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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 33, Number 9. 25 June, 1970

One Month in the Good Old U.S. of A. — Source: Newsweek

page 25

One Month in the Good Old U.S. of A.

Source: Newsweek

Yale Strike: Yale University goes out on a sympathy strike for Bobby Seale and seven other Black Panthers on trial in New Haven (Connecticut) for murder and kidnapping. About 200 students—"sporting clean jeans and neatly trimmed heads"—worked their way through New Haven to solicit support from citizens for the Yale strike. The "teach-out" met plenty of resistance. A woman in a kimono thrust her head out an apartment door and shouted, "Communists!"

Neutral Forces: The magazine The Washington Monthly in January exposed the American Army's action in maintaining a force of about one thousand Army officers whose function was to compile a black list "of potential U.S. enemies on the homefront." A national Teletype network linked the agents to every major Army command. The programme had been established in 1965, "mushroomed after the disastrous 1967 ghetto riots and soon was collating data from police and FBI reports, campus newspaper dippings and the Army's own operatives posing as newsmen, students . . ."

The American Civil Liberties Union took up the matter and, at a news conference towards the end of April, the ACLU produced its star witnesses—two Army non-commissioned officers who had participated in the Army's investigation. One was ex-Cpl. Oliver Peirce, 25, who said his Co at Fort Carson, Colo., had ordered him to infiltrate a program to help emotionally troubled young people, organized by local church groups, a ski club and the Young Democrats. The sin: one of the sponsors had been active in antiwar demonstrations. Witness No. 2 was former Sgt. Ralph Stein, 26, who said he got his marching orders three years ago from the "Left Wing" desk at Army counterintelligence. In a little over a year, said Stein, his desk (plus the "Right Wing" and "Racial" desks nearby) had collected and microfilmed data on A whole Who's Who of protesters ranging from Communist theoretician Herbert Aptheker to folk singer Joan Baez. Among the assignments: A request from a general for A full report on SDS—to send to his daughter at an exclusive Eastern women's college.

Earth Day: The organiser, Denis Hayes, was reported as follows: "Things as we know them are falling apart. Even if the war stopped tomorrow, we would still be destroying our planet. The businessmen and the politicians haven't come to realize that we want to live in this country 30 years from now. Some things are wrong. The poor have known it for a long time. Now all of society is starting to realize that."

That leaves room under the ecological umbrella for just about everyone except the everlastingly endearing Daughters of the American Revolution, who resolved that Earth Day was "subversive" and that reports of an environmental crisis were "distorted and exaggerated." In similar spirit, Georgia State Comptroller James L. Bentley, now seeking the Republican nomination for governor, sent out $1,600 worth of telegrams at taxpayers' expense pointing out that Earth Day fell suspiciously on Lenin's birthday.

Dear Sir: The Administration's communications gap with youth was first pointed up last week by one of the Cabinet's least-heralded members: Interior Secretary Walter Hickel, 50, an independent-minded, self-made millionaire (and the father of six sons). In a personal letter somehow leaked to the press at the same moment it was delivered to the White House, Hickel took the President gently but unmistakably to task for cutting himself off from the nation's youth—and from his own Cabinet. "I believe this Administration," he wrote, "finds itself, today, embracing a philosophy which appears to lack appropriate concern for the attitude of a great mass of Americans—our young people."

Hickel cited the example of the youthful leaders of the American Revolution. "Their protests fell on deaf ears and finally led to war. The outcome is history. My point is, if we read history, it clearly shows that youth in its protest must be heard." The Vice President's attacks on the young, Hickel went on, only served to seal off the channels of communication. And the President himself, suggested the Secretary (who has managed to see Mr. Nixon privately only twice since taking office), might do well to meet individually with members of his Cabinet: "Perhaps, through such conversations, we can gain greater insight into the problems confronting us all and, most important, into the solutions of these problems."

Everyone's Vp: Spiro Agnew chimed in with a few words on the continuing Yale Strike. Kingman Brewster, President of the University, had expressed his public doubt that black revolutionaries like Bobby Seale (one of the Chicago Seven) "could get a fair trial anywhere in America." Agnew fired back a demand for Brewster's removal.

Cambodia & Student Bums: Richard Nixon's decision on Cambodia was clearly the most important—and the most agonizing—of his fifteen months in office. For the President had gambled his own fortunes—and those of his party and his nation—on tactics that were perilously unsure of success. And the Republican President who had once promised to bring Americans together had, by word and deed, pulled them further apart. (The day after his speech, during a visit to the Pentagon, he scraped a little more oil off the troubled waters by denouncing student radicals as "these bums . . . blowing up the campuses.") "Whether my party gains in November is nothing" Nixon asserted, "compared to the lives of 400,000 brave Americans fighting for our country and for the cause of peace and freedom in Vietnam. Whether I may be a one-term President is insignificant compared to whether, by our failure to act in this crisis, the United States proves itself to be unworthy to lead the forces of freedom in this critical period".

Kent State—Rhodes: The Mayor of Akron, Leroy Satrom, had earlier persuaded Ohio State Governor James Rhodes to call in the National Guard. The Governor, who had made campus disorder a key issue in his tough campaign for the Senate, agreed. He said that the students involved in violence at Kent State were "worse than the 'brown-shirts' and the Communist element and also the night-riders in the vigilantes... the worst type of person that we harbour in America... We are going to eradicate the problem. It's over with in Ohio."

Cincinnati & Philadelphia: At the University of Cincinnati, about 1,000 people marched downtown from the campus for a 90-minute sit-in. Police eventually dispersed the crowd but not before arresting 145 demonstrators. Students at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., burned Mr. Nixon in effigy, blocked downtown traffic, then marched to a local General Electric Co. plant and denounced it as part of the "war machine." And in Philadelphia, Temple University students co-opted a National Guard tank, which had stalled on Broad Street, and used it as a background for antiwar rally.

Kent State—35 rounds in all: About 25 minutes after noon, as the smaller detachment marched back up to join the larger group, guardsmen thought they heard a single shot. Almost instantly, there was a salvo from troopers on the knoll that lasted at least three seconds. No warning had been issued and few students knew the guardsmen's rifles were even loaded. 'They're firing blanks," said one student to another, "otherwise they would be aiming into the air or at the ground." And, indeed, some of the sixteen or seventeen guardsmen who fired about 35 rounds in all may have done just that; others, unbelievable as it seemed, had fired right into the crowd of students. The shrieks and moans that quickly filled the air foreshadowed the toll: four dead, ten wounded, including a youth paralyzed from the waist down by a bullet in the spine. Ignoring cries for help, the guardsmen marched away.

Just Desserts: The President's first comment on the Kent State killings, as reported at a news conference by Nixon's press secretary, was "when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy."

Kent State—"Coming for their guns": "They didn't go to Kent State to kill anyone," cried the wife of one of the men who fired at the students. "I know he'd rather have stayed home and mowed the lawn. He told me so. He told me they didn't fire those shots to scare the students off. He told me they fired those shots because they knew the students were coming after them, coming for their guns. People are calling my husband a murderer; my husband is not a murderer. He was afraid."

"I am satisfied that these troops felt that their lives were in danger," said General Canterbury, 55, who was in charge of the troops. "I felt I could have been killed out there ... Considering the size of the rocks and the proximity of those throwing them, lives were in danger ... Hell, they were 3 feet behind us ... I do think, however, that under normal conditions, an officer would give the order to fire."

Some guardsmen on campus evidence little if any regret over the killings. "It's about time we showed the bastards who's in charge," said one. And many of the townspeople of Kent shared the same sentiment. "You can't really help but kind of think they've been asking for it and finally got it," said a motel clerk.

The Universities: Moderates take over: Professors, students and school officials—from presidents to janitors—who had never participated in antiwar efforts not only signed up for the duration but, more important, took control. Instinctively, these "moderates" and "conservatives" moved to seal off violence.

Communist Conspirators Shot in the Back: Augusta, Georgia, has 30,000 Negroes (out of a population of 70,000) living in angry poverty and isolation in a ghetto called simply "the Terry" (for territory). Last week, the blacks tried to burn the Terry down in a day-and-night-long spasm of rage, firing fifteen buildings, smashing countless cars and injuring 60 blacks. When it ended, there were also six Negroes dead—every one of them shot in the back with double-buckshot, and every one of them apparently shot in the back by policemen.

Georgia's Governor, Lester Maddox, announced over a local radio station that he was sending 1200 National Guardsmen and 150 state troopers into Atlanta to stop "the Communist conspiracy" that was "trying to bring this country to its knees."

Cambodia Protest: The National Guard was called out in Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Kentucky as well as at Kent State in Ohio. More than 200 colleges and universities shut down for at least one day in protest against the U.S. action in Cambodia and the Kent State affair, and at least eight (including Princeton) closed for the rest of the semester. The one main group missing with the blacks, who stayed aloof from the turmoil all week long. "A black kid got killed at Greensboro a year ago and nobody got upset," said a black student at North Carolina A&T College in Breensboro. "Now some white kids get killed at Kent State and everybody wants to march."

Nixon's Integration Policy—Fire integrationists: Southern congressmen have been assured by a high White House aide that "it's only a matter of time" before Dr. James E. Allen Jr., the U.S. Commissioner of Education, will be fired. The reason: Allen's resistance to President Nixon's softer school-desegregation policy.

Public Relations Man: Shortly after Hickel's letter arrived at the White House, a top aide (reportedly Presidential domestic-affairs specialist John Ehrlichman) told the Interior Secretary: "Cool it, Wally, this will blow over in 24 hours." And last week, Mr. Nixon's director of communications, Herbert Klein, encouraged Hickel to attack dissenters and the press in a unity speech to be given in San Francisco. Hickel refused.

On top of all this, some White House aides were confident enough that the Hickel affair had blown over to contemplate the public-relations bounty of the episode. "It was good for us," said one close to the President. "Hickel will be a very good speaker at universities."

Keep it Peaceful: Later that night, the President tried a remarkable new venture in communication. Unable to sleep, he arose at 4 a.m., roused his valet and asked him whether he had ever visited the Lincoln Memorial at night. He found about eight young people on the Memorial steps and engaged them in an hour-long conversation about world problems and his difficulties at home. "I told them," he said later, "that I know you think we are a bunch of so-and-sos—and I used a stronger word." Mr. Nixon was clearly making a special effort to establish rapport, but it was not entirely successful. "I hope it was because he was tired, but most of what he was saying was absurd," said Joan Pelletier, a Syracuse. University sophomore. "Here we had come from a university that's completely uptight—onstrike—and when we told him where we were from, he talked about the football team."

By the time his impromptu visit ended, the sun had risen and the crowd had grown to about 50. "Sure, you came here to clamor and shout your slogans," the President told them, "that's all right. Just keep it peaceful. Remember I feel just as deeply as you do about this."

Getting Things into Perspective: In the Justice Department, in an audience with Duke University law-school students, Attorney General John Mitchell caustically expressed his aversion to the whole student protest movement. One Justice Department insider explained the AG's performance this way: "Mitchell feels the students are abysmally ignorant of the facts of the problems they are complaining about. He thinks they are filled with notions based mainly on the superficial coverage of the media and he thinks they seem totally unable to place what is happening now in a historical perspective."

Long on Patriotism: In the middle of the Manhattan financial district last week, battalions of police poised behind grey barricades—looking for all the world as if they were about to defend the palaces of capitalism and the Establishment from the ravages of some proletarian mob. In fact, the cops' mission was to restrain an angry portion of the proletariat—brawny construction workers in the main—from smashing the heads of fellow citizens in a zealous, flag-waving display of their affection for capitalism, the Establishment and President Nixon's Indochina policy.

The problem arose a fortnight ago when the construction workers disrupted city-sponsored memorial activities for the four students killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University. Pouring down from nearby building sites at lunchtime, 200 laborers waded into peace protesters, mostly students, outside the old Sub-Treasury Building on the corner of Wall and Nassau streets, and bashed them with fists, metal hard hats and heavy tools. Even passers-by who seemed too long on hair and too short on patriotism were punched and kicked, while Wall Street clerks and secretaries cheered on the mob. Later, the workers marched on City Hall, where they forced staffers to raise the American flag from its half-staff memorial position—and then chased students of nearby Pace College into their building, battered some young people and smashed glass and furniture. In all, 70 persons were hurt, including many women. Four policemen were also among the injured, but in the aftermath some officers were reported to have stood by and in a few cases reported to have shown sympathy for the construction workers. There were only six arrests.

Many of the construction workers and their allies among the clerks and blue-collar workers around Wall Street shared a high sensitivity to the symbolic acts of defiance that are the protesters' stock in trade. "They spit on the flag," said one worker, "and that's aggression against the U.S."

Three separate investigations are under way into the first outbreak of violence. Of prime interest to the invesigating authorities were charges that the 'spontaneous' attacks on peace demonstrators had been planned at various construction sites in the area and that the plans had been disseminated by roving union shop stewards who encouraged their men to go out and "knock heads." Where the men got their American flags and their professionally printed signs was also a question. And so was the conduct of the police department. Even before the questions raised by past demonstrations could be dealt with, the hard hats scheduled their biggest rally of all for this week.

Jackson State: "We've got some niggers dyin' ": Without so much as A word of warning, the front rank of police and highway patrolmen scattered, dropped to their knees and loosed A fusillade of pistol, rifle and shotgun fire that lasted for nearly 30 seconds. Later, at least 230 bullet holes were counted in the building and all the window panes in the area of the firing were blasted out or shattered. (The TV tape recorded no specific orders to fire.) As coeds screamed and male students cursed, A highway-patrol radio dispatcher could be heard to say: "Well, I guess you'll need some ambulances." Replied a patrolman: "Yes. We've got some niggers dyin'."

The dead—both apparently innocent bystanders—were pre-law student Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, of Ripley, Miss., married and the father of an eleven-month-old son; and James Earl Green of Jackson, a 17-year-old senior at Jim Hill High School who was on his way home from a part-time job across the street from the JSC campus when cut down by the fusillade.

Into Cambodia?: Both Secretary Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers insisted last week that the Nixon Administration intended to withdraw all U.S. ground troops from South Vietnam by mid-1971, except for base-security forces.

Sitting in a TV Lounge, Eating a TV Dinner, Watching a TV War . . .

"Today it is technically feasible to provide live televsion coverage of a strike against the Communists in Viet Nam from a 7th Fleet carrier in the South China Sea," Navy Secretary Paul H. Nitze said Thursday.

"It is not too far in the future that the so-called 'armchair strategist' will be able to watch a war actually being fought from his chair in the living room," he said.

Nitze said such coverage depends upon "whether or not society is ready for it."—Memphis (Tenn.) Press-Scimitar.

And whether the colour compares favourably with "Bonanza".

Reprinted from the New Yorker, 4 March, 1967.

The Americans, like the Russians, are a nation of pious peasants.—

Bertrand Russell.