Threshold launches SEAC as a national movement

Twenty years after we both spent countless hours helping to organize Threshold in our first semester at UNC, C-line and I sat down to reminisce and remember about SEAC's early days. We thought about touching down at the Forest Theatre, where Threshold concluded in an emotional ceremony on Sunday, October 29, 1989. But it was otherwise occupied by the Paperhand Puppet Intervention, performing one of their annual late summer shows. So we traveled a few hundred yards down the road, and ended up at the curved stone bench behind Gimghoul Castle that overlooks the far edge of Battle Park.



At the first SEAC organizing meeting of the fall semester '89 (in Hamilton 100), Jimmy Langman convinced us all that Threshold was going to spark a national movement, and Ericka Kurz gave a fiery, impassioned speech wearing a cool black leather jacket. Besides Jimmy and Ericka, SEAC O.G.'s who were running the show included Alec Guettal, Blan Holman, and Don Whittier. They were all juniors, seniors, even recent grads, but nobody past their early twenties. Still, as C-line put it, "They seemed so old. And we said, tell us what you need us to do!"



The nuts and bolts work of actually organizing a nationwide conference in the pre-internet era was a little less romantic. Working alongside dedicated souls like Lisa Abbott, Chris van Daalen, Celeste Joye, Yu-Yee Wu, Raj Krishnasami, Mark Chilton, Quaker Kappel, Ruby Sinreich, Dave Ball, and a bunch of other SEAC'ers, we prepared mass mailings, entered hundreds of pre-registered attendees' names into ancient Mac computers, lined up crash pad arrangements with hundreds of UNC students, and using a primitive device known as the landline telephone, called up folks who wanted more info to convince them to make the trek to Chapel Hill. And my favorite part, sitting around in endless meeting circles on the second floor of the Campus Y, arguing over one minor detail or another until the WHOLE GROUP reached a consensus.


Threshold ad from Oct. '89 issue of Music Monitor.

The conference succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Over 1,700 folks showed up from around the country, representing 43 states and 225 schools. It was the largest gathering of student activists since the heyday of SDS in the late 60s. And it launched SEAC as a national student and youth-led environmental movement.

On a personal level, my involvement with SEAC convinced me I wanted to be an organizer, and laid the foundation for all my political work that's followed. I became good friends with C-line, and our adventures have continued ever since. I worked on my first winning political campaign thanks to SEAC, when we helped elect Mark Chilton to the Chapel Hill Town Council two years later. And if I hadn't bonded with fellow SEAC'er Raj K., we wouldn't have agreed to live together (along with Clint Curtis) in the spring of '91, which started our search for off-campus housing that eventually led to the Pink House.

Back in the Spring of '89

I'm home for a week's vacation in RI. Taking things slow and easy. Right. Anyway, so my folks have me on trash detail, going through piles and secret stashes of all kinds of long-forgotten shit that's accumulated as a result of my adventures and travels. Naturally, there's lots of treasures and funky stuff. So I come across the 57th pile, and check it, turns out to be DTH's and other campus publications that I hoarded when first coming down to check UNC out back in the spring of '89.


What's going on in that world? It's a wild one, with places like Fowler's, Colonel Chutney's, and the Carolina Theatre on Franklin Street still in full effect.


The Cradle has just re-opened its doors in February in its "new" location across from Hardee's. SEAC members are staging a protest against dolphin-killing tuna expeditions, with Don Whittier at the helm. Brien Lewis has just defeated Trey Loughran in an SBP runoff election. Outgoing BSM leader Kenneth Perry is shaking things up by saying some pissed off things that white Carolina students don't want to hear.


This woman named Kasey Jones is producing controversial lab! theater plays. Some cat named Ian Williams is writing funny columns for the DTH. Dave Suroweicki is the DTH assistant photo editor coming on strong. Ed Davis, or Ruffin Poole, or whoever the fuck that kid was, is cutting up as editor of the Phoenix. Speaking of Davises, there's this media whore named Gene who seems to get his ass quoted in every freaking DTH article published.


And there's even a radical new voice on the scene, some kid named Dana Lumsden (and yes, he is a male) writing guest columns about how George Bush needs to stop helping his friends profit off the arms trade while he's hypocritically leading a hyped up War on Drugs.

- e-mail to Dana, 7/23/98

George Bush should kill less wildlife and save more human life

"The word on the street is disrespect," Daily Tar Heel, 3/1/89

By DANA LUMSDEN

It used to be that people could insult each other, even have fistfights, without a weapon of some sort being produced. As access to the very weapons that the president promotes increases the amount of thought urban teenagers spend before pulling the trigger decreases. Some of you may ask what the president's hunting hobby has to do with the amount of gun deaths. Believe it or not, the president is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, an organization that not only promotes the freedom of Americans to hunt but opposes any restrictions on guns. Eager on the campaign trail to prove his opponent's guilt-bv-association as a "card carrying member of the ACLU," George should be held accountable for his membership in the not quite one man one vote NRA.

The president is fond of talking, and specifically, "talking tough" on drugs. He supports using the military to stem the drug traffic and a mandatory death penalty for "drug kingpins." If there were tougher gun control laws, the police wouldn't be outgunned (most police departments don’t have Israeli assault rifles or Chinese AK-47s) and we wouldn't have to use the military.

This new image, the image of the masculine president, is not really George's at all. (Does George have an image that is uniquely his? Rhetorical question.) Reagan started this image eight years ago when he decided it was essential that the American presidency appear masculine. Although there were reports of Reagan's sleeping through Cabinet meetings, we knew he was alert on the hunt. Besieged by accusations of wimpiness, George started early in the campaign creating the image of "Sport Poppy." As far as the American public was concerned, "Sport Poppy" was raised up among guns and fishing. We were led to believe that gun handling was an everyday thing at Andover and Yale.

As George promotes this new image, there is another sort of hunting going on in America's big cities and suburbs. People are killing each other. Most of these urban crimes are not the result of drugs (newspeople are fond of blaming drugs for every death among minorities) but rather of "dissin'" or "disrespect." In Boston, for instance, a student at MIT was shot two times at a party. When asked the motive, the assailant replied, "He was dissin' my girlfriend."

Certain changes come with a new presidency. Most of these changes are to be expected. Usually they consist of various ceremonies, the swearing in of new Cabinet officials, some scandal, ridicule and a lot of promises. Lately, though, presidents have left much more of a personal image on the tapestry of American life. Some presidents try to define themselves during the first month. Jimmy Carter, who was buried in the "energy crisis" and "the oil decade," chose to turn off all the lights. Ronald Reagan peddled his gung-ho image and the importance of being earnest; now we must assess George.

I call the president George not for lack of respect but because I believe he wouldn't have it any other way. Charming, funny, smart (Phi Beta Kappa from Yale ain't bad), he's everybody's Uncle George. Lately though, George has taken to huntin', and it is the rage of his new cabinet. Suddenly all Washington's power brokers are putting on their gear, packing toilet paper and heading for the woods in pursuit of wild game. Secretary of State James Baker owns his own turkey hunting land in Texas, where he invites all his political buddies and even an occasional reporter to partake in such macho activities as shooting at birds. Studying top-secret documents, making analogies between turkey hunting and Washington politics, he's James Baker, high-level Cabinet member, millionaire, scholar and good ole' boy. George should spend less time killing wildlife and more time saving human life.

Dana Clinton Lumsden is a freshman political science / journalism major from Boston, Mass., and yes, he is a guy.

I never hear any protest of the situation in America

"Activists can find problems at home, too," Daily Tar Heel, 1/20/89

By DANA LUMSDEN, Staff Writer

I ran into a couple of those "trendinis-tas," liberals, campus radicals, socially conscious Americans, or troublemakers (it depends on whom you ask) yesterday. They appeared to be good college students (they were clean, dressed and sober). I just couldn't understand how they could be the subjects of so much debate and the focus of so much attention. How could anyone dislike people who seem to be so altruistic and motivated to expose and eradicate the injustices of the world?

I began to think, though, about some of the causes that these people seemed to hold so dear that they would risk being expelled. Some were concerned about animal rights, others were concerned about people incarcerated in Third World prisons, South Africa and the destruction of the environment. It would be wrong for me to classify or rank these causes in order of importance because all of these problems are meaningful. Who's to say the situation in South Africa is more significant than the situation in El Salvador?

But I never hear of any protest of the situation in America, the situation in America's big cities, the situation in Chapel Hill, the situation here at UNC. These farsighted students are convinced that America remedied all her wrongs during the "turbulent sixties" and have set their sights on bigger and better causes. Like modern day Macbeths, they are so ambitious and self-righteous that they cannot see what is plainly before their eyes.

While they protest the terrible apartheid in South Africa, their eyes block out the "apartheid" in America, Western Europe and Australia. The majority of America's cities are segregated, except for an occasional gray area where blacks and whites live together. For the most part, blacks cannot even walk in certain places without being harassed by the police if not by the area's residents.

The enrollment of black men is decreasing in our colleges. If America's educational institutions were as aggressive in recruiting and nurturing promising black scholars as they are in recruiting promising black athletes, this would be no problem. Here in Chapel Hill, blacks supply most of the jobs that require manual labor. An overwhelming majority of the black students at UNC live on South Campus (mostly by choice) while the University hedges on whether to expand a Black Cultural Center (a mainstay on most campuses) the size of a snack food place.

A good method of gauging the attitude of a democratic country is to see how it votes. Politicians of the day have found a new error-proof way of winning an election: racial politics. Who can forget the infamous Willie Horton ads, and the frequent allusion to "American values" (translate: the values of the white middle class) by the Bush campaign. Big-city elections are polarized by the subject of race. Even as people protest about the subhuman conditions of prisons in certain South American countries, American offenders predominantly minorities are crowded into already over-populated prisons.

As we honor one of the nation's greatest leaders and celebrate Black History Month, there will be a whole lot of soul-searching specials on the civil rights movement reminding us to "Keep the Dream Alive" and our "Eyes on the Prize." As we look at the past and dream about the future, we often forget to make the present better for ourselves. The "socially conscious," who are fond of throwing stones, at Nicaragua and South Africa, should be reminded that America is but a glass house.

Dana Clinton Lumsden is a freshman journalism / political science major from Boston, Mass.