The Wandering Radical
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This formerly mild-mannered college professor was radicalized in 1970 by several brutal state troopers and a corrupt judge. Parenti tried to intervene when University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, campus officials directed a garbage truck to back into a group of students. The students were participating in a demonstration objecting to the Kent State Massacre and the death of Edgar Hoults, an African-American bookstore employee who was shot in the back after being stopped on suspicion of driving while black. Troopers attacked Parenti with batons, and then appeared in court to claim they had been defending themselves! The judge ignored all evidence to the contrary and absolved the troopers of responsibility for their actions. The behavior of the troopers and the judge dishonored the ethical professionals who make up the vast majority in the judicial system and law enforcement.
Anyway, Parenti has gone on to become a wandering radical whose political insights are too vivid and well-informed to ignore. University administrators who tried to censor Parenti by denying him employment only served the purpose of delivering him to the larger audience he has found as a left-wing road warrior. Visceral in his writing style, Parenti generally focuses on abuses of power perpetrated by institutions inside U.S. borders.
The son of hard-working Italian immigrants, Parenti saw his father's bakery driven out of business by corporations who could not match the quality he delivered, but were able to pressure grocery stores into carrying only their product. This no doubt goes a long way toward explaining Parenti's sympathy for the working stiff who sees America increasingly dominated by large, indifferent organizations. Parenti's tone is neither polite nor solicitous; he doesn't mince words when he takes on underhanded treatment of U.S. citizens within their own country.
Parenti's extended discussion of violence is appropriate, since a favorite tool of right wingers is coercion. For example, throughout American history, many businessmen have turned the hallowed halls of free enterprise into a battle zone. One of the worst examples occurred in 1914 after coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado, went on strike. They sought safe working conditions, relief from beatings by company thugs, a fair wage and freedom to live in housing of their own choice. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation (owned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) called out the Colorado State Militia and the Colorado National Guard to force the miners back to work. During the morning of April 20, two companies of National Guard crept up to a tent camp inhabited by miners and their wives and children. The guardsmen opened fire with machine guns. Then they set the camp on fire. At least 19 innocent people lost their lives in the bullets and fire, including children, and hundreds more were injured.
The struggle for a positive, constructive workplace goes on. Tactics used by incompetent corporate managers are nowadays more subtle than the machine gun, since labor unions and progressive political leaders have secured a minimum of legal rights for employees. The battle between rulers and the ruled is now generally fought with words, notwithstanding Parenti's encounter with violent individuals.
It is especially bizarre to sometimes hear Parenti described as "un-American." Whose America are we talking about? The America of the Washington insider? The America of the corporate CEO who makes $5,000,000 per year? In reality, a man like Parenti is a new kind of patriot to take up the standard of Patrick Henry and Paul Revere, who were also working men turned political activists. Furthermore, Parenti's criticism of overbearing businesses can be interpreted at as a defense of those honest and hard-working business people who, rather than viewing a business as a chance for abuse, carry out their enterprise as an opportunity for fair exchange and community development. Suggested reading: Dirty Truths, Democracy for the Few