EDITORIAL

Only a few weeks ago the name Watts meant little to the great majority of people, even those living in the Los Angeles area. Today Watts stands as a symbol of social protest and uncontrolled violence, a byword in Moscow and Capetown, Bombay and Mombasa. The Governor of a great state, the President of the United States, along with thousands upon thousands of other persons have been compelled to take note of the lessons of Watts.

What are some of these? Have they any particular meaning for the readers of this Magazine? A commission of distinguished citizens has been appointed to probe the entire situation and to report its findings. Let it be hoped that their deliberations shall at no time lose sight of the social realities of the situation. For without the sobering controls imposed by such a frame of reference it would be all too easy to fruitlessly debate personalities and details and thereby quite miss the point.

The point is, let it never be forgotten, that whether we refer to slave masses in ancient Athens, toiling peasants under the Manchus, grimy colliers in the 19th Century English Midlands or to the underprivileged Negroes of Watts no substantial sector of society can forever be kept in meek subjection. Human nature just is not like that.

The breaking point will come in one or another way. During many historical periods this breakdown has in later perspective been termed "the decline" of a culture or civilization. Since the time of new social attitudes and new moral standards inaugurated by the American and French Revolutions, and irreversibly it would seem, cultures do not necessarily "decline" any more. Instead, they may forcibly be wrenched into new positions by evolution or revolution in response to the demands of minorities to be heard and to be heeded.

As Los Angeles will never be the same again, since "the time of Watts," nor Alabama since the days at Selma, so it may be held that the Homophile Movement represents another sort of revolt. That it is quieter, that there now appears little likelihood of such eruptions as have marked the emergence of the Negro minority, in no way alters the basic picture, i.e., that minorities no longer will tolerate suppression and repression indefinitely.

How unthinkable but a few short years ago would be an editorial such as this, or a publication in which to print it! Let those who profess themselves unable to discern the dynamics of social change ponder on that

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