WID VIDT * THiiflr't \ \ tr1" rta ,x. Y "1:i W, :6W .4 W," "w: ,W. .r, . . b .i.7r" !.b. W. .; ... 7,,,, / w4,:. % .,., *;;; "';1;il::iti :. , ?,. ,, i .',f ,,.tql ;r{,':",w:!, urging sedition and desertion but that charge was dismissed. The appeals court's reversal of the lesser charge means that Priest is now eligible for an honorable discharge. -J.P. WRL AWARD WINNER GETS WEST POINT DISCHARGE C ornelius Cooper, Jr., who came to the I970 WRL dinner to personally accept the twelfth annual peace award, has become the first West Point gradu- \E $: ate to win an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector. The discharge went into effect February 10 with what his ACLU attorneys, Marvin Karpatkin and Michael Pollet described as "spectacular speed." Only a month previous, lvlaJ'or General George Blanchard reversed the negative recommendation of a hearing officer and asserted that Cooper "is quite sincere and is of no benefit to this division of the Army as a result of the beliefs he holds." Cooper detailed those beliefs at a at) 0\, 2r. \ $ t. { press conference February 1 3 in which he said the U.S. should adopt pacifism and disarmament as national policies. He views it as absurd to try members of the armed forces for individual acts !, of atrocity in Vietnam "since war itself is a crime." ln his dlscharge application, he pointed out that as a black man "l am caused to be more than unusually sensitive to the fact of violence in life and the effect of violence on men's lives." He was one of 8 blacks in the SAILOR WHO WILLED INSURANCE TO WRL WINS ACQUITTAL '69 West Point graduating class of about 800. Last year's WRL annual peace award went to persons resisting within the the military. Two others in addition to Cooper-Russ Malone and Terry Klugattended the dinner to pick up their scrolls in person. -,.P. RIP OUT THE PHONE TAPS, THERE'S NO LAW SAYS YOU CAN'T! Roger Priest, the Navy apprentice There is no law prohibiting the deand underground editor who willed his service-connected life insurance to WRL tection and removal of phone taps, regardless of their so-called legality. "The and urged others to do likewise, has won a complete acquittal on disloyalty vast majority of phone taps are planted changes. The Navy announced on Febwithout court approval anyhow," ac.l rurary 2 that its court of military recording to the Counter-Spy Committee, view had reversed Priest's courtmartial a group of electronic technlcians and conviction promoting disloyalty through lawyers in Washington, D.C. who provide free detection and removal service his underground newsletter. The reversal was based on a technical error of to people and groups being tapped but the trial judge. unable to pay for professional detection Priest originally had been accused of se rv ice s. The committee has a display of devices recently uncovered in and near the homes and offices of several Washington area government employees, students and political activists. The counter-spies found one elaborate device plugged into regular phone company equipment near the home of a woman school teacher who had parti- cipated in a few marches. The device was a near duplicate of the equipment which should have been there, except that it also served as a powerful radio tran sm i tter. The Counter-Spy Committee is looking in other major cities for people wlth some knowledge of electronics who would like to be trained and given equipment to detect taps by the D.C. committee. The D.C. committee will send fully equipped teams of technicians to remove devices when local sleuths discover them. Money is urgently needed for travel expenses and equ ipment upkeep. Contributors, volunteers and persons wanting further information should write to: The Counter-Spy Committee, 1402 New York Ave., Washington, D.C. 20005. -LNS R.EPUBLICAN CONG R ESSMAN SUGGESTS NIXON IMPEACHMENT "The threat of impeachment or at least the discussion of impeachment" has been suggested by Representative Paul McCloskey, )r., Republican of California as the only means of changing President Nixon's war policy. Mc- Closkey advanced this proposal in an interview February l6 on National Educational Television. "Attacks of the kind Mr. McCloskey directed at Mr. Nixon are exceedingly rare in American politics, especially by a legislator of the President's party," commented one newspaper. lmplying that he expected retaliation, McCloskey said after the interview: "l will probably have served my last term in Congress." He was elected in 1961 after defeating Shirley Temple Black, a rightist Republican, in the primary. ANTI-WAR ACTORS SEEK TO ENTERTAIN Gls "lt's been very disconcerting for many of us in Hollywood to see that Bob Hope, Martha Raye and other companies of their political ilk have cornered the market and are the only er di at m clr D 5e cc ln ce an Li c0 lir 0a te tu entertainers allowed to speak to soldiers in this country and Vietnam." .l So stated .lane Fonda February 6 press at a conference announcing formation of a troupe of about a dozen well known, anti-war performers in- cluding Mike Nichols, Elliot Gould, Dick Gregory, and herself which will seek to tour military bases across the cou ntry. To perform on a base, an official invitation from the commanding officer is required and a request for such an invitation has been submitted to Lieutenant General .lohn Tblson 3d, commander at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fort Bragg, was chosen first "because Tolson has been the key architect of the Army's new look." lf he turns down the request, the troupe will put on the show March 13-14 at the Haymarket Square Coffeehouse in nearby Fayetteville. -f .P. CULEBRA ACTION REPORT ment marty laurltsen burton levltsky jackson maclow marls cakars susan cakars mary mayo bruCe chrlstlanson davld mcreynolds peter donna chrlstlanson merlln dlana j clavles don mochon jim peck ralph dlgla paul rllllng karen durbln davld easterbrook lgal roodenko jen elodle wendy schwartz leah frltz lorralne shaplro nell haworth connle sohodskl hendrlck hertzberg bonnle stretch jack horowltz rnayer vlsh n6r marty jezer llnda wood peter klger mlke wood page atlanta, ga.) ruth dear (5429 s. dorchester, chlcago, ilt.) paul enclmer (c/O venlce draft reslstance, 73 market st. no. 1.1, venlce, callf.) s6th foldy (2322 elandon dr., cteveland helghts, oh.) mlchael brunson (box 12548 seattle, washlngton 981 1 1) becky and paul (somewhere ln new mexlco) wayne hayashl (1o35 unlverslty ave., rm. 203, honolulu, hl, 96822) roso labolle (713 ne adams, mlnneapoils, mn.) tlmothy lange (1O45 l4th st., boutder, co.) mark morrls (3808 hamllton st., philad6lphla, pa.) paul obtuda (544 natoma, san franclsco, ca 94103, 6: Come Together: the Ann Arbor Conference @@@@ tf, dorothy lane IN THE PROVINCES jim geheres (c/o AWIN, bo\ 7477, pel in the Navy bombing range in the northwest peninsula of Culebra. The chapel was built in three days and a service was held; 6 people representing the groups involved, including me from AQAG, stayed in the chapel in violation of atemporary restraining order and were arrested for contempt of court. ln the weeks since then ten other people, mostly Culebrans, have gone into the bombing range to inter- The nonviolent struggle on the small Puerto Rican island of Culebra to get the U.S. Navy'off the island is continuing and increasing in strength and determination. On January i 8, 1971 , just one week after a "peace treaty" was signed by the Navy, making small concessions in return for the cooperation of the Puerto Rican government and the Mayor of Culebra in fere with the bombing and have also keeping people from interfering with been arrested for contempt, and nuthe bombing of the island, a group of merous other people have gone in withCulebrans, other Puerto Ricans from out being arrested. ln fact, in the first the Puerto Rican lndependence Party three weeks of "Operation Spring(PlP) and the Clergy Committee for board", the intensification of the HOME FOLKS ofella alayeto marllyn albert the Rescue of Culebra, and North Americans from A Quaker Action Group (AQAG), began building a cha- page l0: The Winter Soldier I nvestigation page l2: France Simmers Again page Tet Offensive 15: in Oswego page 16: Dogs Run Free, Why Not We peace and freedom through nonviolent action page 19: HowTo Live, What To Do 339 lafayette street page 22: Guerrilla War in the Movement page page page 26: 28: 33: Touch! new york, new york 10012 telephone .21 21 228-027 O WIN ls pubtlshed twlcemonthly exc6pt July, August, and Janu- ary when lt ls publlshed monthly by the WtN Publlshlng Emplre wlth the support o, the War Rs. slsters League. Subscrlpflons are $5.OO per year. S€cond class po9 tage pald at New york, N.y. lOOOI. lndlvldual wrlters are re sponslble for oplnlons expressed and accuracy of facts glven. Sorry-manuscrlpts cannot be Reviews Letters Cover: Erica Weiss March 15. 1971 Volume Vll, Number 5 16. a turned unless accompanled by s€lf-addressed, stamped env6lop6. Prlnted ln U.S.A., WtN lJ a memb€r of the Underground Press Syn- dlcate and Llberatlon News 56rvlco. , bombing in which the navies of the United States, Canada, Britain, Netherlands, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Brazil participate, there was only one full day of firing-every other day was interfered with in whole or in part. Repression is increasing: on the night of January 29th, the chapel was \ I 1 \ a -l I , ( : \ x ) i\ l S. i 2th St., Philadelphia, PA., 19101 . The focus of the continuing action will be"to stop, in what ways we can, the testing of bombs and the training of men to use these bombs to kill, and to act with Culebrans and other Puerto Ricans to get the Navy out of Culebra. -Dan Balderston for AQAG pulled down, apparently by Navy peoSTRAIGHT SHIT FROM SCEF ple, and rebuilt by Culebrans the next day; on February 6th at 3 A.M. the Wl LM I NGTON, N.C.-Reports distent of those camping out near the cha- tributed by maior news services on repel was torn down by two sailors; in cent racial violence here have not told the past two weeks a number of peothe truth about what took Place, a ple have been beaten, trampled on, black reporter charges. kicked, teargassed, and threatened with Iim Grant, who writes for the knives and rifles by the Marines. On Southern Patriot, was on the scene for several occasions, the bombing has continued even after the Navy knows that there are people (whom the Navy calls "intruders" in order to deny their humanity) inside the bornbing area. A week ago, February Sth, the chapel was once again destroyed and the materials confiscated, this time by Marines; a group of fifty Culebrans outside the fence saw this happening and took down the ten foot high cyclone"fence and the coils of barbed wire, burned the sentry post, and rescued the cross from the chapel. The nonviolent character of the struggle has been quite constant, except that I understand that three U.S. sailors were burned last Monday by Molotov cocktails. The plans now include maintaining a vigil at the gate to the bombing area, and there is a growing feeling to rebuild the chapel. Plans for the next few weeks are slightly nebulous because of the growing repression on the part of the Navy and Marine Corps, and because of the need to deepen the nonviolent discipline of the action. The group of sixteen who have been arrested have a hearing in the San .l uan Federal Court on February 1 8th. "Operation Springboard" is scheduled to end on February 26th, but the bombing will continue after that date, as will the will to interfere with the bombing. q A Quaker Action Group needs ideas for further action, people to act, and money with which to act. The project At one minute before 10:00 on the has cost more money than we have and morning following the announcement we want to continue fulfilling our part of the South Vietnamese invasion of of it; also money is needed (at least Laos, 14 nonviolent guerrillas from Philadelphia Resistance seized the em$500) for materials with which to rebuild the chapel. ldeas, money, applibassy of the Saigon puppet regime in cations can be sent to AQAG, 20 S. 12th Washington, D.C., chaining shut the 4 five days at the height of the crisis. "What happened here was as close to an insurrection as anything l've ever seen,' Grant said. "About 1,300 students were involved in one way or another. The real cause of the trouble was a conspiracy between police, school officials, and city government-a conspiracy to try to crush those students." Grant declared that the following specific falsehoods were generally stated as facts in news reports sent out Sr C o F t b t b e rl a of Wilmington: 1. That violence erupted in the city because of sniper fire from young black people. The facts, Grant said, are that Ci students were peacefully protesting a' against conditions in so-called integrated p I tl St at a( Sr ki at T ut fir h( m ar af lie :J.r'r * pl rh Gr an rh wz gir th ha of ed w2 gr( wi trL thi three wrought iron gates, displaying banners in the courtyard, confronting embassy personnel with oranges & raisins & fresh-baked bread. Thirty-five minutes later Washington police broke the chains, arrested the demonstrators. A jury trial is scheduled for March 25th. shr wa Gr be, cri wa schools. They had been meeting.in the Gregory Congregational United Church of Christ for several days-when on Februarv 4 ihere were anonymous threats that the church would be bombed. People in the community armed th themselves to defend the church and built barricades to keep white attackers out. But there was no firing from those defending the church until ,,maur auding bands of Klansmen began to invade the area close to the church, coming in cars and pick-up trucks loaded with weapons." They passed easily through police lines a few blocks away, and fired 4t the young black people. "We have it on reliable authority that Klansmen came in from all the surrounding counties," Grant said. This area has long been a stronghold of Klan activity. 2. That a. 19-year-old black youth, Stephen Mitchell, who was shot and killed by police was armed at the time and that police shot in self-defense. The fact, Grant said, is that Mitchell was unarmed. He, along with other unarmed young black people, was fighting afire at a store and two black homes one block from the church. Firemen were refusing to come into the area. They did not arrive until an hour after the blaze started. The fire is believed to have been arson. Black people who were defending the church went out unarmed to try to put out the fire. Grant noted. "Maybe he could have 25 coming of the Guard that stilled the ago-but things aren,t like that protest, Grant said. anymore." "The young people had stood off Grant himself narrowly missed being the Klansmen and the police and they hit by gunfire at the height of the dishad to retreat," he noted. ,,What orders. He said he was near the barrichanged things was when the congrecades when a truckload of white men gation of the Gregory Church met on rode up and jumped out shooting. February 7 and voted to evict the "all of us hit the ground_liteially. young people from the church. They .A black minister who did not duck said the students could stay if they quick enough was hit in the leg,,, Grant would stay unarmed. That would have rep orted. been suicide. The church people said The trouble in Wilmington started they should depend on the police to when school officials refused to even protect them from the Klansmen. But negotiate with black students in three anyone who could analyze the situaschools who were demanding black tion knew that the police and the Klansstudies courses, more black participa_ men were working together. tion in academic and athletic aff airs, "The students decided it would be and other such changes. Students be_ foolish to make a ,Custer,s Last Stand,_ gan a boycott of classes February 2, and so they dispersed into the community. and on February 4 staged a mass march It was sad; some of the church trustees of close to 2,000 persons to City Hall. were under unbearable pressures; they There they found the government ofwere dependent on the city power fices padlocked. structure for their jobs." Wilmington quieted down-at least The white minister of the black contemporarily*after the weekend of Feb- gregation, the Rev. Eugene Templeton, ruary 7, when National Guardsmen backed the students completely, Grant moved in. However, it was not the said. He has since been fired. years -SCEF tU 2'. \:. ,:t''. , :a'**e?l* € ;w4 "lt was cold-blooded murder,', Grant said. "He was shot several times, and police dragged him 50 feet and threw him in a car. We all believe he was still alive when they started dragging him." Mitchell was a member o1 the student steering committee that has been pressing demands on school off ic ials. 3. That a white man fatally wounded on February 7 just happened to wander into the area on his way to the grocery. Actually, Grant said, the white man came into the area in a truck, rode up to the barricade near the church, and.got out pointing his shotgun at the young blacks there. This was one of numerous such incidents, Grant said, and this particular man had been seen in the area before during the cr is is. "l guess he figured he could just walk into the area and start shooting,,, SYRACUSE "CONSPtRACY" SURFACES dictments of Phil Berrigan & friends & call it REPRESSION. " The Syracuse Peace Council recentAt one point there was a march to ly sponsored a three-day demonstration the FBI office to deliver the sign. Nerprotesting the indictment of Father vous US attorneys met everyone outPhil Berrigan and five others. Over side and, fearing a building occupation, 'l 000 people signed a sign which read: offered to carry the sign in. Later some "J. EDGAR HOOVER: We the under- demonstrators went inside and placed signed are members of the Conspiracy the sign in a more appropriate placeto SAVE LIVES-in S.E. Asia, the US in front of the door," & across the world. We Condemn in_ i;i#ili[:; l*rr, to the Student Peace Treaty conference in Ann Arbor hoping that my recent depression over the State of the Movement would be whisked away by the presence of two thousand pacifist revolutionaries who were ready to nonviolently take over the country. My hopes were never realized. The first plenary session began with several rousing choruses of "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh" for the benefit of an NBC newsman who was filming the proceedings. lt went downhill from there. Several delegations were displeased with the agenda that th'e coordinators had set up, and when they were told that space at the University of Michigan was rented in accordance with the original agenda, the dissenters accused the organizers of being right-wingers and fascists. This initial disagreement was representative of the whole tone of the conference; the delegates were very distrustful of the leadership (though the usual movement "heavies" remained in the background for the most part) and even more distrustful of each other. It was not unusual for people to be accused of being CIA fronts if their politics differed from the more violent elements present. And speaking of violence-the rhetoric of the Conference was indeed violent, though I don't believe that very many of the delegates were prepared for actual violence, had the opportunity presented itself. Several people told me that the best thing that could happen to this country would be the assassination of Rockefeller, and when I said that the killing of one man would not make that much difference, they said I was a dupe of the government. At first a demonstration was planned to protest the lailing of several White Panthers, but luckily (l Oetieve) it didn't get off the ground; if it had I think there would have been widespread violence and hysteria given the predisposition of the crowd and the fear of the police (a result of another violent demonstration that had occurred several weeks before). The body of pacifists that were present had to make a difficult decision between organizing a nonviolent caucus and spreading themselves around at the various other workshops and cauiuses that were already set up. We finally decided to do the latter, though my hindsight leads me to believe that either would have been equally ineffective. I went to several of the women's meetings and was disappointed to find a lack of togetherness even though many women belabored the point that we are all sisters and should stick together. At one workshop Jane Fonda got the group involved in an organization-' al discussion on what women can do to aid Gls and their dependents. I came late, and I don't know what machinations she had to go through to gain leadership of the workshop, but it was the only women's group that I went to that discussed any concrete proposals for direct action. At a women's caucus at which there were about two hundred present, I tried to push through a mandate that the women choose one of the Seven Days in May (the Spring offensive H I r ANN ARBOR CONFERENCE -( h proposed by the People's Coalition for Peace and .f ustice) to do a specifically woman-oriented action. The women overwhelmingly vetoed my proposal, and said that as long as they had nothing to do with choosing which days to demonstrate they would not lust plug themselves into an offensive that some male movement heavies originated. I argued that by boycotting the Seven Days the women would be leaving the organization of the Spring offensive to the men alone, and would thus be perpetuating the scenario of all the prior antiwar organizing. But the women remained firm, and I believe there will be a strong push for a women's action in April, though no definite pro- I posals were passed. I also tried to push the Seven Days in May at the New York Regional caucus, arguing that Seven Days in May were better than one day in April (referring to the Trotskyite's march on Washington scheduled for April 24). Someone later told me that my argument ( at that point offered the only humor at the entire conference, but still no decision to support the May actions was mandated at that caucus. However, at the plenary the next day, the group voted to sponsor the People's Coalition plans. My pessimism over the proceedings is not shared, l'm sure, by people whose frame of reference was dif- ferent. The Gls were really together, a result,-probably, of the Winter Soldier investigation, and the people worklng with them got a tremendous sense of affirmation. Likewise, l'm sure those who were closer to the people organizing the Conference felt more secure over the student movement because they were dealing with people whose politics and heads are more together. Butfor me, who sat for hours at a WRL literature table without attracting more than ten people and who watched the sale of teeshirt after teeshirt inscribed with "power through the barrel of a gun" sold in the literature room, the flavor of the Conference was not sweet. My few remaining hopes for the student movement rest in the wish that the hardcore organizers remained home organizing, while the rowdies trecked to Ann Arbor to release their hostilities and frustrations on their brothers and sisters. Wendy Schwartz b 4 _s P .j.iN r. \ *i ir :''i \t,\, e 6 fi Z\t * \l /1) Y l! ), ({ (,,1,',",r, .. t'-'v ll iq) !1' ' 7.. I ,,', .r1) [-r [- .V n P E, N( uu F=_= =€-:., =:,4 that when they opt out, someone else has to pick up the bill. There was also the omnipresent problem of the s we all know, being one person atalarge hectic conference can be a tremendously frustrating and alienating experience." (From a leaflet written by organizers of the Student and Youth Peace Treaty Conference, Feb.5-7, Ann Arbor, Michigan.) For me, any event like the Peace Treaty conference is important in terms of people getting together to cooperatively discuss problems (in this case, how to organize around the Peace Treaty) and finding solutions for them. Such conferences are also significant in terms of how people cooperate on personal levelshow problems like dealing with ego-tripping, good personal interaction, and in general, creating a goodvibes situation. These are all important indicators of how committed we are to creating in our lives a microcosm of the society we h.ope to build together. There were plenty of bummers. There were all too many people who came to the conference with apparently no idea that these things do cost money. Because they either couldn't or said that they couldn't pay the registration fee-which was six dollars, and was planned primarily to cover the cost of renting buildings (although it was also used to pay for conference materials, housing, and three meals) but were nonetheless allowed to register, it seems probable that the conference put the Peace Treaty organization into tremendous debt. Fiscal responsibility may seem like a bummer, but people must realize b heavies, including some conference organizers and national movement "heroes." But at Ann Arbor the heavies had considerably less opportunity to play their bureaucratic andf or ego-tripping games' For once the rank-and-file took it upon themselves to make things happen the way they wanted them to happen' This strength was f irst demonstrated at the plenary Friday night, when the proposed agenda was changed from the floor to fit what people felt were their needs in terms of the conference being a productive one. (lt happened, unfortunately, that one of these changes created a coriflict between a women's meeting ana regional meetings, but as the women's meeting *is not read as part of the schedule, responsibility for this conflict must rest with whoever omitted this meeting from the schedule which was read.) The tendency to bypass the conference heavies was strongest at the women's meetings, and was manifested in a number of ways. The women's workshop decided to dispense with a chairperson and have instead a rotating chairperson (which means that when one woman finished speaking she called on another woman). This successfully prevented one or a few women from dominating the meeting. A certain number of defined goals-set by conference organizers-were supposed to be achieved at this workshop, but midway through it we realized that in order to do this we would have to cut short our discussion of how we felt about the Peace Treaty and how we thought other non-movement women would respond to it. We agreed that the discussion we were having was more important, both for ourselves, and because we felt that the freeness of an unstruc_ tured discussion would produce mor.e valuable sug_ gestions in terms of getting women to ratify and im_ plement the peace treaty. Later on, at another meeting, time was running short because of the scheduled regional meetings. Rather than sublimate the women,s issues that had been raised to deal with the pressures of a mixed meeting, women decided to break up into their own regional meetings to continue discussion of the issues. When word was received that most of the men in_ volved were willing to wait for the women to finish their discussion it was decided that each women,s regional grouping would make its own decision about participating in mixed regional meetings. While this decision may seem like a move to make the men cool their heels for a while, it was intended as a means of working outside the conference structure, once again, because it tive action. was felt that the structure inhi6ited effec_ Finally, at still another women,s meeting, there came a point where tension became very high and tempers short. lt was suggested that women from Bal_ timore sing a women,s liberation song they had writ_ ten. Soon we were all singing, and the t.niion *u, reduced as we remembered our purpose in being together. Sisterhood is powerful. The heavies didn't vanish,altogether. They were still present, having their meetings, playing tireir inXrigues, and trying to make their presencelelt, but they didn't seem to have their usual effect. l'm at a loss to explain just how this came about. Perhaps it was because of Erika Huggins, message to the conference attenders, urging them to move away . from the hero and heavy syndromes. Or maybe it was the beautiful, moving speech made by an ex-Marine from the Winter Soldier investigation, whose words not only made real to me the stark brutality of the ways in which men are oppretsed by the military machine, but also brought the horror of the war home in way. Maybe we've grown Maybe we've grown up a little as a movement. perhaps the follow-the-leader games are on the way out. It may be that people at the conference brought with them a renewed sense of urgency about ending the war, a sense that stimulated not frustration, bui a desire for creative and productive action, which in turn created the feeling that if the structure oi the conference did not provide a workable medium for this, it would have to be changed. Most of the people there, I think, felt that they knew as much about how to end the war as any of the heavies, and that the im_ portant thing was to get on with it. As if to underline this feeling, a telegram was received at the conference Saturday night. lt was sent by Madame Binh, and ,told of the invasion of Laos by American, South Vietnamese, and Thai troops; and asked that peace forces be mobilized to protest the invasion. lf the peace movement can hold on to that sense of urgency, we may be actually able to end this war. But that won't happen unless the people*and that rneans all the people, not the ,,leaders,,_make a new the peace. iust -Connie Sohodski 9 4r, \; %nr$ w " l. i, % %: ffi t):: tu ?:: w ,ffi ,:: W..* ffi \ I '&rW I 0rBCItt ili;m ')*r'' -.'': 1 . -' L, \- mBn jeans and business suits, afros and crew cuts, field Vietnam veter.iackets and love beads. They were all ans who had come to Detroit, Michigan, to testify to first-hand knowledge of American war crimes in ndochina. These were the obverse of Tom Paine's "summer soldiers and sunshine patriots." ln Vietnam, they had been sergeants, privates, lance coiporals, captains, and in at least two cases, maiors. These were the true heirs of the men who endured the long, bitter winter at Valley Forge. These were the veterans of Vietnam who, in the face of public apathy and indifference, and official hostility and harrassment, refused to I forget. Appropriately, the Detroit war crimes hearings, organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against The War, a national organization of 5000 members, were called the Winter Soldier lnvestigation. For these were, truly, the "winter soldiers" of the war in Vietnam' each group spanning the six years American combat forces public f,ave been in Vietnam, they walked onto the stage hour after hour for three full days (January 31t0 - 'a! They came from Texas and Alabama, New York and California, Kansas and Montana. They wore blue A dozen at a time, division after division, -l- February 2) and presented their eye-witness accounts of prisoners tortured and killed, civilians intimidated and shot, villages bombarded and burned, borders illegally and secretly crossed, indiscriminate defoliation and bombing and artillery daily and nightly used, massacres large and small. Sunday, lanuary 31 : 1st Marine Division, 3rd Marine Division, 1st Air Cavalry Division. Monday, February 1 : 101st Airborne Divi'l sion, 82nd Airborne Division, 73rd Airborne Brigade, 5th Special Forces, and miscellaneous smaller units. Tuesday, February 2t 25th lnfantry Division, 1st lnfantry Division, 4th lnfantry Division, 9th lnfantry Division, Americal Division. ln the evenings and inbetween the panels on the combat units, the veterans held special panels on "What We Are Doing to Vietnam," "What We Are Doing to Ourselves," weapons banned by international law (but in widespread use in Vietnam), and POWs-testimony from former POWs, families of POWs, Gls held in American brigs, and methods used by Ametican interrogators of Vietnamese POWs. They also held unscheduled special panels on racism and press censorship, both in lndochina and the military and in the United States and civilian life. Altogether about 100 Vietnam veterans, from 9 g : s 1962to the present, testified at the three-day hearin Detroit's downtown Howard Johnson's Motor' Lodge. Another 400-500 Vietnam veterans from all ings over the continental United States and Canada came and listened, added their support and conducted nonstop organizing meetings in the hall-ways and nearby rooms. Much of the testimony was gruesomely familiar to of the court-martial of Lt. William Calley. What was new was the evidence presented was that the same grisly "incidents" permeated the experiences of men who had served in Vietnam in every year, in every major unit, in every region of Vietnam. One woman or child killed here, 30 killed there, a half-dozen somewhere else, 50 another day, in another place. The pattern of daily, or near-daily American war atrocities year on end was too stark, and too thickly- even casual followers woven, to be soon forgotten by those hundreds of Detroit and Canadian citizens who came to hear, 500 at a time, these men who so obviously had been there, Dozens of sober, concerned, middle-income and often middle-aged Detroiters had to be turned away for lack of room. The doubters were conspicuously hushed and few. Yet there were critics. The Detroit News in particular tried to discredit the hearings by checking the credentials of the veterans with the Pentagon. With growing ill-temper, they reported the confirmation of the stated records of each and every one. Yet it remained by and large a hostile press. The liberal, mostly eastern-establishment papers imposed a near-blackout on the hearings, while the conservative, mostly mid-western press reveled in retorts such as "alleged veterans," and "so-called hearings," and other hackneyed tricks of the put-down trade. But none of the press could deny that the veterans at the Winter Soldier lnvestigation demonstrated conclusively that an entire U.S. Marine regiment had conducted combat operations in Laos, code named "Operation Dewey Canyon," in early 1969, or that an American ambush of unarmed Vietnamese during a Christmas truce had killed 25-31 villagers, who then were "armed" by the military command collecting the souvenir weapons of Gls and adding them to the weapons and body count. They could not deny these two charges In particular because an enterprising news reporter found other veterans throughout the country to substantiate the statements made in lletroit. Nor could the press deny that on Monday, the second day of the hearings, Senator George S. McGovern and Congressman John Conyers called for full Congressional investigations into the charges made during just the first day of the Winter Soldier lnvestigation. There were many other highlights, too numerous to mention. On Tuesday, the third and final day of the hearings, as reports of a new invasion of Laos filtered out of lndochina, the veterans conducting the hearings opened the final session of the Winter Soldier lnvestigation by presenting a former Special Forces sergeant who had made at least a half-dozen secret missions into Laos between August 1968 and August 1969. The press censorship panel which followed this dramatic opening, conducted by former Army and Marine combat correspondents, explained why this was an unreported story in America. As the discussion quickly focused upon self-censorship by the civilian press in lndochina, some of the press corps present in Detroit walked out. Funded by people as disparate as Jane Fonda and the United Auto Workers' Emil Mazey, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Michigan Secretary of State Richard Austin, Mark Lane and the Business Executives Move For Peace, the Winter Soldier lnvestigation was six months in the making. At least a dozen congressmen and one congresswoman, Bella Abzug, endorsed it. Congressman Ronald Dellums has offered the veterans office space in Washington, where, as a possible epilogue, the Winter Soldier hearings may well become official Senate Armed Services or For-' eign Relations Committee hearings. A group of peaceminded congressmen and senators has called for just that. ln the meantime, transcripts of the full Winter Soldier hearings in Detroit are available from the Vietnam Veterans Against The War, Room 735, 156 Fifth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. 10010. The Winter Soldier Investigation grew out of reaction to Administration contentions after the expose of Mylai that the massacre at Sonmy in March 1968 was "an isolated i ncident." I nfu riated .at such state ments, viewed by most antiwar Vietnam veterans as official lies, plans were made in late 1969 by several Vietnam veterans to bring to light enough other first-hand accounts of American atrocities to demonstrate beyond doubt that Mylai was neither "isolated" nor an "incident." In conjunction with many other peace groups-clergy,law, Quaker, and college committees-members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War helped found first the Citizens Commission of lnquiry lnto U.S. War Crimes, to conduct a series of local war crimes hearings around the country (13 cities eventually, in all), starting with Annapolis, Maryland, in February 1970,and then in September, the Winter Soldier lnvestigation-to bring as much testimony as possible and the veterans presenting it to one national gathering. Detroit was selected for its symbolic ties with working-class and Middle America and its proximity to Canada. Because of the refusal of the Canadian government to issue visas to the Vietnamese delegation invited to present their eye-witness accounts, a major part of the planned hearings had to be amended, however. As a substitute, several car-loads of veterans drove over to Windsor, Canada, the last night of the Winter Soldier lnvestigation and signed a symbolic "people's peace lreaty" with a delegation of Vietnamese students exiled in Canada. The symbolism of the final event of Winter Soldier was fittingly appropriate: Vietnam veterans of all branches of the iervice, from throughout America, embracing and apologizing to Vietnamese, rather than killing them. -jan Barry 'll Frc SIMMEre AGAIN Jules Rabin ryw l l WI I YI |:!li {@:tttt;tt.: !R,!E:ffi ! W. &ffi* "*kry ?:" wn 4_\ \\ ""%, .- \, \ ' . ":,. ' "q l ''.1 Something is happening in France today that looks important enough to write home about. Briefly: twenty political prisoners out of some forty now in French jails have engaged themselves in a hunger strike, dating back in the case of four in Toulouse to January 4. And now the strike, and news of it, has begun to spread outside the prisons. What I will write about here is based mainly on a visit I paid to the Sorbonne last night, where ten students and faculty members have holed up, since three days ago, in the office of the director of the Sorbonne's division of philosophy. ln concert with groups in two other locations in Paris, and in Aix-en-Provence and Amiens, these hunger-strikers have joined forces with their imprisoned comrades (the word is in daily use here) to force the Minister of J ustice, Rene Pleven, to accede to two demands. One demand is to accord to political prisoners the rights they have traditionally held in France (rights of visitation, access to books, etc.). These rights, presently denied, were not abrogated even in the hard times of the Algerian war, when they were extended to supporters of the F.L.N. and to rightists alike. The second demand is for the revision, the humanization, of the entire French penal system, which, according to Jean Daniel, writing in Le Nouvel Observateur of February 1, 1971, "is the most severe and the most humiliating of all the m systems now in force in Europe." l've been in Paris iust a month, and I :" l$, j r# li -*. f" r#u W $l H q !*# don't really get it: I don't really get the focus of radical sentiment on the issue of the hunger strike. Not that the action seems to me at all irrelevant. On the contrary, it has a character of basic humaneness, of elementary directness: the support by like actions of imprisoned comrades who are mute and invisible, whose latitude for action is practically nil-who can only put their bodies, their self-chosen privation, on the line. What I don't get is the reason for the centrality of these actions, this campaign, in the turbulent protest movements of the hour. The hunger strike has become the issue of the day. The battalions of cops visible in the streets of Paris, sometimes dressed in battle fatigues and equipped with carbines, truncheons, and plexi-glass shields of old-Roman design, are forced often to play the cat in Tom and Jerry scenaiios. Militants, at least some of them in the name of the Movement of May 27 , have pledged themselves to an "action" a day as long as Pleven refuses to meet the hunger-strikers' demands. These actions have included an assault with Molotov cocktails on the prison of la Roquette; the occupation of a chapel by one of the fasting groups; and the "sequestration" of an underdirector of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts who had dismissed a hunger-striker. "Sequestration" is a form of action currently being taken in factories, and the students at the Beaux-Arts improvised on the system by putting their victim into a glass-walled concierge's booth decorated with a hangman's noose and ringed with chains, and bringing it to an open space for public viewing. (l must note here that iudging from the photograph I have seen, this treat.ment seems cruel and unusual. The smiles of the onlookers surrounding the glass cage of the under-director express the carnival atmosphere that threatens to become the vogue in public punishments of political offenders.) But to speak of an atmosphere closer to the business at hand: the atmosphere of the corridor at the Sorbonne where I visited the new hunger-strikers was startling, triumphant, expectant. I felt I was at an outpost of an insurrection, where everything was going well and the power was accumulating. Because a public meeting at the Sorbonne the previous day (planned originally in support of Angela Davis but broadened to take account of the developing hunger-strike) was attacked by upwards of a hundred rightists, thought to be from outside the Sorbonne and labelled as Fascist hirelings, the strike supporters have organized a round-the-clock guard to protect the strikers. Last night there was a constant coming and going at Escalier C of the Sorbonne. Activists, the curious, the responsible, were all mingled in the frowning, high-ceilinged rooms, whose walls were plastered with posters, painted slogans ("Pleven, the people will have your skin"), and current bulletins. The bulletins, lengthy texts done handsomely with felt markers on yard-wide paper yielded to spoken announcements when events broke quickly. Fifty people milling around hushed and drew close when someone brought the news of an attack (an "affront"? a skirmish? I couldn't tell) on a nearby police station. (ln Le Monde of the following day, under the daily Agitation heading: "Des Cocktails Molotov sont lances contre le commisariat du Ve Arrondissement." Three policemen were wounded, three assailants captured.) People arriving at the wing of the Sorbonne where the strikers have established themselves clustered for the lengthy work of reading the new bulle. tins, running to six and eight feet in length. Outside, in the cobbled courtyard, the figure of Victor Hugo sat, very pensive, very posed, on a massive pedestal painted over in letters a foot high with an appeal for the support of the Black Panthers. Politics at the Sorbonne ( and at two other branches of the University of Paris with which l've become familiar, Jussieu and Censier) are very much to the front. The corridors and facades of these branches are dominated by political slogans, appeals, treatises, in a vast disarray, sometimes attractive for its energy, sometimes a molestation to the eyes. Any least caucus can make permanent its announcement, 30 feet long, for tomorrow's soon-to-be-forgotten meeting. Some current graffiti: Hangings everywhere . . .Sequesirations are good, hangings better . . .Against the penitentiary system . . .Support the strike of the political pr.isoners. The efflorescence of politics, radical politics, that we knew for a few weeks in the States at the time of the Kent-Jackson-Cambodia crisis, seems to be quotidian here, permanent. at least since the indignation provoked by the events at Burgos. (l should note that the branches of the University I have mentioned are closest to what we call the humanities and social sciences, and that the dominating political mood may be the achievement of 10-15% of the total student THE GOVERNMENT HAS GIVEN IN -starting now special conditions (regime special) for the striking political prisoners \ I I i \] I body . . .not a small number. Did Mao say, "First politics, then economics?" This is the actuality of the forefront of the student scene. Politics, right down to razor-fine sectarianism (as it seems to the outsider.) Politics, for example, which recently ensued in a fight between Trotskyists and Communists at Censier, resulting in concussions for some of the Communists, who were somehow projected out of second-story windows. (The Trotskyists claimed they were attacked, that they restricted their actions to self-defense, and that the Communists who in the first place attacked them with iron bars, fled out the windows in panic.) And economics. At the Sorbonne last night I spoke with Claudine, an assistant in aesthetics, and with Hugues, a monitor (that is another faculty grade) in psychology. Their Marxist outlook was fundamental, the source of their coherence. And the economic relationships were basic-the keystone, the laser beam of analysis, the fulcrum of change. ln this perspective, our American inclination to the overall cultural revolution seems like persiflage, like wrongheaded mechanics, like stubborn trivialism. To Hugues, the professional in psychology, as to Claudine, the professional in esthetics, the leil-motif in analysis and in change is economic. There remain these addenda: The Gandhian tactic of the hunger strike, of "taking the suffering on oneself,f is alien to the current mood of French radicalism . . .at any rate the radicalism which is most in evidence at the Universities. ln the repugnance they feel towards police and the government, in the standard of vituperation, these French militants are hardly second to our Black Panthers, who are revered here. But the tactic of fasting was in the first place indicated by the limited latitude for action of the prisoners who began the strike. And the tactic is working. Brisoris le mur de la silence, say the newest posters, Let's break the wall of silence. And the press is, in fact, now, finally, taking note of the muffled vigils of the prisoners. Final addendum: is it an elitist aim to secure the traditional privileges of political prisoners? What about the rest, the plain, every-day lawbreakers, the car-thief, the bank-robber, the cop-hater? According to one current of thought here the distinction between the ordinary criminal and political prisoners is lodged in the first place in the standards of bourgeois morality, and in the second place in the levels of political consciousness and intentionality of the two types of criminal. Both categories of prisoner are at root political. So argues Lacenaire in Folitique Hebdo of February 4. February 8. lt would appear-is it possible-that the strikers have wonl at 2 PM the following notice was posted at the Sorbonne: l I i -A commission of inquiry will meet to decide on arrangements for the other prisoners so that the special conditions may be extended to all -the strikers at the Sorbonne are meeting to decide on the continuation of the strike -the striking political prisoners have suspended their strike pending the results of the commission At 3:30 the strikers of the committee of support announced that they would continue their strike for another 48 hours, to verify whether Pleven would keep his word. Over the weekend the strike became a major issue. Practically every newspaper in Paris took account of ittoday, Le Monde devoting an entire page to the issue. lt was in Le Monde last week that there appeared an article on the deplorable character of foreign restaurants. The writer suggested that one unbeatable way for foreign embassies to serve their home countries would be for each to subsidize a first class restaurant offering the best home specialties. The point was made with aperitif in hand, so to speak, and I take it up here in the spirit: could a hunger strike have succeeded so well anywhere else than in this country, where eating is taken to be one of the more ioyful facts of life and is cultivated as a considerable art? (Pleven put his foot in his mouth last week when he sent word to a delegation of 3 hunger-.strikers and Jean-Paul Sartre that he couldn't meet with them because he was detained at lunch.) Addenda for this last installment, Februarv 8: Hugues and Claudine, whom I saw at the Sorbonne today, protest that I am clipping the truth when I intimate that their outlook is so.tightly bound to economic analysis. And they say that they, at least, hold no such disparaging attitudes as I suggest towards the American cu ltural revolution. And from the Nouvel Observateur of February 8, the astonishing news that a group of "common criminals" in the model prison of Flery-Merogis, began a hunger strike in support of the striking political prisoners. $ \ ) I i 4 t g League "Practice Nonviolence" tags and of course, we printed up 200 leaflets with the heading ,,Blow up balloons, not people!." lt read as follows: Today is Tet New Year in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. As you're here today for your pre-induction physi- :r lih( /-) -4.- ii: --- cal or induction, you are much closer to that New Years Day than you might believe. lf you are inducted into the Armed Forces of the United States, there is a good chance that you will be called upon to fight against the people of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; you will be called upon to kill those people, possibly to die on their land. You will be called upon to do all of this in this New Year that begins today. We,re here to ask you to make a New Years resolution-A resolution that will promise to give the people of Southeast Asia a Happy New Year and that Resolution is to refuse to be part of the military machine. Your options are listed on the leaflet presented outside of the lnduction center-Read and consider these options well. We think that this day and this Resolution calls for a celebration so let's fill this building with balloons owuego offensive Oswego County seems, at first glance, to be an unlikely place for anti-war activity. The county's total population is in the area of 100,000. The largest city, Oswego, has a population of 25,000. We're largely a rural area in what is called central New York's "snow belt", but the Armed Forces lnduction Center, 40 miles away, in Syracuse, N.Y., has come to expect problems when the bus of inductees and prO.inductees arrives from local Board No. 60 of Oswego County. One typical example of what goes on happened in December when one pre-inductee arrived with an American flag painted on his ass, while several of the others took the fifth amendment on all forms presented them. This type of thing happens every month. It seems that by now the Induction Center would have known better than to schedule a bus from Oswego on J anuary 27th, which was Tet New Years. We Oswego War Resisters Leaguers felt that Tet shouldn'[ go by without a party and since many Oswego county people had been called for preinduction physicals on that day we felt the only practical place to have a real party was the lnduction Center.in Syracuse. Being aware that the American military machine is not very fond of civilian parties in military installations, we decided that our decorations should include several balloons. There is, after all, no military manner for the removal of a balloon from a military installation. Any manner for its disposal looks very unmilitary, whether it be picking up the fully blown balloons and carrying them to a waste can, walking around and popping them with pins, or jumping on them. We felt that this would cause sufficient confusion to make our party a real success. One of our friendly local men of the cloth was kind enough to donate 1,000 balloons to our cause with the inscription "Celebrate Life" on every balloon. We also had a good supply of 300 War Resisters and wish the people of Southeast Asia and the World a Happy New Year!!! When January 27th arrived, we were in the middle of a blizzard, but we couldn't 1et that stop the party, so three of us drove to Syracuse and arrived with our balloons, leaflets, and tags stuffed under our clothing. We wal ked in as if we belonged there and took a seat in the lounge where the men sit between different examinations. We attempted to blend in and began talking with different examinees and to read magazines. Soon every civilian in the lounge had at least one balloon and a Ieaflet, and rhey appeared willing to join the party. Blown up balloons began appearing in unusual places, such as the podium in the Ceremonial room, where men are sworn in. The military personnel were getting more and more embarrassed and hassled finding themselves completely unable to find out where the balloons were coming from. We finally decided to hit them full force and everyone began blowing up balloons and tossing them about the induction center. We then turned off the water under all the "Johns" to make them unflushable and made an exit from the rnain floor as Marine Sergeant Warr (that's his real name) began angrily stomping on balloons. As the military lifers were busy upstairs looking for us and jumpi'ng on balloons, we buried the stairway with balloons and along the two floors of railings, we tied "Practice Nonviolence" tags every two inches apart. Just as we finished up our last touches of party decorating, Sergeant Warr came running down the stairway, tripping over balloons, after us. We made our final exit into my car and started away just in time to see the police arrive. We left Syracuse laughing and happy. We had been inside the lnduction Center for more than three hours, spoke with most all of the civilians there, and did a great deal of on-the-spot draft counselling. We made many contacts with new supporters from Oswego County and we all had a good time doing it. -Bob Henning r5 urhynotrc Tom Forcade Several years ago, two anthologies of the under_ ground press came out. One *u, .*ullrd The Hippie Pa.ge1s, edited by Jerry Hopkins, anA ifre ort *u, called Notes From the New Unjergrorna, "r. .jit.a Ov .f esse Kornbluth. As I recall, nobojy tooi ,irctr int.r_ est, positive or negative, in either book when they came out. Jerry Hopkins was an editor of Open City, and .f esse Kornbluth was a Harvard student *ho lrrt happened into the commission. After these books came out, nothing happened for a while. Praeger, of ex-ClA notoriety, .lrrisrioneO u book on the underground press which n.u., !o, .or_ pleted. Ethel Romm got out a book on the u"nder_ ground press called The Open Conspiracy, which was not memorable. Richard Nevill of OZ wrotea book called Play Power, published in England and it was pretty good. Robert Glessing, a Canada College pro_ fessor (for the first six months after I met hiri I thought it was Kenyatta College and was u..f ir_ pressed) wrote a fairly comprehensive book called press The Underground in America. rec-ently, Countdown, amagazine in paper,backY9r. book format, came out three times in 1970 and then ceased publication. lt was edited Uy fr4eiHowara, a theater producer whose avocation is the undergrould press. Ar firsr, Countdown was risiit.nry listed as a UPS member,.and some people *.r.n,, g.o ting paid for their contributions. Eu.nirif V, *"rvbody got paid, and things cooled do*n, *hJr. th.r. had been some very hosiile reactions to CorntOo*n. Graphically and in choice of articles, CorntJo*n *u, about the best thing to come out yet. Sooner or later, it is inevitable ihat someone who spent their childhood collecting baseball carOs inO memorizing batting averages will write TH E auihori_ tative book on the underground press, which will amaze and amuse us all. . Before going further, it,s only fair to point out that I have participated in editing t*o u.,ttloiogi., which are coming out myself. Ne"ither on. *itt strut. the world, no way you can with an antholoey. but they're nice books and the writers *if g.t f ,'or" ,o_ ney. I finished both of them long befoie t .u.l r,.arO of the two books I willdiscuss n".^r, und i t,uu. fong ago gotten all the money I expect to get from them. The contributors not only get mon.V"on prAii.u,ior, but continuing royalties, whi.h i, ,ni,.urj of.'i f,ur. no pride of authorship and I truly aon,t cur.'*t,ett,.r you buy either book or not, out i *roughiii iuir. to point this fact out before I get into ,oriOoj, .f r.,, books. Both of the ones t was invotvea in"u-rl'rurrmarket paperbacks, and therefore ,.ttio u .Jrpt.t.ty different market than the rwo following b;ksl TWO NEW BOOKS and neatly re-pasted into book form. li has a neat ap_ pearance, and it gives you a feel of the underground press, sort of. (Sometimes I wonder why have antholo_ p';:::,.lll!f I Know iyst buy a bunch oi puprr,. I know, l3t against the argument that, but think about it.) Some of the articles in 1ne Movem"ni,-"i".'t ur. .on_ tinuing interest. A great many do not, and therefore have value only as an example of , puitirrti. type of F9r an examp.le, an article unnorn.ing illi!|.: a meertng.to be held. Now, it,s about t*o y.i" ioo f ut. to make it to that meeting, and the prose of the piece isn't too memorable, ,o.l gr"ss it;, ;; .;;;ple. Goodman says the book is an organizing tool. Could be, especially ifyou,d never.seen un ,nJ.rground paper. lnterestingly enough, several unO.igrornjpup.r, L^ have started where the people had nev"er ,r.n unott,., u,nderground paper, and they looteJpreit-ymuch like all the other papers. Which seems ,o prou. ,f",u, ,f,. underground paper form grows organically out of function, nor from imitation. C.rff;i;;;peopte will find Goodman,s book useful, unJ f ,, giua i, came out. A book that big could have held a lot more real content, from a much, much wiOer range of pa_ pert but it's there and it,s happening, so firie. The onty probtem is thar a ti;;;."pi;'ilho urror. articles-haven,t gotten paid. There,s a noie in the back of the book that explains *t y, ,ori-oi. OLt urthors should be paid when a r,re..upiiuil;'.Jrroru- tion like Klo^pf, owned by Raniom 'H";r;, *-t i.t i, owned by RCA, publish a book like this. nCn (Vo, know, bomb guidance systems, radar, electric toothbyr!..1is tiabte legaily and moraily unJii*orrO U. ntce tT Goodman would cooperate to help them get it now. Hopefully, some of the writers .un .oii.rriu.f y bring some action, since letters h"r. ;;r;;';; ,.._ sponse. RCA has the money now, so why wait until the book makes some theoretical ,,p rofit.,, Fire!, edited by three ex_Rat p.opL, l, a book , wherein the articles are typed, OorUi._rpur.a-.Jn. book does not contain many articles una .oii, iZ.Ss. Need I say more? lt,s like buying. f.ir,,i.."i"r.f Tide and finding it half empty. On the"othe, t,unA, ,o_ body is sropping you from ftipping irri"rgi'li'u.r"* you,buy it. lt's their layout concept. I ao"n,t- aig it; maybe you will. ' -'o Again with Fire! there was the problem of pay_ ment to authors. At least one author has complained that he did nor get paid. This sort rhi;;lr;;;vitabte, and no anthology could come out "f witfrou't som.UoOy not getting paid, unless you know Bernadine Dohrn,s Anthologies shoutd srirr ue puiiis-rrea, l1l:.:l^.:: our edttors and publishers should also immediately reimburse anybody whom ihey miss. lf ,f,"ir,i.r" can't be found, pay the paper. ilT;ffxH;ll,lllli,rlJiliu::lrt *iir;';:* a"'pli'd anyway.The big companies have SIiT:l'1,.:ffimi,:ffifi[.3"'^r#ur sam' ,;;;, ;;l'r]st because p.opr; ",. ,[r, doesn,t rhe j' ,Jy3.n'y.unthorogies have come out recentrv,,.one called rhe Movement Toward u N"*A;;;;;,'.ait.a ,horro ir'' rvr,'","nt, book;;;i;.,1.or, [:i?Jffl,T;:j'rni1[:liffi:rffi;]v. lill rirr.a " ";. and" sells ror g5'95. sears-Roebuck catalog with a great number of articles .r, orlli'u'rul ,lr,nur- row range of underground papers and very cteverty il. C.ilii,g t"rk to Fire!, the credits were given in a i .uningt.r, mess, with no names connected i",.v ,]"rt. ti,.r. i, certainlyu.ur. fo,. unsigned jumbled, t7 work, but if that was the theory, there should have been no names at all. I understand that these same people, who are good people, are designing Jerry Rubin's next book, which should be interesting to see. lncidentally, Goodman was a co-defendant with Doc Spock. How about that. As far as these two books, go, I might buy Goodman's because it's too big to steal, but Fire! is just the right size. A PROPOSAL What is really needed to resolve such problems for both sides is a literary agent for the underground papers. We at UPS have had to proceed within very strict boundaries, since we don't have any right to negotiate for them. So we iust keep an eye on things, ipread the word, and deal with things when specific papers ask us to- A full-time agent authorized by the papers would be better. Also, some papers are not copyrighted. You have one year to copyright, so if \ \ .u.ry pop.t would put either Copyright WIN (for example) 1971,or Copyright UPS 1971, then-at the end of the year we could send in two copies, fill out all the forms at once and be totally protected with minimum hassle. The biggest thing standing in the way of such cooperative things was summed up by Jeff Shero in his article in Sun/Dance: "We are still too consumed by our ego competitive death-culture conditioning to choose leaders who we can trust and bolster, rather than undercut and make weak through petty jealousy and infighting. We have lust approached the point when people begin to lose their selfishness and individualism, and learn to work together. We have not reached the necessary stage where people can be chosen for positions of responsibility and leadership and not be cut down." Very true, and one of the things stopping more cooperation within UPS. But it's inevitable for the time being. ir ) -i :l I I i i I I I i I B WHY NOT WE? / There is a strong case to be made for movement people flatly refusing to give books to any establishment publisher. The reason is simple. lf people are conditioned to look for radical and revolutionary channels, all you are doing is reinforcing that channel. All that society is is relationships (channels). And you don't change it by reinforcing such channels. To put it another way, capitalist publishing and distribution of books is like the Grand Canyon and radical books are like water being poured in there making that Canyon deeper. Use your own channels. Yes, I know that if you publish your own book you reach only thousands and when you sell it to them you reach millions, but it ain't quantity that counts, it's quality. The mimeographed Trans-Love books blew my mind and made the revolution more believable and real than any hundred slick Random House "products." Because the Random House book was obviously for profit, and the Trans-Love book was obviously because somebody believed in it. A cliche is a widespread truth: THE MEDIUM lS THE MESSAGE. So mimeograph it, Xerox it, make carbons, or pass it around to your friends, but don't sell it down that Colorado River to become a fucking product, like a frozen TV dinner. Over a year ago, Marvin Garson wrote a book called The Staged Sixties, which he mimeographed. A hell of a lot of people saw that book and read it, despite that, and people remembered it because of the medium, while l've forgotten or discounted many books, because of the medium, despite the message. ln view of these feelings, perhaps you are wondering why I am having my current books (4) done by i establishment publishers. The answer is that I have already sold these. I did take the one unsold book back from Random House. But my next book will be FREE! (and remember, folks, you get what you pay for.) lncidentally, by far the best underground press anthology is a book from England called Counter-Culture, unavailable in the U.S. Outasite! l \ whattodo Mitch Goodman i \ l. .". of their weather reports rhe Weathermen "lt's love. " said, easy to hate in Amerika it's a lot harder to l've never met Tom Forcade. The extent of our connection is one phone conversation. Yet I feel sure he hates me, and has made efforts to spread that poison. Now, that might be simply written as a personal matter, if it weren't for the factthal Forcade is some sort of boss (self-appointed, I think) at UPS, and publishes a newssheet (Clear Head) there, most of which, as I understand it, he writes himself. Which means that Forcade has put himself in a position to do con- siderable good or considerable harm. He's a central- office man, a kind of watch-dog commissar for the underground press, and does whatever he feels like doing, apparently. Does it need to be spelled out? That way lies "democratic-centralism," with party Secretary Stalin at the end of the road. Forcade made up his mind, on the basis of that one phone call (it's clear he knows little or nothing about me) that he did not trust me, or, more accurately, that he didn't like me or the Movement book I had put together. (Trust is a word he doesn't seem to know.) He then got out his hatchet and went to work. u ll He hacked out an item for his Clear Head-back in November some time-in which he jumped right in with the declaration that I was a ,,capitalist and a chomp" and that I was busy ripping off the under- . ground press. He then wrote a quick description and estimate of the book: "which is a collection of articles from the underground press, very badly chosen by Mitchell Goodman, published by Alfred A. Knopf . . .,, Having thus written off two or more years of hard work, he quickly summed up his evidence for my crime by twisting and garbling the facts of the book and its history that I had told him over the phone. When I told him, for example, that yes, I had permission for everything used in the book, he seemed surprised, even disappointed. Still, like the good de_ tective he is, he proclaimed in Clear Head that ,,We are currently examining Knopf's copyright re. . .,, leases . . ." and about two months later sent one of his agents over to look at the permissions letters. He too seemed surprised to find that it was true: no one,s material had been pirated. The fact is, people in the Movement had trusted me to do a book that needed to be done, was being done under difficult condi- tions, and required a lot of willing cooperation from contributors if it was going to get done at all. ln fact, there was a long note to contributors on p. 152 of the book, in which I ran down its complicated history and told them what they could expect (the situation having changed since I first wrote to them for permission). On the phone I had asked Forcade (who was coming on like the FBI) to read that note. He evidently did not bother, or chose to ignore it. He was intent on his hatchet job. Forcade never suggested he was writing this attack; he never sent me a copy (l didn,t know Clear Head existed at the time). I learned of it by accident. Nor did he sign his name to it. ln this latest document (above) Forcade seems to have had some second thoughts about the book. Grudgingly. lt's typical that the only specific item he mentions (and he doesn't even specify that one) is ,,an article announcing a meeting to be held,,, and points out that it is two years too late to go to the meeting. That sounds either like spite or some kind of juvenile petu lance. But then he tells you that what he's really worried about is that a lot of people who wrote the stuff haven't gotten paid. This time he refers to my note in the back of the book "lhat explains why, sort of, . . . " lt doesn't just explain why (if permissions fees had had to be paid at that stage, the publisher would not have gone ahead with the book; and in the end, if it ever had been published, it would have been a $10 or $12 book), it explains how and when contributors are going to get paid-as far as it is in my power to do something about it. ln typical Forcade style, he then proceeds to rave about Random House and RCA ("huge capitalist corporation"), again ignoring what I (and the note in the book) had told him. Knopf-Random House-RCA etc. is not the publisher, certainly not for the purpose we're dealing with here. Knopf came in at the very end to handle distribution; it could not have been done without them. The publisher, the original and only actual publisher and holder of the copyright, is Pilgrim Press, a small church-connected non-profit publisher that operates on a small budget. (They,ve done two good books lately, one on the military-industrial complex by Sid Lens, another on war crimes in Vietnam. Neither book made it: no distribution.) Knopf has a business agreement with pilgrim that effectively protects them from any further costs, like demands for payment from contributors. That leaves Pilgrim Press. They claim that due to the high costs of the book (true) and the low price, they have not made any money on it. That question, and the related question of their obligation (moral and legal) to pay contributors is being pursued. (photographers and others whose work was acquired at the end of the process, after Knopf came in on it, demanded payment and got it. All that part of it was handled by those who did the production work, not by me.) But if all we were really talking about here was money, it wouldn't be worth the fuss (at leastgO% of the contributors do understand the situation-in spite of Forcade's paranoid fulminations-and it,s clear from their responses to the book that they trust me). ln fact, we're talking about love and hate and suspicion and what lies under those feelings. ln his current offering, Forcade is no longer calling me a chomp capitalist; he limits himself to a sneer. l'm no more than an accomplice of Dr. Spock. lmagine trying to make a revolution with an old baby doctor! l've been active in the Movement for six years, in all kinds of weather, in Ny, Berkeley, Boston and several other places, and all this watchdog can dig up on me is that I was on trial for conspiracy with Dr. Spock. Maybe you'd better check with the FBl, Thomas-with all their deficiencies, their information is better than yours. But why is Thomas so eager to use that axe on me (and on the book)? At first I thought he musr be some simpleminded factionalist, a McLuhanite nonreader, who doesn't like my politics and likes books even less. But in this latest document of his, there,s what may be a clue. ln a paragraph beginning ,,Before going further, it's only fair to point out that I have participated in editing two anthologies . . .,,, he tells us that he too is involved with ,,huge capitalist corporations," and spends the rest of the paragraph telling us they, the two anthologies, don,t really amount to much ("they're nice books',), and that ,,1 have long ago gotten all the money I expect to get from them.,, (Really, Thomas? From mass-marketlaperbacks? Wherr they distribute a million books at a clip?). Then at the end of his document he suddenly reveals that it is not really two but four movement books he has been producing, and that all four are being done by ,,establishment publishers." Forcade is in business. (And he's gotten so good at it that he somehow manages to get money for his contributors; but maybe that,s not so hard to do with mass-market paperback cor- porations.) Could it be that he sees me as a rival busi"product" is maybe better than his, nessman whose and was out on.the "market" first, and perhaps will make his "nice books" look not so nice after all? Does that sound too harsh? Then look at it this way. What makes a guy like Forcade worth bothering with at all is that 1) he is only human; 2) he's a victim of this society, like the rest of us; and 3) all this hate and scorn and canny effort to poison the water is symptomatic of the Movement in its weakest aspects, its sickness. Marge Piercy put her finger on the Movement machers (see p. 57 of The Movement, "The Grand Coulee Dam"): the men who make the Movement their business, and in the process use and demean women (and men, too, l'd add). My guess is that Forcade is one of them-whether he knows it or not. (l suspect not.) Probably he's at least half unconscious of what he does with that hatchet, as so many blind-angry people are. But why so angry? ls he angry at himself? ls he guilty? ls he, somewhere, afraid he's got the virus of capitalism in him? Out of feelings like these comes the need to control, to dominate others, to cut people down and so establish your own authority. Authoritarianlsm. Domination. The underlying deformities, on which stand imperialism, sexism, racism, adultism (control of children), capitalism, and the authoritarian forms of socialism. Which brings us back to the central office, the watchdog and the ghost of Stalin. 7 { A final note: I wanted to get into some of the other questions: commercial and Movement publishing, etc., but l've already taken more than my share of the space. The publishing thing, important as it is (the very last words in The Movement are a cail for a Movement publishing house), is secondary. First of all, what kinds of books, what's in them, etc.? Forcade is still giving us the wornout "truth": The Medium ls the Message. Bullshit. The feeling, the action, the experience is the message. The Movement is an action: it embodies the multiform energies of the Movement as they expressed themselves, with immediacy, thru all kinds of people. (Staughton Lynd wrote to me about the book that it "(presents) those sources in a form which is continuous with that of the thing being studied, so that the book itself becomes part of the Movement rather than merely being about the Move- ment." Forcade's reductionlst notion of what a book is corresponds to his parochial view of what the Movement is. He talks about "anthologies", his own and others. But The Movement is precisely not an anthology, it's a carefully constructed book, a coherent en- tity, in which the dynamic of the interacting elements are meant to correspond to those in the Movement itself . Forcade insists on thinking that The Movement is simply a collection from "the underground papers." ("A book that big," he writes, "could have held a lot more real content, from a much, much wider range of papers . . .") But to show the Movement and its matrix, its context, you have to go beyond the underground papers. The intention was to show that the Movement is broader and deeper than most people think it is-John Holt, George Dennison, John McDermott, N.O. Brown (to take a few examples) don't write for the underground papers, but they are all very much elements of and witnesses to the Movement. What I did use from the underground papers was, as I saw it, a representative sampling: Great Speckled Bird, Old Mole, Berkeley Tribe, Chicago Seed, Milwau' kee Kaleidoscope, etc. Anything wrong there, Thomas? And of course the heaviest contributors were not underground papers at all, but WIN and Liberation. No regrets. Other materials, from the NY Times, etc., were used as foils and refractors. I put it all together-good solid writing-in the hope that people still read books and don't iust look at them. Judging from the response, my hope was iustified. (Radical teachers around the country are beginning to use it in courses, for one thing.) As for Forcade's "proposal." Sure, mimeo, xerox, etc. are important, for certain purposes. (Marvin Garson's stuff is memorable not because of the medium (mimeo) but because he writes so damned well, i.e. has the language-power to match his fertility.) And we sure as hell need more Movement presses, like REP, New England Free Press, etc. (Forcade never mentions this crucial element of our media. Nor does he mention the first signs of actual Movement book publishing: Peoples Press and Ramparts Books, both in the Bay Area, where most of what's new seems to ccime from.) But if Forcade's proposal ends with mimeo, xerox and carbons and "pass it around to your friends", then the Movement is going to spend the next 1 0 years talking to itself. The point, the need, now is to reach out-by any and all means, including (for the moment) the commercial publishers. Knopf is distributing The Movement, which is working in and for and beyond the Movement. They do ii for money and prestige. We do it for the revolution. ln the long run, who is using whom? I BUSTNESS L00ts FoR BIG WAR PROFIT I I I 21 ast year in the October I st issue of WIN there was a three-way discussion-Sid Peck, Harry Ring, and myself-on how to end the war. The discussion was occasioned by the split that had begun within the movement, the withdrawal of the Socialist Workers' Party (and Young Socialist Alliance and Student Mobilization Committee), from the broader coalition. At the time I wrote: " . . .their present decision to pull out of New Mobe and set up their own frame-. work is a real movement fuckup; it means a kind of politlcal guerilla war all across the country." How unhappily correct I proved to be, for now the movement as a whole is confronted with choosing between " April 24" and "May 2nd." Some discussion is in order to account for the forces.behind the two dates and the reasons for the conflict. The April 24th date was arbitrarily chosen by the National Peace Action Coalition (known as NpAC). The date itself is tied to no event-its one real value seems to have been that it came a week before the May dates which everyone has known, since last fall, were projected as days of intensive action in Washington. NPAC itself is not in any genuine sense a coalition. The driving force behind it is the Socialist Workers' Party, the Young Socialist Alliance, and the Student Mobilization Committee (SMC). The May 2nd date was chosen by the peoples, Coalition for Peace and Justice, and it was chosen to mark the anniversary of the invasion of Cambodia and because it is on the first weekend before the fateful days of May 4 (Kent State) and May 6 (Jackson State) and also because the International trade union movement is planning mass demonstrations during the first two weeks in May to protest the lndochinese war. Last year, for reasons I tried to outline in a long article in the February 15th WlN, "New Mobe,, began to radicalize and broaden its program, and sought to involve non-white groups in a genuine coalltion that would link peace and social justice. One can make fun of the changes of name that have occurred: Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam to National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam to New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam to National Coalition Against War, Racism and Repression to People,s Coalition for Peace and Justice, but these changes reflect a steady growth in the political nature of that grouping. The People's Coalition itself was born out of the Milwaukee Conferences of June and September of last year and the Chicago Conference of early lf we moved slowly and required three conferences it is precisely because the people,s Coalition is a broad-based organization, ranging from the forces in the AFSC, WRL, FOR, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About the War in Vietnam, and Women's Strike, to such segments of the Old Left as the Communist Party, to eiements of the trade unions, to significant forces in the Chicano, Black, and puer)anuary this year. Cuerillatmr inthe David McReynolds to Rican communities. By "significant" I mean groups such as the National Welfare Rights Organization and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, not merely individual sponsors. ln opposition to that complex reality of a coalition of groups and forces, NPAC has nothing more to it than its essential Trotskyist cadre, plus a very excellent list of individual sponsors (few of whom were aware of the split the Trotskyists had brought to the --\ peace movement), and several community peace coalitions. lt is significant that the People's Coalition is not trying to get massive lists of sponsors-we don,t need them because we have an actual base in communities and organizations-while NPAC has laid tremendous stress on such lists-because they have al- most no organizational support outside the SWP, YSA, and SMC. Now I am not happy to go into this discussion because experience has taught me that splits leave everybody much weaker and, while they are exciting to some of us, they demoralize most of us. But the present "guerilla war" in the peace movement is the only alternative we have to capitulating to the political line of the Trotskyists. What is the basic disagreement? First, the SWP opposes the peace movement having anything in its program except immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, while the People's Coalition feels the time has come to link the brutal foreign policy of this nation with the brutalization our society imposes on non-whites and the poor in general. ln our view Vietnam is no accident, but flows from the structure of our society and we commit ourselves to help change that structure. Second, the SWP opposes any tactic but mass legal demonstrations. lt opposes civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action and, because it runs candidates of its own, it opposes the coalition taking any stands on political parties or candidates. lt knows, for example, that the independents in NPAC will not support SWP candidates in 1912, so it settles for NpAC supporting no one and nothing in the political area. I already pointed out in the WIN debate last Octo- ?2 q ber that I also believe the SWP is terrified that the forces now grouped in the People's Coalition may form a kind of "Left political party" which would draw people away from the SWP. lf they do fear this they are probably correct-the People's Coalition is, potential[y, the first serious move in a long time to create something more than a "peace coalition" or a "civil rights coalition"-it is an effort to create an American coalition aimed at restructuring this society. Whose date was first? This is one of those tragically silly arguments. But to be dealt with. NPAC is saying that they were the "first" with a date and the People's Coalition is dividing the movement by refusing to support April 24th. This is not an honest argument. When NPAC had its conference in Chicago in December, just a couple of weeks before the People's Coalition was to meet, our negotiators begged them not to set a fixed it has ,r t l', : :". J. ' hr I I I ..:.' it !fr att tfi '\5 f,G{tr.rtu Fl oy s6-r ( a :.'! 'a i 1 0,ri t f'rrl date, to wait until the two groups could settle on a joint date. Everyone knew that, as early as last summer, there was talk of an action in Washington in May of 1911 and while most of us were reconciled to the existence of two coalitions instead of one, we felt that both coalitions should join on a single date for mass legal action in Washington. NPAC went ahead and set a date but then did two things, showing real political shrewdness. They kept telling the People's Coalition that NPAC was not "locked into" April 24, that it could be changed, and we should keep negotiating to find a common date. That seemingly generous and open approach delayed the People's Coalition from setting a date as we kept trying to work out a common program with NPAC. ln the meantime, while we were postponing any concrete dates that would lock the movement into a fight, NPAC was proceeding in a very hard way at local levels, lining up buses for April 24th, getting sponsors, etc. The tactic was effective enough, forcing the People's Coalition into choosing between an open fight or into accepting the political leadership and political line of the Trotskyists. I think I speak for a great many people when I say that we are no more prepared to accept this political leadership from the now than, some years ago, we were prepared to accept the leadership of the Communist Party. The SWP fight is unfortunate-and tragic-but the alternative to accept the limitations that a movement has when it adopts the "single issue, single taclic" concept of the Trotskyists. ls there a basis for unity? one question, yes-the question of a single date ,for On a mass, legal, peaceful demonstration. The?eople's Coalition has urged NPAC to give up the April 24th date and join in sponsoring the May 2nd date. But on broader questions, no. The Trotskyists have played a conservative role within the movement for the past two years, a role that has been helpful in limiting the kind of mindless "revolution through personal terrorism" approach of the most alienated sections of the movement, but a rolp that has also stood in the way of developing genuine mass actions involving civil disobedience. As long ago as March of last year, during anti-draft week, the local peace committees controlled by the Trotskyists (and, to a lesser extent, those influenced by the Communists) shied away from concrete support for anti-draft actions. ln the long run the Trotskyists have probably talked themselves out of the coalition. This is not the first time they have sought to exercise hegemony over ' the whole peace movement, but it is their most serious effort thus far to do this, and clearly their most successful. lt is not merely that hard feelings exist now on both sides, but that the People's Coalition has moved to the left of the Trotskyists, leaving them-ironically, considering their attachment to orthodox Marxism-with only the most moderate elements of the peace movement as their allies. A note on "Trotsky baiting" One holdover from the McCarthy period is the is Lt+ feeling that political discussion musL be conducted in some kind of code. During the suppression of the Communist Party in the 50's, there was merit in that. I was not then as aware, personally, as I should have been that to attack certain persons or groups as C.P. was to endanger the jobs and even the freedom of those involved. But in the present context, when the Trotskyists are extremely respectable and my "accusation" against theni is that they wilt not violate the law through civil disobedience, I am hardly costing them their jobs, let alone their freedom. When individuals and groups are involved in a policy of violence and terrorism we are forced to conduct the debate with them in very careful ways-one would not, for example, say that "such-and-such a committee" was infiltrated by Weathermen, or that "so-andso was close to the Weathermen", because such a charges, if put in those terms, amount to providing public information for later government action. But persons and groups in public life whose actions are within the law (and the Trotskyists are profoundly within the law) cannot expect to be exempt from a discussion of their politics and the way in which those politics affect groups in which they operate-in this case, NPAC. So, friends, choose your date April 24th isn't going to do any harm-it will be a nice, legal, peaceful rally with only one demand: "out of Vietnam now." lf your local group has already signed up with that date, and if you can't change to May 2nd, don't worry. Contrary to the belief of some in the movement, the world will not collapse if there are two demonstrations in Washington a week apart. lt is too bad, but not the end of the movement. lf you are able to shift your local group to May 2nd,l urge you to do so. That is also a legal, peaceful rally with two extremely important differences from April 24th. First, we will demand an end to social injustice and political repression as well as an end to the war. Second, May 2nd will be a "support rally" for the thousands who will remain in Washington for lobbying on May 3 and 4 and for nonviolent civil disobedience on May 5th. A NOTE FOR THE FUTURE The current fight, which has created terrible bitter_ ness among the rank and file who don,t understand why, confronted with the invasion of Laos, the movement cannot agree on a single date, may also serve to educate the rank and file that there is not a single and unified movement. We are confronted with some very real political disagreements-disagreements which the Trotskyists forced forward. They are the ones who split the movement. No one forced them out of the coalition-they left. But their actions underline the need for building an American movement that is not run by somebody's central committee. lf the peoples Coalition has been slow to move, has floundered, lacked swift cohesion, required three conferences to make decisions, it is because no one can manipulate it and, therefore, one can hope that it represents something very real in American life. Slow, but sure. Ponderous and pragmatic, but important. !J -"' rI il& ffi f{t ,$ m m ; f le H w I rg ffi t Sam Coleman April 30, 191"1- january 22,1971 :E i No matter how close the flesh of marching men ri Or Youth in wild flock or I $il red phalanx ffi Sam called each by name Catching signals $ fl From each soul That flickered As il m u t'I if it Were one and all I ust so the iumbled thoughts we tangled at his feet He marshalled to a human PYramid Broad as the planet of our dreams With its apex in the MilkY WaY Our stars will follow there -Edward P. Gottlieb a{ ," itltt ,f.,llrr,t,[;ffi i,,,,,t;.ri'rtti " ii *,!;r,'-::,;,ir,,,,,,,rffiiWff". 'ir,.i tii"t;.,r:"r', :: {j1ffii',',,:!!\...irrir.r:ji+jrli . i;{"qlil, ii]i;,1;,7; ,:|r.1ffi1r. 1 w .t- r.'1:,';,i $ ::ift. T 0 Phyllis was heading down a flight of steps, from street level to train level of the Lexington Avenue Subway line. Someone heading up reached over and touched her arm. Watch it! ln New York City, such doings mean trouble. But don't worry. See, the guy who reached for her knew her. Well, he didn,t actually know her, he knew Melissa. I guess l'd better explain. Phyllis is an actress. She's in a play called TOUCH which is running at a theatre in the East Village. It,s billed as a communal musical, it's about us ,'youhg people," and in it Phyllis plays the part of an orphan named Melissa. "l was so excited when he recognized me, I mean when he recognized Melissa...This is really very confusing it's hard to find a way to talk about Melissa apart from myself. She's not make believe; she's real. My life isn't at all like hers, but she,s still a part of me, and I'm a part of her." The first Iime I saw the play it was lnstant Karma. lnstant in that it was quick, but not that it didn,t require some work. The press tickets I hustled were for the best seats in the house, front-row in a theatre which surrou nds the stage on three sides. The slage began at my feet, and although all parts of the theatre were used, the performers were never more than fifteen feet away. lt was frightening, and I was surprised to find it so. l've been going to lots of rock concerts listening to much live rock 'n' roll music. One skill ?L U C H I o that's been easy to come by in these other audience/ performer activities is being able to keep the performers as distant from me, to keep me as secure behind defenses as I feel I need. At TOUCH I was vulnerable, and knew it from the moment I sat down. Much of my fright came from not knowing what my part was supposed to be. I felt like one of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. They were characters from an unfinished play who stormed into a theatre demanding to know how their play would come out. They needed to know. Without knowing they could not carry on. l, too, was unsure of my role. Looking at the less-freaky-more-straight theatregoers around me, I felt like I ought to be, somehow, a representative of the freak community the play was about. But, how much would be asked of me? And, what could I afford? - TOUCH is official off-broadway theatre. Ads in all the newspapers, good reviews in most of the same. But, just recently they received a grant from an arts and theatre foundation, and a celebration ensued. Now, at least for a while, the actors and actresses and other folks involved will get paychecks and not just slips of paper equal to spare change. They had been getting $5, sometimes $10 per week; living on that. second job income, and whatever they come up with in their panhandling scene. (There is one man who has been back to see the play several times, each time of mine commented. They reach out and hug you warmly, as do many of the communards I know, but they don't understand (small "p") politics well enough to know that groups often have to (small "o") organize for getting things done; can't just make it returning with half-dollar pieces which he freely gives away in the scene.) TOUCH grew out of a summer theatre experiment in Warren, Pennsylvania. Edie O'Hara, mother of actresses and a theatre buff herself, began a company called Plowright. They got themselves a barn, put on shows of standard fare, wrote some of their ownIike TOUCH, and did a do-it-yourself thing for themselves all the way to New York. Plowright's given a lot of young people the chance to find out what they can do in theatre, and has plans for continuing with the same. Look, Phyllis. I feel uncomfortable trying to do a straight interview with you . . .l feel involved with the play...Let fl#1 L*l me try to tell on good vibes and touches alone. Look at the way the play ends-the "tribe" in the play doesn't really know how to deal with the inclpient violence of the townspeople who fear/misu nderstand/feel threatened by their commune. They could all use a good course in pacifist activism. The play's about kids like us who drop out and go a searchin'. Hit the city and . . .well, cities got the ways and means to cut up dreams like a street blade moves through even frozen butter. So they hit the road, and come together out of need-simple ones at first, simple in that they are easy to recognize and understand-like need for sustenance and warmth of a physical sort. After taking care of that sort of business, they begin to work at understanding the more complex needs of us human animals, meet some of them, miss on others, feel pain and pleasure from the hits and misses, and understand that once in edge city the return to old ways is beyond consideration. There's a lot more talk could be done about the realism and stuff like that of the play. But fuck it. I know some about the people of the play, as they appear on stage, and some about them off. I know they ain't as together as they could be, which means as l'd like them to be, as l'd like myself to be, but the process of coming together every night on stage, among the performers, between the on-stage folks and the audience, is worth much more than any of these you... That first night I was sitting there trying to find a posture which was comfortable. Physically, I was squirming ln my seat, just trying to be casual. ln my head I was looking for some way to let y'all know I was with you. But during the first act I was being very critical. I kept telling myself how naive your characters-all of you-were. Then some of the magic of good theatre reached me, shortly after the intermission break. l began to step up to where the play was reaching for me . . .y'know, I stopped watching myself watch the play and really began to taste it. It wasn't like I decided to get involved, the play sort of grabbed me. And then at the end, when you reached out for me . . .look, I have no idea if that always happens or not, if anyone else was being touched, if anyone else was being hugged; I wasn't thinking about it, I was just squeezing you and being high. That's really fine to hear, Phyllis grinned and said. I play to the audience. I have to. Their reactions change and shape and mold everything I do on the stage . . .During the introductlons, the "Windsong" scene I sort of case the ioint-that doesn't sound so nice; what I do is look at the people who are sitting where I play . . .l usually know at that time in the beginning who I will be able to reach out to at the end . . Sometimes, though, all I see are coat and tie people, and that scares me. I have such a hard time trying to reach them. David, another of the actors: Sometimes I want to ' be shocking the audience more. They seem so accepting. . .The original notion was to do the intro scene in blackface; a loudspeaker blaring the lines-using the convention of cruelty, sort of, using horror as a device; bur finally we decided that beauty as a device seemed more appropriate. Now, though, what we hear is that we and the play are so naive. . .but the in-theknow political people seem to be training themselves to be refused. lf I could be President, and give them What they wanted, if I could just reach out and give them what they wanted (he extends his hand theatrically, palm upward, as he speaks) they would probably cut my hand off. I tried to interrupt: David, I don't think political people, as you call them, want a president, nor do they want to be given things. At least the play is realistic in one sense, a friend . small words. I consider the play in much the same way I consider the WIN office, a place to go when the city and the winter get too cold for healthy consumption. I take my friends to the play every chance I get. We bake bread before we go and share it with the cast and the audience during the intermission..l've returned to the community of the play many times. As the play ends, each and every time l've seen it, I want it to go on-Throw away the script, I say to myself, no more need to know how it ends, now that I know how it begins. lf the play doesn't mirror the harshness of the realities many of us have come to know, if it's not as real and painful as the world we wake up everyday to it still stands worthy. I had been waiting for a friend of mine to visit from Wisconsin, had been plannlng to share the play with her. I saw much of her in the play-how she was striving to integrate her own need to end the loneliness of our society with her struggle as a woman, with the struggle of all folks who say not that I have suffered because of you-it's your fault-but I will be free, I SHALL BE RELEASED. She didn't make it home. But I know she would have dug the play. She would have been too involved in it to trouble over what it didn't do-she was never much of a critic. Her review would have taken but one line of your reading time: "See it," is what she would have said. -f ack see, 27 the accused "confesses," the prognosis is considered a little better. But in either case, off one goes to the mental hospi- tal for an indeterminate stay-often for life! lt is not sur- THE MANUFACTURE OF MADNESS: A Comparative Study of the lnquisition and the Mental Health Movement by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D. Harper & Row, New York, 1970 $8.95 The first half of The Manufacture of Madness, by Thomas S. Szasz (M.D.), is a mind-blower. Maybe even the first 7/8ths. lf you've ever worried about being "mentally ill," the good doctor sweeps that fear away like Christmas angel's hair from the honest spruce. lt appears that many of us have by the sorcerers of the psychiatric establishfor me, at least-such a liberating feeling to be disenchanted. lt seems, once again, we have nothing to fear but fear itself, a fear deliberately instilled and nurtured by institutional psychiatry. When Franklin Roosevelt uttered that liberating phrase, many people in the country really did have something to fear-starvation. But he wasn't talking to those people. He was talking to businessmen.afraid of losing their dress shirts, not their daily bread. ln the same way, protestors and non-conformists and poor people really do have something to fear from the psychiatric establishment-being locked up in a nut house. But at least we don't have to fear for our sanity any longer, since both sanity and insanity have'been proved a myth, a continuation of the myth of witchcraft invented by the inquisition as a means of disposing of its unwanted challengers. The parallels Dr, Szasz draws between America's mental health movementand the inquisition is damned near perfect. As befits a capitalistic society, the main victims of the psychiatric power structure are the poor. They are the ones been enchanted ment and it is always fill who predominantly the state mental hospitals and among whom psychiatric social workers attached to the welfare department daily seek out more and more misfits to "cure" or put away. The poor, it appears, were also the main victims of the feudalistic inquisition. So-called witches were often midwives and dispensers of medicine to the poor. Physical cures were considered the prerogative of priests who dispensed the mercy of God (although the upper classes relied on .lewish doctors), but witches did the devil,s business of studying anatomy and biochemistry. The point is that witches, like today's "maniacs," were rarely able to prove their innocence. lf they protested it to the end, they were burned at the stake as incorrigibles. lf, after torture, they "confessed," they might be strangulated before being burned-a more merciful ending. The arbiters of their guilt were the specialists in witchcraft, the professional ',witchhunters," whose word was accepted by the power-structure in the same way that two licensed psychiatrists can certify a person "insane." lf the accused "maniac" protests his/her innocence, the psychiatrists diagnose a "lack of insight;,, if k8 prising, in such a situation, that so many mental diseases are considered to be deteriorating and incurable. Moreover, the treatments devised for the insine, which can be perpetrated on them without their consent, Dr. Szasz views as equally sadistic as those invented in the Middle Ages to exorcise witches. lnstead of flagellation and clitoral circumcision, we have electroshock and frontal lobotomies! Dr. Szasz shows, as many of us have suspected, that "normality" is simply conformity to the prevailing ethic. Thus, although murder is considered normal for soldiers, individual murderers are thought to be "mad." lgnoring much historical evidence to the contrary, psychiatrists congratulate the inquisitors for discovering the disease, if not the cure, of insanity in witches, and then go on to insist that Hitler was mad! ln what for me was the most incisive paragraph in the book, Dr. Szasz remarks: " lf the observer sympathizes with the oppressor and wants to exonerate him, while he pities the oppressed but wants to control him, he calls the victim mentally ill. This is why psychiatrists declare tfiat witches were mad. Conversely, if the observer sympathizes with the oppressed and wants to elevate him, while he loathes the oppressor and wants to degrade him, he calls the tormentors mentally ill. This is why psychiatrists declare that the Nazis were mad. I insist that both interpretations are worse than false; by interposing mental illness (or witchcraft, as was the case formerly), they conceal, excLlse, and explain away the terrifyingly simple but all-important fact of man,s inhumanity to man." Dr. Szasz calls ours a "Therapeutic State,, in the same sense that the inquisition produced ",Religious States.,,The psychiatric establishment has become bureaucratized to the extent that there are psychiatric social workers everywhere hunting up "neurotics" and "psychotics" the way witchhunters made a business of seeking out witches. The Rorschach and Thematic Apperception tests, dispensed by psychologists in the way (the author's analogy) medical technicians test blood and urine, always turn up some kind of psychological problem-unlike the more objective medical tests. A person whose blood is tested may turn out to have perfeclly normal blood; not so with one whose mind is tested: he/she always comes out sick. And this, claims Dr. Szasz, is not to be construed as madness on the part of our society, but as an exercisa of power. How this power eats its way into our daily lives is carefully documented in this book. As an example: " .ln a paper advocating psychiatric services in the public schools, the author lists the following types of behavior as 'symptomatic of deeper underlying disturbance . . .: 1. Academic problems-under-achievement, over-achievement, erratic, uneven performance. 2. Social problems with siblings, peers-such as the aggressive child, the submissive child, the show-off. 3. Relations with parental and other authority figures, such ad defiant behavior, submissive behavior, ingratiation. 4. Overt behaviora.l manifestations, such as tics, nail-biting, thumb-sucking . . .(and) interests more befitting to the opposite sex (such as tom-boy girl and effeminate boy) . .' (Sherwin S. Radin, Mental Health Problems in School Children, Journal of School Health, Dec. 1962. f, "Clearly, there is no childhood behavior that a psychiatrist could not place in one of these categories." Later on, the author quotes a psychiatric "in-foke": " . . .if a psychiatric patient is early for his appointment, he is anxious, if late he is hostile, and if on time, compulsive . . ." Knowing the truth of this, and insisting that men- tal illness is a myth invented and defined by psychiatrists, Dr. Szasz still supports the utility of private psychoanalysls. He views the private analyst as a kind of capitalistic entrepeneur, a role of which he approves. Like the "witch" or oracle to which medieval people had recourse when emo- tional problemsarose, the private analyst may possibly be of some help in straightening out an individual's life. But he claims, in other passages in the book, that witches acted as aids to the poor, receiving from them small gifts (food, etc.) in return. ln our society, private analysts are only available to those who can afford to pay anywhere from $50 to $100 an hour, three or four times a week! And there is nothing, except his own personal sense of ethics, to prevent a private analyst from committing a patient to an institution or otherwise ratting on him/her. Dr. Szasz goes on to put down "collectivism," "communism," etc., because in such economic set-ups the state controls all medicine including the pseudo-medicine of psychi- atry. Granted communism as we know it, in its present primitive form, protects itself against nonconformists much the way capitalism does, but it does not wage all-out war against the poor. Szasz goes so far as to refer to Western as the "Free World" without quotation marks. This after describing the mental health inquisition in America! I consider Dr. Szasz's bias for laissez-faire capitalism a lapse of logic on his part and, perhaps unfairly, l'm inclined to attribute it to the unhappy experiences Hungarians have suffered at the hands of both Germany and the USSR. Be that as it may, if one notices that the poor are systematically oppressed by the rich in a capitalistic state where individuals are responsible for the oppression, how can an individualistic approach be relied upon more than a collectivist approach to alleviate oppression? Szasz, himself, observes that "man's inhumanity to man" is an inescapable fact of life. I do not find in that phrase a distinction between man's individual inhumanity and men's collective inhumanity. The factory boss, the private television company, the overly eager private surgeon (who uses his superior knowledge to impress patients with a false life-or-death need for a particular mutilation), landlords, owners of supermarkets, private philanthropists, oil barons who pollute the waters, automotive industrialists who pollute the air, paper companies which defoliate the forests, people who hire servants-all of these oppress and repress people as surely as any collective, Furthermore, Mao Tse-Tung is quoted as saying there is no psychosis in China today . . .perhaps an occasional case of melancholia which Mao does not regard as a disease. His statement should be support for Szasz's thesis-that where there is neither money nor power in it for a practitioner, mental illness ceases to be a plague on the society. .l ust,as when witch-hunts ended, witches ceased to appearl ls it not also possible that laissez-faire capitalism, depending as it does on that most obscene invention of mankind, money, is also a myth? lsn't such a shibboleth as "the poor will always be with us" part of that myth? Why should capitalistic societies u we accept the notion of riches and poverty any more than we accept the idea of sane and insane, saint and witch?' I am not suggesting that social deviants have a better chance in acollective than in a "free enterprise system." But the elimination of poverty will certainly take a massive portion of society out of the category of deviants. The poor at least will no longer be oppressed for their,state of being poor, in addition to being persecuted by wantl Szasz states that he would approve of America fighting communism by military means, if necessary. But what wouid America be protecting in such a fight? Another kind of oppression ! Another myth I I am suggesting that if collectivism is not the answer, neither is laissez-faire capitalism. Szasz must be held to his own acute awareness of one of the observable facts of human life: the cruelty of human beings to one another. He has astutely refused to define this fact as madness-either on the part of the perpetrator of cruelty or the victim. ln this way he has helped to clear our vision so that we can examine the problem with one less illusion. We must either find a way to change this fact or to deal with it rationally for the benefit of the people. No system yet invented-political, social, economic, religious, therapeutic-has yet come up with a solution. And so we are left with the moment of truth, the ultimate question. But we owe Thomas Szasz much Sratitude for standing virtually alone against the newly-defined "military-industrial-psychiatric complex" to help put a part of that question in the right perspective. He certainly doesn't want to be categorized as a new saint or prophet-just a rational human being thinking his way through life. -Leah Fritz street PeoPle even before they taught us to read WALK DON'T WALK our friend the policeman would tell us when to cross DON'T WALK WALK we learned out of school now we're political laywalkers unauthorized personnel who fail to yield the right of waY and by refusing to disPerse stand in contempt of court DON'T WALK DON'T WALK DON'T chanting shouting the streets belong to the People when the man comes with sticks and gas we keep ourselves from panic flight with the hoarsely urgent message Walk Walk Walk -Henry Mayer aCI AI DE MAYOR OF HARLEM and known to the similar bops by David Henderson Dutton pre. Orange surprise. Go right out get this collection of despoems Henderson, by David sentfuturefantasticlovetrue perado poet, madman, saint, blackbeing, bean, soilplanter; or steal his words, they can taste better, like stealings. His Harlem is the only Harlem, his Harlem of de mind, O the broadway subway train travels lo travels quicklY thru these parts rear above ground like a giant sex star to say hello to the girls at Barnard I remember David Henderson, virgovisual "nuns in flying saucers," etcetera, word*monster, I can fill up this piece with quotes/mis of his "seven years of poems, documen- tories tales and lives," but that's nowhere, you have to get to him the whole thlng, see him, feel his mayoralty, taste his Biafra Stew, dig his pope, his boppers, the miraculous switchblades, "whispers of gothic murders," eat from his eyes. Passion ispain, succulence faith dried wine, guarantees of Time. of the roaming hordes "David Henderson was born in Harlem in 1942. He worked as a union organizer, picket line boss, messenger, carpenter, presser in a cleaning store, grocery clerk, magazine salesman, schoolteacher and front man. He has taught at City College in a experimental program out of the Horace Mann School of Experimentation, Teachers College, Colum- bia University, and had served as poet-in-residence to the Ocean' Hill-Brownsville Experimental School District and The Free Southern Theater. Mr. Henderson is an original Umbra poet and a founding editor of Umbra. During the fall of 1969 he was poet-in-residence at City College. His poems have appeared in Umbra, the Evergreen Review, the New American Review, and Negro Digest, and have been anthologized several times." And things jackets don't reveal, like energy, essence. Dig David Henderson. smell the musk of body scent warm and thick congestion at the function before the junction "Nothing could be called the present-still thinking "l hope these poems go beyond the popular misery and the popular loy to some mean point in there where you catch me bopping up and down the streets, dark and old." I remember David Henderson. I see him in the night, daytime faces. Harlem ii Apollo, lower east side, southern blues, Frankenstein dates, blood. I remember David, his blood. (A memory without propoganda). We are in a room. lt is November cold outside, ragefeel, tenement distress, David in the kitchen, on the floor, blood from his lips, Dracula against the icebox and Dracula's brother knifeinhand guarding the about running for de Mayor of Harlem." (David) slaughter, disprotecting the spirit, blood, blood, blood, blood, and out of blood flowers. Out of that, and surviving the other dreams and nights to be, must come the fine campaigns, the sharp poems, the visitations. every morning i go and see the white women in the glass windowsi i have heard they often appear nude to huge crowds Dracula, he suck so much blood, he burst, blood in the park, rowboating, madness in the moonlight, friedchicken and spare ribs to bust out of lies. David between the lines of the accepted lies, the colormyths; live and go, aliveness, the magical, the miraculous, people turn tables on reality, a mix, voodoo, voodoo technology, "release the pain of reconnection," irony, good eyes, hanging out no pity tears, laughter and live, a celebration of breathing since 1942. We bopped when about to fight and we bopped when happy all in our own slight variances known to the members of the Road 3o THE SCHOOL FIX, NYC, USA by Miriam Wasserman Outerbridge and Disenfrey, 568 pages $10.00 The public school system in New York City is practically on its death bed. Although schools are not in quite such bad shape elsewhere, they are on their way. This study of the problems of the public schools as they exist in their most extreme form in New York seeks to illuminate the whole sickness of American education. Miriam's basic thesis in this long and highly perceptive book is that the school crisis in America is not accidental but is instead a direct result of the role schools play 1n O.tpetuating the status system in America. A basic part of the school system is the "tracking system" in which very early in their school careers some kids are tracked to be dropouts, others to get nonacademic high school diplomas, and still others to go to college. Miriam feels that the failure of the average student is inherent in the competitive system. For some kids to get A's, others must get D's. For some kids to go to Bronx High School of Science, others must go to some chaotic madhouse. For some kids to get 800 on thek college boards, others must get 350. The rat race atmosphere in education created by the emphasis on grades, diplomas, and college boards is certainly unhealthy. I personally don't think we are going to get very far in reforming education until we abolish diplomas and degrees. This would accomplish a lot. School overcrowding ,*r.. mighteven disappear. Business could not enforce the absurd requirement that someone should have a high school degree to drive a truck or have a college degree to be a junior executive. People would go to school if at all to get education or training in something they found useful, enlightening, or enjoyable. There would still be competition, but it would be competition for the hell of it or for values that t,' really concern students rather than for phoney symbols. The two greatest things about Miriam's book, I feel, are the extremely perceptive interviews with the kids conducted by John Reiman (he really knows how to relate) and the stories Miriam tells about schools. At one point Miriam attended a class conducted by a "Mlss White." Miss White began, "This is Mrs. Wasserman, children, a very distinguished writer. Say 'Good morning, Mrs. Wasserman,' " "Good morning, Mrs. Wasserman." "Good morning, children." "This is a very s-l-o-w class, h-o-l-d-o-v-e-r-s," she spelt, trying to elicit Miriam's gaze in an understanding complicity. lnstead, Miriam looked away ashamed. The well-trained children stood neatly behind their chairs. At a signal, first the glrls sat down, then the boys. Miss White then said, "Feet flat on floor. Heads up. Sit straight. Hands clasped on desk." Miriam thought some kind of posture class was about to begin but it turned out to be the required posltlon of the morning. The opening lesson, which took thirty-five minutes, was for the kids to read a list of twenty words. Presently Miss White came to the word "trunk" on the list of extremely simple words. "What ls a trunk?" she asked. A kid suggested that a trunk is l'where you put the suit case." Miss White was utterly baffled. The Metropolitan Reading Test which Miss White was using as a teacher's guide has a picture of a foot locker next to the word "trunk." So Miss White, trying to imagine the world her poor "culturally deprived" kids lived in, responded "Why would you want to put a suitcase in a trunk unless there isn't room in the closet?" Another child tried a different tack in defining trunk and suggested that you put things in a trunk "like to go on a picnic." Miss White then lost her cool com- pletely and angrily demanded, "Who would take a trunk on a picnic?" Miriam at this point could hold her tongue no longer and broke the cardinal rule that observers are supposed to remain silent to suggest that the kids might be thinking of a car trunk rather than a foot locker. Miss White was ashamed and explained, "Oh, it's been some years since l've had a car," and then added disapprovingly, "You know they all have cars." lncompetence such as this could exist nowhere except in an entrenched bureaucracy. The entrenched bureaucracy, realizing this, has resisted all forms of community control and competitive hiring and has buttressed itself behind the "merit system." The "merit system" ironically evaluates people on the basis of degrees, exams, seniority etc.-every- thing but competence. The problem of the incompetence of public education has become so critical that more and more people feel that we should iust junk the whole system. Milton Friedman proposed that we abolish public schools altogether and use the money to give every child a certificate he could use to pay for tuition at any private, parochial, "free," or trade school he chose. lt seemed utopian at the time. lt doesn't seem at all utopian anymore. -Henry Bass THE TRIAL OF THE CATONSVILLE NINE by Daniel Berrigan, S..1. On May 1l , 1968, nine men and women entered a local draft board in Catonsville, l\4aryland, removed several hundred files to an adjacent parking lot and burned the documents with napalm. That October they were tried and convicted on charges of willful infury to government property and interference with the administration of the Selective Service Act of 1961 . Father Daniel Berrigan, one of the Catonsville 9, writing from underground, condensed the transcript of that trial into this documentary play. Like the trial, the play opens with the defense declining to participate in the selection of the iury and closes with the final statements and prayers of the defendants after the "guilty" verdict has been pronounced. Within that framework, each of the accused comes forth and tells his/her own story as the motivation for that act of fire: the birth of his/ her political consciousness, and its merging with his/her human conscience. Christians following the teachings of Christ, they had committed themselves to working with people in the ghettos of this country and the world. Painfully, they had come to see the immorality and brutality of United States policies in Vietnam, Latin America, Africa, and now they sought to focus the attention of other Americans upon the cruel actions of our government. The judge said he heard the message, but that it's lawnot morality-that concerns the court. We don't know how many of the jurors heard; we only know that after ninety minutes' deliberation the twelve returned with a guilty verdict. Who knows about the press? But with this script there is an opportunity to reach a broader public, for the play is dramatic, the people in it are real, and thp truths lt speaks are powerful. I saw it in a church (Phoenix Theatre Production, New York City) where the pulpit as judge's bench and the choir stalls as jurors' box made an effective set. WIN readers should present it in their own communlties (especially now, after the new indictments against the Fathers Berrigan and others) to cause more people to think about what is really on trial here: the iudicial system in amerika and the federal government itself. -Dorothy Lane -a4 JI On .f an. 22-23 the Board of the National AFSC agreed that the National Office should no longer pay the 1A% tax on telephone service and they will no longer honor levies iiled by the government when such levies represent an attempt by the government to collect taxes which an employee has refused to pay as a matter of conscience, The People's Coalition for Peace and Justice has endorsed war tax resistance and will promote it as part of its Spring Campaign. Early in April, the Coalition will organize a social justice campaign of hunger marches to dramatize hunger for housing, hunger for jobs, and for peace; fasts, teach-ins and other special programs in schools on April 2; tax protest and resistance activities on a community level relating to reordering priorities; rallies on A- WAR TAX RESISTANCE pril 3; religious tributes to Martin Luther King on Sunday, April 4th. There will also be nonvioleni actions in Washington, D.C. during the first week of May (beginning May 5th). War tax resisters can relate to this social iustice campaign in a very real way. War Tax Resistance and other organizations will be organizing a lransfer of funds campaign; taking the money out of the hands of the government and putting it into the hands of the people. We are asking that people publicly refuse to pay $10 to 950 or more of their income taxes and public- ly transfer this money to local community groups on April 3rd. Those who are resisting the phone tax and ter greater understanding, good will and mutual support at 15]2 N. State Pkwy., Chicago 606.1 0 . . .One realization that came out of this conference was the appalling lack of information on women's prisons where conditions are even worse-overcrowded, no work release program. NUKES: Questions for the AEC by O'Connor, P.l.C. News, 1 212Ol1O: you please comment on . . . statement that the chance of such an accident happening is one in 300 mil_ lion, or the same as a jet crashing into a stadium full of people, in view of the bomber which crashed into the_Empire Egan ll. Would State Bu ildin s? .13. In terms of mathematical probabilities, would you on the peacetime sinking of 2 out of our 85 nuclear subma- please comment rines .16. Would you please com- ment on Dean Palladino's remark that, 'Though we can generally tell when we have a very unsafe reactor, it,s always hard to know how safe you are with one you believe to b.e safe,?,, . . . "Every reactor being built today is totally experimental and a menace to both the public and the national interest." There has been no real progress 5Z acted in 1941 as a TEMPORARY tax and the 1% automo'bile tax was first enacted in 191J as a TEI\4PORARY tax. DO YOU NEED ANY REASONS NOT OTHER TO PAY THESE TAXES??? Many cities are having phone tax demonstrations in March. Write to us for further information on these ac- tions and the Spring Campaign. -Bob Calvert WAR TAX RESISTANCE 339 Lafayette St. other federal taxes can also participate in these actions. fhe 10% telephone excise tax and LOOKING TOWARD FREEDOM, A self-help organization of ex-prisoners is planning d program to teach skills, conduct therapy, make an employment file and open a dialogue which will fos- l% automobile manufacturers tax have for two more years. ln 1974 they will both drop 1% point each year and will expire in 1982??.?. The telephone excise tax was first enbeen extended New york, N.y. 1.0012 (212) 477-2e7O Prison, Mexico City, have informed the Centro Dr'l nformacion Latino-America- DOVETALES no that napalm is being produced in accident prevention, in limiting the results of a large accident or in limitlng the radiation released beyond a site boundary. Natl. Comm. to Stop Environmental Pollution 1 13011 1. MAV-RlC, which is interested in alternate employment opportunities for c.o.'s and aims to build a referral net- work, will welcome and dispense information at 18.1 3 University Ave., SE, Mpls., Minn. 55414 . . .The )an- 29 Wall Street Journal reports: "Lenient judges worry draft officials ." ln .l 1970, 15 out of 6 men convicted of draft vlolations in No. Calif. suspended sentences. received ln Puerto Rico, .l 1961-10, only 1 man out of over 00 accused was convicted and sen- tenced . . .After 3 months under guard at a Tokyo.airport hotel, Barbara Bye is returning to the U.S. She was refused entry because she wanted to do work in Japan. peace- ON THE LEFT: The Ampo Col- lective devotes an issue of its publication, Ampo, a Report from the Japanese New Left, to Okinawa-its history and place in Japan-U.S. strategy. Order Okinawa from Ampo, lshii Bldg. 6-44, Kagurazaka, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, for $2 . . .Political prisoners in Lecumberri in that country. The Centro in Montreal (Box 576, Sta. N) has been recently established by "militants of the former Latin American Movement Anti-l mper- ialist" and plans to publish a monthly bulletin on liberation struggles "High Schools Promote: IRRESPONSl Bl LITY distortion SCHIZOPHREN- lA racism CHAUVINISM hate ELIT- ISM linear thought SU BORDINAtION militarism NATIONALISM oligarchies LONELINESS and other CHARACTER disorders.." Flyer available from Cadre, 519 W. North Ave., Chicago 6061 0. LOCALLY: Although the Eleventh St. Squatters won a legal agreement40 stay until May 31, effolts are being made to evict them. Send help for court costs and publicity to them, c/o Brown, Apt. 2W, 11 E.l1 St., NYC 10003 ."There'll be genocide in Cairo if you people don't speak for the people of Chicago," the Reverend Jones told a Feb. 17 meeting of Women Mobilized for Change. "ln Cairo you do everything belore nightfall because afterward it is like a little Vietnam," he concluded. Food, clothing and bail $$ should be sent to Cairo U- nited Front, 414-14 St., Cairo, lll. 02914 -Ruth Dear 4 most of all, in my opinion. GIs in Japan are so very isolated from the stateside movement. They need a great deal of publicity for their activities, as well as current move- ment news from the states. Our Notes From a New, Uncharted Land: I did not run; I was delivered. Not merely from the agents of law, but from a holocaust of my own making, an attempt to burn myself out. A friend who loved me carried me away. No sooner left to myself, on the other side of the chasm, than my impulse to destroy myself flared up again. My sickness had followed me, it seemed, and even the role of fugitive contained a political, hero- macher-martyr poison. But a new name can do wonders. With time, one's confldence in his newness develops. There comes a point when one's new name feels mote natural than his old one. And then, I realized that I didn't have to go baik, ever:-I was becoming, I am becoming a new person, out of the ashes. Now the impulse is to grow. Growth takes place with relation to those near me, to the food I eat, to the rhythm of life in this new place. It is a different drummdr now, more attuned to life-iess dreading, less self-conscious, less con fining. In this new land I am finding new friends and rediscovering'other fiiends who have crossed, are crossing, are preparing to cross. . . that chasm. i I greatest plague (aside from the brass) when we first started SEMPER FI was the lack of reliable communication lines between Japan and the U.S. Lon Renner and myself were trying to remedy that situation when the brass gave us punitive transfers last June. Happily, in spite of brass repression, SEMPER FI lives. It celebrated its' first birthday last month with the issue of Vol. 2, No. 1. As is evident from Judy Merril's article, however, its' continued existence is always tenuous, due to the transfers of GI organizers and the constant turnover of civilian organizers. If Barbara Bye loses her case in the courts, Japanese immigration authorities will be able to effectively isolate GIs from Ameriian civilian organizers. And that will be a blow, even with the continuing help of Beheiren and other concerned Japanese. Their assistance isvital, to be surewithout it, GIs would not even be able to put out a newspaper. But the Japanese are ill-equipped to counsel American GIs on points of military law, which all political GIs fun afoul of at one time ot another. I would like to return to Iwakuni myse1f, to keep organizing and to really consol- idate the position of GI resisters there, insofar as possible. But Japan is a long distance and I don't have enough money to get there, I am working, and may have enough money saved by this summer. In the meantime I'm considering sending out an appeal for funds, but I'm not really sure how to go about it. I hope to see more GI Movement articles in WIN. Keep up the good work. George Bacon lex-Cpl. USMC) Springfield, Va. For the past 8 months I have been doing alternative service at the Waltwyck School for Boys, Prior to that I helped organize the When one truly loves another person, it becomes easier to love others, to open himself and extend a hand and welcome others, lovingly, and to embrace and celebrate the fact that we are here together, alive and Suffolk County W.R.L, which went dormant after the events of last May, I am interested in trying to start a Peekskill area W.R.L. that would serve the Peekskill-Ossi- alove. terested W.R.L.'ers or people lnterested in such a project to contact me at I Buttonwood Rd., Peekskill N.Y. (914-737-4708)' I am also interested in getting in touch with people in the Suffolk County area who may be interested in starting a new Suffolk County W.R.L. organization. I have received many inquiries from W.R.L.'ers in Suffolk asking what the Suffolk County W.R.L. is doing. Up until last June the Suffolk County W.R.L. was successful in enlisting nearly 200 people who said they were interested in establishing a major East-End Peace Organization; raising money to sponsor a peace literature distribution campaign, in going to Washington to participate in the May demonstration and in conducting three demonstrations againstmilitary recruiting on the Southampton College campus which did force the Army There remains a moment of fear, when doors that have been carefully sealed for years resist the will to open. But trust, nurtured through time with love, makes that step possible and all at once one realizes that-as it was with darkness-there is nothing to fear. My friend reaches out for me, and I am free . . .to love. And all at once I rcalize that all this time I have kept at atm's length half the human race. -alias mark twain column My December issue of WIN just arrived, having been forwarded from my old unit in that ravaged little land across the Pacific. I was doubly pleased to see the story about the GI Resistance at lwakuni, and also that the WRL awhrded its' annual Peace Awatd to military resisters. Thank you for the excellent coverage you've given the struggle in Iwakuni. That is precisely what is needed ning-Yorktown Heights area and I would like to take this opportunity to ask any in- and Marine Corps to not attempt similar recruiting activities this year. The potential for creating an active and vital pacifist com- munity on Eastern Long Island is good. I would like to hear from W.R.L.'ers in Suffolk who would be interested in forming a new chapter out there and I would like to share my experiences with them so that it may prove more srccessful than last time. Anyone interested in either project please wdte or call me. Peace, Charles E. Semkus Jr, I am almostafraid to write you, since the last time I did so, simply to renew my subscription, I discovered my letter in a later issue of WIN! However, after reading your December L, 1970 issue, whose back cover carried your twelfth annual peace award, I again felt the stirrings of a desire to communicate, I am paying the army three years of service in return for four years of educaticn in nursing. It has been difficult to resolve the conflicts within myself of accepting a commission in the army while at the same time defending my position agaifist lhe afmy & against war, particularly the current war in Indochina. When I've sent money to WRL I've hesitated to check the first statement on the envelope since in reality I am suP porting not opposing war, simply be being in the military. So I've always checked the one, . . For your peace award, & for its recognition of those of us who wear the uniform with not a little shame, I thank you. second Name withheld There aren't many times when I smile while writing a check. This is one. Thank you all for the vital blend.of grim facts, love of life and hope for us all that comes through in every issue. It is that delicate balance that provides the stimulus for action in a human way. Too many of the horrible truths can lead one to apathy and despair, or angry dehumanized violence if one cannot approach the solution in a loving peaceful way. I can't remember when I've even been tempted to buy a hard cover book (much $6.95?-$7.95) but I was, and did, Been Invaded by the 21st Century. And now I won't let it out of my hands!! So please, push to have it reprinted in paperback so I can give it to my tiiends. I love you all, less spend for David McReynolds' We Have Peace Ruth Pickering I liked the issue of Feb. 15 except for the cover and not because you printed an "obscenity" but because you didn't. The obvious conclusions would be that you failed to insert the u in fuck because newsstands would not carry WIN if it were included, or, that the post office would refuse to deliver WIN if fuck was correctly spelled. However, if this was the case, you should have omitted the word altogether. It serves no purpose to be like TIME magazine and politely censor 4-letter words, for whatever the reason. Anyway, I think that the People's Peace Treaty may be ratified by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Student Senate. Rich Radbil ,5 Classifleds representative of the United States government! Autographed poster of Madame Binh of the PRG-,,Best wishes for American Wo- rE-- men's Liberation"-available from U.S. Committee of Women to Defend the Right to Live, 2O4W 92nd St., No.3F. $2.OOaprece or $.1-25 each in bulk ( l O or more). Proceeds go to women's anti-war activities. --- -- -- - ------ - M.ovement welfare mother wants healthy I I I encloee S-contribution school, etc., oppression. Willing and abte to work for room and board for asexchange long ai mutu_ally compatibte. Write: o. S.itn,hE" EZ, to Wlll Addrccr HELP WIN SellWlN on yourcampus or in --------------r---rrrWlIl mry.ln ' iXIg Lttry.ttt 'em for 30d. Return unsold copies for credit. Write WlN, 339 Lafayette St., New York, N.Y. 10012 for further details IWANT BACK ISSUES OF WIN (BEFORE JAN 1969). TELL ME YOU R PRICE. PERHAPS YOU'D SHARE PRO. CEEDS WITH WlN. Jan Suter, 3O9 Navajo, Maumee, Oh 43537AFO-OT-64 pages on the new free-you life,91. Atso cROUND nOUrub from Hakuin Zenji, a way to LET your mind 9o b-al9f 9gt asaint 759,. Movins On, p.o. nomad st. ' Ncrv Yock lqrl2 oo send as you can use) and charge you 15d per copy. You se!! I t Zip- I I bundle (as large or small I I I ! I I I a I I l{ame I n I I 245 East 93rd St., N\/C 1O028 you - I I wish to subccribe to WIN for one year, $5. t I I enclose $3 tor a six-month trial subscriptkxr. c,o.mmune experience 1summerl ior' :9iltly r4-year-otd son victim ot Dublic your community. We'll -- Fertlllze yer mlnd, plough und€r yer psych6! The latest GREEN MOUNTAIN POST contains fictlon, fantasy, poetry, comlx a7d lots of pretty plctures o, people and cows. Contributors include Ray Mungo, Marty Jezer, Verandah Porche, famlly & frlends. 5OC from GMP, Box 269 RFO 1, Montaguo, Mass, 01351 o; subscribe: 4 lssues /2/ aaa tsox 624, Mendocino, Cal. 95460 -, L v C WR] S Atla C (, wRl n t' l_: Akrt )r\ r,i (: . lji., Alba 2 '! Bost ( sufi Man) B, Detrt ga Colu 4'l Milw It T-thartd FROM PHILAD E t2A LPI{IA RESI STANI EACH OR 5-FOR 36; Cobl 3r I PPD. COLORSg BLUE, cREtN,YELLotl WHTTE 5ZE5: sMALL, t4ED, LAR6E ALL PROFITS IO I^JIN T (S#:.ff*.a8 PIIILA. RtSISIANCE FRor,\ AARK rqoftRls, 5B0B t{A}rlLT0,l PHILADE.LPHIA, PENNA I3IO4 JT, Olivt Ir doze the c and and as 1r local prog Iiterature THE ONE-MAN REVOLUTION IN AMERICA. Ammon Hennacy's final book-about l7 individuals throughout A_ merican history who, like himself, fit into such a Jategory. Paperback,338 pp., $5 WAR RESISTANCE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE. A mini-"Conscience in America,, by Larry Gara, first man to be jailed, in 1947, for counseling draft iesistance. Local pamphlet, 23pp.,55( WRL THE PROBLEM OF PRISONS. David Greenberg,s study of prisons which concludes by calling for their abolition. Groups TRAINING FOR NONVIOLENT ACTION. A manual compiled by Theodore Olson and Lynne Shivers and published jointly by War Resisters Intl. and Friends peace & Intl. Re_ pamphlet, a}pp-,7 5( lations Comittee. WRL-l4test (Western Region Offices, g33 Haight Street, Pamphlet, aOpp., $l Atlqntg Workshop in Nonviolence (Southern Region Office), P.O. Box 7477, Atlanta, Georgia 30309 EXPLORING NONVIOLENT ALTERNATIVES. This guide, citing 85 specific instances, is by Gene Sharp whose ..Crea_ San Francisco, California 94117, (415)- 626-6976 tive Conflicts in Politics" has long been u populu, WRL item. Paperback, 128 pp. $2.25 (4O4) 87s-O646 WRl-Southwesl (Southwest Region office), mosa S.E., Albuquerque, N.M. 87108. ll68 (505) Akron I|RL, 753 Brown Street, Akron, Ohio (216) s3s-6753 Her- 268_8gi. l AMERICAN SERVICEMEN HAVE RIGHTS: Do YoU KNOW YOURS? A handy pocket guide issued by GI Coun_ seling Services, single copies free to servicemen. To others_ 44311 Albany I|RL, Box 1237, Nbany, N.y. 12201 (51g) 272-2237 Boston llRL, clo Olmsted, 28 Lawrence Street, Boston, (617) 627-4es2 Suffolk County IURL, Box 536, tsd WHICH SIDE ARE yOU ON? At last, a much needed leaflet for comrnunity distribution on the UiAate East issue. single copies free, Sag Harbor, $l N.y. 11963. Manhattan Beach llRL, l0l4 Duncan place, Manhattan Beach, California 90266. (213) 37 g-03 I 5. Detroit WRL, 28314 Danvers Court, Farmington, Michi- BUTTONS gan 48024. (3 1 3) 335-0362. WRL broken rifle button Nuclear Disarmament button each l0l; $l/15; S6/100 Columbus WRL, 30 West Woodruff, Columbus, Ohio 43210. Milwaukee Area Draft Information Center and IURL, 1618 West Wells, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (al4) WRL BROKEN RIFI.E PIN in heavy rnetal. Sl ND PIN black enamcl on steel. g1 342-0191. Cobb County llIN, clo AWIN,8ox7477, Atlanta, Ga. 3030e. (404) 87s-O646. Olivet College lilRL, Box 507, Olivet, Michigan 49706. In addition to the above groups, there are about a dozen efforts to organize local WRL,s going on around the country. These are what we could call embryo WRL,s and when they reach the stage of being able to organize and work outside the WRL membership we will list them I local WRL's. If you would like to begin organizing a local WRL or would like information on the tocal WRL program please write to the National Office. r T--- I | to, WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE ,r9 Lafayette Srreet, New york, N.y. 1fi)12 I items checled. t I I enclose $-for I enclose $_contribution to the WRL. I[ ] !I I Name Address zip per 100 to whom I it am may concern, writi.ng this to inform you of my absolute inabil ity to repay any of my debts at this time. I have no intention of I would appreciate a personal letter from you outlining what my indebtedness retrieve it. means We is to you should at this point avoid to do this outside of repayment. It may be s1ow, my commitment means ling to to the the above mentioned letter. my o1d address and If i hold i-t one any more expensive for a s1ow, but i will be pretty sible to any stronger commit myself and your present program to much inacces- that you might select. I above program My steady am if you will mail is being forwarded wi1- send from i will receive it through channels. of your credit cards, i will not be using any more. I await your letter. Yours (in more ways than one), W,J"L/d,thooL 1::.