That iconic photograph of the lone protester placing a flower into the barrel of a military policeman’s rifle at the March on the Pentagon? At least two photographers took images that day—October 21, 1967—that have since become famous, Bernie Boston of George Edgerly Harris III, a young actor who subsequently died of AIDS, and Marc Riboud of Jan Rose Kasmir, who later carried her celebrated picture in protests against the Gulf War. It takes many such acts and many such people to make a movement.
Recognizing that it would be “impossible to report in full” on the events of “a demonstration involving 150,000 people and a demonstration that took place in many places at once,” the editors of WIN Magazine decided to cover the march, in un-Mailerish, collective fashion, with a collage of short sketches by multiple contributors, all of them affiliated in various ways with the New York Workshop in Nonviolence, a pacifist direct-action group associated with the War Resisters League, and the publisher of WIN. The writers are, in alphabetical order, Maris Cakars (1942–1992), Marty Jezer (1940–2005), Paul Johnson (1935–2006), Susan Kent (b. 1942), Dorothy Lane, Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004), and Allan Solomonow (b. 1937)—some of them notable in their subsequent activist or literary careers, others having left few clear traces of themselves in the historical record.
“WE will enter the Pentagon and sit down in offices, in meeting rooms, and across hallways. If this seems impossible, we will block doorways and entrances. If police and armed forces make this impossible, we will clog service roads, preventing deliveries and obstructing vehicles.”
This was the plan of the National Mobilization Committee’s Direct Action Committee. The response of the government was to call out a total of 8,500 soldiers—military police and members of the 82nd Airborne Division who had seen action in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic and Detroit—to protect the Pentagon. It was the first time since 1932, when Herbert Hoover called in 1,000 cavalry and infantrymen under Douglas MacArthur to put down the Bonus March, that federal troops were called to the nation’s capital. But the troops were only the most dramatic aspect of the hard position that the government had taken towards the peace demonstration. In negotiations for the permit necessary to hold the march and rally, the government at first announced that no permits would be granted unless the Mobilization Committee publicly renounced plans for civil disobedience. When it became clear that the Mobilization would not do that, the government, in the person of Henry Van Cleve, General Counsel for the General Services Administration and chief government negotiator, changed its position. Nevertheless, it categorically denied the Mobilization the use of more than one bridge to get from Washington to the Pentagon, permission to picket the building in any more than one area, access to the picketing of “activity” area except during very limited hours, a march route wide enough to enable the march to reach the Pentagon in a reasonably short amount of time, and the area for a rally that the Mobilization considered most suitable.
To a certain extent the precautions on the part of the government must have been the result of the rumors of violence that circulated widely prior to the demonstration. The New York based “Revolutionary Contingent” had circulated a leaflet calling on everyone to participate in a snake dance that it would hold at the Pentagon. There were reports of groups planning to bring lead pipes for “self defense.” The hippies, it was said, were planning to come with water pistols. And then there was the memory of Newark and Detroit.
Against this backdrop, some 150,000 Americans arrived in Washington on October 21 to demonstrate their repugnance for the war in Vietnam. They came to hear speeches made by Dr. Spock, Lincoln Lynch, Clive Jenkins of the British Labor Party, and many others. They came to exorcise the Pentagon and “do their thing.” They came to shut down the Pentagon.
—MARIS CAKARS
* * *
DR. Spock named Lyndon “the real enemy,” Dagmar Wilson was understood to say we won’t have peace as long as Dean Rusk is alive, and John Wilson of SNCC called for silence in the memory of Che Guevara. But otherwise, it was the same old rally. Perfect weather, pleasant surroundings, nobody really listening. People were courteous—amazingly so, as newcomers to the movement often remark—and for the most part, patient throughout all delays.
We played the two most popular games at rallies: looking out for old friends, and spotting new signs. Among the original slogans I saw were “Remember the Bastille” and “Beat LBJ into a Ploughshare.” Another stunner, held by a husky type I took at first for a counter-demonstrator, said “Shoot a Curl, Not a Vietnamese North Wing Surf Club for Peace.”
We talked about the small numbers of both blacks and hippies present, and wondered whether this weekend would come to be looked upon as the end of the peace movement’s illusions about gaining substantial support from either group. Phil Ochs and Peter, Paul and Mary were very nice, but there was a lot of disappointment when the rock groups never appeared.
—PAUL JOHNSON
* * *
THERE were many levels—grassy embankments and stone steps, psychological levels, symbolic levels—which lay between the happening at the reflecting pool and the happenings at the Pentagon. The gathering together was pleasant and colorful, but impatience was greater than on the other October, March and April days, because we had someplace to go. The march, this time, was not so much for the march itself as to get where we were going, even though it seemed unclear to everyone just what we would do when we got there or what they would do when we got there. Our pace quickened as we approached and passed the mounds of freshly turned earth around new wooden poles supporting the fence with its double row of barbed wire at the top. (How frightened they must have been!) At the parking lot, when the first choice was made in response to a loudspeaker announcement, “Those who want to attend the rally, stay here; those who wish to sit in at the Pentagon, turn right,” the vector led toward the right. At the first embankment, a team helped others up and urged them on over the slippery grass, over the trampled fence and into the next decision stage. There, some people were asking each other how they’d arrived in the place and why, but the area was getting crowded and we had further to go: between some other bushes and into another unknown.
It proved to be a vast lawn, filled with people and trees and people in the trees. Friends were there and the yellow submarine and the pacifist section marker “D.” We looked over and saw masses of people and thought, at first, that they were the later marchers, outside and beyond, still converging on the parking lot. They were converging still, but these masses were already inside the broken fence, already trespassers. Some were leaning over the wall above. A wave on the left broke through the guards on the ramp and we rushed up to join the “storming of the gates,” but the heavy guard reformed. From behind, “break through, let’s go . . .” and from the front, “don’t push, let’s not stampede ourselves . . .” We moved over to the edge to escape the crush and found an easy path up through some shrubbery behind the troops. It led to the last level, next to the Pentagon.
—DOROTHY LANE
* * *
THE head of the march arrived in the Pentagon’s North Parking Area about 3:30. The scheduled departure from Lincoln Memorial had been delayed in order to give the General Services Administration extra time to remove a fence separating the North Parking Area from the Mall. Only a small portion of the fence was removed so, half an hour late and equipped with ten wire cutters, the march stepped off. The marshals had their hands full. Trained by Cordell Reagan, one of the original Freedom Singers and the chief marshal of the Meredith March and other civil rights demonstrations, they struggled with the press, obstructionist Nazis, and Josef Mrotz-Mroz, the eternal counter-picket.
By 4:00, when the second rally was starting, perhaps a thousand people had already gone over to the Mall, tearing down a good deal of the fence as they went. Donald Duncan, Carl Davidson and others spoke at the rally, but all attention was focused on the steps to the Mall entrance to the Pentagon. Even as the speakers spoke, people kept streaming over to what was called in the permit the “Post–North Parking Rally Activity Area.” By 4:30 the leaders—Dellinger, Spock, Robert Lowell, Dwight MacDonald, Father Rice—were ready to lead the civil disobedience. They walked in a group to the Mall and found the steps to the entrance packed with people. So, in order to encourage blocking doors on the other four sides of the building, they went up on Washington Boulevard, the highway running along the west side of the Mall and the Pentagon, and attempted to get to the heliport side. As they advanced, a line of soldiers stationed across the highway began to advance. The notables and the fifty or so people acompanying them, myself included, sat down. Only Dellinger remained standing and, bullhorn in hand he addressed the troops. Then Noam Chomsky of MIT took his turn, but as he was speaking the troops once more advanced. Robot-like they came forward, one slow step after another until they were almost on top of the seated pacifists. Then a remarkable thing happened. They advanced right over and around us. Stepping carefully to avoid hurting anyone they passed right through the crowd and went right on down the highway. Chomsky turned to follow and now the whole group was following the troops, going away from the Pentagon. After a minute or two we reversed ourselves and began marching back towards our original destination. Again we were confronted by a line of soldiers, again we sat down. The second line was not so gentle. After advancing to the point where it was stepping on people, it turned over the job of making arrests to the U.S. marshals who, with a little more force than necessary, proceeded to do their job. (U.S. marshals had been assigned the task of making arrests and made virtually all of them that week-end.) They took people off in three ways, but left Spock, MacDonald, Lowell and Rice. Even the military is sensitive.
Had anyone else been arrested at this point, it would have been an irrelevant action. As it was, the demonstrators were deprived of some of their leadership. Not that these were the only leaders, or that leadership was so badly needed; but given the size of the crowd, if leaders were to lead there had to be many of them. As it turned out, the people hardly needed leaders, but they thought they did, and their absence contributed to a general feeling of insecurity and lack of definition in the situation.
—M. C.
* * *
A BLAND-FACED marshal moves his club across my throat as I step directly in front of him. I point out to him that we mean no violence and we will commit no violence; perhaps I suggest that he can accomplish his purpose as easily by putting the club across my chest. Something flies out of the crowd barely missing the back troops so Val Green of FOR and I help form a line of persons directly between the marshals and the crowd. The next marshal over puts his club to my chest when I move against him: they will not arrest me and I cannot get through without being violent.
To the left, cheers are raised as a stream of protestors head to the corner entrance. Not a soldier from those in front of us runs over. There are cries as the troops pour in front of them; a Negro and a young girl climb underneath the flatbed truck separating our groups. Both are bloody. Another fellow with a camera comes out from under the truck but beyond the marshals’ line; a marshal begins to club him while he is on his hands and knees; the marshal in front of me edges into this marshal, throwing him off balance and giving the kid a chance to get free; the marshal I had been facing winks and offers me a mint.
—ALLAN SOLOMONOW
SUDDENLY there were cries from the top of the stairs. We grabbed hands and ran back, hearing rumours that an MP had defected. What excitement, we left just as the most important event occurred. Everyone was shouting Join us, Join us. We could not make it up one stairway so tried the other side, and got right to the front by the press trucks. Later, there were other reports of another, then another defector.
We sat down again cold and hungry. Soon contingents from the outside were bringing food. At first, there was little, so a sandwich was passed around for everyone to have a bite. But after the sandwich came another and some pretzels, and cookies, and peanut butter, crackers, and an apple, and a clark bar. We thought it the height of luxury when a beer was passed round. But then came home-made cookies and a huge blue tin of cookies and whole balonies and loaves of bread. Someone said they wanted an egg salad sandwich, and a plastic container of egg salad came by. Soon everyone was full and rejecting the food. Earlier, joints had been passed around. The parking lot of the Pentagon, safest place in the world to turn on.
—SUSAN KENT
* * *
Up among the demonstrators everyone seemed to be giving orders over bullhorns. EVERYONE WHO HAS A BULLHORN BECOMES A POLICY-MAKER. Those with better bullhorns were paid more attention. One seemed to be controlled mostly by SDS people. Theirs was much better than that of the pro-NLF committee, but these people had their flags up on the large flat truck that was parked to the left of the upper platform. Most of the night a lone anarchist stood holding a black flag directly over the line of troops beside the truck.
It was during a relatively quiescent period (as I remember it) that the MP’s all put on gas masks. Only individuals had been rushing between the MP’s from time to time, most of them being dragged back to the other side by the MP’s, roughly but not with bloody violence. One soldier or MP was moving back & forth (after the gas masks had been put on) with a gun that looked like a contrabass bassoon. Then, without warning, one tear gas shell burst with a dull thud among the crowd in front of the MP’s. Most of the crowd retreated a little way back from the line of MP’s, but a scarf across my nose seemed sufficient to avoid anything except a slight burning sensation in the nasal passages—at least, this was my experience. Many around me were coughing, choking, their eyes were tearing copiously, however. I don’t know whether this was because they’d been nearer to the original burst (it didn’t seem much more than 10 feet away from me). Crowd surges took place several more times, but the tear gas shells seemed to be set off in the quiescent periods (at least twice more) and not when the movement of the crowd up to the MP’s was strong. . . .
—JACKSON MAC LOW
* * *
A SORT of speakers’ stand is operating now (after 2:00 A.M.) on the top of the parapet between the two levels. Greg Calvert of SDS speaks over the bullhorn: “We’re boxed in again. This is all a failure? Perhaps but it’s still beautiful. We’ve desanctified this institution.” (then, addressing the government leaders:) “The troops you employ belong to us and not to you. They don’t belong to the generals. They belong to a new hope for America that those generals never could participate in. The real enemy is not here (the troops) but there (the generals etc.)—not those who take orders but those who give orders”—then suddenly: “WHO IS THAT BEING BROUGHT IN ON A STRETCHER—IS HE ALIVE OR DEAD???”
Now on the right bullhorn, Sidney Peck saying that “we’re the soldiers’ brothers. Let’s show the troops that if we have the option of accepting arrest, we’ll accept it.” Asks for some people in authority: I don’t get the names.
A boy on the left parapet cries out that they just hit a girl. That it was horrible. Covers eyes. Someone else on another bullhorn addresses troops: “When you go home tonight, think about this. Why does a man with a gun hit someone who is doing nothing?” Orion and the moon are bright overhead. . . .
—J. M. L.
* * *
By now the tension was very high. The police were inching forward crowding us back. On the speakers we were being told to link arms and crowd close together. And sit down. Behind us at the edge of the steps many were standing and throwing things at the MPs in spite of protests from all of us.
At this point some girl got on the bullhorn and said it was dangerous and everyone should leave and gather around the fire. We all shouted, “No!” Bob Greenblatt, national coordinator of the Mobilization, got on and said those in the front wanted to leave and were all being prevented by the militants standing at the rear. We all shouted, “No!” And we stayed, but all felt our “leadership” had sold us out. Instead of supporting us, it helped cause mass desertions.
Using typical military strategy, the MPs were pushing hardest in the middle to divide the group in two. There would be a noise from the middle, the press would turn their lights on the area, while we all had a good view of MPs kicking the seated and intertwined demonstrators. It was not always clear what the demonstrators were doing, because they were now on the ground, but they certainly were not given a chance to be violent if they wanted to, as feet kicked and billy clubs and rifle butts were smashed into people’s heads. It was terrifying to watch people who were only sitting there being beaten badly and carried out with concussions and broken bones. Many of the people sitting got up and ran. Those standing threw things. Those of us sitting bunched closer together, and sang softly, We shall overcome, We shall live in peace, We are not afraid, Soldiers are our friends, Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya. . . . We talked with the soldiers in front of us, looking at them pleadingly: “You don’t want to hurt us, will you do that, will you have to, please don’t hurt us, arrest us, but don’t hurt us, we mean no harm to you. . . .”
In the middle people were slowly being beaten and removed from the line to paddy wagons. The scene was terrifying; many ran. Everyone was shouting, “Get the girls out of there,” but we stayed, afraid but wanting to stay, to stay with and support our men, to eliminate the violence, not to run and excuse ourselves from a dangerous position, to show the soldiers we were sure they would not hurt us, to make our position clear, about the war, to fight it here.
The police wedge broke through the middle. People ran. Those we thought most committed to staying ran in the face of brutality. We were surrounded. In keeping with the pacifistic approach of our small section, we realized there was no point in keeping our arms linked, we couldn’t stop the advance of the troops and would only get hurt ourselves, and cause others to have to hurt us. We let go and covered our heads. A boy behind me put his hands on my head to protect me. The marshals lifted us out of the line carefully, one by one. The violence was gone. It was over for us.
—S. K.
* * *
THE last few hours of the demonstration were the most agonizing, traumatic, and the most beautiful. By then the 150,000 had been reduced to a few hundred who had been through a lot together. They had faced the cold night, tear gas, beatings, indecision. And they came through it all with a new respect for themselves, a real (not just slogan-level) sympathy for the troops, and the beginnings of an understanding of what was needed in a confrontation with the American government. They found that linked arms, missiles and violent charges gained them no ground against the army, that they resulted only in bloodied heads. Many who had started out years ago as pacifists, then abandoned nonviolence for the rhetoric of Che and Giap, saw once again that a violent struggle gains nothing. Self-protection and—even more important—communicating with the troops we were facing—turned the whole group to a nonviolent stance. This was not something that the pacifists in the crowd imposed. Jerry Rubin and Stewart Albert, no pacifists in anyone’s book, were the most eloquent in pleading for nonviolence. Stew even called for any of the soldiers who intended to use violence to raise their hands (one did).
The Mobilization’s permit expired at midnight Sunday. In the last few minutes, as the demonstrators sang “We Shall Overcome” and “America the Beautiful,” several hundred more soldiers emerged from inside the Pentagon and took up positions in front of the demonstrators. Then a voice from within the building announced over and over that the permit was about to expire, that those who remained would be arrested, that those who wished to leave could take buses supplied by the government. No more than two dozen left, most choosing to walk. About two hundred stayed and were gently arrested.
—M. C.
* * *
THE actions then turn into a blur of images in my mind, held in a matrix of terror and warmth and pity and confusion and something akin to a feeling of exultation. The clouds of tear gas and a choking sensation. Troops forming at the side of the Pentagon and marching down with bayonets pointed directly at us. A dialogue in fear between them and the demonstrators who instinctively sat down in their path. The twitching of the soldiers’ jaws on their otherwise immobile faces when needless taunts came at them from the crowd. An impulse to turn and run away, mixed with the urge to bravely act the way the books in the theory of nonviolent power suggest. Trying to see, somewhere, that tiny nugget of humanity underneath in those guards who beat and dragged defenseless demonstrators. A girl walking from soldier to soldier at bayonet point, offering each one a flower—and then the image of that flower, lying in the dust at their feet. Of five men guarding one of the little embankments, two who had the decency not to put on their gas masks when the toxic fumes drifted over, standing with the same tears in their eyes that we had in our own. People wandering through the crowds, passing out water and apples and damp wash rags. The beautiful sight of hundreds sitting close together in front of the doors to the massive fortress. The sound of singing. The glow of bonfires in the dark. And the Sunday bright sun, shining on the tired, courageous people who had stayed throughout the night and were still sitting there, waiting their turn to be arrested—and who had won the battle of the Pentagon.
—D. L.
* * *
Let this letter stand as notes for me to refer to when I get out of here (Occoquan). There’s a lot I want to write about the Saturday night confrontation on the Pentagon Mall; about the incredible brutality of the U. S. marshals; about all of us who refused to fight back, and those asses in the rear who wouldn’t join us on the front lines, but from their safe positions tossed things at the troops, causing them to hit the beautiful kids at their feet; about 36 of us enclosed in a truck, airless, for an hour and a half—like Jews—waiting to be processed; about so much!
We spent the first day in a dorm having a ball. This morning (Oct. 23) we were down to a few kids who chose to do time rather than pay out. Then—commotion at the door. In walked Gary Rader, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bob Murphy—200 more who were busted Sunday night. Now we’re in small, single cells; I’ve got Keith Lampe on one side, Peter Bates (a frosh at Cornell) on the other. Peter’s the kid who stood up to the troops for hours, stared right at them, until they pulled him out of the line. He got five days—for assault! All the kids with bandaged heads were getting charged with assault.
They’ve brought in Fed prison guards from all over to handle us. They’ve been so great, I couldn’t non-cooperate—why make them work harder? We are relating to each other as individuals, as humans.
About half the kids here are into the hippie bag; there isn’t a Trot in the house. Little political talk; the word is love; the unifying factor is pot.
What happened the past two days is the turning point. The Pentagon isn’t rising. It’s crumbling. And despite all the talk against N-V, it was nonviolence that did it. The brothers and the sisters are beautiful.
WE SHALL OVERCOME
LOVE, PEACE,
MARTY JEZER
* * *
THE Greyhound station was jammed on Sunday with hundreds who hadn’t been able to find their chartered buses. Behind me in line, there was the very model of an ivy league frat brother. I didn’t ask what school, but his friend was a Bennington girl. It was the first demonstration for both, and they’d loved it. They spent the whole night on the Mall. Now they effused about how great everyone had been, sharing coats, blankets, food. His blazer still looked straight from the cleaners, but her ironed brown hair was a trifle snarled. “She burned my draft card up there,” he told us proudly, as she blushed and they squeezed each other’s hand.
—P. J.