Mark Satin -- Biography

"If there were a Nobel Prize for thinking outside the box, Mark Satin would be so honored. Unconventional, free from ideological constraints, his probing mind opens to innovative thinking many closed doors. And he displays rare clarity and vivid writing."
-- Amitai Etzioni, founder of the Communitarian Network and author of From Empire to Community, on Mark Satin's book Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now (Westview / Perseus, 2004)

Mark Satin in San Francisco, 2007; photo kindly donated to this Web site and the public domain by Ralph Tyko

Although Mark Satin has at various times been invited to write for the Christian Science Monitor op-ed page, the Washington Post Outlook section, Mother Jones, The Nation, and other entities, he's chosen to focus instead on writing -- and administering, and helping with the grunt work on -- his own political newsletters, New Options and now Radical Middle.

He was born in 1946 and raised in small cities in West Virginia, north Texas, and northern Minnesota (Moorhead), where he had a weekly column in the local paper from ages 14-16. He graduated near the top of his class at the University of British Columbia in 1972, and earned a law degree from the New York University School of Law in 1995, at the age of 49.

In the 1960s he was a New Left activist -- civil rights worker for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in Holly Springs, Miss., in 1964-65 (see photo here, sixth from bottom), president of a college chapter of Students for a Democratic Society in 1966, etc. In 1967 he emigrated to Canada to avoid killing people in Vietnam for no good reason, and to protest the war.

He co-founded and ran the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, Canada’s major draft dodger assistance organization, and wrote the controversial Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, an underground best-seller (65,000 copies sold from Toronto by mail, & many others mimeographed in the U.S.). He later founded and ran The Last Resort, Vancouver’s big hostel for draft resisters and military deserters, and lived underground in Oregon under the name “Fred Wylie.”

In the 1970s and 1980s he became more “New Age” or “transformational” in his views. In the mid-70s he co-founded a free love commune and wrote for an alternative newspaper, the Vancouver Grape. He wrote an honest, self-critical autobiographical novel, Big Plans, published as Confessions of a Young Exile (Toronto: Gage / Macmillan of Canada, 1976).

He also wrote a political pamphlet called New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society that eventually grew into a 350-page book (New York: Dell, 1979; orig. Canada, 1976; also Denmark, Germany, Sweden). [To see excerpts from 35 reviews of New Age Politics, click HERE.]

After President Carter declared amnesty, Mark toured North America with his book for over two years. He vowed to speak anywhere people asked him to go, even if they had little or no money to pay him (one of his heroes was Vachel Lindsay, "troubadour poet" of the 1920s) -- and that's exactly what he did, thanks to dozens of people who put him up along the way, and his abiding small-town affection for the Greyhound bus. [To see a list of some of the 90+ places he spoke, click HERE.]

His book tour evolved into an organizing tour for the New World Alliance, the first national New Age political organization. He joined the staff of the Alliance and fought to make it credible and effective. Later he helped draft the U.S. Green Party’s founding document, “Ten Key Values.”

From 1981-92 he published and edited New Options, well known as “Washington, D.C.’s Idealistic Political Newsletter.” He built it into the second largest independent political newsletter in the U.S., and it won Utne Reader’s first “Alternative Press Award for General Excellence: Best Publication from 10,000 to 30,000 Circulation,” and made the Washington Post’s chart of 10 periodicals spearheading “The Ideology Shuffle.”

By the 1990s, he was convinced his views would benefit from engagement with the “real world” of commerce and professional ambition. Eventually he stopped New Options and enrolled at the most demanding law school he could get into.

During law school, which he loved, he interned for a well known New York judge and arbitrator-mediator, and after graduation he worked for a commercial and banking litigation firm in Rockefeller Center. Currently he's a member of the District of Columbia Bar (but a very full-time newsletter editor!).

You could say his 21st century newsletter, Radical Middle, is his attempt to synthesize the political savvy from his New Left days, the humane sensibility from his New Age days, and the powerful analytic tools he managed to pick up in the legal Establishment. Or you could say it’s his attempt to add depth and complexity to his and his generation’s idealistic political journey.

For a more programmatic effort to outline a new politics, see Mark's book Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now (Westview Press / Perseus Books Group, 2004).

Ten Media Comments About Mark Satin . . . Covering Five Decades

A piece about my work in the Sept.-Oct. 2004 issue of Utne Magazine began with the line, "The long and winding political career of Mark Satin has taken some odd turns." That's been the left's take on my path since the 1970s, really. If you read the following media comments in chronological order (as arranged below), I think you'll see there's been a logic to -- even a positive evolution in -- my personal / political choices. What the PC left sees as "odd," I see as immersion in Life (from the barricades to the DC Bar!), learning from experience, and striving to be ever more inclusive and holistic in my vision. I hope these media comments help you think more clearly about your own personal / political journey.

“The most conspicuous group of [American] exiles . . . consists chiefly of very young New Leftists. . . . They hate America. Most of them call for revolution at home and Communist victory in Vietnam. Some proudly label themselves anarchists, others Maoists. Mark Satin comes close to fitting that standard. . . . He has long hair. . . . He has a yellow button announcing DISSENT in the lapel of his rumpled jacket. Dissent is certainly what he is about and he has had a great chance to exercise it . . . as a $25-a-week counselor for draft emigrants from the United States. ‘That godawful sick, foul country; could anything be worse?’ he asks, his frayed sleeve bumping against a loaf of sliced bread on the desk. (‘My breakfast and lunch,’ he explains apologetically.) ‘I’ve cut all bridges with it. I don’t care if I never go back.”
-- Oliver Clausen, “Boys Without a Country,” The New York Times Magazine, May 21, 1967

"Mark Satin has thrown himself, as much as any man can, into helping his draft-evading contemporaries. . . . Seven days a week, from nine in the morning until, often, very late at night, he runs the [Toronto] Anti-Draft Programme on Spadina Avenue. The premises, a cross between social club and committee room, look, from the outside, like one of the many small insurance and real-estate brokers’ offices in the city. Except that the sunny yellow door with the peace dove painted on it makes it different. . . . Here, the 35 or so draft evaders who arrive each week from the U.S. experience their first contact with others of their kind."
-- Anastasia Erland, “Mark Satin, Draft Dodger,” cover story, Saturday Night Magazine (Canada), September 1967

"Satin grew up in a small town in Minnesota and felt an instinctive sort of rebellion, but unlike Bob Dylan, he did not play the guitar and so had no way of expressing it. . . . He found his answer [by emigrating to Canada]."
-- Dan Wakefield, “Supernation at Peace and War,” The Atlantic Monthly, March 1968

“The young men who came to Canada rather than take part in the Vietnam war always impressed me with their singleness of purpose. . . . Probably a more honest statement about the complexity of the feelings that caused them to reject their homeland in the turbulent days of the Sixties is expressed in Mark Satin’s Confessions of a Young Exile [Toronto: Gage, 1976]. . . . Satin’s emigration wasn’t dictated totally by his idealism. More often than not, he talked himself into radical positions and situations as a result of trying to impress his peers or his girl friend, or rebelling against middle-class parental authority. . . . Satin’s Confessions are convincingly presented in the italics and enthusiasm of adolescence.”
-- Jackie Hooper, “Satin Confesses He Talked Himself Into Exile,” The Vancouver Province, October 4, 1976

“Some surprisingly ordered thinking has been going on in the counter-culture. The evidence at hand is a book called New Age Politics by Mark Satin, an American expatriate living in British Columbia. In 60,000 words Satin has made a comprehensive critique of North American society and outlined a Utopian society to replace it. There’s no comfort in Satin’s analysis for anyone who believes that our present way of life is worth preserving. But there is reassurance about the means of transforming it; he’s a sincere advocate of non-violent persuasion. At 30 he’s already miles ahead of the academics and intellectuals who cling to the Marxist vision. . . .”
-- Robert Nielsen, “A Slightly Flawed Blueprint for a Whole New Society,” The Toronto Star, January 26, 1977

“Mark Satin . . . has devoted much time and energy since the late 1970s to develop[ing] an organizational structure for what can be called the ‘transformative change’ movement. . . . Instead of remaining embittered by having had to go into political exile, Satin saw the need for a healing process, both within himself and within the United States. . . . Within a few years Satin had been instrumental in forming a coalition called the New World Alliance (NWA). . . . The 39 members of the NWA Governing Council included teachers, futurists, environmentalists, feminists, think-tank members, and others from a variety of . . . backgrounds. . . . The NWA sponsored a number of conferences and facilitated local and national networking. In 1981 the group put forward a ‘Transformational Platform,’ which was the first attempt to take ecological, decentralist, globalist, and human-growth ideas and translate them into a detailed, practical political platform with almost 300 specific proposals.”
-- Arthur Stein, Seeds of the Seventies: Values, Work, and Commitment in Post-Vietnam America, University Press of New England, 1985

“The themes of New Age politics were first articulated in the late 1970s by Mark Satin. . . . Drawing on decentralist and feminist theories of the early 1970s, Satin’s New Age Politics called for an escape from the ‘six-sided prison’: patriarchism, egocentricity, scientism, bureaucracy, nationalism and urbanism. In its place Satin advocated a ‘third force’ which would transcend the traditional divisions between Marxism and capitalism, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. Still seeking that synthesis, Satin publishes the Washington [DC]-based newsletter ‘New Options,’ which has criticized both the Sandinistas and Reagan’s policy in Central America, while searching for a ‘different’ ground from pro-life and pro-choice forces on the abortion issue.”
-- Harvey Wasserman, “The New Age Movement: The Politics of Transcendence,” The Nation, August 31, 1985

“In the mid-Eighties, the real political creativity of our generation is focused in the struggle to move our most visionary ideas in from the fringe toward the practical political center. This struggle is still in its early stages, yet it is infused with an urgency such as we haven’t felt since the Sixties. One of the best places to watch it unfold -- and to take part -- is in the pages of New Options, the eight-page monthly newsletter published and edited in Washington, D.C., since February 1984 [and until January 1992 - ed.] by Mark Satin. For an explosive short course in political possibility, try ordering (as I did) a full set of back issues of New Options and reading one a day. . . . Satin’s is another archetypal generational journey. . . . [The Utne Reader and New Options] -- factual, skeptical, hopeful, anything but flaky -- are our generation’s most characteristic creations right now, and the networks through which we talk to one another.”
-- Annie Gottlieb, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Second Coming of the Sixties Generation, Times Books / Random House, 1987

"Satin's [Radical Middle newsletter] carries the encouraging news of an emerging group with a different voice, one that is 'nuanced, hopeful, adult' and that he calls the 'voice of cautious optimism.’ It is essentially the willingness to listen to both sides of the argument.”
-- Walter Truett Anderson, All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization, Westview Press / Perseus Books Group, 2001

“The 'radical middle' ideas [Satin] champions [in his book Radical Middle include] universal access to private health insurance, a universal system of national service, merit pay to attract and reward good teachers, stakeholder grants to expand the 'ownership class,’ affirmative-action efforts focused on economic disadvantage, not race, a military strategy that allows for humanitarian interventions, . . . and political reforms like non-partisan redistricting. . . . Satin does a good job in laying out these 'third way' policies concisely, and his advocacy is more than welcome."
-- Ed Kilgore, “Good Government: Time to Stop Bashing the Two-Party System,” The Washington Monthly, June 2004

For More Information

Contemporary Authors, Vols. 41-44 First Revision (1979)

Who's Who in America, Vols. 56 (2002), 58 (2004), & 60 (2006)

Who's Who in the World, Vols. 19 (2002) & 21 (2004)

Wikipedia: The Online Encyclopedia, Mark Satin entry

Amazon.com, Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada [nice collection of publisher blurbs and media quotes about the then 20-year-old Satin and the now nearly 40-year-old Manual]

Sherry Anderson and Paul Ray, The Cultural Creatives (Harmony Books / Random House, 2000), pp. 206-07 ["personal" side of the creation of New Age Politics]

Walter Truett Anderson, All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization (Westview / Perseus, 2001), pp. 177-78 [independent political scientist discusses Radical Middle Newsletter's innovative outlook]

Pierre Berton, 1967: The Last Good Year (Doubleday Canada, 1997), pp. 197-203 [Canada's Walter Cronkite reminisces about when "Satin's profile was so high he became the virtual spokesman for his fellow countrymen in Canada"]

Gail Cameron with Sandie North, "Why 'Good' Sons Become Draft Dodgers," Ladies' Home Journal (August 1967), pp. 96, 98 [my mother, using the pseudonym "Serena Swanson," tells the world how I hurt, disappointed, embarrassed, betrayed and outraged her and my father by emigrating to Canada. Great stuff to read at any age, but especially at 20. Sandie -- then a very straight and uptight person -- later played a key role in the famous feminist takeover of the Ladies' Home Journal office; see Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time]

Civil Rights Movement Veterans Website [click on "Veterans Roll Call," top left hand side of screen. Site also has (God knows how) a picture of me in Mississippi at age 18 along with other civil rights workers . . . click here & scroll to sixth from bottom photo]

Jerome Clark, "New Age Politics," in J. Gordon Melton et al., New Age Encyclopedia, 1st ed. (Gale Research Inc.), pp. 323-25 [discusses New World Alliance and U.S. Greens along with the New Age Politics book]

Oliver Clausen, "Boys Without a Country," New York Times Magazine (May 21, 1967) [trashes me and the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme. Nothing this crudely biased would be published in a reputable newspaper today. For my reply and Clausen's dishonest rejoinder, see NYTM, July 2, 1967]

Stanley Commons and Alison Wells, "Moving Politics With Spirit -- and Greyhound," New Realities (June-July 1978), 22-25 [New World Alliance organizing tour]

Helen Cordes, "New Options: Requiem Eterna," Utne Reader (May-June 1992), p. 46

Michael S. Cummings, "Mind Over Matter in the Prison," Alternative Futures (Winter 1981), pp. 158-66 [humongous, scholarly review of New Age Politics]

Dennis Duffy, "Perhaps Somewhere a Turgenev is Waiting," Toronto Globe and Mail (June 12, 1976) [snide review of Confessions of a Young Exile]

Anastasia Erland, "Mark Satin, Draft Dodger," Saturday Night Magazine [Canada] (September 1967), pp. 21-23 [cover story in Canada's version of Harper's or the Atlantic]

Marilyn Ferguson, Foreword to Mark Satin, New Options for America: The Second American Experiment Has Begun (distributed by Southern Illinois University Press, 1991)

Roma Gilbert, "Mark, Remembered," Media & Methods (December 1978), pp. 10, 41

Annie Gottlieb, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Second Coming of the Sixties Generation (Times Books, 1987), pp. 74, 80-81, 153-55, 371 [thoughtful comments on New Options Newsletter. Page numbers vary in later editions]

John Hagan, Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada (Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 74-76 [recycled and/or laughably biased second-hand material on my setting up the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, much of it factually inaccurate. Uses one flagrant misquote (of me, from 1967) that's legally actionable, not that I'd bother. Couldn't Prof. Hagan have checked with me before printing this stuff -- or is that too journalistic and vulgar?]

Lynda Hurst, "A Picture and a Thousand Words," Toronto Star (August 24, 2008) [retrospective on my journey from draft dodger leader to Radical Middle editor. Not a hero's journey. Very sensitively done]

Jackie Hooper, "Satin Confesses He Talked Himself Into Exile," Vancouver Province (Oct. 4, 1976) [astute review of Confessions of a Young Exile]

Florence Howe and Paul Lauter, "The Draft and Its Opposition," New York Review of Books (June 20, 1968) [widely cited article that purports to review Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada among many other books]

Andrew Jamison, The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2001) [contains the delightfully portentous line, "From the United States, there seemed to be . . . a number of ideologies that already then [1970s] seemed to be in competition with one another: the social ecology of Murray Bookchin, the new age politics of Mark Satin, the appropriate technology of Amory Lovins, the ecofeminism of Carolyn Merchant, to name some of those that I became acquainted with"]

Joseph Jones, "The House of Anansi's Singular Bestseller," Canadian Notes & Queries (Spring-Summer 2002) [wonderful retrospective in Canadian literary magazine about the genesis of the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, and about the Manual as a significant "character" in five novels and two memoirs]

Renee Kasinsky, Refugees From Militarism: Draft-Age Americans in Canada (Transaction Books, 1976), pp. 98-99 [probably the best of the draft dodger books -- which isn't saying much]

Ed Kilgore, "Good Government: Time to Stop Bashing the Two-Party System," Washington Monthly (June 2004) [1,000-word attack on my book Radical Middle by the policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council]

Linda Marks, "Mark Satin: Keeping the Dream Alive," in ibid., Living With Vision: Reclaiming the Power of the Heart (Knowledge Systems, Inc., 1989), pp. 199-200

John McClaughry, "What's This New Age Stuff?," Reason Magazine (August 1980) [contentious review of New Age Politics by Reagan speechwriter and policy advisor]

Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, Spiritual Politics: Changing the World from the Inside Out (Ballantine Books, 1994), pp. 81, 96, 111 [authors unerringly latch onto the most spiritually resonant passages from New Options Newsletter]; see also pp. 70, 72, 109 [authors discuss their experiences in New World Alliance]

"New Students, Seasoned Pros: Mark Satin," NYU Law School Magazine (Spring 1993), p. 9

Robert Nielsen, "A Slightly Flawed Blueprint for a Whole New Society," Toronto Star (January 26, 1977) [lengthy review -- on Star's op-ed-page -- of early, pamphlet version of New Age Politics]

Robert Olson, "The Rise of 'Radical Middle' Politics," The Futurist (January / February 2005) [sophisticated 2,000-word essay on Radical Middle and the movement it reflects]

Jeff Rosenberg, "Mark's Ism: New Options's Editor Builds a New Body Politic," City Paper [Washington, D.C.] (March 17, 1989)

Arthur Stein, "Mark Satin and the New World Alliance," in ibid., Seeds of the Seventies: Values, Work, and Commitment in Post-Vietnam America (University Press of New England, 1985), pp. 134-139

Leif Utne, "The Radical Middle," Utne Magazine (September / October 2004), pp. 80-85 [nice account of 10 arguably radical middle authors and activists, including M.S.]

George Weigel, "No Options," American Purpose (March 1989), pp. 21-22 [venomous attack on New Options in Jeane Kirkpatrick's husband's newsletter]

Roger Neville Williams, The New Exiles: American War Resisters in Canada (Liveright, 1971), pp. 62-68

Jules Witcover, The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America (Warner Books, 1997), first chapter [Witcover interviewed me at the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme office in 1967. In the book he uses this quote from me: "I feel as though a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. It's colder here, but you feel warm because you know you're not trying to kill people"]

Mark Woodhouse, Paradigm Wars (North Atlantic Books, 1996), pp. 2-3 [Prof. Woodhouse says that instead of "seeking new answers for old questions," I am helping us ask "new questions"]

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