Page 18 RAIN December 1980 Trudell Cont. example of them. They couldn't allow one group of people to start to get control of their lives and start to take it away from the profit maximizers. The next thing you know, if the Indians were successful in talking about self-determination, maybe cities would want to do it, or countie,s, or all of the white pe<'>ple... . That's what the whole thing was about. Rain: How do you feel about the direction of the anti-nuke movement? Trudell: The best I can see of it, it's made up of people who are truly afraid of nuclear power: young people from the unorganized "youth movement," remnants of the civil rights movement, other segments of other movements. What I hope is that all of them will start addressing themselves to their relationship with the land. The radiation helps us to see this relationship and helps us to help others to·see it. It affects the ground, the water, etc. Right after Three 'Mile Island, I was in various places kind of feeling out the anti-nuclear movement. One of the feelings I got at that time was that we weren't taking things seriously enough. It's not enough that we're in the right, or that we're turning people out for anti-nuclear protests, because we have to understand that the other side has gone to great pains to neutralize any political resistance that will come out in the '80s, and I don't think we're as aware of that as we should be. I worry sometimes that the anti-nuclear movement is going to have to take an ass-kicking to understand that. We're in the right, but - the energy corporations are into profit, and nuclear power and con- , trol of energy is profit. In a way, we've got to be resetting up our communications with each other, because this time around-more than in the '60swe've got to try to have a better level of honesty. Not that I mean we deliberately lied to each other, but we misled ourselves then. When the government and the corporations send their spies and provocateurs amongst us, how can they survive? They survive on their lies, and it's quite obvious to me that their lies don't stand out • because they're hidden among our lies. We're talking now about the experience of resistance versus the emotional momentum of movement, and I think we've got to look at some of that. We said in the '60s that we were against war, but we weren't really being honest about it, because when it came right down to it, and we were offered the bribe, everyone settled for withdrawal from Vietnam. Somewhere in there we made a compromise amongst ourselves and we weren't honest about it. Rain: We're finally saying it. We're finally getting at the core of what we've been struggling about for ten, twenty or more years: that it's not ending any one war or getting one particular bit of civil rights, but rather it's opening our brains back up and becoming strong people-then saving the planet. • "For the.revolutionary in America, the idea and romanticism of Revolution keeps hirri in his place,, just like the illusionary electoral system keeps the citizen in his place." Trudell: That's where I think there's more at stake here than we're really aware of. It's going to be easier for our side if the anti-nuclear movement doesn't compromise itself by becoming just a one-issue movement, and further- re-divide into sub-movements which concern themselves only with reactors or weapons or uranium. I hope that doesn't happen, because I think we can be a very formidable force. Rain: It seems a key to it is that it's not just what they do with resources, but that they control resources. We have to re-establish our priorities so that it's not just the anti-nuke movement, but a movement that addresses itse1f to the whole concept of controlling land and resources. Trudell: They control the resourc'es because they control us. When you have an attitude that you can own the land, that attitude should not be that you can own everything that goes with it, too. That attitude is an unnatural act. We're not fighting them for ownership at all. We're fighting them about how it's going to be used, and what our place is going to be on it. And our grandchildren's place. □□ REGIONALISM "There will always be a Basque problem until they give us full autonomy. Because-let me make this very clear-I was not antiFranco, and I am not anti-Suarez. I'm antiSpain." collection of clans. States are artificial political assemblages ... superimposed over nations. Zwerin dubs this movement of national minorities "nationism," which he describes as a new form of nationalism based on ''the will to remain different, minority cultures fighting a last-ditch battle to save themselves from ... this conglomerization called internationalism." All right, perhaps, but Devolutionary Notes, by Michael Zwerin, 1980, 63 pp., $2,95 plus $.50 postage from: Planet Drum Foundation P.O. Box 31251 San Francisco, CA 94131 Zwerin has written a strange and f~scinating. little guidebook to a .movement that is "redesigning the map of Europe." He introduces us to places like Cymru (Wales), Breizh (Brittany) and Euskadi (Basque country) ahd to the people who live and struggle there. Like Basque "separatist" Juan Jose Echave: Although .Zwerin confines himself to Europe, this movement does not. All over the world, in places we think of as Greenland, New Zealand, Quebec, and Native American "res·ervatfons," in socialist as well as nonsocialist states, there are people advocating autonomy. What condition do they share? Occupation. Occupation is the imposition of rule by aliens. Occupation can take political, sociological or cultural form. States occupy nations. Nations should not be confused with States. A Nation ts an organic social, economic and geographical unit with common history, langup.ge and mores .. . a clan or a what ~o these people actually want? Won't this be just the same boring transfer of power from one oppressor group to another? Zwerin insists otherwise. Autonomists, devolutionists, separatists, nationists, whatever we choose to call them ... the heart of their platform calls for a breakdown of power. They are the only politicians anywhere near the mainstream interested in destroying the power of the State
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