Miscalculation

The biggest miscalculation I made when plotting the original ULA strategy was assuming that established literati, as writers, had consciences. I assumed the justness of our grievance would be universally recognized; that those who pay lip service to democracy and foul play would help us institute democracy in literature in reality. I assumed that our first target would return the ill-gotten grant we protested against, and apologize. Surely no one of his station could be that obstinate, that greedy, that selfish. We sought to remind him and his friends that they're part of a community of citizens, a community of writers which includes others beyond their own privileged clique-- that they had an obligation as members of that community to not always take all resources for themselves; they who least needed those resources.

He was that obstinate. His crowd was that selfish, and closed ranks in support of the wrongdoer. They dismissed the idea of community. They've been the alienators, not anyone on our side.

I've sought redress of grievances-- to force our literature, our America, to live up to its ideals. To open up the decision-making to all levels of society, and to ensure that resources set aside to remedy inequalities, not be stolen first by those who already receive more than equal treatment.

Literary rebels in this society have nothing to lose. Who cares who we alienate when they're alienated to us anyway!-- when in their circles of snobbery they've been alienated to our kind of writer from the very beginning?

Ever read Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Lodging for the Night''-- his take on medieval poet Francois Villon? The encounter at the end between the cold and hungry poet, and the old "noble," is the dynamic we face today.

The Rebellion has nothing; no status and no resources, existing penniless in the cold, yet at the same time it has everything on its side; the hunger and energy of the new-- while the other side, the old order of literature, exists in a holding pattern, marching nowhere, clinging to its exclusiveness inside boundaries of its own making.