DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | University of Iowa anti-war protests, January-April 1971 | 1971-03-25 Daily Iowan Article: ""'One false move and somebody is dead???'"" Page 1

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University of Iowa anti-war protests, January-April 1971

1971-03-25 Daily Iowan Article: ""'One false move and somebody is dead???'"" Page 1

DI
March 25, 1971
p. 1 (of 4)

'One false move and som
Editor's Note: The incident that Bill Brashler reflects on in the following article is not a recent one; in fact, it happened nearly a year ago. Little has happened in that time, however, that would offer any hope that the attitudes of the Iowa City police or the Nixon administration have changed. Brashler says in a preface to the article that it is not meant to romanticize Norman Fischer or any other individual. Fischer's words, he says, "serve only to mirror the individual thoughts prevailing within a crowd as it walks toward a police station in the year 1970." Brashler notes that the police appeared to have no strategy or procedure with which to deal with the students. "They shot first, investigated later, they arrested first, figured out charges when convenient.  The police reacted capriciously and viciously at a moment's notice with guns instead of common sense," he says. The year is now 1971 and little has changed. Those same men who sent American youth into CAmbodia to kill Asians and to be killed themselves, those Iowa City policemen who shot at black students walking down a street in Littletown, America, are all still in power. It is getting warm again and May 4 and May 6 draw closer. The columns of this page are open to the thoughts of those policemen who leveled guns at the students of the University of Iowa—black and white alike. Brashler says, "Maybe they will change their heads when they have seen the whites of our eyes." Maybe. Read on.

By Bill Brashler
Of all the paragraphs written about last spring's chaos in Iowa City, not one mentioned the fact that someone came incredibly close to being killed. And that someone would have been as innocent as any one of the four victims at Kent State.
One incident in particular stands out. In retrospect it appears more volatile and more vicious than it did when it happened. It was an incident that capped off the long week of crowds and police lines, and one which found the Iowa City police more trigger-happy and unprepared than at any other time.
Bruce Clark, a sophomore from Iowa City in the liberal arts college, and Norman Fischer, a graduate from Pennsylvania in the Writers' Workshop, didn't even know each other before that day, the Friday of Cambodia Week. Fischer had wandered onto the Pentacrest like hundreds of others to listen to the plethora of pleadings from the steps of the Old Capitol. He listened like most of the rest of us then, half out of conscience, half out of boredom.
. . . it's sunny, the sun catches the pillars, the bronze dome of the Old Capitol, it filters through the trees very delicate-

is forming, curious but not knowing just what to do about it. At this point in that afternoon Bruce Clark comes up to the mike. He's a little too tall for it, leans over and speaks professionally into it, his voice clear, modulated. He's wearing a pair of brown chinos, a sports shirt, horn-rimmed glasses and looks like the class president. He's not. He talks and I begin to listen. . .
Clark commanded attention because he spoke of an incident which held more potential than anything else that had happened up to that point. All week the milling crowds in the streets and on the Pentacrest had only frustration and the shock over four murders four hundred miles away to keep them agitated. They desperately needed a cause, a provocation, an incident which would make the abstract struggle a personal, local horror at which to react.
The broken glass on Iowa Avenue, the police arrests, the show of force which occurred Tuesday and Wednesday nights had only served to build the chaos and resentment. It waited now to crest. Willard Boyd gave it his level best by ordering some 200 Pentacrest campers arrested on Thursday night. Yet even that act did not seem repressive. instead it came off as being frightfully stupid and misinformed. It served only to parallel the general state of affairs across the country, and it brought about a reaction of ennui rather than outrage.
It was the Boydian mentality, that fundamental Richard Nixon pomposity which grieved like Pontius Pilate over the blood of the kids in Ohio while it condemned thousands of others just like them in Cambodia, that piqued those who spoke into the microphone that Friday afternoon. It was a pathetic yet remote horror, and no one could justify the breaking of glass in Iowa City to atone for it.
Yet Bruce Clark didn't speak of such things. He spoke instead of an incident, honest to goodness, in which a group of black students were shot at by Iowa City Police. It had happened the night before as the blacks walked by the windows of Herteen and Stocker's jewelry store. A patrol car drove up and fired what they called warning shots at the blacks. Some of them ran, others were pinned down and taken tinto custody. The police accused them of breaking and entering, a charge which had no validity and was later changed to disorderly conduct. The police said nothing about the warning shots which were fired, probably assuming such was common procedure for those guilty of disorderly conduct. Yet the guns had been pointed in the eyes of the blacks; one bullet punctured the jewelry shop's window about six feet up from the sidewalk.
As Clark railed about the incident, it was announced that a contingent of 

the steps of the Old Captol, their faces hatefully deadpan, looking holes into the audience while their spokesman recapped the incident. He proceeded to condemn not only the police but everyone involved with the week's events. "You continue to stage this carnival freak show," he said, "and manage only to bring down more wrath upon black people and warning shots fired at our heads." He said this whole mess was whitey's problem, the blacks were not interested, just concerned with trying to cope with their own day-to-day problems.
Then the blacks walked off, as slowly and impassively as they had come. But they had made their case very clear. Wisely, Clark seized the moment, realizing that it was changed, more so than at any time before.
"We're standing here doing nothing," he said. "We're wasting time when the pigs have already shown us where they stand. Racism is part of this thing, it's the fabric of the whole society. We've got to move to end it. We've got to show solidarity with these black students."
These were fighting words, words the crowd could respond to with something other than passive compliance. Even the semi-interested like Norm Fischer were now receptive.
. . . there is a little buzz in the crowd that does not come from the trees and suddenly everyone is talking. Then Clark is back on the mike and says he is going to march on the Civic Center and demand an answer to this charge. He says he wants to know what went on, that the police should answer for their action. He's going right now, who's with him? Now, of course, I am all ears and finally awakened all the way. Because, like I say, I do not like racism, I get excited about racism, racism pisses me off like Zeno's Paradox. I am all set to march to the station and march I will, no matter what. There is such a thing as courage which is not courage at all but sheer will. You make up your mind to do something, in an instant, for it is always in an instant, and you do it. You march, I march, with maybe 50 other people and led by Clark. . . .
The crowd was more like two to three hundred in number, for the Pentacrest nearly emptied behind Clark. It was, by no stretch of the imagination, a hostile or incensed migration. Instead, most of the marchers were simply interested, curious at what might happen, willing to stroll down the street in the spring sunshine. There could be no doubt about the legitimacy of the black's gripe, for those black, glowering eyes had a fearful, uncompromising honesty about them. So the crowd moved, and its movement seemed to

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DI March 25, 1971 p. 1 (of 4) 'One false move and som Editor's Note: The incident that Bill Brashler reflects on in the following article is not a recent one; in fact, it happened nearly a year ago. Little has happened in that time, however, that would offer any hope that the attitudes of the Iowa City police or the Nixon administration have changed. Brashler says in a preface to the article that it is not meant to romanticize Norman Fischer or any other individual. Fischer's words, he says, "serve only to mirror the individual thoughts prevailing within a crowd as it walks toward a police station in the year 1970." Brashler notes that the police appeared to have no strategy or procedure with which to deal with the students. "They shot first, investigated later, they arrested first, figured out charges when convenient. The police reacted capriciously and viciously at a moment's notice with guns instead of common sense," he says. The year is now 1971 and little has changed. Those same men who sent American youth into CAmbodia to kill Asians and to be killed themselves, those Iowa City policemen who shot at black students walking down a street in Littletown, America, are all still in power. It is getting warm again and May 4 and May 6 draw closer. The columns of this page are open to the thoughts of those policemen who leveled guns at the students of the University of Iowa—black and white alike. Brashler says, "Maybe they will change their heads when they have seen the whites of our eyes." Maybe. Read on. By Bill Brashler Of all the paragraphs written about last spring's chaos in Iowa City, not one mentioned the fact that someone came incredibly close to being killed. And that someone would have been as innocent as any one of the four victims at Kent State. One incident in particular stands out. In retrospect it appears more volatile and more vicious than it did when it happened. It was an incident that capped off the long week of crowds and police lines, and one which found the Iowa City police more trigger-happy and unprepared than at any other time. Bruce Clark, a sophomore from Iowa City in the liberal arts college, and Norman Fischer, a graduate from Pennsylvania in the Writers' Workshop, didn't even know each other before that day, the Friday of Cambodia Week. Fischer had wandered onto the Pentacrest like hundreds of others to listen to the plethora of pleadings from the steps of the Old Capitol. He listened like most of the rest of us then, half out of conscience, half out of boredom. . . . it's sunny, the sun catches the pillars, the bronze dome of the Old Capitol, it filters through the trees very delicate- is forming, curious but not knowing just what to do about it. At this point in that afternoon Bruce Clark comes up to the mike. He's a little too tall for it, leans over and speaks professionally into it, his voice clear, modulated. He's wearing a pair of brown chinos, a sports shirt, horn-rimmed glasses and looks like the class president. He's not. He talks and I begin to listen. . . Clark commanded attention because he spoke of an incident which held more potential than anything else that had happened up to that point. All week the milling crowds in the streets and on the Pentacrest had only frustration and the shock over four murders four hundred miles away to keep them agitated. They desperately needed a cause, a provocation, an incident which would make the abstract struggle a personal, local horror at which to react. The broken glass on Iowa Avenue, the police arrests, the show of force which occurred Tuesday and Wednesday nights had only served to build the chaos and resentment. It waited now to crest. Willard Boyd gave it his level best by ordering some 200 Pentacrest campers arrested on Thursday night. Yet even that act did not seem repressive. instead it came off as being frightfully stupid and misinformed. It served only to parallel the general state of affairs across the country, and it brought about a reaction of ennui rather than outrage. It was the Boydian mentality, that fundamental Richard Nixon pomposity which grieved like Pontius Pilate over the blood of the kids in Ohio while it condemned thousands of others just like them in Cambodia, that piqued those who spoke into the microphone that Friday afternoon. It was a pathetic yet remote horror, and no one could justify the breaking of glass in Iowa City to atone for it. Yet Bruce Clark didn't speak of such things. He spoke instead of an incident, honest to goodness, in which a group of black students were shot at by Iowa City Police. It had happened the night before as the blacks walked by the windows of Herteen and Stocker's jewelry store. A patrol car drove up and fired what they called warning shots at the blacks. Some of them ran, others were pinned down and taken tinto custody. The police accused them of breaking and entering, a charge which had no validity and was later changed to disorderly conduct. The police said nothing about the warning shots which were fired, probably assuming such was common procedure for those guilty of disorderly conduct. Yet the guns had been pointed in the eyes of the blacks; one bullet punctured the jewelry shop's window about six feet up from the sidewalk. As Clark railed about the incident, it was announced that a contingent of the steps of the Old Captol, their faces hatefully deadpan, looking holes into the audience while their spokesman recapped the incident. He proceeded to condemn not only the police but everyone involved with the week's events. "You continue to stage this carnival freak show," he said, "and manage only to bring down more wrath upon black people and warning shots fired at our heads." He said this whole mess was whitey's problem, the blacks were not interested, just concerned with trying to cope with their own day-to-day problems. Then the blacks walked off, as slowly and impassively as they had come. But they had made their case very clear. Wisely, Clark seized the moment, realizing that it was changed, more so than at any time before. "We're standing here doing nothing," he said. "We're wasting time when the pigs have already shown us where they stand. Racism is part of this thing, it's the fabric of the whole society. We've got to move to end it. We've got to show solidarity with these black students." These were fighting words, words the crowd could respond to with something other than passive compliance. Even the semi-interested like Norm Fischer were now receptive. . . . there is a little buzz in the crowd that does not come from the trees and suddenly everyone is talking. Then Clark is back on the mike and says he is going to march on the Civic Center and demand an answer to this charge. He says he wants to know what went on, that the police should answer for their action. He's going right now, who's with him? Now, of course, I am all ears and finally awakened all the way. Because, like I say, I do not like racism, I get excited about racism, racism pisses me off like Zeno's Paradox. I am all set to march to the station and march I will, no matter what. There is such a thing as courage which is not courage at all but sheer will. You make up your mind to do something, in an instant, for it is always in an instant, and you do it. You march, I march, with maybe 50 other people and led by Clark. . . . The crowd was more like two to three hundred in number, for the Pentacrest nearly emptied behind Clark. It was, by no stretch of the imagination, a hostile or incensed migration. Instead, most of the marchers were simply interested, curious at what might happen, willing to stroll down the street in the spring sunshine. There could be no doubt about the legitimacy of the black's gripe, for those black, glowering eyes had a fearful, uncompromising honesty about them. So the crowd moved, and its movement seemed to [see next column on page 3]