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THURSDAY, JULY25, 1968
NIGHT EDITOR: MARCIA ABRAMSON
New riots with some
new techniques
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INDICATIONS ARE that those who have
been conjecturing about why the long-
awaited urban race war has failed to
materialize may now cease their specu-
lation.
For the .preparations for it on both
sides have certainly not; been lacking,
and if Tuesday's outbreak in Cleveland
is any indication, the initial outbreaks
may have begun.#
Tuesday Cleveland was the scene of a
thirty minute sniping spree which left
seven Negroes and three policemen dead.
It also touched off outbreaks of looting
and burning in other parts of the city.
Trouble has been predicted for other
cities as well, and though none has yet
erupted, there are no grounds for undue
optimism. The situation in these cities is
no better than it was last summer, and in
some cases it is even worse.
BUT THE RIOTS seem to be taking on
a somewhat different form this year.
Black nationalist leaders believe they
have found some new techniques.
They have noticed that spontaneous
mass outbreaks triggered on hot summer
nights by obvious instances of police bru-
tality or harassment have certain obvious
disadvantages for the black participants.
The casualty rate is generally astronomi-
cal, and the damage done to black homes.
is shattering.
Both the black casualty rate and the
conspicuous attempts of the white com-
munity to arm itself - both individually
through the purchase of guns for house-
hold use and institutionally through more
elaborate police equipment and more
comprehensive riot-control techniques-
have not gone without response by blacks.
Attempts are being made by amorphous
black nationalist groups to organize the
black community along military lines for
more concerted efforts against the racist
and trigger-happy national
and police forces of some of
cities.
guardsmen
our larger
. OBE
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'V
BUT UNFORTUNATELY for those black
nationalists who think there is some
chance for a military victory overthe po-
lice and national guard, the technique
they have devised is really a very primi-
tive one. Sniping is as old as firearms,
and every revolution has some of it.
Sniping sprees are frequently accom-
panied by elaborate mystical rites - the
"small and determined" band responsible
for the Cleveland outbreak is rumored,
according to the highly impressionable
Associated Press, to have beat on drums
for hours like Africans before going to
war - and snipers are traditionally held
to be among the most heroic of revolu-
tionaries.
But sniping really represents an act of
desperation by insurgents who are to-
tally at the mercy of white society.
It would be very hard to say what tac-
tic could be successfully followed by revo-
lutionaries who are - along with all
black people - in a country where the
control exerted by the white majority is
so pervasive and powerful.
CLEVELAND HAS A Negro mayor in Carl
Stokes, but Tuesday's sniping and
rioting should convince even the most
credulous that without major structural
changes the participation of token black
leaders in the power structure is clearly
not enough.
For it seems that the only real atten-
tion that the problems of the black com-
munity ever receive is the exceedingly
short-lived moral outrage of the com-
fortable white majority which usually
follows urban racial uprisings.
-ANN MUNSTER
In Chicago, waiting for the 'Demnocrats...
*>
By ROGER BLACK
College Press Service
CHICAGO - What is going to
happen in Chicago Aug. 26?
A number of people are churn-
ing around, talking about bring-
ing great numbers of people to
the Democratic Convention. The
card-carrying Democrats are, of
course, planning on bringing about
20,000. The McCarthy and Hum-
phrey campaign staffs will number
in the thousands. Al Lowenstein,
the Coalition man, talks about
bringing a million for some kind
of super rally, perhaps the Sunday
before the convention.t
Renny ' Davis, Chicago coor-
dinator f or the Mobilization, says
they hope to bring 100,000 people.
Marcus Raskin, the man in the
Spock trial who was acquitted, is
starting a fourth party and is now
intending to hold a convention in
the Auditorium Theater simul-
taneously with the Democrats in
the Amphitheater.
The Yippies (Youth Interna-
tional Party), who almost folded
after Johnson quit, are sitting
back, in their way, and letting
people cotne to them. They are
trying to rent out Navy Pier for
the week of the convention to
place rock band8 like Country Joe
and the Fish there and have a
general "Festival of Life."
THE PROBLEM with these mil-
lion and some odd people is that
they are all (with the exception
of the Democrats themselves)
paper. Al Lowenstein and his staff
are flying about the country con-
tacting everyone they know to
see how many people they can
bring. Renny Davis and his friends
sit in their very pleasant office
on Dearborn with the El running
by at the level of their windows
and issue "calls." ("We believe the
Convention is a time to unite our
movements and our organizations,
a time to say Americans will not
be silenced or unrepresented in
1968, a time to tell the politicians
and the world that we will stay
in the streets of America until
every soldier is brought home and
every suffering is heard.") Marc
Raskin goes to New York to talk
to Lindsay, to talk to McGovern.
There is talk about a McCarthy-
Rockefeller ticket, a Rockefeller-
McCarthy ticket, a Mansfield-Mc-
Govern ticket, a McCarthy-Lind-
say ticket. The Yippies sit hap-
pily in their office in New York
and grind out buttons and post-
ers.
But no one has set up a housing
office. No one really knows how
those million people are going to
get to Chicago or what they are
going to do when they get there.
Daley is ready, no doubt, to shoot
to maim. The Chicago police are
ready for anything.
'The Mobilization people plan to
have one huge march on Thursday.
Davis has visions of a fairly ela-
borately choreographed proces-
sion in which the forces mass
during the nominations, march
during the roll call, and when, as
they are t convinced will occur,
Humphrey is nominated, appear
outside the Amphitheater, thun-
dering in protest.
FOR THE FIRST days of the
convention, the Mobilization glans
to let people do pretty much what
they want as a form of participa-
tory democracy. They are plan-
ning for the first days a number
of workshops, programs, small
rallies, and meetings. Somehow
they will get word around where
these things are and how to get
to them.
The Mobilization, however, con-
siders the Democratic Convention
a cut and dried affair. They are
coming to Chicago not to influence
the nominating process, but to
protest it, to protest Humphrey
(and hence Johnson), the war,
the system. Raskin and the fourth
party people are doing much the
same thing. They are choosing the
"democratic" process, but they
have given up hope it will work
under the current conditions. The
Yippies, of course, have aborted
altogether.
The people who don't think tb
Huhphrey's nomination is
evitable are the liberals, the N
Carthy people and the Coalitt
for an Open Convention. Paul F
ney, who has emerged as thet
man in McCarthy's campai
does not want to see a mill
McCarthy people arrive in. C
cago for the convention. He wa
to go directly, privately, tot
delegates. His success so fa
not apparent. Vut in any case,t
McCarthy campaign is becom
more confused all the time. Ma
reform-minded Democrats inA
McCarthy camp have begun
despair that the McCarthy ca
paign can ever become organiz
They have come to long fort
Kennedy type of "ruthlessness.
LOWENSTEIN and the Coa
tion become then, the people
watch. Their organization is a'
confused, and largely for the sa
reason: every one is doing th
own thing; indeed that is pr
ably the basis for the Coalition
the first place.
Bout if anyone can pull ifa
Lowenstein can. He was one of
people who last November ur
McCarthy to become a candida
In December he brought toget
several hundred people for aC
alition of Concerned Democrat
a dump Johnson movement.
No one thought then that Job
son could be dumped. As underd
candidate in the Democratic Co
gressional primary in Nas
County, New York, Lowenstein'
ed McCarthy tactics-massivex
of clean student volunteers-
won the nomination. Aftert
assassination of Robert Kenne
Lowenstein organized a sec
coalition, the Coalition for
Open Convention, with the i
of consolidating Kennedy a
McCarthy forces in order to du
Humphrey. And now not ma
people think Humphrey 'can
dumped.
YESTERDAY, the vanguard
Lowenstein's staff arrived in C
cago . They are setting up a gro
hat
in-
Me-
ion
in-
top
gn,
ion '
hi-
nts
the
is
the
ing
any
the
to
wM-
ed.
rallying around the phrase "on to
Chicago," the last words that Ken-,
nedy spoke and a phrase that Mc-
Carthy has used since New Hamp-
shire. Lowenstein's million may
never materialize, but what he
hopes to do is indicate to the De-
mocratic delegates what he thinks
is an overriding sentiment for a
change - a sentiment reflected in
the fact that the administration
received fewer than 20 percent of
the votes in the primaries. The
"On to Chicago" people are not
sure whether they will have sev-'
eral rallies at the time of the con-
vention or one big rally. They
don't know where they will have
them; they don't know where
they will put the million- people
if they come.
But they are working on the
conviction that the new political,
movement that started in New
Hampshire is irresistible and if
the Democrats try to resist it, they
will lose. And while the delegates
may be able to ignore private per-
suasion by the McCarthyites,
while they can ignore a peace
demonstration and a fourth party
movement, it will be difficult for
them to ignore half a million or
a million clean, middle-class De-
mocrats calmly, on.national color
TV, insisting on a change.
...........
Canadian sunset
TrHEUNITED STATES is up tight.
I guess impressions are those feelings
converted into words when somebody
asks you what you thought about some-
thing.
Well, last weekend I found out that I
and a whole bunch of Americans are up-'
tight about a lpt of stupid things.
The scene was still in Ann Arbor when
we decided to spend a weekend in Can-
ada. We were at a "support McCarthy"
meeting in a well-to-do house and we
all listened with drinks-in-hand while a
delegate to the 1964 convention pre-
pared us for a 1968 disillusionment by
explaining how idealism just doesn't fit
into the philosophy of national politics.
AFTER BEING engulfed in the nodding
heads of the polite, mostly middle-
aged audience, I decided I wanted to be
away from Ann Arbor and its University
-even if just for two days:
My friend and I decided to go to Strat-
ford, Ontario, to see the plays in the
Shakespeare Festival which are produced
each summer in that small Canadian city
halfway between Detroit and Toronto.
Of course, the plays were enjoyable -
especially to just casual viewers of
Shakespeare. But what we found in
Stratford and what we took back to Ann
Arbor was more than the memory of a
few professional theatrical productions.
The one thing that strikes anyone who
has ever driven from Detroit to Windsor,
Ontario, is the fact that nothing changes
across the river. The same cars are
stopped at the same traffic lights and
if the license plates are of a different
color, the whole impression one gets- in
Windsor is that you've driven across a
state line, or any other arbitrary de-
marcation.
THE DIFFERENCES of Canada are more
subtle than the color of a license plate
or the price of an imperial gallon of gas-
oline. They lie in the homogeneity of the
population, the expanse of the country-
side and the attitudes of the people.
There is something about not being
part of a country whose administration
bills itself as "the most powerful country
in the world" which is pleasing and re-
laxing to experience.
There is something about living in a
country without black ghettos in the
cities and white psychotics in the suburbs.
There ,is something about living in a
country which doesn't conscript part of
its male population each month.
A FTER SEEING a play on Friday night
we went to Stratford's coffee house to
listen to a pair of pretty decent folk-
singers. But unlike their Ann Arbor coun-
terparts, the people at the "Black Swan"
were not talking about the draft or the
war or mentioning that year-old word:
"detroitnewark." Everyone was talking
about music; even the songs avoided the
protest strain which is lapped-up in the
United States.
After enjoying two sets of the folk'
group, we went to a park near the theater
and slept in sleeping bags that night. I
fell asleep thinking about what my pros-
pects would be if I slept in a Detroit park
on a summer night.
1MEANWHILE, back in downtown Strat-
A. ford, the folksingers and a few reg-
ular visitors to the Black Swan were
playing hopscotch, and frisbee in the
city's streets. "The cops don't bug you
about things like that up here" one of
the bunch had reminded me when I asked
him if it was okay to sleep in the park.
Saturday morning we went swimming
in an old stone quarry converted into a
municipal pool. And the water was so,
clean you could see the rocks on the
bottom ;25 feet below. And I thought of
Kensington being closed because of pol-
lution one weekend last summer.
Although we probably didn't realize
what had happened ufitil we returned
to Ann Arbor that night, the memory is
all too good right now. We were relaxed
for about 48 hours.
Just as simple as being up tight, and
a lot more fun.
-STUART GANNES
Letters to the Editor
the WALLACE IMM EN
ali-
to
also Sure, pessitmis
,me
leir
ob-
in
for quie etroit
off,}
the ON ANY STICKY, hot July evening, Negroes in Detroit who have
ged menial jobs, little money and no women can get so easily! depress-
ate. ed that they are ready to kick a cat, maybe, or rob for a few tall cans
her of beer. But, this summer the momentoes of '6Ts fire and sniping are
Co still too fresh for violence to become contagious.
ts~ There has been little to promote optimism. The rout of the Poor'
People's Campaigners in Detroit as well as Washington, and the brutal
clashes of Negroes and police around New York's City Hall have follow-
og- ed serious incidents sparked by Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination.
sau But, a rearmed Detroit police department has had an easy time.
us- Most of the charred, abandoned buildings still have a few unbroken
use window panes, while neighbors still stare in amazement whenever
and they pass the many crumbling houses. In the meantime, most blacks
the seem willing to disappoint predictors of imminent violence.
dy' Black businesses which can still; operate are open, although they
Ond
an may have Olywood in place of windows and their owners may be un-
dea . able to renew fire insurance policies. Shoppers regard precautionary
and "soul brother" slogans freshly painted on many doors as points of
mp pride rather than fear.
any "If anything happens this year it's going to be in those rich sub-
be urbs," says a black housewife who must tote her groceries ;14 blocks on
the bus because the A&P next to her home is still a grey, melted shell.
of WORKING ON THIS sentiment is Bill Weston, a hefty occasional
'hi-.
up college .student who. wears outlandish pastel suits "because it gets at-
tention." He is organizing a late summer protest caravan to the pre-
dominantly white suburbs of Royal Oak and Birmingham. He is a near
dictator of an organization which has no official name.
He has found 18 block chairmen to develop a following and ar-
range transportation to the suburbs where "we can hit without tearing
our own homes down." A typical rally is conducted in an abandoned
Mc- theatre which has been converted to a car wash. Despite intonations
ncy which touch on everything from basic rights to Afro-American heri-
Ong , tage, the workers have garnered disappointing support because few are
on willing to risk getting shot or abused-even those who weren't in riot
a areas last year.
all Bill claims last summer's riots could not possibly have been plan-
rm- ned "because that much action would have taken twenty years to plan."
He believes there was a chain reaction in city after city as blacks be-
for lieved they were finally going to get somewhere together. "But, like
ss- usual we got nowhere." Weston is especially inflamed about the -"token
and efforts of colleges to honor King's death with special scholarships.
oin "Take a look at who is getting them," he says. "It's a new way to re-
nal cruit black athletes."
AS HE HOPS into his sound truck after a rally, he is often met by
Mc- the "Cool It" soundmobile, which is sponsored entirely by black busi-
um. nessmen, and comes complete with reverberating, stereo Motown tapes.
oup The overwhelming push of such radio appeals, handbills and petition
lay- campaigners this spring and summer, seeking orderly community ac-
the tion has probably been a major influence holding back violence.
a But where Detroit goes from here is open to serious pessimism.
for Nearly all the accomplishments of the past year have been demolition
projects. A few gasoline stations and bank branches have filled in va-
of cant corners, but they represent a pale fraction of the medical clinics,
who insurance offices and stores of all descriptions which are relocating in
tial nice, quiet, white communities 9utside the city limits.
Mo-
ext MASSIVE INNER CITY relief is practically impossible. Communi-
ties established to help rebuild the community are effectively vindictive.
dis- among themselves, but have failed in their tasks. They are not even
this sure whose help to accept.
nee The Federation for. Self Determination, the largest of all these
y's black groups, refused pledges of more than $250,000 last winter and
nal laid aside publicized plans to rebuild heavily? hit portions of 12th
Mc- Street. The group's leader, Athe Rev. Albert Cleage, said the black
Ict, comnunity needs black support and has refused money that is not
me pledged as undesignated. The trickle of such grants has led to a stale-
mate.
4
By the peopnle
To the Editor:
AMERICA supposedly has a gov-
ernment of the people, by the
people and for the people. Well,
we certainly do have government
of the people - whether they like
it or pot; whether this govern-,
ment is for the people is question-
able; and the assertion that the
government is by the people ap-
pears contrary to the fact. Let us
consider the political process of
selecting a President.
Major party candidates are se-
lected at the national conventions
by delegates from the several
states. These delegates, number-
ing somewhat less than four
thousand, nominally represent the
electorate of the nation, yet as a
whole, these delegates are decid-
edly atypical.-They are chosen in
state conventions from among
those who have been faithful par-
ty workers through the years.
Where does this leave the inde-
pendent voter or the dissident
within the party? Moreover, in
more than one state, one man or
a small group effectively dictates
jthe selection of these . delegates,
e.g., governors Maddox, Romnev,
Reagan, and Rhodes may be able
to control sizeable blocs of dele-
gates at the conventions. The unit
rule, still prevalent in many states,
completely disregards the minor-
ity.
within the state are totally sup-
pressed. Doesn't this abrogate the
philosophy of one-man, one-vote?
THESE OBSERVATIONS have
a profound application in the 1963
presidential race. Las Vegas, the
pros, and the political analysts
have virtually conceded the nom-
inations to Nixon and Humphrey.
These nominations will be made
by the aforementioned convention
delegates. But the national politi-
cal polls, reliable measures of the
political pulse, indicate that
Rockefeller would fare better than
Nixon against the Democrats,
while McCarthy would top
Humphrey against the Republi-
cans. The interpretation is that
the nation prefers Rockefeller and
McCarthy. The pation, of course,
does not nominate the candidates
Just as it does not elect the Pres-
ident. It appears that Humphrey
is favoredpdue to his loyalty to
the administration and to the
Democratic Establishment, while
Nixon is collecting delegate votes
for past political favors.
I have my own opinion about all
this, but I ask the reader to draw
his own; conclusion: is this the
democratic process? Is this a
government by the people?
My solution is a national pri-
mary followed by a run-off elec-
tion.
--James E. Tuttle
Sorry, Wes
Dupont, who has supported h
Carthy's bid for the presider
since it began last fall, was amt
the speakers who congregated
the podium for the rally -
group that traveled ' toget)
throughout the Second District
day pushing the McCarthy ca
paign.
Dupont spoke of the need
further development of the gra
roots support for McCarthy, a
called upon the audience to j
the campaign efforts in the fi
weeks ahead.
VIVIAN DID NOT join the h
Carthy supporters on the podi
He did not travel with the gr
in support of McCarthy that d
When he came up" from the au
ence to speak, he informed1
McCarthy rally that he was
supporter of Edward KennedY
the presidency.
I find these different points
view significant for those v
want a McCarthy presiden
candidacy to win at the Den
cratic National Convention n
month.
If you want a congressional,
trict victory for McCarthy in t
area, and a congressional nomi
who will work for McCarth
nomination, and a congressio
nominee who will carry forth A
Carthy's issues in this distr
then you should vote for Jero
Dupont on Aug. 6.
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Summer Editorial Staff