Anarchism and the New Left

Don Olson:

Back during the Vietnam War, I had a friend who introduced me to anarchism. As we studied at the Draft Information Center I began to draw connections between the draft and the State, and whether the government should have this kind of power over the individual.

There was a lot of feeling about [anarchism] at the time. The co-ops were a positive aspect of that. Some people did education… There was a great fervent. A lot of people were discussing radical ideas throughout the community. People were quite active in social change. They quit their jobs because the war was so oppressive. It was something that needed to be opposed.

Of course anarchism has many varieties. Individualistic, communist, syndicalist…”—workers seizing control of the factories—“…I was more into the anarcho-communist and pacifist end of the road. I liked the social involvement and grouping together –people doing things in small groups. It’s a way of organizing human activities that made a lot of sense. As opposed to Marxism…

“There’s a certain amount of overlap between the two. The end of result of communism is very similar to anarchism. The problem is how to get there. And of course, the Marxist-Leninists are an entirely different thing! The Marxist-Leninist Parties had a different morality and different ways of approaching people.

Northern Sun Alliance

“In the late 1970s, a mass protest swept through the normally conservative farm country of west central Minnesota. Farmers tried to stop construction of a 400-mile-long transmission line that would cross their land on the way from North Dakota to the Twin Cities. A system, which line opponents said was unfair, turned ordinary people into radicals.”

- Mary Losure, Minnesota Public Radio

Marv Davidov:

Well, the farmers began protesting around 1976 or 1977 as rural electrification co-ops—the REA's—were pushing the line from North Dakota across western and central Minnesota towards Mankato. NSP…”—Northern States Power—“…was involved at the southern part of it. We didn't understand why so many farmers [were up-in-arms]… So finally, a friend who lived in St. Cloud called and said ‘Its an incredible movement up here, you should send somebody to check it out.’ And so we did, and we got involved.

In 1977 we started Northern Sun Alliance. And during that period—from 1977 to 1981—we were involved with the farmers, helping to resist that line. I got busted twice on that.

Don Olson:

I was one of the founders of Northern Sun Alliance. We started that in 1977. George Crocker and I had been active in the power line struggle with the farmers out in western Minnesota. So [George] moved out there, and I was in charge of demonstrations. Each day we would send out one carload of people to demonstrate.

They were using eminent domain to take away farmers’ land to run this power line. It was feeding into the so-called ‘cooperative’ electrical entities –the Cooperative Power Association and the United Power Association.”

            It was during these (sometimes violent) rural protests that future-Senator Paul Wellstone began his political career, bringing carloads of college students to Western Minnesota to stand together with the farmers. It was a coalition that cut across class divisions and a great cultural divide: the Jewish intellectual—a professor of Political Philosophy at an elite private college—and the (sometimes xenophobic) residents of dying farming communities. Wellstone later wrote a book about it called Powerline: the First Battle of America’s Energy War.

Marv Davidov:

“Democratic and Republican governors forced the power line through.  And even the EPA has agreed that high voltage power lines are a danger to human and animal health.  The farmers knew that.  We put together a little coalition of American Indians–AIM people—farmers, and ourselves.  And we got to be members of the family up there.”  

Don Olson:

Northern Sun was meant to be an alliance of a lot of different efforts. A lot of things developed out of that, such as a doctors’ group on chemical weapons. I was also involved with organizing against uranium mining up near Duluth. And we were quite involved in the Black Hills Alliance during the big [Native American] Survival Gathering out in South Dakota in 1979.

The Black Hills were being attacked for uranium mining, and [native] treaty rights were under attack. There were Indians from all over the country. At the second Black Hills gathering, there were maybe 10,000 people there. There were a lot of workshops! So it brought together a lot of activists and people who were specialists in the area.

We helped stop one nuclear power plant in Durand, Wisconsin; we helped the Northern Thunder group. It was a pretty fruitful city-farmer alliance that we had. I’m proud of that, and the fact that we had such a strong sense of draft resistance –the fact that we defeated the draft. They still have the registration requirement, but no one is prosecuted anymore. They use carrots instead of sticks.

TO BE CONTINUED...