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Middle Earth various issues, 1967-1968

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WISCONSIN, How To Get Your Head Busted

October 19 at the University of Wisconsin at Madison there was a non-violent sit-in demonstration to object to the University's sanction of Dow Chemical Co. policies by allowing them to recruit on campus. October 22, several people from Iowa City went to Madison and talked to students who had been involved and the following descriptions were taped.
'We learned early in the year that Dow Chemical was coming to recruit and there was a lot of sentiment on campus against a corporation that makes napalm and profits enormously from the war in Vietnam, and feeling that they should not be allowed to recruit on this campus. Early in the year the administration said that anyone who sat in would be subject to various kinds of disciplinary action from suspension to expulsion, to action in the civil courts. Needless to say, this frightened a lot of people and they met to discuss how strongly they felt about Dow's recruiting on campus. The meeting decided that they should have an obstructive sit-in and to take whatever consequences came, Following is an account of what happened and this has been largely mis-reported.

'Approximately 200 - 250 people sat down in the corridor of the building in which Dow was recruiting, linking arms peacefully; blocking sufficiently not to let interviewees in to Dow but letting people go to classes and letting as much movement go on as could, We were attempting to prevent Dow's prescence at the University. Early in the meeting, the University security officer said he would be willing to get rid of Dow if we would go away. A lot of people applauded this. We didn't want to get arrested, we didn't want to get suspended. But a lot of people were suspicious and we asked him to get the administration to put his promise in writing. The administration refused. We were still linking arms and still letting people through.

'Very soon after that the dean of students appeared with a bull horn saying, ' This is an illegal assembly.'
That's all we heard. Then the lights went out. There was a good deal of fear. We knew they had billy clubs. We didn't know what degree of strength they would exercise. With the lights off there could be a good deal of damage. The lights went on. It was just a signal. The cops attacked with absolutely no warning; with no warning that we could be arrested; with no warning that we could be hurt; with no warning that we should leave the building. If they had issued that warning things might have been different.
They attacked with billy clubs. They smashed. They smashed girls. They smashed boys. They smashed people getting up to leave. They smashed people sitting. They smashed people trying to lead us out. It was a charge, and a very bloody one. Girls were hit on the head. Girls were bleeding from the vagina. One boy had his back badly hurt. People were hit on the back of the head. Some have their sight impaired. It was a bloody melee inside and we decided to move out. But his was only the beginning. It appeared that about 1500 supporting picketers had gathered while we were sitting in and that many students who weren't involved at all were outside watching.
'While we were outside speaking to the crowd telling them about the enormous brutality, many other students gathered and were standing around hooting the cops. The cops tried to charge against the students and by then there were approximately 4,000 students outside. Many were hirt. On this occassion there was absolutely no reason for the charge. There were no corridors being obstructed, nor was the general business of the University being disrupted. IT OCCURED TO US THAT IF THE UNIVERSITY REALLY CARED ABOUT ITS GENERAL BUSINESS MORE THAN ABOUT DOW RECRUITING ON CAMPUS, IT WOULD NOT HAVE ALLOWED THESE POLICE ON CAMPUS, BECAUSE THEY DID FAR MORE TO OBSTRUCT ITS FUNCTIONING THAN WE DID, WHICH SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT THE UNIVERSITY CARES ABOUT.
'As we gathered around the patrol wagon, the police used tear gas to make us disperse. They used it against anybody, people who were just walking by. And when they used it there were more charges. A lot of people were involved in this and a lot of people saw what the police did and this had a great effect on how they saw the university, BECAUSE FOR THEM THE UNIVERSITY REVEALED WHAT ITS INTERESTS WERE.
'We gathered around the patrol wagon again, some 4 or 5 thousand strong, attempting to prevent it from leaving with the 5 people they had arrested. THE INTERESTING THING WAS THAT THEY DID NOT MAKE ARRESTS OFTEN; ONLY 5. THEIR INTENTION WAS NOT TO BREAK UP THAT SIT-IN. THEIR INTENTION WAS TO WADE IN AND HURT AND THEY DID A LOT OF THAT.
There was more tear gassing and more tear gassing and people stayed until 4:00 or 5:00. The tear gassing went into classes. Classes were disrupted. There was so much noise outside that classes had to end. It was a big day for the University. That night there was a meeting of between 6000 and 10,000 students near the library to plan what action should be taken. The sentiment was that whether or not one was against the war in Vietnam, whether or not one was against the Dow recruiting, the University had done enough to discredit itself and TO REVEAL FINALLY THAT THE INTERESTS OF THE STUDENTS WERE NOT ITS INTERESTS AND THAT IT HAD OTHER INTERESTS IN MIND, THE PROTECTION OF DOW'S RECRUITING FOR ONE. A strike was declared and the next day a strike was carried out.' 
Later in the tape four students discussed the estimates of the number of people inside the hall before the riot police struck. Estimates ranged from 200 to 400, and the inaccuracy of these figures stems from the number of office help and passersby who were watching the sin-in and who were attacked by the police as if they were participants. Everybody in the hall got it.
There were stories of some cops trying to exercise some degree of restraint on other cops. Once some of these kids were down the cops wouldn't stop hitting them and then the cops had to drag off their own men to keep them from probably killing students, because most of the kids were down and they didn't stop hitting them.
'They couldn't get doctors to come up the hill from the hospital to help people. We had to find cars and it was really hysterical moment. For some reason the doctors wouldn't come up the hill. I was helping people out the door and trying to get doctors to come and they wouldn't. We had to drive students to the hospital.'
The cops were going through classrooms in the buildings near where Dow Chem was stationed and clearing them out. I heard that one young cop went into a classroom where a girl was studying and demanded that she leave the building. I don't know the details of what she did then but anyway he hit her. She fell down unconscious and this young fellow was afraid he'd killed her. He started stumbling out of the building and mumbling to himself over and over, 'My God, I've killed her. My God, I've killed her.'

'PEOPLE WHO WERE SITTING IN THERE CAME TO KNOW A VERY IMPORTANT THING AND THAT IS WHEN POWER PROTECTS ITSELF IT USES POWER. THAT MEANS THAT THE RULING CLASS ISN'T GOING TO SAY WELL, YOU'RE RIGHT AND I'M WRONG.'

How To Stop A War If You're REALLY Trying

We are standing in the crosshairs of history. 
As you read these pages, there is a non-violent sit-in going on (Nov. 1-3) against the Marines recruiting in the Placement Office of the Iowa Memorial Union. It ought to be clear that this sit-in is morally justified by the nature of the Marine Corps behavior in these timer in Vietnam and elsewhere. But its moral justification is not what is at issue. The present article is an attempt at a political justification for the sin-in.
The historical context from which this shift comes is what is determining its form. This is as it ought to  be. In Texas, on Sept.29 -- before the Washington March and in preparation for it -- Lyndon Jonhson said, 'First, we must not mislead our enemy. Let him not think that debate and dissent will produce wavering and withdrawal. For they won't.
'Let him not think that protests will produce surrender. Because they won't ...we shall press forward... 
What he meant-- for those statements are not directed at Hanoi, but at us, the American people -- what he meant was: Get free of the illusion that what you the American people think will have any effect on how we, the government, do or do not prosecute that war. Get free of the illusion that you the American people have the democratic right to influence the decisions made about that war. My assumption here, of course, is that were the majority of the American people given a fair and honest chance to make up their minds, the majority of them would oppose the war. This reading of what Mr. Johnson had to say is corroborated by what happened in Washington on Oct. 22 and 22. Ever since 1962 when, under Student Peace Union auspices, 8,000 students went to Washington to protest nuclear testing and fallout shelters, the anti-war movement has devoted its dreams and its energies toward making the REALLY BIG national demonstration so large that its message could not be ignored. And group after group took up the agonizing job of walking that nightmare tightrope of coalitions that attempted to get everybody at one place and at one time.
And on Oct. 21, between 200,000 and 250,000 people went to Washington. 
We have had the big demonstration.
We had to have the big demonstration. before people could see beyond it.
The demonstration established from our side of the fence what LBJ had already determined from his side-- that dissent will not deter him.
Now, at all levels in the peace movement there is a tacit agreement that we gain little by sending 250,000 people down to Washington to get their heads bloodied by the 82nd Airborne.
There is an awareness creeping in from Oakland, from Washington, from Wisconsin, that the authoritarian machinery of this country is perfectly willing to bloody up the heads of its own people in order to be able to prosecute this war.
A parallel event happened in Iowa City last week, at the rally Oct. 18. 
It was the smallest anti-war rally held in this town in the last two years, and not even the attraction of Carl Oglesby as key speaker could make it otherwise.
We are no longer satisfied with demonstrations of sentiment, and liberal speakers from the faculty, who irritate their consciences, and and then go home, unassuaged. We want to end that war, and we are seeking better ways of doing it.
We have become convinced that the political arena is not the place to go to end it. And so we turned the National Conference for New Politics from third party organizing to community organizing.
That is the context out of which the call to obstruct the Marine recruiters on campus has gone out.

And it is as context and a call that is being shared throughout the country. In Oberlin, the students have obstructed the Navy recruiters. In Madison, they stopped Dow Chemical. From Connecticut a friend writes me: 'Things are happening here. We have a large group of turned on people. We had about 250 at the march in Washington. Many stayed overnight. None were arrested, but a couple were clubbed and tear gassed, including myself. We had a really Tuesday night with about 150 people. The turnout was not as good as we had expected, but the people wanted to do something. So when Dow Chemical comes to campus on Tuesday, we will be there and we will not move out of their way. The following week the Navy will be in the Student Union and we will remove them. The week after that the CIA will be here and we will have a massive sit-in (150-200 people). Besides all of this on campus, we are moving off campus. This Sunday we have set up a meeting of most of the colleges and universities in the state. We will be forming the Connecticut Resistance Movement. Our first state-wide act will be a sit-in and massive protest at the Connecticut induction center in New Haven. After that we will be going after Colt Fire Arms in Hartford. And these little events are only the beginning...'

conrd pg 10, col 1

Saving...

WISCONSIN, How To Get Your Head Busted October 19 at the University of Wisconsin at Madison there was a non-violent sit-in demonstration to object to the University's sanction of Dow Chemical Co. policies by allowing them to recruit on campus. October 22, several people from Iowa City went to Madison and talked to students who had been involved and the following descriptions were taped. 'We learned early in the year that Dow Chemical was coming to recruit and there was a lot of sentiment on campus against a corporation that makes napalm and profits enormously from the war in Vietnam, and feeling that they should not be allowed to recruit on this campus. Early in the year the administration said that anyone who sat in would be subject to various kinds of disciplinary action from suspension to expulsion, to action in the civil courts. Needless to say, this frightened a lot of people and they met to discuss how strongly they felt about Dow's recruiting on campus. The meeting decided that they should have an obstructive sit-in and to take whatever consequences came, Following is an account of what happened and this has been largely mis-reported. 'Approximately 200 - 250 people sat down in the corridor of the building in which Dow was recruiting, linking arms peacefully; blocking sufficiently not to let interviewees in to Dow but letting people go to classes and letting as much movement go on as could, We were attempting to prevent Dow's prescence at the University. Early in the meeting, the University security officer said he would be willing to get rid of Dow if we would go away. A lot of people applauded this. We didn't want to get arrested, we didn't want to get suspended. But a lot of people were suspicious and we asked him to get the administration to put his promise in writing. The administration refused. We were still linking arms and still letting people through. 'Very soon after that the dean of students appeared with a bull horn saying, ' This is an illegal assembly.' That's all we heard. Then the lights went out. There was a good deal of fear. We knew they had billy clubs. We didn't know what degree of strength they would exercise. With the lights off there could be a good deal of damage. The lights went on. It was just a signal. The cops attacked with absolutely no warning; with no warning that we could be arrested; with no warning that we could be hurt; with no warning that we should leave the building. If they had issued that warning things might have been different. They attacked with billy clubs. They smashed. They smashed girls. They smashed boys. They smashed people getting up to leave. They smashed people sitting. They smashed people trying to lead us out. It was a charge, and a very bloody one. Girls were hit on the head. Girls were bleeding from the vagina. One boy had his back badly hurt. People were hit on the back of the head. Some have their sight impaired. It was a bloody melee inside and we decided to move out. But his was only the beginning. It appeared that about 1500 supporting picketers had gathered while we were sitting in and that many students who weren't involved at all were outside watching. 'While we were outside speaking to the crowd telling them about the enormous brutality, many other students gathered and were standing around hooting the cops. The cops tried to charge against the students and by then there were approximately 4,000 students outside. Many were hirt. On this occassion there was absolutely no reason for the charge. There were no corridors being obstructed, nor was the general business of the University being disrupted. IT OCCURED TO US THAT IF THE UNIVERSITY REALLY CARED ABOUT ITS GENERAL BUSINESS MORE THAN ABOUT DOW RECRUITING ON CAMPUS, IT WOULD NOT HAVE ALLOWED THESE POLICE ON CAMPUS, BECAUSE THEY DID FAR MORE TO OBSTRUCT ITS FUNCTIONING THAN WE DID, WHICH SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT THE UNIVERSITY CARES ABOUT. 'As we gathered around the patrol wagon, the police used tear gas to make us disperse. They used it against anybody, people who were just walking by. And when they used it there were more charges. A lot of people were involved in this and a lot of people saw what the police did and this had a great effect on how they saw the university, BECAUSE FOR THEM THE UNIVERSITY REVEALED WHAT ITS INTERESTS WERE. 'We gathered around the patrol wagon again, some 4 or 5 thousand strong, attempting to prevent it from leaving with the 5 people they had arrested. THE INTERESTING THING WAS THAT THEY DID NOT MAKE ARRESTS OFTEN; ONLY 5. THEIR INTENTION WAS NOT TO BREAK UP THAT SIT-IN. THEIR INTENTION WAS TO WADE IN AND HURT AND THEY DID A LOT OF THAT. There was more tear gassing and more tear gassing and people stayed until 4:00 or 5:00. The tear gassing went into classes. Classes were disrupted. There was so much noise outside that classes had to end. It was a big day for the University. That night there was a meeting of between 6000 and 10,000 students near the library to plan what action should be taken. The sentiment was that whether or not one was against the war in Vietnam, whether or not one was against the Dow recruiting, the University had done enough to discredit itself and TO REVEAL FINALLY THAT THE INTERESTS OF THE STUDENTS WERE NOT ITS INTERESTS AND THAT IT HAD OTHER INTERESTS IN MIND, THE PROTECTION OF DOW'S RECRUITING FOR ONE. A strike was declared and the next day a strike was carried out.' Later in the tape four students discussed the estimates of the number of people inside the hall before the riot police struck. Estimates ranged from 200 to 400, and the inaccuracy of these figures stems from the number of office help and passersby who were watching the sin-in and who were attacked by the police as if they were participants. Everybody in the hall got it. There were stories of some cops trying to exercise some degree of restraint on other cops. Once some of these kids were down the cops wouldn't stop hitting them and then the cops had to drag off their own men to keep them from probably killing students, because most of the kids were down and they didn't stop hitting them. 'They couldn't get doctors to come up the hill from the hospital to help people. We had to find cars and it was really hysterical moment. For some reason the doctors wouldn't come up the hill. I was helping people out the door and trying to get doctors to come and they wouldn't. We had to drive students to the hospital.' The cops were going through classrooms in the buildings near where Dow Chem was stationed and clearing them out. I heard that one young cop went into a classroom where a girl was studying and demanded that she leave the building. I don't know the details of what she did then but anyway he hit her. She fell down unconscious and this young fellow was afraid he'd killed her. He started stumbling out of the building and mumbling to himself over and over, 'My God, I've killed her. My God, I've killed her.' 'PEOPLE WHO WERE SITTING IN THERE CAME TO KNOW A VERY IMPORTANT THING AND THAT IS WHEN POWER PROTECTS ITSELF IT USES POWER. THAT MEANS THAT THE RULING CLASS ISN'T GOING TO SAY WELL, YOU'RE RIGHT AND I'M WRONG.' How To Stop A War If You're REALLY Trying We are standing in the crosshairs of history. As you read these pages, there is a non-violent sit-in going on (Nov. 1-3) against the Marines recruiting in the Placement Office of the Iowa Memorial Union. It ought to be clear that this sit-in is morally justified by the nature of the Marine Corps behavior in these timer in Vietnam and elsewhere. But its moral justification is not what is at issue. The present article is an attempt at a political justification for the sin-in. The historical context from which this shift comes is what is determining its form. This is as it ought to be. In Texas, on Sept.29 -- before the Washington March and in preparation for it -- Lyndon Jonhson said, 'First, we must not mislead our enemy. Let him not think that debate and dissent will produce wavering and withdrawal. For they won't. 'Let him not think that protests will produce surrender. Because they won't ...we shall press forward... What he meant-- for those statements are not directed at Hanoi, but at us, the American people -- what he meant was: Get free of the illusion that what you the American people think will have any effect on how we, the government, do or do not prosecute that war. Get free of the illusion that you the American people have the democratic right to influence the decisions made about that war. My assumption here, of course, is that were the majority of the American people given a fair and honest chance to make up their minds, the majority of them would oppose the war. This reading of what Mr. Johnson had to say is corroborated by what happened in Washington on Oct. 22 and 22. Ever since 1962 when, under Student Peace Union auspices, 8,000 students went to Washington to protest nuclear testing and fallout shelters, the anti-war movement has devoted its dreams and its energies toward making the REALLY BIG national demonstration so large that its message could not be ignored. And group after group took up the agonizing job of walking that nightmare tightrope of coalitions that attempted to get everybody at one place and at one time. And on Oct. 21, between 200,000 and 250,000 people went to Washington. We have had the big demonstration. We had to have the big demonstration. before people could see beyond it. The demonstration established from our side of the fence what LBJ had already determined from his side-- that dissent will not deter him. Now, at all levels in the peace movement there is a tacit agreement that we gain little by sending 250,000 people down to Washington to get their heads bloodied by the 82nd Airborne. There is an awareness creeping in from Oakland, from Washington, from Wisconsin, that the authoritarian machinery of this country is perfectly willing to bloody up the heads of its own people in order to be able to prosecute this war. A parallel event happened in Iowa City last week, at the rally Oct. 18. It was the smallest anti-war rally held in this town in the last two years, and not even the attraction of Carl Oglesby as key speaker could make it otherwise. We are no longer satisfied with demonstrations of sentiment, and liberal speakers from the faculty, who irritate their consciences, and and then go home, unassuaged. We want to end that war, and we are seeking better ways of doing it. We have become convinced that the political arena is not the place to go to end it. And so we turned the National Conference for New Politics from third party organizing to community organizing. That is the context out of which the call to obstruct the Marine recruiters on campus has gone out. And it is as context and a call that is being shared throughout the country. In Oberlin, the students have obstructed the Navy recruiters. In Madison, they stopped Dow Chemical. From Connecticut a friend writes me: 'Things are happening here. We have a large group of turned on people. We had about 250 at the march in Washington. Many stayed overnight. None were arrested, but a couple were clubbed and tear gassed, including myself. We had a really Tuesday night with about 150 people. The turnout was not as good as we had expected, but the people wanted to do something. So when Dow Chemical comes to campus on Tuesday, we will be there and we will not move out of their way. The following week the Navy will be in the Student Union and we will remove them. The week after that the CIA will be here and we will have a massive sit-in (150-200 people). Besides all of this on campus, we are moving off campus. This Sunday we have set up a meeting of most of the colleges and universities in the state. We will be forming the Connecticut Resistance Movement. Our first state-wide act will be a sit-in and massive protest at the Connecticut induction center in New Haven. After that we will be going after Colt Fire Arms in Hartford. And these little events are only the beginning...' conrd pg 10, col 1