What Politics Means to Me

With two books about it under my belt (so to speak), I’ve written more words about sex than about politics. But politics has always been closest to my heart, and I hope to redress the imbalance in my word count in the near future.

I was always a leftie.  My father was a liberal in a family and community of racist republicans.  My older brother went to Santa Barbara in 1967 and game me reports from “the front.’  And I went to Berkeley from 1970 to 1976.  ‘Nuff said.

At first, politics was all about the New Left, Marxism, and political economy.  I was “out-there,” active in various extremist groups, and fully engaged at the same time with the counter-culture.  Eventually, with the decline of the New Left, I gave up being active in the public political world and chose a profession—psychology.  I never gave up my sentiments or beliefs, but couldn’t figure out how to blend them with my work, since I don’t believe that good therapy should have a political agenda in any way.

But then I started writing up a storm for progressive magazines and started to feel less divided within myself. Michael Lerner helped inspire and published me in Tikkun.  Don Hazen did the same in Alternet. And, about six years ago, I helped form something called the Institute for Change, sponsored by the Service Employees International Union.  The Institute has a whole bunch of interdisciplinary faculty, from shrinks to corporate consultants, to community organizers, to union activists, and we’re all dedicated to the aim of helping unions become more radical, more effective, more politically savvy, and more engaged with their members in order to help spearhead a progressive movement for social change.  It’s been a life-changing experience for me, meeting union leaders and working with these colleagues.  I hope to reflect these experiences in my writings on this website.