Thought this was a worthwhile passage from Jerry Rubin’s 1970 book “Do It!”:

Fear and paranoia are the luxuries of the suburban leftists, armchair intellectuals, graduate students, the uninvolved. The further you are from the movement, the more scared you become. The Black Panthers aren’t afraid. The yippies aren’t afraid. The Viet Kong aren’t afraid.

But in your living room, you’re scared shitless. And that’s just where the power structure wants you.

In the middle of a riot, I’ve never found anybody who’s chickenshit. The way to eliminate fear is to do what you’re most afraid of.

The goal of theatre [street protest, etc] is to get as many people as possible to overcome fear by taking action.

While I don’t necessarily agree with every little statement Rubin makes in this book, or even in this passage, it’s been a very instructional read for me. He has a certain skill with language that tries to get people active, to get people to respond - rather than sit around and contemplate and argue and get mired down in small details. There are certain problems that come about as a result of that though, and I also think there’s a healthy dose of naivety and starry-eyed idealism in the book. But hey, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t - right?