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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers.
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints,
WEDNESDAY, MAY 8,1968
NIGHTEDITOR: JOHN GRAY
:
Federal spending cut:
Why Hot Vietnam?
PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S proposed 10
per cent income tax surcharge came
one step closer to passage Monday
when a majority of the members of the
key House Ways and Means Committee,
including its chairman, Wilbur D. Mills
(D-Ark.),'agreed to support the $10 bil-
lion tax hike if it is coupled with a '$4
billion cut in government spending.
The only problems remaining are to
hammer out the differences between the
House and Senate versions of the budget'
and to decide where the spending cuts
should be made. While various "non-
essential" projects - such as our space
program - have been. recommended for
the scrap heap, it seems foolish to aban-
don these ventures while we continue to
pour over $2 billion a month into the
most non-essential project of all-the
war in Vietnam.
This, of course, is the one area which'
no one seems to have suggested might
be a good, one in which to decrease spend-_
ing. Instead it is proposed that federal
funds for education, space exploration,
highway development or agricultural sub-
sidies be cut. And because, with the
exception of farm subsidies, none of
these programs has very many people to
lobby for it, they are almost certain to/
be the ones to get the ax.
It's a pity, because these are just thef
programs (again, with the exception of
agricultural subsidies) which are among
those which will probably be most bene-
ficial for the nation in the long run.-
A SUBSTANTIAL cut in military spend-
ing, however, would be both diplo-
matically and economically desirable.
A cut in Vietnam spending would have
to be achieved either through reduced
troop commitmeits (probably achieved'
by shipping no additional men overseas
and letting the number of troops dimin-
ish as terms of duty expired) or through
drastic cutbacks in bombing. Since the
last month's sham bomb halt is hardly
the kind of demonstration of good faith
we should bring with us to the Paris con-
ference tables, a genuine' halt in the
bombing might well be in order at this
time.
A reduction in Vietnam spending
would also be valuable for economic rea-
sons. The whole purpose of the proposed
tax hike is to hold back inflation by re-
ducing the amount of money available
for private consumption. Cutbacks in
government spending, similarly," will be
that much reduction in public consump-
tion. In theory at least, the combined
impact will be to stop or slow the rise in
prices while maintaining our present
level of resource utilization.
One of the byproducts of the wave of
inflation we have been experiencing for
the past four years has been a growing
lack of faith abroad in the stability/ of
the dollar. The higher American prices
climb, the harder it is to sell our. pro-
ducts abroad, and the easier it becomes
for foreign merchants to sell their goods
in the United States. This, coupled with
an estimated $25-30 billion a year being
spent in Vietnam, means the country is
faced with a serious balance of payments
problem, which can lead to speculative
runs on gold such as hit the international
money markets three months ago.
CUTTING MILITARY spending in Viet-
nam, apart from decelerating the war
and allowing us to keep more worth-
while programs intact would be an im-
portant first step toward lowering our
balance of payments deficit and restor-
ing international confidence in the dollar.
-JENNY STILLER
By STEVE DIAMOND
Liberation News Service
Second of Three Parts
WEDNESDAY was tense, but the
driving rain served to miti-
gate the tension. At around 4:30
p.m., Dean Coleman and two
others emerged from Malcolm X/
Hamilton Hall. Coleman stated
that four black students had en-
tered his office and told him he
might leave if he wished. The ap-
parent reason for this move was
that the students who were holding
the building felt violence (between
themselves and NYC police) was
in the wind and did not want to be
responsible for Coleman's health.
Outside the building, Coleman
stated that he had been treated
"very nicely."
The blacks then called a press
conference, stating their condi-
tions to the hungry pack-of-news-
man, yipping to be allowed inside.
The blacks announced that one
man from each press service would
be allowed in, but the New York
Daily News reporter would be ex-
cluded because the News, an arch-
conservative tabloid, was a racist
paper. White student sympathizers
outside Malcolm X/Hamilton Hall
cheered this move. The order of
admittance for newsmen was:
black newsmen from black media;
black student press; white student
press; 4) black reporters from
white media; whites from white
media.
By now, both the black and
white students had formulated de-
mands, each separate but basically
asking for the same things. The
demands were:
* All work on Columbia Gym
must cease immediately.
t Institute for Defense Analysis
must leave Columbia.
s Six students involved in IDA
demonstration in March must not
be suspended.
, Amnesty for all in current
demonstration.
0 Dropping of charges on ar-
rests of previous community dem-
onstration again the gym.
Edict on no indoor demonstra-
tions must be dropped.
Thursday, April 25
On Thursday night, the threat
of police intrusion on campus be-
came more apparent., Police had
been present in increasing strength
since the beginning of the revolu-
tion, but on Thursday night it
seemed likelythat the cops would
come in and bust students in the
liberated buildings.
New YorkSNCC, Harlem CORE,
and many .other black-oriented
community groups had promised
to come up to the Morningside
Heights campus to 'demonstrate in
support of the blacks in Malcolm
X/Hamilton Hall and in sympathy
with the white SDS members and
their groups who were now holed
up in Low Library, Avery Hall, and
Fayerweather Hall, the "third
front" which was opened Thurs-
day Afternoon.
On Thursday night a mob of
approximately three hundred Co-
umbia athletes formed at the 116th
street entrance to the campus, a
forty-foot wide open gate facing
Broadway. Earlier Thursday, at
the request of Lean Coleman, the
university had sealed off the en-
tire campus by closing approxi-
mately thirty entrances, leaving
only the two main campus en-
trances, 116th and Broadway and
116th and , Amsterdam Avenue,
open.
AT THE BROADWAY entrance,
the jocks were trying to keep back
a crowd of slightly larger size
composed of the Harlem groups
who had sworn to come on the
campus in support of their bar-
ricaded brothers. There were only a
handful of police present and they
were mainly concerned with trying
to keep traffic moving past the
community people who couldn't
"It became necessary to destroy the university to save it!"
The greatest show on earth
push their way on to the campus
and were spilling over into the
street.
Charles Kenyatta, a prominent
black legder and head of the Har-
lef Mau Maus, stood up on a car
and spoke to the crowd through a
bullhorn. "You depend on ;mob
support. Man for man you are
nothing. You wouldn't be able to
attend this university if your
grandfathers hadn't gotten rich
off the black man's backs. We are
going in to support the black stu-
dents and their white brothers who
are defending the Harlem com-
munity, representinga community
which has been ignored so far
by the Columbia racist administra-
tion."
While Kenyatta was addressing
the crowd, the athletes, who were
beginning to feel the surge of
those outside the. gate area, began
chanting "Hold that line, hold
that line." At that point, an un-
identified SNCC organizer took
the bullhorn from Henyatta and
said, ; "If you people don't move
away and let us through the cam-
pus there is going to be violence.
I don't intend to let any college-
educated honkie stop me now,
especially you jocks. I used to be
a jock too,-a BLACK jock."
Police at this point decided to
enter the confrontation. Sur-
prisingly, they opened up a path-
way for the black people from
Harlem and the supporting stu-
dents from NYU and other local
schools to come through. Dean
Coleman, recently released from
Malcolm X/Hamilton Hall, took
the microphone and announced;
"We are going to walk these peo-
ple through the campus, and there
will be no violence."
ALTHOUGH THERE were minor
scuffles with some of the ath-
letes, there was no major ac-
tion. The five hundred marchers
walked briskly through the college
walk, 116th Street from Broadway
to Amsterdam Avenue, and then
followed Kenyatta down into the
Morningside Park area where.
speeches were made against Co-
lumbia's racist gym.
Sensing that everything seemed
to be slowing down, I went over
to Low Library where the SDS
group was in control of President
Grayson Kirk's office suite of four
rooms. i had not been in the
building yet, and I was curious
about the condition inside. In
order to get by the thirty or so
NYC police ringing the building,
I had to climb a fifteen foot wall,
which fortunately had window
gratings that made the scaling
quite easy.
Inside, a meeting was in pro-
gress. About fifty people in one
room were debating the tactics to
be used if the rumored police bust
came later that night. I walked
through the - dissheveled office,
noting files spread out of. desks
and fancy cigar boxes, now empty.
All told, there were slightly over
one hundred people in the presi-
dent's office.
While I was walking around the
office, a tall white headed man
came through the window. It was
Stephen Spender, the sixtyish ex-
editor of the British publication
Encounter and a well-known poet.
Spender smiled at the scene and
very modestly began talking with
the students. On his rumpled con-
servative blue suit was a red but-
ton with a cartoon of a rat hold-
ing a rifle; the logo of an under-
ground NYC paper, "The Rat."
AS I HAD HEARD that another
front was opening up in the Ma-
thematics Building, I climbed back
down out 'of Low in order to go
over to Mathematics, about one
hundred yards away. A large group
of counter-demgnstrators had
formed around the Low Library
windows and were screaming for
blood. But they could not get near
enough to get into the liberated
president's office.
By quietly sneaking into the all-
but-deserted building, SDS stu-
d e n t s liberated Mathematics
Building. There were several night,
maids working, but they were
quietly escorted out of the build-
ing. Barricades were' quickly set
up, but the university at that time
(approximately 12:30 at night)
was not aware of the new front.
When Vice-President Truman
was informed of the fifth building
taken over by students, he issued
a statement that police would
soon be called in to free the build-
ings. Truman had been pressured
by the jocks who claimed the ad-
ministration had deserted them by
taking no action against SDS. An
emergency faculty meeting was
called. About three hundred fac-
ulty attended. The faculty voted
to link arms in front of all five
"liberated" buildings in order to
force the police to go over the fac-
ulty members if they wanted to!
get into the buildings.
WKCR shut down for approxi-
mately one-half hour after threats
by the trustees that its license
would be revoked. This example
of the trustee's arrogance was a
predictable concomitant of WK-
CR's unbiased reporting. But it
resumed broadcasting after V.P.
Truman responded to protests and
ordered the station to continue.
THIRTY TO FORTY plain-
clothes police were the first to ar-
rivehat Low Library. They at-
tempted to storm into the building,
clubbing several faculty members
in the process. Prof. Greenman,"
of the French Dept and a mem-
ber of SDS, was hit on the skull
and was led away bleeding pro-
fusely. Vice ,Pres. Truman, who
was inside Low Library, stopped
the plainclothesmen who had suc-
ceeded in passing the faculty, from
entering the barricaded presiden-
tial offices.
Around 3:15 a.m., Truman came
out and announced to a crowd of
approximately a thousand faculty;
athletes and demonstrators that he
had originally called police but
rescinded the decision at faculty
request, and that Mayor John
Lindsay and President Kirk had
decided to stop work on the Co-
lumbia Gymnasium until "every-
thing is worked out." Truman also
announced that the entire univer-
sity would be shut down until
Monday, April 29th, and that Fri-
day morning at ten a.m. a faculty
meeting would be held. Police then
began departing, leaving behind
skeleton crews at all entrances to
the campus.
Friday was a stalemate. Around
three thirty in the afternoon, four
hundred high school kids from
Harlem flooded the campus. Im-
mediately thereafter, police moved
in on the remaining two entrances
to the campus, the two 116th
Street entrances, and set up a
checkpoint whereby people would
have to show Columbia identifica-
tion to get on campus. I spoke
with some of the high school kids,
who told me that they had come
to show support for the black stu-
dents who were holed up in Mal-
colmX/Hamilton Hall.
Ted Francis, a senior from
Brandeis H.S., on the west side,
held a huge sign which read "LBJ
& RUSK - YOU COOL IT."
Francis said that "The black peo-
ple haven't known who they were
for hundreds of years. Now we
know, old men and children,
every one knows who we, the black
people, are. No more NEGROES-
just black people."
The students who were barri-
caded in Malcolm X Hall did not
admit the high school. kids for
fear of loosening security measures
and depleting food and water sup-
plies. They also did not want' to
assumeresponsibility for the safe-
tY of the high school kids in the
event of violence.
AT AROUND 3:30 on Friday,
Rap Brown and Stokely Car-
michael showed up. They had a
bit of a hassle at the guarded gate
but strode right through and
walked briskly to Malcolm X/Ha-
Milton Hall. They were inside for
about forty-five minutes when
both suddenly came out. Brown
took the reporters' microphones
and spoke to a mixed crowd of
leftists, athletes, black high school
kids, and concerned faculty and
administration members, number-
ing over a thousand.
"The black students and some
of the community brothers have
held Hamilton for over fifty-si;
hours in protest against the racist
policies of the university which
has refused to alter these policies
under normal protests. We have
exerted every possible means to
stop this racist activity but can
no longer resort to non-violence.
There are our demands: if the
Jim Crow-Gym in Mornngsde
Park is built it will be blown up;
amnesty for all students partici-
pating in these demonstrations
here at Columbia, Institute for
Defense Analysis must go. It is a
tool of the government, the racist
government, to suppress the poor
peoples of the world, Latin Amer-
ica and the ghettoes of this cou-
try.
"If the university meets the
first two demands then the black
students will negotiate the third.
If not, the students will remain
indefinitely. They have set up an'
efficient working cafeteria and
have large supplies of food. They
also have a doctor in there and a
good infirmary system. Their mo-
rale is extremely high, they know
they will win. They are in com-
plete control of Malcolm X/Ha-
milton Hall and are not going to
let any Honky cops in.
If they have to, they will get
massive support from Harlem. Ig
the university refuses to deal with
us, with the black brothers inside
this building, then they had better
be prepared to deal with the black
brothers in the streets."
Then Brown and Carmichael,
whose only comment had been
"Rapis my leader,he speaks for
me," left very quickly.
TOMORROW:THE END GAME
°'
*
4
4
THE HOUSE Un-American Activities
Committee has never won any prizes
for the sophistication of its analysis of
social upheavals. But with its latest re-
port on Communist infiltration 'of the
black nationalist movement and its pro-
posals .for containin'g Communist-in-
spired black guerrillas, HUAC has out-
done itself.
The linking of Communists and black
guerrillas (and the slippery vocabulary,
which equates black nationalists with
guerrillas) is so clearly an echo of the
past that it hardly desefves comment.
Whether or not any of HUAC's qubstan-
tive charges iare true is almost irrelevant
at this point: what else could HUAC have
been expected to find?
Indeed, had HUAC stopped with this,
few eyebrows would have been raised.
What attracted national attention was
'the. committee's suggestions for dealing
with black guerrillas. "The McCarran
Act provides for various detention cen-
ters to be operated throughout the coun-
try," its report stated, "and these might
well be utilized for the temporary im-
prisonment of warring guerrillas."
No comment
WHAT IS critical in the crisis is that
when some Negroes kick up a fuss'
about the way they live, and others take
advantage of the fuss to go on disorderly
sprees, the authorities respond with a
murderous fearful vidlence wholly dis-
proportionate to the offenses. The
(Kerner Commission) Report finds that
rioters killed only two of Detroit's 43,
dead. .
There may be and have been other
possible readings of this Report. Mine is
that its driving argument is one against
the violent repression of Negroes. This
is a difficult and unpopular argument. t
make when the prevailing, not always
outspoken agreement seems to be that if
repression is not the right thing to do,
it may be the only thing to do. In strict
cost analysis terms-say in dollars per
peaceful Negro-it is the cheapest. And
a growing body of opinion holds that if
the state is neitb'r to "appease" rioters
Copies of the report haven't arrived in
Ann Arbor yet and none of the stories in
the national press explained why the
committee recommended the reincarna-
tion of detention centers, so it is prob-'
ably unfair to condemn the proposal out
of context. Yet one is left with the strong
impression that HUAC would have to
devise a fairly complicated argument to
demonstrate why existing means of in-
carceration are insufficient to handle
the hordes of Communist black guerrillas
who inhabit our urban jungles.
The committee's morbid fascination
with offbeat punishment techniques like
the detention centersis only slightly-less.
scary than its proposal to issue a census
card on each slum-dweller bearing his
photograph and providing information
of the name and address variety.
For this HUAC's report offered a fairly
elaborate explanation: "This, classifica-
tion would aid the authorities in know-
ing the exact location of any suspect and
who is in control of any given district."
THE PHILOSOPHY behind issuing cards
to all slum-dwellers niftily flies in
the face of the facts (which show only
small minorities of slum inhabitants par-
ticipating in disorderly riots and say al-
most nothing about the extent of "guer-
)rilla activity" - what the committee is
allegedly concerned with, after all),
landing in a presumption of guilt pro-
foundly alien to the American tradition
of justice. Above and beyond innocent-
until-proven-guilty objections, the whole
idea of issuing information cards on citi-
zens reeks of creeping big brotherism.
Fortunately, HUAC's recommendations
are not likely to be implemented. The
committee's principal functions seem to
be to provide a tension-reducing, blow-
ing-off-steam place for those paranoiacs
who sincerely believe the internal Com-
munist conspiracy theory and to ruin the
lives (or, alternately, make martyrs) of
those who naively sign petitions of pro-
test, unaware that there exist organiza-
tions like HUAC which comb the signa-
tures to see if any Communists or Com-
munist fronts have signed the same pe-
tition. Long ago HUAC ceased to be im-
'
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Letters: On religious hypocrisy
wA
To the Editor:
j FEEL compelled to write this
note regarding Stephen Wild-
strom's editorial (Daily, May 1).
I, too, have been troubled'.by the
paradox presented by the religious
bigot. As a former Catholic, I
found many such people in the
church-it has been a source of
constant dismay and disillusion-
ment with organized religion.
The South, of course, is known
as the "Bible Belt"; this would be
greatly amusing if the problem
were rot so real and serious. How
can a man profess to love God, yet
hate his fellow man?! It brings to
mind a line from "The Eve of
Destruction"-"Hate your next
door neighbor/but don't forget to
say grace." This religious hypo-
crisy, the complete lack of hon-
esty, even with oneself, is at the
root of so many of the world's'
problems.
It is manifested in the white
suburbanite, calling himself a lib-
Pr" t n1 .syA ~+ Kthe xanetime Aficrhtin~r
racism lies the real danger-the
man who says, "I'm not preju-
diced, but . . ." and all the other
time-worn cliches; the George
Wallace's and the Lester Maddox's
of the world are not the problem;
it's the people who aren't preju-
diced . . . just "realistic."
I'm rambling now-I wanted to
tell you that Mr. Wildstrom wrote
a fine editorial. I have always
thought Jews (as a whole) less
prejudiced than others, but I
guess no group is without its blind
men. Perhaps your editorial will
open a few eyes-lest they have
forgotten. You did a great job.
-Amy Bachelder
Exploitation
To the Editor:
W HEN I WAS A student at,
Michigan I had the privilege
of meeting many students from
the Middle East. At that time,
1954-1956, I listened to these stu-
in my classes and identified the
Israelis with these classmates
from New York and Chicago. As a
pre-seminary student, I held a
Biblical eschatology based on the
literal return of the Jews to the
Holyland.
After two and a half years serv-
ice with the church here in Jor-
dan, I wonder how emotional and
complaining I have to become af-
ter seeing injustice pour like muddy
waters. I wonder now how anti-
Semitic I have become after I've
seen the weak exploited by the
Zionists., I wonder also about my
own theology when I see the sec-
ularists and Zionists try to build
a nation on the naive faith of
many Jews as well as Christians.
If any student now studying is
fortunate to have an Arab student
as a friend, please try to under-
stand that it is easy for one to
become emotional and cynical af-
ter seeing what has happened to
the people here. I also would like
thPCP apctndpcntq to now vrnrthat
Today only a few people seem
to care about this area of the.
world. I am happy to say that'
many Jewish men have spoken,
against the modern state of Is-
rael. Thes4 leaders realize that
Zionism and Jewish faith are not
equivalent. I-hope that in the days
to come mo e studients and others
will see that Israel's aggressive and
over-confident position is becom-
ing too burdensome for America
as it has been for the Arabs in the
last twenty years.
-Rev. David Bentley
Amman H. K. Jordan
1 \1 tI goo,", I -WWT I