Customer Reviews

Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the few books I read in a single evening. Having experienced many of these events first hand, I still lacked Crowley's historical perspective. As a teenager I didn't know that much about what I was protesting about. Crowley is a first-class writer, and as a local historian he has no peer. Everyone who lived in Seattle during the 60s should find this book of interest; in fact it is so well-written that anyone who enjoys good journalism will enjoy it. Highly recommended work.

If you were in Seattle in the 60s, reading the Helix hippy rag, hanging out at the Eiger and the P House, sitting on the Fringie Wall, smoking dope on Hippy Hill, protesting the war, blocking freeways, going to piano drops and pre-Woodstock rock festivals (Sky River), rooting for the Seattle Seven to get off, and whatnot (and you know what "whatnot"), then you *have* to read this book. Personally, I think Crowley spends too many pages recounting distant events on the national scene, to provide background for local events, I presume, but the remainder of the book, which gets down into the nitty gritty of what went on back then on the local Seattle scene, makes slugging through a few pages on the Chicago police riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention, for instance, well worth the effort. Still, others, who weren't around back then, may need the history lesson, I suppose.

Crowley includes a list of important events and when they happened.(in the world, not just Seattle) It is a memoir rather than a comprehensive history but since Crowley was there, his memories are worth something. He was writing about and paying attention to things that I wasn't.

So it is valuable to me to read his take on things and to find out when, for instance, the first Light Show took place, where and when Dylan played, etc.

It is probably not, as one reviewer notes, the last word on political reality, but at least it gives me a starting place to explore the things I missed. There are pictures and chapters about events and groups Walt was involved with and considered important.

As always, Walt's views on things are worth reading.

I still remember the day I first met Walt Crowley. It was the summer of 1966, and I was handing out leaflets at the Safeway on Brooklyn, in support of striking farm workers in California. He walked up to me and said, "I'm an anarchist. I support any strike." Unfortunately, the clarity of his political thinking did not improve since those days. When he wrote this book, he counted such establishment types as Jim Ellis and Phyllis Lamphere as the "real radicals."

His book on the Sixties provides many interesting anecdotes, some of them accurate. But he misrepresents himself as well as the nature of the progressive movements of those times.

After the Ave. riots of 1969, the city created the University District Center as a buy-off. Crowley parlayed his visibility into the directorship of the UDC. Meanwhile, precious little was done by the city to deal with police harassment and other real problems that had instigated people to riot.

While Crowley was on the sidelines making snide remarks, Students for a Democratic Society was organizing a solid anti-Vietnam War movement at the University of Washington. A core group of several dozen organized campus anti-war demonstrations of up to 10,000 people. When SDS faltered, other organizers founded the Seattle Liberation Front, which brought in even larger numbers of activists and mobilized thousands against the war, Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, and the Kent State shootings, and in support of the Chicago Conspiracy Trial defendants.

The SLF ran its course also, victim of its own internal contradictions. Most movements have these. But the various anti-war organizations in Seattle had a powerful impact as part of a national movement that restrained LBJ and Nixon in their war on Indo-China. In addition, many activists developed a lasting commitment to making this country live up to ideals of equality and justice.

Walt Crowley distorts the accomplishments of the anti-war movement. A lot of Sixties veterans have better ways of continuing to supporting progressive causes.