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"Never Mind The War-What Happens To The
ational Economy Af ter The Campaign
Spending Is Over!"
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1968
NIGHT EDITOR: PHILIP BLOCK1
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of Ann Arbor High
THE REAL TRAGEDY of the Ann Arbor
High School situation is not that ra-
cial violence is needed to promote social
change, not that a bitter conflict is being
waged, nor that students are missing
crucial days of school; it is that admin-
istrators are displaying immaturity while
students have acted in an especially ma-
ture fashion.
By taking drastic measures to suppress
student activism, the authorities are
missing an opportunity to utilize student
awareness as an important tool in re-
forming the educational process.
For students, more than any other
group, understand the needs and defi-
ciencies of their education. The board
should be heartened by their lack of
apathy and their sincere desire to im-
prove the high school.
For the first time these previously
docile high school students have begun
to realize their educational institution
is a bastion of racism and bigotry. And
more important, they have realized there
is something they can do about it.
THE SCHOOL'S initial reaction to black
student demands' was highly com-
mendable. The administration agreed at
the urging of Sperintendent of Schools
W. Sc6tt Westerman to call off classes
for a day. Instead, voluntary sessions
were held where students could air griev-
ances.
The resulting dialogue served as a
healthy catharsis for blacks who used the
three-hour session to blast faculty, coun-
selors and administrators for racial dis-
crimination in academics, athletics, and
extracurricular activities.
They shocked a pseudo-liberal school
system into the realization that racism
often takes more subtle forms than call-
ing someone "boy" or "nigger." Their de-
mands and charges appear to be well
founded.
Ann Arbor High School has derived an
impressive national ranking from the ac-
complishment of its top students, while
neglecting those on the bottom.
The faculty and administration have
externally appeared sympathetic and
reasonable with regard to the 21 demands
of the school's black students, but there
is still some question whether any real
reforms will come about.
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Summer Editorial Staff
DANIL OKRENT ...................... Co-Editor
URBAN LEHNER.....................Co-Editor
LUCY KENNEDY.......Summer Supplement Editor
PHIL BROWN ... ...............Sports Editor
FRED LaBOUR .................Ass't. Sports Editor
NIG3HT EDITORS: Marcia Abramson, Philip Block,
John Gray, David Mann. Leslie Wayne.
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS: Nadine Cohodas. Henry
ri, Martin Hirschman.
Summer Business Staff
In recommending action to the school
board on only 15 fairly innocuous de-
mands, which were carefully watered-
down, the high school's faculty has ne-
glected its responsibility to get at the
heart of the problem.
The six demands that were passed over
by the faculty include many substantial
grievances raised by the blacks, specific-
ally that racism at ?Ann Arbor High
School exists because there are bigotted
faculty members.
The faculty, however, was unwilling to
set up machinery to purge itself of these
entrenched instructors. And until the,
bigots are gone there will be no peace at
Ann Arbor High.
THE PREVIOUSLY tolerant attitude of
the administration toward the black
grievances is quickly drawing to a close.
It is being replaced by a quasi-police
state that can only result in increased
friction between the races. The incredib-
ly naive decision of Principal Nicholas
Schreiber to impose "partial martial law"
on his students leaves little doubt about
the administration's intent.
Imposing suspensions on students for
offenses such as smoking or passing out
"unauthorized literature" will not regain
the respect of the students, nor will
threats of reprisals against the editors of
the school's underground newspaper,
"US".
If the administration wants to create
martyrs, they are succeeding by sus-
pending two students for passing out
anti-draft literature. In fact, when asked
if1 his school provided for due process in
cases of suspension, Principal Nicholas.
Schreiber could only say the students
had a right to appeal.
Often, however, students remain sus-
pended even while appealing their pun-
ishments. It is clear that students at Ann
Arbor High School are presumed guilty
until proven innocent.
THE ATTITUDE of the high school and
Board of Education to the presence of
non-student protesters has been almost
comical. The demonstrators were told by
Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter Krasny,
"If you cooperate, it is possible the school
board won't seek an injunction against
you."
Imagine that, a police chief speaking
as legal counsel for the board of edu-
cation
The board is accustomed to treating
students as children who should be seen
and not heard. Their inability to stop
the demonstrators or the publication of
"US" has produced an only absurd stop-
gap-ism, for the police action and "mar-
tial law" at Ann Arbor High School are
at best only temporary solutions to the
school's race problems.
At worst, the measures are a crass
show of strength that will only infuriate
student activists.
The high school administrators must
realize that it is possible and indeed de-
sirable for necessary reforms to be eval-
uated during the tense atmosphere. The
experience of the past two weeks can be
educationally profitable to the faculty
and students both. But not if repressive
actions continue.
What is needed is a change in attitude,
and only then can further strife be
averted.
-STEVE NIS SEN
-- rDANIEL OKRENT --
Young TuTks and
old o redneclis
THE STATE Democratic Convention in Detroit this past weekend
could very well have sounded the death knell for the party as a
progressive social force - something that it indeed once was, but
too many years ago. For the Democrats, by honoring their most oner-
ous traditions, are trying their best to see to it that once these tradi-
tions and the men who formed them fade from view, there will be
nothing left.
I suppose that the convention, which went through the motions
of action but was actually a two-and-a-half day charade, cannot
really be cited as a turning point. Few observers, and only slightly
more of the progressive, open forces in the party who were summarily
gagged and bound in the process of the meeting, actually expected a
victory for the "Young Turks." But if the affair was not a turning
paint, it was surely a dress rehearsal for a funeral.
ESSENTIALLY, two things happened which took the measure
of the Democrats: First, the Sixth District (Lansing) delegation, its
majority comprised of a loose Kennedy-McCarthy coalition, was denied
-by vote of the entire convention-the right to determine its own
procedure for choosing national convention delegates. This enabled
Humphrey forces, in minority in the district but in clear majority in
the state, to name the district's convention delegates by constructing an
almost vulgar selection process. Second, McCarthy forces at the con-
vention - found mostly in the Sixth and Eighteenth (Oakland Coun-
ty) delegations - were neatly excluded from the slate-making caucus
that picked the 24 at-large national convention delegates.
It wasn't hard for. the Democratic machinery to adjust itself
to suit the labors of the AFL-CIO, which still controls the state party.
Nonsensical unit rules enabled slim majorities in many district dele-
gations to 'deliver large packets of votes for their particular causes.
And even those who made use of the unit rules feigned to d'eny the
particular value of such procedures. One Macomb County delegate
explained it quite forthrightly: "It's democracy - the majority rules.
This way, if we've got 100 votes, and 51 of us want one thing, we get
our way - and the minority's votes. And if only ten people show
up to vote, we can still get the 100 votes that the party gives to our
district."
THE SADDEST THING about this particularly mindless logic ("It's
democracy") is that the man who offered it to me was grinning just
as gloriously when he explained it as he had been earlier when former
state chairman Zolton Ferency was roundly hooted when arguing for
proportional voting.
That's how the convention worked, and the flocks of young people
who had come to push McCarthy or Kennedy didn't seem too unhappy
about it. And this is the tragedy of the Democratic Party. Disregarding
the merits of Kennedy or McCarthy, the party needs their backers,
for the party's own sake. Prof. Otto Feinstein of Wayne State, a leader
of the reform Michigan Conference of Concerned Democrats, put it
succinctly: "If the party wants to have young people in it, it will
have to change its procedures."
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A
draft for morality
DRAMATIC TRIALS provide
good drama but little in the
way of meaningful social change.
As the Spock-Coffin trial draws
to a close in Boston,bmore and
more people seem to be hanging
on the verdict as an indication of
the "future of dissent" in this
country. My one great fear is that
people will become so involved in
"sympathizing" with the defen-
ants that they will fail to carry
out the message of the Boston
Five.
By ruling out any defense based
on the illegality or immorality
of the Vietnam war, the govern-
ment has succeeded in reducing
the trial of the Boston Five to a
"civil liberties" contest. The only
issues being dealt with are factual
questions concerning the first
amendment: did they actually
"conspire" to counsel men to
evade the draft, and did their
actions constitute "conduct" that
goes beyond the constitutional
protection of freedom of speech?
THESE QUESTIONS are only
peripherally related to the real
issue of the trial-the "right" of
every American citizen to follow
the dictates of his conscience. One
of the specific acts mentioned in
the indictment against the Five
is the signing of the petition, "A
Call to Resist Illegitimate Author-
ity." The statement reads in part:
"We believe that every free
man has a legal right and a
moral duty to exert every effort
to end this war, to avoid col-
lusion with it, and to encour-
age others to do the same .,."
Thus, whether Coffin and Spock
are guilty under the law is really
academic. They believed that they
had a moral duty to advocate re-
sistance to the draft. What most
people fail to recognize is that
having believed they were right,
they had no choice except to carry
out their actions.
It is the conscience not of the
five mhen, but of the American
people that is on trial in Boston.
It is the right of the American
people to live out their heritage,
to do as our own Declaration of
Independence tells us:
.when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pur-
david
duboff
suing invariably the same ob-
jective evinces a design to re-
duce them under absolute des-
potism, it is their right, it is
their duty, to throw off such
government, and to provide new
guards for their future secur-
ity."
THIS "right of conscience" to
encourage resistance to the draft
has little to do with freedom of
speech. It goes much deeper; it
deals with the way in which an
individual orients his whole life
in a civilized society. Certainly,
the physical act of separating one-
self from the selective service sys-
tem by returning one's draft card
has some speech content, but it
also has more. It involves action,
setting up a whole new style of
life around the principles of hu-
man dignity and the duty of the
individual to dissociate himself
from those actions of his govern-
ment which violate his moral
character.
The Declaration of Indepen-
dence lists as "inalienable' the
right to "life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness." How can
we be true to "life" while living
in a society that must kill people
to defend its existence? How can
we be true to "liberty" while liv-
ing in a society that has to rely
on involuntary servitude to recruit
manpower for the military ma-
chine? How can we be true to the
"purusit of happiness" while liv-
ing in a society that has to limit
people's alternatives so that they
will become engineers and not
artists?
* * *
WHAT COFFIN and Spock are
saying to the draft-age men of
America is that a person has a
responsibility to lead his own life,
according to his conscience and to
those values that guide his life-
those values that make him A
moral human being. But a person
cannot become moral; he must be
moral beacuse he does moral
things from day to day. Being a
human being and not a murderer
involves action. Life can mean
very litle if it can only be enjoyed
while others are being made to
suffer in our names.
The Boston Five would never
have been put on trial had there
not been 'men who believed what
they said, who took jheir lives into
their own hands. Thus, it is these
men, the men at the resistance,
who are on. trial in Boston.
The young people of Resistance
know that war is part of the
America lives. We know that if
there is to be peace it must begin
in our own lieves, with our refusal
to collaborate with those who
make 'war. If we are to be free,
and if we are to help liberate our
brothers in the ghetto, the army,
and the countries America chooses
to dominate, we must first remove
ourselves from the institutions
which seek to divide and silence
us all. We must begin to practice
the values of truth and honesty
which we proclaim, and reject in
fact the values that we condemn
in words. We must follow the
example of Thoreau:
"... . Let your life be a coun-
ter friction to stop the machine.
What I must do is to see, at any
rate, that I do not lend myself
to the wrong which I condemn."
*' * *
TODAY, June 5, Ann Arbor Re-
sistance will hold a "Celebration
of Life." Several young men will
be returning their draft cards.
In doing so, they will be expres-
sing an opposition to the war that
is an affirmation of their own
lives, an opposition that involves
their bodies as well as their minds.
They will be affirming their in-
tention to express their love for
their fellow men through social
commitment and intensive social
action. They will be following the
example of the Boston Five.
The Am'erican people cannot sit
idly by and watch its conscience
be slowly stifled and executed in
Boston. They must stand up and
demonstrate, through action, that
the spirit of human dignity and
brotherhood transcends the bru-
tality and vulgarity of a govern-
ment that dares to put five nota-
ble men on trial for advocating
freedom.
Ferency at the State convention
4
RANDY RISSMAN,.......... Business7
BARBARA SCHULZ.......,.Co-Advertising1
SUE LERNER .............Co-Advertising1
PHYLLIS HURWITZ............Classified7
DEBBIE RIVERS .............Circulationl
Manager
Manager
Manager
Manager
Manager
The new Nixon's new coalition
EVERYTHING about Richard
Nixon is new, or at least looks
new. His appearance on TV is
much improved: now one might
conceivably buy a used car from
this man. His new character over-
flows with the milk of human
kindness and spouts a dialogue
that is as funny at times as a
Lucille Ball script. If this contra-
venes all we have been told by the
psychologists about people in their
fifties, Dick may claim to be a
shining exception. Most important,
the fellow has a new coalition -
and it's a humdinger.
Nixon has picked up where
Barry Goldwater left off,' and
since Barry is clumsy while Dick
a large proportion of its unneeded
Negroes - reinforced the ele-
ments of racism in the Goldwater
coalition, just at a time when civil
rights were in the ascendancy.
Another weakness was that the
elements in the Goldwater line-
up had no strong cohesion, and
G ldwater's campaign blunders
finished it 'off.
THE NIXON coalition looks
even more thinly stuck together;
but in a year of confusion, and
with Nixon's incomparable gall as
a binder, it is not to be under-
estimated. Its components are
liberals, Black Militants and the
New Scuth. The cement contains
White America, he says, has
sought to buy off the Negro with
welfare payments, when what is
needed to make the ghetto a Great
Society is "the economic power
that comes from ownership, and
the security and independence that
come from economic power." Ev-
ery Negro a capitalist! And of
course no Black Militant, having
somehow grown rich under Pres-
ident Nixon, will think of exploit-
ing any other Negro -- not only
because the other *egro is a Soul
Brother but because the other will
be rich too.
This scheme has been taken
apart before. What chance, in a
Goldwater, Nixon will not be
alienating the Negro voters en
masse.
NIXON'S bid for "liberal" sup-
port falls under the heading of
what the CIA would call a "cover
story"; that is, it is designed to
make him appear much more
"modern," much less "extremist"
than Barry Goldwater. By pur-
porting to find a parallel between
some of his views and those of
Daniel Moynihan (and the paral-
lel does exist), Nixon hopes to
succeed in convincing the gullible
that he is much less intransigent
than Goldwater. And so he is, in
the sense that he is an opportun-
is't andlfiGoldwauter is nolft. In a
the support of the New South, he
makes his simultaneous plea for
the support of the Old South much
less palpable than was Goldwater's
wooing of that element. In brief,
the talk about Black Capitalism,
the New Liberals, and the New
South is all by way of putting a
gloss on the ideology of Gold-
waterism and covering up the
underlying presuppositions on
which the Goldwater coalition was
based.
There is really nothing new in
the idea of a coalition which takes
these basic facts into account. All
Nixon has done is to dress up the
racial part of it by a phony appeal
to Negroes gullible enough, or
Feinstein couldn't be more correct. Eventually - like maybe within
three months, when the exodus of youth from the party after Hubert
Humphrey wins the nomination will possibly exceed the influx after
McCarthy's victory in New Hampshire - the new blood that offers
the hope of revitalizing the Democratic Party 'will have been washed
down the drain. You don't have to love McCarthy, or even admire
him; his position as possible savior of the party is secondary to. that
of those whom he has lured into party politics.
THAT IS the crux. Hopefully, the grinning unionists who controlled
last weekend's convention, men who still wear Soapy Williams bowtie
pins in their lapels, men who are the closest thing to rednecks that
you can find north of the Ohio River, men whose past and present
affiliation to one or another of the parties is predicated more on the
affiliation's ability to control half of a state's politics than it is on
ideology, hopefully his configuration of power within the party can
be replaced. Feinstein said after the convehtion Sunday that the Con-
cerned Democrats have entered candidates for precinct delegate in
over 2000 of the state's precincts; hopefully, the August 6 delegate
election will change the tenor of the party.
SADLY, THOUGH, it probably won't. Each year for the past ten,
Feinstein has spoken of grandiose plans to take over the Democratic
Party. This year, he is more desperate than ever (the party currently
is in the worst shape it has been in during the past decade), and the
McCarthy candidacy has offered a vehicle for his machinations. But
estimates of the Concerned Democrats' chances can only be based
on history. And this history has taught us that the major parties
never open up to new movements; rather, as demonstrated Sunday,
they just rally to repel an outside challenge, close ranks, and spend
the rest of the campaign in masturbatory self-congratulation after they
h~av heatnoff the infidels. What's worse. this year's infidels are', in
I