Fitchburg, Wisconsin—Memorial Day weekend begins today and we honor the fallen, the families, and make sense of sacrifice by keeping faith with revolutionary spirit.
This Summer we mark our 250th anniversary as a country and a promise of eternal hostility toward oppression.
We betray the fallen if we fail to speak out against the demonic beasts among us.
Our country is betraying the service of all by becoming a vassal state of Israel.
Our government has become Israel-first, fighting wars and draining our common treasure for the focus of evil in the world.
Today, right here, now, we must resist the enemies and traitors is our midst.
The 2024 campaigns for the presidential elections comprise the most nihilistic and heartless performance in my lifetime.
The Democratic Party appears little more than a neo-McCarthyite group of chickenhawks led by neo-cons seeking more war; committing Genocide and sinking the peoples' elections into pits of indecency.
Meanwhile, corporate media and the Democratic establishment push for censorship, lest the public become more repulsed by Democratic lies.
Fitchburg, Wisconsin — Jackie Captain passed away May 15, 2024. I love her, and long before we married. It's Memorial Day weekend, Jackie's favorite holiday.
Jackie is a late convert to beer, brats, hot dogs, and burgers dipped in beer, butter, garlic pepper and onions that I made for us every Memorial Day weekend. Often, I would venture to Dane County's Brat Fest to throw em in the concoction, with some corn on the cob on the side.
Perhaps because of her father, World War II veteran, Wesley Captain, Jackie was a patriot and anarchist, and an aesthetic.
Said RFK, "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: 'In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'"
Catholic agnostic Jackie would substitute the Universe, perhaps, for God. To a moral certainty, Jackie believed in human healing power and celebrating life through everyday acts of standing up for others.
Jacqueline Marie Captain, wife, neighbor, sister, daughter and friend to many passed Wednesday morning, May 15, 2024.
Jackie died of a long series of illnesses related to Sepsis, kidney disease and Crohn's Disease.
Jackie loved our neighborhood, now more than ever full of happy children welcoming Summer. Jackie loved kids running, biking down the street with dogs and wagons in tow.
Jackie loved her family, her community, her work and the giant family of which we and all life are members, Jackie believed.
Said a nephew of Jackie's this morning: "When I was a kid she was the funny, goofy aunt that always made time for family. She always had time for birthdays and came bearing cool gifts. She had a beautiful smile and laugh. I remember her knowledge of all music and movies and she would break into a verse of song lyrics often."
Jackie worked for peace, love and justice, trying, as Bertrand Russell wrote, using passion "making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greeds, and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression."
Jackie did PhD work on anti-fascist artists, Ben Shahn and Eugene Higgins before accepting positions that included a consultancy with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum before it opened; editorships; Professional Project Manager at American Family Insurance; and Administrative and Research Assistant to Dean, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jackie Captain did her graduate work under U.W. Prof. Jim Dennis, renown art history U.W. scholar, and Madisonian.
Jackie was born in Wisconsin Rapids August 29, 1957 to Wesley and Helen Irene Captain, a beautiful World War II family determined to spread peace.
Jackie is predeceased by Wesley Captain (Father); Helen Irene (Mother); Jan Captain (Sister); and Allen Braund (Brother- in -Law).
Jackie is survived by her husband, Michael Leon; her siblings; Jean (Sharon) Duluth, Minnesota; Joe (Margitta) Gulfport Mississippi; Pete (Sally). Wisconsin Rapids; Judy (Kate), Stoughton; Mary (Allen Braund, deceased) Wisconsin Rapids; John (Joanne) Antioch. Illinois; Jim (Mary), Plain, Wisconsin.
Jackie passed, saying she missed joking with her Aunt Sweet Loraine Weaver of Wisconsin Rapids who turned 103 last year, still spreading sweetness.
Jackie's husband is Michael Leon of Fitchburg, Wisconsin. Leon said of Jackie that he "has never seen a more beautiful soul betrayed to her core by injustice. I think Jackie sometimes suffered because of her commitment and sensitivity, but Jackie was not alone."
Jackie is survived by many cousins, nieces, nephews, and even larger numbers of other family members.
Jackie had many friends, and loved working at American Family Insurance, and missed seeing her friends after retirement.
Jackie's family and friends would like to thank the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, especially folks at the ER, and Trauma and Life Support Center (TLC) units; as well as Ingleside Nursing and Rehab Center (Mount Horeb) and Nazareth Health and Rehabilitation (Stoughton). We would like to thank Bristol Hospice Madison for all their love.
Most of all Jackie was blessed by two forces of nature, family friends, So and Tina, whose reservoirs of love and intelligence appears endless.
Jackie loved them all.
Family and friends are welcome to bring outdoor plants to Jackie and Mike's front lawn to create an oasis of peace at 5767 Monticello Way, until June 15. #
Two Madison women celebrate love and peace at the Meadowood Health Partnership annual Christmas Community Dinner at Good Shepherd Church on Dec 21, 2022 on the southwest side.
Madison, Wisconsin — Madison heads into 2023, new year beckons, and peace and love as moral force retain powerful presence in this southwest neighborhood, Meadowood.
Peace warriors, radical pacifists, longtime neighbors, religious groups, Madison City Hall — the Meadowood neighborhood is a hotbed for love- action, neighbor kindness, not rivaling Madison's Isthmus perhaps, but right in the ballpark, by tradition.
About 100 residents gathered in late December for the annual Meadowood Health Partnership Christmas Community Dinner at Good Shepherd Church on Dec 21, 2022 on the southwest side.
The atmosphere, attendees reported, was thick with a sense of community and solidarity that had perhaps waned after Covid-induced isolation and Winter blahs tending to occur with less Sunlight.
"The dinner was wonderful, just wonderful," said Sharay Wallace, an event organizer, community organizer and activist in Dane County.
Community victories for peace over violence and bad will are common in the Meadowood neighborhood.
Satya Rhodes-Conway, Madison Mayor, takes in love with young residents of Madison's Meadowood neighborhood in Dec. 2022 at Christmas feast.
During a somewhat trying time of temporary duration some five years ago, Meadowood experienced problems from a small number of burdening fascists who menaced, vandalized and generally made a public nuisance of themselves.
With the determination of community activists and Madison Police, the problem has now vanished.
Madison, Wisc Meadowridge Library fought off Covid to hold presidential elections in Nov, 2022.
Similarly, a troubled and bizarre director of the Madison School District Neighborhood Center in the Meadowridge Shopping Mall halted his pattern of harassment against residents that had become locally notorious, after local peace activists and Meadowridge Library staff voiced complaints.
It
was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in
arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of
patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols
popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand
and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a
fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young
volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new
uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts
cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by;
nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory
which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they
interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears
running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors
preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles
beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence
which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and
the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and
cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and
angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank
out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday
morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the
church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight
with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering
momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the
foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the
surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored,
submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear
ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no
sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for
the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service
proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first
prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the
building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and
beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation.
*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then
came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for
passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its
supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all
would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and
encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the
day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make
them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to
crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable
honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved
with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the
minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his
head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his
shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness.
With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way;
without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there
waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence,
continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the
words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory,
O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The
stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the
startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he
surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an
uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come
from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote
the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no
attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and
will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall
have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import.
For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more
than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.
"God's
servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken
thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not.
Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the
spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would
beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke
a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing
of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly
praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain
and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your
servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to
put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and
also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly
and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words:
'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole*
of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations
were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed
for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it,
cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also
the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words.
Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols
of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in
spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides
to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to
bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields
with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder
of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us
to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to
wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help
us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended
the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports
of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in
spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave
and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes,
blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their
steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the
blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him
Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and
friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and
contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Twain
apparently dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by his
publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished
manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine's
anthology, Europe and Elsewhere. The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed.
Hundreds March for Peace and Children on Madison, Wisconsin
Photo by Paul McMahon, (Heartland Images)
Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — Led by 100s of young people, a festive peace march walked down Raymond Road on a beautiful Saturday August morning on Madison's southwest side.
Their message was clear: Stop the violence; save our children, as religious and secular attendees laughed together under the late-morning sun.
Asked why they were participating, Madisonian Nino
Amato driving a white MINI Cooper convertible with a young man of
approximately six-years, said, "We're here for the children. It's all about
peace. We are many together and we stand against hate."
Occurring in the wake of Charlottesville and an emboldened white supremacist movement, the Communities United: Stop the Violence! Save our Children! march was held "in light of the recent violence and shootings in Madison," notes a press release.
The rally had a strong social justice and peace theme of a national scale. "Future Dr., Don't Shoot," read a sign held by a young black man of approximately five-years-old. Near the young man was a sign, reading "Peace, Not Hate." "Hey, Hey. Ho, Ho. Violence has got to go," chanted one group of marchers in front of the Meadowood Shopping Mall. Madison Mayor Paul Soglin attended the rally and could be seen with streams of well-wishers joking with, and thanking the Mayor for his support of the event and the southwest community. Dozens of well-wishers lined Raymond Road. Many shouted "Thank you. Thank you," and waved as marchers passed by. --- Below are more photos of the event. All photos by Paul McMahon of Heartland Images.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography," said Ambrose Bierce.
It’s also a way to teach military history and in this illustration-heavy book, American Battles and Campaigns, A Chronicle from 1622 — Present, (Editor, McNab, Thomas Dunne Books), the earliest battles in our burgeoning country to the occupation in Afghanistan are presented.
From muskets to battleships to airplanes to nuclear weapons to drones, war is made for killing.
Battles and wars come with human costs in lives lost and broken; the illustrations in this book show this most of all.
In American Battles and Campaigns, 400 years of battles and war are displayed in thick, glossy pages in maps, depictions of troop movements and high-resolution shots of our troops and Marines.
The accompanying prose is first-rate and the military historian Chris McNab offers an engaging book in a genre where this quality of literature is hard to find.
From the map of the Normandy landings, (pp. 203-04), to a stunning shot of "American infantry crouching to avoid enemy fire as their landing craft takes them across the Rhine River at St. Goar," Germany in March 1945 (pp. 206-07), the reader is left to contemplate the trauma our American armed forces endure in the wars and battles fought in the name of the United States.
These young people were so scared, look at their eyes in these shots.
The wars, awful and usually unnecessary, and the veterans who served are ours and on Veterans Day, we remember this.
As an American, I recommend American Battles and Campaigns and not just for the stunning shots; but also for the crisp narrative prose and thorough index of battles through history.
The reader will find a comfortable awe in the tragedy endured in our names.
This work is a chronicle that invites a reader to think and consider the contradictions of duty and insanity in an effort to serve.
War embodies intimate betrayals in human enterprise, and rarely is war a necessary outcome of noble objectives and aims.
War is fought by our veterans, they're ours. So are the wars, we need to own them.
Phil Ochs: Singer-songwriter
who died this day in 1976
'Can't be singing louder than the guns when I'm gone'
Forty years ago today marks the death of one of the greatest singer-songwriters in American history, Phil Ochs.
Ochs died tragically in 1976.
He lived 35 years as an artist, poet, civil rights and peace movement champion during an epoch of American music when absent a political message, many would ask, 'what's he-she trying to say?'
The wonder of June is the new generations growing ever so fast, in which we see hope, fascination and pure joy.
A niece is moving onto High School, already a critical thinker and natural lover of life.
When sent the shots of the young moving forward with their lives: Accepting, loving, so excited to look around and see people as friends and fellows, not enemies to divide and conquer, not ever, hope does spring eternal.
Congrats, young Tori and all your friends, live your lives:
Necessary to quote Russell: "Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, to their friends, or to the world are inspired by hope and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence. In their private relations they are not preoccupied with anxiety lest they should lose such affection and respect as they receive: they are engaged in giving affection and respect freely, and the reward comes of itself without their seeking. In their work they are not haunted by jealousy of competitors, but concerned with the actual matter that has to be done. In politics, they do not spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of their class or nation, but they aim at making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greeds, and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression."
- Bertrand Russell
Proposed Roads To Freedom
(1918, Cornwall Press, Inc, Cornwall NY)
A look at the morning Inbox demonstrates renewed faith in our capacity to massively surveil our planet's climate; reverse our economys' use of the planet as a repository for waste, and deciding that innovative sustainability, peace and cooperation are national security and humanity security imperatives.
Think of what we are doing to the planet as a giant cigarette injecting its toxic contents into our childrens' organs at an accelerated rate; compounding the results by altering global systems, "climate forcings;" and poisoning our children and their children while guaranteeing disasters not yet imagined.
Carbon energy extraction forces such as the Koch brothers; destructive tools such as Scott Walker; and the bigoted and hateful need to be opposed by people working just a little to save and civilize.
Give up nothing to save everything.
Sounds like a good political slogan.
Our country and our civilization cannot afford Republicans as a force in this world, nor Democratic Party sheep. Peacefully oppose.
We have finally reached a place where the mainstream culture in several fields more often than not recognizes PTSD as a condition in which veterans are victims, not perpetrators; and it follows: War is the enemy.
As recently as 2010, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli came under heavy criticism from veterans' advocates for his part in treating suicide and trauma in the neocon way—blaming the troops and treating this trauma "as a lack of moral character, and a lack of intestinal fortitude, when it is really a medical issue," as Steve Robinson wrote in August 2010 in angry reaction.
That 2010 Army report has been effectually killed now; it was commissioned by the Bush-Cheney administration that targeted veterans who give war a bad name.
We take issue at this site on occasion for President Obama's not moving fast enough in renouncing the many imbecilic policies of the Bush-Cheney administration.
On the issue of PTSD and how it is treated, we recognize that there has been a sea change.
War being war, this is not nearly enough for U.S. military veterans, and certainly not enough for the victims of war who are not American, and whose humanity remains.
Another Dangerous Terrorist Captured -
Oh She's a Bad One for Sure! - Just Look at Those Eyes
Republican Rep Eric Cantor (VA) said he is "concerned"
about this woman and her growing "mobs" of fellow protestors.
I remember Vietnam, the real Vietnam, the Vietnam of the Marine rifle squad, the senselessness of it, the suffering. We all knew it as what it was, a huge con.
Now, nobody doubts the War on Terror was the same thing, Afghanistan, the drug producing capitol of the world, Iraq, the farce staged by the Bushites to loot oil and empty America’s treasury. ... I am more than familiar with what 'on the job' means.
[See live stream at Global Revolution. Democracy in action; fascism in the street of New York as brave souls - the young, labor, veterans, grow by the day and spread to cities across the country. Panic from the powers that be is next. See also #OccupyWallStreet.]
Rock on, Tori [that's my niece in black and white stripes] and classmates and Danish friends!
Mark Horowitz, a teacher at Golda Meir School in Milwaukee, and a large group of hosting families and staff, students, and seemingly the whole school of Dyssegaardsskolen, Denmark, have again collaborated on the exchange of fifth graders from Milwaukee to Denmark (for the 16th time).
"Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal," said Dr. King.
Sermon was delivered at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967. Less than a year later, Dr. King was assassinated.
Many Americans today believe King's resistance against the Vietnam War led to his assassination by forces who were vested in war, and who opposed his message of peace. I can't attempt to evaluate such claims; but the fact that killing a man of peace is a thought that can be entertained tells us something by the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.
The sermon which I am preaching this morning in a sense is not the usual kind of sermon, but it is a sermon and an important subject, nevertheless, because the issue that I will be discussing today is one of the most controversial issues confronting our nation. I'm using as a subject from which to preach, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam."
Now, let me make it clear in the beginning, that I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," says Jesus, "and the truth shall set you free." Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.
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 perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we're 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 in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.
Polls reveal that almost fifteen million Americans explicitly oppose the war in Vietnam. Additional millions cannot bring themselves around to support it. And even those millions who do support the war [are] half-hearted, confused, and doubt-ridden. This reveals that millions have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism, to the high grounds of firm dissent, based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.
Yes, we must stand, and we must speak. [tape skip]...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 the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. And so this morning, I speak to you on this issue, because I am determined to take the Gospel seriously. And I come this morning to my pulpit to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.
This sermon 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. Nor is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in a successful resolution of the problem. This morning, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility, and entered a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.
Now, since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is...a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was 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. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and 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 hope of the poor at home. It was sending their sons, and their brothers, and their husbands to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportion relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by 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 a 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 school room. So we watch them in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village. But we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago or Atlanta. Now, 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 ghettos 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 non-violent action; for they ask and write me, "So what about Vietnam?" They ask if our 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 first having 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 the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent. Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they've applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before thousands of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, we can't do it this way. They applauded us in the sit-in movement--we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor;when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark. There's something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, "Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There's something wrong with that press!
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 Peace Prize was not just something taking place, but it was 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 communists and capitalists, for their children and ours, for black and 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 to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with them my life? Finally, I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the 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 today to speak for them. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of the military government of Saigon, but simply of the people who have been 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 until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.
Now, let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators. Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation. And incidentally, this was before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And this is a little-known fact, and these people declared themselves independent in 1945. They quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom, and yet our government refused to recognize them. President Truman said they were not ready for independence. So we fell victim as a nation at that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony. And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years trying to re-conquer Vietnam. You know who helped France? It was the United States of America. It came to the point that we were meeting more than eighty percent of the war costs. And even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because France had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu. But even after that, and after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop. We must face the sad fact that our government sought, in a real sense, to sabotage the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition. People were brutally murdered because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence and by increasing numbers of United States 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. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It's a man by the name of general Ky [Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky] who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we are supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government and the press generally won't tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.
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 and 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 towns and see thousands of 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. 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 noncommunist revolutionary political force, the United Buddhist Church. This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. I'm 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, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our 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 changed 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. 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 the veins of peoples 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.
Oh, my friends, if there is any one thing that we must see today is that these are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds 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. They are saying, unconsciously, as we say in one of our freedom songs, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around!" It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, 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 a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that 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, we shall boldly challenge unjust mores, and thereby speed up the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."
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 worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing, 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 mankind. And when I speak of love I'm 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-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of John: "Let us love one another, for God is love. And every one 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 me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.
It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God."
Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means losing a job...means being abused and scorned. It may mean having a seven, eight year old child asking a daddy, "Why do you have to go to jail so much?" And I've long since learned that to be a follower to the Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it--bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace. Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have not lost faith. I'm not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right: "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right: "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne." Yet, that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the bible is right: "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!" With this faith, we'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don't know about you, I ain't gonna study war no more.
Text from Pacifica Radio/KPFA/UC Berkeley Library's Media Resource Center's site. The sermon was at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Thanks to Sam Husseini.
I used to wonder vaguely in my mid-teens why everyone in the world was not instantly transformed to a place of paradise after listening to the consecutive songs of Something in the Night and Candy's Room on Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978).
Check it out. In my opinion, Darkness is the very best piece of music ever recorded, what Pete Townsend called a "f*&king triumph" ... a piece of literature and art that lives forever.
I'm riding down Kingsley, figuring I'll get a drink Turn the radio up loud, so I don't have to think, I take her to the floor, looking for a moment when the world seems right, And I tear into the guts, of something in the night.
You're born with nothing, and better off that way, Soon as you've got something they send someone to try and take it away, You can ride this road 'till dawn, without another human being in sight, Just kids wasted on something in the night.
Nothing is forgotten or forgiven, when it's your last time around, I got stuff running 'round my head That I just can't live down
When we found the things we loved, They were crushed and dying in the dirt. We tried to pick up the pieces, And get away without getting hurt, But they caught us at the state line, And burned our cars in one last fight, And left us running burned and blind, Chasing something in the night.
I just learned that my friend Howard Zinn died today. Earlier this morning, I was being interviewed by the Boston Phoenix, in connection with the February release of a documentary in which he is featured prominently. The interviewer asked me who my own heroes were, and I had no hesitation in answering, first, “Howard Zinn.”
Just weeks ago, after watching the film, I woke up thinking that I had never told him how much he meant to me. For once in my life, I acted on that thought in a timely way. I sent him an e-mail in which I said, among other things, what I had often told others: that he was, “in my opinion, the best human being I’ve ever known. The best example of what a human can be, and can do with their life.”
Our first meeting was at Faneuil Hall in Boston in early 1971, where we both spoke against the indictments of Eqbal Ahmad and Phil Berrigan for “conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger.” We marched with the rest of the crowd to make citizens’ arrests at the Boston office of the FBI.
Later that spring, we went with our affinity group (including Noam Chomsky, Cindy Fredericks, Marilyn Young, Mark Ptashne, Zelda Gamson, Fred Branfman and Mitch Goodman), to the May Day actions blocking traffic in Washington (“If they won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government”). Howard tells that story in the film, and I tell it at greater length in my memoir, “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.”
But for reasons of space, I had to cut out the next section in which Howard—who had been arrested in D.C. after most of the rest of us had gone elsewhere—came back to Boston for a rally and a blockade of the Federal Building. I’ve never published that story, so here it is, an outtake from my manuscript:
A day later, Howard Zinn was the last speaker at a large rally in Boston Common. I was at the back of a huge crowd, listening to him over loudspeakers. Twenty-seven years later, I can remember some of what he said. “On May Day in Washington, thousands of us were arrested for disturbing the peace. But there is no peace. We were really arrested because we were disturbing the war.”
He said, “If Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had been walking the streets of Georgetown yesterday, they would have been arrested. Arrested for being young.”
At the end of his comments, he said: “I want to speak now to some of the members of this audience, the plainclothes policemen among us, the military intelligence agents who are assigned to do surveillance. You are taking the part of secret police, spying on your fellow Americans. You should not be doing what you are doing. You should rethink it, and stop. You do not have to carry out orders that go against the grain of what it means to be an American.”
Those last weren’t his exact words, but that was the spirit of them. He was to pay for that comment the next day, when we were sitting side by side in a blockade of the Federal Building in Boston. We had a circle of people all the way around the building, shoulder to shoulder, so no one could get in or out except by stepping over us. Behind us were crowds of people with posters who were supporting us but who hadn’t chosen to risk arrest. In front of us, keeping us from getting any closer to the main entrance to the building, was a line of policemen, with a large formation of police behind them. All the police had large plastic masks tilted back on their heads and they were carrying long black clubs, about four feet long, like large baseball bats. Later the lawyers told us that city police regulations outlawed the use of batons that long.
But at first the relations with the police were almost friendly. We sat down impudently at the very feet of the policemen who were guarding the entrance, filling in the line that disappeared around the sides until someone came from the rear of the building and announced over a bullhorn, “The blockade is complete. We’ve surrounded the building!” There was a cheer from the crowd behind us, and more people joined us in sitting until the circle was two or three deep. We expected them to start arresting us, but for a while the police did nothing. They could have manhandled a passage through the line and kept it open for employees to go in or out, but for some reason they didn’t. We thought maybe they really sympathized with our protest, and this was their way of joining in. As the morning wore on, people took apples and crackers and bottles of water out of their pockets and packs and shared them around, and they always offered some to the police standing in front of us. The police always refused, but they seemed to appreciate the offer.
Then one of the officers came over to Howard and said, “You’re Professor Zinn, aren’t you?” Howard said yes, and the officer reached down and shook his hand enthusiastically. He said, “I heard you lecture at the Police Academy. A lot of us here did. That was a wonderful lecture.” Howard had been asked to speak to them about the role of dissent and civil disobedience in American history. Several other policemen came over to pay their respects to Howard and thank him for his lecture. The mood seemed quite a bit different from Washington.
Then a line of employees emerged from the building, wearing coats and ties or dresses. Their arms were raised and they were holding cards in their raised hands. As they circled past us, they held out the cards so we could see what they were: ID cards, showing they were federal employees. They were making the peace sign with their other hands, they were circling around the building to show solidarity with what we were doing. Their spokesman said over a bullhorn, “We want this war to be over, too! Thank you for what you are doing! Keep it up.”
Photographers, including police, were scrambling to take pictures of them, and some of them held up their ID cards so they would get in the picture. It was the high point of the day. A little while after the employees had gone back inside the building, there was a sudden shift in the mood of the police. An order had been passed. The bloc of police in the center of the square got into tight formation and lowered their plastic helmets. The police standing right in front of us, over us, straightened up, adjusted their uniforms and lowered their masks. Apparently the time had come to start arrests. The supporters who didn’t want to be arrested fell back.
But there was no arrest warning. There was a whistle, and the line of police began inching forward, black batons raised upright. They were going to walk through us or over us, push us back. The man in front of us, who had been talking to Howard about his lecture a little earlier, muttered to us under his breath, “Leave! Now! Quick, get up.” He was warning, not menacing us.
Howard and I looked at each other. We’d come expecting to get arrested. It didn’t seem right to just get up and move because someone told us to, without arresting us. We stayed where we were. No one else left either. Boots were touching our shoes. The voice over our heads whispered intensely, “Move! Please. For God’s sake, move!” Knees in uniform pressed our knees. I saw a club coming down. I put my hands over my head, fists clenched, and a four-foot baton hit my wrist, hard. Another one hit my shoulder.
I rolled over, keeping my arms over my head, got up and moved back a few yards. Howard was being hauled off by several policemen. One had Howard’s arms pinned behind him, another had jerked his head back by the hair. Someone had ripped his shirt in two, there was blood on his bare chest. A moment before he had been sitting next to me, and I waited for someone to do the same to me, but no one did. I didn’t see anyone else getting arrested. But no one was sitting anymore, the line had been broken, disintegrated. Those who had been sitting hadn’t moved very far, they were standing like me a few yards back, looking around, holding themselves where they’d been clubbed. The police had stopped moving. They stood in a line, helmets still down, slapping their batons against their hands. Their adrenaline was still up, but they were standing in place.
Blood was running down my hand, covering the back of my hand. I was wearing a heavy watch, and it had taken the force of the blow. The baton had smashed the crystal and driven pieces of glass into my wrist. Blood was dripping off my fingers. Someone gave me a handkerchief to wrap around my wrist and told me to raise my arm. The handkerchief got soaked quickly and blood was running down my arm while I looked for a first-aid station that was supposed to be at the back of the crowd, in a corner of the square. I finally found it, and someone picked the glass out of my arm and put a thick bandage around it.
I went back to the protest. My shoulder was aching. The police were standing where they had stopped, and the blockade had reformed, people were sitting 10 yards back from where they had been before. There seemed to be more people sitting, not fewer. Many of the supporters had joined in. But it was quiet. No one was speaking loudly, no laughing. People were waiting for the police to move forward again. They weren’t expecting any longer to get arrested.
Only three or four people had been picked out of the line to be arrested before. The police had made a decision (it turned out) to arrest only the “leaders,” not to give us the publicity of arrests and trials. Howard hadn’t been an organizer of this action, he was just participating like the rest of us, but from the way they treated him when they pulled him out of the line, his comments directly to the police in the rally the day before must have rubbed someone the wrong way.
I found Roz Zinn, Howard’s wife, sitting in the line on the side at right angles to where Howard and I had been before. I sat down between her and their housemate, a woman her age. They had been in support before until they had seen what happened to Howard.
Looking at the police in formation, with their uniforms and clubs, guns on their hips, I felt naked. I knew that it was an illusion in combat to think you were protected because you were carrying a weapon, but it was an illusion that worked. For the first time, I was very conscious of being unarmed. At last, in my own country, I understood what a Vietnamese villager must have felt at what the Marines called a “county fair,” when the Marines rounded up everyone they could find in a hamlet—all women, children and old people never draft- or VC-age young men—to be questioned one at a time in a tent, meanwhile passing out candy to the kids and giving vaccinations. Winning hearts and minds, trying to recruit informers. No one among the villagers knowing what the soldiers, in their combat gear, would do next, or which of them might be detained.
We sat and talked and waited for the police to come again. They lowered their helmets and formed up. The two women I was with were both older than I was. I moved my body in front of them, to take the first blows. I felt a hand on my elbow. “Excuse me, I was sitting there,” the woman who shared the Zinns’ house said to me, with a cold look. She hadn’t come there that day and sat down, she told me later, to be protected by me. I apologized and scrambled back, behind them.
No one moved. The police didn’t move, either. They stood in formation facing us, plastic masks over their faces, for quite a while. But they didn’t come forward again. They had kept open a passage in front for the employees inside to leave after 5, and eventually the police left, and we left. * * * There was a happier story to tell, slightly more than one month later. On Saturday night, June 12, 1971, we had a date with Howard and Roz to see “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in Harvard Square. But that morning I learned from someone at The New York Times that—without having alerted me—The Times was about to start publishing the top secret documents I had given them that evening. That meant I might get a visit from the FBI at any moment; and for once, I had copies of the papers in my apartment, because I planned to send them to Sen. Mike Gravel for his filibuster against the draft. From “Secrets” (p. 386):
“I had to get the documents out of our apartment. I called the Zinns, who had been planning to come by our apartment later to join us for the movie, and asked if we could come by their place in Newton [Mass.] instead. I took the papers in a box in the trunk of our car. They weren’t the ideal people to avoid attracting the attention of the FBI. Howard had been in charge of managing antiwar activist Daniel Berrigan’s movements underground while he was eluding the FBI for months (so from that practical point of view he was an ideal person to hide something from them), and it could be assumed that his phone was tapped, even if he wasn’t under regular surveillance. However, I didn’t know whom else to turn to that Saturday afternoon. Anyway, I had given Howard a large section of the study already, to read as a historian; he’d kept it in his office at Boston University. As I expected, they said yes immediately. Howard helped me bring up the box from the car.
“We drove back to Harvard Square for the movie. The Zinns had never seen ‘Butch Cassidy’ before. It held up for all of us. Afterward we bought ice-cream cones at Brigham’s and went back to our apartment. Finally Howard and Roz went home before it was time for the early edition of the Sunday New York Times to arrive at the subway kiosk below the square. Around midnight Patricia and I went over to the square and bought a couple of copies. We came up the stairs into Harvard Square reading the front page, with the three-column story about the secret archive, feeling very good.”
- Daniel Ellsberg is a lecturer, writer and activist and the former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who, in 1971, released the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times.
Happy Memorial Day Weekend
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