Monday, February 5, 2001

Activist Still Fighting for others

Worked for peace, civil rights

By CHRISTINE COX

The Hamilton Spectator

You don't forget meeting a man like Staughton Lynd.

He has a social conscience that won't let him rest. He's been a civil rights activist, an anti-war protester and a champion of workers' rights.

He once flew to Hanoi in an attempt to stop the United States from engaging in a war with North Vietnam. Later he tried desperately, but unsuccessfully, to prevent steel mills from shutting down in Youngstown, Ohio.

At times this semi-retired lawyer, former history professor, author and Quaker has paid a heavy price for defending his beliefs, but he never wavered.

Now 71, the soft-spoken American grandfather is still hammering away to improve the lot of others, this time as a prison activist.

"I don't know if I am more radical than I was at 16, but I think I'm just about as radical as I was at that time," he said.

The man considered a hero of the American peace and civil rights movements was in Hamilton over the weekend speaking at McMaster University and later at the Welcome Inn Mennonite Church. His visit was co-sponsored by various groups, including the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster, the Hamilton-Wentworth Coalition for Social Justice, and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

IN the early 1960s, Lynd, who has a PhD from Columbia University, taught history at what was then called a Negro college -- Spelman College in Atlanta. He remembers how excited he was by the work of a student called Alice Walker. She would later win a Pulitzer Prize for The Colour Purple.

Lynd became director of a Mississippi Freedom school for African-Americans during the tense time when blacks were struggling for equal rights. That summer of 1964, the Ku Klux Klan murdered three young civil rights workers and Lynd attended a memorial service at a burnt out church that had been used as a freedom school.

In the fall, Lynd headed to Yale, where he taught history for three years and became prominent in the anti-war movement. He chaired the first march on Washington against the Vietnam war and during the Christmas 1965 vacation, made a trip to Hanoi.

Lynd was inspired by a Quaker named George Logan, who was credited with helping to avert a war between the U.S. and France in 1798. Lynd feared the military might of the U.S. would destroy Vietnam.

"I had been imagining a kind of paternalistic role where I would be the great peacemaker…and save the lives of little children," he recalled. He was shaken when an elderly, diminutive North Vietnamese representative looked at him in the eye and stated "We are going to win."

When Lynd returned, there was no tenured position for him at Yale and offers of teaching posts at five other universities were made, then withdrawn. It seemed he had been blacklisted.

His next step was law school and, at age 46, he started over again as a lawyer. After a brief stint with a firm specializing in labour law, he worked for 18 years for a Youngstown legal aid service.

Most labour lawyers were working for employers or unions. Lynd made up his mind to help people in conflict with both.

Lynd said unions perform a necessary function in protecting workers' standard of living, safety, and dignity in the workplace but are "totally unprepared" to deal with the globalized economy.

He said that in the U.S. steel industry, for example, union leaders tend to respond to company decisions by offering to make concessions or by blaming other countries for steel dumping.

"I truly believe that the long-run answer is government of community ownership of these facilities…to make decisions on the basis of the public interest rather than maximizing profit."

Lynd said capitalism has created worldwide overcapacity in the steel and auto industries . He believes actions such as raising tariffs on imports are superficial, short-term solutions. He takes issue with those who consider socialism an irrelevant relic. "Every time a Daimler-Chrysler or a General Motors or a U.S. Steel does its thing, I am renewed in my belief that something has to be done about the kind of economy that these folks promote."