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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1969
NIGHT EDITOR: MARTIN A. HIRSCHMAN
Sheriff Harvey
and the matrix of power
THE RECALL Harvey movement appears
on the surface like an effort every red-
blooded anti-Harveyite should support,
but tactically the movement is unsound,
politically it may be disastrous.
Even if RECALL gathered 15,000 signa-
tures-- and the organization needs 13,-
000 more in the next three weeks - Har-
vey would almost certainly win a recall
election by a substantial majority. A pop-
ular base elected him in the last election,
and since welfare demonstrators went to
jail and people were beaten on South Uni-
versity, Harvey's support has grown. De-
feat in a recall election would embarrass
the, Harvey opposition, strengthening the
already formidable pro-Harvey forces -
and destroy the u n i t y of anti-Harvey
sentiment which might otherwise have
some chance of battling him.
But politically - and this is most im-
portant - the Recall Harvey movement
ignores the crucial issues which will per-
sist long after one Sheriff Harvey is gone:
the growth of police as an independent
political force, police ties to the govern-
ment and vested interests, and the total
inability of the community-at-large to
exert any control or checks over a police
force meant to protect it, a police force
which the people created a n d sustain
with their own taxes.
Harvey, obviously, menaces any hope
for social justice and humanitarianism in
t h e community; h is an incompetent
sheriff; and consequently the public
should oust him from office. Replacing
him with an intelligent law officer train-
ed in community social problems might
ease the tension over Sunday concerts in
the parks and lift the yoke of paranoia
which prevents students and other mi-
nority groups f r o m living their rights
without fearing billy clubs or jail.
BUT OUSTING Harvey will not change
the matrix of power between the po=
lice, government and the community. And
that is precisely where democracy in this
country will ultimately win - or crum-
ble before an American fascism.
America formed its governments, our
national philosophy tells us, to execute
the people's will. And the people formed
police forces to ensure the common wel-
Suimmer Staf
MARCIA ABRAMSON ...................... Co-Editor
CHRIS TEELE...... .................Co-Editor
iARTINI HIRSCHMAN .. Summer Supplement Editor
JIM FPOIRESTER............ summ~er Sports Editor
LEE KIRK ... .... Associate Summer Sports Editor
ERIC PERGEA JX .Photo Editor
NIGHT EDITORS: Nadine Cohodas, Martin Hirsch-
man, Judy Sarasohn, Daniel Zwerdling.
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS: Laurie Harris, Judy
Kahn, Scott Mixer, Bard Montgomery.
Business Staff
GEORGE BRISTOL, Business Manager
STEVE ELMAN .. Administrative Advertising Manager
SUE LERNER................ Senior Sales Manager
LUCY PAPP............ Senior Sales Manager
NANCY ASTN...........Senior Circulation Manager
BRUCE HAYDON .................Pnance Manager
DARIA KROGULSKI......Associate Finance Manager
BARBARA SCHULZ...............Personnel Manager
fare of the community and the freedom
of its individual citizens. Citizens pay for
the police: with our taxes we pay their
salares, purchase their guns and g i v e
them tear gas.
Yet the community ha's lost control ov-
er police actions and as a result supports
a police which arrests whom it pleases
and represses minorities it dislikes, What
has happened in Ann Arbor? the mayor,
of this city - the mayor - fears the po-
lice force and so do many citizens.
THESE ARE the issues the community
must face, but which RECALL ignores.
Until the community gains control of its
own police, the people will face m o r e
South Universitys. Now, in fact, the RE-
CALL movement not only ignores the is-
sue of community control but unwitting-
ly denounces the people who try to raise
it. RECALL organizers circulate with their
petitions a Detroit Free Press editorial,
which, while denouncing Harvey as "one
dumb cop" - a fine phrase coming from
a conservative newspaper - also de-
nounces the students who fought hi m
a n d urges their prosecution under the
very legal and police system t h e y are
struggling against.
Eventually, there will be South Univer-
sitys .not o n 1{y of radical students and
street people, but of the respectable lib-
eral middle class. Because the humani-
tarian ideals liberals profess abhore the
billy club justice of the Harvey's - and
if white collar liberals practice what they
preach, the police phalanx will strike at
them too.
SO WE ALL shrink from a common
threat together: student, radicals,
liberals, adults. We should work together,
organizing throughout the community,
knocking on doors, talking with citizens
and explaining that community control
of the police is essential to real free-
dom in our society.
Educating the community, debating in
the community, showing e y e r y citizen
why he must grapple with police power-
this is where the Harvey opposition should
be. The task is not easy, and perhaps
even a majority of the community will
support the club-but without focusing
the issue before the public, the concept
of community control will be buried in
an inarticulate hatred of Harvey. This
will solve nothing.
If the public can throw Harvey out
of office, naturally it should try. State
confidence in the sheriff has plunged
in the wake of the murders and organized
public pressure might force Governor Mil-
liken to investigate and oust him. This
is a far more feasible tactic than a quix-
otic recall movement - and if it worked,
life in Ann Arbor would be more pleasant.
BUT OUSTING HARVEY-a single man
-will achieve nothing substantial for
the future. What we must oust is an en-
tire system.
-DANIEL ZWERDLING
conventnally
DR. MILTON EISENHOWER'S National Commission on the Causes
of Violence seems to release the reports of its task forces with less
enthusiasm and pride than they deserve: very little else can be said
for a recent history conditioned by national disasters, but it does seem
to have concentrated the intelligence and improved the coherence of
the behavioral sciences.
"The Politics of Protest," in Dr. Eisenhower's series, is the report
of his Task Force on Violent Aspects of Protest and Confrontation, Dr.
Jerome Skolnick, director.
Skolnick's compilation is especially cogent and striking in its dis-
cussion of policemen.
First of all, it discards the notion that the decision to join the
force springs from "sadistic or even authoritarian" impulses. The usual
police recruit appears to it, on the contrary, to be "an able and
gregarious young man with social ideals, better than average physical
prowess, and a rather conventional outlook on life, including normal
aspirations and self-interest."
THE APPEAL of police work in general has been strongest during
periods of depression, when it offered job security, and weakest in
times like these when the wage is low. It would be natural then that,
as in most other areas of the civil service, "the older policemen are
better educated and qualified than the younger policemen-a reversal
of the trend operating in almost every other occupation."
But that is a problem of manpower training; the basic trouble is
described by the words, suggesting proper adjustment to things as they
are: "an able and gregarious young man with a rather conventional
view of life."
We occasionally forget what the conventional view of life in
America really is. The Skolnick report gives us a useful reminder:
"Whites opposed, by close to a two to one majority, the lunch counter
sit-ins in 1960, the freedom rides of 1961, the civil rights rally in Wash-
ington in 1963." So then, in his time, the conventional view was op-
posed to each of the things Martin Luther King did in succession.
Times change very rapidly, of course; Martin Luther King is now a
saint and the things he did are accepted glories of conventional history
in most places.
Policemen, then, as conventional people, are opposed to any stirring
in the streets. Their explanations of riots run very heavily to "outside
agitators"; and that is conventional view also; when Lou Harris asked a
sample of white Americans for the cause of Negro riots, the first answer
of 45 per cent of them was: "Outside agitation."
NOW THE POLICE have appeared as a political party. They have
organized as a union, for conventional union purposes; they have also
organized as a force for conventional morality. Off-duty policemen
check the courts as part of the law enforcement group's study of soft
judges. The Police and Fire Assn. of Los Angeles collects dossiers on its
political enemies. The Mayor of Boston confesses that he does not con-
trol the police department. Policemen yield to that same contempt
for authority which is almost conventional for Americans now; "Wanted
for Murder" posters of Mayor Carl Stokes hang in Cleveland police
stations.
Suddenly all of us are commencing to recognize the rebellion gf the
white lower middle class. These are people whose anger is generally
accompanied and even increased by the sense of having no power;
alone among their fragments, the police groups have cohesion; only they
have a day-to-day means to express outraged convention. We are going
to have to get ourselves together before we can deal with all that is
conventional in America which they represent.
(c) New York Post
Thfe news- -Penta
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4
"One small step for taxpayers! . ..
One giant leap for tax reforn!"
Let
Ted Kennedy
To the Editor:
I READ Daniel Zwerdling's edi-
~torial on Ted )Kennedy in 'rues-
day's Daily and" I think that, by
reducing the issue to sex, booze,
and traffic laws you are oversim-
plifying to an absurd degree while
ignoring the real problems.
I don't give a shit if Kennedy
was smashed out of his m i n d,
screwed his secretary three times
a day or drove across the bridge
at 100 m.p.h. What I do care about
is:
At a time of crisis, Kennedy lost
his head completely, not just for
a few minutes, which is under-
standable, but for approximately
g ofn stl
I
ers to the Editor
By DANIEL ZWERDLING
THE PACIFIC Stars and Stripes,
tabloid voice of the Pentagon,
carries news of the world neatly
folded each week to the embassy
offices, bomber bases a n d tiny
thatched hamlets of United States
strongholds throughout the east-
ern world.
So when the paper reprinted an
article from the Washington Post
on the Harvard strike last April,
Vietnam N a v y communications
officer William Curtis, a former
economics major at Princeton
University, r e ad it carefully to
find out what was going on.
He was surprised, consequently,
when he received, the original
Washington Post article his. moth-
er sent him - and discovered the
Stars and Stripes reprint distort-
ed its entire meaning.
The article, by Alan Barth, an-
alyzed the growth of violence on
American college campuses and -
according to the Pentagon version
- seemed to take a bitter stand
against the student strikers:
"THE ESSENCE of the drama,"
wrote Barth, "was expressed in a
tableau staged in the Harvard
Yard at the height of the student
'strike.' About 30 pickets were pa-
rading in an orderly, if slovenly,
maimer bearing placards Which
exhorted their fellow students to
stay away from classes. As the
picketers trudged, they chanted -
somewhat listlessly as though they
had been at it for a long time -
'U.S. Out of Vietnam -- F i g h t
ROTC.'
"What had the Harvard Yard
come to?" asked Barth. "Here was
the b e a s t in its most ferocious
form. 'Here was the final end to
intellectuality - the outright ap-'
peal to hatred and to bigotry. It
seemed a terrifying portent."
These are strong words for Alan
Barth, who used to churn out con-
sistently liberal editorials before
the Post editorial p a g e became
Lyndon Johnson's respectable rub-
ber stamp.
But the Stars and Stripes ver-
sion of Barth's article was some-
what abridged. For between those
two paragraphs, printed in t h e
army tabloid, a third paragraph
by Barth h a d been dropped -
changing the entire attack of
Barth's vignette:
"In the middle of the picketers'
oval," Barth had also written af-
ter the first paragraph, "stood a
-lone figure, indifferent to the cla-
mor - a quiet little man, not un-
known to the Harvard Yard, more
composed, m o r e neatly dressed,
mor3 dignified than the picketers,
carrying a banner of his own with
the simple legend: 'Fight the Jew-
ish - Communist 'Conspiracy in
America.'"
THIS WAS BARTH'S "outright
appeal to hatred and to bigotry"-
not the student strikers of t h e
Stars and Stripes.
Curtis wrote the Washington
Post/Los Angeles Times News
Service - whicl teletypes its copy
to 275 newspapers like the Stars
and Stripes throughout the world
- and demanded an explanation.
Service editor Robert Keith says
"The paragraph was dropped here.
We screwed up the transmission,
not the Stars and Stripes - so
the omission isn't what it looks
like."
Adds Keith: "Mistransmissions
very seldom happen."
10 hours. In our split-second
world, quite a bit of chaos could
result if the man in charge of a
nation is out of it for 10 hours.
It has been reported that, un-
der optimum conditions, a person
in a submerged car could survive
as long as 5 hours. It has a1so
been reported that Kennedy could
have gotten help to the scene in
40 minutes at most if he had act-
ed promptly. Thus, it is entirely
possible the woman coilid have
been saved, and it is also entirely
possible t h a t Kennedy's neglect
could have been the deciding fac-
tor in her death. Kennedy's op-
position to the Vietnam war is
commendable, but it doesn't lessen
his guilt in this death; any life
ended needlessly is a tragedy,
whether Vietnamese, American or
any other.
KENNEDY HAS EMADE con-
flicting statements. Certainly, po-
liticians are liars and people are
liars; but a politician who makes
it so obvious is bound to suffer.
Kennedy informed at least two
associates (Gargan and Mark-
ham), who also broke the law by
not informing autlorities and who
also may have contributed to the
woman's death by their inaction.
It is quite obvious that their pri-
mary purpose was not to do the
right thing, b u t to shield Ken-
nedy. This certainly makes me
wonder about the men who would
be running this country if Ken-
nedy were to be elected president.
W ould they also be men who
placed, personal loyalties before
conscience, law and the rights of
others? And since Kennedy plead-
ed guilty to a crime, does this not
make Gargan and Markham ac-
cessories after the fact? When will
they be tried?
Kennedy's refusal to face press
questions leads one to believe that
there may be answers he is un-
willing to give because.he thinks
the voters will consider therm \too
damaging to his image.
This type of conduct has been
known in the past as a "credibility
gap." During the last administra-
tion, the American people decided
they could not trust a man with a
credibility gap. Also Kennedy's
hiding behind a "curse" was one
of the biggest tear-jerking cop-
outs I've heard. I half expect him
to prove next thatait was all in his
horoscope and was, therefore, in-
evitable and not his fault at all.
ZWERDLING IMPLIES that the
Sublic should go easier on Ken-
edy be'cause it is unfair to Criti-
cize him while Nixon is not being
forced to squirm for his various
idiocies. The logical way to end
this disparity ishto make Nixon
squirm more rather than to 'for-
get the Kennedy incident.
I have a lot of sympathy for vic-
tims of tragic accidents, but my
sympathy diminishes drastically
whenait comes to breaking just
laws and neglecting such an ob-
vious duty upon which a human
life depends. Perhaps Zwerdling
feels he could have been a part of
the group that applauded Ken-
nedy at his church last Sunday,
but he should not be so naive as
to think that anyone who cares
to take a closer look at this man
is a gossipping Mrs. Grundy.
I am probably as much in agree-
ment with his political views as
Zwerdling is, but a man t a k e s
much more in'fo the White House
than just his Senate speeches and
voting record. We must look at the
whole man not merely the aspects
we like.
--Mrs. C. P. Steinmetz
LSA '64
Grad '65
Letters to the Editor should
be mailed to the Editorial Di-
rector or delivered to Mary
Rafferty in the Student Pub-
lications business office in the
Michigan Daily building. Let-
ters should be typed, double-
spaced andnormally should not
exceed 250 words. The Editorial
Directors reserve the right to
edit all letters submitted.
*,
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music
Blues Festival: Breathtaking tour of a very rich sou
nd
By NEIL PATERSON
Blessed by Ann Arbor's fickle
weather the Blues Festival kicked off
with an intriguing first night. The
program offered a little for any blues
fan, though emphasizing the urban
blues of the Chicago school and B. B.
King. Introduced by famed Chicago
disc-jockey Big Bill Hill, who emerged
as the Bill Kennedy of the Blues,
things got under way with the more
traditional blues of Roosevelt Sykes
and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. Sykes
strained vocals have a limited range
but this is amply compensated for
by his powerful fifteen finger piano
style.
Crudup has earned a strange con-
voluted fame as the source of Pres-
ley's early songs. He worked his way
through a familiar repertoire includ-
ing "Rock Me," "Look on Yonders
Wall," "I'm in the Mood." Often
blues traditions. He seems almost an
anachronism in the evolving soul
spund of Chicago, and if not this
sound at least its appearance.
Jimmy "Fast Fingers" Dawkins
heralds the new age, without losing
all contact with the past. The small
band of Hutto becomes a larger group
with two saxophones riffing, moan-
ing and gasping. Purple-suited Dawk-
ins stand still as a pillar around
which saxophonists twirl and gyrate,
This tight, tough band is the quin-
tessence of modern Chicago blues.
The stinging guitar owes much to
B.B. King, but is dirtier. As Buddy
Guy trips forlornly into the world of
soul it is great to see Dawkins de-
veloping as a star in a similar style.
Vocally Dawkins is much less impres-
sive, having a weak loosely strung
voice, but his guitar builds up an
intensity which even the open sky
could not dissipate.
* t
4.
B. Hutto pounds out his sour
5.,.
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