Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me
no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with
the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and
Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee
are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its
opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in
relation to Vietnam.
The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most
difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily
assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor
does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist
thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the
issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict
we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that
the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak
with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we
must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a
significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying
of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of
conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is,
let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its
guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so
close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and
to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from
the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my
path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are
you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace
and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they
ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am
nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not
really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that
they do not know the world in which they live.
In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to
state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This
speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed
to China or to Russia.
Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a
collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North
Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they
can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable
reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give
eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and
take on both sides.
Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow
Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has
exacted a heavy price on both continents.
A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was
a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty
program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in
Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle
political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never
invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures
like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic
destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of
the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me
that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was
sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in
extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the
black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight
thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found
in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the
cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die
together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.
So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize
that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face
of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my
experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last
three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men
I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have
tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social
change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and
rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive
doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their
questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the
violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the
greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of
those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands
trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to
exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a
group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our
motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our
vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America
would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were
loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with
Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-America will be!
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity
and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally
poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it
destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet
determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working
for the health of our land.
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not
enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot
forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work
harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that
takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to
live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the
relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes
marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do
not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for
their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have
they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully
that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a
faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with
them my life?
Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery
to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be
true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God.
Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and
brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for
his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound
by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which
go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the
weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no
document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to
understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that
peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but
simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three
continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be
no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their
broken cries.
They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed
their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation,
and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even
though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of
freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its
reconquest of her former colony.
Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for
independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has
poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected
a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had
been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by
clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new
government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.
For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of
independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive
effort to recolonize Vietnam.
Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs.
Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the
reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and
military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be
paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.
After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would
come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States,
determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants
watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen
man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out
all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss
reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S.
influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the
insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may
have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real
change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in
support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular
support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of
peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and
consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and
apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps
where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed
by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.
They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must
weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.
They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower
for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly
children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless,
without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children,
degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters
to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to
put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we
test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new
tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent
Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We
have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the
nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church.
We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their
women and children and killed their men. What liberators?
Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical
foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the
concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan
to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such
thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These
too are our brothers.
Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have
been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely
anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America
when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to
bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our
condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe
in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were
nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them
with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we
pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their
feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we
supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own
computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.
How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twentyfive percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must
they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of
Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly
organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak
of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta.
And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form
without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political
goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded.
Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political
myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to
see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of
ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own
condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of
the brothers who are called the opposition.
So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines
endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak
for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their
distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to
independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership
in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the
willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French
domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they
controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at
Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which
would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they
realized they had been betrayed again.
When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.
Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American
troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the
Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not
begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved
into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North
Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when
they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of
peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing
international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the
bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion
strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the
most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of
bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to
give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who
are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else.
For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the
brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to
destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a
short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.
Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among
Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the
wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.
This Madness Must Cease
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and
brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid
waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for
the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and
death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it
stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my
own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them
wrote these words:
"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in
the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their
friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so
carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are
incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again
be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and
militarism."
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we
have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal
expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking
that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear
installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the
world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and
deadly game we have decided to play.
The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It
demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in
Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The
situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.
In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in
bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our
government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating
ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:
1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the
atmosphere for negotiation.
3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by
curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial
support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful
negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
5. Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with
the 1954 Geneva agreement.
Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to
any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation
Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We
most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if
necessary.
Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge
our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to
raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be
prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest
possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our
nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious
objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than
seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all
who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I
would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and
seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not
false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our
nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the
protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on
what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say
we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more
disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the
American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing
clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be
concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and
Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be
marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless
there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts
take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation
was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen
emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military
"advisers" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments
accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells
why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why
American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in
Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come
back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution
impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of
those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and
the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a
nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from
a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and
computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than
people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being
conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of
many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good
Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come
to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not
be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True
compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial.
It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true
revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and
wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual
capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America,
only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries,
and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin
America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has
everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of
values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences
is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's
homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of
people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields
physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with
wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money
on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this
revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from
reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the
pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with
bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is
not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or
nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided
passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations.
These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not
call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in
the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers
to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest
defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must
with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice
which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems
of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of
justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are
rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We
in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort,
complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the
Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world
have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only
Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our
failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our
only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a
sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust
mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every
moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the
rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must
become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding
loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe,
race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for
all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by
the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an
absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of
some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great
religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key
that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-ChristianJewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle
of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and
knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one
another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to
worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are
made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of
nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee
says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good
against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory
must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the
fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a
thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us
standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of
men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to
pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached
bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words:
"Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our
neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice
today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in
Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our
doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful
corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might
without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful - struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait
eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the
struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate
against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be
another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment
to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it
otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.
And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending
cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be
able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of
brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all
over America and all over the world, when "justice will roll down like waters, and
righteousness like a mighty
I l6
IMAGINATION OF THE NEW LEFT
system in which parties come and go, but the state (i.e. the Fifth Republic)
remains intact, a normal occurrencein the United States,but not in France
(where the headsof government haveperiodically reconstirutednew republics
in accordancewith new historical conjunctures).
A further problem encounteredby those whose aspirationsresemblethe
valueswhich emergedin May 1968 (self-managementand inrernarionalcooperation ) is the strong showing made by the National Front in the elecrionsof
1986. Their l0 percentof rhe vote (roughly the sameasthat receivedby the
Communists) indicatesthat a significanr number of people sharethe Front's
anti-immigrant and militarisric sentiments. Whether or not the National
Front's share of votes increasesin coming elections, there will remain the
ethnocentric dimension of French culrure, a dimension which even parties of
the Left-like the Communisrs-have yer to free themselvesfrom.
Without a popular movemenr mobilized ro rransform everyday parrerns
of interaction, even if a Socialistgovernment is again rnandaredro rule France,
such a government would, at besr,provide nothing more than a more humane
meansof modernizing archaic social relations in France while preserving the
existing structural imperatives of profit and domination. Ar worsr, a new
Socialistgovernment would merely be toleratedby the elecrorateasa meansof
checking the far Right. The five years of experiencegeneraredby rhe Socialists'tenure from 1981 to 1986 provide ample evidenceof their qualitative
similarity to other political parries.The Socialists'nationalizationscan evenbe
seenas following in the tradirion of Louis XIV (the "sun king" under whom
classicalFrench culture reachedits high point, and the absolutemonarchy was
consolidated).Louis XIV's financeminister crearedmany state-ownedindustries, as did de Gaulle, who nationalized Renault and other major industries
after World War II. Nationalization, in conrrasrro socialization,leaveseveryday life ensnaredin an increasinglyadminisrered(rather rhan self-determined)
socialreality, and the possibiliry of more freedom is frustrated by the growth
of the state.
Rather than seekingto srimularethe emergenceof a popular mobilization
aimed ar transforming France, Mitterrand's reforms-particularly his concessions at Pfogoff and Larzac-were designed ro quiet well organized and
widely supported grassrootsmovements, not to empower rhem. Is it surprising that Mitterrand and the Socialists,like any orher polirical party, sought to
avoid another period of generalizedinsurgencyl
For anyone to think that a reperition of the May events is out of the
questionwould bc a grave misrake.Given rhe intensificationof somc of the
samecultural contradictions which exploded in 1968, such a scenariomay be
realistic,but in the absenceof organizaiionsand leadershippreparedro provide
a framework for the transformarion of the French stare, a new explosion
would be unable to translate popular aspirations into reality. Indeed, the
ensuing polirical crisis might even be resolved in a regressivedirecrion. History might repearirseli bur nrt ashasbeensaidbefore:rhe firsr rime astragedy,
the second as farce. Rather, it might well become: the firsr time as erls, the
secondas rDaas.
T'ro'y;if "
'uio.nu
(PIf'
n:^:::'r!
i7
Chapter 4
"a)::;: MH'w)
7, trrt knrsrtt(tctf
Tne
IYewLnm
IN THE
Uxrcno STATES:
Me,Y7970
Tha crisison American campusesha no parallel in this history of the
nation. This crisishasrootsin dioisionsof American societyasdeepasany
sincethe ciQil war. The diQisionsare reflectedin 1)iolentactsand harsh
rhcrorie, and in the enmity of thosaAmericans u;ho seethemseh)esas
occupyingopposingcamps.Campusunrest rdlects and increasesa mlre
neu ttiolenceand
proioL"i
'griuing ti;i;t in-the nation as a uhole. . .'We fear
of understanding
crisis
this
if
continues,
trend
.
.lf
this
enmity .
indurei the ttery surttittal of the nation uill be threatened'
-The President's Commission on Campus unrest'
September1970
Two yearsafter the French May, the United Statesexperiencedwhat is today
regardedasits worst political crisis sincethe Civil War, a crisis precipitatedby
tn! U.S. invasion of Cambodia. The first general strike of students in the
history of the united srates was nor rhe usual springtime festivities:At Kent
State and Jackson state universiries, six students were shot dead, and
throughoui the narion, confronrarion and violencebecamecommonplacc.The
natioiwide studenrstrikeof May 1970was the high point in the developmenr
of the student New Left in the United states and, as such, reflected both its
limirationsand srrengths.lThe crisis of 1970 was createdby the more than
and high school studentswho went on strike and the many
four million college
-*ho
joined rhem, but as the eroseffectwas felt, the rank and
faculty members
file oi military combat units refused ro fight, rhe militant black liberation
movemenr intcnsified, workers went on strike, the feminist movement grew
srronger, and a whole array of rural Southerners and middle Americans
becameactivated.
I will examinethe contours of the eventsof May 1970 in order to help
uncover the essentialnature of the society and the social forces that were in
morion during rhis period. The intensity o[ theseevcntsprovides historical
Il8
May 1970
The New Left in theUnitedStates:
clarity, not only of the New Left, but alsoof thc societywhich producedit. ln
contrast to prevailing norms and values,the millions of people who were
involved in the nationwide srrike acted according to principles of
internationalsolidariryand self-management.
Like the Frencheuentsof t SOS,
the movemcnt emerged abruptly, reachedproporrions of historical importance overnight, and necessitateda seriesof reforms designedto maintain the
stability of the existing syst€m.
the Panthersto control the volatileassoltmentofradicalsthey had organized
to come to New Haven.
whcn the arrival of the first groups of the 15,000 demonstratorscoincidedwith Nixon's announcementof the invasionof cambodia on April 30, it
appearedthat a confronrarionar Yale was unavoidable.But there w-ereonly
s.amered incidents thar night, probably due ro both the orders from thc
Panthersnot to take to the streetsand the presenceof 4,000 Marines and 8,000
National Guardsmenin New Haven. The next night, rioting broke out, but
not on the scalefearedby the Yale administration.
Although Brewster's"skepticism" had succeededin helping to avoid a
confrontarion at Yale, the pacification of the demonstrators created a space
within which the movement came together to formulate plans for a national
studenr strike againstdomestic racism and the war in Indochina. Between the
two planned rallies, there was a spontaneouslyassembledmeeting of almost
2,000 people at Yale University's Dwight Hall. This free-flowing meeting
was one of those rare moments of optimism and solidarity when imaginations
ran wild. Speakerafter speakerrose to call for greaterresistanceand to spread
the movemlnr. One activist calledfor a national srudenrstrike. A few minutcs
larer someonecalledfor a generalstrike. By the end of the meeting, all agreed
to organize a national student strike beginning Tuesday, May 5 (coinciden-
The Black Panther Party at Yale University
In 1970,the studenrmovementhad no nationalleadership.Nearly a year
before the student strike (in rhe summer of 1969), Studenrsfor a Democratic
Society (SDS) had self-destructedby splitting into factionswhich were unired
in their denial of rhe political imporranceof student activism but differed over
whether it was the working classor the third world who was rhe "vanguard of
world revolution." For the mosr parr, rhe old guard of the New Left's early
college days was no longer acrive, since rhe movement had developed far
beyond their wildest fantasies.Less than a month before the invaiion of
Cambodia, rhe National Mobilizarion Commirtee to End rhe War in Vietnam
had closedits office a few blocks from the White House, under the impression
that the anti-war movemenr had already run irs course and that President
Nixon's April 20 television announcement of the wirhdrawal of 150.000
additional U.S. troops from Vietnam meanr the war was winding down.
The Black Panther Party was the only narional New Left organization
which continued to grow in this period, bur ir was under intenseartack from
the state: More than rwenty-five Panthers had been killed by police; Huey
Newton was in jail; Bobby Sealewas on rrial for murder; and Eldridge Cleaver
was in exile. The only national leadcrof the Panthersnot dead,incarcerared,or
in exile was David Hilliard, and he was jailed briefly in April following a
speechhe gave ar rhe spring Anti-War Morarorium in San Francisco in which
he allegedly threatenedNixon's life.
The New Haven trial of Bobby Seale,Erica Huggins, and other members
of the Party for the allegedmurder of a police informant brought Panthersand
their supporters to Yale University, where the majority of srudenrs soorr
swung over to their side. A narional mobilization to frce Bobby Sealeand his
co-defendantswas scheduledfor the weekendof May I in New Haven, and on
April 15, the Bobby SealeBrigade riored at Harvard Squarein Cambridge,
Massachusetts,
in an acriondesignedas a build-up to May Day.
By Wednesday,April 2 2, most of Yale Collegewas striking in supportof
the Panthers.The next day, more rhan a rhousandpeoplegatheredon the lawn
at the house of the university's presidenr, Kingman Brewsrer, ro listen to
speechesby members of the Panrhers. Wirhin forty-eight hours, Brewsrer
surprised a faculty meering with his srarement:"l am appalled and ashamed
that things shouldhavecomero sucha passrharI am skepticalofrhe abiliry of
black revolutionaries to achievea fair trial anywhere in the Unired Srares."2
Brewster'slastminute changeof hearrhad the effemof imposinga mandareon
k*-'
I 19
IMAGINATION OF THE NEW LEFT
tally Karl Marx's binhday).
The three strike demands formulated at this meeting and accepted
throughout the country were:
l. that the United States government ceaseits escalationof the
Vietnam War into Cambodia and Laos; that it unilateraUy and
immediately withdraw all forces from SoutheastAsia;
2. that the United Statesgovernment end its systematicoppression
ofpolitical dissidentsand releaseall political prisoners,particularly
Bobby Sealeand other members of the Black Panther Party;
3. that the universitiesend their complicity with the United States
war machine by the immediate end to defenseresearch,the Reserve
Officer Training Corps (ROTC), counterinsurgencyresearch'and
all other suchprograms.
Wirhout the accidentalcoincidenceof the New Haven rally and the invasion of
cambodia, the focus for the nationwide strike (particularly the dcmand relating to politicalprisonersin the United statcs)would no doubt havebeenmore
diifusi. The aitacks on the Black Panther Party had the effect of bringing
rogerher a sponraneouslygeneratedpolitical avant-garde which was able ro
provide a vision and program for the movement \r'hich eruptcd'
The Campuses Erupt
Students demonstrareda remarkablecapability for self-organizationand
actionsasrhe strikeunfolded.Within forty-five minutes
apparentlyleaderless
120
The New Left in rhe United States:N{av 1970
IMAGINATION OF THE NEl' LEFT
of Nixon's televisedannouncementof the invasionof Cambodia,studentsat
Princeton had organized a protest. That same nighr, students at Oberlin
College occupied the administration building and demandedthat the faculty
meet to discussthe invasion.During the firsr six days after the invasionof
Cambodia, there was an averageof twenty new campusesgoing on strike
every day, and in the days after the slaughrerar Kenr Srrte on May 4, one
hundred more collegesioined eachday.3By mid-May, as the e/oreffect swept
the nation, more than 500 collegesand universitieswere on strike, and by the
end of the month, at leastone-thirdof the nation's2,827 institutionsof higher
educationwere on strike. More than 80 percentof all universitiesand colleges
in the United Statesexperiencedprorests,and abourhalfofthe country's eight
million studentsand 350,000 faculty actively participaredin the strike.a
The scaleand intensity of the protestsduring May was new to the studenr
movement in the United States.ln the first week of that month, thirry ROTC
buildings were burned or bombed.sAt rhe University of Wisconsin in Madison alone,there were over twenty-seven firebombings, and acrossthe country
there were more incidentsof arsonand bombing (at least| 69 ,9 5 aloneon rhe
campuses)than in any single month in which government records have been
kept. A $6 million computcr,owned by the Atomic Energy Commissionand
used by New York University, was captured by a racially mixed group of
sixty students and held for $100,000 ransom early in May. The protesters
demandedthe money be usedfor bail for a iailed member of the Black Panther
Party in New York. After twenty-four hours of fudle negotiations, the
protestersleft gasolinebombs to destroy the computer, but the quick acrion of
faculty successfullydefusedthe explosives.6At Fresno State College in California, a firebomb destroyed a million dollar computer center.
During May, over 100 peoplewere killed or rvoundedby the gunsof the
forces of law and order, Besidesthe four murdered and ren wounded ar Kenr
Stateon May 4 and the two peopiemurderedand twelve wounded atJackson
State on May 14, six black people were murdered and twenty were wounded
in Augusca, Georgia; eleven studenrs were bayonerred at the University of
New Mexico; twenty people sufferedshotgun wounds at Ohio State;and
twelve studentswere wounded by birdshor in Buffalo.
Nearly 2,000 people were arrestedin the first two weeks of May for
political rcasons.The governorsof Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and South
Carolina declaredall campusesin a stateof emergency.The National Guard
was activatedon twenty-four occasionsat twenty-one universitiesin sixteen
differentstates.BetweenApril I 5 and May 19, more than 3 5,000 Guardsmen
were involved in domesticduty, and for the first time, the nation'suniversities
were occupiedat gunpoint.T
A nationalstrike information centerwas quickly establishedat Brendeis
University and functionedasboth a coordihatorof localprotestactivitiesand
an information centerfor the nationalstrike. On May I 1, over ,500deleg',rtes
attendeda National Student Strike Conferencein SanJose,California. On
almost every campus,a strike coordinaringcommittee was spontaneously
formed and linked up with the newly crcated narional centers.At Berkeley,
over 2,000 activistsdemocraticallypa(icipared in one meetingof their strike
Photo3
MaY1970
KentStateUniversitY:
f.f#
s
t2l
122
IMAGINATION OF THE NEW LEFT
committee after which "action groups" were formed. There was the general
leeling that "if a person can't find a place to plug in, he can createhis own
niche."8
During May, morc than I 1,000 draft cardswere rerurned to rhe Selective
Service. A Union of National Draft Opposition was ser up ar Princeton
immediately after the invasion of Cambodia (the day before the deathsar Kent
Stare).By rhe middle of June, chaptershad beenesrablished
ar r$'enry campuseswho rogerherhoped ro return 100,000draft cards.When they tried to
give the SclectiveService5,000more cardsonJune I 0, they were turnedaway
without the cardsbeing accepted.e
rhe impacr of draft resisrancewas admitted
by the SelectiveServicewhen, for the first time, they filled lessthan 80 percent
of their narional quota. Soon thereafter,they began to investigatethe sudden
increasesin failures to report, particularly in Rochester, New York, and
northern Alabama.
On lessthan a week'snotice,there was a demonstrationof over 100,000
people in the nation's capital.r0The speakersrepresentednot only rhe striking
students,but also organizationsof black people and workers. From the
podium, the American people were calledupon to go on a generalstrike ro end
the war, and the recent strikes by post office workers, rruck drivers, and
workers at General Electric were all interpreted as responsesto inflation
causedby the war. Although ar least400 people were arresredafter rhe rally,
the popular surge toward massivecivil disobediencewas successfullydefused
from above by rhe hastily reconsriruredNew Mobilization Commitree, a
broad coalition of anti-war forces including pacifisrsand clergy as well as
Communists and Trotskyites. One of the leadersof the "New Mobe" believes
"to this day" that the committee suffered "an untimely failure of nerve"ll on
May 9. Of course,a confrontationrhen would havemaderhe May 4 massacre
at Kent Stateseemsmallby comparison,sinceover 2 5,000policeand soldiers
were standingby.l2
From the outside,the movement may have appearedasa threat ro national
security,but the high water mark had passed.Two days later,Georgc Winne,
a studentat the Universiry of Californiain SanDiego, died of self-immolation,
a desperate
acrofprotest that reflectedthe nationaldeclineofprotestsafterthe
May 9 demonstration. In the next week, as if to make their intentions clear,
the forces of law and order murdered six peoplc in Georgia and two in
Alabama.rr
It cannorbe deniedthat a sizeableporrion of rhe anti-war movemenrin
1970did nor condonemilirant confrontation.The a.tions of rhe rhousandsof
studentswho convergedin Washington,D.C. to lobby Congressare ample
evidence,but at the sametime, tensof thousandsof peoplein the Unired staies
chosc to battle the police rather than talk with congresspeople.By their
actions,millionsof studentsshoweda political understandingrhat making the
s.ystem
changeits policiesmeanr"raising the cosrs"of continuing the war by
disrupting domesrictranquiliry, and thc diffusion of militant tacticsoccurred
despitethe besteffortsof the sysrem(andmany within the movemenraswell).
The burning of the Bank of Americain Isla vista, california on Februarv
25, 1970,had setan imporranrprecedent.Like the weatherpeople'sDays o{
The New l-eft in the United States: Mey 1970
t23
Rage in offober 1969, it was an acrion which defineda new level of struggle
,.ri* rh. counrry. Afier Chicago's Loop was trashedby the Weathcrpeople'
window breaking and streetfighling becamecommonplace;and after the bank
was burned in Isla Vista, theie weie firebombings acrossthe country. The
diffusion of tacticalinnovations among studentswas not simply a national
phenomenon. When students at Brandeis University took control of the
.r-pu, relephonesystem,within ten days,.studentsin England, Italy, France,
ra
and iVest G.rrnttty had attempted to do the samething'
s
p
o n t a n e o u s lgye n c r 9
7
0
.
I
s
t
u
d
e
n
t
s
o
f
M
a
y
I n t h c c o u r s eo I t h e c v e n t s
ated new racticalapproachesfor confrontations designedto stop "businessas
railroad
usual." Across the country they blocked highways, express\Mays'
ofthe
extension
as
an
seen
might
be
traffic
tracks,and city streets.l5Blockading
sit-in, a ractic originally used by striking workers in the 1930s, but the
studentsof 1970 iontesred the operation of the entire society, not only
well.
occupying their universities, but fighting for control of plblic space.a_s
On Mry I, and againon May 3 and 14, thousandsof studentsat the University of M"ryland in College Park closeddown Highway 1 and battled police
and National Guardsmen who tried to open the road' On May 5, nearly 7,000
proresrers from rhe Universiry of washington in Seattle blocked both the
north and southbound lanesof inrerstare5 for over an hour, during which time
they moved along the sroppedcarsto talk wirh motorists about the war and the
strii
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