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A NEW STAGE IN THE ANTIWAR STRUGGLE IN THE U.S.
By Joseph Hansen
The two April 15 demonstrations -one in New York and the other in San Francisco -- were the most massive turnouts of their kind in the history of the United States.
This simple fact alone shows that a new stage has opened in the struggle against the war in Vietnam. Even more is involved. The size of the demonstrations, taken in conjunction with the character of the slogans and the mood of the demonstrators, shows that a most significant turn has occurred in the general political scene in America. New radical forces are on the rise.
First as to the sheer size of the antiwar rally in New York. Dave Dellinger, a vice-chairman of the Spring Mobilization Committee which sponsored the demonstration, announced from the platform in the United Nations Plaza late in the afternoon that 500,000 persons were participating at that moment.
The most conservative estimates were 250,000 to 500,000 while other figures ranged from 500,000 to as high as 750,000.
The big capitalist press found it extremely difficult to minimize the massiveness of the demonstration. The New York Times (April 16) tried reporting only that part of the news it saw fit to print. Police officials at the United Nations Plaza, said the Times, estimated the number of demonstrators at "between 100,000 and 125,000." Rather lamely, the Times explained: "It was difficult to make any precise count because people were continually leaving and entering the rally area." The UN Plaza will hold a crowd of 125,000. This was packed to capacity *y early afternoon.
In addition, all the side streets were packed to capacity.
‘That was not all. The marchers extended an entire two miles from the UN to Central Park, and they were proceeding in much heavier ranks than the sixteen abreast that is normal for New York parades.
Still another most impressive figure must be added. At the assembly area, Sheep Meadow in Central Park, the crowd of 70,000 appeared to remain stationery during the afternoon as fresh masses of people kept pouring in from subways, buses and on foot.
The parade started at noon. It was marching into the UN Plaza after the speeches were over and the rally had been officially ended. The final contingent, a section of doctors, nurses and hospital personnel, refused to obey police orders to disband "because it was over."
The head of the contingent told police that it was not over until they had entered the Plaza. In heavy rain they moved forward in formation without breaking ranks. That was six p.m.
In San Francisco it was the same. The march there, drawing principally on the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and therefore a much less heavily populated area than the East, nevertheless filled the entire length of Market Street for the afternoon with the biggest parade in the history of the city -- 75,000 persons.
The giant size of the demonstration in New York was such as to completely shatter the routine practice of the communications media of singling out minor incidents and blowing them all out of proportion so as to obscure the main facts.
A few tiny bands of ultrarightists, who concentrated at several points along the line of march to heckle, throw paint and eggs (and at one place bits of metal from a construction site) succeeded only in setting off by way of contrast their own impotence. Consisting of fifty to sixty members in each group, the two or three bands sought to provoke incidents, in some instances with the press and TV camermen obviously tipped off in advance. Most of the marchers and onlookers scarcely noticed these occurrences. They were absorbing their own experience -- something completely new to the overwhelming majority of them -- the feeling of the weight of their own numbers. |
It was the same at the assembly point in Central Park. A small band of ultrarightists tried to provoke some incidents. The huge throng was scarcely aware of their existence.
The ultrarightists set off a smoke bomb. Some of the crowd thought it was a colorful touch conceived by one of the contingents like the balloons } painted with antiwar slogans.
The press tried, naturally, to make something big of the draft-card burning which far less than a hundred draftees engaged in. But the crowd in Sheep Meadow paid little attention. Some thought that the smoke bomb might be from the draft cards. The draft-card burning ceremony, in
fact was not an official part of the protest demonstration.
There were some historic firsts besides the size of the demonstration as a whole.
The police were extremely cautious and respectful. The crowd was in a holiday mood -- they were really meeting each other -- interested in making contacts, in talking. The police evidently considered it best not to do anything to change that mood.
Thus they had set up their wooden parriers marked "Police Line -- Do Not Cross" throughout Sheep Meadow. The aim was to begin separating and closing in the crowd.
The throng was so huge, however, that the police withdrew. Many of the wooden barriers were knocked over and used as footwalks to cross the large puddles of water remaining from the heavy rain the night before.
More significantly, for the first time in the history of the park, the police permitted the sale of literature. All the radical groups were there with booths or stands and with their members threading the crowds selling literature. Among the most conspicuous were those selling The Militant with its lead story about the case of Pfc. Howard Petrick, the GI faced with court-martial for expressing his antiwar views. ,
A booth marked "Revolutionary Literature" on one of the paths under the trees drew attention with its wide display of books by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Castro, and pamphlets of the Socialist Workers party. Sales were brisk. The National Broadcasting Company featured it in its nationwide TV newscast which lasted a half hour, a most unusual amount of time to give any subject in a news report.
The crowd was a most friendly one; as indicated above, one of the main interests being in meeting each other. But this was only the other side to their extremely serious mood.
The tone of the demonstration was not set by the "hippies" with their daffodils and odd dress, although they turned out en masse. The tone was set by the very young people, the bulk of them of college and high school age, who rallied in such numbers as to wash out even the hippies.
Not less than three-fourths of the demonstrators were in this age bracket. And for most of them it was their first, their very first, big demonstration if not their very first action of any kind along these lines.
The slogans, too, reflected the underlying current of extreme seriousness. The slogans were far different from the pacifist slogans characteristic of the parades staged and dominated by such. organizations as SANE only a few years ago.
In fact the slogans were quite different from those at the beginning of the antiwar protest movement that was touched off by Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam.
At that time, the emphasis was placed on "negotiations." Only a relatively small group, consisting of the Socialist Workers party, the Young Socialist Alliance and sympathetic currents pressed for the slogan, "Withdraw U.S. Troops Now!"
In the April 15 demonstration, the latter slogan-was one of the main ones, sharing prominence with "Stop the War!" and "Stop the Bombing!"
The shift was most dramatically illustrated by the quip repeated by several of the speakers at the UN Plaza which drew a roar of laughter from the crowd: "If you were being raped which would you prefer, prolonged negotiations or immediate withdrawal?"
The mood was indicated again by the response of the demonstrators to the speakers. The milder, more standard pacifist declarations, such as has been the stockin-trade of the Rev. Martin Luther King, fell rather flat. Militant declarations drew heavy applause.
The strongest response went to attacks leveled at President Johnson. Thus when Stokeley Carmichael spoke a few truths about Rusk, McNamara and Johnson, he received tremendous applause.
Similar response went to a savagely ironic indictment of Johnson made by Professor Howard Zinn, author of the book on the Vietnam war, The Logic of Withdrawal.
The crowd also gave a most appreciative reception to the straightforward class-struggle speech made by Cleveland Robinson, the Secretary-Treasurer of District 65 CIO, chairman of the Negro- American Labor Council and one of the vicechairmen of the Spring Mobilization Committee. He indicted the war profiteers. It is the poor, he said, who do both the dying and the paying for the war.
The common political aim of all participants in the immense demonstration -to register opposition to President Johnson and his war on the mainland of Asia -- was one of the most significant facts noted by seasoned political observers. It portends much for the future.
The size of the demonstration, the big advance made in the nature of the slogans, and the generally militant note struck from the platform, marked the merging of the more active sectors of the civil-rights movement with the antiwar movement.
There was an obvious drawing together of King, Carmichael and McKissick in face of the attack from the right wing. The tremendous turnout, of course, helped consolidate the merger of the two movements. King, referring to the huge civil-rights demonstration in Washington in 1963 said that big as that rally had been (more than 100,000), it was nothing compared to this. This was the truth; he was speaking to the largest crowd he ever appeared before. This was signaled by the decision of Stokely Carmichael, Floyd McKissick and Martin Luther King to become sponsors of the April 15 demonstration and to participate actively in leading it. The international impact of the giant demonstration cannot yet be assessed. Chairman Dellinger reported that messages of solidarity had been received from "all countries." As an indication he read a statement from 743 members of Parliament. This development, foreseen by a sector of the leadership from the beginning, constitutes an enormous step forward for the antiwar movement. As proved in the most incontestable way April 15, it means a greatly broadened movement and the involvement of new contingents nunbering into the hundreds of thousands.
On the stand were three members of the International War Crimes Tribunal -- Dave Dellinger, Stokely Carmichael and Isaac Deutscher. In mentioning the tribunal the hope was expressed that it would now get a much more favorable response than up o now. The best most conscious representatives of the capitalist class were, of course, immediately aware of its significance. The three leaders, particularly the Rev. Martin Luther King came under
Those who worked so hard to orgaheavy fire. nize the demonstration have the most solid reason to feel elated. They did a superb job from all points of view. Old timers could not recall any nationwide demonstration of its kind that came anywhere near it in efficiency. This was all the more amazing in view of the spontaneity of the response. Red-baiting was tried. They were getting involved with the reds in the antiwar movement!
But the policy of nonexclusion has become so firmly established that it was simple to brush the red-baiting aside. James Bevel, the national director of the Spring Mobilization Committee, answered for all when he admitted that there would be reds in the march April 15 -- genuine Sioux Indians.
Those who from the beginning held to the course of keeping the antiwar movement on the road of demonstrations rather than dissipation in ineffective "community work" or doorbell ringing for "peace" candidates of the Democratic party were vin- An effort was made to mobilize the dicated completely. most conservative sectors of the Negro community against King. The NAACP and Ralph Bunche, Undersecretary for Political Affairs at the United Nations, spearheaded an attack on the "tactical error" King was making in trying to link the civil-rights movement with the antiwar movement. Vice-president Hubert Humphrey joined in this -- while touring with one of the worst racists, Lester Maddox of Georgia. Humphrey made the press with his assurance to Maddox that there was "lots of room" for both of them in the Democratic party.
On the platform in the UN Plaza, King gave his answer by defending his move and underscoring the common interests of the civil-rights and antiwar movements.
The crowd got a big laugh when another speaker pointed out that at least in Sweden they had recognized that the two movements had something in common when they awarded King the Nobel Peace ize.
Members of pacifist organizations who stood up to pressure from the right and refused to bow to red-baiting or to arguments about the need to get "senators and congressmen" on to the platform can stand up proudly. Life itself proved they were right.
As for the ultralefts who withdrew to the sidelines to indulge in epithetmongering about a "sellout" and "betrayal," they testified in their own way as to how wrong they were. They decided to come in at the last moment. It was amusing to see them at the march, doing their best to attract the attention of the crowd assembled through the work of others.
The American Trotskyists especially can feel proud, for their role is being increasingly recognized by both foes and friends as representing a most serious and politically alive tendency. Their determination was undoubtedly decisive at several crucial turns, when the antiwar movement took unavoidable dips and when it seemed that the road of demonstrations was lead~
ing nowhere simply because they did not seem to have impact on the bird brain in the White House.
It is precisely at this moment when a huge victory has been scored that it is appropriate to take a look ahead.
There is not the slightest question that the next big goal should be to bring the labor movement into the antiwar struggle. This was the big missing component April 15. Only the advance guard were there. But this advance guard also gives the brightest promise that the most powerful force of all in American society -- the ranks of organized labor -- may soon be brought into play.
When this happens, it is not likely that even Johnson will dare to look in another direction.
But even if he does begin to indicate that he is preparing to draw back it may be too late. The April 15 demonstration was the handwriting on the wall.
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