Seventy.nine years of editorial freedom
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Editorials printed in The Michigan Doily express the individual opinions of staff writers
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JRSDAY, JANUARY 8, 1970
NIGHT EDITOR: JIM NEUBACHER
Anti-war movement:
The road forward
kST SEMESTER at the University was,
anything but encouraging for radi-
S.
'he Moratorium/Mobilization became
primary vehicle with which the left
tg of the Establishment attempted to
e the anti-war movement back into
mainstream of "legitimate" two-party
itics. Following up on Eugene Mc-
thy's professed goal of saving Amer-
s youth from radicalism, corporate
rals offered to anti-war youth the fol-
ing bargain: "place your faith in lib-
, Democratic politicians, and we will
e you our support and leadership."
e bargain was consummated. And not
prisingly.
.e radical wing of the movement had
ed to demonstrate clearly enough to
dents that anti-war sentiment w a s
d-end unless it grew into anti-imper-
sm. This pedagogic failure plus the
ently-executed suicide of the main
,onal organization of student radicals
)S) placed the liberals' offer in an at-
etive light for the student body.,
o the Mobe took everyone to Wash-
ton, marched them around a little, and
!n took them back home. And in the
cess it began to abort the develop-
at of a single-issue anti-war m o v e-
at into a movement mnore insightful,
re militan~t, and more determined to
orce fundamental social change in.
-erica.
iE REVIVAL of student's faith in the
Mobe's "moderate" politics was felt
the anti-ROTC campaign. Believing
war's end to be imminent and never
ing been won over to anti-imperial-
, students logically looked askance at
anti-ROTC campaign which (in their
w) seemed anti-climactic and politi-
ly extreme.
fistaking these political reservations
mere faint-heartedness, anti-ROTC
ders tried a series of vanguard "exemp-
r" actions designed to restore t h e
Ipus' courage and resolve. It became
ir that political isolation could not
:ured by tactical daring.
1E THIRD principal campaign 1 a s t
semester was over the bookstore is-
It focused on a legitimate grievance.
vas aggravated by the predictably nar-
-minded, petty-business orientation
Editorial Staff
HENRY GRIX, Editor
STEVE NISSEN RON LANDSMAN
City Editor Managing Editor
V'E ANZALONE...........Editorial Page Editor
IS STEELE...............Editorial Page Editor
NY STILLER............Editorial Page Editor
CIA ABRAMSON ...Associate Managing Editor
IE LIPPINCOTT.....Associate Managing Editor
LIE WAYNE .................. Arts Editor
N GRAY .............Literary Editor
L BLOCK... ........6.Contributing Editor
W BOGEMA.............Contributing Editor
of the Regents and Administratin. It
moved large numbers of people into mili-
tant action in their own interests.
All this was good. But the aftermath -
specifically the inability to transform
the Bookstore Coordinating Committee
into an ongoing student power union -
demonstrated the price radicals p a y
when they begin (as they did here) to
postpone their own job of persistently
raising the political implications and in-
adequacies of a movement in order to
insure that movement's short-term vic-
tory. In other words, a bookstore was won,
but the degree to which the conscious-
ness of the campus was raised in the
course of fighting for it is not breath-
taking.
WHAT ROAD now for the movement?
To save itself from isolation (on the
one hand) and adsorption/cooptation (on
the other), the movement must raise its
political sights and broaden its social
base. These are not mutually exclusive.
For example, anti-war sentiment must
become anti-imperialist on principle: it
must be opposed to all authoritorianism.
And that same principle will lead us into
supporting the struggles in the U.S. of
those who fight their own authoritarian
institutions.
Specifically,' the movement must ally
itself with workers who confront the
stratified, hierarchial institutions which
run their lives (e.g., it must support the
GE strike).
Demands raised by students, blacks, the
poor must be broadened in order to make
clear to other disenfranchised groups that
the sharp edge of our movement is di-
rected not against them but at the social
order which oppresses us all.
Students should raise a demand f o r
low-income housing in Ann Arbor. But
instead of limiting demands simply to
student housing needs, the movement
should embrace the housing needs of the
whole Ann Arbor community. This is
especially realistic now since a full 50
per cent of the American people are now
effectively priced out of the housing
market (according to the Wall Street
Journal!). Similarly the movement must
demand that this construction be financ-
ed in such a way as to remove the burden
from wage-earners and put it on those
corporations and individuals-higher up
the income ladded.
A COMPLETE PROGRAM for revitaliza-
tion of the movement clearly deserves
more extensive discussion than can be
given here. But the general direction in
which it must move is clear: radicalize
the politics, extend the social base.
-BRUCE LEVINE
See the Z
By RICK PERLOFF
2 A.M. NEW YEARS DAY. A man with a
narrow b vn tie and slightly wrinkled
white shirt stirs coffee. He sits alone in a
crowded restaurant, facing an empty chair
and packed parallel to couples who look
happier than he.
I fill the seat. He eyes me, twists his
head leftward and says softly, nervously,
and qute suspiciously "Tell me, look to my
left, is that blonde looking at me?" I see
a tall blonde-haired woman issuing a Miss
America smile in conversation to the gen-
tleman opposite her. She is not looking at
the man with the narrow brown tie.
I tell him so buthe is not surprised. He
had little luck at a dance hours before and
as his gradually balding hair dips into his
forehead he says blandly that he did not
score tonight.
Some other guys did, but he concedes
that these affairs are the getin, get out
of bed sorts that are devoid of meaning.
But he hasn't been scoring lately and -
alone - it has begun to bother him.
HE NUDGES a woman next to him, ex-
plaining that he had asked her to dance,
she had refused him, but that the idark of
a ballroom makes people look different
and less handsome. She smiles, mechan-
ically, and returns to a conversation.
He sips the coffee and says he wanted
to be a lawyer once, but now sells insur-
ance. "It's dog eat dog out there andrdon't
you forget it."
Two women sit beside us, and he imme-
diately compliments a tall brunette on a
"stunning" thin black outfit. Her friend
laughs under her breath and the brunette
says only thank you. The man has been
turned down again.
Having finished my drink, I rise and he
wishes me good-bye. It may have been the
first time in awhile that he scored with
anyone.
THE DODGE DART has left that res-
taurant in Los Angeles and drifts quietly
along U.S. 66 back to Ann Arbor. It has
passed from the Waynesville, Missouri's to
the Santa Rosa, New Mexico's, along a
route that is lined with motels, hotels, and
customers who glare no matter what their
location at a male companion whose hair
shags around his neck.
The Dart has made Las Vegas whose
slot machines pour out money like chyme
and whose glittery greed promises "hap-
piness" to the men with the narrow brown
ties. It moves on the icy roads of Indiana,
the dusty grounds of Texas and the curves
of California, but finds a highway is fund-
amentally a highway and suspects t h e
s a m e for the people it encounters in
America.
* * *
THREE PAINTERS, all about 30 "years
ol, are on a coffee break in McLean, Tex-
as, a town of about 1500 close to the Okla-
homa border. Corduroy shirts, proletarah
pants and slightly oily black hair, the three
are small town men and proud of it. One
says several truck drivers hollered out their
windows at him for driving his truck too
slowly on an Amarillo highway. He laughs
at this, brags that he couldn't make it, not
with the city fellows
Their town, one mentions, does not have
the city's problems of ghettos and the con-
tinuing threat of riots because "there
aren't any of them to riot in McLean."
McLean, it appears, used to operate a
selective admissions policy in regards to
race. Now, however, there are no rules pro-
hibiting blacks there as long as "the nig-
gers mind their own business."
Of course no one will purchase f r o m
their stores or talk with them; but they
are free to stay just the same. One black
gentleman apparently operated a cafe but
none of the whites dare entered, and his
food was rumored to be poor quality be-
sides. And sure enough, they all laugh, he
left fast.
-Daily-Thomas R. Copi
But doesn't the town have one of them
left? Indeed it did, said one gentleman.
"Old Nigger Dave" is still around, but
they guessed he was about ready to die.
He lives -on a farm, they explained, and
when he goes into town no one says any-
thing to him, but they don't kick him out,
no sir.
JUST OFF Route 66, outside Waynes-
ville, Mo., sits a souvenir store selling ani-
mal skins, pottery and fireworks. A man,
who speaks of killing wolves on a bounty.
also notes he saw some black panthers
near his farm. I smile, is this a pun?
No. Apparently they are the live-animal
panthers, for he does not return my grin.
His life is detached from militant blacks
and police harrassment; it is as delightful-
ly simple as the rustic hippies who live in
New Mexican communes.
* * *
THE PURPOSEFULLY efficient r i n g-
ring of the telephone has always disturbed
the woman who nurtured a baby with her
visible, ample breast.
She smiles continually, pats the child
and talks with Spencer, a bearded lad who
hitched w i t h us to the red-white-blue
mailbox that leads down a hill and into
the first commune established in New Mex-
ico, outside Placita and 20 miles from Al-
buquerque.
When we arrive, we are greeted by a;
heavily bearded man, originally from Ann
Arbor, who gulps swigs from a bottle of
red wine and calls himself none other
than Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
We are offered some and drink it while
we observe the commune: a s e r i e s of
thatched huts, on a slope of sandstone
rock. The shacks overlook a hill and con-
tain several dogs, a cat and a fair amount
of geese and chickens.
Spencer tells the woman with the baby
that he tried to go straight o n c e, but
couldn't. Everyone told him he was crazy
and maybe, he says, hoping for a person-
ality different than the rest, maybe he is.
SPENCER then figured he was destined
to be a hippie - like, the McLean truck
driver who believed himself also destined
for a simple, independent life.
The commune people seem to have an,
antipathy to anything massive or t h a t
fosters competition; a woman asks why
anyone should like to attend a rock con-
cert in a city - with so many people.
WE WALK OVER to Grant who tells us
of his attempt in a city to weasle some
cigars off some men. They wouldn't give
him any, he said, and Grant walked away
figuring that if they weren't going to of-
fer cigars to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, they
weren't worth his bother.
He mentions a lawyer who was award-
ed Grant's army jacket as an initiation in-
to the new world when he dropped out of
the legal - and straight - profession.
No one says much else. Some pick ber-
ries off a tree while another chops wood.
Now it is time to return to the road and
we tell Spencer we may return. He affec-
tionately waves goodbye.
AND THERE IS a continuity of con-
trasts. The ghost towns, plastic mountains
and patched-together slums sit sedately
at the Universal City Studios. They are but
half an hour from reality.
In the alleys of Watts lie ripped mat-
tresses, on the sidewalks lie grimy beer
cans. In the stores hobble cane-clutching
men clinging to life yet groping for death.
On the gravel pony-tailed children ride
bikes and on the corner militant youths
with purple shades sell papers.,
This is Watts, a sunshine slum t h a t
breathes bitterness. There are few tene-
ments, but the frame houses and the peo-
ple are both condemned.
One boy is immediately hostile to ques-
tions. He identifies the pigs as the police
for me and glares
It is° the s a m e response a long-hair
receives along the road; he is someone
different. In both cases one is a stranger,
an intruder into a closed culture with alien
values and modes of living.
America, the land of image and status.
The radio station in Los Angeles says
if you want to improve your image, you
can buy a square foot of land in England.
If you're clever, you can deceive people
by telling them you're important when
you're not.
And outside Tulsa, on Route 66, we pass
the Governor's car. with the "Oklahoma
- 1" inscribed. After the Governor pays
his money at the toll booth, the man rec-
ognizes him. "I just gave a nickel to the
Governor," he beams.
But his enthusiasm seems somehow mis-
directed. He is excited at the fact that
he, a lowly person, is fraternizing with a
governor, someone of awesome status. The
man at the toll booth has been American-
ized: he worships prestige at the expense
of his own liberty.
ON THE ROAD again. Cars pass us and
somehow the road looks friendlier than
the slums-it shields one from the America
of the narrow-minded small town and
makes the country into an impressive in-
stitution.
One of these rare moments of abstract
unity came at the Painted Desert in
Arizona, where Americans of differing
backgrounds and automobile models call
the barren splendor either "wonderful,"
"beautiful," "groovy," or "tres magnifique."
The non-human grandeur inspires the
common, monetone humanity in tourists.
On the road, they are united by the com-
mon experience of overcoming other cars,
waiting tensely at stop lights, blinking at
glaring headlights. Perhaps, the American
people are united under the cliches they
cherish and by the experiences they share,
as de Tocquevill indicated in 1830. Then,
he described the American as a "rootless
conservative," dependent on no one and to
be found anywhere in the country.
THAT IS THE WAY it appears today.
Bound by the same traditions and insti-
tutions a large group of Americans does
indeed share values, although they often
have different ways of implementing them.
The people in McLean and Waynesville
yearn for independence and simplicity,
but, as Tocquevile also observed, are con-
tent in their Americanism and distrust
anyone different than they. They are also
united in their adulation of material pos-
sessions and status and their beings often
reak with emptiness as a result.
One passes their lives on the Las Vegas
Strip and in the streets of small town
Oklahoma. It is quite often one independ-
ent dog against another and it seems that
few, despite their admirable yearnings for
simplicity, stop to care for anyone else.
They care for the American Dream's hol-
low goals of status and wealth and believe
that happiness somehow ansues the. at-
tainment of the ideal. They sit alone, stir
coffee and watch their lives overtake them
every New Years Eve.
1~
I'
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Mayor Harris: Totalitarian Left dictatorship leaves him c
old
To the Editor:
I HAVE opposed State Sen.
Robert Huber's politics ever since
I first crossed his path during the
Senate's consideration of fair
housing legislation in 1967.
However, I believe Sen. Huber
has a right to say what he thinks,
even if I disagree with it. If the
account in the Dec. 10 Daily is
correct, Sen. Huber's right to free-
dom of speech was deliberately
and systematically denied by a
group of students at this campus
who disagree with Sen. Huber's
politics.
IT IS A SAD thing for the cam-
pus and the country if any col-
lection of intellectual bullies who
want to close off freedom of speech
on campus can do so at will and
with impunity. There isn't much
sense in having a campus if un-
popular views can't be aired there.
I hope that SOC and SACUA
will address themselves to this
problem of swiftly and effectively.
More important, I hope the mass
of students and faculty members
will discuss and then come to grips
with the issue, which is serious
and current: are we to stick by
Thomas Jefferson's idea of free-
If we believe in the equality of
man; it is hard to deny -the equal
claim of all men to express what
they deem to be truth.
There is a terrible arrogance in
the assumption that you already
have so secure a grip on all truth
worth knowing that you can afford
to suppress those who disagree
with you.
-Mayor Robert J. Harris
Dec. 10
shoddy business
To the Editor:
(The following was sent to Mr.
Fred Ulrich of Ulrich's bookstore.)
ENCLOSED YOU will find the
halves of my credit card with your
store. That card has been so
destroyed for two reasons. The
first is to prevent its misuse should
it fall into the wrong hands. The
second reason I cut my card in
half is to demonstrate my dis-
pleasure with the manner in which
you conduct your business.
In a seeming conspiracy with
the other book stores in town, you
charge outrageous prices. I know
of two well-documented instances
Student Book Service when it was
founded. If you were a legitimate
businessman, you would not find
it necessary to stoop to such
actions.
I was always lead to believe that
capitalism was based on the prin-
ciple that there is always plenty
of business for a legitimate enter-
prise that provides good service.
Obviously Ulrich's Books, Inc.
doesn't make the grade. I there-
fore regard it as highly foolish to
vontinue doing business there. I
only hope that actions such as
mine will mare you realize that
it is in your educated best interest
to improve your service to the col-
lege community or that the col-
lege community will get wise to
the shoddy way in which you con-
duct your business.
-David L. DeMarkey, '72
Engineering
Dec. 14
health care
To the Editor:
THE MICHIGAN DAILY of
Dec. 5 carried an article on Wal-
ter Reuther's talk the previous
evening on universal health in-
and present material related to
the place of medicine in the serv-
ice to society. This was the first
time medical students were given
complete responsibility for' plan-
ning and carrying out a portion of
the official Medical School cur-
riculum. Mr. Reuther's speech was
one of this excellent series, pre-
sented not just as an evening Uni-
versity lecture, but as part of the
required curriculum of a Medical
School course.
AS WE ARE in a period of
serious discussion on this campus
regarding the role of students in
participating in decisions regard-
ing curriculum, it seems to me
that the auspices under which Mr.
Reuther spoke should be of great
interest to the University com-
munity. The Medical School, in-
cluding faculty and students, are
pleased with this particular de-
velopment, and thought your read-
ers might be interested as well.
-Robert A. Green, M.D.
Associate Dean for
Student Affairs
School of Medicine
Dec. 17
the gym closes), the gym is open
only to foreign students.
Why does anyone wish to segre-
gate the foreign students in this
manner? I believe that this pro-
cedure inhibits the assimilation of
foreign students. Furthermore, I
can't see why American students
should be prohibited from using
these facilities on Friday night,
a prime time. I am fully aware
that the IM building is available,
but it is very inconvenient to make
the long trek down there.
If "International S t u d e n t
Night" is to be continued, I wish
to suggest that the management's
policy be changed, due to the great
inflexibility of at least some of
those presently in charge. This
inflexibility is demonstrated by a
personal experience I had with
one individual.
ON A RECENT Friday night,
I walked into the gym with five
friends. The gym was completely
empty, except for the manager,
one other student, and a janitor.
The manager informed us that we
could not use the gym, because
it was strict policy that the gym
was only for international stu-
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