antiwar forces in scores of cities across the United States took various protest actions against the war machine. These led to large-scale flareups on several campuses from the east coast to the west.
Draft cards were burned or deposited with federal officials in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Washington, Denver, Minneapolis, Portland (Oregon), as well as in several European capitals. In San Francisco 1,000 demonstrators handed the U.S. Attorney a basket containing 180 draft cards. In Los Angeles police arrested nineteen persons for staging a sit-down in front of the Armed Forces induction center.
The most violent protest of this kind took place in downtown Oakland where 3,000 antiwar demonstrators clashed with helmeted police, using clubs and chemical sprays, when they tried to close down the induction center.
Many had come from the Berkeley University campus by bus where an allnight rally had been held in defiance of a court order. A Supreme Court judge had issued the order after Oakland police had arrested 125 demonstrators, including folk singer Joan Baez, the day before. It forbade the university to make its facilities available for any meetings attacking the draft laws. Although the Berkeley chancellor canceled permission for a rally in the Studenc Union, the students held one in the open air outside Sproul Hall, the traditional staging area for protest rallies in recent years.
In their clash with the Oakland cops more than a score of the demonstrators had to be treated for injuries.
The University of Wisconsin and
Brooklyn College of New York were likewise
the scenes of stormy campus actions. Stu-
dents boycotted classes at Wisconsin the
day after police attempted to break up a
demonstration against job recruiting by
the Dow Chemical Company, manufacturers
of napalm used in Vietnam. The striking
students paraded in front of the academic
buildings and the Madison police head-
quarters, bearing signs saying "Fight
Might with Right, Strike!" and "Hell, No."
On October 21 almost 2,000 students and
professors marched on the state capital
protesting the use of police on the campus
and demanding the lifting of all reprisals
against the demonstrators.
The movement at Brooklyn College
was touched off by a protest against the
presence of two Navy recruiting officers
on the campus. When other students came
to the support of one of their leaders
who had been suspended by a college of-
ficer, police rushed in, beat boys and
girls, and dragged forty of them out of
the building into patrol wagons. Two pro-
fessors who objected to the brutality
against women students were likewise ar-
rested.
The next day virtually the entire
student body went on strike which shut
down academic activities. Their united
and militant action resulted in victory
when the Brooklyn College president agreed
to drop all charges against the protesters.
Commenting on the "storm trooper"
response of police in many cities to the
student demonstrators, the New York Post
columnist Harriet Van Horne wrote: "How
sad it is that