wasn't an original concept for him either. You will find the sentence, “There is nothing new under the sun,” in Ecclesiastes, making it apparent that, whoever wrote that particular portion of the Bible, spent a good deal of time hanging out with pagans. They were the ones with the first ideas. Or were they? What this tells me, then, is that all of the so called radically “new ideas” we had in the 60's came from other sources. As unique and different as we purported to be, we were obviously “inspired” by others who preceded us. A fact we were too cocky to see even with Mao's “Little Red Book” in our back pockets while we sported T-Shirts with “Che's” face glowering from under his beret. We live in a vacuum.....there are no original ideas. As I transitioned out of my teens into perceived adulthood in 1966, a year that was rife with the likes of The Weather Underground, The Black Panther Party (for Self Defense), SNCC and the Puerto Rican equivalent, The Young Lords, I found myself drawn to these ideologies of social justice, as were thousands of other young Americans, disillusioned with everything from the Vietnam War to starving children in inner cities. Names like Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver Jerry Rubin, Abbey Hoffman, Felipe Luciano, David Perez and Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman resonated and we felt alive in the idea of the “revolution,” televised or not. It was an idea whose time had come and I was all set to jump in with both feet, until I got a letter that told me Uncle Sam had other ideas. “Greetings,” it said. That was all I needed to see. The revolution was kicking into full gear and I had just been drafted. I saw, at that point, that the level of my radical spirit had been trumped by a dash of “wussiness” when it came to the idea of possibly dodging the draft. My father had fought in WWII and my uncle served in Korea and I could see that, even though socially, we had an awful lot of work to do, there was enough patriotism in my own blood to keep me from shirking this particular responsibility. In 1966 I joined the Air Force and, in 1968, I went to Southeast Asia. That didn't mean it had to dampen my socially conscious spirit. When I stepped off the plane at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, I was immediately hit with a burst of humidity and a smell that I soon learned to embrace. I had to.....I was going to be there for a while. Every time we go to a new place, the first thing we do is try to surround ourselves with like minded people and I soon found myself in the middle of a group of GIs who were also disenchanted with social situations back home. It wasn't long before a group of us with names like Tito, Tony & Chops, joined the Black Panther Party, by mail, and were selling the newspapers on the base, in between our military duties, of course. In the military, you can only be as radical as they will allow you to be, but, again, we thought we were being original. As a “GI,” I must have been adequate because on Jan. 10th, 1970, I was honorably discharged. I had gone to Vietnam and was now back home where I could protest it. After being spit at and called a baby killer enough times, I grew my hair long, refused to admit to my Veteran status and moved to Puerto Rico where I became fast friends with the central committee of the Spanish Harlem based Young Lords. We became close enough that, whenever they would be on the island, they would stop by my apartment and, occasionally, hold meetings. It was at one such meeting that I realized that the “revolution” was not the romanticized cure-all I was initially drawn to or an ideology I wanted to embrace any longer. The guys from the “Lords” came over and said they wanted to have a meeting but that it was private and they had to use my bedroom, which was where they headed with my stereo, my records and my weed, leaving me only partially high and very dry and alone in my living room. They weren't discussing some secret strategy to get the kids in the Barrio free school breakfast or trying to find alternatives to police brutality in the neighborhood. They were partying in my bedroom and I wasn't invited. We were now well into the early 70's and the drug culture was beginning to surface with enough of a vengeance to render the radical 60's a thing of the past. An idea whose time had come......and gone. Over the years most of us grew up, married, had families and became downright responsible. Hell, Eldridge Cleaver became a Republican politician. Our idealism had given way to the hope that, as we changed and became the mainstream, our off spring would start the process all over again, as they grew into disillusioned teens, with minds and thoughts of their own to act upon as the cycle continues. I only hope they have better luck than we did. A good start would be to not get cocky and remember the completely unoriginal words of Audre Lord - "There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt."