Connecting the Dots

Perhaps it was appropriate that I was much more involved in literature than politics as a young person, as in northeast Iowa we were far from the seats of power. Nevertheless, American politics did have its effect on us. We avidly listened to news discussions and debates on television on winter afternoons, read what we could in magazines and discussed current events in school. It just felt so far away!

Thus I was delighted to run across someone only slightly older than me, who had lived and worked in Washington, D.C. from 1966 through 1974. Judith Nies published The Girl I Left Behind: A Narrative History of the Sixties in 2008 as an explanation for her daughter of the political life she had led and why she left it. In direct, vivid prose she describes her education and her work, telling stories of the people she met and her growing understanding.

She had three very interesting jobs in Washington, first working for The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, where she met some of the activist women who had campaigned for and finally won the vote for women in 1919. Telling their stories, she connects their influence to the amazing women who were instrumental in preventing atmospheric nuclear testing and stood up to the House Un-American Activities Commission in 1961 saying, “We are a movement, not an organization,” and then to the “second wave” of feminists.

From 1968 to 1970 Nies worked for a coalition of ten congressmen who were opposed to the war in Viet Nam, coordinating hearings on the war which resulted in two important books which she edited with Erwin Knoll, War Crimes and the American Conscience and American Militarism. Her last job in Washington was for congressman Don Frazer and the Women’s Equity Action League, working on examining how American leadership is selected and trained. The book wonderfully describes her growing understanding of privilege as it relates particularly to those who develop America’s foreign policy.

Judith Nies’ book connected many dots for me on the atmosphere of those early days as well as what it would have been like to be smart, working class, and yet have aspirations toward foreign policy work. My family had a strong, empathetic interest in foreign affairs. My parents housed Displaced Persons after World War II. We were always interested in what missionaries traveling through our area had to say. And perhaps the literature that we read so avidly opened us to the understanding of others as well. But no amount of study could give me the insights Judith Nies received from being on the scene. I recommend her book.