Mount Airy activist ‘renounced white skin privilege’

Posted 5/27/16

by Arlene Tyner

Ed. Note: Last week we ran an article about Arlene Tyner, 74, long-time Mt. Airy resident who has been a passionate social and political activist her entire adult life. She has …

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Mount Airy activist ‘renounced white skin privilege’

Posted

by Arlene Tyner

Ed. Note: Last week we ran an article about Arlene Tyner, 74, long-time Mt. Airy resident who has been a passionate social and political activist her entire adult life. She has also done extensive research into the highly controversial case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 by the U.S. government during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early Cold War era. Here are more thoughts from Tyner:

My favorite writers are those rare scholars and journalists unraveling the mysteries of the Second World War, including the Holocaust, as well as the crimes of state committed during the Cold War. I have followed the latest research on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., because the “official stories” are so full of holes that they sink into a sea of unspeakable corruption.

I don’t have any regrets, but it has taken me a lifetime to learn why I chose the unusual path of service to others rather than personal enrichment. I learned from my father, Sidney Shupak, that living a principled life is better than succumbing to greed and careerism.

I was witness to greed destroying the Shupak Pickle clan. I also remember that my parents risked prison by hiding Communist leaders being hunted down by the FBI in the 1950s for prosecution under the Smith Act. These men lived in our basement in Oxford Circle, which at that time was on the edge of the city.

I used to serve them food as a child and talk to them about the families they left behind. Some were later captured and put on trial. They were First Amendment felons. The Supreme Court eventually overturned all of their convictions because government evidence was based on thoughts alone. There was no evidence that anyone committed acts of violence aimed at overthrowing the government.

Somehow I knew that if I wanted to exercise my First Amendment freedom without being obstructed, I could not have a high-paying career job. I settled on a job with union protection and a good retirement nest egg. Somewhere along the way I also decided to keep a low profile in organizing activities that challenged racism.

It turns out my instincts were spot-on. I have evidence the FBI was afraid of my information. Also, I had a lot of support, especially in the African-American and Puerto Rican communities here in Philadelphia.

I rode a curve that allowed leftists to be respectable once again, which allowed my writings to reach a wider audience. I used to imagine FBI men wringing their hands in frustration because they couldn’t stop me from living the life I was meant to live.

Today the Black Lives Matter movement is challenging white supremacy in aggressive ways. Young people are talking again about white skin privilege. We had such conversations in the 1960s, too. My life is an example of someone who quietly renounced white skin privilege in favor of using my education and writing skills to challenge institutional racism.

Grass-roots organizing involves convincing people to pool their talents so they can win various struggles. Some people have faulted me for being intolerant of prejudices like racism and sexism, but I have mellowed over the years and tempered my militancy.

Writing about the effect racism has on everyone has been difficult because it’s important to be precise without being offensive. It’s the one sin no one likes to admit, but honest people can’t avoid facing it head-on. Politicians thrive on it, however, which is why racism continues to poison our culture.

My most treasured possessions are my books. I have bookcases in every room except the bathroom. Sometimes it takes hours to find a particular book.

You have asked me what people I admire the most. The people I most admire are no longer with us. I would have liked to talk to women who operated behind enemy lines during World War II — women like Christine Granville, Winston Churchill’s favorite spy. She hailed from Poland with a Jewish mother and a Catholic father.

She risked her life by often going back into Nazi-occupied Poland by skiing over Italian mountains so dangerous the Nazis didn’t patrol them. She rescued downed Polish pilots and brought them back to England. She was dropped into France and successfully organized Resistance activities after the Allies landed there. I’ve never met anyone with that amount of courage. I’m now reading a second biography.  Christine survived the war, only to be killed by a jealous lover in 1952.

I would also have liked to talk to President Kennedy. He was my hero for standing up to the U.S. military industrial complex and preventing nuclear war during the missile crisis. He also paid the supreme price for trying to end the Cold War and bring about peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union.

-- To be continued

mt-airy, opinion