inside: the full story of stop the draft week days …
TRANSCRIPT
THEDAYSWESEIZEDTHESTREETINOAKLAN
INSIDE: THE FULL STORY OF STOP THE DRAFT WEEK
COPS "ARMED MERCENARIES/' SAYS EX-COP
IN THIS ISSUEBARRICADES IN OAKLAND - p. 3INSIDE STOP THE DRAFT WEEK - p. 4"MILITARY HISTORY OF STOW" - p. 6ANTI-DRAFT AND WOMEN - p. 11ARAB-ISRAEL - p. 10LADO IN CHICAGO - p. 16
By Steven Lindstedt
I sat alone in a tiny celL The monotony of the concrete was broken only bythe steel bars of the cell door - beyondthat, another concrete walL I had beencharged with a felonious assault upon apolice officer. Only four weeks prior, Ihad been a city police officer myself,in Berkeley. The transition had beentotal. In months prior, I had arrestedoffenders and now, I had been arrested;I had peered into cells before and now,I was on the inside, peering out.
The ranks of police had filled ClayStreet earlier that· morning. Opposingthem, a street full of demonstrators, Isensed that today (fuesday) would bedifferent from Monday. Barbara and I haddecided not to risk arrest, but merely toobserve the demonstration. It was in thisrole as spectators that we sought a safevantage point in the parking lot oppositethe induction center. A loudspeaker blareda warning and thEm, more distinctly, camea sharp order:" 'MarchI"
The police moved forward, at firstpushing and then hitting. Clubs wereswung above police helmets and camecrashing down amidst the demonstrators,The police were not selective, both menand women, young and old alike felt theriotsticks. The crowd broke easily;, thepolice could claim total victory for thisbattle.
STUNNEDI was stunned, bewildered. I could not
believe what was happening. Tears suddenly flooded my eyes; I held Barbaratightly and we turned away, unable towatch any longer.
Was it true? Had I been a policeman onlyfour weeks before? Had I been one ofthem? It was true. Perhaps I had not beena "good" policeman, but I had been oneof them. Perhaps I had neve\- believed it
when they said it was a war and thepeople out there were the enemy. PerhapsI had gotten too involved with the peoplethat I encountered. Perhaps I felt toomuch or questioned too much, Whateverthe reason, I never Q1lite made it as apoliceman.
The four weeks that had passed sinceleaving the force now seemed like a lifetime, I felt no commonality and no commitment to them. TtJey were strangers,As the morning progressed my estrangement was to be turned into reluctant involvement. The transition would be complete.
About two hours after the police hadcleared the street in front of the induction center, Barbara and I were watchinga group of demonstrators as they blockedtraffic. We saw a commotion behind a busand began crossing the street to get a better view of the activity. A lone Oaklandpoliceman came walking back from thefront of the crowd after his unsuccessfulattempt to disperse the demonstrators,Without warning and without provocation,the officer started shoving us with hisnight stick. I was able to step aside, butBarbara was hit in the back, Trying to protect Barbara, I attempted to step betweenher and the officer. She turned aroundand was struck in the forehead by theofficer's night stick. At this point, I began grappling for the officer's club.
CLUBBED
A squad of eight or nine Highway Patrolmen were suddenly on top of me. I wasclubbed and knocked to the grou~, I curledup and attempted to cover my head, StillI was clubbed and kicked. The policegrabbed my feet and dragged me downthe block, past the police lines.
Some 34 hours later, the charge was reduced froma '-felony (assaulting an officer)to three misdemeanors (including resisting arrest). The bail was reduced from
-$5500 to $220 and I was soon bailed out,I now await trial.
That particular Tuesday' will not besoon forgotten. It was a radicalizing dayand an enlightening day. Old illusions giveway to new perspectives -: the image ofthe police as community servants has beenreplaced by an image of armed mercenaries.
THE MOVEMENT PRESS449 14TH STREETSAN FRANCISCO, CA. 94103
The police across the nation are rapidlybecoming militarized; they are preparingfor battle. Urban police forces have increasingly employed military tactics andmilitary equipment. They feel that theirposition in the community has been threatened. They have reacted by resorting tomore frantic and more oppressive ways ofmaintaining "order." ......
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THE MOVEMENT is publishedmonthly by The Movement Press,449 14th Street, San Francisco,California 94103, 626-4577.EDITORIAL GROUPjoe BlumTerence CannonBobbi CieciorkaKaren KoonanBrooks PenneyBill MandelLOS ANGELESBob Neimann1657 Federal Ave. #5Los Angeles, Calif. 90025478-9509CHICAGOMike James4533 N. Sheridan Rd.Chicgo, Ill. 60640334-8040SUBSCRIPTIONS$2 per year, individual copies; $7 perhundred per month, bulk subscriptions.Advertising: $4 per column inch.
OPPORTUNISM
The violence that occurred last Tuesday,especially against those who sat-down(as in Los Angeles in june) stemmed inpart from the' 'mixed", confused natureof the demonstration, and the scatteredisolated nature of the sit-downs, Thesewere often surrounded by police andn,ncealed from view, The somewhat provocative nature of the self-defensive andre-ab::;orption taerics announced for themonitors led to their line, and the standing demvnstrators !Jebind, being drivenback 011 rop of those Sitting against thewall of the Centel-. This in turn led tothe indisaiminate cluhhing of those whowere trapped there, who fell or whoremained ::.ittin" in small groups, Theseevents cannot be compared with a solid,clearly demarcated sit-down blocking astreet from the outset of the demonstra··tion.
Yours in solidarityNigel Young
Berkeley, Calif.
In fact one may detect a certain opportunism by the steering committee incombining thus violent self-defense andnon-Violent sit-down tactics, This mayhave placated, and thereby recruited,the maximum number of demonstrators,but it placed those who sat-down in peculairjeopardy. It is even more dishonest tothen use this experience to further discredit a tactic whic, seriously planned,might have closed the Center for longer,and either have minimized (there wasprobably a limit to the numbers theOakland authorities were willing to arrest)or violence, or, given enough people.both.
I\Iaybe we can honestly consider this forDecember 4th, or whenever the next actof mass-resistance takes place, For itwould be disastrous for the movement ifthe Stop the Draft week leaders wereto' continue to delude themselves, andothers, about the nature of their following. This has so far been transient andunorganized; no democratic nexus ororganization was established betweenleaders and led; above all the follOWingis overwhelmingly NON-violent in anymeaningful sense, When violent seIfdefense and other tactics were suggestedfew responded; of over 330 arrested during the week only a tiny fraction wereengaged in physical retaliation to thepolice. When (on Wednesday and Thursday)the rank and file took over, the preference was for non-Violent tactics. Thesurrogate of defensive barricades on Friday, was not a step toward street fighting, but an expression of this same spirit,
,of " anti-violence". The fortuitous pu. licity (injunctions, the Res'istance, and
joan Baez) which increased Tuesday'snumbers were no substitute for a democratic grass-roots organiZing (there wereincidentally, Significantly more blackpeople involved with the ReSistance, whichHAS begun to organise). Nor can wedepend on charisma and manipulation assubstitutes for leadership. We have toBUILD a movement of resistance to thedraft.
P.O. BOX 8641EMERYVILLE BRANCHOAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
Now that the immediate exigencies ofunity which dominated "Stop The Draft\Veek" have dWindled, it may be permissible to voice a few criticisms fromthe ranks of the demonstrators, In particular, whilsr recogniZing the personalcommittment and courage of many of theleaders, one may I think express some,misgi \'ings about their tactics.
In their quite sectarian opposition topacifism, the leadership was led intorefusing to consider certain direct-actiuntactics (often associated with pacifistprotests) on their merits. For example.the possibility of massive civil-disobedience to shut down the Industion Centerwas never seriously contemplated, andthe si.t-down tactic, even when used, wasdiscredited both before and afrer Tuesday's inevitable fracas, The major arguments deployed against such tactics seemed to be - a) that such demonstrationsrequired a discipline and committmentthat was not available - b) that largenumbers would be reqUired to block thestreets around the center effectively c) that people were no longer ready tobe politely led-off to jail like "sheepto the slaughter" - d) that a sittingcrowd would have invited and been morevulnerable to police violence than a standing one (ruesday has been cited as a proofof this).
Dear Editor,
DIRECT-ACTION TACTICSIn response to the first two objections,
it is quite clear that there were bothnumbers and committment throughout theweek; it is true however, that a successful mass sit-down would have requiredprior pledges and training session for participants, As for the third point, thisstrategy of confrontation could have beenquite different from Monday's "smooth"demonstration were groups of twenty wereso easily shifted from the doorways, andpolitely walked to paddy-wagons, A largeSitting crowd pledged to non-co-operation(Le. at least a thousand at each 'entrance)would have presented the police with adifficult dilemma, Either they could arrest very large numbers (one can remember how long it took to shift 800 peoplefrom Sproul Hall) or disperse a peaceful,disciplined sitting crowd with force, Asfor the objection of vulnerability, in myexperience of many kinds of demonstration, here and abroad, (and in spite ofSelma) police are less likely to attackand club a sitting crowd than a standingone, the division between aggressors andsitters is just too obvious to the pressand public. When violence IS used a lineof sitting monitors is just as able toprotect itself and people behind it as astanding line, I have also seen mass sitdowns used successfully against mountedpolice and dogs,
torney, judge, Jury, and hangman.We do not know what happened that morn
ing. We do know that Huey Newton cannotreceive a fair trial. No black man accusedof killing a white cop has that chanceanywhere in this country. Add to this thefact that the Black Panthers have openlychallenged the racist nature of ., lawenforcement" and justice becomes amockery.
THE MOVEMENT asks its supportersto contribute to the Huey Newton DefenseFund.
HUEY P. NEWTON DEFENSE FUND
Huey Newton, the Minister of Defenseof the Black Panther Party for SeIfdefense, lies wounded in a hospital bed.Five cops are in the room with him,five more are outside the door, andten are down the hall. He has been accusedof murdering one Oakland policeman andwounding a second.
Already the newspapers and other mediain the Bay Area have signed, sealed anddelivered Huey Newton. With little evidence cited, they have proceeded to playtheir multiple roles of prosecuring at-
started Is["ae I put into the field twicethe soldiers as all the Arabs combined,not to mention the substantially betterequipment, Israel talks of the 50,000Egyptians in the Sinai, but always knewthat they could put 150.000 Israeli'sagainst them, Egypt knew that they hadno chance at that time, \Vitness what50,000 couldn't accomplish in Yemen,
You will find many jews, closely connected to their people, who ha\ e for theentire history of Modern Israel foughtthe policies of its government, The warhas somewhat sIlenced this argument. Itis terribly difficult to turn against abrother, against your' people, in theirtime of crisis, whatever your opinionof the cause and justice of that crisis,My heart is full of anguish over thecrimes of my people of the United States,I condemn the leaders in Washington,But I cannot tear myself from my relatives and neighbors who put those terriblepeople in office. The strongest weaponof the Imperialists is the call to patriotism. But it is the highest patriotism to renounce your own, if conscience dictates,
CONTINUED ON PAGE 14,
LANDIf you knew jewish history, you would
know that political Zionism, from itsinception in the late 1800's, proposed ajewish homeland as a theocratic state,That is a state of, by and for Jews, patterened after a contemporary understanding of ancient Jewish custom and tradition,Unfortunately, the above, not mentioningArabs, assumes that they do not exist inthe particular piece of land, Or if theydo exist, that they must be dealt with, Thehistory of modern Israel is a long succession of such dealings, The result wasto build up a sea of ha;:red which constantly threatens to drown IsraeL TheGermans lied about almost all of whatthey blamed on the jews, The Arabs arecorrect for almost all of what they say,Israel has displaced and appropriatedthe land of one and a haIf million people,If they did not intend keeping it, letthem place it in escrow with the UNor somebody. If they are going to keepit, as they are undoubtedly going to dowith what they won in •48, let thempay for it at least, They do not consider either idea worth talking about,In effect, they have fought for land,whatever the public pronouncement,
No, as a jew deeply bound to hispeople and to their traditions I do notbelieve Israel has a right to exist atthe expense of one and a haIf millionArabs. If it could not be done exceptat that price I would rather it not bedone. Because that price is changingthe jews of Israel. They are proud oftheir militarism, discriminatory againstthe darker skinned, racist toward the
DEFEND HUEY NEWTON!
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FEELING FOR ISRAEL
I write this letter in response to thatby Naomi Lauter because I believe shespeaks for a large percentage of liberaland progressive jews and because I thinkshe clearly places many of the points ofan enormous debate going on in theleft jewish community. And I think thatthere is an enormous stake,' both to allthe movements that we participate inand support, and to that humanist, progressive tradition which has made itworth being a jew for so many generations. For the events of the Middle Easthave provided the wedge for deep politicalinro.ads by the Republicans and also by theFar Right. And I do raise that as abogey-man. I dread the image of the survival of the state of Israel requiringthat the jewish community of Californiaadopt as spokesmen Reagan Murphy,Yorty, and Chuck Connors, as they didat the "Save Israel" rally in Los Angeles.I think that the modern history of Israelmay be creating a Jew that I don't wantto identify with,. SO,let us debate paragraph by paragraph, (an old jewish custom,) so that' the people who read thispaper may know us better.
While I don't have a copy of the "Movement" editorial on Israel before me, Iam quite familiar with the SNCC pOSition,and as a Secular jewish School parttime teacher in Jewish history I agreesubstantially with it. I further believe thatthe histery of modern Israel is a repeatof several of the worst episodes in jewish history. (Which also concerned the•'recapture" of Palestine from the natives. )
AnonymousDetroit,CaliforniaCanada
NOTE FROMUNDERGROUND
There is no queStion that I have alife long, deep feeling for Israel, asdoes almost every jew in the world,':I:ionist or non-Zionist. Which has mademost of us patsies for the "threat ofbeing pushed, into the sea" argument.In spite of the Arab bombast, in spiteof the constant threats, in spite of thecontinuous harrassment, the "threat ofannilation" is hogwash. The Israelileaders knew it. On the day the war
Dear Editor,
Dear Friends:Now that you have had Oakland and a
few other places, it seems appropriate toraise the question of what you will do withyour suggestion: Nobody Go, You showedthe public the Armed Force on which thiswar' and this country are based, and manydemonstrators saw that successful illegalactivity is what makes the public pay forits immorality. But you did not stop thecountry's induction processes,
The point now is, to put together the ideaof getting away with breaking the law withthe idea of not accepting induction, Sofar anti-draft workers have been stoppedover the question of what to offer menthey encouraged to refuse the draft, Thisis because they have thought that prisonis the major alternative, and because theyhave thought in terms of an organized underground as the only alternative theycould create,
Two years ago I refused induction, waslater arrested and had a trial date set,Since then I have met a number of men mostly black men - who have the same setof new or altered identification cards Icarry. Some of them took themselves underground in this simple way after jumping bail, most went immediately afterrefusing induction (important if you wantto jump bail later, if caught). The careless and the talkative have occasionallybeen caught (and are doing two years) butthere is not now the manpower to actively look for all of us, Many of us areactive in movement work in the lessconspicuous positions, others have notbeen active - but nobody went.
NOVEMBER 1967 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 3
BARRICADES IN OAKLAND
by Terence Cannon
OAKLAND, CALIF -- From 5 AMto 10-..30 AM, October 20>"10,000 peopleheld 22 blocks of downtown Oakland against2,000 police.
The cops were outflanked, outnumberedand outrun. The people barricaded thestreets with cars, trucks, concrete busbenches, potted trees, parking meters,street signs, trash boxes and lumber, inorder to block the buses carrying drafteesto the Oakland Induction Center. \
With cans of spraypaint they decoratedpublic buildings and streets with antiwar slogans and symbols. On the wallof City Hall a large sign read, "FirstLiberated Zone of Oakland:'
It was the first mass white clash withpolice in recent 'years, the first antidraft riot since the First World War.With the similar Pentagon action, it haschanged dramatically the peace, antidraft and st\!dent movements.
COALITION
Stop the Draft Week began in the officeof THE MOVEMENT last July at aninfo,rmal meeting of anti-draft organizerswho wanted to move opposition to the warand the draft from the level of moralportest to a show of power. They decided to halt the activity of the OaklandInduction Center during the week of October 16.
This action was first seen as bringingtogether black and white organizers arounda common issue. It became clear aftermany attempts that black organizers dis-trusted the idea of mass demonstrationsand felt that young white people werenot ready for clashes with the police.A •'wait and see" attitude was taken byblack activists, and attempts by whitesto draw in blacks were resented and seenas manipulative.
/'
SELF DEFENSEFrom the first, the STOW organizers
rejected traditional pacifist non-violenceand emphasized the right to self-defense.The hard-core pacifists bro'ke, off anddecided to t!l~let a seperate demonstratiori on Monday the 16th at the InductioIiCenter.
Most draftees come from lower and
working-class white communities. Rejecting non-violence was seen as necessary to reach them and to forge cooperation with black militants. (Those arethe POLITICAL reasons for droppingnon-violence; the 'real reason was thatthe organizers were angry and fed upwith getting themselves arrested andattacked and accomplishing nothing morethan ineffective moral protest).
ORGANIZINGMembers of the STDW Committee set
up and aided some community anti-draftprojects, but the timetable forced on itby the need to plan for a specific actionmade it difficult to carry through onprojects. The feeling of the planners wasthat the angry tone of the week wouldmake future organizing broader andeasier. Now that the week is over, thisfeeling seems to be justified: seriousorganizing has been given new energy. ,
ONTO THE CAMPUS
When school opened, STDW becamea campus issue, particularly at Berkeley.The UC Administration at first bowed tostudent pressure and allowed them to usea large auditorium for an all-night' 'teachin" and for organizing the activity.
The day before the "teach-ill" the Alameda County Supervisors got an injunction against the use of any universityproperty for "on campus advocacy ofoff campus violations of the UniversalMilitary Training and Service Act,", The students refused to let this stopthem. They came onto campus anyway,in the thousands. Illegal rallies wereheld on ,campus before and during theWeek. Students brought loud speakersonto campus under guard and took themaway afterward. In retaliation, the Administration suspended all campus organizations participating in STDW. Theresult was larger meetings, held illegallyby illegal organizations using illegal loudspeakers to plan illegal off-campus activities. The momentum could not be stopped.
THE WEEK: MONDAY
, Th~' 'Civil Action Day Commfttee, a'pacifist-oriented group that has been holding sit-ins at the Induction Center for
several months, began the week quietlywith a sit-in and support demonstrationat the Center. 129 were arrested.
The Resistance' had organized several
hundred young men to turn in their draftcards that day, which they did at theFederal Building in San Francisco. USAttorney Cecil Poole refused to acceptthem, but the box of 300 draft cards wasdumped over his head. (Pooie describedthe anti-draft activists as "rabble:' OnFriday Poole's government car was oneof those pushed into the street in Oakland, its tires flattened and used as abarricade. )
At Berkeley High School 700 studentswalked out on their classes and picketedthe Berkeley Selective Service office.,
THE "TEACH-IN"The Berkeley Administration and the
ASUC were in a bind. They had attemptedto take over the Monday all-night planningsession and turn it into an academictalk-fest. But when the, injunction wasserved on them they' locked the doors ofthe auditorium and lost any control overthe activities. 6,000 students attended theorganizing rally on the steps of SproulHall, to learn the plans for the next day,despite the rumor that cops might becalled onto campus to disburse' them.UC Chancellor Heynes 1eclined to invitethe cops in:, he had learned from the FSMand Student Strike.
Those willing to go to the Center weredivided into groups, and held more detailed planning sessions with the moni
,tors and monitor captains.
TUESDAY: MACE & CL~BS
At 4 AM, the rented fleet of 20 bus~s
began to ferry the groups to LafayettePark in Oakland, a staging area 7 blocksfrom the Induction Center.
The Induction Center is in downtownOakland, one block from City Hall, 5blocks from the Oakland Tribune building. To the west is the West Oaklandghetto, to the east the downtown shopping and business center.
The STOW Committee had expectedthe police to cordon off the area aroundthe Center."The cops, h~wever, allowedthe groups 'to mass in the streets infront and on the" Side of the building.
At 7 AM, the police moved out fromtheir field headquarters, a three-level
-parking structure across the corner fromthe Center, and waded into the crowd,.forcing the people down the streets andclearing the area around the Center.Despite the heavy use of riot clubs andChemical MACE - a concentrated teargas in aerosol cans - the groups heldfirm at seve-ral intersections, blockingtraffic and tying up the police in a wideperimeter around the area. Newsmen,bystanders and white-clad medics withred-cross armbands were clubbed andbeaten along with the deomonstrators.22 people were injured.
Police violence had been anticipatedand preparations made, but many demonstrators were surprised by the furyof the attack. The STOW Steering Committee was split over whether to continue the blockade the next 3 days. TheSan Jose, Stanford and San Franciscorepresentatives voted to continue: mostof the Berkeley group voted to stop.It was decided to have only peacefulpickets the next two days.
Berkeley High School students stageda boycott of classes and joined the noonrally at Sproul Hall.
WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY:THE NON-VIOLENT HOUR
On these days peaceful picketing anddemonstrations were held in front ofthe Induction Center. The monitors, ratherthan acting as' street leaders, merelykept the crowd orderly and aided thepolice.
The mass of demonstrators acceptedthis without enthusiasm. Rather than beingintimidated by the police attack, theywere angry and wanted to take back thestreets. "Is this all we're going to do -walk around the Induction Center 50times 7" asked a demonstrator Wecl:'lesday.
FRIDAY: THE BARRICADES"We're going back tomorrow, just like
we did on Tuesday, only smarter," aStop the Draft Week spokesman announcedin Berkeley Thursday afternoon. TheSteering Committee reunited again aroundthis decision and prepared for the useof tear gas and police violence.
The history of the blockading of theInduction Center iii' spelled out in detailin the other articles in this issue. Itis a proud story. Read on. ..
PAGE 4 THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBER 1967
STOP THE DRAFT WEEK:
EYEBALL CONFRONTATION at a barricade. Note the plywood shield in the center and the garbage can lid shield. Notealso that the police are surrounded: this happened several times during Friday,
By Terry Cannon ·and jeff Segal, Stop the Oraft Week Steering Committee members.
The political hassles inside a movement organization are rarely put down in print,except to expose or debunk that organization.. Public debate over the problems andmistakes of movement activity generally only occurs in the heat of battle and is carriedon in polemic for the purpose of winning political battles .. Rarely do we sit down afterwardand publicly discuss the results in the hope of learning from our mistakes as well as ourvictories, The Movement. feels that if we are going to start to treat ourselves, as amovement, seriously we must begin to engage in real exercises of self-criticism ..Without such self-criticism we are likely to make mistakes that could have been avoidedif we were more open and honest, .
The events of October 16 - 21 are among argument against the new position wasthe most important in the white movement. that only the middle-class and pro-What went on inside this effort is not fessionals could mobilize the strength tounique; we hope others will profit by what end the war, and they would be alienatedha'S been learned. What follows is by rejecting non-violence, The Steeringan attempt to analyse the internal events, Committee's response was that the warroughly in the order in which they occured, was not an isolated phenomenon but ende-and draw some lessons from them that mic to the American social system; whatare applicable to the operation of future was needed was a movement th<:!t wouldmovement activities. last after the war in Viet Nam was over
and such a movement had to be based on
The basic problem in dealing with PL,as well as any of the other left splintergroups, is their tendency to be verymanipulative. The practice of waitinguntil the last moment and then circulating leaflets undercutting or attacking theactivity is an example of this, as are the
MANIPULATION
working class whites, a black PLmemberand a campus PL person, without openlyidentifying them as PL When this wasbrought out in the open, the PL people wereforced to act as an open caucus, Whenthis was done it helped a. great dealto clear the air. The objection here is notover PL's politics but the way it,. andmost other left splinter groups, operatein open non-ideological coalitions. Theyact as tight secret caucuses that try tohide their politics behind a many-facetedorganizational facade, This should notbeallowed to happen, and when discoveredthey should be forced to act in the openso that all the members of the coalitioncan make their decisions based on thetrue nature of the po litical debate.
The second area of conflict came overpreparations for self-defense .. It was feltby Steering Committee members that oneof the major differences between thisaction and other demonstrations was tlitwe were mounting a serious confrontationto the draft system; this meant that wewere expecting the cops to act in a violent
'fashion and that we had the responsibilityto provide some kind of self-defenseframework. The PL people were all infavor of a general line on self-defensebut constantly.opposed as provocative anydevelopment of that in terms of providing equipment. This produced a conservative strain in Steering Committeeplanning ·and contributed toward the general lack of dear planning for the week.
SPEAKERSAt one point, when speakers for the
major pre-week rally were being nominated, it was decided that speakers representing the white working class, theblack co~munity and the univer~ityshouldbe selected, The PLers on the SteeringCommittee nominated a PL organizer of
speakers reflected the proper anti-imperialist line (the PL line), no realorganizing could come out of the week ..This conflicted with the feeling of theoriginal members that the ACTION of the
•week was most important, and would definethe ideology of the movement by creatingnew ways of struggle. The original committee felt that organizing people to .'\CTdifferently was the key. PL people wantedto get the largest number of people toaccept a corrlmon .slogan and intellectualattitude.
The loose structure of STOW madesuch problems worse .. New people would
be made here. In regard to the blacks; thefew blacks who came to Steering Committee meetings in july (having been turnedon by the basic idea of STDW) couldn'tunderstand who we were wasting so muchtime on the pacifists, who obviouslyweren't in the same bag that we werein. They decided that we probably weren'tworth bothering with and left.
The other result of this debate was avacillating image projected to the public.As long as we were unsure if people wereready for a really serious confrontationwith the police state we neither projecteda clear image of ourselves and ourprogram nor provided people (and ourselves) with a detailed plan of action forthe week.
The addition of representatives of endorsing groups to the Steering Committeebrought members of the ProgressiveLabor Party (PL) onto the Steering Committee. The PL members, however, didnot come to Steering Committee meetings as representatives of PL (nowhere inthe Bay Area ,did Progressive Labor, asan organization, endorse STOW) but cameinstead in the clothes of "front" organizations--anti-draft unions, organizingcommittees, etc. Until this was laid outin the open, it created a number of problems. They functioned as a hidden caucusinside Steering Committee meetings andgenerated long hairy discu·ssions about theideology of STOW. The que s t ion ofideology was brought up over and overagain but only in the context of choosingspeakers for rallies of slogans forposters and buttons; never where thatquestion would have had real content,around the STOW organizing activity.They felt that unless the slogans and
show up at each general meeting and raisethe same arguments that had been dealtwith the week before. TheelectedSteeringCommittee members represented a newfeeling rather than a specific constituency,The non-violent left and other groups werebetter organized than STOW, They spokefor visible groups of people. The SteeringCommittee, operating only on th(;. assumption· that people were ready for a new,militant action, was never, until the activities of Friday, October 20, on as steadyground.
After a few weeks the coalition-of-organizers idea was modified. Organizedgroups that were willing to participateunder the new discipline were 'asked toelect representatives to the Steering Committee.
STRUCTURE
PROGRESSIVE LABORMIXED TACTICS
Many stayed in in the hope that theycould prove by example that theirphilosophy was better. The participationof non-violent demonstrators on the militant days turned out to be a severehandicap. Most of those beaten on Tuesday were engaged in non-violent sit-insand were not able to get out of the wayof the cops. Others interfered with thebuilding of barricades and hampered themobility of the action.
Future militant action Will, hopefully,not attempt to "mix" self-defense andnon-violent tactics. The general feelingafter the week on both sides was one offriendly competition. The 'united front'idea seems to all to be impracticaL
The debate with the pacifists also addedto two other problems; our relations withblacks and the lc;ck of clarity in projecting the actual plans for the week. Thesewill be dealt with in more detail later;however, a couple of comments should
the people who carried the brunt of theexploitation -- poor and working classpeople, ethnic minorities, youth, etc, Thismeant speaking to them in a languagethat they understand; which is not pacifism ..
"Vo'hat about your violent plans?" objected a member of The Resistance,"What violent plans?" asked a SteeringCommittee member. "To have blackpeople participate," was the answer.
When the· pacifists failed in their attempt.to get STOW to accept their discipline,a large number walked out and set about·organizing a separate demonstration forMonday, October 16. Others, who weretactically, but not philosophically, attached to non-violence, stayed in. It was agreedthat they could have "their own thing"within STOW, but exactly how that wouldwork was never clear.
THE PACIFISTSThe view of the ·Steering Committee ran
directly counter to those who accepted anon-violent discipline, The older leadersof the anti-war movement were pacifistsout of World War Il, the SO's and 60's.On the campus, political activists hadbeen taking their guide from the civilrights movement before Black Power.
The first big debate was between theadherents of non-violence and selfdefense. General meetings turned intoheated arguments with the pacifists, TheResistance and faculty groups. A major
Stop the Oraft Week (STOW) began inanger, In late july a small group ofmilitant anti - draft and anti-war organizers met at The Movement office in .San Francisco. The problem: to "dosomething" about the draft.
They agreed on several things: newforms had to be found outside the traditional forms of moral protest demonstrations. "We've got to go beyond The Resistance," it was said. Young people werefed up with the draft and the war; theywere not satisfied with the basic operating assumption of the anti-war movementat that time: that the existing channels ofpolitical opposition were sufficient to endthe war and make changes in the society.That assumption had led to picketing,marches, peace candidates, complicitystatements, draft - card burning andturning-in, and the backing of establishment doves.
Peace people felt alienated, a smallhandful inside an apathetic to hawkishpopulation, They either played the numbers game: more votes and marchersmeant a stronger movement, or thoughtin terms of "militant" protest such asdraft card burning, which was no morethan a symbolic act of moral indignation,Their aim was to change the minds of·those in power, not to stop those inpower from operating, Militants formedunhappy caucuses inside liberal organizations, being either ineffective or embarassing to the larger group. They didnot feel safe on their own and looked for'4cover."
Those who called for Stop the OraftWeek agreed on some new ways of operating. 1) They would not bind people to theold non-violent discipline, It was feltthat if we were going to mount actionsthat began to seriously attack the powerstructure, the' 'iVlan" would respond violently, and we had to be prepared to defend ourselves from attack, Self-defensewas stressed. 2) We were going to "shutthe mother down," that was the importantthing. HOW would be worked out as theorganizing took place and was to besubordinated to the main objective ofclosing down the induction center foras long as we could.
A call went out to all anti-war activists in the Bay Area to attend a seriesof open meetings to work out the specificplans. At one of the early open generalmeetings a steering committee waselected, In it were both on and offcampus organizers. All agreed on the newassumptions. The group was seen asa coalition of organizers, not of organizations.
HOW WEEK BEGAN
.' J , I t I») r I ) l I ( ~ .' • j f r'
1_ L !
A POLI.TICAL ANALYSISNOVEMBER 1967 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 5
CONTINUED ON PAGE 14
OPEN MIKECriticism here is double-edged. On the
one hand, such rallies are in actualitynot democratic but manipulative, and produce charismatic figures or the demand'for popular speakers who can "sway themasses". There is a lot of jockeying forthe microphone at crucial moments at (hesame time that an' 'open mike" provides anillusion of democracy. The open mike wasnot the way to satisfy the needs of thestudents to. know what the Steering Committee was planning. It just added to theconfusion since people were at those rallies basically to find out what the hellwas going on. The only services the openmike provided were to give the complusive talkers a chance to mouth off and toprovide an illusion of democracy for thosewho needed it to cover the manipulative deals.
On the other hane; the lack of clearplanning for activity after Tuesday provided just the void in leadership that theOld Guard thought they had [he responsibili tY to filL
The Steering Committee had not decidedupon a plan of action for the rest ofthe week before Tuesday and by the timethe first day of clashes with the copswas finished most of the steering Committee were either in jail or too .tired andoverextended to work out any'clear plans.(One of the most serious deficienciesstemming from this lack of planning wasthe Steering Committee's inability to spellout specific plans for self-defense. Theresponsibility was thus thrown largelyon individuals to work out for themselves.)This lack of planning and ~he reaction onthe part of }he Berkeley leadership ledto a hopeless split in the Steering Committee: the off-campus San FranciscoOriginals, the San Francisco State PIers,San Jose State and Stanford wanted tocontinue activities; the Berkeley Originalsand the Old Guard wanted to stop. TheOld Guard did not want to be placed inthe leadership of a militant minority ofdemonstrators. The majority of people
,. ,
of mistakes that had been made in theplanning (or lack of planning)for the week,
Berkeley has a tradition of "democratic" mass rallies on campus, in whichpeople" decide" what course of action is tobe taken. The Old Guard relied exclusively on this, feeling that unless alarge proportion of people assembled ata rally supported them through handvotes, they couid not continue with theweek's actions.
The injunction by the Alameda CountyBoard of Supervisors prohibiting oncampus organizing for the assault on theInduction Center, and the attacks on STOWby Senator Murphy and others contributedgreatly to the momentum on campus, Thishas been labeled "fortuitous" by some, butit is unclear when reaction by the forcesin power is fortuitous and when it is thenatural response to any militant threat totheir controL
At any rate, it created a climate inwhich many Berkeley students carne toSTOW rallies to find out what the ruckuswas all about. Many then carne down onTuesday for the first militant action,The violent attack on the people by thepolice caused a strong reaction at Berkeley and shook the confidence of the Berkeley leadership (both Old Guard types anda good percentage of original Berkeleyiteson the Steering Committee).
Many Old Guard members steered clearof STOW until after the injunction, andthen moved in to the Steering Committeeto preserve their status as campus leaderswhen it wa~ clear that STOW had a strongmomentum. This made worse a number
from campus organizations at Stanfordand San Jose State (both largely representing SOS chapters). Roughly half ofthe Originals came from the UC-Berkeleyc\lmpus and gravitated back there fromcommunity and high school work they hadbeen doing during the summer to giveleadership to the on-campus STOW Committee, The Berkeley PLers also returnedto the campus.
The other half of the Originals, who didnot come out of a campus base, not working out of a specific community butmostly out of The Movement office, weresupposed to be building community contactin San Francisco. This WIS only superficially attempted and those people gravitated toward administrative positions,handling coordination, tactical planningand public relations work from the SanFrancisco office. Because of the militant,tight nature of the action that was beingplanned, the San Francisco half of theOriginals took on the job of cadre plannersrather than organizers; which producedsome serious strains within the SteeringCommittee.
INOUCTION CENTER MAIN DOORS, 6:50 a.m. Friday. (photo: JeffBlankfort ).
The Berkeley campus leadership,formed out of the FSM, VDC and 1966Strike a<;tions (herein called the OldGuard) has been around for a long time,Berkeley is a tight community and outsiders (not to be confused with non-stu-,dents) are not exactly trusted,
INJUNCTION
BERKELEY OLD GUARDSTOW began as an off-campus actiVity.
After school opened in September, thischanged, and it found itself in the leadership of basically a campus movement.
When school opened, the Steering Committee was composed as follows: theoriginal members who issued the Call,the PI, members. and representatives
feeling that the dratt issue was a cornman one and that the militant tone ofself-defense made cooperation possible,This coalition existed only on paper,however, and the Steering Committeerigidly kept on trying to build it longafter the possibility was gone,
The Steering Committee found itselfin a box and did lIot have the politicalsavvy to get out. It had been advised bysome local black organizl"rs that the bestway to involve black groups was to bringout a national SNCC figure, The nationalSNCC office agreed to send someone;however this did not work out, and realcontacts with local black organizers weremeanwhile postponed until it looked verymuch as if the Steering Committee wasdepending on SNCC to get black peopleto the action at the Indu'ction Center,
There was also a great deal of loosetalk by Steering Committee members tothe effect that if a strong SNCC person were brought out, the militancy ofthe week would be insured, Many people
associated with STOW were afraid thatwhite people could not be militant bythemselves, Again, we were operatingon assumptions alone and were gettingthe jitters that only a few hundred peoplewould show up. This feeling about whiteyouth was shared by young black people.Mark Comfort, in Oakland, reported thatthough East Oakland liked the idea of theweek, they felt that when the cops attacked, the white kids would run awayand leave the blacks fighting the cops.
The Steering Committee was accusedof using the black community by planningrallies in the Oakland ghetto (which isright next to the Induction Center). Veiledthreats were made that black youth inOakland would attack the white activists forattracting the cops to their community.Finally, much too late, the Steering Committee agreed to move their rallies outof the ghetto and to abandon the blackand-white-together bit and go it alone.
This proved to be one of thE; group'ssmartest decisions. Tuesday and Fridayproved without a doubt that white youthsare ready and willing to clash with thepolice and defend themselves. As a resulta new pride and energy has been givento them. They no longer feel in the shadowof the black liberation movement.
The result of all of this has been anew attitude by blacks, both in the community and in militant organizations.There is a new empathy toward the whitemovement and a feeling that white peopleare finally beginning to talk their language.
attempts to gain control of pieces of theaction through surprise maneuvers.
In a leaflet issued one day before theweek began and circulated heavily on theUniversity of California campus, PL accused the STOW leadership (of which theywere a part) of "white chauvinism," of"maneuvering to get the cops to attackthe demonstration," and of planning for"pop-art guerrilla warfare." The chargesof "white chauvinism", while putting afinger on a serious problem, attacked theSteering Committee for something thathad been solved before the leaflet cameout (and which will be dealt with later).The accusation that we were leading lambsto the slaughter ignored the fact thatpeople were told to expect police violenceand be prepared to meet it. It is a curious
'accusation to come from the PLers sincethey were the ones that argued againstself-defense preparation in the SteeringCommittee. The attack, in general, waspolemical in tone and was done to winpolitical points, not to provide any reasonable, concrete solutions to the many realproblems that we had to deal with. Itsbasic purpose, obviously, was to gain asmuch miEage as possible out of the actionand to show what they consider just theproper amount of ideological differencesiii order to recruit people with similarcriticisms of the activity.
Of PL's charges, the one dealing withblack-white relationships was the mostlegitimate, From the beginning STOWhoped to build a black-white coalition,
BLACK ANDIOR WHITE
TWO CARS AND A TREE FORM A BARRICAOE. Many black residents of the area'helped block the streets. (photo: Jeff Blankfort).
SUPPORT DEMONSTRATIONThe UC campus PLers provided the
second example of manipulation whenthey sent a large number of their members (armed with bull horns) down to thesupport demonstration and moved it fromthe decided-upon spot in front of the draftboard (about 10 blocks away from the Induction Center) to the front of City Hall(a block away from the Induction Center).
The PLers thus moved into an areaof danger a large number of people whohad already decided they did not wantto be so involved and did so without makingthat danger clear. The result was thatthe members 'of- the support demonstration got caught, along with others, in aseries of confrontations with the copsthus hampering already made preparations for self-defense and finding themselves in situations they were opposedto being in.
In spite of all of this, however, the SanFrancisco State PL group did an excellentjob of organizing for the week, and broughta disciplined, ready group to the action,They maintained their militancy in theface of vacillating Berkeley leadership and argued constantly that STOW was,in fact, an aid to campus organizing.
PAGE 6 THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBE R 1967
POP-ART GUERRILLA WARFARE
Here is a map of the terrain that we had to work with.
Telephone link - -
Walkie-talkie link ----
cop cordon.
substitutes for each of these people whowere trained as regulars.
Besides the monitor squads there wasthe Lookout made up of a chief lookout,(imported from Chicago) his beautiful,red-haired assistant, a walkie-talkieoperator, and 2 runners which was responsible for general coordination of thestreet activities. There was also a firstaid station operated by doctors and medicalstudents.
MONDAY NIGHT& IIBLOODY TUESDAYII
The final planning stage began Monday evening on the steps of Sproul Hallof the University of California-Berkeley.'Here the bulk of the participants met todiscuss the plan of action., (a group ofabout 150 came up from Palo Alto onTuesday morning as well as a contingentof about 200 from San Francisco).
It was at this time that the bulk of theparticipants were instructed as to thegeneral plan for Tuesday, were giveninformation on what to do in case ofarrests. and were divided up into groupsand assigned monitor squads. The groupsthen discussed and asked questions untilthpv heQ'an to ship out at about 4 a.m.
The approximately 3,000 participantswere brought into the area via rentedbuses and car pools, cleared themselvesthrough the staging areas and proceededto move to the IC along their pre-arranged street routes at about 5 am: Here,we received our first surprise. We hadexpected to meet police resistance, inthe form of cordons, at the intersectionsaround the IC. However, there was none,and we were allowed to take the twoblocks in front of the IC's doors (Claybetween 15th & 16th and 16th betwee"nClay and Jefferson). The cops had takenover control of the 4 story parking garageon the southeast corner of 15th and Clay(kitty-corner from the IC) as their head-
This is a diagram of our communicationschain.
2) We felt that a system of trained monitorsquads, who would train (and be responsible for) certain grolJPs of peoplewould afford us the best way of disseminating information and instrctions tothe participants.3) We felt that the squad-group systemwould provide us with the most flexibleusage of our participants. That througha centralized communications system wewould have a maximum of flexibility inmoving. the troops around to get at the IC.
We had a total number of 11 monitorsquads; 8 basic "assault" groups, 2monitor squads who were responsiblefor control of the 2 staging areas nearthe IC (see map). and 1 to handle thegroup of people who wanted to be involvedin a sit-in (thiS is the set-up as developedfor Tuesday; there were changes for activity on Friday). Each monitor squadwas made up of a chief monitor, a walkietalkie operator and a runner. There were
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6--- -.' ,"~-"-" OL/..~ ./ '
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Four basic rules of thumb came out ofthis general position.
1) We would try to avoid getting arrested. We understood that merely beingin the area of the IC meant that we ranthe risk of getting arrested but that' thegoal of the action was not a large .numberof people in jail. That would just cost ustime and money and not get us any closerto our objective.
2) We would try to avoid direct contactwith the cops whenever we could. Thatmeant that people were ~1.9 to spJit ifattacked by cops; if the cops moved into'an area to clear it out we would go if itdidn't seem that they were doing it to getthe inductees into the IC.
3) People were told that they had theright to defend themselves. We felt thatjust because of the stated purpose of theaction there would be police violence. Thismeant preparation for self-defense BEFORE the action began. We encouragedpeople to bring whatever they thoughtnecessary to aid in self-defense and alsotried to instill,a feeling that self-defensemeant collective self-defense. If you cimget people away from the clutches of thecops - do it. j
4) People were given information on anumber of tactics that the cops might useand our suggestions as to how to combatthem. But people were told that they wouldhave to think on their feet •• 'Do whateveryou can to close the IC down. use yourimagination and don't be afraid to innoy.at~' BE FLEXIBLEI
Before getting into the guts of the activity, one clarification. This article isonly concerned with two of the five days ofSTDW - Tuesday. October 17. and Friday. October 20. The first day of the weekwas given over to the pacifists who heldan orthodox non-violent sit-in. Wednesday and Thursday· were normal type picketlines with small sit-ins connectea withthem and have no utility to the purpose ofthis article.
The actual planning for the "military"aspects of STDW started about 3 weeksbefore STOW when we called togetherabout 50 people to a monitors meeting.There were 6 meetings of thisgroup.who were the people that made up ourmonitor squads and acted as the skeletonstructure for the action on Tuesday (someof these p~ople were also part of the structure for FTiday but the set-up was slightlydifferent).
It was at these training sessions that we.developed our basic organizational structure and trained people in the skills that weneeded (Le. operation of walkie-talkies).
In discussions before the week began itwas felt that we had to break down the organization of people being brought to theIC to a number of groups, the minimumsize being 250. This was done for threereasons:1) We felt, prior to Tuesday's action, thatthe cops might try to break us up beforewe got near the IC and that it would bemuch harder for them to deal with a numberof small groups converging on the ICfrom different directions than one group
/ marching to the IC. We decided on 8 groups(With one monitor squad for each group)since we thought that the cops would tryto cordon off the area instead of letting usget near the IC That was the maximumnumber of groups needed to cover intersections around the IC
PRE-WEEK PLANNING
One of the basic propositions that Chepresents in •'Guerilla Warfare" is thatin all actions one's tactics must flow outof one's strategy. This became a key operating rule in the planning for STDW. Sinceour strategic goal was the closing of theIC our plan was to attempt to do that witha minimum of cost.
"We hope that one of the accomplishments of STDW wiIl be the developmentof a new kind of demonstration. Insteadof a fixed plan of action. we have attempted to describe a set of alternatives which will provide the flexibilitynecessary to achieve our goal - closingdown the Induction Center - with a mi.nimum of arrests and police violence."
of our own movement) did we PLAN forand CARRY OUT an operation whose object was the taking of contiol over one ofthe basic institutions of the society. Weorganized in advance that manner in whichwe expected to defend ourselves, and <?urplan took the form of a military actionagainst the cops. The attempt was only afeeble one but it has given us real experiences to sink our teeth into andlearn from.
We have now had clashes with thepolice in more than a dozen places aroundthe country since the beginning of STDWand 1 am confident that those clashes willgrow in numbers and in militancy. Wemust seriously study each new encounter,provide ourselves with the preparations tomeet the cops in battle and win.
This then is an attempt to present toour comrades in the movement an analysisof the specific tactics that were usedand the lessons that we learned fromour struggle. so that the next time all ofus will be more prepared than before.
And the battles will not be merestreet fights with stones against teargas bombs. nor pacific g e n era 1strikes; neither will they be those ofa furious people destroying in two orthree days the repressive superstructure of the ruling oligarchies. Thestruggle will be long. harsh. and itsbattle fronts will be the guerillafastnesses, and also the cities. ,hehomes of the fighters - where therepressive forces will go seekingeasy victims among their families- the dwellings of the massacredrural population. the villages or citiesdestroyed by the bombardments oftheenemy. _ Che Guevara
TACTICS
By J eft Segal
.,A primary purpose of this book isto make available to civil and militarylaw enforcement agencies the most upto-date methods of handling crowd andriot situations. Its scope ranges fromthe friendly persuasion of a peaceful crowdto the application of varying degrees offorce when lesser means are inadequateto insure control, even to the use of ballammunition in an all-out riot •
•'Simply stated. a mob action is abattle between the forces of law andord~r and persons or groups who havetaken the initiative in attempting to wrestthe ability to enforce the law from thelegally constituted police forces. lf themob succeects. law and order may be replaced by anarchy."
The above are two paragraphs fromthe introduction to •Crowd and Riot Control' (formerly called, KiIl or Get KiIled)by Col. Rex Applegate. This book is themajor text-book for po Ii c e agenciesthroughout the US.
A primary purpose of this article is tomake available to movement organizationsand organizers the most up-to-date meth,ods for handling police and police connected agencies in situations of struggle.Its purpose ranges'from peaceful discussion with the cops to varying degrees offorce when lesser means are inadequateto insure control and provide for the success of the guerilla action.
Simply stated, a peoples' action is abattle between the forces of the presentlyconstituted power structure and per>sonsor groups who have taken the initiativein an attempt to take control for themselves. lf the people succeed. law andorder may be replaced by Anarchy.
SEEDS FOR THE FUTURE
NOVEMBElZ 1967 THE MOVEMEI T PAGE 7
We moved out of Lafayette Square atabout 6 am and marched into the area
park benches in the middle of the blockso as to use the traffic on 14th to blockthe traffic from coming down Clay. Thetactic of bUilding barricades and blockingup intersections was widely used on Friday.
VICTORIOUS FRIDAY
CONTINUED ON PAGE 13
WE TAKE THE STREETS
Most of the discipline from Tuesdayremained the same for Friday. In juxtaposition to Wednesday's and Thursday's• 'peaceful" demonstrations, people weregoing back Friday, "to do it like Tuesday,only smarter !" However, two basicchanges were made. The first was thatwe were going to eliminate, as much aspossible, the use of the Sit-down. Thesecond, and more important change, wasa redefin Ition of our tactical focus. Thefocus changed from the doors of the ICto the buses bringing the inductees in.It was felt that our real strength layin our mobility. We would bring ourmonitored groups into the area aroundthe IC and plan ahead for the dispersal.Groups would be assigned intersectionsand attempt to block them up. We wouldstop the induction process by fucking uptraffic in downtown Oakland. We wouldnot wait for the cops to come and beaton us, rather, we wou'ld split from oneinten;ection to another and reqUire thecops to come out after us. They wouldhave to fight on our grounds insteadof us fighting on the cops' grounds.
Firday morning people met directlyat Lafayette Square (staging area V).There were ori Friday about 10,000 people. Once the people arrived in the parkthey were divided up into groups, eachwith its own monitor squad, and orientedto the new battle conditions. This timepeople were more prepared to engagethe cops -- a good portion of theparticipants wore helmets of one kind oranother, most wore heavy coats, andpeople generally brought a wide varietyof protective equipment. We also had onTuesday (see description at end of article),a large supply of aerosol paint cans forpainting up the streets, and a couple ofold cars that people donated for turningover in the interseotions.
What we did not have was a communications system. The communications system used on Tuesday was much tooprinitive and, we decided, more botherthan worth without major additions ofequipment. We will need this kind ofsystem in the future but will have to getahold of much more electronic equipmentthan we had.
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!,I
iDiagram of blocking of intersection.
A group of people (With one of themonitor squads) moved onto 14th fromClay and decided to try to block. up theintersection of 14th and Clay to prohibitmovement down Clay. They came up withthe idea of building up a barricade using
for quite a while and began to build awhole new psychology th3t proved veryhelpful on Frid.lY. The second was thebuilding of a barricade to stop up trafficon 14th Street.
r::-were
the police activity that have been practically unreported.1) A good proportion of the police violence came as a result of individual orsmall groups of cops flipping out (out offear, hate, lust, etc.) and charging thepeople. Many people were attacked justbecause they were standing near cops.2) The most difficult thing for people tohandle and what caused mo'st of the fearon our part was the use of mace. Peoplewere unfamiliar with the small macecans and did not know what was happening to them. Advance training in this areawould be helpful in the future.3) The police seemed to have a beat-upand disperse policy as opposed to an'lrrest policy. They had very little abilityto •'take prisoners" and were more interested in driving us off than arrestingus.4) Cops were very uncomfortable if therewas just a small number of fhem in anarea filled .with people. We found thatthey would move back to strong unitstrength and when one or two of them gotcaught in a group of people, they got outfast.
Two small scale experimenls were madewhile we were waiting it out with the copsthat proved significant for Friday. TIlefirst was that along about 8:30 a couplehundred people moved out into San Pablo(which is one of the main drags in Oakland) for the purpose of blocking uptr affic on the street. This tied up traffic
PUSHING A CAR INTO THE STREET for a
barricade. Dig the altered street sign and thespraypaint can 'in the rear pocket. (photo: JeffBlankfort).
ATTACK
These people reacted to the policecharge by sitting down and proclaimingthemselves a non-violent sit-in. Thism0ant very little to the cops, who wereafter blood. They just stepped right into,on and over the people Sitting, Most ofour injuries resulted from people sittingdown. One of our prime watchwords thatcame out of this experience was, •'don'tsit down."
The cops then proceeded to slowly andmethodically clear larger and larger segments of Clay and then 15th. They endedup pushing us to 16th and Clay, 14 andClay, down 15th to Jefferson and up 15to San Pablo.
I--![ --p '![~]C~[~JJShows our position ~
before cops mo.ved in, 'E
DON'T SIT DOWN
Once this was done we were left withthe situation of a static perimeter aroundthe IC. The cops stood on the insidefacing us and we stood on the outside facing them. The buses were finally broughtin, about 9 am, strafght down Clay St.
POLICE BRUTALITYMuch has been said (and undoubtedly
will be said) about the police brutalityon Tuesday and there certainly was a greatde;ll of billy club swinging that day. However, there were a number of things ofthin~s of significance that came out of
quarters and stationed about 600 copsin it. They arrived just before we did,·
We were unprepared for this particulartactic and ended up doing little else thanfilling up the large area 3round the 3doors with bodies until 6.:30 3m when thecops started to clear Clay, During theperiod of time between 5:00 am and 6:30am most of the activity took the formof marching up ;lnd down in the streets.chaining up the doors (which were veryquickly freed after we .lost control of thedoors) and waiting for the cops to dosomething.
Shows our posmonafter cops moved in. x. ',',.,
Sure enough at 6:30 ;lm a large segment of cops moved out of the parkirtgstructure, formed themselves into a wedgeformation and started to move down Claycrossing the intersection of .and Clayand down the block to 16 and Clay. Herewas our first encounter with the cops andthey won. The cops moved into the crowdof demonstrators swinging billy clubs andspraying people with MACE. This produceda lot of confusion in our ranks. Peopleran into each other and many panicked.
The most serious problem that we hadat this point, however, revolved aroundthe people who came down to participatein a sit-in. This was a group of peoplewho were tactically wedded to the form ofa non-violent sit-in and wanted to dothat within our action. We had told themthey cou ld and sent them down to the ICearly as part of a "peaceful" protestgroup. This was contingent, however, onthe possibility that only they would beable to get near the doors to the Ie,When everybody got to the doors of theIC it no longer became necessary for usto use the cover of a sit-in to get peoplestationed near the door and the sit-inbecame an unnecessary tactic.
There is a movement now in this country that it makes sense to describe as. a re- .sistance. What a year ago was merely a slogan has begun to take shape at inductioncenters, in the corners of small offices, in the character and style of increasing amountsof anti-war work and the consciousness of growing numbers of people that they cancreate a real opposition to the Johnson Regime. There is still a great deal of confusion .and groping. The resistance exists at the fringe -- on the edge of the student movementand the university community, at the margin of the poor and decaying communitieswhere the offices and apartments of most of the resistors are to be found.
This article outlines a program of resistance; it seeks to clarify objectives anddescribe a way in which part of the resistance can root itself in poor white and lower paid
The following article is by a group of young white organizers who plan to begin implementing this program invarious cities across the country. The Movement prints itin the hope of stimulating 'discussion on long-range plansto fight the war and the draft and to effect basic socialchange. Next month we will print a critique of this plan bycommunity organizers in Chicago. We hope other articleswill follow.
PAGE 8. THE MOVEMENT
INDUCTEES reading anti-draft literature,
WE'VE GOT TO REACHOUR OWN PEOPLE •-.
working class communities; it attemptsto suggest the urgency, need and potential for establishing those roots now.
WE CHOOSE RESISTANCE
, Much of the anti-war movement, regardless of rhetoric, seems predicatedon the assumption that existing power islegitimate and that the regular channelsof political opposition are sufficient toend the war. For that reason it hasconcentrated on proving that there is SUbstantial, growing public sentiment againstthe war (tbrough large demonstrations,petitions, newspaper ads, referenda, etc.)and it has done this quite effectively.Its method has concentrated on antiwar propaganda and education and symbolic appeals to power. Even the mostmilitant, civil disobedience advocates havegenerally directed their energy towarda Ghandian confrontation with and appealto power.
We are convinced that power throughoutthis society is illegitimate and will continue to be basically unresponsive to publicopinion and normal political pressure.That conviction FORCES us to a conception of resistance -- an effort toimpede and disrupt the functioning ofthe military/poill*-al machinery whereverit is local and vulnerable. We join a resistance movement out of no great optimism about its capacity to end the war;indeed we call this a resistance, not arevolution, because entrenched power istoo strong to be broken. At best a resistance can delay and harass, strengthening the internal conflicts that make thewar costly, aiding marginally the Vietnamese whose prosecution of the waris the most critical determinant of itsoutcome; at best a resistance sets seedsthroughout the country of a movementaimed directly at imperialism and domestic exploitation.
What we do believe, however, is thatthe resistance can draw together thosepeople who seek real power to deflectthe war. We believe that a resistancecan draw together people who are sufficiently detached from the integrativesocial mechanisms of th'is country so thatthey could never participate in a propaganda/symbolic-confrontatiOn - orientedmovement. In this sense, we think the resistance can make available to manypeople who are now denied it, a credible(believeable, possible) form of oppositionto the war.
WORKING CLASS & POORIt is here that the war hits hardest.
It is young men from these communitleswho do most of the dying in Vietnamand it was their fathers and brotherswho did most of the dying in Korea. Itis their unions that will be surpressed
in the name of the war effort, their wagegains that will be erased by war inflation,their checks that will feel hardest thesqueeze of a war tax. And it is also thetoken programs of relief, job training,school improvement, and rent supplementthat will be cut off in their communitiesbecause of the war.
But it is here that the anti-war movement has had least experience and leastsuccess. Paradoxically, the people mostbrutalized by material and social exploitation, the p eo pIe pushed unceasinglythrough the processing of school, militaryand job seem unmoved by the anti-wareffort. Partly this is explained by themassive, unthinking, unchallenged racismand patriotism (anti-communism) whichthese communities share with the restof white America and which must be brokenif a movement is to succeed. But moreimportant, we feel that these are exactlythe communities that will not be reachedby the symbolic, propaganda tactics ofthe current sense of REAL GAIN, a sensethat political activity represents morethan the demonstration of disaffection. Itis in these communities that a resistancemakes most sense.
Because grievances are so deep, somuch a part of the marginal economicand social web of people's lives, themovement of opposition, once triggeredcould be very powerful. We choose towQrk here because people do have a deepsense of exploitation .that can lead themto identify not only with their own struggle,but with oppressed people everywhere.It makes sense to talk in these communities about the need and right ofself-::defense and self-preservation and tospeak of democracy as the unadornedright of people to make the most important decisions about their lives. Thereis little of the legalism and formalismthat can paralyze other sectors of thesociety, but rather a profound but segmented anger th;J.t can be kindled andunited' by the existence of a credibleopposition to the war.
WE CHOOSE THE DRAFTThe draft and the war are issues now,
everywhere. There is no need to manufacture them or convince people of theirimportance; the conviction is implantedtwenty times a day by television, radio,papers, conversations and the visible signsof war inflation and pressure -- not theleast of which is the caskets rolling backinto the community from Vietnam. Unlikesome of the other things community projects have tried to work on, there is noneed to produce "consciousness" abGutthis issue.
We want to focus on the draft becauseit is the MOST IMPORTANT AND MOSTTANGIBLE manifestation of the war in
'most people's lives. Hardly anyone existsin a lower class working community whodoes not have friends or close relativeswho are in the army or threatened by it.Coming into the community with a program that will help people deal with thisproblem, that will keep themselves ortheir friends or their children or theirloved ones out of the damned war, cutsthrough to the very heart of the issue.It is a way of fighting back, a methodof self-defense, and it makes the opportunity for opposition credible and compelling.
Unlike many issues, the draft is important enough so that people will takea stand and accept the risks that thatimplies. It is only when an issue ormovement is so important that the goodaverage American will take a stand againsthis neighbor or his bowling team or themen he drinks with ,or works next tothat you have it chance for a significantsocial movement. Revolutions always tearcommunities apart. It is that tearing thatrepresents the splitting of the social fabricwhich has held people in belligerent allegiance to their country in spite of theirdisaffection. Very few of the issues we
.have organized around have been thatpGwerful. This one is.- And although opposition to the war willdivide a community in very importantways, it will unite it in others. Thereare few issues that will unify a marginalcommunity across its fractured status
'and economic lines. For example, theantagonism between wor~ersandwelfarerecipients frequently keeps them fromworking together. But the draft cuts acrossthose lines. It can bring the welfaremother, worker, parent, young person intoone cause and into a common sense ofthemselves and their position as opponents.
The clarity of this issue and its importance, can strengthen the oppositionto other institutions when they are usedto surpress it. When the school expelsstudents for forming a high school draftresistance league, the general anger ofthe community about the school has afoundation and anchor that the abstractness of the "school problem" may haveprevented from forming before. >
PRESERVATIONFinally, however, there is one reason
that over-rides all others in making usattempt a community based draft resistance movement. That simply is thepreservation of the movement. Becausethe movement is in danger. The war inVietnam, despite its gravity is neitherthe last act or a continous feature ofthis society. It will end eventually; andeventually could be soon. If the movement it has generated is to live beyond
it, two things must happen. First, largesections of that movement must becomerooted deeply, not simply in communities,but in the lives and difficulties of people.Second, it must get far enough beyondthe symbolism of protest to convincf>ITSELF (the people in it) that it caneffectively combat and resist power.
We think the effort to make a basefor the movement in people's lives and inits capacity to bring tangible, real gainto those people must become the programmatic focus for large nurrbers of people.We must begin to develop an edge, asharpness, a clarity about our directionthat can combat the current tone ofpolitical indecisiveness that is so stronginside the anti-war movement and theoverwhelming sense of dissolution that willfollow the end of the war.
We do not claim the insight of orthod<KY about this program. We do not feelcompelled to urge everyone to drop whatthey are doing and join our ranks. Theiris a richness and a)ife to the anti-warrriovement that laughs at orthodoxy andthat we respect despite disagreement.What we do feel is that a focus is neededthat can unify some of the divergentstrands of the movement around a political and programmatic perspective andthat can place that perspective in communities where it can grow and endurebeyond today's horrible, but preliminaryskirmish against human suffering.
For that we need many people. Notjust people to join this program; butpeople throughout the movement who willlook at their work from this perspective- - the simply crying need of the movement to sink roots, to seek real confrontations with power -- and to endure-- to survive -- to live.
COMMUNITY BASEDDIlAFT RESISTANCE
Draft resistance is growing. The momentum the peace movement gained thissummer has turned more and more towards draft resistarce. "It is the oneanti-war organization that really pulledtogether." "It is the one issue aroundthe war that really touches people personally and desperately."
On the other hand, draft resistancegroups have very different reasons forexisting, and are now moving in severaldifferent directions. Some had their startin moral pacifist protest, some in atendency towards direct violent confrontation with the establishment, some againin a longer range perspective of· building~a movement for social change.
But the Vietnamese struggle for liberation continues, and the political repression of some in this country, the economic
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
NOVEMBER 1967 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 9
regimentation of others and the politicalpowerlessness of many also continues.We have choices to make and a responsibility for our political actions.
Neither the· skills or techniques ofcounselling, or the tactics of inductioncenter demonstrations are talked abouthere. A direction for draft resistance ispresented and a discussion of possibletechniques is set out.
DISAFFECTED AREASDraft resistance can grow faster and
more strongly in sectors of the population which are already disaffected withthe war and with the political machinery
local and national. Think of black andethnic communities, like Puretor Rican,Polish, American Indian, German,Portugese. Think also of lower classwhite working class communities: ·less.than half of these communities vote because they don't believe political leaders will do anything for them, they aregeneql11y against the war, and they arethe ones primarily who are getting drafted.
On the other hand, none of these communities are particularly open to ordinary, large organization funded, top downpeace propaganda programs. They naveto be approached by people who settle intotheir own communities, are familiar withand militant about their community Ilroblems and who gain respect and credentials in their community.
These are the people who are runpowerless through this society -- throughthe schools, the army and the jobs -and these are the people who can forma base of power to resistthewar machine.Draft resistance is the way to reach thembecause the draft is touching almost everyone of their families. They got a reasonto fight the draft. Let's talk about gettingthem the chance.
STUDENTS
Who are yOU? Some of you have rootsin communities where draft resistancecenters could be started, but a great manyof you are students, or at least withoutthose roots in potentially insurgent communities. Some of you are already involved in draft resistance work in student areas and .don't feel you have thetime- or the manpower to try to reachinto the community. Why should yOU?Haven't you got you own job to do.
Students are most often the troops ofthe movement, but they are not all thepeople. A significant resistance to thewar and to the unrepresentative political machine which directs it must bebased not only among students but amongworking people. A real resistance mustlast to fight against the next war like
Vietnam which the government involvesus in, and to last it must have a baseamong people who have their own reasonsfor defending themselves against an oppressive social system. Since studentsare very often the ones with the time andbackground development that allows themto develop opposition to and organization against the establishment, they mustbe the ones to bring agitation and organization to Americans who don't have thattime or background.
A lot of us have believed that thesepoor and working class communtities arefilled with super-patriots. They ARE filledwith people who have fought in Korea,and with families who have lost menin Korea. Some of them support thewar, and the government, blindly. But moreof them know it is not being fought forthem or for freedom or for our nationalsecurity. They will be quick to learn whatthe Vietnamese people are really fightingfor, and they will be quick to defendthemselves and their sons against thedraft. They have not been vocal againstthe war, because they have not had thetime. They have not had the time in theirwhole lives. -- They were busy beingprocessed, meeting responsibilities andmaking a living.
UNION PROGRAM
What follows here is a program forsetting up community based draft resistance unions. It is hoped that youwill move in that direction. On the otherhand, many student based groups ororganizers, just do not have the time ...orin some cases the experience to workin the community full time. In that caseit makes sense to talk about a "flying"group that, during the course of itswork, tries various ways of reachingout into potentially insurgent communities. In some cases, people can be foundto establish community draft unions, andin other cases enough contact can be made,enough information gathered, to followup when organiziers are available.
ORGANIZINGDRAFT UNIONS
Pick the neighborhood for some goodreason. Maybe you know some good,sympathetic people there who know theirway around. Look for areas where a peacereferendum was optimistic, where thereis a ROOTED neighborhood peace group,where there are welfare rights organizations,· where there is a fight with thepolitical machine, where there have beenrent strikes, where there may be anurban renewal issue or an issue of control of the schools, the hospitals or thepolice.
Check on the listings of men who areI-a in the city. The draft board won'tgive out their addresses and if you can'ttrace them down then you can send thema letter through the draft board; they arerequired by law to forward mail to menwith I-a classifications. If you make contact with one in an insurgent neighborhood and if he wants to refuse inductionor refuse to fight in Vietnam, ask himfor permission to get his neighborhoodout to support him. BUT GET HIM TODO THE WORK. Start a leaflet campaignand a petition of support for his refusalin the neighborhood.
It. is not necessary to get a storefront, if you can't afford one. Even apair of rooms on the second floor isgood enough, if you clean them up andmake them look decent. Try to get theneighborhood kids to help you fix up theplace. They are your base: tell themwhat you are there for.
LEAFLETLeaflet the surrounding blocks, the
churches, schools, community centers,bars and barbershops, asking for permission to set up a draft informationcenter. You should make a strong statement against the war to let people knowwhere you stand from the first. You cansay that Draft Information Centers arespringing up over the country and thatyou, like others, want to get people tostand up in their own defense againstan unjust war which is not in the American people's interest. You want to knowif the people want a draft informationcenter here. Ask them to come and tellyou.
CirCUlate a petition getting signaturesthat support your right to be in theneighborhood: the right of the people tolearn about alternatives to the draft andthe right of people to resist the draft.Get your own views out. You'll get responses. You may have to try two orthree different blocks before you getone where you can settle in with thesupport of enough people.
Be careful about language: if thereare Puerto Ricans or Mexicans in theneighborhood, be sure to have leafletsand petitions written in Spanish.
Get to know ministers, priests, gradeschool and high-school teachers. Try toset up chances to speak about the draftand/or the war.
Leaflet high-schools and trade schools.If you can find people help set up multiissue groups in the high schools, helpwith "underground" high school papers.It is important to work with students youget to know, if you can, and not from theoutside or from the top: the name ofthis movement is insurgent.
RESISTANCE CENTER
Try to make the Draft Resistance Center into a place where high school peoplehang around in the afternoon. We needIMAGINATION. Put speakers outside andplay some good sounds. Do some skitsthat people can understand. Let highschool students use the office for thingsthey want to do: it is their union asmuch as it is yours. Hang newspaperpictures up, headlines, articles. Haveliterature on other things beside thedraft which you think will develop apolitical consciousness and which willinterest people.
Try to get into community life. Talkto people at the laundry-mats, bars, bowling alleys. Take care of babies formothers. Try to get people to come intothe center and have a cup of coffee. We'regetting past the point where we canjust collect like-minded people. We haveto MOVE people, and to do that yougot to spend the time to get to knowthem. In so far as you are defying thestate you may want protection, and thepeople are the only protection you got.You bett.er be tight with them.
Begin to get involved in other issuesof community control. If you fight alongside with people when they are tryingto control their own lives and get whatthey need, they will listen to what youhave to say. Draft Resistance takes ona legitimacy when it is linked to, say,community control of the schools orrent strikes. Also try to interest peopleyou have counseled or supported at theinduction center in other community fights.
Find out where the men in the com-· munity work -- ask them? -- and leafletat their plants or shops. Talk about thewar as well as the draft in the leaflet.Try to get community people to leafletwith you.
NEWSLETTER
Put out a newsletter to your COlllmunity which talks not only about yourown fights, but gives information aboutdraft resistance in other parts of thecountry. Give it out door-to-door anddistribute it at shopping centers, schools,etc. People have to know that they arenot alone in the country. They have to kno\'{that THEIR PEOPLE all over are stand-
· ing up against an unfair government.
It is important to participate in peacegroups and to help to set them up. Talkto them about draft resistance and draft
· counseling: they'll want to know the facts.They may be your strongest support group,and may give you money, materials or
. CONTINUED ON PAGE '1~
A PLAN FORWH ITE RESISTANCE
PAGE 10 THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBE iZ 1967
ARABS, ISRAELIS, US
ISRAEL··"REPUBLIC OF VICTIMS OF FASCISM"
WOMEN, ORGANIZE YOUR OWN FIGHTING FORCES!
A YOUNG WOMAN TALKS to the cops at the Induction Center (photo jeff,Blankfort).
By William Mandel
CONTINUED ON PAGE 15
•'Our political and military problemswould seem vastly different if we were fourmillion jews instead of two and a half million." (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE,Oct. 26, 1967).
This was in a speech to a conventionof the volunteers from abroad who cameto fight for Israel in june. The CHRONICLE story says:
"In its anxiety to increase the jewishpopulation of Israel, the government isin the midst of a drive to keep as permanent residents as many of the volunteeJ;:s as possible,"• And Israel is also moving its own peopleinto the cultivated, fertile Jordanian territory on the west bank of the Jordan River conquered during the June War, to replace those who fled their homes out ofa justified fear, based on the 1948 and1956 experience, of being a discriminated-against minority in a racist and expansionist country. Jerusalem has beenofficially annexed,' and Israel is exp~oiting
the oil resources Egypt has developedeast of Suez.
U.S. JEWSVastly larger than the number of jews
who responded to Zionism were those whofled to the United States and other countries permitting free immigration, wherethey sought only the right to live as human beings. Of all the ethnic groups immigrating to the United States, there weremore workers among the Jews than anyother, because the Jews,were an urbanpeople. The Jewish immigrants were deeply affected by the 1905 Revolution in Russia, in which many had played a part, andbecame the most militant and revolutionary section of the American working
NEW POPULATION
PROPAGANDAThe propaganda is a little different,
In the 18th century, the notion that one'sown •'race" was superior and all othersinferior was universal among mankind,and one did not have to make excusesfor subjugating those who were regarded as not quite human. In 19th centuryEurope, imperialism was a proud slogan,not a cuss-word, and American "statesmen'~ said it was our "Manifest Destiny" to expand endlessly. In the 20th century this is no longer acceptable. Imperialism has demonstrated not only thatit brings incredible misery to those itexploits, but wars without precedent indestructiveness to the imperialist statesthemselves. Only the U.S. has thus farescaped feeling the consequences on itsown soil. So the U.S. can still use Hitler's cover-up of "anti-communism" tosome effect among its people. No one elsecan, and so the Israelis fall back uponthe most ancient of all excuses for aggression: "self-defense," Yet each ofIsrael's three wars of "defense," (194849, 1956 and 1967) has left that countryin possession of vastly more territorythan at the outbreak of the fighting, Oneach occasion, it has immediately calledfor additional jewish immigration to populate the new conquests. Prime MinisterLevi Eshkol now says:
Eshkol's ,appeal for further mass - scalelmmlgration- brings us to the matter ofZionism. Of the 5,000,000 Jews in the
pogr{)m-ridden ghettoes' of the Russian Empire, only a tiny handfulof12,000 sought to
, solve their probiems by moving to Palestine between the 1880s, when the Zionist movement began, and 1917, towardthe end of World War L These were
the extreme nationalists, many moved bythe racist colonialist notion of the' mostdistinguished leader of Zionism, who toldthe British at the close of that war thathe wanted a Palestine "as Jewish asEngland is English." This was when theJews were one-tenth of the population I
ZIONISM
the treatment of the Indians, with Arabssubstituted.
MIDDLE EAST USAConsidering how much the world has
CHanged, the new issues and forces thathave arisen, and the geographic differences, the parallel between early U.S.history and that of Israel to this day(it is now 20 years since independence)is amazing. The founding by a minorityfleeing persecution, the occupation of aland already populated by others, thedetermination to build a society consisting only of one's own ethnic group, theenergy with which a modern economywas erected, the liberal form of government for one's own group, and theever-widening conquest of territory withthe announced purpose of making moreroom for larger and larger numbersof immigrants: it's all there, and so is
BE DAMNED. But if manhood means thesame thing as womanhood and they bothmean humanity, then only will the movement achieve unity and the ability to winthe struggle. If the overall plan is FREEDOM FOR ALL PEOPLE (that must inc·lude women), without the deadly souldestroying virus of supremacy of one overthe other, than only will we have the makings of a world of justice, freedom andfraternity. AND ANY OTHER KIND OFWORLD IS NOT WORTH FIGHTING FOR.
A PLAN OF ACTIONThe follOWing is by no means complete
but 1£ will serve as a modest guide.I. Demand equal leadership with men.2. Refuse all appointments or electiveoffices which put women in positions ofsecretary, cook, bottle washer or childwatcher.3. Demand equal representation in allcommittees or in any unit of the organization.4. Demand a reformation of language usedby males when referring to women. Demand an end to separate and unequal references to women such as the follOWingstatement from THE MOVEMENT Lettersto the Editor: •'Mr. Pr,esident, I've got toinform you that the Negroes throughout theU.S. are through taking it from the richman. Because if he hits US OR ONE OFOUR WOMEN WE are not goIng to sitstili for that" .5. Form a caucus in every organization towhich you belong. This caucus to fight onthe floor in meetings, conferences andconventions for the rights of women.Demand that meetings; conferences andconventions go on record for equal rightsfor women.6. Women, organize your own fightingforces, your own organization, involveothers,write your material. Agitate. Or-·ganize in your own defense NOW.WOMEN Ur\ITE.Gloria Martin:\storia, Oregon
Everyday of their lives women sufferinsults, social and economic limitations,scorn and degradation. Black people suffer much the same oppression. The blackpeople and women are second class citizens; conscious women and consciousblack people know they are second classcitizens. The basis for a great enlightenedunity exists if only it is exploited by themovement. What better place to bringtogether the most oppressed, the mostdeprived, the poorest people, than in themovement. Men in other movements haveconsistantly used the women, then laughedat their complaints as at a child's whimpet, 'worthy only of being ignored. Now theblack liberation movement has the opportunity to embrace women as equal'partners in the struggle and to reap thegreat benefit to the struggle which womenwould bring to it. Time will tell. Meanwhile women must continue and intensifytheir fight for equal rights.
The black liberation movement has beenlearning and growing day by day. Thedevelopment of theory and practice isremarkable. The consciousness of thepeople is grOWing, very largely due tothese struggles. Poor whites are findingthat they have no ,power. Women mustrealize that they too must take their placealongside the men, as equal partners. Thismay very well mean a desperate strugglewithin the movement, as well as full scaleaU out war with the power structure.Every movement for women's rights hasbeen diverted into other struggles whichhave appeared more urgent at the time.THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN AGAIN.
One of the most outrageous mythS, projected in the black liberation movement-which women must refute without delay-is that of male emasculation, There is muchtalk by men who, it seems, feel deprivedof their manhood. If manhood means a goodjob, being the HE.\D OF THE FAMILY,coming home at night to a vine coveredcottage where the little wife is waitingwith slippers and super ...then M,\NHOOD
The United States was founded by a persecured religious minority who undertook along, dangerous, and miserable ocean voyage to establish a colony where they couldbe free. This -did' not prevent them, as soon as they were strong enough, from turningupon the native {nhabitants, driving them away from their own lands, and killing notonly those who resisted but simple innocents in order to terrorize the rest.
While doing this on the one hand, this barely-emerged nation was able, on the other,to wage a long and just war of national liberation against the great world empire that hadpermitted and encouraged the colonization for its own interests. The newly-independentstate then developed the most progressive Constitution known to man by that date, anda Bill of Rights without equal as far as guaranteeing individual liberties is concerned.But the words "progressive" and' 'equal" applied only to the ethnic group, Europeancolonists and .their descendants, who had colonized and conquered the country. Allothers, both those who had been _here from time immemorial and slaves brought forexploitation from overseas, were excluded from its provisions. And this nation of immigrants, without abandoning that Constitution, proceeded to expand its boundaries till theyextended from ocean to ocean, conquering, slaughtering, and penning up the Indians,importing black slaves and treating ~em as less than human, taking over Mexicanlands and treating the Mexicans in the same way, and finally reaching overseas toerect a wor Id empire without compare in history.
ANGRY BLACK WOMAN SPEAKS OUT
To the Editor:It is of tremendous interest and vital
concern to me, a woman, that the Western~ Black Youth Conference will have a work
shop on the role of women in the movement.In a sense this question is a soul chillingone, because it should need no discussionin special sessions. This is very muchlike debating the rights of black peoplewith a group of southern whites. Therights of women and black people shouldnot, in fact cannot, be negotiated orbargained for; as we are finding out, theymust be taken. The so-called role ofwomen should be the same as the roleof men in the moyement, as in everydaylife. The very fact that it will get specia"!treatment in this conference is someproof that it is not taken for granted, atthe very least. I can only hope that thewomen at this conference will take amilitant position regarding their righ~s,
that the men will attempt to bring abouta change in their own attitudes, as wellas the attitudes within the movement.Finally I hope that a good look at the"roles" of men and women will be taken,and that this scrutiny will prove that"role playing" is a bad substitute formilitant living .•.
It is tragic indeed that we have thisever present problem, the problem whichhas been like a rapier thrust in the livingflesh of militant women in every walk oflife. Radical women, women in the CivilRights movement, the Freedom workersin the south, all have felt the sting of oppression and discrimination, All have hadto fight for independent political identity,They have been laughed at, jeered at, andused as bed partners, but one way oranother they have met with defeat. Womenare, at the very least, victims of gravehumiliation and bitterness in this society,
Working women, black and white, arethe most oppressed. They work in orderthat they and their children may starvemore..•SLDWLY. They see their childrenabused in the street, in the schools, andin the police stations, It is the childrenof the poor who are classified as retardedby the school systems, who are shot inthe back by the police. The children ofthe poor fill the JAILS and the ARMY•. ,
WOMEN MUST FIGHT
It is pertinent to point out here whatneeds to be said once and for all: Womenmust fight for their place in the movement, any movement. They must organizein their own behalf. No one will do thisfor them. The black liberation struggl~
and the struggle for women's rights aretwo prongs of the same problem. ,,vomenhave been oppressed for unknown centuries, longer than the black people.Women's demar.ds in modern times, forequal pay, equal opportunity, equal education, and just plain simple rights likestanding on a street corner without beingclassified as a pickup by males, haveNOT I3EEN S.-\TISFIED.
NOVEMBER 1967 THE MOVEMENT PAGE 11
STANFORD ANTI-DRAFT MOVES ON
ANTI-DRAFT ANDWOMEN'S RIGHTS
We are tired of writing obituaries forthe wrong people, tired of repeatinghow fine and strong and beautiful arethe movement people who die. Theydie and are killed and eaten awayby the pain of struggling against akiller society. More will die, we know,and may the strength of all' of themseep into those of us left living. Theoppressors die at an old age and theliberators young. May we see the daywhen this is reversed. .
The young years that Ruby DorisRobinson put into SNCC were notwasted. They have helped many thousands live and struggle.
RUBY DORIS ROBINSON
added, particularly around the draft issue.Woman have to become increasingly militant. We have to learn to assert ourselves,to demand both our rights and our rightto equal participation in the struggle. Wethink the draft is a good issue for womento work around. When the draft is understood as a coercive force which attacksboth men and women, and when it isseen in the context of our larger .strugglefor power to control our lives, it is obvious that women are just as involved as'men. We don't pretend to say that thiSincreased militancy will be easy. Thesystem legislates against it. Our owninsecurities and the prejudices of ourmen increase the difficulty. But the stakesare high. That ancient goal, freedom for'all people, can only be attained whenwomen as well as men are free. ......
men from these areas are more likely'toface the draft than students from an eliteschool like Stanford. Stop the Draft Weekspurred much of this increased activity,and several of the groups organized to participate in the week are continUing withday-to-day anti-draft work. ..
the' building and return it to student control. However, the administration at Stanford is composed of clever liberals whowould like to avoid a confrontation if atall possible. SDS hopes to make this confrontation unavoida"le, to bring the policeon campus because students are opposingthe war and to thus demonstrate the authoritarian nature of this society and buildthe first sustained mass movement atStanford.
The Anti-draft Union is increasing bothits campus and community activities, Oncampus the ADU is re-circulating its"We Won't Go" statement that got overthree hundred signatures last year, Thisyear the statement will also be circulatedat several local high schools and at Foothill and San Mateo Junior Colleges. TheADU also has several leafletting projectscentering around local teen hangouts,draft boards, and inductee departures forOakland. Finally, in the near future theADU plans to begin anti-draft work in thewhite working-class areas ·around Fremcnt. Increased anti-draft work at juniorcolleges and high schools and in workingclass areas is significant since the young
What needs to happen next is that we.must extend the legitimacy for which westruggle so hard, the legitimacy to whichStop the Draft Week has in some measure
KAREN KOONAN, STOW Steering Committee member, briefs her monitor group beforethe Tuesday action at the Induction Center. (photo: William Wap,ren, Berkeley Barb).
acting like men. It has been the samein ALL people's struggles for power -in Cuba, in Spain, in Vietnam -- womanhave participated as equals with men.Battlefield conditions both allow and require us to become fellow warriors.During the Stop the Draft Week demonstrations we worked along side the men,protecting demonstrators, rescuing peoplefrom the cops, building barricades. Nowwe all know that we can do those thingsand that's a good feeling
WHAT NEXT?
By John 'Saari
STANFORD, CALIF:- -- From the outsetStop the Draft Week organizers conceivedthe week's demonstrations as an· impetusfQr further anti-draft and anti-war organizing. Long before the end of the week,Stanford S.O.S. and the Stanford Anti-draftUnion had begun several projects to makethat hope a reality. These projects fallinto two categories: campus projects andcommunity projects.
'fhe chief campus project, one that grewdirectly out of Stop The Draft Week, is theconfrontation by S.O.S. of governmentagencies and war corporatibns when theyhold job interviews on campus. In particular, the CIA is holding job interviewsbeginning on Oct. 30th; and Dow interviewsstart Nov. 7th. The Placement Service,where these interviews are held, is locatedin a small building in the center of campus,Last year this. bUilding housed the studentcontrolled experimen6:t1 college which isnot on campus this year because ,the university could not find another building tohouse it. lf the university does not cancelthe CIA interviews, SDS plans to liberate
\
In the Stop the Draft Week organizing,women faced the usual problems. Somehowthere we were, doing the office work andthe agit-prop theater. But some of usdemanded in the planning sessions that webe listened to as political, thinking people,We came to realize that when the guysjoked or called us "ball breakers" wecould respond with "That's your problem, baby," and it would be true; itwasn't our problem. We knew what wewere doing; we knew we weren't' 'tryingto be men". If men were threatened bywomen· acting as independent politicalpeople, it said something about theirconfidence in themselves, not about ourfeminity.
• When the heat was on - in the demonstrations - many of us participated, someas monitor captains. In the face of possible violence by cops there was noneed and no time to worry about women
Even in the movement in the past we've.usually played secondary roles. We'vebeen the typists and teachers, the officemanagers and cooks. We have not beenprojected as leaders or spokesmen: wehave rareJy BEEN leaders andspokesmen. We existed to BACK UPthe men and be .around for the socialaspects of their political lives~ Whe~we have participated equally with men,when we have led demonstrations, beenon steering committees,' etc, it's beenvery difficult. We have to work twiceas hard as a man to prove ourselvesbefore we are accepted. We have to dealwith snickering, being called "un.feminine" and just plain being ignored.Some of us have done these things; a lot!.of us haven't.
THE WEEK
MOVEMENT WOMEN
secondary roles in this society, roleswhich are perpetuated by the society.Any serious attempt to liberate the society has to reject secondary roles forwomen. As a movement, we can't talkabout taking power over our lives whilewithin that movement men still dominatewomen. Men can't talk about self-deter-
'mination and at the same time refuseself-determination to women. That justain'J freedom, ain't equality and ain'tgonna lead to taking power. So, as women,seeing this, we have a duty--which isto emancipate ourselves, NOW, so thatwe can be fully functioning individualsin the struggle, able to act without relying on men.
WOMENHow do women fit in? Well, you notice
that the memo doesn't mention them,That's because women aren't really important to the power structure whichdesigned the draft. Those politics and thoseeconomics can pretty much get alongwithout women. And that's why womanare second class citizens in this country.And that's why our status isn't goingto change until the power structure ischanged. Until changes .are made, womenare going to have to put up with secondclass education, second class jobs andsecond class ·wages. And something else:Ain't nobody gonna make those changesFOR us. We have got to do it for our",selves.
by Karen Koonan and Bobbi Cieciorka
The draft needs to be understood inthe full scope of its coercive power.Not only does it gobble up our youngmen, warp their minds and get a lotof them killed, it also controls how therest of us will live in order to escapeits clutches. An official Selective ServiceSystem memo which we read recentlypoints out that procuring manpower forthe armed forces is only a small partof the SSS operation. More importantis the "channeling manpower through(the) deferments aspect of the SelectiveService System". The memo makes itquite clear that this is very consciousmanipulation. Time and again it comments on "the ever increasing problem(of) how to control effectively the serviceof individuals who are not in the armedforces .•• Many young men would not havepursued a higher education if there hadnot been a program of student deferment. Many young scientists, engineers,tool and die makers and other possessorsof scarce skills would not remain in theirjobs in the defense effort if it were notfor a program of occupational deferments ... Selective Service processes donot compel people by edict as in foreignsystems to enter pursuits having to dowith essentialitYJ and progress. They gobecause they know that by going theywill be deferred, Delivery of manpowerfor induction...is not much of an administrative or financial challenge. It isin dealing with the other millions ofregist:-ants" that the system is heavilyoccupied.••
In other words, that student deferment,that defense industry job which seemslike such a clever maneuver, has allbeen planned ahead. Where you work andwhat you work at and a whole lot ofthings about what ought to be yourPRIVATE life are shaped by the SSSlurking in the background.
Stop the Draft Week made us thinkabout broad issues. The. Week wasn'tjust another moral protest; it was thebeginning of a move toward POWER.We learned that it wasn't just Stop theDraft/Don't Feed the War; it was thereally broad issues of power in thiscountry, the need for self-determinationthe need for people to control their ow~lives. In other words, some pretty basicchanges in this old country.' And wethought about what that means for womenbecause it's a little different for u;than it is for men.
Some observations: Women do play
THE DRAFT
We want to talk about a couple ofthings: How the draft is an issue whichaffects women, and why women shouldfight this thing which both symbolizesand sustains our oppression.
Because women in this country AREoppressed--people in this country' areoppres'sed, but women in special ways-and we are oppressed, very directly,by the draft.
WOMEN & THE WEEK
PAGE 12 THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBER 1967
THE POWERFUL DID NOT USE THEIR POWERBy Julius Lester
now in the North. Every week and evenevery day must see militant action taking place somewhere in the country. Somecities are particularly vulnerable andthese cities can_be target areas for action.Just as a group of young blacks droppedout of school in 1960 to work full-timefor "the movement", now is the time foryoung whites to. involve themselves fulltime in militant action against the war.It would be a tragic error to let the
_ momentum that is now evident stop.And, at the same time, there must be
advances in ideological understanding. Itis not only the war in Vietnam that mustbe stopped. It is this country. One demonstrator cried out during a brief skirmishbetween demonstrators and the army:"Humanity is dead in America!"In thebroadest terms, that is the issue. Buthumanity is not synonymous with flowersin the hair and bells on the feet. Neitheris it- synonymous with slogans on a picketsign or marching on the Pentagon. Whethera country is. humane is directly relatedto the economic and political system under whose banner that country's citizenslive. It is not enough to be against thewar in Vietnam, because next year onemight have to be against the war in Bolivia, but it will be the same war. A waris a war is a war when that war i,; foughtto sustain the present political and economic system. Place name is only incidental.
It is good that people are now so angrythat they will storm the Pentagon. Thenext step is to let the anger come notonly from what is being done to theVietnamese, but. being done to all thepeople of Africa, Asia and Latin Americaand to blacks here. And above all, it mustbe realized that this government's veryexistence is a constant act of war againsteach and everyone of us. When this isunderstood, not only will the Pentagon beours; America will be, too. Then humanitywill be be born where it has never existed--- the United States of America.
This country belongs to the young andwe must never relent until control of itis in our hands! -.-
CONFRONTATION AT THE PENTAGON
Now is the time for not only the victoryin Washington, but the victories all acrossthe country to be consolidated. Actionagainst the war must be accelerated, andnot confined to a day or a week out ofa several month period. Just as the demonstrations in the South were a constantpressure. so must demonstrations become
IN THE FUTURE
were empty and that only those troopsinside the Pentagon carried loaded weapons. This is a great indication of howcautiously the government moved vizaviz the demonstration. It did not want toeven risk a rifle going off accidentallyor an MP breaking under the pressureas happened during the rebellions thissummer where soldiers disobeyed ordersand fired on blacks. But Lyndon Johnsoncould not afford to do to thousands ofwhites what has been done countless timesto blacks. If he had done so, there would'·ve been no confrontation. The Army could've cleared the Mall in a matter ofminutes and only fear of the readion tosuch a massacre restrained the government. The next .time Johnson may notgive a damn what the reaction might beand he will unleash that might which thePentagon logisticaly calculates.
If and when this happens, the demonstrators must be prepared. A flower is agood weapon against a rifle when thatrifle is not fired. Bodies are good weapons when rifles are not fired, billy clubsnot swung with automated efficien1!y andtear gas used as if it were a squirt ofnasal spray for head clods.·It was.a victory mainly because the powerful did notuse their power.
It must be remembered, too, that thedemonstrators were to some degree immune from wholesale brutality becausethey were white. Whether they retaintheir racial immunity depends upon themilitancy of their actions. If they becomea real threat to this country, they willnot. The confrontation at the Pentagonshows graphically that the revolutionarypotenti-a! of young whites, of which therehave been many adumbrations, is nolonger simply a matter of conjecture.
REALITIES OF POWERIt was clearly a victory for our side,
but partially because the Army did notunleash its power. The rifles that could'vebeen fired into the air (or in a morehorizontal direction) remained silent. TheWashington Post revealed that the rifles
On fhe other side of the mall, demonstrators had been amassing in the driveway leading to the. door of the Pentagonand finally, they gave that one big pushand broke the line of MP's and marshallsand with a great yell, ran toward the frontdoor of the Pentagon. A great cheer wentup and it was a fantastic sight to see,but there they were, storming the Pentagonand being met by the U.S. Army. Somegot inside and were immediately pitchedout and down the steps. Time and timeagain, however, they broke the lines andran, dodging billy clubs and rifle butts,up the driveway and toward thatfront door.
It was obvious that this was a new peacemovement. Few offered their headswillingly to the billy clubs. Many a marshall swung his club and instead of hearing it meet a skull, he suddenly found hishands empty as someone tore the clubfrom him. After the demonstration, thePentagon released "casualty" figures:24 demonstrators, 23 Federal marshallsand MP's.
CONFRONTATIONS
STORMING THE DOORS
For an hour or so the marchers stoodeyeball-to-eyeball with MP's and Federalmarshalls. It was obvious that the MP'swere under strict orders not to dispersethe crowd, but to only act defensively. Itwas equally as obvious that the marcherswere none too anxious to be aggressiveand get their skulls cracked. Sothey stoodthere calling the soldiers everything except a child of God.
Then, one contingent of MP's decidedthey were going to take .control of thearea on the north side of the Mall. Withrifles pointed, they charged toward thedemonstrators, and, it was here that thedemonstrators showed thatthey had movedbeyond protest. When the Mp's pushed,they pushed back. Instead of backing up atthe sight of rifles pointed at them, theysurrounded the MP's and several demonstrators proceeded to lay sticks up-sidethe soldier's heads. One MP was jerkedout of line and qUickly shoved into acorner and immediately beset upon. Hewas quickly rescued, though, one demonstrator is now the proud owner of anMP's helmet. Other MP's had their riflessnatched from them. Later in the day,three soldiers "defected" and threw downtheir rifles, running into the crowd ofdemonstrators, screaming "Protect me!"
The soldiers had never had to deal withsuch people as these before. When theypointed their rifles menacingly someonecame forward and stuck a flower in thebarrel. Others were Virtually deluged in ashower of flowers, but they stood there,rifles pointed, faces grim, with flowerson their shoulders, flowers on their helmets. When they put on their gas masks,they were booed and hissed. These wereaverage American boys being' opposed bypeople who looked like their brothersand sisters and the soldiers learned thattheir show of force meant absolutelynothing. They were being ridiculed by theirown people.
PENTAGON PARKING LOT
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The October 21st Confrontation with the Warmakers beganslowly. The Lincoln Memorial served as the gathering place for the thousands who camefrom all over the country and there wasn't much to do during the morning except sit,stretch out, or wander around and look for those people that you only got a chance to seeat demonstrations. All the radical organizations were there selling their propagandaliterature, while miscellaneous souls sold buttons. The only excitement during the morning came when a Nazi tried to punch Clive Jenkins, the English union man, while he wasspeaking. The Nazi was immediately beset upon by several of the Mobilization Committee marshalls who seemed all set to "take care of business", but someone keptyelling, "Leave him alone! Leave him alone!" These ill-advised words were heeded andthe proceedings receded to the tedium of speakers and speeches.
When the march itself finally got underway, it was a rather somnambulent affair andit looked for a while as if the confrontation would take place between the marchers andphotographers. The latter waited like the Alabama state police at the other end of thebridge, while the marchers slowly came toward them under a huge banner --- SUPPORT
OUR BOYS IN VIETNAM. BRING THEMHOME. Behind them an all-Americanhero held his own cardboard sign highin the air to the right of Dr. Spock'shead. Emblazoned therein crayon, impossible to be left out of any photographer'spicture was L.B.J. SUCKS. (The WhiteHouse has, as yet, made no comment.)
After several delays, the march made itsway to the south parking lot of the Pentagon, by way of whatseemedtobea countryback road. It looked like a perfect setup for an ambush, but the armed guardain's of law and order were nQt apparent,as they had not been throughout the morning. Only when the march approached anunderpass did a momentary chill comeover the crowd as people looked up to thehighway and saw a dozen or so Virginiastate troopers lounging against the WELCOME TO VIRGINIA sign in fine southernstyle. The demonstrators remained onFederal property, however, and the localguardians of the law seemed quite contentto let Federal troops deal with them.
At the Pentagon parking lot, the Mobili'zation Committee had arranged anotherbrief rally, aI)d, this was there the marchbegan to lose its somnambulence. Fewmarchers stopped before the platformthat had been set up, but simple keptstrolling toward the Pentagon, whose wallsloomed above the trees like a medievalfortress. A few stopped at the other endof the parking lot where a group of hippies were casting out evil spirits fromthe Pentagon with chants and flag-waving.High above them, lining the roof of theevil edifice was the Army, its evilnessundiminished.
About the time the hippies really gotinto their thing, a group of demonstrators came streaking by with Vietnameseflags flying in the wind. They looked likeFrench revolutionaries going toward thebarricades, which, in actuality, they were,for their progress came to an abrupthalt at a rope barrier behind which,arms folded, stood military police. Whenthe MP's made no move to disperse thegroup, it was apparent what the tactic ofthe day was going to be. Intimidate themarchers by a show of force, but use aslittle force as possible. After all, thesewere not a bunch of niggers. These weregood, clean American kids exercising theirright to dissent. Now, if these were niggers, we'd have cut' em off at the bridgeand whupped heads from can to can't,cause who gives a damn. If we get roughwith these kids, however, we'll h,avemothers and fathers from coast-to-coaston our necks.
It was a good tactic and it almostworked. Even though thousands of demonstrators wore cards reading "We don'twant violence" , thousands didn't wear any·cards and it wasn't a question of wanting or not wanting violence. It was simplythat there they were, standing in front ofthe international headquarters of violenceand the massive granite walls ofthe Pentagon didn't awe anybody; it made themangry.
Once the March reached the south parking lot of the Pentagon, the people tookcontrol of it. Without a blink of the eye,they tore down the fence behind whichthey were supposed to have remained andheaded for the steps and Mall of thePentagon. They weren't interested in civildisobedience; they wanted to take controlof the Pentagon.
NOVEMBER L967 '1'1 IE MO VEMENT PAGE 13
WHERE CAL WILL MOVEBy Morgan SpecturBERKELEY, CALIFORNIA -I don't think that I have to point uut that Rerkeley is uniqueamong college campuses. ,'\lthough we have a repmatwn of being a radical campus, wealso' face the reality of being highly subject to pressure from rhe reactionaries on theoutside, Thus, although Berkeley was the rnajur 'focal puint for rallies and mobilizationduring the week. many Berkeley students (myself included ,face campus discipline for ouron-campus activities during that week, are pressuring the administration tu cume
This problem, then, has raised an or- down hard un the cited students, Notganizing problem on campus, The sevent\'- because we bruke campus rules, hilt be-odd students who were cited for speaking cause we bruke those rules in order toat illegal r:allies have had to determIne achieve a politlcal goal which those menwhether or not to press the fii':ht intu do not bellevein "[11atthepressureispoli-another Free Speech Movement, or only tical may be eVIdenced by the fact that araise the free speech issue lI1sofar as it campus cunserv ative who violated therelates to our freedom to organIze anti- rules has not been cited,war activity on the campus, The students also realize that it was not
1 ,think that the tendency is toward the just our polltics, but the EFFECTIVE-second of these two alternath es The rea- NESS of our politics that is stIrring theson for this is. 1 think, connected with a response, Because we sought to link there-definition of the student movement In campus with a dynamic series of demon-order to explain that re-definitlOn. let me stratlOnS we brought the campus into theqUickly sketch out how the campus has center of political confrontation, Thus theresponded to the outside politIcal press- pt-essure from the righture that is being applied, because out of This understanding of the social forcesthat response is arising a new student at work here is what is behind that re-consciousness that will insure that re- definition of our rno\'ement that I men-definition, tioned, For the first time since FSi\L a
It is clear to most of the campus that very important poinf has been driven hornewe who are involved in anti-war organiZing to us, That is, ull-campus freedom does notare being victimized. for the first time exist in a vacuum, The lack of that under-since 1964, by the outside pressure that standing in the p;Jst was what put the stu-is being exerted on our campus by the dent mo\'ement into the bag of saying::" .\11California reactionaries from Reagan on the world may be in chains, bllt here ondown" campus we shall be free Ilere we must
have sanctuary"
POLITICAL PRESSUREThe Alameda Goard of Supervisurs. and
the local dailies, have put a lot of POLITICAL PRESSURE on the campus, TIley
OUTSIDE WORLDThe developments of the week of the
16th have made it clear that our movement
is to[311y and inextricably connected withthe fights for freedom now being carriedon in the' 'outside" world We have learnedthat when students move against the systemthey meet the same oppressive force thatall rebels do, The students are preparingto carry the fight against that oppression ..
That determ ination is already ha ving results on campus .. It means that:
(1.' We still attempt to keep the CIA offcampus on Nov, 6 and 7. as away of ;Jsserting our unwilllllssnessto allow the campus to be used fortheir ends,
(2) Sume ASL,e Senators are demandingstudent control of the student facilities, and student control 'over'\\'ho is allowed to interview oncampus, (I1Jat would mean the endof Dow. the Navy. and CIA),
(3) Support of labor unions on campus will increase.
(4) Drastic revision of campus regulations will be sought immediately. with the aim of guaranteeingstudents tbe same rights on campusthat they should enjoy ofL
(5) \Vhite radical organizing will expand from a solely "anti-war"orientation into full programs thatanalyze American Society, and seekto change i:.
These are just a few' of the many ideasthat are coming out of the sua:esses of theweek" It is important to note that mostof them revolve around the concept thatit is possible for students to apply theireducation in an effective manner againstthe syste(n"
They revolve around the understanding
that students are no freer than any otherresidents of this oppressive system .. Indeed. we see that we face a peculiar kindof oppressive system, Indeed. we seethat we face a peculiar kind of oppressionthat is as odious as any represented by theOakland cops. As long as we are expected to apply our education primarily to themaintenance of this society then we, tooare oppressed,
That brings me to the final point. whichis that I see many possibilities for programs that unify our separate movements,It is becoming possible for us to establishprograms that make clear the connections that I mentioned earlier" Such efforts as humaniZing the students and aiding in the expansion of the involvementof the campus in off-campus radical pr~jects are activities that can help to adda new dynamism to the radical movementas it continues to develop in this country.
The next year will be vital in assessingthe growth of the stLIdent movement in thiScountry. It will be important to see howmuch of the excitement of Stop the DraftWeek can be harnessed into meaningfulwork. Will campus organizations suchas SDS be able to develop out of themany contacts that we made during theweek the nucleus of the kind of movementwe would like to see?
The problems are magnified on the Calcampus, because we have a history ofbeing a crisis-oriented movement. lf wecan present a viable. meaningfuL alternative to what is happening, with a clearly defined role for the student, we shouldbe able to create and maintain a powerfulmovement on campus, .•'
Don't let your people hang around theoffice getting frustrated and tired witheach other. Organizers should organize,
If a draft resistance union is effective,it may corne up against some police andlegal repression. One way to avoid someof this is to plan for what leadershipthat does develop to leave the forefrontof the project, openly at least, as soon
\ as there are others who can do theirwork. They can go on to set up othergroups in other communities, or theycan move into other kinds of organizing-- say around control of the schools -and work for the union quietly" Policerepression is often directed at the individuals in the spotlight: if they keepdisappearing and new people keep turning up as the leaders, the spokesmenon picket lines, etc" the police will havea harder time.
COMMUNITY UNIONSLet's be straight. What's got to be
done is to get the people in this countrywho neither support nor confront thegovernment's misuse of power, MOVING.To do that we've got to find issues onthe local level, in the community, aroundwhich people can demand control of whatthe political machine, or a minority of ,landlords and businessmen now controLIf Draft Resistance Unions establish themselves genuinely in the community andfind the people there who will confrontthe government's use of poor and working people in the war, it may be possibleto form a community union which ','!illtry to take local power.
The war in Vietnam will be over someday. There may be a lapse before thenext one the government gets us into.We've got to be building the kind ofmulti-issue local control unions whichwill last and grow through that lapse,or the American people will never havea chance to run their ,own country: orwe will have to start from nothing againto build a resistance to the next war.
While the war continues, conditionsin poor and working class communitiesare getting tighter. Groceries for a familyare costing $25 a week instead of $19.Credit is getting tighter. Old credit liensstill have to be paid, the rent has to bepaid and babies are still being born.Wages are not going up but taxes are,to pay for the war" While the war continues less and less money wiil go intourban programs, or poverty programsand grievances at the local level will growlouder. We've got to organize now whilepeople are feeling the pressure of auseless and tyranical war and knowing
CONTINUED ON PAGE 15
vote on issues, discuss them until youcan agree. All the pain of long meetings amounts to a group which knowsitself well, holds together with a serious,human spirit, and any member of whichcan step into a role of responsibilityif someone else leaves. Fight for thatkind of group, because people will wantto join with it:· there are not many' thingsin this country like that. Stand by eachother.
A lot .of groups already formed haveproblems with keeping people involved.Partly that is because some of themare not in the community with the peoplethey contact and so lose track of them,and part ly it is due to a lack of organization and ideas for action, Set up functions for everyone; apportion responsibilities. Keep people on the streets reaching people. if they have nothing else to do,
involved as organizers that some of theoriginal organizers can set up anotherunion in another community. Therefore,it is important that the group be runso that everyone gets experience in running meetings (rotating chairman), makingdecisions about demonstrations, doingdoor-to-door war k, etc. Leadershipalways develops, but new people mustbe constantly trained to take over theduties and roles of leadership.
Since the draft resistance group is anattempt to reach into the community, itmust be run so that new community peoplecan have an equal share in making decisions and corning up with ideas. Onthe other hand, you do have a politicalpoint of view and it is important sometimes to just throw some people out ofthe group. Use your judgement: groupshave been nearly destroyed by going toofar in either direction"
You, are a serious resistance: don't
'vie W«nf 14[RYGROlJWl
JOIN TI-lEATER agit-props to get playground in vacant lot. (photo: JOIN Film Co-op).
Draft resistance groups, especially inthe community, should see themselvesas trying to get enough community people
GROUP STRUCTURE
base in the community, it must be supported mostly by the community. Don'tbe afraid to ask poor or working peoplefor money: it's their fight they've got topay as much as they can. People aremore suspicious of organizations that existwith no visible means of local supportthan of people who ask them for moneyto keep going. lf you do a good job, you'llget supported. But you should also think'about trying to support yourself by havingsome members of the union take jobs andbring home paychecks. Working will alsogive you both roots and credibility in thecommunity.
FUND RAISINGMiddle - class, professional sup par t
groups can provide some money, so canpeace groups" Fundraising letters shouldinclude newsletters, sample leaflets, etc"Try to get monthly pledges" There areusually organizations around like Vietnam Summer r') give a little seed money,but don't count on that. If the DraftResistance Union is going to have a real
into the army" In organJZlng this kindof a group you want to find amI help developsomeone whu will see themselves as anorganizer, and gi ve him or her as muchof the responsibility for the group aspossible: Your purpose is to spread INTOthe neighborhood,
•.. '.. "If
.. , \ .~ / ~ 'J" •
Draft Resistance Unions have foundit important everywhere to set up supportgroups among lawyers, doctors, laborunion staff people, and other professionals"They can help with property bond, withlegal services, 'with publicity contactsand with money" It has been worthwhileto spend a lot of time with each individualin the support group, explaining yourperspective and activities in order to geta stronger commitment from them, Alot of men and women who have driftedaway from the old left are anxious tohelp new left groups" They are part of yoursecurity, don't forget them. If it is possible to get someone, a lawyer or thelike, to organize that group with you,do it.
Organize adults to keep the young menin the neighborhood from enlisting oracquiescing to the draft. A mothers group,a group of veterans, a group of workers:..- any of these will be good at convincingyoung men not to go, and probable betterthan someone nearly their own age: theycan speak from experience.
Organize young women in a group tokeep young men from going and to support those men who refuse. Young worpencan break through a lot of the _•• Be aman" propaganda which lures young guys
SUPPORT GROUPS
access to reproduction facilties. AIsoethnic groups like the" Polish AmericanCenter" should be contacted; send themliteratLIre and speak to them if possible:use what tight non-establishment groupsalready exist.
Besides demonstrations at the induction center, try other things. lf there isa demonstration against the war put outyour own leaflet explaining why the DraftResistance Union is against the war andwhy and how it is fighting the draft.Put out your own leaflet, explaining yourown reason for support, in demonstrations of other kinds: welfare, housing,against a mayor, for a police controlboard, in support of black political prisoners. Anything to let people know thatyou are on the side of the people andto let them know that draft resistanceis a legitimate and necessary way ofdefending yourself.If you are good at skits, try to springone up by surprise in a public place,like a subway station or a supermarket,Pass out leaflets, talk to people, anddisappear.
WHITE RESISTANCE, Con't from p9
PAGE 14 THE MOVEMENTj
NOVEMBER 1967
INSIDE STD-W Can't' from p 5
NON-ZIONIST Can't from p 2
POP.ARTWARFARECon't from p 1right around the IC. We then held tight,keeping the groups in as organized amanner as possible, until the cops startedto disperse us. Since we had planned forthis to happen we were able to move ourgroups out in good order and take up ourorearranged posts at the key intersectionsin the area. It was at this point that thefull character of the action began todevelop; for when the people got out tothese intersections they really came intotheir own.
People were mad about Tuesday and thebrutality they saw and were determinedto make the power structure pay for whatit did. They went into the streets andbuilt barricades from whatever they couldfind handy -- benches, large potted trees,parking meters, garbage cans, and carsand trucks (these were placed in the middle of the streets and the air let out of thetires.) People would run up behind busesand rip the ignition wires out or wouldclimb into trucks and steal the keys.They ran into the streets and let theirimaginations and new-found sense of powerrun wild.
Typically a group 'would march into anintersection and form a moving circle inthe area of the crosswalks. People wouldthen come out and start to paint things onthe streets and sidewalks. The paint wasreally the original catalyst that loosenedthe people up and lead to the many othergreat, beautiful things. Once this looseningprocess had taken place, small groups ofdemonstrators would break out of thecircle and begin to move all kinds ofobjects into the streets. Many times thisactiVi~ happened right under the nosesof the cops; people acted with absoluteimpunity.
A group would work on an intersectionfor a while and then move on to another.This happened when they felt that theintersection was •'finished" or if a largecolumn of cops was beginning' to movein on them. People would. calmly moveoff, to avoid a direct clash, and startto work on the next intersection.
Incredible spontaneous things wouldhappen, from scenes where one or twooeople with the plywood shields would beholding off 15-20 cops from beating onibunch of demonstrators to an operationwhere we were actually able to push backa contingent of cops one whole block andregain an intersection.
People involved in those activities hadthe feeling of power. We had put the Oakland police force on the run (they startedout with 600 in the garage and had to increase strength to 2,000) and using aminimal amount of our energy were ableto really disrupt the whole city of Oakland for day. People have begun to feelthat Friday' was just a prelude to whatwe can do in the future.
THE NITTY GRITTYHere is a descriptive list of a number
of very specific items which we foundit useful to know about and use.
APPARELHelmets were widely worn and invalu
able as protection (and deterrents) againstblows to the head. The best kind area form of hockey goalie masks withlarge plastic face protectors. The sheets
'of foam rubber wrapped around the arms,legs and torso were also valuable. Menshould wear jock straps with metal cupsand women should use heavy padding toprotect their breasts. These are vulnerable areas of the body that the copsgo for. Special care should also go inprotecting the neck and collar-bone area.People should wear heavy coats (forprotection and to be used to cover teargas canisters) and good strong boots withsteel toes.
SHIELDSOne of the best ideas for self-defense
that we came up with was to build plywood shields. These shields were madeof 1/4", 3' by 4' pieces of ply-woodwith 2 canvas straps as, handles.People utiiiz~a'ihem~sways of holdingback cop attacks for short peLiods of
WHAT THE WELL-DRESSED STREETDEMONSTRA'!DR should wear. (photo:Mike Urmann).
time in order to give demonstrators achance to move out ahead of the_ cops.Many times, people with shields wereable to jump in between a cop_and theperson he was beating and protect thatperson from injury. The only problemwith the shields was that we didn't haveenough of them (we ended up with 50.{,0of them on Friday and we needed hun
,dreds)•. There are also modifications inthe design that are important. They shouldbe round, instead of rectal)gular, so thatbilly club blows will slide off of the edgesinstead of getting caught on the corners;if possible they should be made of wickerwhich is just as strong as plywood andhas greater give; and the handles shouldbe the kind that people can slip out ofeasily to avoid running the risk of gettingan arm caught and broken.
TEAR ~AS & MACEPeople should be made familiar with
both items before hand so that fhey arenot unknowns when used. Some proteet'ionis had hy carrying a wet handkerchief tobe placed over the face when coming incontact with tear-gas. The handkerchiefwill absorb agood percentage of the gas.Dunking your head in a pool of water alsodoes some good in wash,ing it ofL In thecase of mace, applications of vasalineto the face are helpful as mace is aliqUid and will run off the oily surfaceof the skin. ln the case of both tear-gasand mace, do not rub your eyes.
PROVOAmong the most helpful of our morale
building tools were the cans of spraypaint. They"helped provide ways of loosening up people and getting them to be,come imaginative in the handling of material around them. People should go intoactions of this type' 'armed" with paint,whipped cream, etc. Agit-prop here isalso invaluable and preparations in advance should be made for its use. (I.e.squirting cops in the crotch with wateror perfume is one good way of gettingthem out of action for awhile).
ARRESTSsheets and information forms. It was
very important for us to have been ableto collect, before the action, the information we needed to- bail people outof jail. Arrests were made at random;things were much simplified by ourhaVing this information and by the participants' knowledge of the ~asic processof arrest.
MONITOR SHEETSand maps. Small instruction manuals
are very important and shou:kl go outto as many people as possible. Thesew.ere> aids in b.t1ilding '\ .un~fi~d" ac~ion
and in prOViding information for peopleto use.
at the Tuesday night U.C. campus rallyvoted, after much pushing by the OldGuard, to have only a non-violent demonstration on Wednesday. The breakdown inplanning allowed this departure from theavowed philosophy of the Week to occur.Once the vote was taken, the Old Guard.insisted that it was the responsibility ofthe San Francisco Originals (the onlymembers of the Steering Committeepresent)to organize and lead the monitorsfor the next day. Wednesday's picketingwas uneventful.
LEADERSHIPAnd thus it was that on Thursday the
people themselves decided.A majority of the Steering Committee,including people from the Old Guard, decreed at Wednesday afternoon's rally thatthere would be no action on Thursday, thatthe week could be called off after 'theactions of Tuesday and Wednesday, as asuccess and people would be satisfied. Theminority on the Steering Committee announced that there would be a demonstration anyway and the Old Guard thenmoved to the pOSition of having a militantaction on Friday but still nothing onThursday. The veterans of Tuesday, thepeople who had read the papers and attended the rallies, went down to the Induction Center on Thursday anyway; itwas possibly the biggest cancelled demonstration ever. The internal jockeying on theSteering Committee was rendered irrelevant; or rather, the militant faction won,but not by arguing. They won because themood they had hoped for occurred. Peoplewere not about to let the cops run themout of Oakland. They had promised to try ,'to shut down the Induction Center for aweek, and by god they were-going to do it.
The most important lesson to be learnedout of this phase of the activity is anunderstanding of the way old guard campusleadership operates. The Berkeley OldGuard is made up of a number of peoplewho developed as political' leaders inBerkeley. That's where they cut theirpolitical teeth. But there have been manypeople in the movement who "grew up"in Berkeley who are not in the OldGuard. Where are they? They've left Berkeley and gone elsewhere to work. Whatyou have left is a group of people who
Arabs in their land and out, and aboutas Socialist and equalitarian as those'other Socialist leaders, Willy Brandt andG. Sarragat. Scarcely recognizable as'Jews.
I don't know about Israel and progress in the area. I think they want it.So long as it doesn't disturb them, usetheir water, interfere with their needs.The problem is that they deny this elementary -right of self-determination tothe Arabs of IsraeL Arab leaders atfirst wanted Jews to come to Palestineto get allies against the Colonial powersand to bring money and commerce intothe area. Time has placed Israel on the
COMMUNICATIONSA coordinated communications sys
tem is a necessity. This means havingavailable a strong sophisticated walkietalkie system with enough people trainedin its use.
GENERALIt was vital to our success that we were
able to give basic instruction to afairlylarge number of people and extensivetraining to a group of monitors. Thisenabled people to act on the basis ofsome knowledge and have confidence inthemselves when they decidedJo innovatein the field. We found out that we stillneed a lot of training to be able to provide any complete kind of self-protectionand group defense and will be studyingfor the next time.
FOR THE FUTUREWe would like to begin to collect re
ports of experiences of this type so asto be able to prepare our own gUides foraction. People should send ,in, accountsof actions. they' help organize" OF haveparticipated in. ..
find it comfortable there and who are afraidto test what they have learned in otherparts of the country where the climatesupporting . left activism is much lesspronounced. They tend to become verycautious and instead of becoming theinnovators on the campus wait to seewhich way the wind blows and jump onwhatever ship seems to be floating inthe right direction. That's a dangerousthing that can happen to any of us ifwe allow ourselves to be made "leaders"and then make our identity solely dependent on that role.
CONCLUSIONSThe major value of Stop the Draft
week was that it discovered where peoplewere at. It tapped a source of energy,frustration and anger that has not beenmobilized before. All over the countrysimilar outbreaks have occurred: Madison, Brooklyn CO<l.lege, the Pentagon.
Rather than build an organization outof the 10,000 people who blockaded thestreets around the Oakland Induction Center (thiS is what the Free Student Uniontried to do with the large number ofstudents involved in the FSM), smallgroups of people are getting togetherto build cadres of organizers which willshape the disc?vered energy into seriousprojects.
Hopefully, out of this will come a groupor groups that will play similar rolesin the 'white community to that of SNCCin the black: staff organizations that willcultivate skills in organizing, communications, electronics ••• They will not beafraid of organizing a minority in anycommunity, be that a campus or a sectionof town. Their. aim will be to involvepeople in a struggle for power: the powerto prevent sections of the military andgovernmental structures from operating.They will use creative tactics that fall outside the conventional non-violent discipline.
On Jefferson Street in Oakland, weisolated and rolled back a troop of Highway Patrol. On Clay Street we surroundedthe police and cut them ofL We used theobjects at hand, trees and benches andCoca Cola trucks. These actions werenot ends in themselves: they were parablesfor the future. ..
side of the Co~onial powers, and theJewish immigrants have done the nativesout of far more than they have broughtthem. As nice as the schooling, etc.,is, it is only for a tiny, tolerated minority.
Israel admitted the use of Napalm.Said it didn't harm the historic buildings. There are many photographs. Yesthe Israeli's are nice to captives. Theirprisons are not too different from thenormal living conditions of most of thepeople of the area. Nevertheless, fromthe smallest incident to the wars themselves, Arab casualties have always vastlyoutnumbered Israeli casualties. As withtoday's incident between the Israeli destroyer, peacefully sitting in an Egyptianharbor entrance, and the Egyptian' oilfields. Fifty-one casualities to severalhundred. One destroyer to an industry.And Jews remaining in Arab states. Yes,they are being driven out. They livedequally with the population for two thousand years, but the hatred for Israel isbecoming a hatred for Jewry, and weall must bear that burden.
Fin<.lly, I have not lost my coo1. Iam not afraid. I am proud and happy to be aJew, and I will work and fight to keepthe Jews something that I would want tobe. I believe that we Jews can remakeIsrael. It will not be easy or simple.It may take. as long as it takes to remake this country. But Israel is asmuch"' my country as it is Rothchild's.And I believe that Jews can build anation where they will have the samerelationship with Arabs that they havealway" wanted for themselves. That isthe age'-old dream of our people.
For the movementAugust Maymudes
Past chairman, LA Friends of SNCC..
THE MOVEMENT
ISRAEL, Con'l from p 10
WHITE RESISTANCE, Con't from p13
NOVEMBE/, 1967
class in the East, as the Wobblies(I.W,W.)were on the West CoasL (;See the paperback autobiography by Mike Gold, JEWSWITHOUT MONEY).
Most Russian and other European jewsstayed put in their homelands. They weremuch more influenced by Marxist thanZionist ideas, although some tried tocombine both. Lenin argued that nationalism in a dispersed people playsinto the hands of exploiters both of thedominant nationality and of its own bydividing the working class, and the solution for the Russian jews was alliancewith the Russian ethnic working class,Many of his fellow Communist leaderswere JeWish: Sverdlov, first President·of Soviet Russia, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, (He himself was Russian).
HITLERIt was Adolf Hitler, and not the Zion
ists, who populated Palestine with jewsSix millIOn had been killed, Those whosurvived had no reason whatever to trustthe West. which kept them in refugeecamps and, in the case of the U.S", refused to re-open its doors to more thanrestricted quota immigration, Nor didthey feel that the C,S,S.R. offered a solution, for reasons that were not verydifferent,
Having been the only people on earthchosen for absolute extermination in thiscentury, the survivors concluded thatthey could trust only each other. Theymoved to the only place on earth wherethey could build a state on that basis. andwere assisted, at great and willing sacrifice, by jewish people throughout theworld and by others. The combination ofthe understandable mistrustfulness of thesurvivors, the fact that the only leadership on the spot was Zionist, and thatthe Arab leadership of that day was semifeudal and no significant revolutionarymovement existed (neither Nasser nor theAlgerian liberation movements had madean appearance) defeated what moves therewere to make Palestine a bi-national state,and led to the solution of partition by theU.N. in 1947,
RIGHT TO EXISTAs a left-Wing Italian journalist declared
a few years ago, "Israel is the republicof the victims of fascism," It is that, andnot Zionism, which gives it the right toexist. But the right to exist is not the rightto expand'into other people's territorY,asit has done in three wars, Itis not the rightto treat the native inhabitants as secondclass citizens, and to use every possiblemeans to pressure them to leave, It isnot the right to refuse to accept thereturn of half a million refugees to theirown houses, olive trees, vineyards, sheep,It is not the right to pursue a viciouscircle policy of urging millions of addi- .tional jews to abandon their homelands(which they won't) and come to Israel,causing Israel to say it needs more Lebensraum (Hitler's word for space for anexpanding population), which it then seeksto populate with still more immigrants.
That has been the well-established policy of the Israeli government for twentyyears. Today the government is morefirmly in the hands of leaders favoringthat policy than ever before, The cabinetcontains the outright fascist, MenachemBegin, whose particular terrorist groupmassacred the population, including women and children, of an Arab village in1948, and who brags of that because it served the purpose of causing Arabs to fleeen masse. It contains the militarist, Gen.Dayan, who said in an interview with LEMONDE last year: "Of course we are allies and cooperate with the Western powers." The world policy of its ruling partyis indicated by a letter ,of the Chairmanof the Committee on Foreign and Security Affairs of the Parliament (Knesseth), David Hacohen, in the semi-official daily DAVAR, May 24, 1966:
"The defeat of the U.S. in Vietnamwould be the beginning of the end of theind~pendence of all the peoples of Southeast Asia, and the dead end of the independence and freedom of man all overthe world:'
Israel also opposed the Algerian warof na.tionaI liberation, because it was
effectively allied with France. It attempted to return Egypt to a state ofcolonialism by striking at the Suez Canal, jointly with Britain and France, in1956, And yet there are those who support Israel against the Arabs on groundsof its progressivism,
The highly-publicized communal kibbutzim farms comprise only 4% of thepopulation of IsrateL Whatever the highsocial ideals of the people living inthem, their government employs themas military outposts on the Arab frontiers, It is like the Russian Tsars whoconverted communities of runaway serfs.called Cossacks. into that empire's perm anent border guards.
The total percentage of trade-union andgovernment-owned industry and enterprise in Israel is little higher than inItaly ~Jnd France. ~I'hich no one callssocialist states, \Vhen publicly or orgauizatlonally-owned propenv is used topursue a government policy of su'engthenin~ PRIV:\TE pl·operty. that is statecapitalism. not socialism. And that isIsraefs policy
PROGRESS IN MIDEASTThat is not the policy of ,\ 1geria, of
Syria. or of Egypt, No one Clrgues abuutthe fact that there is a true social rev'olution in progress in Algeria, with alevel of workers' cuntrol higher thananywhere but YugoslClvia, In Syria allmajor industry has been nationalized,As Egypt is the largest and most important Arab state, let us look at itmore closely, Six years ago, banks. i.nsurance companies. and 3.300 businessestablishments were nationalized, Taxlaws maximized income at 5.000 poundsper year, and a quarter of all companyprofits had to be distributed to workers.The next year, nationalization of foreigntrade was complete'd, as was heavy industry and major mining, Consumer goodswere left in private hands, but the owners are heavily restricted. Agriculturalholdings were limited to 100 feddans perfamily, As a result, there has been a-massive rise of consumption by the commonpeople.
ISRAEL'S BACKERSSo Egypt, Algeria. Syria, are countries
very well advanced in building socialism,Israel doesn't even talk about it any more.It listens to those who provide its money,In August, sixty millionaires from allover the world, including 38 from theU.S., convened in Tel Aviv to plan Israel'~ future. They told Israel to pull inits belt before they would provide anymore, and, when they were finished, PrimeMinister "EshkoI was humbly mumbling.he would gi ve •most serious study' to thecriticisms of the economy." (;San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 13, 1967).
So while there are parallels betweenearly U.S. and Israeli history. there aredifferences as welL Israel is not economically self-supporting. It is not quite a
. puppet, but those who pay the piper do callthe tune. And for the U.S, military-industrial complex, for the world empire ofhigh finance (in which rich jews are atifty minority, but a loyal part), it is notIsrael that counts, but oil and Arab Independence.
, OILThe two are inseparable. The Arabian
American Oil Company has the highestprofit margin of any billion-dollar-pluscorporation in the world, One-third of allprofits on direct foreign investments remitted to the U,S. in 1965 from theentire world came from Middle EasternoiL The gasoline for which you pay over30 cents a gallon costs one-seventh of onecent to produce in Kuwait on the ArabianPeninsula. For every dollar's worth ofproducts derived from Middle Easternoil, the governments there get about tencents and the Arab workers less than onecenL
The revolutionary Arab governmentswish to free all this from imperialismand use the. total income to develop theirown countries. To do this. the Arabmonarchies and sheikdoms, chiefly on theArabian Peninsula, must be overthrown.
This is why Nasser supported the Yemenrepublicans against the monarchists. whowere supported by Saudi Arabia.
U.S. INVOLVEMENTThe Israeli conquest in june weakened
Nasser, compelling him to come to anagreement with Saudi ,1\rabia and pullout of Yemen. This is the prime reasonwhy the U.S. supported Israel, and whyit has just resumed arm shipments bothto Israel and those Arab states that havereactionary governments. Yet it was chiefly Saudi Arabia, which hets never participated in any of the wars with Israel. thatis the source of the threats of extermination which so unified the Israelis in thewar and gained them almost unanimoussupport among the American and WestEuropean public, This plays right intoIsrael's hands, Clnd it supports the Arabmonarchies I Foreign l\1inister Abba Ebansaid in a speECh on ,May 13th: • 'The Arabstates also are not anxious to exchangeBritish colouialism for Egyptian colonIalism." (RAMPARTS, November. 1967,p. 97), But Israel actually supports British colonialism, Prime Minister Eshkolhaving said on April 30th that he wantedBritain to stay in South Arabia and in Aden,
While King Faisal of Saudi Arabia saidover SBC in May that his pOSition withregard to Israel was: "Extermination ofIsrael," the London SUNDAY TIMES ofjune 4th quoted Nasser's reaction whentold by a Western diplomat that the gen- •eral impression in the West was that,given the chance, he would massacreevery single Israeli:
DESTROY ISRAEL?"According to the diplomat, Nasser
was surprised at this" By •destroy Isr.ae!' , he said, he meant destroy her as aWestern-subsidized anti-Arab base in theMiddle East." And he went on to describehis' 'vision of the ultimate settlement," in
their' own anger. We've got to get peoplein motion. Draft centers, in the community, can provide the beginning focusfor that motion.
TALKING TO PEOPLEEve'n men and women who are not
pan of the Labor Union movement orwho do not remember its struggle toorganize are close to the rhetoric of•self-defense'. "Working people organizedinto unions because they were being usedby bosses and companies' over which theyhad no kind of controL They organizedto get a share in that control and theygot it. They also get their self-respectand a way of defending themselves."Those same men and women will respond to draft resistance if it is putto them with that same rhetoric. "Weare joining together to defend ourselvesand keep ourselves from being used ina war which we don't want and whichwe don't think ought to be fought. -Dying is too much for the company toask of us." "We have a Draft Resist-
. ance UNION."It doesn't make sense not to use our
own revolutionary tradition. People withonly high-school educations remembermore about it than most college students. "When in the course of humanevents it becomes necessary ..." "Thiscountry was founded on the principlethat sometimes it becomes necessary fora people to resist the laws of its government because that government does notand cannot be made to represent the willand beliefs of the people. We believethis is such a time, We refuse to go .. ,"
Bow many times have you heard someone say that •'there never was an honestpolitician". Let's consider the possibility that they mean it. People beingcynical about political leaders, about voting, are just bitching. But when you linkthat kind of talk to an act of resistance:support of someone who refuses to go, itgoes past just complaining. The samething goes for talk about "The workingman gets the raw deal, the rich man
. gets the easy life and don't do nothin'for it." Well, it's a rich man's warand poor and working, black and whitepeople are getting drafted to fight iL
Nobody has said that most of the peoplewho work for a living -- who are de-
PAGE 15
which the refugees would be restored asreqUired by the United Nations: "jewswoula- still be the majority in this newjewish-Arab State" in Palestine, but itwould be a Middle Eastern State not tiedto Western imperialism."
That was just before the war, Todaythe situation is worse than ever, as demonstrated by the sinking of an Israeli de
, stroyer by a Soviet-made missile boat andthe destruction of Egypt's oil refineriesby Israeli shelling.
RUSSIAN AIDThere will be no more Israeli conquests.
The USSR now maintains naval flotillas inEgypt's ports at all times, A thousandSoviet military advisers under six Russian generals are reorganizing and training the Egyptian army (Cairo dispatch,San Francisco Chronicle, Oce 27, 1967).As condition for re-equipping Nasser'sforces, the Soviet Union has insisted thatthe pre-revolutionary military caste bethrown out, and be replaced by an officercorps from the people. Nasser has agreedmost willingly,
On the other hand, Moscow rejects theAlgerian and Syrian demands that Israel'sconquests be freed by armed forces, TheUSSR wants no world war,
Eventually, industrialization, education,reforms, and military recovery must necessarily make the combined revolutionaryArab states vastly stronger than Israel,as a mere matter of population, If Israelsurrenders its conquests beyond':t\le armistice lines of 1949, the USSR andbtherswill insist that the Arab states recognize itfully. If not, the Arab states will at thatfuture date take matters into their ownhands, and. Israel will ;be destroyed. Thedifferent pOSitions of Saudi Arabia andEgypt, of the USA and USSR, make clearthat this struggle of national liberation vs,imperialism is not one of race, color, orreligion. ..
pendent on a weekly or bi-weekly paycheck -- are against the war, Some areand some are not at alL, But the oneswho are ,against the, war are tied in allsorts of human, life-style ways to theones who are not, to the super-patriots,Propaganda about the war is not splittingoff a militant resistance to the war, butcampaigns against the draft ARE. Thedraft is an immediate issue: a man hasto act, his supporters have to decide ..
Finally, we got to give people thesense that other people, LIKE THEM,in other parts of the country, are beginning to move. People moving on a locallevel don't find out about people movingon local levels in other parts of thecountry, unless they burn up the city.Part of our job is to build up a networkof communications, initially between localdraft centers, so that people feel thaItheir people have stopped bitching andstarted moving.
THE LAST THINGAnybody who has tried to organize in
the U.S. knows ~hat anti-communism isthe strongest force holding a people alienated from their government in supportof that goyernment. We can begin tobreak through the anti-communism ifw.e begin to talk in our literature aboutthe way people live in Cuba and NorthVietnam, in Eastern European countriesand in all over the new revolutionarythird world countries. We don't haveto defend Chinese communism, or anyother communism: we simply have tcbring people to a consciousness of theparticular way people live in the countries Americans have been taught tchate. We have to discuss, say, Cubarinstitutions for choosing leaders and directing the economy and decide whetherthat amounts to tyranny. It is a tyrannywe are fighting against, and if thentu'rns out not be a tyranny in Cuba, orChina, then we don't have to hate thOSEcountries.
But again, education doesn't mean anything if we are not involved in reastruggles. The war against the Vietna.mese people continues. Our governmenis using and murdering our own peopleWE'VE GOT TO REACB OUR OW!'PEOPLE. ...
PAGE 16 THE MOVEMENT NOVEMBER 1967
INTEGRATED ORGANIZING
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Born to Win
WOODY GUTHRIE
songwriter - poet,spoke and sang forthan we can speak
VVoody, folksinger,lover-revolutionary,himself far betterfor him:
I write what I see,I write what I've seen,I write things that I just hope to seeSomewhere farther along.
"I never would have craved to writeso many balladsongs, anyhow, if I'd notbeen able to tell you what I think is wrongwith this world we're living in."
Chorus:Born to win. I know I'm born to win.It's a funny old world that I am in.I'll fight to change it like it ought to be .Born to win. I know I'm born to win.
I had my fun and my troublesI had my hard luck and bluesBeen up and been down and been sober
and drunkBut I know that I'm not born to lose.
STOP THE DRAfT
FUNDS ARE URGENTLY NEEDED FORTHE DEFENSE OF THOSE ARRESTEDON FELONY CHARGES. PLEASE SENDCONTRIBUTIONS TO STOP THE DRAFTWEEK FUND, 449 14th Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94103
able that whites should not pour intoblack communities (or brown communities) to organize. But this should notbe taken to mean that, at least undercertain conditions, where people live together, that black, brown and white peoplecannot organize black, brown and whitepeople together, while taking into account that each organizer has his orher special area of responsibility. LADOhas not set the city of Chicago on its feetyet, does not have large numbers of successes to point to. But in certain respects,LADO experience has indicated what canbe done. ..
STOP THE DRAFTFELONY ARRESTS
OAKLAND -- M<:>st of the arrests duringStop the Draft Week were misdemeanors,ranging from disturbing the peace tocontributing to the delinguency of a minor(presumably by urging him to join ~e0action. )
Several STOW leaders were arrested,however, on felony charges, carrying sentences of one to five years. Robert Mandel and Steve Hamilton, both of the STOWSteering Committee were arrested for., assault on an officer."
Terence, Cannon, also on the SteeringCommittee, was arrested the Sunday before the week begap. by police who illegally searched his car after a monitortraining session and found 29 sticks ofwood to be used as picket sign standards.Cannon was arrested on 29 felony countsof "possessing a lethal weapon." Thethree were released on $3300 bail each.
Though the charges' are false, the policeare determined to carry through in prosecuting, to intimidate future anti-draftprotests. It may take several appealsand trials to win these cases.
Wherever death maysurprise us, it will bewelcome, provided thatthis, our battle cry,reach some receptiveear, that another handstretch out to take upweapons and that otherm en come forward tointone our funeral dirgewith the staccato of machine guns and new criesof battle and victory.
Che Guevara
TEACHING WHITES
WORKING TOGETHER
LADO experience points to certain lessons, which may be useful to the movementas a whole. It has now become indisput-
the conditions of the poor, LADO peoplesuggested that the most effective actionwould be to reject Romney, since he hadalready given his answer, in Detroit, tothe demands of the poor. After some discussion the committee agreed, and drew upa press release which stated, among otherthings, that they could not welcome politicians who, answered the demands of thepoor with tanks and machine guns. WhenRomney arrived the press release wasdistributed, whch, caused him to blowhis cool and start shouting. The incidentreceived quite a bit of publicity, in Chicagoand the national press. While there hasbeen some negative response, and threatsof reprisal by the Puerto Rican uncletoms against LADO and other individuals,the general reaction of the community hasbeen healthy.
Among some poor whites, the harshness of their conditions leads them to seekout LADO. As one of the LADO members'put it, "There's only one train that'smoving on Division St., and if the poorwhite people want to go anywhere, they'vegot to get on the moving train." Recentlya white woman, whose family was evicted,came to LADO because she had heardfrom some of her Puerto Rican neighborsthat LADO helps people". LADO moved herfurniture back in (postponing the eviction)and helped her take suitable action againstthe landlord, who had acted illegally.
It has not been a point of principle toinsist on the use of only Spanish at allLADO meetings. The point of principlehas been that everyone should understandand take part in the meeting. On occasion, where there have been large numbers of English-speaking people at ameeting, and where all the Latins presenthave been comfortable in English, themeeting has been' corducted entirely inEnglish. At other times, the meeting hasbeen held in Spanish while interpretationto and from Spanish is provided for thosewho need it. Black people in LADO, whobest of all understand the meaning ofdestruction of a culture, are quite willingto put up with the inconvenience of gettingthe meeting through a sometimes inepttranslation. The same is true of the moreadvanced whites. What exists is not alanguage barrier, but a consciousnessbarrier. \"!hen this barrier is overcome,language ceases to be i probl~m.
Thus, one Puerto Rican young man inthe community said, "We can't unite withthe Negroes. lf we do, we'll close one doorto ourselves." LADO's answer whichsums up all resistance to unity with theblack people, both among Latin Americansand poor whites, is this: "Yes, there are
'two doors open to us. One is the doorof poverty and discrimination, destruction of our culture and denial of ourrights, coupled with a few tiny privilegesto make us think we are better than theNegroes. The other door leads to fullfreedom. We can't go through that doorunless we are hand-in-hand with the blackpeople, and we can't be hand-in-hand withthem unless we take tbeir struggles asour own, even to the point of rejecting
•our few miserable 'and degradi!1g 'privileges', where they exist. It is exactlythat first door we mean to close, and thatsecond door we mean to open."
The most dramatic illustration of thegrowth of consciousness among Spanishspeaking community people of the needto identify with the black people was theincident that took place during Gov. Romney's recent visit to Chicago. He had arranged to visit one of the social welfareagencies in the neighborhood, which iilsohappens to be the meeting groung of theurban renewal representation committee.During a discussion in the committee ofhow to utilize Romney's visit to dramatize
ROMNEY
CLOSE THE DOORS
Many radical organizers have noted thedifficulty of organizing poor whites, andhave pointed to a pattern of racial privileges as an important cause of this difficulty. The power structure iswilling to offer certain privileges to anygroup to keep it away from the BlackUberation Movement. It is this contradictory presence of privilege togetherwith oppression that forms the back-dropto any attempt at organizing non-blacksto unite with blacks.
Where the privilege is least, the desireto struggle is greatest: thus poor whitesjoined the balck people in Detroit, andPuerto Ricans rebelled in Chicago and,east Harlem;, But fighting for one's interest, even to the point of rebelling,is not the same as uniting with blackpeople.
POOR WHITES
common problems. A slum building withan almost equal number of Puerto Ricanand black tenants, as well as severalwhites, a welfare office which hurls racistabuse at Spanish-speaking and black applicants, and which mis-treats white applicants (without the racial slurs) - theseconditions are ready-made to teach everyone concerned the need to organize'together.
This commitment to organize the poorof the area into one group does not meanthat the Latin American Defense Organization has become transformed into a ' I Poor
'People's Defense Organization", that ithas dropped its special concern for theproblems of the Spanish-speakin'g people.It means simply that LADO has undertake~to explain to all the poor of the area thatthe first condition of a fight againstpoverty in the Division St. area is the defense of the rights of the persecutedand oppressed Latin Americans, and theirmost immediate and obvious ally, the blackpeopl,e. Thus; when whites have come to
'LADO,they have understood that they arecoming to a neighborhood group whichis fighting in everybody's interest.
POVERTY PROGRAM
The Division St. area, in which LADOconcentrates its efforts, is the landingpoint in Chicago for most new arrivalsfrom Puerto Rico. Latin Americans(mostly Puerto Rican, but also includingOO'1linicans, Mexican-Americans and Cu-
') make up slightly more than half, area's population. Black people are
Ie!.' 10%, by rough estimate. Therem? .,nder consists mostly of workingcla~s whites of Polish and Ukrainian extraction (many who own their own homesand many who do not) and a small numberof southern whites. '
LADO found black, brown and sometimes white people thrown together with
by Noel Ignatin
1 don't think he meant it this way,but this is how it came out dept.(Sargent Shriver on Merv Griffin'sshow): "The War on Poverty is doinga great job. We had hundreds of boyswho couldn't even qualify for the army--now with the help of the anti-povertyprogram we have been able to send600 of these boys to Vietnam and sixhave been killed already."--Herb Caen, S. F. Chr~nicle, Oct27,1967.
DIVISION STREET
In Chicago a demonstration of the LatinAmerican Defense Organization (LADO)is in process at the welfare office. Awomanapproaches one of the demonstrators andtells her that she hasn't had anything toeat for herself or her children in severaldays and the welfare department is givingher the run-around. The LADO demonstrators take up her cause and ~n heran emergency check. The woman comesto a LADO meeting the next day andmakes a short talk expressing her appreciation of LADO and her willingness tohelp. Her talk is greeted by loud applause,cheers and cries of Viva!
The landlord of a rent-struck bilildingapproaches the wife of one of the leadersof the LADO Tenant Union in the buildingand asks her for rent, saying that her husband hac promised to pay some rent andinstructed the landlord to see her. Thewoman replies that there must be somemistake, since her husband is 'not acoward, and therefore would not haveagreed to pay rent while a strike is on.
The tWO incidents mentioned above aretypical of what might be expected from acommunity group such as LADO, with onespecial feature: in neither of the two incidents recounted is the individual LatinAmerican. The woman at the welfareoffice white; the woman who told off thelandlord is black.
At the present time, when radicalsare considering all aspects of blackwhite organizing (together? separately?by whom?) the experiences of LADO inthis respect are worthy of study,
LADO was founded in the summer of1966 following the Puerto Rican uprising on Division St. The original organizers were'several Latin Americanswho had lived in the community for years.Today, a majority of LADO staff members,both Latin American and white, are peoplewho have lived and worked in the community for long periods. The purpose ofthe founders was expressed in the namethey chose for the group. One of the mainpillars of their program was to help theLatin American community in the areaidentify its interests and struggles withthose of the Black Uberation Movement,
I had women all kinds and all colorsIn every land where I have beenI sawall the people in trouble like meAnd I know that we're not born"to lose.
NAME
ADDRESS
-from BORN TO WIN byWoody Guthrie
You robbed us and beat us and bled usYou worked us and paid us like slavesI know we're a-ll born to work and to fightAnd to win or go down in our grave.
449 14th STREETSAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. 94103
MAIL TO THE MOVEMENT
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