Re: ANSWER, NION, Vietnam

[Lou Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jacob Levich wrote:

> I'm not asking this rhetorically; I'm wondering how a similar though
> hardly identical situation played out during Vietnam and would love to
> hear from those who lived through it.

David Hawk and Sam Brown launched the Vietnam Moratorium Committee in
1969 in order to siphon off support from the independent mass action
coalition into "peace campaigns". Reflecting back on the period, Brown
told Tom Wells, author of the indispensable "The War Within", that "it
was the wrong time to do marches" in Washington, especially angry ones,
and that local, community-based actions would be more useful--especially
those that would prepare people for electoral work. He then approached
David Hawk, who had been a fellow Youth for Eugene McCarthy to help
organize actions in November that would be differentiated from those of
the "crazy radicals".

When the SWP and those sympathetic to our orientation learned of their
plans, we went overboard to ingratiate ourselves with them and make the
actions as successful as possible, which meant taking action on the
local level to give the protests as militant a character as possible and
deemphasizing the ties to the Democratic Party. Through a combination of
the American peoples' own alienation with the warmakers and effective
"united front" practice by the Marxist wing of the movement, the
Moratorium had a huge impact:

---
Three days after the Days of Rage, a protest of an entirely different
nature commenced. At 7:30 P.M. on October 14, antiwar congressmen set in
motion their plan for keeping the House in all-night debate on the war
in solidarity with the Moratorium. The protest had been organized by
peace activists on Capitol Hill, particularly the Quaker David Hartsough
and Cliff Hackett, an aide to Congressman Benjamin Rosenthal (D-N.Y.).
"While everybody around the country was stopping business as usual,
Congress was going to stop business as usual and really focus on the
war," Hartsough envisioned. "To me it was just psychologically important
that Congress was land of 'out in the streets' at the same time that
people around the country were." The debate was halted after only four
hours by Republican congressional leaders, who claimed it would undercut
their commander in chief. "There can be only one quarterback," the
Republican Minority Leader Gerald Ford, a former football player, had
lectured earlier in the day. "We have a good quarterback and I believe
he will do the job." The protest "turned out to be a flop--a dud," Nixon
perceived. Nevertheless, it was the most extensive discussion the House
had ever held on Vietnam. "That was certainly a massive step ahead from
where we had been," Hartsough recalled.

The next day witnessed an outpouring of public dissent unprecedented in
American history. More than two million citizens participated in the
Moratorium. Many of the predominantly white, middle-class protesters
were speaking out for the first time. In cities and towns across the
nation, Americans rallied, leafleted, canvassed their neighbors, held
candlelight vigils, attended church services, showed films, and engaged
in discussions. Church and school bells tolled for the war dead. In
community after community, citizens publicly read the names of Americans
killed in Vietnam; one reader in Houston burst into tears upon
discovering the name of a friend on his list. Flags were displayed at
half staff. Black armbands, symbols of participation in the Moratorium,
were everywhere.

Businessmen and professionals turned out in large numbers, even holding
their own demonstrations. Some of the nation's biggest capitalists
participated in a rally of twenty thousand on Wall Street, where they
listened to Bill Moy-ers; afterward, several read the names of American
war dead in nearby Trinity Church. That many of the businessmen were
more concerned about the war's economic cost than its morality did not
bother Moratorium organizers in the least. "I'll take people who were
against the war for whatever reason they're against the war," Sam Brown
said ardently. "I wanted the killing to stop. . . . We're not dealing
here with the entryway to heaven--we're dealing with how do you end the
war. And that frequently got confused. . . . There was a good deal of
'holier-than-thou' going on: 'I'm more against the war than you are. And
the reason why I can know I'm more against the war is because . . . I've
been busted seven times. You've been busted six? Well, Christ.'" Brown
considered such thinking "nonsense."

More than a thousand high schools participated in the Moratorium. While
many youths merely used it as an excuse to cut classes, others pondered
the gravity of the occasion. Among them were two seventeen-year-old
classmates in New Jersey. Craig Badiali was president of his school's
dramatic society, Joan Fox a cheerleader. Both were profoundly disturbed
by the war. The two teenagers joined in an afternoon rally. The next
morning, they were found parked on a deserted road in Badiali's parents'
car--dead. A vacuum-cleaner hose was attached to the exhaust pipe and
fed through a hole in the floor of the vehicle, said Badiali's brother,
"My brother died for his convictions. He was against the war."

In the nation's capital, thousands of federal employees partook in
Moratorium activities. HEW workers had their choice of at least twelve
different discussion sessions on Vietnam to attend during their lunch
period. Participation in the Moratorium by government workers led the U.
S. Civil Service Commission to issue a directive the following month
declaring that "any day set aside by a private group for an event of
interest to that group does not change that day to an other-than-normal
Government business day. On such a day, the regular leave and personnel
policies of the Government apply and are unchanged." Antiwar leaders
were moving at top speed, hopping planes, trains, and automobiles to
fulfill multiple speaking engagements. Rallies, teach-ins, and panel
discussions were held all over the major cities, often simultaneously.
Some two hundred thousand people turned out for myriad events in New
York. Mass demonstrations took place in many locations. Coretta Scott
King addressed a crowd of fifty thousand at the Washington Monument. At
least as many gathered at Manhattan's Bryant Park, clogging rush-hour
traffic and listening to speeches by Shirley MacLaine, Woody Alien,
Stacy Keach, and Senators Charles Goodell and Eugene McCarthy. Thirty
thousand congregated on the New Haven Green, where they heard no less
than the previous year's state chairman of Citizens for Nixon-Agnew
assail the war. Crowds of twenty thousand turned out for rallies in Ann
Arbor and Madison, fifteen thousand in Minneapolis, Detroit, and
Philadelphia. On Long Island, Averell Harriman addressed another
assemblage of fifteen thousand--the largest antiwar protest ever there.

In the biggest demonstration of the day, about a hundred thousand people
converged on Boston Common. The highlight of the afternoon was provided
by the SWP leader Peter Camejo, the last speaker. By the time it was
Camejo's turn to talk, many in the audience were tired of speeches and
some were starting to head home. Intent on halting the exodus, the fiery
Camejo began his speech while still a step or two from the microphone.
He spoke "in a high pitched, stacatto cadence, and his whole body
vibrated to the rhythm." The war was not a mistake but an inevitable
product of the system, he shouted. "And to those politicians who are
joining the bandwagon, this antiwar movement is not for sale. This
movement is not for sale now, not in 1970 and not in 1972." The exodus
of bodies quickly ceased. Disdainful of the VMC's call to think about
the war for a day, Camejo told the gigantic throng, "We are not here to
reflect on the war! We have already decided that it is wrong! We are
here to stop it!" Waving his arms about, bouncing and gyrating, tearing
into the war with a vengeance, Camejo stirred the crowd's passions. "He
made us hate the war perhaps more than we ever thought possible," one
listener writes. Wild bursts of applause punctuated his oration. This
was the first time that Camejo had spoken to a hundred thousand people,
and he was having a ball. "I could actually see the front of the crowd
react to what I was saying before the back did, in a wave," he recalled.
Camejo ended his speech at its peak.

(Tom Wells, "The War Within")


--

Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org




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