Photographing the Revolution

By Don Hazen, AlterNet. Posted May 27, 2005.

David Fenton is a longtime publicist for many liberal and progressive causes and organizations, including Moveon.org. His company, Fenton Communications, has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. Fenton says he learned the tricks of communication as a teenage drop-out, under the wings of legendary activists Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Tom Hayden. And he has the pictures to prove it.

Fenton's new book Shots is a compelling and evocative collection of photographs taken for Liberation News Service during an era marked by its passion and upheaval -- known now as the '60s -- but in the book covering the period from 1968 -'72.

The images evoke a flood of conflicting feelings, both for those who were there and those who have heard the stories. Shots reflects the struggles and the joys of progressives' last great succeses -- civil rights, the environment, women's rights, and the Vietnam antiwar movement. Then came political assassinations and the Nixon administration, and the tactics of a police state turned the times very dark.

Times have changed, to say the least, and so has Fenton. Yet he insists they will change again. The values and lessons of this turbulent period-- which have inspired tremendous inspirations and defensive derision -- will again come to the fore.

David Fenton was interviewed by AlterNet executive editor Don Hazen on May 20, 2005 in New York City.

So why this book, now?

David Fenton: I think that this is a period of history that a lot of people don't know a whole lot about. And the late '60s in particular, I think, was very intense, apocalyptic and frustrated and passionate, and a little delusional also on the part of the movement. This is the era that George Bush wishes never happened, and is still trying to put back in the bottle.

The culture wars of today started in this period, basically, and they started, on one hand, from real, significant, lasting, wonderful changes that were intrinsically good: the end of segregation, emancipation of women, rights of gays, the break from traditional culture and conformity of thought. The assertion that you can't have a draft and send people away to an unpopular war. There were a lot of great things that were accomplished. But there was craziness.

This is the delusional part?

Yeah, there was excess... how could there not be? There is in all these points in history. I remember Abbie Hoffman, whom I adored, and who was my mentor, went crazy one day at a press conference and took a knife out of his hand at the press conference and put the knife on the top of the table and said, "We're not gonna let this happen!"

I remember people going around in front of the police and chanting the slogan "Off the pigs!" I watched people I thought were sensible in SDS go underground and blow up buildings and help turn the country against us. That was insane.

We don't have Abbie, we don't have the Chicago Seven, we don't have the symbols of protest from back in the '60s.

They'll emerge ... if the theocratic corporate state continues the takeover of our government, believe me... there'll be rebellion at some point. I mean, conditions will bring that about.

How bad does it have to get?

I'm no expert on that. I'm a photographer. [Laughs] In my own life, the Vietnam War totally changed everything I knew. I remember I went to my first antiwar demonstration as a photographer and I wore a "Bomb Hanoi" button because I was concerned that they would think I was an anti-war demonstrator. That's how little I knew. Of course, I was 15 years old or something in 1967.

Do you think your precociousness affected you? The fact that you were so young -- did that influence the pictures you took, the relationships you had, the whole Liberation News Service?

I was a baby. Sure, it affected me. But what I proceeded to do was go to school with the anti-war movement. I dropped out of high school, ran away from home, went to work for the Liberation News Service, supported myself selling photographs, and lived on my own and never went back to school. My education basically was with the Chicago, with Abbie and Jerry [Rubin].

That was my introduction to the American legal system. I walk into the courtroom and these big burly federal marshals seize this black man, they push him into a chair, they push a cloth into his mouth, right? They tie his hands behind him and they tie his legs and then next thing I know some guy is sailing over the pews, the rows in the courtroom, landing on top of the federal marshal to protest him, pulling him to the ground. There's fistfights in the courtroom. And this is court!

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