October 16–20 was called Stop the Draft Week and cards were turned in or burned all over the country. The New England Resistance brought 4000 people to a rally on Boston Common on Monday morning to hear antiwar addresses, mainly by clergymen. They then marched to the Unitarian Arlington Street Church where more than a century earlier William Ellery Channing had called for the end of slavery. Here 214 young men submitted their draft cards and 67 others burned theirs with Channing’s candlestick.
The University of Wisconsin had a sit-in against the draft in 1966 and a demonstration against the Dow Chemical Company, which made napalm, in February 1967. Now in the week of October 16, Dow recruiters would be interviewing students for jobs. On Monday a handout warned that this would be brought to campus attention on Tuesday and that Dow recruiters in the Commerce Building would be sealed off on Wednesday. The next morning 200 picketers marched in front of the building. On Wednesday they resumed the picketing. But at 10:30 about 100 entered the building, linked arms at the recruiting office, and announced that there would be no more interviews. A large crowd gathered. Chancellor William Sewell had stated that recruiters would be protected. Officials pled with the demonstrators to leave, but they refused. University police and 20 off-duty Madison cops were brought in. After lunch about 30 more city riot police in full regalia arrived. At 1:30 they charged and beat many students, clearing the Commerce Building. A large, angry crowd gathered outside and was attacked with tear gas.
Later in the afternoon 5000 students and 200 professors met in the library mall. They pledged not to give or attend classes until Dow was banned forever. This strike was successful on Thursday and Friday, but it disintegrated the next week. Later Dow recruiters returned, but to a remote building under police protection. Sewell resigned.
The federal government could hardly ignore the events at Madison and on other college campuses. McNamara informed Rostow on December 7 that the CIA had already stopped recruiting in the colleges. The secretary had “advised” Dow to abandon recruiting and believed they had accepted his advice. But he thought it would be wrong for the Department of Defense to stop all visits or even to avoid “sensitive” universities. Instead, he had established a policy based on a “careful, selected basis.”
In the East Bay the Stop the Draft Week confrontationists, veterans of Berkeley and the New Left, were tougher and more sophisticated. They had studied the new tactics of the European students and they were perversely inspired by the news that their revolutionary hero, Che Guevara, had been captured and murdered in Bolivia on October 10.
Their objective was to shut down the draft headquarters at the Oakland Armed Forces Examining Station. There was a fairly uneventful sit-in on Monday, October 16, and 124 people, including Joan Baez, were arrested. On October 16 about 2000 demonstrators met at the federal building in San Francisco. A basket circulated through the crowd to collect draft cards. U.S. attorney Cecil Poole, who was black, came out to observe. Dickie Harris, who was also black and a draft resister, approached Poole. “Brother Poole, you head nigger here?” Harris dumped the draft cards on his head. Poole turned about 400 over to the FBI.
The next day, “Bloody Tuesday,” 2500 demonstrators closed down the Oakland station for three hours. The police attacked with clubs and Mace and the demonstrators replied with cans, bottles, and smoke bombs. On Friday they came to the scene with French mobile tactics. They had helmets and hard hats, smeared their faces with vaseline against Mace, and spread ball bearings on the streets, effective against cops on horses. Between 4000 and 10,000 demonstrators choked off ten blocks around the induction center. About 2000 police officers chased the fast-moving demonstrators. The latter attacked cars, news racks, parking meters, and trees in pots. They painted CHE IS ALIVE AND WELL IN OAKLAND on sidewalks. By the end of the day, partly inspired by drugs, they exulted over “winning” the battle of the streets.
On October 27 Father Philip Berrigan, a noted crusader for peace, led three others into the Baltimore custom house where the Selective Service cards were kept. They opened drawers and drenched the 1-A files with blood. The press arrived and got photos for the papers and TV, which was the Berrigan idea. The priest and his friends were arrested and sentenced to six years in prison.
On November 14 in New York the Foreign Policy Association celebrated its 50th anniversary with a dinner meeting at the Hilton at which Dean Rusk was the featured speaker. The opportunity to attack the Establishment and the war simultaneously was impossible to resist. About 4000 activists greeted Rusk and the diners with obscenities as the police escorted them into the hotel. Using French and Dutch tactics, the demonstrators stopped traffic with police whistles, sprayed peace slogans on sidewalks, and tossed steer blood, symbolizing the blood spilled in Vietnam, on buildings and cars. Midtown Manhattan was chaos for three hours and there were many confrontations with the police. There were 46 arrests along with the injury of 21 demonstrators and 5 policemen.
The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, an umbrella organization of over 100 centrist and leftist peace groups, planned to bring Stop the Draft Week to a climax with a giant march on the Pentagon on Saturday, October 21. David Dellinger was chairman. Yaleeducated, an anarchal (nonviolent) pacifist long associated with A. J. Muste in the Fellowship for Reconciliation, and editor of Liberation, he had gone to Hanoi where he talked to Pham Van Dong and Ho Chi Minh. He had arranged for the release of three American prisoners of war. The Reverend James Bevel was national coordinator and Jerry Rubin was Washington project director. An original Yippie, Rubin came out of the Berkeley scene and had run for mayor of the town on a platform of Black Power and the legalization of marijuana. He had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in a Revolutionary War uniform blowing bubbles. Rubin said he wanted to “levitate” the Pentagon and “exorcise” its evil spirits.
Lyndon Johnson was not amused; he was enraged. The vision of a mob of “Communists” descending upon the Pentagon offended him deeply. He ordered the intelligence establishment to track the Mobilization, the Department of Justice to maintain legal coordination under Warren Christopher, and the police and the military to be at the ready with a massive display of force. Dellinger said that the FBI planted agents provocateurs inside the Mobilization.
On October 3 Ramsey Clark met with Paul Nitze of Defense, Lawson Knott of General Services, and their staffs, along with presidential aides Larry Levinson and Matthew Nimetz. They agreed that the leaders of the demonstration must obtain a permit confining its scope, that they would be denied access to the Pentagon itself and other “vital public buildings,” and that the prescribed route for the march would be from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, across the Memorial Bridge, and into the north Pentagon parking lot.
The Mobilization, according to the FBI, had other ideas. The purpose of the demonstration was to “shut down” the Pentagon. There would be two staging areas, one at the Lincoln Memorial from which the marchers would cross the Memorial Bridge, and the other from the Washington Monument over the 14th Street Bridge. They would join at the south Pentagon lot. The FBI continued: Those wishing to engage in civil disobedience would try to enter the building to sit in halls and doorways, or, if unable to enter, to block the five entrances. The demonstration would continue until Monday. If unable to reach the Pentagon, they would march on the White House. The FBI was convinced that the demonstrators would engage in violence.
The FBI’s secret informants did not get it straight. The Mobilization plan was to bring Stop the Draft Week to a head on Friday afternoon, October 20, by having a delegation in Washington for Saturday’s demonstration to present a stack of draft cards to the Attorney General. Coffin and Spock led a group of 11 to the Department of Justice at 3:25 with a briefcase they said contained 992 draft cards and copies of others turned in around the country. Clark would not meet with them, but John R. McDonough and an aide did so.
Coffin led off by stating that an increasing number of young men
had concluded that the war was illegal and immoral and, “as men of conscience, must refuse to be drafted.” Older people, like himself, agreed and supported the resisters. They had counseled the younger men to “evade the draft” and were “aiding and abetting them … in such a way as to constitute a deliberate violation of federal law.” They did this with full awareness that they could face a five-year prison term and a fine of $10,000.
McDonough said he would report this information to the Attorney General. He asked about the contents of the briefcase and was told of the draft cards. He said he could not accept them, that they must be given to local draft boards. The Mobilization group said they would leave the briefcase with its contents and departed. Two FBI agents took possession of the documents.
When the President was informed, he demanded that Clark prosecute all the “lawbreakers … firmly, promptly, and fairly.” The next day Clark gave Johnson a report on the contents of the briefcase, said the cards were being referred to Selective Service, and stated that U.S. Attorneys were prepared to prosecute both evaders and aiders and abettors.
The permit issued jointly by the National Park Service, General Services, the D.C. Police, and Arlington County, Virginia, on October 19 was restrictive. The Lincoln Memorial was the sole assembly area. The march would cross Memorial Bridge and proceed by a specified route to only the north parking area.
At 11 a.m. on October 21 the Justice Department expected a crowd of 22,000, the FBI 28,000. These figures excluded those arriving by private car as well as residents of the Washington area. Since the New York Times used a figure of 50,000 for the crowd the next day at the Lincoln Memorial, the FBI estimate seems to have been fairly close to the mark.
LBJ mobilized forces adequate to repulse a foreign invasion. The first line consisted of the park police and U.S. marshals. They were backed up by 2000 D.C. policemen together with 1700 National Guard troops. Finally, there were 6000 active Army soldiers, including elements of the 82nd Airborne. There were 2600 in and around the Pentagon, 600 alerted for the White House, 400 for the Capitol, and 2500 in reserve. For good measure there were 45 Secret Service agents in the White House, 30 to 35 in reserve, and 20 in the Executive Office Building, plus 140 White House policemen.
The FBI did not forecast the quality of the oratory at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday. The 50,000 people who gathered there, including the novelist Norman Mailer, were punished with deadening speeches. “On went the speeches,” Mailer wrote. He “had no particular idea of their order or what they said.” Dellinger, who spoke for the left wing of the peace movement, made an interesting comment. He declared that this was the end of peaceful protest. Now it would move to “confrontation . … This is the beginning of a new stage … in which the cutting edge becomes active resistance.”
Mailer found the costumes worn by hippies more interesting. Some dressed like Sgt. Pepper’s Band or as Arab sheiks or Park Avenue doormen. Others showed up in western styles—Rogers and Clark, Wyatt Earp, Daniel Boone coonskins. Confederate gray and Union blue uniforms were much in fashion. “There were Martians and Moon-men and a knight unhorsed who stalked about in the weight of real armor.”
After the oratory a much smaller group (no reliable estimates of size) gathered haphazardly and lurched their way with several stops across the bridge and into the Pentagon’s north parking lot. Most of them just stood around wondering what would happen next. SDS and a group of New York leftists, calling themselves the Revolutionary Contingent, “stormed” the Pentagon itself. Six, in fact, actually entered a side door and were immediately thrown out by U.S. marshals. As darkness fell, there were many confrontations that led to a large number of arrests. Shortly before midnight those who remained were told that the permit was about to expire and that buses were available to take them back to the city. Most left. A few remained and were arrested. The level of violence was not high. In a review of the event, Stephen Pollak wrote Clark, “I would be less than candid if I did not pass along reports that the marshals at the mall entrance, unlike the Military Police, in a few cases used more force than was warranted.”
McNamara observed the demonstrators from his office window and found them “terrifying. Christ, yes, I was scared.” At the same time he was offended by the disorder and, characteristically, he later told Shapley that the antiwar movement was “under-managed.” He said, “They did it all wrong. The way to have done it would have been Ghandi-like. Had they retained their discipline, they would have achieved their ends.” Paul Nitze also watched the demonstrators from the Pentagon, knowing that three of his children were among them.
The cost to the government for maintaining order was $1,078,500, of which $641,000 was spent by the Department of Defense. Of the 625 adults arrested, 580 were convicted of violations of federal laws, most for disorderly conduct, but some for simple assault or contempt of court. A few served time, including Mailer, who spent a night in Occaquan Prison. Some said he was either drunk or stoned during the demonstration, and his book, Armies of the Night, supports both theories. On Sunday the Johnsons drove around the Lincoln Memorial. LBJ, confusing flower children with antiwar demonstrators, came to see what a hippie looked like. Mrs. Johnson was shocked by the litter.11
About the time of the demonstration, Clark Clifford and Walt Rostow met with the President. “Recalling the great comfort he had derived from earlier meetings with several elder statesmen, including Dean Acheson and John McCloy,” Clifford wrote, “the President said he wanted to hear from some of the senior statesmen again.” He asked Clifford to organize the meeting and he and Rostow drew up a list from which he selected those he wanted. They would meet for dinner with Rusk and McNamara at the State Department on the evening of November 1 and for four hours the next day at the White House with the President. Those who attended were Acheson, General Bradley, Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Dean, former Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Justice Fortas, former Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy, and several still with the government—Harriman, Lodge, and Taylor. This was the first meeting of what came to be known as the “Wise Men.”
The session at State began with upbeat briefings on the war by General Wheeler and Carver of the CIA. The next day each of the Wise Men, according to Clifford, “told the President he should stand firm.” Even Ball did not go beyond a narrowing of bombing targets, though Harriman “remained silent during this display of unanimity, looking straight ahead.” During the discussion Johnson’s daughter Luci brought her five-month-old baby, Patrick, into the room and gave him to his grandfather. He napped quietly in the President’s arms as they talked about bombing North Vietnam.
Clifford thought the meeting was “greatly comforting to the President that he had this kind of solid support and that this was the thinking of men who had taken part in this kind of activity for a great many years.”12
16
Updating the Minimum Wage and Social Security
LYNDON Johnson, despite his eroding presidency and the budgetary squeeze, refused to surrender his Great Society. Califano put it this way:
There was no child he could not feed; no adult he could not put to work; no disease he could not cure; no toy, food, or medical device he could not make safer; no air or water he could not clean; no discriminatory barrier he could not topple—just as there was no war he could not win and no cease-fire he could not negotiate.
Each year Johnson sent Califano and his aides to the major universities to push the smart professors for new legislative ideas. “The trouble with you Harvard liberals,” he said, “is that you think there are no brains in the middle of the country. … You don’t know a goddam thing about water or power. In Brooklyn you think water comes out of a faucet and electricity out of a socket.” Califano usually returned with a stack of suggestions. They would then set up task forces to examine their feasibility and when the State of the Union rolled around in January the message was full of legislative proposals.
But, as time passed, the job grew tougher. When Califano we
nt out to the universities for ideas for 1968, all he found was “criticism of the war.” And it was easier to collect suggestions than it was to put bills through Congress. Insofar as even moderately significant legislation was concerned 1966 was not bad unless compared with the 1965 gusher; there was a marked falloff in 1967; and 1968 was pretty much a dry hole. During these years, moreover, there was no fundamental legislative program comparable to the Keynesian tax cut, the Civil Rights Act, federal aid to education, and Medicare.
There were, however, a number of important legislative intiatives in 1966 and 1967: important amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act and Social Security Act, recounted in this chapter; assistance to the arts and humanities and the establishment of public broadcasting, recounted in chapter 17; and the bold attempt to confront perhaps the nation’s most serious problem, urban decay, in the model cities program, recounted in chapter 18.1
The mid-sixties was a perfect time to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act both by raising the federal minimum wage and by expanding its coverage to millions of workers still not protected. The northern Democrats had majorities in both houses of Congress, thereby trumping the Republicansouthern Democratic coalition which had long blocked such improvements. Economic conditions could hardly have been more favorable. Substantial full employment undermined the traditional argument that the legal minimum caused unemployment. A widely used rule of thumb was that the federal minimum should be half of average hourly earnings in manufacturing. Since these earnings were rising rapidly, this justified a catchup formula for the minimum. Finally, by 1966 consumer prices had taken off on the Great Inflation, thereby eroding the real purchasing power of the FLSA rate, again supporting its increase. But now there was a new counter-argument: the deep concern of the Council of Economic Advisers over inflation and its insistence that no hike should exceed the wage-price guidepost.
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