Tributes to Michael Harrington
Larner, Jeremy
In 1955 Mike came up to Brandeis to confer with the ten members of the progressive political club. There was plenty of left-minded political passion on the campus, but few saw hope for active...
...Eventually, he was able to move—if not change—the country by making poverty visible...
...Speaking with a tremendous flow of energy, information, and analysis, he told us his travels had convinced him that a coalition of farmers and workers was about to rise again and dominate the 1956 elections...
...Mike brought us more optimistic news...
...Since Mike was supporting Bobby Kennedy, I imagine the Kennedy speechwriters made the same connection more frequently...
...Still, I was aware I was in the presence of an exemplary person...
...There was plenty of left-minded political passion on the campus, but few saw hope for active politics in those Eisenhower years...
...108 • DISSENT...
...It didn't matter WINTER • 1990 • 107 Remembering Mike that the left didn't rise as he (or anyone) hoped...
...Socialism, then and now, was a word that could not be mentioned in American politics—yet how many politicians must have turned to America's leading socialist, simply because he knew what the problems were, he ceaselessly thought about what might be done, and one could trust him absolutely...
...what inspired us was that a guy like Mike was devoting his life to it...
...Coming from Indiana, where these same signs had eluded me, I had my doubts...
...Even in 1955, his blue eyes were watery and pale—in odd contrast to the intensity of his speech—and I thought he looked tired, that he was mobilizing his energy against a continual drain...
...If others had worked as hard and passionately, it might have come true...
...Perhaps I was young and snotty enough to think that the nuts and bolts of organizing were more boring than the lofty historical theories that passed about me day and night...
...I remember in the campaign of 1968, when I was writing speeches for Gene McCarthy, I sometimes called Mike to find out what should be known and said...
...That day, as he talked to us, he returned again and again to the gut-level facts of poverty and injustice—never with malice or hate, but with joy for what might be and for the fellowship of doing it...
...Mike's vision was, and remained, the most humane and practical version of the American dream I knew of...
...While Mike stuck to his democratic ideals, the theories with which he backed them changed over the years—a better way, I came to learn, than those who do it the other way round...
Vol. 37 • January 1990 • No. 1
