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The Resurrection Of Antioch College: A Small Victory For Humanity

September 6, 2009

The struggle and victory to re-open Antioch College as an independent institution separate from Antioch University is a major victory for peace and progressive forces in the United States. On Friday, September 4, Antioch University officials signed a 750-page closing document after 14 months of negotiations to turn Antioch College assets over to the Antioch College Continuation Corp. (read: the alumni).

A group of Greene County citizens recently dropped a complaint filed with the Ohio Attorney General’s office to strip the University of its tax exempt status. The complaint alleged that the University had neglected and wasted the assets of the former College, including severe damage to the historical main building at the Yellow Springs campus.

The Attorney General’s office acknowledged that the withdrawal of the complaint helped pave the way for the final settlement.

The Dayton Daily News reports that the resurrected Antioch plans: “…for a small, first-year class in fall 2010.” The Chronicle of Higher Education asserted that: “Admitting applicants and educating students are at least two years away.” And, Antioch University itself said when it closed the College that it would attempt to re-open it in 2012.

When the increasingly corporatist Antioch University Board of Trustees announced that the College would cease operations in July 2008, it was a stake through the heart of advocates of socially-conscious liberal arts education.

The sooner Antiochian-educated students are injected into America’s body politic the better. In many ways, the little liberal arts college in Yellow Springs has functioned as the conscience of American higher education. Also, it has served as an incubator for virtually every progressive struggle that has improved human rights in this nation.

Mussolini understood in his bid for fascism, that alternative and selfless ideas must be eradicated. He once gave a definition of fascism as “illiberalism” and “corporatism.”

Bruce P. Bedford served on the Board of Antioch University as well on the Board of the Arlington, Virginia company GlobeSecNine. The company was described as possessing a “unique set of experiences in special forces, classified operations, transportation security, and military operations” according to Bear Stearns. Michael Alexander, a former Trustee, founded AverStar whose clients were primarily the U.S. Defense Department and NASA. AverStar merged with the controversial Titan Corporation in the year 2000. Titan, with close ties to the Bush administration, pleaded guilty and paid, at the time, the largest penalty under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for bribery and filing false tax returns in March 2005. Questions have lingered over the role of Bedford and Alexander with their close ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex and the U.S. intelligence community.

At the time of the closing, the Dayton Daily News reported that a $5 million accounting error caused the College to close. Bedford, University records show, served as Treasurer just before the decision was made to close Antioch College.

Recalling Antioch’s history is key to celebrating this victory. The Christian Connection founded Antioch in 1852 and famed educator Horace Mann helmed as president in when it opened its doors in 1853. Mann’s quote: “Be ashamed to die until you win some victory for humanity” inspired the progressive spirit of the school. Antioch College was one of the first mostly white colleges to aggressively recruit African American students in the 1940s and refused to expel students accused of “Communist” leanings in the 1950s. Antioch provided a setting for growing activist movements such as the civil rights movement, New Left, Black Power, and feminism. Antioch students were encouraged to participate in practical work along with their classroom learning.

Former Antioch College faculty, staff, and others continued holding classes while the College was closed in what they called “Nonstop” Antioch during part of 2008 and 2009. Students attended classes at Yellow Springs bookstores, coffee shops, churches, homes, art galleries and even at the Glen Helen Nature Preserve.

An alumni reunion is scheduled for October 2 at the re-born Antioch College. Let us hope that the spirit of the event is that which caused the college to be targeted as a “vanguard of the New Left” under the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO operation. Those who fought to save Antioch have clearly won another significant victory for humanity.

See: Shock, awe and Antioch at freepress.org

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Bob Fitrakis represented the Greene County citizens group seeking to strip tax exempt status from Antioch University. He is also the author of “The Fitrakis Files” Spooks, Nukes, and Nazis” on the role of the CIA in Ohio politics and the author of the forthcoming volume Cops, Coverups and Corruption.”

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Rekindle The Spirit Of Kennedy’s 1980 Run: Social Democracy

Thinking about the death of Senator Edward Kennedy causes me to reflect on my own life and political activism. First, I was struck by the fact that “Teddy” was only one year younger than my father. The Senator always seemed eternally youthful, optimistic, and idealistic. I harbored in the back of my mind, up until the time his brain cancer was announced, that somehow – someway – he would still end up as President someday.

But, I was there for his last battle in 1980, supporting him and his United Automobile union allies in Detroit. In many ways, it was the last shoot-out in the Democratic Party between the liberal/progressive forces longing for a return of the New Deal/Great Society and the emerging new pro-corporate Democrats.

Not that the corporatism of Carter and his economic moderation was not offset by his championing of human rights and a rational energy policy, rather those of us who pushed Kennedy in 1980 realized that the “stagflation” – simultaneously high unemployment and high inflation – associated with Carter and the Democrats would likely pave the way for the rise of Ronald Reagan and his politics of deregulation and casino capitalism.

Ted Kennedy would later, during a tribute to the intellectual architect of the [John] Kennedy/Johnson War on Poverty Michael Harrington, call himself a European style “social democrat.” This idea of an America that took care of the least of its brethren and joined the rest of the advanced industrial nations with universal health care was what we were fighting for in 1980.

Harrington, the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, had gone on an early tour to test the waters as a progressive presidential candidate himself. But most of us understood that he was a “stalking horse” for Teddy. Harrington’s frequent trips to Detroit showed that there was tremendous support within the progressive wing of the labor unions for a run by the last remaining Kennedy brother. I had the privilege of chauffeuring Harrington around from meeting to meeting on a few occasions and talking strategy with the likes of the legendary Millie Jeffries and Saul Wellman. The two were once old Left adversaries, but both agreed that Carter had to be challenged within the Democratic Party.

The Michigan caucuses that year came down to who could turn out the most forces. Then-Mayor of Detroit Coleman Young stood strongly with President Carter. The Mayor’s real fear of Reagan, mitigated by Carter’s largesse to the Motor City that at one point reached a 70% match of the entire Detroit budget through various federal grants during 1980 election year, caused him to pull out all stops to deliver the caucuses to the sitting President. The UAW threw the massive political resources of the international union into the caucus fray. Ultimately, it came down to the role of the Associated of Communities Organizing for Reform Now (ACORN), that ended siding with Carter in exchange for delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Sadly, the ACORN forces were some of my closest allies and the political commune I lived in and partially owned at 12749 Kilbourne on Detroit’s east side often was referred to as “ACORN East.” That summer ACORN’s interns and students sent from Minnesota by a little-known college professor, Paul Wellstone, worked out of my house.They continued to do so through 1984.

I remember what appeared to be a scuffle in the New York delegation during the 1980 Democratic primary where Harrington was accused of blocking Carter delegates from speaking. We fell a few delegates short at the convention, and from putting forth our dream of a resurrected Camelot. I stayed away from the Democratic convention, instead organizing demonstrations in Detroit at the Republican convention where not only Ronald Reagan was nominated, for the former CIA director George Herbert Walker Bush emerged as his Vice President.

It was the last gathering of the New Left tribes and the 60s countercultures. I worked very closely with the San Francisco Mime Troupe who were organizing the “:Reagan for Shah” committee. I played the role of a young Republican pleading with Reaganites to have Reagan declare himself Shah and get rid of the liberals who were ruining the country. I few were quite drunk and sympathetic saying, “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

I regretfully sat out the Carter campaign in 1980 and instead worked for Barry Commoner and the People’s Party. I recall the slogan, “The 5% Solution.” If we could just get 5% of the vote, we would have a real environmental worker’s party on the ballot. Like the dream of a re-born Camelot, the structure of American politics has long worked against a viable left-wing third party.

Still, I can’t help but wonder these days as I ponder the life of Ted Kennedy and his tremendous perseverance in the U.S. Senate during the dark days of Reagan and Bush who were both elected in 1966 to public office for the first time. Voted in as enemies of the Great Society, the New Left, and the 60s counterculture, they represented a violent reaction against the idealism of the 1960s.

Kennedy remained the last and greatest idealist of the 60s. Even during the hell-black night of Bush the Second. Let us pray that his death inspires Barack Obama and others to rekindle the dream that endured with Kennedy physically and hangs heavily in the air as we mourn his passing.

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Bob Bytes Back Archive: 9/25/1996 Desperate and Clueless

9/25/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

Another politically bleak week: trade gap widens by 43 percent; credit card delinquencies hit a record high; but violent crime goes down 9 percent. Yet Bill Clinton and Bob Dole continue to run for district attorney instead of president. It’s just the real national problems like trade policy and stagnant household income that they’re clueless about.

Ask them about drugs and crime, boy, do they have answers. Desperate for political hot-button issues, they bellow: “lock ’em up, beat ’em up, kill ’em quicker, more cops, fewer civil liberties….”

Dole wants to double prison spending-must have been talking to the Brothers Voinovich. I wonder if Paul Mifsud is still working for his campaign? Dole also called for more “drug news.” Here’s some: 85 percent of drug addiction is legally prescribed.

Ask Chief Justice Rehnquist, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Kitty Dukakis, Elvis, etc. In the early ’80s, high school kids used to work themselves into such a frenzy at the “Just Say No” clubs that they had to go chug a beer just to cool down afterwards. Clinton wants to spend $700 million for “the largest anti-drug effort in history, “but he won’t give the Congressional Black Caucus an answer on whether he backs an investigation into the CIA’s (aka Cocaine Importing Agency) involvement with crack trafficking in the inner-cities of the U.S.

An American institution
Speaking of crime, the Pentagon finally released documents showing that U.S. Army training manuals used at the notorious School of the Americas advocated executions, torture, coercion, blackmail, and other God-fearing American tactics against Third World insurgents. Yes, indeed, our U.S. tax dollars at work abroad.

We, as a people, are responsible for our drug-running, murdering, and torturing government. Sorry, that’s the way democracy works. We are paid to train and “educate” most of the Western Hemisphere’s most heinous butchers. Like “Blow Torch” Bob D’Aubuisson who was the leader of El Salvador’s right-wing death squads, the Salvadoran soldiers who assassinated six Jesuit priests in 1989, and “our man in Panama” General Manuel Noriega.

Recently, the largest-ever protest occurred at Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the School of the Americas. Four hundred and fifty people-including 300 Catholic nuns-converged on the main gate and called for its closing. Believing “The Truth Cannot Be Silenced,” 13 U.S. citizens remain in prison for willfully and openly trespassing at the School in the finest tradition of civil disobedience.

As for President Clinton, the White House recently called the School “a force for good and not evil.” Hey, did I tell ya how they pioneered that really thin highly conductive wire that could be inserted in the penile shaft like a catheter and hooked to any portable military field telephone? Just a few cranks of the field telephone and your average Third World non-white Native American-type starts telling you everything you want to know. You usually don’t even have to torture him all that long to get information. Must be what the President means by a “force” for good.

Cliff and Jim
Enough bleakness, there’s still some heroic Americans fighting the good fight. Cliff Arnebeck, probably the most decent and thoughtful candidate in central Ohio this year, is once again calling for real Congressional campaign finance reform. Arnebeck is Deborah Pryce’s Democratic opponent in the 15th district.

Arnebeck, Tom Erney and I are all part of a lawsuit against the state of Ohio with our lead plaintiff, former Republican Congressman Clarence Miller. Our suit argues that it’s unfair for the Democratic and Republican parties to draw up the Congressional districts to favor their party’s incumbent Congressperson. Take for example, Franklin County: the state legislature created two relatively safe Republican districts by dividing the Columbus voters into two separate districts and attaching overwhelmingly Republican rural counties like Delaware, Licking and Union. If the city of Columbus had been left intact as a Congressional district, we’d actually have a competitive Congressional race this year. In Cleveland, they created a black minority district that votes 84 percent Democratic. And they call it “democracy.” We’re arguing that a non-partisan body should draw up Congressional districts in a fair and impartial manner. Whoa, is that radical or what?

Worthington School Board member Jim Timko continues his fight against the lock-step majority on the board. Timko refused to bow to community pressure and instead acted on his own conscience. He believes that former Worthington Kilbourne student Max Seeman “didn’t do anything wrong” in sitting during a senior pride rally. At least nothing so evil as to require a police paddy wagon to remove Max from the school and his suspension.

“The message it sends is we’re going to do everything we can to control your behavior,” Timko stated. “You don’t understand the Worthington mentality. ‘We don’t make mistakes.’ That’s what the school board is saying, and that’s wrong.”

Timko is consulting with one of the state’s leading civil rights attorneys to discuss his options following his September 9th censure by his fellow board members. He admits to being “flabbergasted” after the “junta” voted four to one for censure. And well he should.

The Worthington school board is going to have a hell of a time explaining to a judge how they offered a completed resolution of censure and disapproval, and issued a prepared statement on the resolution behind Timko’s back. Can you say violation of open meetings law? Can you say violation of Sunshine Laws? Obviously, the paddy wagon came for the wrong people. The board is acting criminally, not Max Seeman.

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