Interview with Nesbit Crutchfield: Black Student Union Central Committee Member and San Francisco State 1968 Strike Organizer
The following is an interview with Nesbit Crutchfield, a political organizer active in the USA since the 1960s. Mr. Crutchfield primarily organizes with the Venceremos Brigade. From November 1968 to March 1969, students, faculty, and staff at San Francisco State went on strike and shut down the university. Nesbit played a leading role as a member of the Black Student Union’s Central Committee. The BSU, in the Third World Liberation Front coalition, led the strike with the following demands:
Black Student Union Demands
1. That all Black Studies courses being taught through various departments be immediately part of the Black Studies Department and that all the instructors in this department receive full-time pay.
2. That Dr. Hare, Chairman of the Black Studies Department, receive a full-professorship and a comparable salary according to his qualifications.
3. That there be a Department of Black Studies which will grant a Bachelor's Degree in Black Studies; that the Black Studies Department chairman, faculty and staff have the sole power to hire faculty and control and determine the destiny of its department.
4. That all unused slots for Black Students from Fall 1968 under the Special Admissions program be filled in Spring 1969.
5. That all Black students wishing so, be admitted in Fall 1969.
6. That twenty (20) full-time teaching positions be allocated to the Department of Black Studies.
7. That Dr. Helen Bedesem be replaced from the position of Financial Aid Officer and that a Black person be hired to direct it; that Third World people have the power to determine how it will be administered.
8. That no disciplinary action will be administered in any way to any students, workers, teachers, or administrators during and after the strike as a consequence of their participation in the strike.
9. That the California State College Trustees not be allowed to dissolve any Black programs on or off the San Francisco State College campus.
10. That George Murray maintain his teaching position on campus for the 1968-69 academic year.
Third World Liberation Front Demands
1. That a School of Ethnic Studies for the ethnic groups involved in the Third World be set up with the students in each particular ethnic organization having the authority and control of the hiring and retention of any faculty member, director, or administrator, as well as the curriculum in a specific area study.
2. That 50 faculty positions be appropriated to the School of Ethnic Studies, 20 of which would be for the Black Studies program.
3. That, in the Spring semester, the College fulfill its commitment to the non-white students in admitting those who apply.
4. That, in the fall of 1969, all applications of non-white students be accepted.
5. That George Murray and any other faculty person chosen by non-white people as their teacher be retained in their positions.[1]
Our aim with this interview, as the Communist Workers’ Platform USA, is to document the historic struggles of the youth and student movement in the United States. The perspective Mr. Crutchfield graciously provided New Worker allows us to understand and document a pivotal moment in the US communist movement during the popular movements of the 1960s. While there remain many ideological points and observations to evaluate the state of the movement in the 1960s and its impact on the present state of our work, criticisms and analyses are not within the scope of this interview. The ideological influence of the Chinese Communist Party on the US movement in the 1960s, the presence of the Black Panthers, the militancy of the student movement, the participation of trade unions in this strike, and the subsequent ideological and practical direction of the movement following this period can be seen firsthand through the recounting Nesbit Crutchfield offers us.
Mr. Crutchfield's views are entirely his own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Communist Workers' Platform USA. We emphatically thank the comrade for his time and hope this interview acts as a step in our efforts to analyze the history of the US communist movement—its trajectory, its present state, and our direction moving forward.
Source
CWPUSA: Can you tell us about how you first became politically involved?
Nesbit: Back in 1967, I decided to get my master's in personnel in the School of Business at San Francisco State. So I was looking for a job, so I got hired as administrative assistant to Doctor Nathan Hare, who was the head of the Black Studies department at [San Francisco] State. I was just an administrative assistant. I was an Air Force officer. I was a personnel officer in the Air Force, right? I got out of the Air Force in ‘67 and went directly to San Francisco State.
I was his administrative assistant at that time. Amiri Baraka was teaching a class at State. He'd been brought in by the Black Student Union. Sonia Sanchez was also there, this was back in 1968. They really impressed me with discussing Black culture and Black history. It really just kind of turned me out. So I started attending the Black Student Union meetings and I became very active. And because of my background, they wanted me to join the central committee of the Black Student Union.
Our mentors were the Black Panthers of both San Francisco and Oakland. I'm talking about Huey Newton, Bobby Hutton and Eldridge Cleaver and all of them, you know. So, and then we decided that we wanted to ask the administration for the establishment of a school for Third World studies and they refused to do it. And so we — this is the Black Student Union — we decided that we would call a strike.
We went around and we contacted the various other student organizations — Japanese students organization, Indigenous students organization, the Latin students organization, the Chicano students organization, the Chinese students organization. And we asked them all to come and support us. And so then we call the strike. And then the Students for a Democratic Society joined us and we closed down the school. There was no school happening.
The police were called. We had assemblies every day. We had four to five hundred people on the campus, but the school was closed. I got arrested eleven different times. Eventually from my activity, I was active in the —they had a school concourse where leadership of the Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front met and had a debate with the school administration in front of the entire school body. But because I had been arrested so many times, illegal assembly, all different types.
I had 17 charges against me, 5 major felonies. The BSU employed 3 different attorneys to try to go to court with me. I was convicted of major felonies and I was sent to Vacaville State Prison. I was sent to prison. I was at the Vacaville on the Z number for nine months and from Vacaville I went back to court and they sent me to jail for a year.
Basically, what we decided was the Black Student Union decided to try to organize the entire campus. This had never been done before where a Black student organization and a people of color student organization, the TLF, came together to join our forces to organize the rest of the campus. This is the first time it was done, and that's the reason why it was so successful, because all of us were speaking from the same textbook and the same Bible from the same god.
And that's the reason why we closed the school for three and a half months.
Over 500 people went to jail from our side. Three of us went to prison.
The other two people who went to prison [besides me] were so intimidated by going to prison, so intimidated by the entire thing they totally dropped out.
San Francisco State was really the first of my political activities.
CWPUSA: That’s quite the way to get started.
Nesbit: Many people, that was the height of their activity. Some people their entire life was based upon [that strike].
For some people, that was the only activity, only political activity they ever had. And you have to keep in mind that the San Francisco strike, the San Francisco State strike, the BSU/TLF strike changed everyone's life, closing down the school, being a strike that is known throughout the world — the longest strike in the history of any university.
The most important thing that came from the strike was our tendency to bring everyone into the fold, to bring everyone to understand what our demands were. We had 15 demands. We educated everyone every day. We had political education, educating people about our demands, involving everyone.
A number of people who felt that they were so politically advanced that they didn't want to take the time to talk to educate, to do political education with the other students. Their opposition was that every student was a potential recruit.
Every student had a responsibility to understand what we were trying to do and to at least be knowledgeable about where we were coming from. That's how we got all this support. We did not look at ourselves as being automatically “we are the vanguard”. Now, Progressive Labor, which existed at that time thought that they were the vanguard and they were too political to deal with the rest of us too. We opposed them by proposing that it was our responsibility to go to the various classes, to go to the various meetings to talk to [the students] about what we were trying to do and to encourage people to join us. And that's how we became very successful. Not as successful as we could have been, but more successful than any student organization have been up to that point.
CWPUSA Interviewee: What did the daily political education look like?
Nesbit: We had 15 demands. We wanted the establishment of a School of Third World studies, we wanted to rehire George Murray—who was the Minister of Education for the Black Panther Party and also a teacher at State. We wanted to establish Dr. Harris as the director of the School of Third World Studies. We wanted to establish a school for indigenous students, for Latin students, for Chinese students, for Japanese students and for Black students. And what we did was—this was during the time of Battle of Algiers. So, we were teaching the Battle of Algiers. We were teaching from the Red Book— we were Maoists. So we were, you know, we were teaching all the basics. We talked about what did Frantz Fanon mean by the “Wretched of the Earth”. We talked about that.
We talked about showing the movie The Battle of Algiers and teaching around that. We talked about Mao Tse Tung and Zhou Enlai. We talked about the politics of mainland China—we're talking about this now. This is back in ‘67, ‘68 and ‘69 and we're talking about mainland China and Taiwan. The same issues that exist today existed back then.
Back then it wasn't Hamas, it was PLO. It wasn't Hamas. It was the PLO trying to deal with both the West Bank and Gaza and dealing with the Zionist Israelis. These are not new issues! These are all the same issues. That was over 60 years ago! The first removal of the Palestinians was 75 years ago. So all of this, all of this is still going on. These are not new issues. [The blockade on] Cuba is not new. The issues around Palestine are not new. They were very, very intense political contradictions at that time.
And so our political education dealt with the basics of Maoism, the basics of Wretched of the Earth, the basics of what's happening in Palestine. And of course it was progressive because back in those days, there was no integration of the various different people of color and white. Even though the whites regard themselves as progressive, they did not join with other people of color. And we brought that together. That was the first time in the history of political work, especially on the campus, that these types of things were being taught.
We also, we also did work, we also did work in the various different communities. The basis of all work at State was the Black community, the Asian community, the Latin community. So we would have headquarters both at State and could also have headquarters in the Mission, which was the Latin community. We'd also have offices in Chinatown and in the Japan town and these were headquarters of BSU and various different organizations. You had la raza, you had Los Siete—which was the Latin version of the Black Student Union. Los Siete had offices both at State and in the Mission.
The Chinese organizations had headquarters within the State and in Chinatown. The same thing with the Japanese students, same thing with the indigenous students. OK, that kind of thing.
CWPUSA: When you were involved with the Black Student Union, were you around when it started at San Francisco State?
Nesbit: The Black Student Union started a year and a half before I got there. Originally it was named the Negro Leadership Conference. There was a cultural change where most black people were so embarrassed about being called black. So they didn't want to be called black, they wanted to go Negro. So when more progressive students came on campus, they couldn't regard themselves as being black. They had a large mass meeting and they decided they would have new leadership and that they would change their name from the from the Negro Leadership Conference to the Black Student Union, which was unheard of at the time!. Black Student Union? Oh my God, right. You can't imagine.
All right. So anyway, when I came, the Black Student Union was a year and a half old. There were 13 members of the Central Committee, all of whom were men. Gender oppression was rampant and I'm not exaggerating, it was rampant even though we had a number of sisters who were very active. You had the cultural nationalists and you had internationalists. I was an internationalist. I'm talking on the BSU Central Committee.
There was a very important meeting we had of the Central Committee where we had an issue on the agenda and the question was in which direction will we go? Are we going to go more into the Black direction? Or are we going to move more into the international direction? We had a long, long discussion, a long struggle, and it happened that the internationalists won. The internationalists were myself, Terry Collins, Benny Stewart, Danny Glover—the actor— Clarence Thomas—not that one—Bernard Stringer. All of these people are dead now to the exception of Danny Glover, Buzz Thomas, Benny Stewart and myself.
We decided that we would be internationalists and we would reach out to the entire student population rather than just dealing with blacks. So the major thing was that we would reach out to the other students of color first of all, and then we would organize with the SDS and with Progressive Labor. Eventually all of that came together into one consolidated unit, which was the establishment of the Experimental College of State and the establishment of a “progressive wing” that dealt with reinforcing this strike. That's how it happened.
CWPUSA: Were there any efforts that were made to link up or organize along with unions on campus?
Nesbit: Unions were primarily with the teachers, professors, teachers, assistants and all that. What we did was we would go to the various different AFT (American Federation of Teachers) meetings and explain to them what the issue was in State. We explained to them why we were on strike, explaining why we needed their assistance to—if they're going to hold classes, hold classes and talk about the strike, Do not hold classes and talk about trigonometry, history—talk about the strike. And so we had students, we had teachers, we had janitors, we had maintenance people, we had landscape people. We had all of the unions on our side. All of the unions on our side! We were incredibly fortunate.
Source: San Francisco State College Strike Collection (Courtesy of San Francisco State College Strike Collection)
I'm not saying it was easy. It was very difficult. It was very difficult because people didn't trust it. People were afraid of it because our mentors were the Black Panthers. The Panthers, the propaganda around the Panthers were that the Panthers were thugs. The Panthers were carrying guns, you know, and not that the Panthers were being violent, but they were verbal, articulate black men and women and that was unheard of and the discipline there, you know.
And so, they came to the State campus. They were members of the Black Student Union. They were members of various different AFTs. So we had the Black Panthers who were teachers and were helping us organize the AFT. We had students who were Chinese or Japanese or Chicanos or Latin, who were from the missions, who were also teachers, who were organizers.
Let me try to go back to your question. If you're going to organize on campus your number one priority is to find out: what are the goals, what are the points of unity, what are the interests of the various organizations that's on your campus? Who's on your campus? What are they there for? What are they trying to reach out to? When you're trying to bring people into your points of unity, your politics, you have to speak their language. You have to know what's of interest to them. What do you have in common? What are your differences and how do you deal with those differences? Are those differences irreconcilable? Do you follow me?
But it's your job to teach. Community organizers are two things: they're teachers and they're fundraisers. That's what community organizers are. You cannot organize anyone unless you can do some political education with them. You cannot organize people unless they respect you and trust you. This whole thing about, well, you know we are “very, very progressive”. Being very progressive and people not having respect for you doesn't mean anything. People have to respect you. You have to respect them. You have to respect people in order to politicize them. But you have to understand where they're coming from, understand what their interests are.
That's when you have to understand what points of unity are—very important. You have to spend time and be patient with people because you have two 2, 3, 4, or 5 years of political education and you're well-grounded in your politics doesn't mean that everybody is. Because you believe in the sovereignty of Cuba doesn't mean that everyone does. That may not be the point of unity for you. You may believe in the sovereignty of Cuba. You may believe in the lifting of the blockade and the and the removal of the sanctions and the removal of Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism, but let's say I don't have that.
Let's say that I don't believe in the sovereignty of Cuba, but I believe in lifting the blockade. That's a commonality to work with. OK, what I'm saying is just find out what the commonalities are. And if you find, if you come into a situation and you find out that you have very little in common and what you do is that you very patiently sit with that person and talk about what your differences are. Not in a disrespectful way, but in a very respectful way. Talk about it. Talk about what the change of differences are and explain to people why you're, you're what you believe has more acceptance for you than what they're talking about.
Invite them to ask questions. Invite them to combat you with contradiction. That's the way you evolve.
CWPUSA: And you're right in the sense that when people see you respect them and when they respect you, they feel comfortable enough to like to talk about those things and work with you even if they disagree with aspects of what you believe in.
Nesbit: I've been working on progressive avenues, progressive venues since 1967. Sixty-seven years. I've been doing this for 67 years. What does that mean? It means I have longevity. That's all it means. It doesn't mean that everything I say is right. Don't think just because somebody has tenure, it means that they have all the answers. That's bullshit.
You know we're still talking about trying to liberate Cuba. We're still trying to liberate Palestine. We try, we're still trying to liberate this country! Obviously, there's still other stuff to go. You follow what I'm saying? I’m trying to be really upfront with you. That doesn't mean that I haven't had experience doing political work. It doesn't mean that I haven't made some mistakes. I’ve made many, many mistakes. Hopefully I've learned from those mistakes, but let me share this with you.
When I was an undergraduate and before I became a progressive, I always felt really discontent about political organization. I knew what the contradictions were. I just didn't know what the answers were. I didn't know how to resolve the contradiction. Contradiction.
Let’s say, I'm a Democrat and you're a Republican. And even though we say that we're from different parties, we both agree that even though the Israelis have killed over 40,000 Palestinians, they still have the right to defend themselves. And I feel that way, but I'm uneasy about it. You feel that way. You are uneasy about it. Why are we uneasy about it? And here you come. You talked to us about the contradictions. You talk about the fact that the issues that you and I are confused about are 75 years old.
You tell us that when even though, 75 years ago the Europeans decided that that even though the Germans had carried out the Holocaust against the Jews, the Germans were in the same room and they decided no, that if we're going to find a homeland for the Jews, we're going to send them back to their “ historical home” in Palestine. And just what happened is that Palestine is for a people without land, Palestine is land without people. Bullshit! There were hundreds of thousands of people in Palestine. OK, so what you have to do, we just remove them [the Palestinians] and put you [the Jews] there. That's what happened! That's the reality.
What I'm saying is that you tell us this and now suddenly a spark comes in our mind: wait a minute—I didn't know about that. I didn't realize that this Nakba thing is something that people lived throughI didn't realize that there are just as many Palestinians as there are Israelis. I didn't realize that if you talk about the greater “UN,” Palestine or greater “Israel” then and that if you have the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, that there is apartheid there. But what does that mean?
I had—I'm jumping back and forth—but I had the advantage of, after leaving State, becoming very active in the anti-apartheid movement. I'm talking about South Africa. I was in South Africa eight different times. I was in South Africa during the inauguration of Mandela. I was backstage when Benazir Bhutto and Muammar Gaddafi and Fidel walked up on stage and I'm done—I'm gaga, OK? So that is to say that I have a clear understanding of what apartheid means. In Palestine and Israel the same power dynamic exists as in South Africa [under apartheid].
I have a clear understanding of the politics of what happened in reference to the separation of India and Pakistan. I have a clear understanding of the politics of Libya and Mahmoud Gaddafi and why NATO came in and assassinated him and how that brought about Al Qaeda in North Africa and how that relates to Israel to this day. Now that relates to the various different countries that surround Israel.
I'm saying that having an historical perspective is one thing, but having a political perspective that integrates that historical perspective is vital. So that when you go into a situation where you're trying to do some outreach, you don’t have to have an answer to every question, but it does mean that you should be comfortable in talking about the politics of the situation. It gives you a modesty about not feeling that you have all the answers, but feeling that you have enough of the answers that you feel confident in discussing issues with people, hearing your points of view and being able to analyze all that around your political perspective.
CWPUSA: You said that the Panthers were very involved with the strike. Did you ever consider joining them after you left State or you didn't have the opportunity to?
Nesbit: [Laughing] There's a story behind everything.
After I became a member of the BSU Central Committee and the TLF—every afternoon we would go to the students lounge and the student lounge held about 300 people. We would have political education every day.
One day I was slated by the central committee to do an explanation of the finances and the politics of the relationship between the students and the administration. I gave my speech on that. After I gave my speech, there was a question and answer and someone asked me a question. I can't remember the question, but my answer was contradictory to the position of the Black Student Union at that time.
So what happened was, the next morning when we had a central committee meeting, it was pointed out to me that the answer I gave was politically incorrect. The direction of the Black Student Union was when someone asks you a question politically and you are not sure about the answer, you don't just give me the answer. You let them know: I'll go back and check it out and I'll let you know. I didn't do that. I thought, hey, shit, I'm intelligent. I'll give the wrong answer.
The decision by the Central Committee was to have me do work on the Breakfast for Children in Double Rock in Hunter’s Point for two weeks. It was my job to work at the hot table at the Breakfast for children for the next two weeks. That was my political punishment.
That experience in Oakland introduced me directly to the Panthers. Every morning I had to get up at 3:00 am to be there to help set up. I did that for 14 days in a row. I learned about the Panthers, and interacted with the Panthers. To answer your question, I did not join the Panthers, but my respect for the Panthers increased tenfold because they worked their asses off. They were really, really dedicated. That's not to say there weren’t some people that were really fucked up, but they had discipline, yes, standards and respect.
And ever since that two week period, my respect for the Panthers knows no bounds, right. To answer the question, I did not join them, but my respect for them rose greatly. I was invited to become a member of the Panthers. I couldn't become a member of the Panthers because I had to go to prison. All right? Had I not gone to prison, I would have been a member of the Panthers. Incredible spirit.
CWPUSA: We’re curious about your time in prison and if it shaped your political ideology, if it shapes your beliefs at all. A lot of the time that’s where a lot of people become more political as well.
Nesbit: Going to prison scared the shit out of me. This is the situation: I went to prison on what’s called a Z number. A Z number is an observation number, which means that your cell is a cage. A cage where people can see in and you can see people. There's nothing you do that's private. Going to the bathroom, urinating, having bowel movements, all that—everybody in the world knows about it. All right. They're observing you 24 hours a day.
I was sentenced to six to sixteen years in prison with the stipulation of the Z number that after nine months to twelve months, they would decide as to whether I was incorrigible or not. If I was deemed to be incorrigible then they would in fact send me back to prison for the six to sixteen. If I was not incorrigible, then they would send me to jail for a year. Incorrigible means that I could not be rehabilitated. All right.
So I decided that what I would do is I would be busy from sunup to sundown. What I did was—I had two jobs: I worked in the kitchen and I worked in the library. I worked in the kitchen because I wanted to get food, better food than on the line, and I worked in the library so I have a place so I can read.
I joined the church. I was on the usher board in the church. I had a therapist, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist. All right, so at the end of those nine months—Z number is for 9 or 12 months—at the end of the nine months, they sent me back to court. They decided I was not incorrigible and sent me to jail for a year. I saw my job in prison was to do as much as I could to get out of prison. I didn't do anything political while I was in prison. I did political stuff in jail.
I was very active with some people who were on the periphery of the Weather Underground. I did some work with a number of different people, whatever, because I was in jail for five months and then the last seven months in jail I started work furlough where you'll be in jail at night and you work during the daytime. I had a job in Haight-Ashbury, 4 hours a day. I had another job in Marin County, 4 hours a day. That's what I did. And in Marin City I became active in the politics of Marin City. Started working for a partnership where our job was through a progressive, some progressive, wealthy progressive people to give away their money. It's called Pacific Changes—a consultant fund.
To answer your question, when I was at Vacaville, I was trying to get out of Vacaville. I was very, very lucky. A journeyman prisoner—a journeyman prisoner is someone who cannot make it on the outside and he returns to prison constantly. This person really took me under his wing. He looked out for me. He knew I was a tender boy, you know, I mean I was one of these student activists who was sent to prison. He basically adopted me, looked out for me, taught me all the basic stuff and that's really the reason why I did not go back to my six to sixteen.
I didn't become really active politically again until I was in jail where then I was more back in the Bay Area because Vacaville is further towards Sacramento and San Bruno is right outside of San Francisco. There were experiences in prison that I'll never, ever forget. I mean jail was like a dungeon. Jail was punishment. Prison was more psychological. Break your spirit. Different world altogether.
CWPUSA: And this is kind of veering off, but why was the Third World Liberation Front named that?
Nesbit: Yeah, it was called the Third World Liberation Front because most of the liberation organizations back in those days were called “Liberation Front”. You had Liberation Fronts in Algeria, in Congo, in Guinea Bissau, in Mozambique—you know, so we were youngsters, right? And we wanted to be progressive! All of this was unheard of. They've never been a people of color organization where Japanese, Chinese, Latin, Chicanos, indigenous people, and Blacks came together. And so we call ourselves the Third World Liberation Front.
That's how it came about because we wanted to be revolutionary and that's how we know and we considered ourselves the Third World. The first world was the United States; the second world was the Soviet Union; and the third world was what we call now the [Global] South.
CWPUSA: Was the mood at the time in the late 60s revolutionary, did everyone expect some sort of revolution to take place?
Nesbit: Oh, absolutely. The revolution was going to come tomorrow! Absolutely! We were absolutely convinced of that. We were absolutely convinced.
This was during the time of Patrice Lumumba—ever heard of Patrice Lumumba? [He] was one of the icons, along with Fidel. Various different leaders throughout the world were considered to be the new leadership and the revolution was right around the corner.
Source: San Francisco State College Strike Collection
The revolution has been right around the corner for over 60 some odd years. We're much wiser now, though I think we're more pragmatic. I think we see the challenges that are ahead of us. For example, there’s an economic conglomerate called BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and they just brought in [others]. That can be a change in the world order if these nations come together, really have trust in each other, and really start working together as an alternative to the European Union—to the Western powers. Western powers are very, very concerned about it. But I think that it's going to involve trust, its going to involve study, its going to involve a lot of very hard work.
But I think that what your organization is doing is vitally important. I would only suggest seriously that you have a real understanding of solidarity. When I say solidarity I'm not necessarily talking about unity. I'm not saying that your organization should be in unity with DSA or in unity with the Troika Collective, or unity with the Communist Party USA, or unity with PSL. I'm not saying that. I am saying, though, that our commonality is much more powerful than the things that separate us. Sectarianism is really the bane of our existence as progressives in this country. And I think it's really important that the more progressive you are, the more you understand that to coalesce and to have solidarity—how can you have solidarity with the Communist Party in Cuba, or solidarity with the with the South African Communist Party, solidarity with the Communist Party of Italy and you don't have solidarity with the progressives in the United States? What is that about?
All right, I'm not talking about sameness. I'm not even talking about our common point of unity. I'm talking about an understanding of your common working relationship in reference to what your politics are. Be you Marxist-Leninist, be you Maoist, be you whatever, Trotskyists. You know, I'm just saying that our sectarianism is really the bane of our existence. For example, you go to Cuba and you talk to people that need that. One of the main things that they will push is coalition work in solidarity. They talk about unity—I'm not talking about unity, but—I mean, unity would be wonderful—I don't talk about unity. I am talking about coalitions. I am talking about solidarity. I am talking about recognizing that the three of us in this room have more in common with each other than anybody else because of our politics. That doesn't mean that our politics are the same. It means that certain basic aspects of our politics have commonalities. I'm a Marxist Leninist. I see myself as a communist. I am not a member of a Communist Party, but I am a communist. I am a Marxist Leninist with little tinges of Maoism here and there, all right.
But what I'm saying is that in order for your organization to grow—be it in Miami, in West Palm Beach, in Tampa, in Orlando, in Tallahassee, there has to be an understanding that coalition and solidarity work. It's really important. But of course, you can't have solid coalitions and solidarity unless you come from a solid base yourself. So I encourage that.
When things come up, I can at least let you know what's, what's, what's happening. I can invite you whether you come or not, It's up to you. You can invite me whether I come or not, it's up to me. We have a commonality of knowing each other and knowing we exist and working to be supportive of each other, that's vitally important. Anything that I can do to help you in your effort to organize…let me know and I'll be glad to do it. My home base is the [Venceremos] Brigade. You know, I'm 84 years old. I am blessed. I'm relatively healthy and I don't have mobility issues. I still think to a certain extent, I'm not too forgetful, you know, and I have plenty of experience.
I've been on this road for a long, long time. So utilize me, utilize me any way you can. I'm asking you to do that. Appreciate it. I hope I answered some of your questions.
CWPUSA: Last question, you’ve seen a lot of people tap out or lose interest and end their involvement— over all this time, what has sustained your political vigor?
Nesbit: I am very lucky. I have traveled a lot. I've been to Cuba 10 times; I've been to South Africa eight times. I’ve traveled all over the United States. I've known and worked with Lucius Walker—head of Pastors for Peace. I have met three of the last presidents of South Africa: Cyril Ramaphosa spent a night at my house, I met Nelson Mandela, and Jacob Zuma. I met Fidel—he hugged me, I'll never forget that. I realized that above and beyond all of the politics that we talk about, that we're all just basically human. We're all looking for some type of progressive way of thinking. What sustains me then is that I know that revolutionaries are people and revolutionaries have ups and downs and worries and anxieties, but they also have a real determination to make life better.
And I know that many of the young people and old people who are trying to just live—if they see a socialist way, if they understand the essence and the specifics of how socialism will make their lives better. And it's taught me how to understand and taught me how to, to always be fascinated by learning, to be fascinated by growing—political growth and ideological growth.
CWPUSA: What message would you have to young people today keeping things going?
Nesbit: My message to you is to just be unswerving in your principles. That is to say, know what you know and know what you don't know. Have respect for people who have learned. Have respect for people with experience, but primarily have respect for yourself. You must have respect for yourself. You must believe in your own basic integrity.
Without your own integrity, you have nothing. You cannot trust or have integrity with [someone] or teach [someone] anything unless you first of all start with yourself. You cannot deal with all the different national machinations of life, pros and cons, the contradictions of politics without having a certain basic grounding and respect for yourself. You must respect yourself and don't allow anyone to make you disrespect yourself. Very important. And investigate! Take nothing for granted. You know, don't take somebody's word without, you know: “No investigation, no right to speak.” That guides me. Be inquisitive! Always be inquisitive! That’s all I can tell you.
Source
1. San Francisco State University Library. “The San Francisco State College Strike Collection.” San Francisco State University Library, archived by the Wayback Machine, 24 Feb. 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20150224071740/http://www.library.sfsu.edu/about/collections/strike/essay.html.