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ACTIVIST REVIEWS DOING
IT Review by Wendy Schwartz A woman who cares first about peace and social justice and nearly as much about coordinating the colors of her petunias is someone with priorities worth heralding. Ruth Stamm Dear, whose presence at WRL National Committee meetings always provided sense and sensibility, is such a woman. She has decided to share her journal with us, and it is a generous gift. Ruth began recording her thoughts in 1985, shortly after the death of George, her husband of some 40 years. She writes of her fierce sense of loss and loneliness, her fears of aging, and her struggle to remain active in Chicago peace groups and the Gray Panthers; her first act of civil disobedience was at age 71. She also chronicles her early years as a leftist activist in New York and the child of a Jewish working-class family with Marxist politics. She is the quintessential grassroots organizer whose lifelong commitment to social justice keeps her challenging herself and others, even as she approaches her tenth decade with deteriorating health and without her soulmate. What makes You Can’t Not Do It such a satisfying autobiography of an activist is its natural meshing of the personal and the political. Ruth shows that a dedication to radical political work need not preclude taking satisfaction from putting together an attractive outfit and enjoying a good meal in a nice restaurant. She writes about seeking to fulfill a newfound need for spirituality in her life and trying to reconcile it with her longtime disdain for organized religion. As her life becomes harder and her searching for personal peace more urgent, she questions the movement practice, and her own as well, of “closing off other people’s ways of coping.” In fact, as Ruth exposes her quick anger and personal irritations she asks herself—and her readers—hard questions about our lack of charity and open-mindedness. Her internal debate about how to deal with the death of an activist she disliked is surely one we’ve all had in one form or another. This is a book of great honesty. Unfortunately, You Can’t Not Do It is also a book with serious flaws that will probably prevent it from reaching as wide an audience as it should. Though an editor worked with Ruth to increase its accessibility, some passages about her work with local groups, her family relationships, and her living circumstances are simply too telescoped to be meaningful. Her comments about public figures, political theorists and authors are often also not intelligible because she did not supply sufficient context, not to mention a full citation for the books she recommends. The fact that Ruth and I have much in common, including a childhood in the Bronx, an appreciation for certain feminist writers and a love of memoir as an art form, helped me to decipher some of her very cryptic references (and pleased me a great deal), but most people will miss some of her most important points. And, finally, I must mention the book’s too frequent sloppiness: The names of individuals and organizations are misspelled or wholly incorrect (indeed, even the Nonviolent Activist is cited incorrectly), and the many convoluted sentences cry out for a strong editing pencil. These flaws will keep movement people for whom Ruth Stamm Dear should be an inspiration from getting full value from the book. Other potential readers, who would benefit even more from the many good ideas and from the evidence that an abiding commitment to social change can be a basis of a very good life, probably will not even get a chance to see this autobiography because unprofessional products simply do not get shelf space in bookstores. You Can’t Not Do It is available from Plainview Press, PO Box 33311, Austin, TX 78764; 800/878-3605. |
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