Reply #9: Had a couple of really good teachers who wanted us to know the score

[havocmom]

One actually spent time hiding in under the seat in an outhouse in a farm workers camp during the bad days with grape growers. Those people WERE not nice and he probably would have been killed if not for his hide out. The boss-men tore EVERYTHING else in the place apart on the hunch that there were people with cameras snooping around. (There were, and he was a mess when Monday came around, but his pal the photographer got some damning stuff)

One had been OSS during WWII and as it morphed into the CIA. He taught history. He REALLY taught history. And he suggested we apply the lessons to our approach to dealing with power in America. He stopped a lecture one day, asked us to put down our pens and said if we never learned anything else from him, we should learn that the government was not our friend. Then he gave some interesting tidbits about how easy it was to be found on the wrong side of things in the eyes of power, and how they could paint and destroy people at will. He looked so sad some of us were afraid he was suicidal.

It was not long after WATTS. Both those teachers discussed it with us. But we were in a time and place where WATTS was local news we all recalled seeing on TV just a few years before.

Now? WATTS? History?

Hell, ask people who Samuel Gompers was... be prepared to be saddened.