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Welcome to the Revolution
Ratings:
215 pages2 hours
Summary
The year is 1968 and revolution is in the air.
Thousands of young people around the world are challenging every aspect of society from the war in Vietnam, to attitudes about sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Mark Simon, a leader of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), in an upstate New York college is trying to make the revolution a reality while having to choose between the girl he loves and his political beliefs.
Mark and his fellow radicals are leading hundreds of students in an escalating series of confrontations with the college administration. When they are not taking over buildings, talking politics, or throwing a cream pie in the college president's face, they are listening to music, smoking dope and exploring their sexuality.
But there is a rift in SDS, as one faction plans to go underground and blow up a campus facility contributing to the war in Vietnam.
The personal collides with the political as one student considers suicide at the prospect of coming out about his homosexuality. Another student, the elder statesman of SDS, has to make a choice between his personal integrity and taking care of his growing family. Mark, the protagonist, has to betray his girlfriend to stay true to his politics. All the while there is an undercover cop who has infiltrated SDS.
Publisher: MuseItUp PublishingReleased: Nov 19, 2019ISBN: 9781773920436Format: book
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Welcome to the Revolution - Steven Mendel
Historical Fiction
The year is 1968 and revolution is in the air.
Thousands of young people around the world are challenging every aspect of society from the war in Vietnam, to attitudes about sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Mark Simon, a leader of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), in an upstate New York college, is trying to make the revolution a reality while having to choose between the girl he loves and his political beliefs.
Mark and his fellow radicals are leading hundreds of students in an escalating series of confrontations with the college administration. When they are not taking over buildings, talking politics, or throwing a cream pie in the college president’s face, they are listening to music, smoking dope and exploring their sexuality.
But there is a rift in SDS, as one faction plans to go underground and blow up a campus facility contributing to the war in Vietnam.
The personal collides with the political as one student considers suicide at the prospect of coming out about his homosexuality. Another student, the elder statesman of SDS, has to make a choice between his personal integrity and taking care of his growing family. Mark, the protagonist, has to betray his girlfriend to stay true to his politics. All the while, there is an undercover cop who has infiltrated SDS.
Welcome To The Revolution © 2019 by Steven Mendel
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or events, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
MuseItUp Publishing
https://museituppublishing.com
Cover Art © 2019 by Charlotte Volnek
Layout and Book Production by Lea Schizas
eBook ISBN: 978-1-77392-043-6
First eBook Edition *November 2019
Dedicated to my parents
Acknowledgements
Although this book is a work of fiction, it is based on real events.
There are many people who assisted in the telling of this story that I would like to thank. Tom Jenks, an early reader of this manuscript, had many helpful suggestions. Over the years, Jeremy Leeds helped me refine my thinking about the issues raised in this book. Steve Goldstein for the many thoughtful discussions about the intersection of politics, philosophy and psychology. Pam Williams for her efforts to make this manuscript more readable. Ralph Iocco for living through these times with me and still being a close, loving friend. Trevor Richardson of Subtopian for his belief in me and his readiness to publish my writing. For my daughter, Liza Mendel-Williams who showed her love by reading the manuscript twice!
To my family; David, Susan, Desmond, Devon, Dalia, Robin, Bruce, Emily, Elyse, and Sandy for their unconditional support and love.
And a special shout out to my muse, guide and role model for writing and everything else in life, Margaret.
This book is dedicated to my parents, Ted and Flo Mendel who instilled in me a social conscience, a healthy dose of nonconformity and an intolerance for any political system that is inherently unfair.
Welcome To The Revolution
Steven Mendel
MuseItUp Publishing
www.museituppublishing.com
Chapter One
FALL 1968
Hey hey, LBJ how many kids did you kill today?
The city streets vibrated as a hundred thousand people roared. The voices became one and Mark never feeling more powerful joined in. Rob Mark's roommate started a new chant pumping a right fist in the air. Hell no we won’t go.
Mark joined in and soon the demonstrators around them were chanting. The chant spread through the crowd until it sounded as vast as an ocean wave. Sarah and Beth carried the Hudson College banner. Eric walked at the front of their contingent and Tom as always walking right besides Eric trying to keep up.
The wide flat streets of midtown Manhattan rose to a small incline and Mark jumped up and looked uptown. There were people as far as he could see. Marching to end the war to stop the killing to change the world. They were many but the few were ready to push back. The demonstration turned a corner and stopped abruptly. Marchers ran into those in front of them. The chanting stopped. What had been a coherent purposeful army turned into a confused crowd.
A voice boomed from a megaphone. Disperse. This demonstration is illegal. Anyone apprehended in the street is subject to arrest and imprisonment.
Mark looked around and the Hudson group was not in sight. The crowd was being split up and suddenly Mark didn’t recognize anyone around him. You are hereby ordered to disperse. This is your last warning.
The voice boomed from some place on high. Mark heard the clacking hooves of the mounted cops’ horses hitting the pavement. Most people looked around confused but one guy with a long blond ponytail standing next to Mark took out a set of brass knuckles smiling as he put them on. The cops walked the horses slowly in a line toward the crowd. When they got closer, they turned the horses sideways creating a wall of animals pushing the crowd together. Behind the horses were other cops on foot standing shoulder-to-shoulder helmets on and batons out.
Mark held out both arms to keep the marchers in front of him from pushing him into the people behind. The crowd was being squeezed and what had been a disciplined demonstration devolved into a collection of increasingly scared individuals. Mark felt alone in a group of strangers.
The crowd tried to make up its mind—hold the line and confront the cops or break ranks and get the hell out.
Someone began a chant. The people united will never be defeated.
The chant got louder as more demonstrators joined in. The people united will never be defeated.
The crowd had made its choice. It would stand its ground.
Helicopters hovered overhead drowning out the chanting. The horses in a slow and steady gait kept pushing people into smaller and smaller spaces like predators with a school of fish. Someone screamed so close to Mark that he thought the sound came from him. Then Mark saw the guy with the ponytail and the brass knuckles fall to the ground, blood streaming down the side of his head. A middle-aged man in a blue windbreaker ran close enough to brush against Mark’s shoulder. The man held a small black billy club. Other men in the same blue windbreakers ran through the crowd swinging their clubs hitting demonstrators. The crowd roared.
Mark froze as one of these men ran toward him. Their eyes met. Mark couldn’t move even though it was obvious what was coming. First pulling his head in then hunching both shoulders with closed eyes braced himself for the inevitable blow. But it didn’t come. When Mark opened his eyes, the man lay on the ground. Rob stood over him rubbing the knuckles of the right hand. The marchers closed in around the fallen cop who looked almost tiny lying there. Everything came to a stop. Then the cop reached for the billy club. Rob kicked it away. The kid with the brass knuckles hair sticky with blood kicked the cop and screamed Fuck’n pig.
The crowd closed in around the fallen man. The cop’s walkie-talkie squawked and a group of other cops with black billy clubs ran toward their fallen comrade.
Let’s get out of here Mark,
Rob said.
Rob led as the two of them pushed through the crowd. They emerged from the press of people and slipped into a side street one block from the demonstration.
They passed a small group of counter demonstrators waving American flags. They were holding signs that said, America love it or leave it
and Support our boys.
There were less than two dozen of them and at least twenty cops surrounded them. One of the demonstrators spotted Mark and Rob and shouted, Where are you going you commie bastards? Go back to the hole you crawled out of.
The guy was dressed in a green army jacket with a large swastika on one sleeve.
Hey, you commie bastard,
the guy yelled again and left the fenced-in area and the safety of the police protection and followed quickly after Mark and Rob. They picked up the pace and tried to ignore him. But he stayed right behind them and called out, Hey you, you long haired faggot. That’s right, I’m talking to you, you kike.
Mark turned quickly. Rob grabbed his arm. Mark pulled it away. What did you say?
Mark walked right up to the guy their faces almost touching.
You heard me you dirty Jew.
And before the last word was finished, Mark slammed a fist flush in his face. The guy fell to the ground and blood gushed out of his nose.
Mark straddled him and yelled. Get up and I’ll knock you on your Nazi ass again.
Someone yelled from the counter demonstrators. Hey what’s going on there?
Some counter demonstrators ran toward Mark and Rob. They knocked somebody down. The commies are beating on one of our guys.
Let’s go,
Rob said.
Mark looked down at the guy reaching to find his glasses with one hand and tried to stop the nosebleed with the other.
Fuck’n Nazi,
Mark said, still straddling the guy and spit on him. When he looked down the Nazi looked like a scared little boy with a bloody nose and a face dripping with spittle.
Mark turned and followed Rob. They went two blocks and joined the midtown flow of pedestrian traffic. Nobody followed them. A couple of blocks from the demonstration and it was like any autumn afternoon in Manhattan, people were out on their lunch breaks walking quickly and the tourists were walking slowly trying to take in all the sights. It almost seemed like the demonstration existed on some other planet.
They walked to Grand Central Station got on the train headed for Hudson. Leaning against the window of the train and trying to sleep, body exhausted, Mark’s mind wouldn’t stop. The image of the Nazi lying on the ground nose bleeding looking so scared stayed with Mark. He imagined himself on the ground bleeding after getting hit on the head by that plainclothes cop with the black billy club then remembered that a cop laid on the ground after Rob smacked him and saved Mark.
Mark felt disgusted with himself, not sorry about punching that Nazi, but he thought that was all left behind in Brooklyn. The memories of fights in high school and on the playgrounds when playing basketball resurfaced. The thing that always made him lose it was the anti-Semitism. It touched something in him and knew somehow it connected to his father. No one in the family was religious. Both parents were communists when they were younger and, though they were no longer politically active, they were still left wing and definitely atheists. But there existed something primal about standing up for oneself especially after World War II and the stories of Jews sheepishly marching to be gassed.
Mark believed once out of Brooklyn that the Irish, Polish and Italian kids left behind meant that there would be no more fighting to show that this was one Jew who wasn’t going to march to his death without a struggle. Mark’s eyes were closed but his mind stayed wide-awake.
Rob’s eyes were open but the Hudson River rushing by outside the train window did not exist for him. It’d been a long time since the feeling of pride lived inside Rob. Sitting across from Mark, Rob thought about the day and how he’d rescued his friend three times. Decking that cop then getting them out of the demonstration when it started to get ugly and then eluding the Nazi’s friends. Rob felt beholden and a responsibility for Mark’s safety. The thought of this new responsibility led to the growing inner warm feeling. Rob almost admitted to himself what had been on the edge of his awareness for a long time but not quite.
Chapter Two
Bailey Gorman, a legend at Hudson College, was thirty years old ten years older than most students. Bailey had been an organizer for the Mine Workers Union and went south in the early 1960s as part of the civil rights movement and along with hundreds of others got arrested several times and walked with a limp after being badly beaten by the KKK. Bailey was the founding member, elder statesman and guiding presence of the radical student group at Hudson College SDS.
Bailey went back to school after the union organizing and civil rights work to complete a doctorate in social history and teach part time at Hudson. The Gormans lived in the middle of town in an old slightly run-down Victorian house. Every room overflowed with books and those that couldn’t fit on the overloaded bookshelves were stacked in precarious piles throughout the house.
Mark heard about Bailey, but it wasn’t until taking one of Bailey’s classes that Mark got to know him. Bailey’s class changed Mark’s life. For the first time he learned about a radicalism to call his own and not a parental inheritance. Mark read every book assigned suggested or even briefly mentioned in the class. Their relationship quickly grew beyond teacher-student. It wasn’t long before Mark joined SDS and became a part of Bailey’s extended family.
May, Bailey’s wife, liked Mark right away. And Mark was totally taken with her. May taught theater at Hudson led acting workshops and directed a guerilla theater company that performed at radical conferences and demonstrations. Mark imagined a future life that would look like Bailey’s, working as an academic doing political work and living in a house overflowing with books with someone like May.
Mark told Bailey and May the stories he’d heard his whole life from his parents about their time in the communist party. Told constantly by his parents to be wary and not tell anyone about the family’s past radical involvement made it even more exhilarating to reject their advice and get such an enthusiastic reaction. Mark felt powerful as he freed himself from his parents’ silence. The stories began to feel as though they were about him.
May and Bailey loved the story of how Mark’s mother chained herself to a radiator to block an eviction of a neighbor. Right after World War II apartments were in short supply. All the veterans returned home with lots of money because there was no place to spend it during the war.
Mark echoed his father as if he’d lived through those
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