Aminoe £efi r4i40 4Pt an 4Daig~ Seventy-seven years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan, under authority of Board in Control of Student Publications 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily exp ress the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in oll reprints. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1968 NIGHT EDITOR: STEVE NISSEN / Welfare poltics: Playing games with people Sociology: EDITOR'S NOTE: Young, radical called Health. Edt academics have been asserting fare. Those of yc themselves recently at the normally staid annual meetings of their pro- passively to what fessions- Both the American Politi- presumably agree cat Science Association and the finition, this desc American Sociological Association theiman tides saw their recent annual conven- the man did, car tions sparked by organized young message. Yet amon radicalssattempting - and to some including the ha degree succeeding -- in affecting wod nwb the direction of their professional who do know b associations. The following is a know better. The speech delivered by Martin Nicho- which the mani laus,: an instructor at Simon Fraser accurately dsrb University in Vancouver, at! the a t describ ASA convention two weeks agp. which watches ov able distribution THESE REMARKS are not ad- disease, over thef dressed to the Secretary of estic propaganda Health, Education and Welfare. tion, and over the This man has agreed voluntarily . a cheap and doci to serve as member of a govern- force to keep e ment which is presently, fighting 'wages down, 'He, a war for survival on1 two fronts, Disease, Propaga Imperial wars such as the one bing. against Vietnam are usually two- This may be p front wars, -one against the for- for you, for you, b eign subject population, one on where you lo against the domestic subject pop- you stand. If you ulation. The Secretary of HEW is Sheraton Hotel I a military officer'in the domestic offensive. 'But if front of the war against people. and ladies would Experience in the Vietnam teach- across the street i ins has shown that dialogue be- might get a diffe tween the subject population and and a different vo its rulers is an exercise in repres-, will look at th sive tolerance. It is, in Robert through the eyes o S. Lynd's words, dialogue between , at the bottom of chickens and elephants. He holds eyes of the subje some power over me; therefore, and if you will en eves if he is wrong in his argu- with the same d ments he is right, and even if I'm sightedness youi right, I'm wrong. I do address my- courage amongy self, however, to the Secretary's you will get a diff audience. There is some hope- of the social scien even though the hour is very late are devoted. That -that among the members and this, assembly her ' sympathizers of the sociological kind of a lie. It is profession gathered here there will together of thosei be some whose life is not so sold know, or promo and compromised as to be out of knowledge of, soci their own control to change or a conclave of high; amend it. ' scribes, intellectua The ruling elite within your their innocent vict profession is in charge of what is the mutual affirma SIXTEEN county supervisors voted Sept. 10 to supply the Social Services Board (SSB) with $50,000 to carry out a pro- gram f or emergency welfare funds to clothe 1,300 children for school. Six days later the entire board of sup- ervisors voted unanimously to renege on the pledge. T h e y claimed the $50,000 could be, adequately found in SSB's own budget. T h e supervisors claimed $353,866 re- mains in the SSB budget and that more than $200,000 of that will be unused at the end of this fiscal year. Nevertheless, Ithe supervisors' decision to renege jeopardizes the program, not because money is not available, but be- cause it has rekindled a feud between the. SSB and the supervisors. As a result the BSB has said it is not sure it can carry out the program, despite indications from reliable sources that it can. Regardless of the financial realities, the program is now endangered, and the responsibility for this political mess must rest with the supervisors. They made the commitment, not the SSB. Following the Sept. 10 decision it was understood that the ratification of the agreement by the entire board was, but a matter of course. The action of the sup- ervisors in refusing to follow-up their earlier promise prompted Ypsilanti Mayor John Burton to comment, "We must look very silly."' NFORTUATEIY, there is little room for humor. Their action exceeds silli- ness - it is misleading and unfair both to the welfare recipients and other coun- ty residents. It is misleading in that it does nothing to save anybody any money. The $50,000 will still come from the taxpayers' pocket - whether it is labeled "supplemental;" or "SSB funds."' Originally, the supervis- brs appropriated the funds as "supple- )nental" - the money would be obtained from the surpluses remaining in various ounti departmental budgets - such as the SSB - at the end of the year. More than likely, it would have been easiest to allocate SSB's surplus funds as the "sup- plemental" funds in the first place. In any event, the, money is still coming from the same place. The action is further misleading and unfair to the county in that the super- visors have used the manuever to trick the taxpayer into believing he is saving money. As a matter of fact, it seems as though their professional fraud outdid it- self, as many of the supervisors them- selves seem to think money is being saved. Most important, however, it is unfair because it seriously jeopardizes the orig- inal commitment. Though the money re- mains available, the age-old quibbling be- tween the SSB and the supervisors has been started again. The SSB has already announced it may not completely fulfill the commitments made Sept. 10. The SSB may not allocate any ,of the $91,000 left after the 30-day period to those families showing a greater n e e d than $70 per child - and that was one of the main compromises by which the mothers set- tled Sept. 10 and ended four days of ser- ious disturbances and mass arrests. The SSB says it may not fulfill the pro- gram, because it cannot be sure funds will be available. This is doubtful. it it is true, the supervisors will have twice lied and their rationale for failing to hon- or their commitment will be shown to be without any basis whatsoever. But all indications suggest the funds are available. !k THE SUPERVISORS' action was meant r to place the responsibility for the pro- ject on the SSB and thus funnel all crit- icism of the agreements reached Sept. 10 to the SSB. Actually, b o a r d chairman Harrison and his 15 supervisors had prac- tically everything to do with the agree- ments, and not the SSB. The commit- ment was wholly their own. The result of this political maneuver- ing and the rekindling of the childlike feud between the supervisors and the SSB is deplorable for it loses sight of the cris- is problem. While battling each other and trying to get the upper hand, while trying to pass the buck and ignore responsibili- ty, the interests of some 1,300 s c h o o 1 children are being disregarded. T h e children - who must remain the central issue - now are suspended between the whims of two quibbling, childish branch- es of the county government. And instead of trying to solve the prob- lem,.s county 'government is using the problem for what they ironically feel is. their own tactical political gain. JT IS NOW the immediate responsibility of the SSB to ignore any false pride and become a service agency and nothing else. The surplus monies must be re-allo- cated for this direct relief purpose. Some $170,000 is presently in the SSB budget for hospitalization of the indigient, but recent medical aid laws make this money available for re-allocation. The SSB has claimed reallocation is not a "customary procedure." It is true that in the past the supervisors have not al- lowed the transferring of funds from one project to the next without their express- ed consent. However, the situation is cer- tainly not a "customary" one, and the supervisors have already suggested re-al- location publically. i I Establishment's servant ucation and Wel- ou who listened t he had to say d that this de- cription of what ried an accurate ng you are many, Lard researchers, etter or should department of is head is more ed as the agency ver the inequit- of preventable funding of dom- and indoctrina- e preservation of ile reserve labor, verybody else's is Secretary of rida- and Scab- put too strongly ut it all depends ok from, where stand inside the these terms are you gentlemen I care to step nto Roxbury you rent perspective cabulary. If you e social world of those 'who are it, through the ect population- ndow those eyes egree of clear- profess to en- yourselves-then 'rent conception ce to which you is to say that re tonight is a s not a coming- .who study and ote study and ial reality. It is and low priests, al valets, and aims, engaged in ation of a false- hood, in common consecration of a myth. Sociology is not now and never has been any kind of objective seeking out of social truth or real- ity. Historically, the profession is an outgrowth of 19th century European traditionalism and con- servatism, wedded to 20th century, American corporate liberalism. THAT IS TO SAY that the eyes of sociologists, with few but hon- orable exceptions, have been turn- ed downwards, and their palms upwards. Eyes down, to study the activi- ties of the lower classes, of the The honored sociologist, the big-status sociologist,'the fat-contract soci- ologist, the jet-set sociologist . . . this is the type of sociologist who sets the tone and the ethic of the profession, and it is this type of sociologist Who is nothing more or less than a houseservant in the corporate establish- ment, a white intellectual Uncle Tom not only for this 'government and ruling class, but for any government and ruling class .... . : . . . . . .'... ". . " y . . . :E N:" . . : "iM V S #ti E E :# E:" 4 Y . . .' 1 Mw' l . : : : " .: the same. The things that are sociologically "interesting" are the things that are interesting to those who stand at the top of the mountain and feel the tremors of an earthquake. Sociologists stand guard in the garrison and report to its masters on the movements of the occupied populace. The more adventurous sociologists don the disguise of the people and go out to mix with the peasants in the "field," returning with books and articles that break the protective secrecy in which a subjugated population wraps itself, and make it more accessible to manipulation and control. selves up in a loco parentis situ- ation that is usually far more op- pressive than any real parental relation. The crime which grad- uate schools perpetrate against the minds and morals of young people is all the more inexcusable because of the enormous liberating potential of knowledge about so- cial life. Unlike knowledge about trees and stones, knowledge about people directly affects what we are, what we do, what we may hope for. The corporate rulers of this society would not be spending as much money as they do for knowledge, if knowledge did not confer power. So far, sociologists 4 V subject population-those activi- ties which created problems for the smooth exercise of govern- mental hegemony. Since the class of rulers in this society identifies itself as the society itself---in the same way that Davis and Moore in their infamous 1945 propa- ganda article identified the so- ciety with those who run it- therefore the problems of the ruling class get defined as social problems. The profession has moved beyond the tear-jerking stage today-'social problems' is no longer the preferred term- but the underlying perspective is Stop'the-,cheer, and, Thus, the money promised mothers and the public-the entiret 000-must be totally expected in method agreed upon Sept. 10. the $91,- the MOST OF THE blame for the past sev- eral weeks of political blundering and irresponsibility rests in the hands of two men: Ways and Means Committee chair- man Fred Lunde a n d board chairman Robert Harrison. Lunde was negligent. He knew surplus funds were available, but he refused to indicate this during all of the protest. He refused to attend any of the meetings, subsequently held to deal with the prob- lem, even the meeting Sept. 9 called by Ann Arbor Mayor Wendell Hulcher. Lunde failed in his responsibilities as a public servant. He served no public inter- est but some' still mysterious aims of his own. Harrison was put on the spot by the problem. He could have dealt with it eth- ically, but he ended up dealing with it fraudulently. While offering compromise and sincerity, he was only stalling for time to let the demonstrations subside. His appeasements in the forms of nego- tiations he has since called irrelevant and unnecessary. He claimed to mediate the dispute and champion settlement, when actually he was only deceiving all the parties concerned, Social Services director Alfred E. Brose must also share much of the blame. It was his consistent refusal to listen to the mothers as far back as last April that has now terminated in this political farce. When the problem became immediate - when the sit-ins began -- Brose left the County Bldg with a deaf ear. It was at this point that Harrison was forced into the picture, as the only legitimate county official who could speak with authority. BUT THE commitment has been made. The supervisors' attempt to deny that the commitment was made is er- roneous. Their commitment was printed and publicized throughout the state, and never once was it refuted until the meet- ing Monday. It must still be honored. O E MORNING not long ago, but before Chicago, several of us went to Detroit's Fort Wayne induction center to demonstrate against the draft and on behalf of Frank H. Joyce, national director of People Against Racism, who had received an induction notice for returning his draft card to his lo- cal board. To make the trip, we snapped to the roar of the alarm clock at four a.m. in a glimmering of con- sciousness, spun silently east on I-94 amid trucks packed with live- stock and amid the fluorescent sunless dawn developing east above our destination. In a clammy chill both from our bodies' untimely arousal and from theurbandawn, we reached De- troit's industrial southwest side. Down Livernois Ave. we followed a semi-trailer packed high with watermelon, driving between small factories and dusty plate glass store fronts. We rediscover that in those hours before seven a.m., one's sto- mach moans and stretches, talking a monologue of primordial feel- Letters To 'the Editor: AS A FRESHMAN, I am upset by the inability of the Daily to serve the majority of the stu- dents in this university. The theory that a constant bombard- ment of radical statements can radicalize people is false in the context of the United States to- day. If a person or a paper be- comes disgusting enough to peo- ple, they can ignore him (or it) and listen to someone else. If radicals continue to speak in terms that most people don't understand, such as the "facist pigs" of Mayor Daley, then in- creasingly large numbers of peo- ple will turn to George Wallace to hear about 'fpseudo intellec- tuals." The radicals who are dismayed that Wallace has more support than Humphrey are in the wrong movement, and should think twice about it. The radical movement is responsible for discrediting liber- alism in this country, but they have utterly failed to radicalize this country. They drew the line and said, "What are you average Americans, facist pigs or human beings (radicals) ?" THE AMERICAN people have answered decisively that they are not radicals, and never will be, and they are even willing to sa- crifice a bit of their humanity if the radicals force them to. A lack of communication between radicals, reactionaries, conserva- tives, liberals, and moderates is the problem. The Daily editors must rise to the occasion, and make this paper an open forum for the expression of all points of view. They must go to the other groups on campus and ask them for a statement of opinion by one of their leaders. Some suggestions: Young Amer- icans for Freedom, fraternities, ings, the invective of a mad pre- man forgotten in time. By seve4i a.m., we of Ann Arbor had joined perhaps a hundred and fifty persons walking picket ovals on both sides of the driveway which leads to the ,machinery of Fort Wayne induction. WE WOULD STAY for about two hours until a person we would take for Frank Joyce would flash a V from a window of what we as- sumed was the chartered bus bringing inductees from Royal Oak. During those two hours perhaps a hundred persons would observe us.. A dozen Detroit cops with nightsticks, keeping the peace. Some uniformed soldiers on some sort of' guard ,duty. Mysterious plainclothesmen inside the gates, photographing the demonstrators. But also, many of the following: white youths with sallow faces and waterfall hair, accompanied by mothers in low-heeled shoes and by balding fathers. Blacks with modestly Afro hair, accompanied by tight-lipped Negro adults. All entering Fort Wayne. 4 Carloads of whites or black men in dark blue shirts and hard hats, slowing down or stopping by the pickets, asking questions or firing frustrated epithets or staring glumly. A crowd of teens in T-shirts and waterfall hair, sitting on door- steps across the street from Fort Wayne. ALL THOSE PEOPLE, includ- ing the police, looked at the dem- onstrators with expectation, not hatred or ridicule. They seemed to be waiting for the marchers to do or 'say something meaningful, something which would resolve and dismiss thelingering head- aches of American militarism: ob- noxious draft board secretaries, threatened lives, murder abroad, loneliness at home. Unfortunately the demonstra- tors had no tactic for those peo- ple. The demofistrators, for the most part, ignored or brayed at spectators. Our picket oval was executed in a chickenwalk. Our anti-draft-chants were in the style of high school football cheers. We were taunting and somewhat chil- dish. And we were needed. Our obser- vers-might have listened if we had known how to talk to them. Or if we had even tried. And they might have joined us. Our efforts at Fort Wayne weren't much different than those of other demonstrators elsewhere. If anything was unusual, it was the spectators, who looked more desperate and less belligerent than any group we had seen. For it's 1968, and America's pa- thological militarism concerns others besides the veterans of picket lines. YES, 1968, and after years of protest by what passes as the most brilliant Americans, the Vietnam War and the urban decimation has not been stopped. Nothing has changed, despite all the protest. So maybe all the well-intention- ed demonstrators have done some- thing wrong. "Playfulness" and "jiving" ade- quately describe much of the, Fort Wayne affair, if not much of the ways in which The Movement has confronted the .public. Or has' failed to talk to the public. My fear is that at Fort Wayne, at least, we failed to bring a sense of identity to people, that we fail- ed to show that we had a purpose which people could share. We failed, as Seale would say, to show we were for real. We failed to teach. AT BEST, some of the people who observed our demonstration were probably' uptight about Fort Wayne, perhaps as uptight as we were. At worst, they may have ,felt their American life was empty and that they were powerless to change it. And we should have be-, gun to talk to those feelings. We have talked mysteriously for some time of "organizing" poor whites, middle class whites and young whites, as if it required_ some special skill we needed to learn in professional school. But we probably need only to begin to get close to those others, to identify with them as we have identified with our protest. The solution is probably em- barrassingly simple: the next time we are at Fort Wayne-or at any other of the Fort Waynes-some of us will have to stop the cheer and drop out of the chickenwalk. Some of us will have to cross the street and spend our energies where the people are. How can we end wars arid liber- ate the oppressed until we can talk to the kids across the street? The sociologist as reseacher in the pay of his employers is pre- cisely a kind of spy. The proper exercise of the profession is all 1o0 often different from the proper exercise of espionage only In the relatively greater. electronic so- phistication of the latter's tech- niques. THE PROFESSIONAL eyes of- the sociologist are on the down people, and the professional palm of the sociologist is stretched to- ward the up people. It is no secret and no original discovery to take public note of the fact that the majoi and dominant sectors of sociology today are sold--com- puter, codes and questionnaires- to the people who have enough money to afford this ornament, and who see a useful purpose being served, by keeping hundreds of in., telligent men and women occupied in the pursuit of harmless trivia. I am not asserting that every in- dividual researcher sells his brain for a bribe-although many of us know of /research projects where that has happened, literally-but merely that the dominant struc- ture of the profession, in which, all of its members are to some ex- ten socialized, is a structure in which service to the ruling class of this society is the highest form of honor and achievement. The honored sociologist, the big-status sociologist, the fat-con- tract sociologist, the jet-set soci- ologist, the book-a-year sociologist, the sociologist who always wears the livery, the suit and tie, of his masters--this is the type of soci- ologist who sets the tone aid the ethic of the profession. And it is, this type of sociologist who is nothing more nor less than ao house-servant in the corporate es- tablishmen't, a white intellectual , Uncle Tom not only for this gov- ernment and ruling class but for any government and ruling class,' which explains to my mind why3 'Soviet sociologists and American sociologists are finding after so many years of isolation that, after all, they have something in com- mon. TO RAISE AND educate and train generation after generation of the brightest minds of this ,country's ) so-called educational. system, to let °survive this soci- ological ethic of servility, to soci- alize them into this sociocracy, is' a criminal undertaking, one of the many felonies against youth committed by those who set them- have been schlepping this knowl- edge that confers power along a one-way chain. taking knowledge from the people, giving knowledge to the rulers. What 'if that machinery were reversed? What if the habits, problems, secrets and unconscious motivations of the wealthy and powerful were, scrutinized daily by a thousand systematic researchers, were pried-into hourly, analysed and cross-referenced, tabulated and published in a hundred in- expensive masscirculation journals and written so that even the fif- teen-year old high school drop- out could understand it andpre- dict the actions of his landlord, so he could manipulate and con- trol him? Would the war in Vietnam have been possible if the structure, function and motion of the U.S. imperial establishment had been a matter of detailed public knowl- edge ten years ago? ,Sociology has worked to create and increase the inequitous dis- tribution of knowledge; It has worked to make the power struc- ture relatively more powerful and knowledgeable, and thereby to make the subject population re- latjvely more impotent and ig- norant. In the late summer of 1968, while the political party currently in power is convening amidst barbed wire and armored cars; the sociological profession ought. to consider itself especially graced and blessed that its own delibera- tions can still be carried on with a police-to-participant ratio smaller than one-to-one. This may be be- cause the people of the U.S. do not know how much of their current troubles stem-to borrow Lord Keynes' phrase-fronm the al- most forgotten scribblings of an obscure piofessor of sociology. Or it may be that sociology is still so crude that it represents no clear and present danger. IN 1968 it is late, very late, too late, to say once again what Rob- ert S. Lynd and C. Wright Mills and hundreds of others have long said, that the profession must re- form itself. In 'iew of the forces and the money that stand behind sociology as an exercise in intel- lectual servility, it is unrealistic to expect the body of the profes- sion to make an about-face. If and when the barbed . wire goes up around the ASA conven- tion in a future year, most of its members will still not know why. pm r, ~ ..- t ZN t t--- Fall and winter subscription rate $5.00 per term by carrier ($5.50 by mail); $9.00 for regular academic school year ($10 by mail). Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48104. Daily except Monday during regular academic school year. Daily except Sunday and Monday during regular summer session.' The Daily is a member of the Associated Press and Collegiate Press Service. Editorial Staff MARK LEVIN, Editor STEPHEN WILDSTROM URBAN LEHNER Managing Editor Editorial Director DAVID KNOKE, Executive Editor WALLACE IMMEN,.................... News Editor PAT O'DONOHUE .................... News Editor CAROLYN MIEGEL ...... Associate Managing Editor DANIEL OKRENT.................Feature Editor WALTER SHAPIRO ...... Associate Editorial Director HOWARDKHN . .....Associate Editorial Director NEAL BRUSS....................Magazine Editor ALISON SYMROSKI ...... Associate Magazine Editor AVIVA KEMPNER ..:............Contributing Editor DAVID DUBOFF..............Contributing Editor A)V ' Ar'MOhf T44-. ~~Vila t n}peai for. xa a Inrernat o t Nuclear rT a.t 1 Y 4 I. ..: