#title Off Center #author Sol Plafkin #SORTauthors Sol Plafkin; #date 1967 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/30-may-15-31-1967/off-center]] #lang en #pubdate 2017-05-18 #notes Fifth Estate #30, May 15–31, 1967 One nice thing about public feuds between politicians is that it gives everybody a rare chance to see part of what’s going on inside governmental circles. We learn, that at least to some extent, many decisions are made on the basis of personal vanity, pride, and ego conflict—and not solely as the result of some impersonal “power structure” beyond the reach of our full comprehension or influence. This writer, for one, believes that there is some sort of sense to reasonable political involvement -that the world is not just a bundle of economic determinisms fated to go only one way, immune to influence and alteration by us ordinary folks. One apparent difference between the “hippy” of today and the “beatnik” of a decade ago is that the present-day “hippy” does not seek complete disengagement from today’s mundane social problems as did his predecessor. It may be just more than coincidence that the Artists’ Workshop and offices of the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam are on the same corner in town. John Sinclair, our beloved “hippy” leader, has proudly asserted that he is a member of the DCEWV. And there’s a lot more than rebellious cuteness in the slogan, “Make Love, Not War.” With the reactionary elements of our society calling for the lives of our young men in the pursuit of its current inhumane projects, those in love with “life” (the potheads, etc. ) have no choice but to enter into some limited political activity against obviously useless wars. Getting back to the Beck-Cavanagh squabble, we come to another truism—-that, most of the time, life is too complicated to be separated into simple “good” and “bad” sides. While this columnist recently stated that the Cavanagh — recall movement had inherent racist overtones and we would probably have to support our young whippersnapper chief executive, it also should be apparent that Jerry is far from perfect, and that Mary Beck is far from being a local adherent of ex-Gov. George Wallace. Miss Beck, we should be constantly reminded, has been one of the few councilmen to demand that Police Commissioner Girardin stop allowing his officers to keep “dossiers” on Detroit citizens for their political, not criminal, activities.