Tomorrow is Halloween but tonight the neighborhood children came out in their costumes to get their treats. I purchased more candy than ever before, but my wife ran out before the last child came. I guess Halloween gets bigger each year.

Tonight I was asked to make a brief presentation at a conference of the Utopian Society about my experiences in the 60’s and 70’s. I was on a panel with persons with experiences in civil rights and education reform at that time. Preparing for this talk I had to recall memories of the time and realized how exciting and natural life was at this time. Like a child at Halloween we did not know what the next open door would bring but we were ready to get excited and find joy.

You can find via the internet memories of these times in Milwaukee. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has put together a digital collection of the civil rights projects called The March On Milwaukee: Civil Rights History Project. On my web site you can find some memories of the Milwaukee 14 action of 1968, destroying 1A Selective Service.

But this look back at the 60’s for the Utopian Society and for us present was not for nostalgia or to share stories of the past. It was to learn from the past how to create a better society in the present day. To the scholars of the Utopia society it is called ‘concrete Utopia’, learning from the past efforts to create a better society today. The sixties and seventies are a good time for this kind of study since some of us really believe we were working “to build a new society within the shell of the old”.

This looking to the past to create a better tomorrow is the reason I called my site about the Milwaukee 14 action of 1968 the Milwaukee 14 Today.

Children at Halloween come to our doors saying: “Trick or Treat”. Those who ignore the lessons of the past are doomed to find the same old tricks and make the same old mistakes. Those who learn from the past will find the future a real treat.

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