Dangerous Grounds

by Parsons, David L. ;

  Perhaps the most frightening incident of violence in the GI coffeehouse network’s history occurred at the Fort Dix Coffeehouse in Wrightstown, New Jersey, in early 1970. On February 8, six men in military uniforms, including a captain and a sergeant first class, entered the coffeehouse and proceeded to “harass the hell out of the GIs,” ripping newspapers out of their hands and tossing them on the floor, preventing phone calls from being made, and attempting to provoke fights. After coffeehouse staff evicted them, the men replied, “We will return.”27 One week later, the coffeehouse was celebrating Valentine’s Day with a crowd of about thirty GIs and their dates. At approximately 8:45 p.m., the coffeehouse door opened and what appeared to be a metal canister rolled into the center of the floor. Several GIs recognized the canister as a grenade and attempted to throw it out the door. Before they could, though, the grenade exploded, seriously injuring two Fort Dix soldiers, Privates Donald Hutchinson and James Shoenung, and one civilian, nineteen-year-old Mildred Baker.28 No one was ever arrested for the grenade attack.

  In a 1970 Los Angeles Free Press interview, Howard Levy of the USSF was asked what he thought civilians could do to support antiwar GIs. He replied, “I think civilians must appreciate the fact that within the past two weeks, the MDM [Movement for a Democratic Military] office in Oceanside, California, had twelve rounds of .45 caliber bullets fired into it. One GI was hurt, but he’s doing fine now. Recently, the Fort Dix Coffeehouse in New Jersey was subjected to a hand grenade attack. The coffeehouse at Fort Knox, Kentucky, was firebombed three times.” Levy and the USSF wanted to convince civilians that GI activism was an important part of a larger movement for social justice, linking the reactionary violence to which it was subjected to that experienced by other revolutionary groups, such as the Black Panthers in Oakland, California. “There’s an enormous amount of repression coming down on the GI movement and the civilians who support that movement,” Levy emphasized. “That repression is exceeded only by the repression that’s coming down on the Black Panthers. It is therefore of extreme importance that civilians, in any way possible, demonstrate their solidarity, their support for the GI movement.”29 To organizers, the fact that coffeehouses were subjected to violent attacks proved the desperate need for civilian-supported meeting spaces for antiwar soldiers.

  While extralegal assaults on coffeehouses were the subject of sensational headlines, it was official harassment, in the form of constant arrests, that proved far more financially taxing for coffeehouse supporters. By a large margin, bail money and legal defense accounted for the most substantial portion of the USSF’s budget, as coffeehouse organizers around the country, including GIs, were routinely thrown in jail by local and military police. The arrests were so frequent and carried such high bonds for relatively minor infractions (most often for violations like trespassing, loitering, or being a public nuisance) that many organizers suspected a coordinated effort on the part of local and military authorities to make life nearly impossible for anyone associated with a coffeehouse.30

  Indeed, as government records reveal, suspicions of a conspiracy were sometimes well founded. Federal authorities had their eyes on the coffeehouse phenomenon from the moment it first appeared in Columbia, South Carolina, and took immediate action to disrupt its effectiveness. At the time, the FBI’s counterintelligence program was operating around the country under director J. Edgar Hoover’s orders to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” subversive political organizations. In July 1968, the director issued to all FBI field offices a letter titled “Disruption of the New Left” that included specific plans for FBI agents to undermine the activities of antiwar groups. Hoover singled out the GI coffeehouse network as a target for special attention: “New Left groups are attempting to open coffeehouses near military bases in order to influence members of the Armed Forces. Wherever these coffeehouses are, friendly news media should be alerted to them and their purpose. In addition, various drugs, such as marijuana, will probably be utilized by individuals running the coffeehouses or frequenting them. Local law enforcement authorities should be promptly advised whenever you receive an indication that this is being done.”31 Federal agents thus became one part of a coordinated effort to harass antiwar activists at coffeehouse locations around the country. Of course, each coffeehouse project had a unique local experience with harassment and intimidation, experiences that ran the gamut from relatively benign (angry letters in the local newspaper) to downright frightening (arrest and imprisonment on felony charges). The common thread through all this harassment, though, was a consistent underlying message: GI coffeehouses and their supporters were not welcome in America’s military towns.

  “OFF LIMITS”: THE SHELTER HALF CATCHES HELL

  In January 1970, the Shelter Half coffeehouse in Tacoma, Washington, became the first GI coffeehouse project declared officially “off limits” by military authorities. A critical component of the military’s argument for the coffeehouse’s restricted status was that its staff members directly counseled soldiers to commit crimes (specifically, going AWOL or otherwise refusing duty). In the weeks leading up to a scheduled hearing on the coffeehouse’s restricted status, a number of undercover agents visited the coffeehouse and attempted to engage staff members in various criminal activities, from drug dealing to promoting armed insurrection on base. Well accustomed to these kinds of tactics, the staff eventually held a press conference to emphasize that the coffeehouse did not promote desertion and in fact encouraged disaffected GIs to explore the military’s available legal channels.32

  To the operators of the Shelter Half, the military’s aggressive campaign against the coffeehouse was obviously political, intended to blunt the impact of the antiwar movement’s efforts to work with soldiers at Fort Lewis. Matthew Rinaldi, a civilian organizer who worked at the Shelter Half during its first two years in town, pointed out to the Tacoma News Tribune that the military’s “off limits” designation marked a significant change in policy. Historically, the military had deemed businesses to be “off limits” only in the cases of houses of prostitution, homosexual bars, and places of known narcotic activity. By attempting to ban soldiers from going to the Shelter Half, military officials widened their definition of potentially harmful establishments to include politically themed coffeehouses. “The military is blatantly and admittedly moving for political reasons in this case. We consider this a test case because if the government is successful here it could move against the moratoriums and political meetings and the entire anti-war movement,” Rinaldi explained, echoing a widely held suspicion among coffeehouse organizers and others in the GI movement that the federal government (specifically, the Nixon White House) was behind the more aggressive administrative attacks against their organizations and members.33

  In the month leading up to the scheduled “off limits” hearing, organizers at the Shelter Half, along with a number of soldiers from Fort Lewis who regularly visited the coffeehouse, initiated a publicity campaign and demonstrations to call attention to the military’s escalating policies. In special issues of locally produced GI newspapers, both GIs and civilians defended the coffeehouse’s right to exist and reminded Fort Lewis soldiers that the Shelter Half would remain open to them regardless of the army’s designation. GI writers cast the coffeehouse’s struggles in the context of the larger GI movement, asserting that the army’s campaign against the coffeehouse was part of an effort to silence dissent among soldiers and limit their access to critiques of the war: “The brass are trying to tell us who we can talk with and what we can read. The Shelter Half is one of the links between the GI movement and the civilian movement. They provide material and moral support for our struggle. Now the military wants to keep us from our meeting place. They’re afraid of what will happen when we will no longer be used as robots and slaves. But they can’t stop us from getting together. The Shelter Half is ours.”34 By threatening to ban soldiers from visiting the coffeehouse, officials at Fort Lewis inadvertently helped c
all attention, for many soldiers, to the Shelter Half’s important role in the local GI movement. The coffeehouse’s fight against military authority echoed the local GI movement’s own efforts to secure civil liberties for enlisted men.

  As the Shelter Half’s January 22 hearing approached, its operators continued to mount their publicity campaign to defend the coffeehouse, helping mobilize the Seattle-Tacoma area’s robust antiwar community. A group of activist attorneys volunteered their pro bono legal services, and the American Servicemen’s Union held regular meetings at the coffeehouse to discuss the defense strategy. In concert with these actions, a large group of students at the University of Washington in Seattle helped organize an on-campus event to publicize the coffeehouse’s fight and bring attention to the harassment faced by dissident soldiers. This event, billed as “the Trial of the Army,” ended up becoming, for a number of reasons, one of the most successful and important public demonstrations in the history of GI activism.35

  Held on January 21, 1970 (one day before the originally scheduled military hearing), the mock trial was, at its heart, an act of guerrilla theater, one of the New Left’s favorite forms of public satire. The “Trial of the Army” parodied the military’s proposed “off limits” order, using the Shelter Half’s persecution to point out military hypocrisy. On the stage of the Husky Ballroom at the center of the university campus, a “jury” of thirteen active-duty servicemen listened to testimony from a variety of witnesses who spoke about daily life in the Vietnam War–era U.S. Army, including conditions in prison stockades, racism, harassment, and, of course, the experience of the war itself.36 Hundreds of civilians, students, and soldiers crowded into the space, raising their fists and chanting revolutionary slogans in response to each of the speakers. The most electrifying moment occurred when an AWOL GI, who had escaped from an armed guard at Fort Lewis a week earlier and was at that moment a fugitive from military justice, took the stage surrounded by ten uniformed GI “bodyguards.” His voice shaking, he told the crowd of his terror at being hunted by military police for not wanting to go to Vietnam.37

  More than fifty local GIs risked punishment and harassment to speak at the Shelter Half–sponsored “Trial of the Army.” One of these soldiers, Private Wade Carson, went to extraordinary lengths to participate in the event. In the days leading up to the trial, Carson was arrested on post and held in pretrial confinement after an officer witnessed him handing a single copy of Fed Up! to another Fort Lewis GI. Unlike other GIs then being punished for various crimes, Carson was not confined to the stockade but was rather issued an order that he could not leave the post, even during off-duty hours. He was also assigned a personal guard by military officials, who ordered the guard to make sure Carson did not speak to any other soldiers. Despite being held under these conditions, Carson was able to arrange a visit with a Shelter Half attorney, who helped him to covertly record a politically charged statement on audiotape. The tape was played as the first “witness” during the mock trial just days later, Carson’s disembodied voice a stark reminder of the treatment often given to political dissidents within the armed forces.38 Carson’s alleged deception in recording the message only added to the ire directed at him from post authorities, who confined him in the stockade after learning of the tape’s existence. Though the details of Carson’s case were extraordinary, most of the soldiers who participated in the Shelter Half’s mock trial reported some form of official or unofficial recrimination in the weeks following the demonstration.39

  The Shelter Half’s “Trial of the Army” marked the apex of a month-long media campaign by coffeehouse organizers and supporters, and the resulting publicity seemed to make an impact on the official army position toward GI coffeehouses. A few days before the planned hearing, the Armed Forces Disciplinary Board delivered a letter to the Shelter Half, reporting that the “off limits” hearing had been “indefinitely postponed.” The Shelter Half’s seeming victory marked an important moment for the GI coffeehouse movement, as military authorities backed off the aggressive tactics taken toward off-base meeting places, of which the Shelter Half’s proposed “off limits” designation was only one example.40

  Perhaps most important, the Shelter Half’s brief experience with official military repression contributed to an outburst of political organizing and demonstrations throughout the Pacific Northwest that reflected the particular strength and diversity of the region’s radical communities. The “Trial of the Army” showcased this diverse local presence, as groups representing a wide range of left-oriented interests came together to show support for a threatened institution. In the GI underground press and at the mock trial itself, the coffeehouse’s struggle and the challenges faced by the GI movement were explicitly connected to working-class and related liberation movements. At the event, a representative from the United Farm Workers, Dale Van Pelt, spoke at length about the national grape boycott, comparing poor agricultural laborers to the exploited “grunts” of a working-class army and proposing that a union model of labor organization, like that being built by the American Servicemen’s Union, could help ameliorate these shared injustices.41 Another speaker announced the formation of an all-Indian GI organization, Hew-Kekaw-Na-Yo (“to resist”); the group went on to publish a widely read, if briefly produced, GI newspaper called Yah-Hoh throughout 1970.42 Yah-Hoh called attention to the specific issues faced by Native American soldiers and contributed to a surge of specialized GI publications covering an expansive set of ethnic, racial, and cultural categories characteristic of the American political landscape in the early 1970s.43 The Shelter Half’s comparatively small battle with military authorities had sparked an intense local reaction that situated and articulated the coffeehouse’s predicament as part of a range of critical issues facing American society during the Vietnam War era.

  A “CESSPOOL OF EVIL”: THE UFO COFFEEHOUSE ON TRIAL

  The UFO coffeehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, caught the attention of officials in Washington when the Fort Jackson Eight case became national news in 1969. Shortly after the case’s conclusion, the army issued the first federal guidelines on dissent during the Vietnam era. Commanders at army posts around the country received an official directive, referred to as “Guidance on Dissent,” that specifically addressed antiwar activity among soldiers and how best to handle it. In categorizing the different manifestations of dissent found on and around army posts, the directive listed the two most significant threats as “possession and distribution of political materials” and “coffeehouses.”44 In keeping with its overall strategy of quiet containment, the directive acknowledged that soldiers were technically permitted to visit coffeehouses and other “off-post gathering places,” as they were entitled to constitutional protections that included freedom of speech and association. “Severe disciplinary action in response to a relatively insignificant manifestation of dissent,” the directive continued, “can have a counter productive effect on other members of the Command, because the reaction appears out of proportion to the threat which the dissent represents. Thus, such disproportionate actions may stimulate further breaches of discipline.”45 Nonetheless, the directive also left a clear opening for local commanders to declare coffeehouses “off-limits” if they decided that “the activities taking place there include counseling members to refuse to perform duty or to desert, or otherwise involve acts with a significant adverse effect on soldier health, morale, welfare.”46

  After the Fort Jackson Eight were released from the stockade, the UFO coffeehouse experienced a conspicuous increase in harassment by undercover FBI agents, local police, and civilians. UFO staff members noticed “straight people trying to act real cool” and were well aware that, in the UFO, they were often surrounded by undercover police and government plants.47 Often agents would show up at the UFO dressed in rather obvious “radical” garb, attempting to infiltrate the staff by volunteering for work and mouthing extreme leftist rhetoric. As one staff member later recalled, “They [undercover infiltrators] were so
eager to be useful and accepted that whenever we had a really nasty chore, we’d just give it to one of them. I used to think I was really popular. It was only later that I learned all those guys were being paid to be my friends.”48

  Government records reveal that the UFO staff were right to be paranoid: throughout the few years of its existence in Columbia, the UFO coffeehouse was aggressively investigated by all levels of state, local, and federal government. The FBI supplied local police with information on social activities engaged in by UFO staff, hoping to arrest them on drug charges.49 Federal agents collected detailed profiles on the staff’s political beliefs, sexual preferences, and travel plans and attacked the coffeehouse’s finances, sending information to the IRS that taxes had not been paid on admission fees for live performances.50 In addition to the undercover infiltrators on volunteer duty, several plainclothes agents (a mixture of local police, army intelligence, and FBI) visited the coffeehouse daily,51 and a rotating group of military police officers stood guard outside the UFO’s doors to observe and take note of the coffeehouse’s patrons.52 The UFO’s constant, nearly-comic endurance of government surveillance and infiltration was even noted by visiting writer Norman Mailer, who began his August 1969 lecture at the coffeehouse by sardonically asking any undercover agents in the audience to stand and identify themselves.53

  The intense law enforcement campaign took a heavy toll on the UFO and its staff. The close relationship between authorities at Fort Jackson and local police allowed for a nearly endless variety of legal harassment. Colonel Angelo Perri was acting chief of staff at Fort Jackson during the height of the army’s concern with the UFO problem. He later explained, “[We] just called the police department, the chief, and he closed the coffeehouse. And the way they did it . . . the fire department went in, and said, ‘Ah! Fire hazard here, fire hazard there, you know, gotta be closed.’ Whether it was true or not, you know, you could go to court and sue them to reopen it.”54 In addition to being shut down for fire hazards and other violations, the coffeehouse’s staff members were often personally cited on similarly minor charges that nonetheless carried costly fines.