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 3

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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 3

DI March 25, 1971 p.3 (of 4)

and somebody is dead...'

of the Old Capitol, their faces
deadpan looking holes into the 
while their spokesman recap
incident. He proceeded to con
ot only the police but everyone
with the week's events. "You
to stage this carnival freak
he said, "and manage only to 
own more wrath upon black peo
warning shots fired at out
He said this whole mess was
problem, the blacks were not 
ed, just concerned with trying to 
th their own day-to-day problems. 
the blacks walked off as slow
impassively as they had come. 
ey had made their case very
Visely, Clark seized the moment,
g that it was changed more so 
any time before.
e standing here doing nothing."
"We're wasting time when the 
ve already shown us where they 
Racism is part of this thing, it's
ric of the whole society. We've
move to end it . We've got to 
olidarity with these black stu

were fighting words, words the 
could respond to with something 
than passive compliance. Even 
mi-interested like Norm Fischer 
ow receptive. 

there is a little buss in the 
that does not come from the 
and suddenly everyone is talking. 
Clark is back on the mike and
e is going to march on the Civic
and demand an answer to this 
He says he wants to know what 
on, that the police should answer
eir action. He's going right now, 
with him? Now. of course, I am 
rs and finally awakened all the 
Because, like I say, I do not like
I get excited about racism, ra
pisses me off like Zeno's Para
am all set to march to the sta
and march I will, no matter what. 
is such a thing as courage which 
courage at all but sheer will. You 
up your mind to do something, 
instant, for it is always in an in
and you do it. You march, I 
with maybe 50 other people and
Clark...
crowd was more like two to three
ed in number, for the Pentacrest
emptied behind Clark. It was
stretch of the imagination, a hos
incensed migration. Instead, 
of the marchers were simply in 
ed, curious at what might happen. 
to stroll down the street in the 
sunshine. There could be no
about the legitimacy of the 
s gripe, for the black, glower
es had a fearful, uncompromising 
ty about them. So the crowd
d, and its movement seemed to 
portent, ominously so like wa
r anger, swirling into a drain. 
we march down Clinton and 

[from page 2]
turn toward the civic center. But soon we have to slow down as more and more people begin to follow us. There is rib-cracking excitement in the air because everyone senses that now somebody is actually going to do something. There is so much bald fear of the police that any action whatever occasions oohs and ahhs from the crowd. Because this right now, today in Iowa on a day in May when God in his disinterested goodness blesses us - cops and crooks alike - with his sun. Yet this is a police state, a made state, and we are all afraid. We read the papers like everyone else. 

But there is a carnival spirit, too. Everyone in the line is a comrade. I see a fellow walking beside me on a crutch who sings and fumes and grunts and hollers as he hobbles along. I want to say look, break my leg, I'll hobble, you walk erect. I'm nothing and my lousy life would be made only rosy by a kind act as that. And we are all everyone lovers then. And on we march. . . . 

Bruce and Carmen Clark begin a chant and many take it up, none louder tann me, the racist who hates and despises racism more than anything. END RACIST SHOOTINGS END RACIST SHOOTINGS END RACIST SHOOTINGS. There is a great comfort in the saying of it, the hearing of the other voices all around, the knowing, at least , that all is reduced to this, that life, right now, is the simple, that single minded, that pure. The goal is only to END RACIST SHOOTINGS damn it, and be done with it. And on we march . . . . 

On Washington Street, the marchers stretched from the Burger Chef to the boarded windows of Herteen and Stocker. Though Clark and others chanted at the front, there was only the silence of walking at the rear. The single most significant characteristic of the crowd was its spontaneity, a phenomenon which is some ways worked to its disadvantage. 
No one had any way of anticipating this crusade, not its leaders, nor its target. In any event, the police were probably alerted only minutes before they could see the first few heads of the crowd. One can only imagine the frenzy which followed. For only a few nights earlier the Civic Center had been besieged by a crowd of similar size, a crowd which lobbed rocks like mortars through the plate glass, a crowd which ebbed and flowed menacingly toward the police lines in a game of cat and mouse. 
One can only call to mind the hordes of police cowering beneath the shelling of rocks during the previous nights if he is to contemplate the reaction inside the Civic Center on that Friday afternoon. The aura surrounding the events was similar if not identical, bruise for bruise, regardless of how unarmed the group was as it advanced down Washington Street. The stage was again set. The police had little idea of what it was all about this time, but they were cer 

whitehot burn of mace on my face. I am crazy with anger and I hear Clark screaming . . . 

The two patrolmen guarding the front of the civic center did not wait for Clark and Fischer and the rest of the crowd to try and get past them. Instead they rushed Clark as he strode for them, and in a sudden flurry of pushing and garbled obscenities, they wrestled him to the ground. They made no attempt to refrain from using the butts of their shotguns in subduing him. That is perhaps what drew Fischer into the melee. He instinctively grabbed for Clark, trying to pull him free yet at the same time identifying himself, in the eyes of the police anyway, with the struggle. 
The entire crowd surged quickly around the chaos, many at the front screaming ferociously at the two policemen. This only served to bring more police, plainclothesman and the like, as well as reporters and photographers and anyone else in the civic center out onto the steps. 
By this time the larger of the two policemen was straddling Clark while the other wrestled with Fischer. The one atop of Clark made an issue of keeping the rest of the crowd at bay, which he did by pointing his shotgun into their faces. This did little but fill photographers' lenses, however, for most of those in the forefront of the crowd were helplessly smarting from the abundance of MACE which someone had sprayed wildly about.
As soon as the incident started, it ended. The police hustled Clark and Fischer up the steps and into the center before most of the crowd could get close enough to see what was happening. In the shouting and threats that followed, no one could summon up enough courage to finish what Clark and Fischer had begun.
Likewise, no one knew what was happening to them inside the building. The crowd only saw the re-emergence of the two gun-toting policemen, their shotguns still pre-eminent. The larger policemen was shaking so much he could hardly hold onto his weapon. He leered at the crowd like a defiant prize fighter, yet his right hand continued to shake so that he went back into the civic center and later emerged without the gun. But that was now beside the point, he had gotten his man. 

. . . we are rough-housed, hurled like baggage up the stairs and through the door. I notice two detectives, plain clothes, who are in on it. One's really crazy-dangerous. a red-faced man, medium height, red hair, maybe 35 or 40, whose mad as hell and screaming at the top of his lungs. He's taking terrific pleasure in yanking at my hair and hitting me on the head with some kind of club when we are past the doorway and such brutality is now possible. There are two on either side of me, pummeling me as I shout, "Okay, all right, damn it, I'm not going to fight you. I'm non-violent, dammit, cut it out, get your hands off me !" And I am answered, " Sure you're non-violent. We'll show you some non-violence, we'll show you

charged and bail was set. She then called Police Judge Marion Neely. Neely listened to her plea and replied that he couldn't set bail until he had more facts about the disruption. Neely also added that he felt it common knowledge that people from the Writers' Workshop were a large cause of all the trouble. 
Carter reiterated Fischer's innocence to the judge, vainly trying to get him, if nothing else, out of jail. Upon hearing this Neely asked her, "Well, if he is so innocent, what's he doing in jail?! Judge Neely did promise, however, to call Carter back within an hour. 
Carter and Lew waited in the civic center's lobby, watching the armed guard pace in front of the entrance. Finally Lew left to go to the men's room. While he was away, the lobby filled with rushing, shouting policemen. Apparently someone had put a smoke bomb in a bathroom. When Lew unknowingly came back from his journey, he was accosted and ordered to leave the center. He threw up his hands in puzzlement and left. 
When Carter complained to an officer, he told her to sit down or she would be put under arrest. Finally someone found the smoke bomb and things returned to a relative calm. 
After 45 minutes had elapsed. Carter went to the police counter to inquire about her call. She was then told by the same officer to sit down or be put under arrest. She asked under what charge. She was told that of disobeying an officer. 
Carter then aid, with all the punch she could muster, "I don't want to sit down."
The officer jerked her over to a rug and said, " Take one foot off that rug and you'll find yourself in a jail cell."
By this time she was sufficiently angry and frustrated to walk to the police desk despite the officer's order. He walked after her, grabbed her, dragged her five-and-a-half foot frame across the lobby, and dumped her out of the building onto the concrete steps outside. Carter landed on her knees, her purse spilling its contents everywhere. 
The armed guard then approached her, pointed his gun in her face and asked the other officer if she was under arrest. The officer said no, that she was just leaving. 
After a few curt words with the officer, Carter left. She was not hurt badly by the policeman : though her ribs became black and blue from the tussle she was only insulted and unnerved. 
She still becomes unnerved talking about the incident. " If someone had attempted a confrontation at any point during that time, they would have been badly injured or killed," she said. 
" If someone like me could get it - and I'm establishment-looking - what would have happened to someone looking like a hippie?"
The same thought flashed through Norman Fischer's mind at the height of his confrontation with the Iowa City Police. He was struck by the overwhelming sensation of being caught in a ma

Saving...

DI March 25, 1971 p.3 (of 4) and somebody is dead...' of the Old Capitol, their faces deadpan looking holes into the while their spokesman recap incident. He proceeded to con ot only the police but everyone with the week's events. "You to stage this carnival freak he said, "and manage only to own more wrath upon black peo warning shots fired at out He said this whole mess was problem, the blacks were not ed, just concerned with trying to th their own day-to-day problems. the blacks walked off as slow impassively as they had come. ey had made their case very Visely, Clark seized the moment, g that it was changed more so any time before. e standing here doing nothing." "We're wasting time when the ve already shown us where they Racism is part of this thing, it's ric of the whole society. We've move to end it . We've got to olidarity with these black stu were fighting words, words the could respond to with something than passive compliance. Even mi-interested like Norm Fischer ow receptive. there is a little buss in the that does not come from the and suddenly everyone is talking. Clark is back on the mike and e is going to march on the Civic and demand an answer to this He says he wants to know what on, that the police should answer eir action. He's going right now, with him? Now. of course, I am rs and finally awakened all the Because, like I say, I do not like I get excited about racism, ra pisses me off like Zeno's Para am all set to march to the sta and march I will, no matter what. is such a thing as courage which courage at all but sheer will. You up your mind to do something, instant, for it is always in an in and you do it. You march, I with maybe 50 other people and Clark... crowd was more like two to three ed in number, for the Pentacrest emptied behind Clark. It was stretch of the imagination, a hos incensed migration. Instead, of the marchers were simply in ed, curious at what might happen. to stroll down the street in the sunshine. There could be no about the legitimacy of the s gripe, for the black, glower es had a fearful, uncompromising ty about them. So the crowd d, and its movement seemed to portent, ominously so like wa r anger, swirling into a drain. we march down Clinton and [from page 2] turn toward the civic center. But soon we have to slow down as more and more people begin to follow us. There is rib-cracking excitement in the air because everyone senses that now somebody is actually going to do something. There is so much bald fear of the police that any action whatever occasions oohs and ahhs from the crowd. Because this right now, today in Iowa on a day in May when God in his disinterested goodness blesses us - cops and crooks alike - with his sun. Yet this is a police state, a made state, and we are all afraid. We read the papers like everyone else. But there is a carnival spirit, too. Everyone in the line is a comrade. I see a fellow walking beside me on a crutch who sings and fumes and grunts and hollers as he hobbles along. I want to say look, break my leg, I'll hobble, you walk erect. I'm nothing and my lousy life would be made only rosy by a kind act as that. And we are all everyone lovers then. And on we march. . . . Bruce and Carmen Clark begin a chant and many take it up, none louder tann me, the racist who hates and despises racism more than anything. END RACIST SHOOTINGS END RACIST SHOOTINGS END RACIST SHOOTINGS. There is a great comfort in the saying of it, the hearing of the other voices all around, the knowing, at least , that all is reduced to this, that life, right now, is the simple, that single minded, that pure. The goal is only to END RACIST SHOOTINGS damn it, and be done with it. And on we march . . . . On Washington Street, the marchers stretched from the Burger Chef to the boarded windows of Herteen and Stocker. Though Clark and others chanted at the front, there was only the silence of walking at the rear. The single most significant characteristic of the crowd was its spontaneity, a phenomenon which is some ways worked to its disadvantage. No one had any way of anticipating this crusade, not its leaders, nor its target. In any event, the police were probably alerted only minutes before they could see the first few heads of the crowd. One can only imagine the frenzy which followed. For only a few nights earlier the Civic Center had been besieged by a crowd of similar size, a crowd which lobbed rocks like mortars through the plate glass, a crowd which ebbed and flowed menacingly toward the police lines in a game of cat and mouse. One can only call to mind the hordes of police cowering beneath the shelling of rocks during the previous nights if he is to contemplate the reaction inside the Civic Center on that Friday afternoon. The aura surrounding the events was similar if not identical, bruise for bruise, regardless of how unarmed the group was as it advanced down Washington Street. The stage was again set. The police had little idea of what it was all about this time, but they were cer whitehot burn of mace on my face. I am crazy with anger and I hear Clark screaming . . . The two patrolmen guarding the front of the civic center did not wait for Clark and Fischer and the rest of the crowd to try and get past them. Instead they rushed Clark as he strode for them, and in a sudden flurry of pushing and garbled obscenities, they wrestled him to the ground. They made no attempt to refrain from using the butts of their shotguns in subduing him. That is perhaps what drew Fischer into the melee. He instinctively grabbed for Clark, trying to pull him free yet at the same time identifying himself, in the eyes of the police anyway, with the struggle. The entire crowd surged quickly around the chaos, many at the front screaming ferociously at the two policemen. This only served to bring more police, plainclothesman and the like, as well as reporters and photographers and anyone else in the civic center out onto the steps. By this time the larger of the two policemen was straddling Clark while the other wrestled with Fischer. The one atop of Clark made an issue of keeping the rest of the crowd at bay, which he did by pointing his shotgun into their faces. This did little but fill photographers' lenses, however, for most of those in the forefront of the crowd were helplessly smarting from the abundance of MACE which someone had sprayed wildly about. As soon as the incident started, it ended. The police hustled Clark and Fischer up the steps and into the center before most of the crowd could get close enough to see what was happening. In the shouting and threats that followed, no one could summon up enough courage to finish what Clark and Fischer had begun. Likewise, no one knew what was happening to them inside the building. The crowd only saw the re-emergence of the two gun-toting policemen, their shotguns still pre-eminent. The larger policemen was shaking so much he could hardly hold onto his weapon. He leered at the crowd like a defiant prize fighter, yet his right hand continued to shake so that he went back into the civic center and later emerged without the gun. But that was now beside the point, he had gotten his man. . . . we are rough-housed, hurled like baggage up the stairs and through the door. I notice two detectives, plain clothes, who are in on it. One's really crazy-dangerous. a red-faced man, medium height, red hair, maybe 35 or 40, whose mad as hell and screaming at the top of his lungs. He's taking terrific pleasure in yanking at my hair and hitting me on the head with some kind of club when we are past the doorway and such brutality is now possible. There are two on either side of me, pummeling me as I shout, "Okay, all right, damn it, I'm not going to fight you. I'm non-violent, dammit, cut it out, get your hands off me !" And I am answered, " Sure you're non-violent. We'll show you some non-violence, we'll show you charged and bail was set. She then called Police Judge Marion Neely. Neely listened to her plea and replied that he couldn't set bail until he had more facts about the disruption. Neely also added that he felt it common knowledge that people from the Writers' Workshop were a large cause of all the trouble. Carter reiterated Fischer's innocence to the judge, vainly trying to get him, if nothing else, out of jail. Upon hearing this Neely asked her, "Well, if he is so innocent, what's he doing in jail?! Judge Neely did promise, however, to call Carter back within an hour. Carter and Lew waited in the civic center's lobby, watching the armed guard pace in front of the entrance. Finally Lew left to go to the men's room. While he was away, the lobby filled with rushing, shouting policemen. Apparently someone had put a smoke bomb in a bathroom. When Lew unknowingly came back from his journey, he was accosted and ordered to leave the center. He threw up his hands in puzzlement and left. When Carter complained to an officer, he told her to sit down or she would be put under arrest. Finally someone found the smoke bomb and things returned to a relative calm. After 45 minutes had elapsed. Carter went to the police counter to inquire about her call. She was then told by the same officer to sit down or be put under arrest. She asked under what charge. She was told that of disobeying an officer. Carter then aid, with all the punch she could muster, "I don't want to sit down." The officer jerked her over to a rug and said, " Take one foot off that rug and you'll find yourself in a jail cell." By this time she was sufficiently angry and frustrated to walk to the police desk despite the officer's order. He walked after her, grabbed her, dragged her five-and-a-half foot frame across the lobby, and dumped her out of the building onto the concrete steps outside. Carter landed on her knees, her purse spilling its contents everywhere. The armed guard then approached her, pointed his gun in her face and asked the other officer if she was under arrest. The officer said no, that she was just leaving. After a few curt words with the officer, Carter left. She was not hurt badly by the policeman : though her ribs became black and blue from the tussle she was only insulted and unnerved. She still becomes unnerved talking about the incident. " If someone had attempted a confrontation at any point during that time, they would have been badly injured or killed," she said. " If someone like me could get it - and I'm establishment-looking - what would have happened to someone looking like a hippie?" The same thought flashed through Norman Fischer's mind at the height of his confrontation with the Iowa City Police. He was struck by the overwhelming sensation of being caught in a ma