A local anarchist emailed to ask about Boston’s anarchist/direct action groups in the late 1970s, which is when I discovered that my own developing political views — stemming from the anti-Vietnam War period, Israeli kibbutz small-group socialism, my general anti-authoritarian impulses, and my cultural disaffection from US society — were best captured in anarchist literature and theory. Someday I hope to write more about my experiences during that era, which in turn strongly influenced my later work in critical psychology. In the meantime, here’s a very brief and unadorned account of my own connections with that period, subject of course to my own hazy memories.
I moved to Boston in 1975 seeking like-minded people and a year later moved into a communal household in Somerville that had placed a roommate ad describing themselves as libertarian socialists. The house was part of a new group of three or four communal houses working on a community gardening project and related politics (the group, New Moon, lasted formally for one year). Some of my new comrades who called themselves anarchists were heavily involved in a number of projects, including the Hedge School restaurant collective at Boston University (which had just splintered), the Black Rose Lecture Series at MIT (which lasted for years), a prisoner book program, and small self-study groups reading Murray Bookchin and much more.
In 1976 the Clamshell Alliance anti-nuclear group formed to combat the Seabrook nuclear plant, and New Moon took part in early Boston meetings. At first we mostly opposed mass organizing, preferring to work as a small collective, but eventually we got more involved as Clamshell organized along decentralist lines. By then, New Moon no longer existed. I wasn’t living in Boston during much of that time, though I returned as frequently as I could while my friends created a new collective called Hard Rain. Clamshell’s heavy American Friends Service Committee (Quaker) influence made continuing collaboration difficult for those of us who objected to too much top-down direction and who thought direct action meant we would actually try to get onto the Seabrook site to stop construction rather than plan for symbolic arrests. Hard Rain eventually became a key affinity group that split off from Clamshell in 1978 to create the Coalition for Direct Action at Seabrook (CDAS), which made two unsuccessful occupation attempts in 1979 and 1980.
After that, people scattered — some back to school (that’s where I went), got jobs, moved into other efforts. Former CDAS people were instrumental in creating Bikes Not Bombs and similar groups in Boston, California, and elsewhere. Some ended up in Vermont at the Institute of Social Ecology (see the Institute’s discussion of its own role in the developing anarchist movement, the Clamshell/CDAS split, and later developments).
Many of the New Moon/Hard Rain/CDAS crowd are still here, but we’re all in our 40s and 50s and the ones I know of are mostly doing nonanarchist things. Half a dozen of us went together to DC a couple of years ago for a big anti-globalization demo — an informal Old Farts affinity group. I’ve bumped into people at other local demos, at the Boston Social Forum, during the DNC and RNC protests. A lot got sucked into the Nader campaign four years ago, into Green Party politics. Some are now part of the Swing the Vote campaign in New Hampshire, trying to overcome their distaste for Kerry in particular and the Democrats in general. Most work at career jobs (things like teaching, social work, environmental work, urban planning, nonprofits, lawyering, carpentry, art) and live in nuclear families. Some became liberals. But it’s more Secaucus Seven than Big Chill. No one I know is just out for themselves.
There are even more people in Boston who were involved in the broader Clamshell Alliance, which was pretty interesting even with its organizational problems. It was very influential among the left in Boston and Cambridge and in sparking other decentralized anti-nuclear groups around the country in the late 1970s. I’d guess a fair number of local community activists are former Clamshell people.
There is some literature on the Clamshell Alliance part of this. The CDAS split from Clamshell is generally portrayed negatively, as the action of a bunch of disruptive crazies. But about four years ago I was contacted by Leslie Kauffman, a New York lefty activist and writer working on a book about direct action. She came up to interview a group of 7 or 8 of us about Hard Rain and CDAS and to look at our old handbooks and pamphlets and the like, though I don’t think she’s finished her book. I hope she does.
In my website’s Essays section a piece called Pizza Night describes some of the personal aspects of the transition from then to now.
