Strawberry Restatement

James S. Kunen was 19 and a Columbia University sophomore when he wrote The Strawberry Statement, a wry account of Columbia's 1968 student strike against the Viet Nam War. The book's instant success transformed Kunen into one of the spokesmen for the rebels of his generation. Since then, Kunen, now 37, has served as a conscientious objector, worked as a public defender in the Washington court system, been married and divorced. Now a senior writer at PEOPLE magazine, he was asked by TIME to comment on what has happened to him and his protesting peers of the '60s who now seem to have quietly joined the Establishment.

"You've got the power," I wrote in The Strawberry Statement, 18 years ago. "You make millions of people suffer . . . Well cut it out, will you? Just stop it. If you won't stop it, we'll stop you."

The "we" I was presuming to speak for were the student protesters of the '60s, and the "you" were the remote and powerful men who were exploiting and oppressing the "People." Two decades later, it's terribly clear that we haven't changed the world very much; the question is, how much has the world changed us?

As young "radicals," we considered ourselves the conscience of the nation. To us, the Viet Nam War was a moral offense, not a question of politics; we reacted to it primarily in moral, rather than political terms. Somehow, by the strength of our youth, the nation would be wrenched from the grip of death, cleansed, made new. A "movement" without politics or program, we were defined largely by our shared lives on the campus--millions of us getting stoned and listening to the Beatles--and by our opposition to the war. Now that war is over, and we inhabit private worlds.

Still, when I speak with old "radical" friends--none of whom are leading noticeably radical lives--I find that our political views haven't changed that much. We're dismayed by slashes in social programs and appalled by the contra war against Nicaragua. Why, then, aren't we heard from? Why aren't we marching in the streets?

Paradoxically, we felt a more excruciating responsibility for the acts of our nation then, as 19-year-olds who couldn't even vote, than we do now. We took things more personally. We felt that we were bombing Viet Nam, and we were allowing the poorer and less well connected of our generation to die there. Now, we say, it's the Reagan Administration that builds and occasionally drops bombs.

- We no longer believe that we can remake the world. Instead we adapt to it and act cautiously, because we have much more to lose. We have our careers. In the booming economy of the '60s, the affluent youth's greatest concern about a career was how to avoid one. A career was part of the System, within which success and exploitation, work and war, were inextricably linked. ("Work! Study! Get Ahead! Kill!" we used to chant at demonstrations.) Also, embarking on a career meant accepting the constraints of adulthood. I thought if I didn't settle down, I could stay young forever. I was wrong. You get old whether you're wearing a necktie or not.

When I was a "kid," I avowed a profound aversion to wealth. All I wanted, I used to say, was to raise a family in a decent home and be able to spend a few weeks at the beach. That's all I want now, but I find that these modest ends require massive means. It's hard to renounce materialism when materialism is renouncing you.

Our middle-class instinct (subliminal, unshakable) to "make something of yourself" and contribute to society, has led us down the Establishment road --what we used to call selling out. We like to think that our careers give us more effective ways to act on our values than we had as students. We all try to do good and do well at the same time.

Meanwhile, people sleep on the streets while our tax dollars are at work waging war in Central America. We know we really ought to find the time and the courage to do something about it. (Things to do today: call insurance broker, add to IRA, smash the state.)

At least we have a past to live up to. We helped end one war, and the continuing effect of our action restrains our country from getting into new ones. It's good that there was a time when we stood up for what we believed in --which, as you get along and go along, is not something you do every day.