Tell us a little bit about your uhm background and how your reaction to the election of FDR reflected that.

Well, I grew up in a solid, Republican home in Wakefield, Massachusetts, at the time a suburb. My father was a lawyer — actually he was a friend of Calvin Coolidge, and one of my early memories was having Calvin Coolidge, who at the time was Governor of Massachusetts, coming out on the train and our meeting him at the station. In those days he came without a body guard (chuckle) or anybody else — just Calvin coming out for Sunday dinner.

My father was actually Chairman of the Republican Town Committee, at one point I guess, the County Committee. By the time I went to Yale, in the fall of 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt was elected, I had a lot of disagreements with the way things were. Particularly since in my town well there weren't Jews or black people, but there were Italians and Irish who were very much looked down on.

So I had begun a process of re-thinking my values and becoming critical of the society but, aah, late one night when we learned that Franklin Roosevelt had been elected, I thought the world was going to come to an end, and I sort of prepared myself for the disaster. (Clears throat). By leaving my room as a freshman at college and walking alone in the streets of New Haven, just wondering how (chuckle) how the world would hold together...

You arrived aah at a very different political perspective from the one you had on that night. Can you describe briefly what that perspective was?

Well, first I should say that that it went step by step, and one difference I sometimes have to this day with my colleagues who I guess, you know, on the left, aah, is that I've always been concerned with individuals and not to say that everybody isn't, but I think there is a danger in politics that aah we develop sweeping characterizations of the system or things become abstract.

So at the very time that I was horrified by the election of Franklin Roosevelt I was already in trouble at Yale for having joined the struggle to improve the working conditions and to provide, to make possible for the janitors and the maids to have a union.

And I guess that same, that's still my attitude. On the other hand I do think that aah we are governed...ruled...our lives are dominated in most cases by one of the most cynical, economic systems in the world which says that the only way to aah to be fulfilled is to compete against your fellows and to rise above them instead of cooperate with them to work together for the common good and everybody rise or fall together, hopefully rise.

So I am strongly opposed to the capitalist system although I don't always run around using that word, but I mean any system which emphasizes private profit over human welfare and what I think is a very undemocratic system which gives tremendous economic power to a tiny percentage of the population then gives them the sop of saying that they can vote periodically.

And I think that aah democracy is aah is aah nonexistent in the United States. Real democracy. Don't forget, I guess the other thing is that aah I think the change has to come from the bottom up and that of course is a fundamentally democratic concept, again, but what is commonly called democracy in this country is that somehow you have the right to choose who is going to rule over you or that if you oppose the war in Vietnam or that you're dissatisfied with the treatment of women or blacks or minorities or or the working class generally, that the thing to do is to change the people at the top.

But I don't think that aah shuffling around the personnel up there is nearly as fundamental as aah developing our own sense of solidarity with other people, our ability to work together and in particular, our ability to say no to the government. When in comes in with a draft, aah conscription or comes in with money for El Salvador...

Good. That's very good. We'll come back to some of those points but let's let's just touch on the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that is a piece of legislation which is often hailed in the landmark legislation passed by progressive president committed to aah the welfare of black people. Do you share that view of the Civil Rights Act in 1964?

Actually, an example of what I was talking about is the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964...

Be-begin again because, be-begin again because we won't...

Oh, it's a separate segment— Oh, I was trying to make the link (chuckle) yeah, ok.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 under the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson is an example of the power of the people at the grassroots to force through change and politicians at the top who aah as Charles Colson put it, "would walk over their grandmother if necessary, in order to attain high office or in order to hold it." But anyway, people of that kind to respond to the pressures and then claim credit for them.

I was sitting in a bar with aah two or three of my black friends with whom I'd been involved in activities in the South the night that Lyndon B. Johnson said on television "we shall overcome" and I thought they were gonna throw up. I thought I was, too.

Because we knew that that was a canny politician's way of responding to the fact that — I was gonna say young blacks because a lot, it didn't even, I started to say it started there, but a lot of middle aged...blacks of all ages — a certain point had reached aah a time in their lives and and a time in American history when they would no longer accept the aah gross aah, segregation.

You know, in a southern town aah, the mother took her children downtown and there was no place to go to the toilet because there were no toilets for black people downtown. And then in the bigger cities there were black and white toilets. All, all of that type of thing.

But when blacks went out and aah had hot coffee poured on over them sitting in aah luncheon counter at Woolworth's or somewhere else, when they began to say no to all of these things, then it became necessary for politicians who had advanced as Johnson had by being anti-black to swing as far as they thought was necessary in order...well, both to aah gain or hold office, but also to keep the country from exploding.

Good, aah, let's go to the war itself. Uhm, why do you think that the United States became involved in the war in Vietnam? Do you think it was an aberration?

To understand why the United States became involved in the war in Vietnam one has to go back at least to World War II , I just take that as the starting point. And not a lot of Americans realize that the United States in the early stages — and I mean Franklin Roosevelt and certainly the big corporations backed both Hitler and Mussolini and they backed dictators all over the world.

Now, at the same time because America is schizophrenic it has wonderful ideals and many great promises and some of the people that I'm criticizing, half believe in them but, with the other part of this schizophrenic personalities they made alliances with dictators and and aah in actually when aah Japan was defeated in aah August 1945 and the Vietnamese people declared their independence their freedom from colonialism which was one of the aims of World War II , the United States provided arms to aah the Japanese fascist prisoners and...

Let's cut for a second. Sorry to do that.

Too long? Heh...

It's often been...

Hold it, hold it—I'm not quite ready...Ok, ready.

It's often been pointed out that the Vietnam War was the first war that was visible in people's living rooms through television. And people viewed with horror children being napalmed, grass huts being burned and they thought this is a terrible mistake, it it really runs counter to the American ideals which it does.

Gradually, step by step, people learned that it really wasn't an aberration. That we were giving, first of all, the Vietnamese the same treatment we'd given the Indians and then the same treatment we'd given the Philippinos, and that so there was an element of racism about it and that America, you know, with its high ideals, should dominate the world.

And secondly, there were economic reasons, and it was often said that aah, you know, we didn't have much to win or lose in Vietnam. But what I believe was happening was that it was a war of example, at a certain point, became a war of example to prove to undeveloped, third world countries that they could not harbor ideas of being democratic themselves, they could not have the decision making power over their own lives. But they had to welcome the superior civilization that came with its corporations and its science and technology, and allow the Americans to run their lives.

Now at points, of course, the United States spoke about democracy there, but they they placed into office and even assassinated aah in the case of Diem, aah people they thought would uhm support them and then finally, they said that aah they welcomed, coming there because they'd been invited in by the Vietnamese to help straighten out their country, but the invitation was written in Washington. And handed to the Vietnamese to be given to us. Is that closer to what you want or is that...

Ready?
Hold on just a second while I settle this... Yes... Okay.
Why did you march on the Pentagon?

In April of '67, we surprised the country by getting maybe half a million people out in New York City to protest the war in a march and rally. Martin Luther King told me it was double the number of the famous civil rights march.

And we began to realize that that this was wonderful but if we limited ourselves to marches and rallies that it, you know, people after awhile began...initially they'd get a sense of their power. Because I mean, gee, I'm not crazy — here's a hundred-thousand people or now it was five hundred thousand people who came out to say the same things. Then after awhile they begin to get a sense of their own impotence as they come out and march and rally and nothing happens and they go home and wait for the war to end.

So we coined a slogan from protest to resistance which was that you keep marching and rallying but that we would step up the pace of non-violent, civil disobedience. Now already there were young people refusing to be drafted or burning their draft cards and that kind of thing. We decided to have a mass organized activity which would include civil disobedience.

We set it up in stages so that people could participate at whatever level they felt was right so that they wouldn't be told well, you can't come unless you're ready to burn your draft card (chuckle) or unless you're ready to invade the Pentagon grounds to say the the Pentagon must be shut down.

So, first we had a massive, aah, rally at the Lincoln Memorial and people could come for that and leave if they wanted...then we had a march from there to the Pentagon and if people wanted to take a little chance of having red paint thrown on them or being teargassed or being attacked by people, some of whom could have been sent in by the government or others just sincerely and patriotically aroused against us...that was a little further step.

And then to be sure that anybody who wanted to leave then and wouldn't get caught up in the other activity aah could do so, we had a brief rally in the parking lot of the Pentagon for which we had a permit. But then perhaps five, ten thousand people moved on to the Pentagon grounds aah saying to the soldiers who had been called out, saying you are our allies, join us. You are victims too, lay down your arms.

And saying to the public and to anybody who was in the Pentagon, we have to get out of the war business. We have to stop manufacturing instruments of massive destruction which are in the famous phrase of our chickens coming home to roost, besides killing millions of these Vietnamese in the end, we're sending two hundred GIs home in canvas bags every week at that point. So we wanted to have room for everybody but to legitimize uhm a more militant form of non-violent action.

Good. (Cough). You described the negotiations with the government and you you wrote in one of your essays, "we wanted we wanted something with more teeth in it, we wanted a real confrontation instead of a legitimized one." This is in context of the trial...

Yes, that was fine, yeah.

Uhm, what did you mean by that "a real confrontation?" A confrontation with whom over what?

There's a very strange attitude that the government took and a lot of liberal people, namely, isn't it...

Could we start again and could you not...

Not lean forward... (chuckle)

We're so restricted (chuckle)...

Uhm...as the protest mounted, there was a danger that people would say, "oh isn't this a wonderful country. It will allow a hundred thousand people or three hundred thousand people to aah march against the war even while it's going on. So that they were hearing that, that since we were a democratic country that had civil liberties, then maybe it wasn't so bad that we were burning little children with napalm or killing off two hundred GIs every every week.

And and so when the government said to us, "well, we will provide permits for you to come and march and we will arrange everything so that, you know, it's a collaboration between us and you," aah, we said no. Aah, because the one thing that they would not allow is to go on to the Pentagon grounds saying "shut down the Pentagon! End the war!"

Uhm, and when we said this, then they said you will get no permits at all, we will not even allow buses to bring demonstrators into Washington, we will stop them all at the Maryland line. At that point, some of the younger people who were not as convinced as we were of non-violence and had sort of stayed away perhaps, or were not active participants, they became enraged that we couldn't even bring buses in, and it kind of actually, it boomeranged against the government.

And the people who had been wavering for one reason or another—maybe—more people than I just referred to—people who would say, "well, civil disobedience may be going too far. We don't want to go to the Lincoln Memorial even if we can leave at that point. "When they learned that the government was taking the line that it was, they joined us and it became a huge demonstration which successfully combined the three elements.

What was the result of the act?

At the time of the Pentagon...

I'm sorry...

Oh, I keep doing it - forgive me.

...I'm out of focus...

I'm sorry... I I I just forgot... See, you make me get interested in the subject matter and I'm no good...

If you want to stay forward...

No, that's alright (chuckle) ...that's alright...I be emphatic and leaning back... ask me again what it was...

What was the result of the action?

After the Pentagon activity was over, there was some people who said it was a waste of money and they totaled up how much money it must of cost to bring a quarter of a million or how ever many people it was there and to pay those who paid fines and all the rest, and they said that the Pentagon wasn't shut down. It would have been inhibited as much if we burned twelve cars, one in each approached to the Pentagon.

What they missed was that a message went out to the country, a message that there were thousands and thousands of people of all categories who would no longer tolerate business as usual, would no longer be put off by the fact that they had the freedom to gather in certain assigned places and to speak against the war.

The other thing about the Pentagon, the other result was that it was the first time that the National Guard has been brought out to stand between the aah protestors and aah the object of where they were trying to go. And after considerable debate, we overwhelmingly decided to say to the GIs, you are our brothers, join us, and there were some GIs who actually threw down their guns on the line and were led away and aah but we got in touch with them afterwards.

And the country gradually, beginning with the Pentagon, became aware that the GIs themselves were not happy with the war. Not too long after that they became the cutting edge of the Anti-Vietnam War movement.

Up until that time they had always said "you're stabbing our GIs in the back," but to this day, I can pick up a hitchhiker or I can speak at a college and somebody will come and say, "I was in Vietnam and I hated the war. I was opposed to it, and the best news to me was the demonstrations and the rallies against it" but that was not known.

I'd like to add the third factor, the government became so terrorized, not just we were terrorists, but because they were showed that the people were turning against the war and were going to take serious action to stop it. And so they stepped up the policy of sending agents provocateurs into our rank, who kept arguing that it was necessary for us to be violent, and that was the beginning of a series of bombings that actually were carried out by the FBI in order to say to the country, "See, these are not non-violent people, these are not peacelovers, they are terrorists."

And aah, aah, this, of course, eventually came out. But at the time, it became a very demoralizing factor when when bombs were put off in an anti-war message was accompanied with it, and it wasn't until later that some FBI people became so disillusioned that they confessed that this was happening and then under the Freedom of Information Act, we found out how extensive that was. I was often offered bombs by FBI agents, people who later turned out to testify against us and to say that I was violent—not the government.

Okay, cut please. I think we're almost out.

Let me just sit up without throwing Kevin off...

Kev, can I... Ready ...

Hold on just a second... Why did you go to the Democratic convention in Chicago?

Many people think that one of the best things about our political system is that we can elect our president, but I think that one of our problems is that it becomes a substitute for people acting themselves. And, after the successful mass actions and also the resistance activities that took place in the late '67 and early '68, there was a tendency to say, "Ok, now we'll handle everything because we're going to elect a president."

And, aah, some of us felt that the movement to stop the war would lose its momentum if we followed Gene McCarthy's advise which was to get out of the streets and into the quote "regular political arena." But we would have gone at that point to any major national event of a ritualistic nature to say that this becomes all poppycock when we are trying to bomb the Vietnamese people back to the stone age and killing off the finest flower of American youth.

So, it was a natural place the eyes of the world would be upon it and aah, so after immediately after the siege of the Pentagon in October of '67 we began—we first of all, the National Mobilization Committee, which had by then become the new Mobilization Committee, made a decision to conduct demonstrations at Chicago at the National Democratic convention.

And I believe that was one of the reasons that Lyndon Johnson decided that he would not run because he would have been so embarrassed and humiliated to come to Chicago and be greeted as he would have been by the demonstrators.

Why did you organize a protest in the streets?

Well, actually, we did not organize the protest in the streets. We organized a festival of life and an alternate convention and we had commissions that were that were drawing up preliminary papers and that we were to meet and to discuss all of the issues that the national parties such as the the Democratic party would discuss. We were going to come up with an alternative program for the country.

But we were denied certain elementary rights, including the right of aah of young people coming in, who wanted to sleep in Lincoln Park which had previously been used as a place where the Boy Scouts could sleep overnight and I think the masons or some group of that kind. We were told no, and that became an issue of free speech and of people who couldn't afford to stay in hotels and so forth.

And we were denied permits to get within six miles of the arena where the democratic convention was taking place. And so it became in the streets because the very first night when we were in Lincoln Park and they announced a curfew and actually, to the best of my memory, most people left, but when we got outside the park, in fact, even before we got outside the park, the police charged us and began clubbing people and beating them to the ground.

And, aah, that was really the history of of aah the convention week. It became a question of trying to survive and still have a visible presence to show that we were there, to show that we would gather in the parks on the streets, wherever we could, we would march through the streets condemning the war and whenever we did, or most of the times when we did, we were brutally attacked by the police.

Mayor Daley was often blamed for that but there was a lot of evidence that it was orchestrated in Washington. They also succeeded in keeping away some of the people that would have been there because Mayor Daley, after the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, announced that next time the police should be prepared - in terms of mass demonstrations - prepared to shoot to kill, and the head of the National Guard announced that they would have live caliber ammunition which was the kind that killed people.

So they did everything possible to keep people away, and we thought it was terribly important that we not accept fascism by staying away, by saying, "well, we'll wait and demonstrate some other time." If in this historic occasion they wouldn't give us permits and they told us that if we came we would be mowed down, which is what they said over and over again, and they said the only way you can protest the war is by voting for your favorite candidate or you lesser evil candidate. Then we felt it was very important.

And while we were there, the Soviet Union invaded Prague, and over and over again, we said, "Chicago is becoming the Prague of America," and we condemn both the Soviet troops for invading Czechoslovakia and the troops of Mayor Daley and the federal government for invading Chicago and putting down our much vaunted civil liberties and freedoms.

You have written that the Chicago police in a sense are really fundamentally not accountable or responsible for the violence that took place, that that violence was, so to speak, inherent in the system. I mean, that it was, you know, that they were the agents almost, in a sense, of the larger system. Can you describe that a little bit, please?

I'm not sure what you're referring to... I don't want to go off on some long-winded thing that's not quite what you...

We'll come back to it...

'Cus I immediately think about when I was in the south, in Birmingham, you know, and people said it was Bull Connor, and I said that when there are people in the streets in cities of New York that are as insistent...

For close to a week in Chicago, the protestors endured the violence without its getting on the t.v. or being known widely around the country, but then because it went on for a week and because camera men and other newspaper people were also brutally beaten, it began to reach out into every living room, much as some of the horror of Vietnam War had reached into people's living room.

I think for the first time the people of the country got a sense, on the one hand, of the brutality of the establishment and on the other hand of the determination of thousands and thousands of people to risk their lives, if necessary, to end the war. So, in a sense, Chicago was a victory in that it became impossible - and it was known in Washington - that it would be impossible to continue the war at its current pace and to maintain peace and civil liberties and and aah, well, they can't get any support from the American people.

They just decided that even those who were not particularly opposed to the war, if there are such, that aah it was just getting to be too much of a mess and that aah, you know, the country just better start ending the war.

On the other hand, the terrible thing that happened within the movement aah, although mostly with a minority, was that aah people who had been brutally beaten while being non-violent came to the sad and tragic conclusion that non-violence didn't work. And, from that time on, and particularly with the infiltrator sent in by the government who kept over and over again saying that to us - and I was told how many times by FBI, people who later turned out to be FBI agents - either to accept a bomb or that I should pick up the gun, that was the only way we'd get peace and justice in the country.

But from then on it became much more confused, the complete, the overwhelmingly non-violent nature of the movement was no longer transparent. And, aah, so at the same time the country turned against the war there was a tendency to, in a lot of circles, to turn against the anti-war movement. To think that it was, as the government had been saying for years, a bunch of spoiled kids who who would resort to trashing or or violence.

Even though the government had created that situation, it was our greatest enemy when we tried to keep the movement non-violent. They knew they could deal with a non-violent movement that — I mean a violent movement - that they could discredit. So I would say that it was a two edged sword or a two edged victory.

It was partly a victory for us because it really alerted and aroused the American people and turned them against the war. But it weakened the anti-war movement around the edges, at least, and that became, the edges became what Richard Nixon played on.

I mean, he would...when he was making an appearance in the electoral campaign aah he would say something or have somebody do something to taunt the protestors, and then if they all yelled at him, he would say, "see, that's that kind of people they are."

And of course, they're yelling, or even those who trashed or did things that the leadership always opposed and that most people never did—but even those who did that—it was nothing compared to dropping B-52 bombs (chuckle) you know, cluster bombs on the people.

But somehow or another, Nixon and others succeeded in at least fooling some people into thinking that the anti-war movement was untrue to its words, and untrue to its ideals and actually violent.

Would you have had the same outcome from Chicago...

(cough) I'm sorry, I coughed and I couldn't hear you.

We have less than a minute.

Okay.

In the early days of the anti-Vietnam War movement we were described by Lyndon Johnson as a few nervous nellies. And the press systematically cut down the numbers saying, like when I heard the daily news reporter call in from New York that there were 200,00 people there that day protesting, the headlines said 100,000.

But then we got to be so large, as many as a million people demonstrated on the same day at two or three places, I mean a total of a million in two or three places in the country, and it was just such a ferment of activity that this could no longer be said. But then they came up with the phrase, "the silent majority" and we're just the "noisy people" that the vast majority of the country which is aah who are keeping silent that they still favor the war.

Now I knew from my travels into small, out of the way places that that was not true. But it's a little bit like the moral majority today — there was the same kind of arrogance of saying, you know, the people that you don't hear from are the ones that, you know, that aah think differently. But after Chicago, I think it became impossible after that.

And in particular, when the moratorium took place, October 15, 1969, and then the massive mobilization in Washington on November 15, which is one of the times there were over a million people, it just no longer became possible to claim that. But still, that was a way of trying to rally people and to undermine the anti-Vietnam war movement.

Let's talk about the MOBE of November, 1969. Was the MOBE a continuation of the moratorium in October or was it different?

One of the ways in which the myth of the silent majority was demolished was by the October, 1969 moratorium. When in thousands, probably, many hundreds, probably thousands of towns across the country aah people came out to observe a moratorium against the war.

Now these included a lot of the people who had been protesting all the time, but it clearly reached out into new segments of the population who hadn't liked the war, many of them for a long time, but had been kind of pacified in terms of taking action by the theory that they would be stabbing our boys in the back if they protested or that you don't protest in the middle of a war.

But when they came out, that changed a lot. And we were already planning uhm November 15th march, a month later, in Washington, and some of the new organizers who had succeeded in reaching out to new people with this aah with basically a new organization with overlaps, came in and joined us in planning the November 15th march.

As always, there were people who wanted to keep them separate and again, this was a role of an agents provocateur often, to say to the moratorium people, "look it, this includes notorious radicals like Abbie Hoffman or Dave Dellinger" or whoever it was.

But I found aah that I was sought out by moratorium leaders and aah as I sought them out and we sat down, most of them and most of us, we sat down in rooms and very quickly worked out a joint program so that there was joint activity, and I think that's why as a follow up to the moratorium, the mobilization was the largest single demonstration in one place up until aah up until that time.

And there's a fact of history that's not often known, and that is that Kissinger and Nixon had told the Vietnamese that they would use nuclear bombs on November 1st if the North Vietnamese had not withdrawn their troops from South Vietnam and if the NLF had not surrendered. But they revised that after the turnout on October 15 and after the indications it was going to be so massive on November 15. They knew that they could not control the country if they used the atom bomb or the nuclear bombs that they had threatened to use.

The coalition of organizations who were involved in planning the MOBE was rather broader than that involved in the moratorium. Was there a danger of diluting your effectiveness by including this odd compassing sets of groups and issues?

Give me just a second. Ok, go ahead.

Hold it, please.

Stop. Cut it.

Yeah, I have to think about...

When people become aroused about any particular injustice, there is a problem that always comes with it. When you begin to see its links with other injustices, do you start talking about them, too, or do you dilute your message? And one of the dilemmas in that respect was aah seen in in the existence of the Civil Rights Movement and the existence of the anti-Vietnam War Movement.

And one of the things that I was heavily involved in along with a lot of other people was trying to persuade Martin Luther King, an eminently moral non-violent man, to come out against the war in Vietnam when a lot of people were saying to him that if he did, he would appear unpatriotic he would antagonize people who had come along and were supporting him on civil rights.

In the anti-Vietnam War Movement, we had the same problem. Aah, one time the treasurer of the National Mobilization Committee on the war in Vietnam, a marvelous man, resigned because he said we were talking too much about civil rights and black rights, and later it came up in connection with women's rights. People say why do you intrude that here?

And it's it's a real dilemma. I think that one can sometimes emphasize one thing but should not keep quiet about the other. And the approach the MOBE took was to try always, to have an emphasis on the war but to constantly have foremost spokespeople for the black rights speak, and aah we always had women speaking, but the history of the movement of the country in regard to women was such and the women's movement at the time wasn't that active so that very often they did not speak in the early years in favor of women's rights.

But I would say that after Chicago where we had really set up commissions to deal with every major social problem after that uhm there was much more unity in the MOBE on the necessity for being sure that all of these issues were represented.

It's the same problem that the disarmament movement faces today. But I always think about something a friend of mine, the poet Kenneth Patchen once said about the anti-war movement of an earlier period, when he said "the trouble is they want to get rid of war without getting rid of the causes of war." So, if you do not somehow make the linkages aah you can develop mass movements that are easily led astray.

The anti-bomb movement of the 50s was largely single issue, and then when they passed the limited test band treaty, John F. Kennedy was able to turn right around and double the involvement in Vietnam because people were palliated because they had not been educated beyond the bomb into interventions.

Dave, try to keep looking at me, okay.

Yeah, that would help.

Yeah, look at me, don't look at...

I was looking at Barbara and John...

Right, I know...

Can't look at Elizabeth...

Look at me...Why did politicians...I mean you were saying you were reaching out embracing and so forth...why was it that politicians that were opposed to the war I mean people like Lowenstein or Kennedy, Ted Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy...why were reluctant in some cases, just decided not to participate in the activity in the MOBE?

In the MOBE?

Yes.

I want to get into this but...we were wooed by the Kennedys a few times, but in the early days, to come and speak, but with this...I believe the same kind of wishy washiness, I mean to take it over rather than to keep it honest. That's not, I'm just making it too brief. Oh yeah, are you filming this?

Yes, we're filming this. Go ahead.

(Chuckle) I was just talking. Sorry, turn it off.

Cut. Cut.

I beg your pardon...

One of the problems with American democracy, so-called, is that it takes a lot of money to run for high office. The problem is we try to have political democracy without having economic democracy. So, if people with the best of intentions want to run for Senate or some high office, they really require millions and millions of dollars to run a successful campaign. The higher the office, usually the more the money.

And therefore, they're very nervous about associating with movements like the anti-Vietnam war movement until they're well over the hill of winning public acceptance. Then they come in and still try to hold it back. For instance, to limit it from talking equally about black rights or women's rights or any other issue that might offend their sponsors.

So, we had a lot of problems. Sometimes with people who would say to me privately, "I agree with you, Dave, and I agree with what the MOBE is doing, but I've got to run a campaign." Now, in the country that is interpreted often as that the people are more conservative than the anti-Vietnam War Movement was, or the Civil Rights Movement, or the Women's Movement, whatever it is, but I think that it aah is more that that people who can finance the campaigns and get people into office are the ones who are more afraid of popular movements.

It probably wasn't as good the second time, but...same idea, anyway...

Great, you're great.

In 1966 I realized that I and a lot of other people were very active in the anti-Vietnam war movement, and rightly so. But there was an awful lot that we really didn't know about what was really going on over there.

And on the one hand Lyndon Johnson said over and over again, and it was commonplace and believed by all Americans that the United States was only bombing steel and concrete and was being very careful about civilians. On the other hand the uh Chinese had announced that uh Hanoi had been utterly destroyed.

And I decided to go to Vietnam to try to go there and find out what the real story was. First I went to Saigon, because in cases of that kind I always want to go to both sides, if I can. I also wanted to see what was going on in Saigon, although there had...of course there were Americans there.

So the first interesting thing about that was that my trip was, has to this day, has been uh emphasized in terms of going to Hanoi, as if, you know, I went to the enemy. Uh, which I believed in doing anyway because I believe in reconciliation and getting to know each other and so forth. But uh, the Saigon part of it, going to our ally and being equally conscientious there is dropped out.

But the horrifying thing was that I found out that the United States Air Force was, by intention, bombing schools, hospitals, uh churches, temples, uh just an utterly devastating bombing. I also found out that they were using cluster bombs, that uh were anti-personnel weapons. Bombs that would not penetrate any kinds of barrier, but would only penetrate human flesh. And uhm, through the years, by the way, these things became more and more sophisticated in, in ways so that uh if they struck somebody's leg, they would travel up to the heart and the doctors would not be able to operate, and that kind of thing. They were really a brutal anti-personnel weapon.

So I came back and I talked about these things, and for approximately a year and one half, almost two years, the Pentagon denied that they manufactured such weapons or were using them. But uh, then after a certain period of time, actually I think it was closer to two years, they not only admitted that they were using 'em but there was public bidding for the opportunity to uh manage them.

I also then, in supplement to what I had observed, I got a hold of an Air Force manual - which uh was supposed to probably be classified, I'm not sure - but uh which uh pointed out that uh in a modern warfare you had to bomb the heart of the civilian population because that was the way to destroy morale.

While I was there, they also, one day they would drop candy or radios or, you know, various consumer items along with leaflets telling people to surrender, that they would uh you know come and join America in the good life. And then the next day they would come in the middle of the night with their flares and they would machine gun strafe, men, women and children, uh uh or do blockbuster saturation bombing.

And somehow or other it never seemed to occur to them that uh the goodies that they distributed one day, if they had any appeal at all, were destroyed, the effect of them was destroyed by the bombs that would come actually sometimes just a few hours later.

I'd like to move on to the next...

Change batteries. Okay.

Wait just a second.
Ready.

To understand whether the anti-Vietnam War made a difference to the country and not to the war one has to think about two things. First of all...

Begin again, and say the anti-war movement.

What did I say?

The war itself. Just start over again.

I don't remember, but where do you, you want me to say?

You left out the word "movement" by mistake.

Oh, I see. Thank you.

Do you think you made a concrete difference in the conduct of the war?

I don't think one can really appraise the question of the effectiveness of the anti-war movement without taking into consideration two factors. First, where the country was in the very early 60's when the United States became heavily involved and where it is now. And secondly, one has to consider the fact that the anti-war movement is made up of people. And, therefore, they have been conditioned into the society they - we — are erratic and confused at many points and, you know, we work unevenly toward our goals.

But when the war began it was considered impossible, and it was considered unpatriotic for Americans to object to a war in which American troops were involved. And many people wrote off the anti-Vietnam War movement after there was a massive influx of US troops in Vietnam.

But by the time the last years of the war came it became so unpopular to have American troops over there that they had to, in Nixon's phrase, change the color of the corpses by having Vietnamization, having the South Vietnamese being the ones slaughtered for American and US goals in Indochina.

But also if one considers interventions now, such as in El Salvador and other places, one discovers that much quicker there are mass protests, there are activities that force Reagan to cry "halt" from some of his things, or to make excuses and to be much more uhm undercover about them than uh was possible or necessary in the early days of the Vietnam War.

But also one can look at something like the women's movement and say that the anti-Vietnam War movement failed because it did not adequately recognize the oppression of women and do the things that were really required. And yet what happened was that in the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, step by step people began to discover that nobody should be left out of the human family, nobody should be stereotyped, treated as an object, made a second class citizen.

And so what began, in a certain sense, with the civil rights movement, spread to include Vietnamese and to include GIs who were being killed and told that it was for glorious purposes, and then it extended to, to women, American Indians, gay and lesbians, young children, old people, this whole wealth of movements that uh began to uh develop, again erratically and unevenly.

But in the 70's was in many ways a product both of the successes and the failures of the anti-Vietnam war movement, because people's consciences were aroused and stimulated. Their consciousness arose and uh I think we're at the threshold of possible uh revisions in the American society, which are necessary for all of its people.

There are always some people who think that a violent confrontation stirs up people, educates them and uh provides for better things. But I never have bought that.

I believe that when it comes down to violence it does anger people, but that's not necessarily their best selves that are stimulated. It may radicalized them in uh one sense, but I believe that movements uh to succeed have to be non-violent because...it's as I said about the anti-Vietnam, of the uh nuclear, anti-nuclear movement today, we who are in favor of nuclear disarmament have to realize that some people favor nuclear armaments because they have the same fear that we do of a nuclear holocaust, and they think that deterrents will do it.

And there is a way in which human beings are much more alike than their differing and opposing politics will often bring out. And so, once the confrontation becomes a violent one, then...all of those similarities and affinities and the possibility of reaching across the differences and coming to some understanding is lost.

Martin Luther King once said to me that he never entered a non-violent action where people didn't oppose it, because they said that it will arouse people and confuse the issues. But he said that it does raise the level of the issues and the level of the debate, but as long as it's non-violent, then it also opens up the possibility of each side understanding the other.

When it comes down to fighting and violence and trashing and all that kind of thing, it does just the opposite. It makes each side feel self-righteous and to focus on the wrong things on the other side and not on what they're striving, struggling for.

One of the inaccurate attempts to discredit the movement at the time of Chicago was to say, "Why are you partisan, why didn't you go with the Republican Convention, too?" Well, first of all we did. The National Mobilization Committee actually organized the protests at both places. But Chicago was where the party and power was. And, therefore, that was the main place to be.

Also, it's wrong to think that people can just flit around the country and go every week or every few weeks, you know, to a new place to demonstrate. So we mostly had, we decided to focus on Chicago. And we mostly had people who were in or near the south plus a few from outside go to the Republican Convention. Is that any help?

Yes.