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/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May
27, 2004
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
May
19, 2004
Elizabeth
W. Corrie
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing,
Now
Bill
and Kathleen Christison
The US Can't Win
Vijay
Prashad
For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004
Ray
Hanania
Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.?
Greg
Moses
Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC
Michael
Gillespie
Who is Kenneth deGraffenried?
Josh
Frank
Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry?
Gary
Corseri
Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave
Kevin
Alexander Gray
If Malcolm Were Alive
May
18, 2004
Neve
Gordon
The Gaza Debacle
Doug
Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib
Shouldn't Surprise Us
Bob
Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib
Vanessa
Jones
Man on a Leash
Thomas
P. Healy
Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden
Zeynep
Toufe
Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Kenneth
Roth
Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush
Elaine
Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later
Website
of the Day
Truth Against Truth
May
17, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain
Laura
Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib
Mickey
Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness
Frederick
B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice
Shakirah
Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera
Boris
Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.
Alex
Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation
Victor
Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
May
27, 2004
Remembering
Dave Dellinger
A
1993 Interview
By
DOWNTOWN MAGAZINE
(This interview with
Dave Dellinger, who died on May 25, 2004, appeared in Downtown
Magazine in 1993. Thanks to Bob Feldman for reminding us.)
What are your most vivid
memories of what happened on the streets and in the parks of
Chicago during the 1968 anti-war protests outside the Democratic
National Convention?
DELLINGER: Inevitably, the
most vivid memory I have is of busloads of police driving up
to where we would be gathered, jumping out, getting into formation
and marching into the crowd, goose-stepping as they marched.
Slapping their sides with their clubs and shouting: `Kill! Kill!
Kill! Kill! Then they would go in and hit everybody that they
could over the head--or jab their clubs into people's groins.
How seriously were people
hurt by the Chicago police?
Many people were very seriously
hurt. Not only by the clubs, but by mace. I guess the tear gas
wasn't that serious, but it certainly had all of us coughing
and gasping for breath.
Who was responsible for
that violence? Some people I speak to, they say `Well, the antiwar
movement of the '60s provoked the confrontation and was responsible
for the violence.' Is that true?
No. First of all, the mass
of protesters were overwhelmingly nonviolent. After the first
attacks by the police, some people--but only a small minority--began
to lapse into the unproductive approach of calling the police
`pigs.' But, actually, we circulated a leaflet--handed it out
to the police--which said that we did not blame them for what
they are doing. And saying that we supported them in their attempts
to get overtime pay. If I remember correctly, the police had
been in negotiations and in some kind of temporary strike shortly
before the Convention. But all that was laid aside.
I think, for example, of a
time in front of the Hilton Hotel--where a lot of the action
took place. I think of a guy by the name of Fred Gardner--who
had organized the first coffeehouses for GIS in which we had
tried to explain to the GIs our friendly attitude toward them
despite our militant opposition to the Vietnam War.
In the 1967 siege of the Pentagon--which
was the last major national action before Chicago--we had agreed
on a slogan and used it in bullhorns and person-to-person, saying:
`You are our brothers. Join us. You are victims, too. Join us.'
Fred Gardner had played a key
role in that kind of approach to the GIs, and together we tried
to apply it to the policemen in Chicago. Fred Gardner, Phil Ochs
and I climbed on the roof of a car and Fred and I spoke to the
police. First, though, Phil Ochs--who was probably the most popular
folksinger of the day--sang to them.
How did the police respond?
It wasn't too effective, was it?
Well, the fact is that a lot
of the Black police responded. And in our trial--which came a
little more than a year later--one of the people who testified
for us--although he was not allowed to say most of what he wanted
to say to the jury--was Renault Robinson, the head of the African-American
Policemen's Association. He told us that many of the Black policemen
were so upset by the unnatural violence against us that they
spoke up about it. As a result, they were relieved of duty during
that period, as part of the mayor's attempt to be sure that the
police would be as violent as they were.
Probably, readers won't know
that a presidential commission was appointed to look into the
roots of the violence at Chicago. And they unanimously ruled
that most of it had been `a police riot.' They gave examples
of police not only beating up demonstrators, but going on to
porches where people were sitting outside their apartments watching
what was going on. Going up there, dragging the people down and
clubbing them.
Now why was the Democratic
Convention seen as an appropriate site for an antiwar protest?
First of all, you should understand
that it was more than an antiwar protest. The original plan was
that we would hold an alternate political convention in which
we would lay out a broad platform. We had separate meeting places
for a variety of issues: women's rights, Native Americans' rights,
the schools, the environment, the economy. All that kind of thing.
You see, it's a bit of a paradox.
On the one hand, we felt the importance of going there with the
antiwar message. We knew that the media would be there and at
least some attention would be focused on it because it was a
time of great uncertainty, confusion and disillusionment in the
country about the war.
The paradox was that, on the
one hand, we thought it was terribly important to carry the antiwar
message, but, on the other hand, the main organizers--at least
from the National Mobilization Committee--had in mind showing
that Vietnam was not an accident. That Vietnam represented attitudes
towards human life and human beings that extended into the whole
culture and society, domestically as well as in foreign relations.
Now what happened was that
we had tried to get permits for people to sleep in Lincoln Park,
as the Boy Scouts and the Elks and various other groups had been
able to do. And that was particularly important for the young
people. But, for others also, who couldn't afford the price of
hotels and didn't, perhaps, know people in Chicago that they
could stay with. But we couldn't get the permits and were ordered
to leave the park every night at a certain hour. We decided to
do that, but on the first night, as we were walking out of the
park, at whatever the hour was, I felt somebody tug at my sleeve,
my right sleeve. I turned around, and it was the mayor's youth
commissioner. He and I had met several times, in prior attempts
to work things out amicably, and we had become, at least up to
a point, friends.
He said, `Dellinger. When you
get out of the park turn to the left and get away from there
as quickly as you can. Because the police are going to attack
from the right.' And that's exactly what happened.
When the nonviolent protesters
dutifully left the park when the time came that they were supposed
to be out of there, the police were waiting for them and waded
into the crowd.
How did you come, personally,
to lead the antiwar protests in Chicago?
Well, I think it's very important
to recognize that there were many leaders. You know that one
of the problems in the society is that certain people are focused
upon as being the `leaders'. And this was intensified in the
case of Chicago because afterwards--actually not until the Nixon
Administration came in and John Mitchell, who ended up in jail
himself for perjury--the government thought it needed to intimidate
the Movement.
So it selected what it thought
of as the leaders of various sections of the Movement: the militant
Black movement, Bobby Seale--who hadn't even had anything to
do with the demonstrations. Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis, from
the Students for a Democratic Society--who were thought of as
the leaders of it. Although, actually, by then they had, to some
extent, been pushed aside by the younger students. But they were
the best known.
I was considered, I guess,
the leader of the adult nonviolent movement.
But I think that things would
have been very much the same in all of those movements, with
or without the presence of Tom, Rennie, and myself. If I played
a role, I think it was, first of all, in stressing the importance
of nonviolence at a time when some very vocal people--some of
them agents provacateurs--were saying that the assassination
of Martin Luther King, Jr. had proved that nonviolence doesn't
work. Interestingly, they didn't say that the assassination of
Malcolm X proved that violence doesn't work.
Secondly, within the adult
coalition--which was a very complex coalition of forces--I played
somewhat of a mediating role. Because I didn't believe that there
was any single tactic or strategy that everybody should follow.
One of my firm beliefs is that we have to have not only the kind
of cultural diversity that people are talking more about today,
but that even within cultures, we have to have people whose individual
lives, personalities, etc., call for different ways of acting.
There was a rumor that you
and Tom Hayden thought you might be assassinated if you failed
to call off the planned demonstrations. Was that true? Was there
pre-demonstration terror directed against you?
Well, after Martin Luther King
was assassinated and there were Black riots all over the country
it seems that the Chicago police acted with a little more common
sense and sensitivity than they sometimes had in the past. At
that time, Mayor Daley bawled them out and issued an order that,
in similar demonstrations in the future, they must `shoot to
kill' anyone who was thought to be in the act of committing a
felony. And `shoot to maim' anybody who might be committing a
misdemeanor. And that was trundled out and used over and over
again against us, for a month or more before the convention.
But as far as the specific
assassination threats are concerned, what I remember better is
that in 1972--when some of us were going to the Miami Republican
and Democratic Conventions with similar ideas in mind to those
we had had at Chicago--I received a call from the lawyer of a
retired <F.B.I>. agent. One who had resigned to protest
against the infiltration and violence that they were trying to
instigate the Movement to take. And I was told--on the authority
of this <ex-F.B.I>. agent who had just recently resigned--that
Rennie Davis and I were going to be assassinated in Miami.
When the polcie came to Miami,
they came under the guise of fellow protestors. They were organized
in `Red Star Cadres'--which it later turned out, had all been
organized by the <F.B.I>. They brought guns to Miami and
kept trying to get us to use them. When I spoke against this,
they said: `Well, you're just a pacifist. And you have no right
to let other people be killed because of your nonviolence.'
Fortunately, the Vietnam Veterans
Against The War came to the convention, and, although I had not
told most people about the threat--because I didn't want to have
a panicky situation--I told some of their leaders. And they formed
an honor guard around me and Rennie for the rest of the convention.
Wherever we went, we were circled by them. So that some of them
would have had to be shot in order to shoot us.
So that's much clearer in my
mind than the general feeling that we might be assassinated in
Chicago.
You mentioned Rennie Davis.
Now Rennie Davis and Jerry Rubin were charged with you in the
post-Convention `Conspiracy Trial,' yet they seemed to retreat
from antiwar activism in the '70s. Can you speculate as to why
that happened?
Well, it's an uphill fight
and one has to develop means, I think, of replenishing one's
energies and spirit. Some people just became so obsessed with
the urgency of ending the war that they never had time to do
anything else. They spent years of emergency living on the barricades.
And they didn't have time--I say this in my book, From Yale To
Jail--they didn't have time to climb a mountain, read a novel,
go to a concert or an art gallery, walk in the woods, do any
of the things that keep one, in a sense, sane. Things that help
one to avoid becoming either self-righteous or monomaniacal,
in the sense that `this is the exact thing that everybody must
do right now.'
And I remember Rennie in that
connection, one time when we were recruiting for a demonstration
after Chicago. He and I were speaking on the same platform and
he said that `The next six weeks will determine the future of
Western Civilization.'
So it was that kind of exaggerated
preoccupation with the immediate present, I think, which led
to some of this backing off later.
And one also has to say, in
all honesty, and perhaps particularly with some people more than
others, that because the media focused on our trial--even though
there were other trials that were just as important and just
as unwarranted. And because the government picked us seven white
males and one Black male--when there were many women and other
people who deserved the honor of being indicted as much as we
did. With all that attention and all that `groupie' adulation
which happened, I think that all of us were thrown off balance
more than we should have. And, in a certain sense, one might
say that Jerry Rubin made certain attempts to keep in the limelight
by doing other things. And that's understandable.
But I never publicly criticized
Jerry, no matter how much I advocate and try to follow a different
path than the one he has taken. Because what I remember is that
he and all the other ones who were indicted made a joint decision
that we would face 10 years in jail, rather than try to win the
case on a technicality. Instead of using technical excuses and
methods in conventional lawyerly fashion, we would do our best
to put the government on trial in our trial.
You mentioned women who
were involved. What role did women activists, also African-American
activists and lesbian and gay male activists, play in helping
to organize the Convention protests?
The role of the three groups
were quite different. The Black leadership in the Mobe and in
the antiwar movement generally decided basically to stay away
from Chicago and not be involved. The main exception was Ralph
Abernathy and the Southern Christian Leadership Council [SCLC],
which came with a mule train. But even though were were on good
terms and friends, they basically did not take part in the planning
or in the decision for our nonviolent marches. They wanted to
have a purely symbolic presence with the mule train and did not
talk about nonviolent marches as a whole--or possible civil disobedience
by sitting down if we were stopped on our marches.
What about women activists?
The women's liberation movement?
Well, women were very active.
Now I'm generally listed as the `chairman' of the National Mobilization
Committee To End The War. And I was backward enough to have accepted
that title for a short time. And then I insisted that I would
not be chairman unless there was a co-chairperson who was a woman
and a co-chairperson who was an Afro-American. But the women
played a very important key role in all of the events at Chicago.
As for lesbians and gays, a lot of people who later came out
of the closet also played key roles in Chicago. But I don't remember
any public calls there for the rights of homosexuals.
Now you mentioned a book.
What have you been up to in recent years? And were you involved
in writing a book, also?
For about a year I had been
working intermittently on writing what I called From Yale To
Jail: A Memoir. I was a little shocked when Pantheon released
the book a couple of months ago [in 1993] and changed the subtitle,
so that it now reads: From Yale To Jail: The Life Story Of A
Moral Dissenter. Which I think is a little pretentious. I never
would have approved of it if I had known that they were going
to do that.
My preferred approach is think
globally, act locally. And I was doing a lot of local acting
before the Vietnam War came along. I just felt that I had to
go beyond my local community in order to oppose it and--I think
because of my peacemaking role amongst the various objectors
to the War--was almost forced into the position of becoming chair
and later co-chair.
So I am working with a number
of groups here in Vermont: The North Country Coalition for Peace
and Justice. Several peace and justice campaigns. I've been a
member of the Vermont Rainbow, which finally ceased to exist
because we insisted on being democratic. And Jesse Jackson, in
his attempt to win the presidency, decided that he had to control
the whole organization and even appoint the state chairs and
executive committees.
And we've been active, until
recently objecting to the manufacture of Gatling guns in the
General Electric plant in Burlington, Vermont. Gatling guns which
fire--I think it's four or five hundred bullets a minute--and
were taken down to Central America to be used by the <U.S.-trained>
and supported death squads in El Salvador. Also, for several
years, by the <U.S.-trained> and equipped and financed
Contras in Nicaragua.
What do you think are now
the major political issues for pacfists, now that the Cold War
has ended?
Well,as I have said, one of
the reasons we went to Chicago was to get away from the idea
that there were only two issues that were central, namely, stopping
the war in Vietnam and civil rights. That was why we wanted the
alternate convention, which would lay out other things. And I
think that now we are in that situation.
We're in a situation where
we've gone ahead a little, even though some people who are in
favor of ending war and gaining civil rights still drag their
feet against gay and lesbian liberation and against full equality
for women.
But on the whole a lot of progress
has been made. Instead of two issues, it's like Heinz: there
are practically 57 different variets of issues that are getting
more attention than they did in the '60s. Personally I think
that one of the important things is for people to have at least
one or two of those issues in which they are active in a consistent,
long-term way.
But also, I think it is important
to get the broader picture. And to understand what some of the
reasons are why in every area of life people are taught to compete
with other people in order to rise `higher.' To get more power,
money, fame, beauty--whatever it is--than other people. And I
think that at the root of that is the military-corporate complex
and the economy. So I think that people have to understand the
economic ties with all of these 57 areas, whether it's the environment
or women's rights or Black rights or any of the other places
where people are not treated with respect, dignity and as equals.
Finally, I prefer to call myself
a nonviolent activist for justice--or justice and peace--rather
than a pacifist. Because too often pacifists treat the violence
of war and weaponry as more deadly than the violence of our economic
institutions. But more people die every week because of the poverty
caused by our economic institutions than the total number of
GIs killed in the entire Vietnam War.
Weekend Edition
Features for May 22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
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