'HOPE DIES LAST' | A review Studs Terkel speaks with activists

The speakers hold hope for a more just America.
By BILL MARVEL
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
"Hope Dies Last," by Studs Terkel (The New Press, $25.95)
Hope is the least understood of virtues.
It's not the same as faith, which is the belief in things unseen. And it certainly isn't the same as just wishing. Hope is action-packed, a kind of confidence that if you do the right thing, a good outcome will follow.
For decades Studs Terkel has been setting his tape recorder in front of ordinary folks in the hope that they will tell the most extraordinary stories. In such books as "Hard Times" and "Working" and "The Good War," waitresses, taxi drivers, heavy equipment operators and World War II vets told their tales to Terkel, and through him to us. He's a good listener, which is at least as hard as being a good writer.
Now in his 12th book and 91st year, the onetime disc jockey and veteran radio talk show host points his microphone at some extraordinary folks -- economist John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, activist Tom Hayden, California's one-time Zen governor, Jerry Brown. You get the drift: With few exceptions, these are the protesters, civil rights marchers, labor organizers and troublemakers of the 1960s and beyond, those who once hoped to turn the country to a more just, more gentle path.
Changing times
It hasn't always worked out that way. Some, in the words of Chicago activist Tim Black, have come to see an America "with no responsibility for anyone else except to the bank, to the corporation." Some have had their expectations dashed by the decline of organized labor, the loss of community and the rise of Enronism. But for most, even if hope dozes off from time to time, it isn't dead.
After a life "planning, training, arming, practicing and fighting in wars," Retired Rear Adm. Gene LaRoque has turned dovish. Now he fights growing defense spending and what he sees as the creeping militarism in American life.
In the absence of a Movement, individual acts kindle hope, from the priest who brings together a grieving mother and the young man who murdered her son to the young solder who gives a peace protester a drink of water.
Almost none of those Terkel interviewed hopes for anything for himself or herself. It is hope for the poor and the powerless that keeps them going, and propels this book.