A Less Showy Kind of Activism

During his four years at Harvard, Kenneth E. Reeves '72 spent two summers and countless school-year afternoons working with kids at the low-income housing project at Dorchester's Columbia Point.

While Reeves took on poverty in his back yard, he also took on global issues. Reeves was a key figure in the spring 1972 takeover of President Derek C. Bok's office in protest of Harvard's $21 million of investments in Gulf Oil, which was viewed as supporting imperialism because it maintained operations in the then-Portuguese colony of Angola.

Though Reeves's participation in protest politics was more than a passing foray, his community work was more time consuming and more gratifying. But campus activists today, Reeves says, seem to focus on the bigger issues.

"Today, there's much more emphasis on individual and global problems and much less concern for what's happening in the United States or even in Cambridge," says Reeves, who was director of Phillips Brooks House's (PBH) first summer community outreach program at Columbia Point.

While dozens of students last year busied themselves with rallies, overnight vigils and sit-ins in protest of Harvard's $580 million invested in companies that do some business in South Africa, several hundred other undergraduates, as Reeves did, got involved with a less showy kind of activism.

Under the auspices of various community groups, churches and PBH, Harvard's main institution for public service, these students spend their time doing things like counseling children, serving in soup lines and tutoring convicts in and around Boston. PBH alone had about 1000 participants last year who put in anywhere from a few to 40 hours a week, according to Graduate Secretary Gregory A. Johnson '72.

Johnson says that "PBH work is less flashy, but gives more of a long-lasting catharsis" than what he calls "rhetorical politics."

In 1979, Johnson returned to Harvard to save a sinking PBH, which then had only $95 in the bank. Six years ago, he says, PBH was caught up in ideological debates and investment decisions. It was "distracted from social service, caught up in rhetorical politics," Johnson says.

Monique E. Dixon '86, PBH's treasurer, says ideological debate still takes up time at meetings: "'Are we going to be a social service or social action [organization]?' was a big question for PBH earlier this year."

While the final decision was to plan programs along the lines of social service, Dixon sees the two as intertwined. As director of an all-day program for children at three Cambridge housing projects last summer, Dixon says she tried to combine service and politics.

"We try to make kids aware of how they are caught up in the system," she explains. For example, activities in summer 1984 included games and tutoring in reading and math as well as visits with Cambridge City Councilors Saundra Graham and Alfred E. Vellucci and traveling south for the March on Washington, Dixon says.

Johnson says he feels most social service is by its nature political, although people involved might not think so. "If a counselor just has a good way to teach the kids to read and write, that's political. That's revolutionary because keeping them ignorant is oppressive," Johnson says.

Dixon got involved with PBH her freshman year when she took a work-study job as a counselor for the Cambridge Youth Enrichment Program. In the same year, she marched in front of the office of Dean of Freshmen Henry C. Moses, calling for the reinstatement of minority organization events on the Freshman Week calandar.

While she had no qualms about protesting for "things that are actually here and now," the Leverett House senior plays down the effectiveness of activism aimed at changing things such as Harvard's investment policy.

"I do sympathize with [the pro-divestment activities], but I don't know how effective they are...I guess I see working in Cambridge as being a little more productive," Dixon says with some hesitation, because she says protest sometimes can be the most effective way to promote change.

But another PBH activist insists adamantly that protest is not the way to go. "People who organize protests have really good intentions, but they haven't seen that many results, at least not at Harvard," asserts Remigio Cruz '86, who spends several afternoons a week and lives summers in a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood in Boston's South End.

Cruz's philosophy is an outgrowth of his experiences as director of PBH's Keylatch program in the Villa Victoria housing project, where he says he "learned how politics works...how to get along with people to get money and to get things done."

In order to reach kids and affect real change, Cruz says, ideology sometimes has to be compromised. "I hope to be some sort of leader, one who gets things done, whether it's with the Republicans or the Democrats."

Cruz tells of meeting with Boston city councilor James Kelley to get funding for Keylatch. "This man was [pictured] in the Boston Herald throwing bricks at Black kids during the busing controversy, and I went to him and said, 'I'm not political, [but] helping me will improve your image in the Hispanic community.' He gave me money."

Cruz is forthright in saying to others that "in the long run, what I'm doing is political: helping kids from poor neighborhoods use education as a tool..to become leaders."

Every time Cruz takes the T to West Newton St., he says, he is making a political statement. Moreover, that's often more effective politics than a campus sit-in or rally, he adds: "Sometimes protests build animosity. It's more effective to be diplomatic, to organize a debate."

This is especially true, Cruz asserts, when you are dealing with Harvard. "The administration is very powerful. You can't move them with emotional ploys...What people need to do is have an irrefutable argument for divestment, and until that comes about, the University won't change its policy [which all but precludes divesting]."

For Dixon, it comes down to choosing where she will spend her limited time and energy. Dixon says she finds it ironic that campus liberals focus on international civil rights issues like apartheid in South Africa while ignoring civil rights issues in the United States. "People have been lulled into believing that things have changed a lot [in the U.S.]. On the surface it is that way, but I don't think that's necessarily true. Here are people fighting about a cause 50,000 miles away when there are problems next door."