w .l liw.w r , i r i i w. r rw iw r ir r r rrrrr ALW61A~)W T~ "This' FLA~ 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 FEIFFER 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 all reprints. 5. iw+ t.jr VC N . V G THURSDAY, JULY25, 1968 NIGHT EDITOR: MARCIA ABRAMSON New riots with some new techniques STEP STAW' OF AHCR(A- C- A~P -116 ~flS~c FO~ WC(~ T ~~~9s v0 WPV5B- }. 0 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 i WrOO- } jIi , '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. ;Yfi + ,rg,. . Jfi, ,r, v++ F.r, rrl . +YIYtA~ ." N df +f.>.+/ Mi!r,. ''fr' ,rrrrrrf r' r^ /f,.+r',' r";{.+J.rl.?'?¢+st ;:r;¢rrrryr;rr ;yf{i rr .gr"W.,7 ;y4' . rf .d r. .,? J."". r.:r,:'st r. rf , 'JJY '::... tr.. r' +rr;+ or.1,. :r' r.{?. i'Sfo. o rlr:,..rr:;"i:: rr ," r :,: ^ : r'^'i: r<"e.? :: r:^: .::". : Y.tr'.^?. . r I t I .,rt , J ,r+ [ w r r r t Ir i i I tf t i t Summer Editorial Staff