Posted on 04/06/2002 8:44:23 AM PST by buzzyboop
In a basement corner of his home-brew radio station, where a computer keyboard sits next to a copy of The Catholic Worker, Vincent Scotti Eirene fishes around and produces a sentimental keepsake of the new age: the modem he was using the night he met his wife online.
"We met in an Internet vegetarian discussion group," he explains. Rebecca is upstairs, nursing their second child. The modem is obsolete, but the marriage seems to be enjoying a certain timelessness.
The basement, a dank place dug a century ago, is headquarters of Blast Furnace Radio, an Internet station that carries rock music that sounds like amplifiers being thrown down the stairs and political speech that sounds like Republicans being thrown down the stairs.
"I started it on Dr. King's birthday two years ago. I don't know why. As I traveled around the country, it became my entree with the new activist community," he says.
Eirene has turned 50.
He is still very much the Upper St. Clair schoolboy who, in 1968, used his cigarette money to take a streetcar Downtown for an antiwar rally.
He is a bit rounder and the lenses on his eyeglasses are thicker. His black, shoulder-length tangle of hair is coming to resemble Spanish moss. The son of a prosperous South Hills contractor, Vincent Scotti was talked out of studying law by the Berrigan brothers, the two radical priests of the 1970s, and decided to become the 20th century equivalent of a social outlaw. He climbed fences at nuclear sites, chained himself to doorways, sat down in streets and, on one occasion, dug a grave in the front yard of Donald Rumsfeld.
During a first marriage in which neither bride nor groom wanted to impose a family name upon the other, they decided to share the last name Eirene, which is Greek for "peace." The first wife left after a few years. Vincent kept the family name and went on to become a connoisseur of correctional institutions.
"I'd say the best was the old Allegheny County Jail," he says. "They used to lock you in at 8:30 at night. The best jails are the ones that leave you alone and have the strongest coffee."
Allenwood federal penitentiary, he adds, is overrated. Not that he wouldn't go back.
"I wanted to get arrested to celebrate my 50th birthday," he says. But two years ago he was run over while crossing a street. He hobbles about the house after multiple surgeries. One arm is in a sling. One foot is in a walking cast. Chaining himself to a door at the Software Engineering Institute, a favorite target because of its defense research, would shift all the home duties to Rebecca.
"Maybe for my 51st," he says.
Instead, for this one, Eirene opted for a party at his house at 1332 Sheffield in Manchester. He'll have a live band and, after realizing he'd sent out e-mails to 3,000 people in 26 states and seven countries, decided to open the door to anyone who shows up at 3 p.m. tomorrow.
Couldn't this cause general disruption?
"I hope so," he says.
At the half-century mark, Eirene is something of a cultural artifact, one of the remaining members of the Catholic left, which tried to fuse church teaching with social activism. The church became more conservative, the left became more violent, but Eirene declines to endorse anything resembling a fist.
"The only thing the Weather Underground succeeded in blowing up was themselves," he says.
Opposed to abortion, he stays relatively quiet on that subject. "The problem is there's pro-life and then there's pro-lifers. The pro-lifers don't take into account all that people are going through and then end up pushing them into the arms of an abortionist," he says.
Similarly, he is an anomaly among current leftist demonstrators who won't give names, wear masks while smashing windows at Nike outlets and build elaborate conspiracy theories about capitalism and world trade. It's not that Eirene doesn't think capitalism and world trade aren't a danger to humanity. But after 25 years of denouncing them up close, he's concluded they lack the forethought to conspire.
"I think this is just a big, blind beast," he says.
This is one statement I can kind of agree with. After almost 30 years of studying government conspiracy theories, on a casual part time basis, I have arrived at three distinct conclusions.
1.) None of the conspiracy theories hold water.
2.) They are all predicated on the assumption of coordination between different government agencies. As anyone who has ever had to do much business with the government clearly understands, the left hand has no clue as to what the right hand is doing.
2.) If there is any plausible aspect of conspiracy theories it most likely that they are in fact put out by the government, so that in the event that someone does actually come up with something that could be damaging to them, it makes it much easier for the government to write them off as a conspiracy kook in the publics eyes.
Adam Smith called it the 'Invisible Hand'.
One of the undeniable great truths.
Yep- probably LSD!
And by the way, who exactly is it who gives a rat's patoot about this 60's moron???? What a waste of bandwidth.
Where did the writer get this little "factoid"?
Now he will be easier game for the slow driving Pittsburgh oldsters. If we're lucky, Molly Rush will be helping him cross the street.
Notice he doesn't feel the same way about other activists. The boy ain't a deep thinker.
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