Re: Barrington Moore Jr.

[<Borba100@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In a message dated 10/20/1999 1:49:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
lnp3@xxxxxxxxx  quotes Steve Rosenthal writing the following:

<<  In 1969, the student movement reached a climactic moment at Harvard.
  The Harvard Administration brought in the Cambridge police to break
 up a large sit-in.  The cops beat and dragged the students out of
 the building, as hundreds watch in horror and amazement.  The next
 day an SDS-led strike shut down the University.  The "worker-student
 alliance" caucus, led by the communist Progressive Labor Party,
 comprised much of the leadership of the strike.

 Very few Harvard faculty even grudgingly supported the student
 strikers.  >>

Don't have time to do this justice but Rosenthal's description of the
important Harvard student strike of '69 is littered with inaccuracies, so....


The building takeover  (not sit-in) AND the student strike were possible
because of several years work based on a two pronged strategy: a) win
students to oppose the war based on how it effected most people, that is
working people, here and in Vietnam and b) isolate the administration by
proving its hypocrisy in the course of struggle.  The latter deserves much
discussion since it was the secret to the huge power (at that time) of
Students for a Democratic Society - that is, its power in some schools; in
schools where it did NOT have a base one generally found that this approach
had not been followed.  Though it did NOT lead the strike SDS had changed the
thinking of thousands of students sufficient that they were furious at the
suppression of the building takeover and therefore were willing to strike.
(It was NOT a "large sit-in"; it began with the gentle but forced evacuation
of the deans from the administration building; the building was forcefully
but not violently seized)

The building takeover raised (if I remember right) 6 demands -- including the
end of Harvard's expansion into working class neighborhoods, the end of ROTC
at Harvard (Reserve Officer Training Corps).

The building takeover was attacked the next day (wee hours of morning) by 300
cops drawn from at least two cities and ordered in by Harvard Pres. Pusey.
Students in the Freshman dorms -- hundreds of them -- came out (it was in the
early morning) and when the police attacked the administration building
(quite violently) they defended us; there was fighting in Harvard yard for
(if I remember right) an hour.  (They did NOT stand and watch in shock and
dismay, or some such.)  After this vicious attack, in which one girl's back
was broken and several of us were injured (I had my nose smashed in by a cop
gripping a small piece of lead pipe) about 70 or 80 of us were arrested --
the fighting in the yard continued.  I believe it was later that day that
14,000 people met in Harvard Stadium and voted to strike, partially endorsing
the SDS demands.

The building takeover was led by the left of SDS at Harvard; a section of SDS
tried to prevent it.  The strike was not led by the left; in saying it was,
Rosenthal, a member of Progressive Labor, engages in that tedious US sport,
sect-arian historical rewrite, the same sort of thing that causes every US
"leftist" sect to give wildly inflated membership counts, apparently unaware
that the ONLY thing that counts is whether people "out there" are learning
anything.

There were two centers of power in the strike, which shut down the university
for 3 weeks.  The smaller, more radical one had meetings of up to 750 (actual
count); it was extremely radical.   At one point we had a vote to reject the
university's offer to bring students into running the school on the grounds
that given the fundamental NEED for these guys to exploit the world, the only
thing one could do was fight them over specific demands until a force strong
enough, primarily working people, was in place to establish a very different
kind of power.  That won by a vote of 700 or so to 2 or 3.  Quite remarkable
since this was HARVARD! (Though the stronghold of the left of SDS was
scholarship kids -- i.e., very bright working class kids...)

The faculty was not as hostile as Rosenthal, whom I do not recall ever being
involved at Harvard, suggests.  For example, the faculty fired Pres. Pusey
and they voted ROTC off campus - this a year before the Kent State shootings
and subsequent nationwide student rebellion (in which many ROTC buildings
were burned down during mass protests.

Rosenthal also leaves out: the level of discussion in the seized building (we
were there for almost 24 hours) was amazing.  I wish I had a tape.  People's
minds were exploding into clarity, the culmination of several years of
organizing and actions (some carefully planned, some not) which were handled
so as to expose the hypocrisy of the university administration.  People hate
liars worse than murderers, and they had learned a lot.

The Harvard action was followed by an amazing National SDS convention in
Chicago, where the delegates split, with the better side having the majority.
 The majority reconstituted itself (with justification) as the valid SDS.
Unfortunately it was then wrecked by decision of the national leadership of
Progressive Labor, whose handful of members were the strategic leadership of
SDS.  Progressive Labor was about to transform itself into a typical sect,
and it destroyed SDS in the process.  That;s a long story and alas I have no
more time just now

Jared