Workers are too tired
420 Mayna
1rSft anBaI
Seventy-nine years of editorial freedom
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FRI DAY; MAY 22, 1970
NIGHT EDITOR: ROB BIER
agTurning de tide
againist U.S. imperialism
A NEW UPSURGE in the struggle against
U.S. imperialism is now emerging
throughout the world. Ever since World
War IT, U.S. imperialism and its followers
have' beerr continuously launching wars
of aggression, and the people in various
countries have been continuously waging
revolutionary wars to defeat the aggres-
sors., The danger of. a new world war still
exists;-and the people of all countries
must get. prepared. But revolution is the
main treed in the world today.
UNABLE TO win in Vietnam and Laos,
the U.S. aggressors treacherously en-
gineered the reactionary coup d'etat by
the Lon Nol-Sirik Matak clique, brazenly
dispatched their- troops to invade Cam-
bodia and resumed the bombing of North
Vietnam, and this has aroused the fur-
ious resistance of the three Indochinese
peoples.
I warmly support the fighting spirit of
Samdech ,(P ri n c e) Norodom Sihanouk,
Chief of State of Cambodia, in opposing
U.S. imperalism and its lackeys. I warmly
support the joint declaration of the sum-
mit .conference .of ..the Indochinese peo-
ples.
While massacring the people in other
countries, United States imperialism is
slaughtering the white and black people
in its own country. Nixon's fascist atroci-
ties have kindled the raging flames of
the revolutionary mass movement in the
U.S. The Chinese people firmly support
the revolutionary:struggle of the Ameri-
can p e o p'l-e 'I am -convinced that the
American people who are fighting vali-
antly will ultimately win victory and that
the fascist rule in the U.S. will inevitably
be defeated.
THE NIXON government 'is beset with
troubles internally and externally, with
utter chaos at home and extreme isola-
tion, abroad. The mass movement of pro-
test against U.S. aggression in Cambodia
has swept the globe.
Less than 10 days 'after its establish-
ment, the Royal Government of National
Union of Cambodia was recognized by
nearly 20 countries. The situation is get-
ting better and better in the war of re-
sistance against U.S. aggression and for
national salvation waged by the people
of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
The revolutionary armed struggles of
the people of Korea, Japan and other
Asian countries against the revival of
Japanese militarism by the United States
and Japanese reactionaries, the struggles
of the Palestinian and other Arab peoples
against the United States-Israeli aggres-
sors, the national liberation struggles of
the Asian, African and Latin-American
peoples, and the revolutionary struggles
of the peoples of North America, Europe
and Oceania arte all developing vigorously.
UNITED STATES imperialism, w h i c h
looks like a huge monster, is in es-
sence a paper tiger, now in the throes of
its deathbed struggle. In the world of
today, who actually fears whom? It is,
not the Vietnamese people, the Laotian
people, the Cambodian people, the Pales-
tinian people, the Arab people or the peo-
ple of other countries who fear United
States imperialism; it is United States
imperialism that fears the people of the
world. It becomes panic-stricken at the
mere rustle of leaves in the wind. In-
numerable facts prove that a just cause
enjoys abundant support while an unjust
cause finds little support.
A weak: nation can defeat a strong, a
small nation can defeat a big nation. The
people of a small country can certainly
defeat aggression by a big dountry, if
only they dare to rise in struggle, take up
arms and grasp in their own hands the
destiny of their country. This is a law of
history.
People of the world, unite and defeat
the United States aggressors and all their
running dogs!
-MAO TSE-TUNG
May 20
By DAVE CHUDWIN
ONE OF THE fondest hopes of
campus radicals is that the
nation's workingmen will rise up
and join in a massive student-
worker alliance to protest the war
in Southeast Asia and other for-
eign and domestic injustices.
David Dellinger, for example,
called for a general strike at the
anti-war rally in Washington on
May 9. Support from workers
would be essential for such a strike
to be effective even on a small
scale.
Don't count on it. Workers are
generally not going to ally them-
selves with students and, if con-
struction workers in New York
are typical, they will actively op-
pose demonstrations and strikes.
Approximately 150,000 N e w
York construction workers held a
march Wednesday to support
President Nixon's war policies.
Some of the marchers were also
among the construction workers
who attacked peace demonstra-
tors last week.
WHY ARE MANY workers so
opposed to student protests? As
a member of the working class for
the summer, toiling in a grimy,
dirty factory which produces steel
conduit, I can see three ,major
reasons for this hostility toward
dissent.
Many factory workers, to begin
with, are uneducated. At the plant
where I'm working few of the
men have finished high school
and many are essentially illiterate.
Even the obscenities scrawled on
washroom walls are misspelled.
In addition, about a third of the
workers are of foreign descent.
mainly Mexican-Americans, and
can't speak any English at all.
Envious of college students who
can spend all their time learning,
many workers feel students should
keep their noses in their books,
and make the best of an oppor-
tunity the workers never had.
They regardkdemonstrations,
riots and similar activities as use-
less distractions from what they
consider a student's primary re-
sponsibility-to get a degree' and
with it a good job.
OTHER WORKERS take a more
anti-intellectual stance, charging
that protesting students and pro-
fessors are living in an "ivory
tower," so caught up in theories
and idealism that they have a
warped view of the real world.
These intellectuals, the workers
claim, dream up utopian schemes,
get angry when their impractical
proposals are not accepted and
then lead marches and strikes.
Another result of workers' lack
of education is a simplistic atti-
tude toward international politics.
To them, Communism is an un-
speakable evil which is the major
threat to the security of the Unit-
ed States.
Many workers see Vietnam as a
simple case of Communist aggres-
sion rather than the complex situ-
ation it actually is,
Because they know so little
about Southeast Asia and military
and political conditions there, they
rely completely on the President,
"the only man' who has all the
facts," for an assesment of the
war.
THE SECOND major factor in-
volved in worker opposition to an-
tiwar protests is the hours, pay
and working conditions in most
factories. Benumbed by boring
labor, workers neither have the
time nor the inclination to be
active in political movements and
resent those who can.
Political involvement takes time
-a precious commodity among
workers. Employes in my factory
work eight hours a day, six days
a week. Soaring prices, high taxes
and the overtime or second jobs
necessary to support their fam-
ilies, leave them little time for
leisure.
Most workers have monotonous
assembly-line jobs that deaden
their minds. Going home, they
would rather have a cold beer and
watch an entertaining television
program than hear about strikes,
demonstrations and politics.
Laboring so hard to earn a
paltry living, many workers feel
students take poor advantage of
their free time and waste expen-
sives tuition costs when they pro-
test instead of study.
Demonstrators are viewed as
"spoiled brats" who don't know
how good they have it, "chronic
complainers," and hypocrites who
use violence in the name of peace.
A FINAL CAUSE of worker dis-
content is the workers' background
and upbringing. Immigrants or the
sons of relatively recent immi-
grants, many workers were raised
in an authoritarian family en-
vironment.
Through their families, what
little schooling they had and the
military, the workers were indoc-
trinated with the importance of
patriotism, neatness, religion, re-
/ \1
s I
spect for one's elders and obedi-
ence to authority.
Unkempt demonstrators yelling
profanities and carrying Viet Cong
flags in revolt against their gov-
ernment deny the basic values on
which many workers base their
lives.
Tom Wicker once described the
protesters during the 1968 Chicago
convention as "our children." But
construction and factory workers
then, and now, could not acknowl-
edge any relation.
They see the demonstrators,
products of "permissiveness" they
claim, which opposes everything
the workers hold sacred.
Rather than looking for stu-
dent-worker alliances, be pre-
pared for continued hostility to-
ward the campus from the work-
ing class. The generation gap be-
tween the two groups is more than
a gap-it's a dangerous chasm
which will not be easily bridged
if it is bridged at all.
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Dad . .
mmmmm JAMES WECHSLER...
A
liberal
views the murders in Augusta
Breaking the news
IT IS A frightening time when the
government tries to surpress news it
finds disagreeable. That time appears to
be with us now. Last night on the CBS
evening news show, W a 1 t e r Cronkite
accused the government of "an under-
cover campaign to discredit". a television
report of a combat assault in which a
North Vietnamese prisoner was shown-
being stabbed while lying on the ground.
CBS correspondent Don Webster, on
the scene when the original assault took
place, last night identified the soldier who
did the stabbing as Nguyen Van Mot, a
South Vietnamese s e r g e a n t who was
quoted as saying he killed the prisoner in
self - defense because the prisoner was
reaching for a rifle..
The.U.S. government alleges that "the
story was faked" and th.t CBS identified"
as American helicopters and military ad-
visers which might have been Australian.
However, last night, Webster replayed
the film of the assault, stopping the
action at strategic moments and enlarg-
ing portions of a helicopter aid a soldier's '
uniform which showed that both were
American. . .
HAT IS most important here is not
whether CBS can substantiate every
fact but that it should have to defend
itself against the government. It is both
reprehensible and frightening when the
government seeks to obilterate from the
record events which might cast it in a
less than favorable light.
The government cannot do this alone,
however. Too much of the media is will-
ing to adhere to the government's posi-
tion that it does no wrong, has done no
wrong, will do no wrong and will punish
anyone who says it has.
IT SEEMS best to let the current situa-
tion be summed up by CBS News itself.
At the close of his show last night Cron-
kite said:
"We broadcast the original, story in the,
belief it told something about the nature
of th~e war in Vietnam. What has happen-
ed since then tells us something about
the government and its relations with
news media which carry stories the gov-
ernment finds disagreeable."
-NADINE COHODAS
AMID THE GRIM communiques
from bloodstained Augusta,
there is another Georgia story
that may warrant more cheerful
headlines before this year ends.
It involves the candidacy of the
Rev. Andrew Young, who has be-
gun a fight to, replace Republican
Fletcher Thompson-.-in Young's
words "a sort of Agnew-Goldwater
Republican .with a touch of Les-
ter Maddox"-as Representative
of the state's 5th Congressional
District in Washington.
Young is the slender, soft-
voiced, spirited 38-year-old min-
ister who marched at Martin
Luther King's side in Alabama,
Mississippi, as well as Georgia and
innumerable other fronts. Offical-
ly he was executive vice president
of Dr. King's Southern Christian
Leadership Conference; he was al-
so confidant, organizer, contact
man with other civil rights and
antiwar forces, a remarkably
ecumenical figure with a quiet gift
for moving men and shaping
events.
Now, with the warm support of
Mrs. Coretta King and Julian
Bond, among others, Young has
entered the political arena on his
own. His decision is consistent
with the growing concentration of
disidents on the halls of Congress.
And although the district in which
he is running is centered in At-
lanta, the judgments motivating
his decision are clearly related to
what has happened in Augusta
where a young Negro's prison
death touched off an explosion.
"THE REACTION to the prison
tragedy and now to the street
killings of blacks is particularly
strong because there has been a
long accumulation of neglected
problems," Young was saying on
a brief visit here yesterday.,
"This is the incident that blew
it."
But it is Young's view that the
absence of black political repre-
sentation intensified the anger.
"More and more I've come to
the conclusion that blacks have
to think politically rather than
despairingly," he said.
"The election of black Congress-
men from the South is possible
now. There are new forces visible
everywhere, among the younger
generation of whites as well as
the blacks. Our job is to mobilize
these new political energies.
"Too many people underesti-
mate the possibilities of the voting
rights law. In Mendel Rivers' dis-
trict in South Carolina, 45 per
cent of the population is black.
When they become politically ac-
tive, he won't be in Congress any
more. All of the old Southern
oligarchs who hold key committee
positions in Washington are vul-
nerable to this developing black
electorate, and to the changed at-
titudes of Southern young people
who have been just as affected as
Northerners by protest movements
and fresh ideas."
YOUNG RECALLS that in 1966
Dr. King and the SCLC saw Carl
Stokes' battle for election as May-
or of Cleveland as "critical to the
creation of political power chan-
nels for black energies." The alter-
native to non-violent political
militancy, they predicted, would
be a diversionary, self-destructive
rage and dead-end separatism.
But Young believes there is spe-
cial urgency about progressive
political action in the South now
because "it is the real answer to
Nixon's Southern strategy."
After the Carswell furor and the
President's subsequent appeal to
white racist emotions, Young con-
cluded that "the only way we can
change this tide is to start to de-
feating Republicans who play this
game in the South."
Although incumbent Thompson
initially identified himself as a
GOP moderate, he has moved
steadily to the right in conformity
with the growing Southern Repub-
lican effort to "out-Wallace Wal-
lace." He has talked of demanding
the impeachment of HEW Secre-
tary Finch and stridently upheld
the Cambodian invasion.
"This contest will be a real test
of issues and the whole racial
maturity of the South," Young
declares.
Young faces a trial run in the
Democratic primary, and present
indications are that he may be
opposed by another black nominee
-Lonnie King, head of the local
NAACP unit-as well as white
conservatives. He speaks in friend-
ly tones about King and is undis-
mayed by the primary prospect!
"I think I'll win and that the pri-
mary will help to create interest,
in the real battle against Thomp-
son," he said.
YOUNG LIKES to describe the
coalition emerging in the South
as "the radical middle." He sees
it embracing not only white and
black liberals but large sections of
labor-of both races-and ques-
tions the view that white workers
are irretrievable captives of Wal-
lace.
"Too many people have given up
on the South and assumed the
Nixon strategy is unbeatable," he
declared.
"Andy" Young is a sometimes
painfully modest man but he
quickly communicates his warmth,
conviction and persuasiveness. In
his courageous front-line role as
aide and friend to Dr. King, he
acquired a legion of adherents in
many areas. In this city Julie
Belafonte and Sidney Poitier head
a committee sponsoring a dinner
June 10 to help build his campaign
chest; Harry Belafonte, Alan King
and Lena Horne are among those
who will perform.
"I'm not hesitant about asking
for help outside of Georgia,"
Young said.
"Nixon and Agnew will be doing
all they can to save Thompson.
Are my friends outside agitators?"
@ New York Post
Letters to the Editor
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Don't strike
To the Editor:
THE FOLLOWING is a rather
confused account of why I no
longer support student strikes at
this university or at any other
university and why I believe that
mass protest demonstrations are
of doubtful value at this time. In
the past I h a v e been guilty of
numbering myself among the un-
thinking majority; when the ev-
ents of the past month or so be-
gan to unfold I knew it was time
to start thinking.
The first point I want to make
is perhaps the most basic. It is ex-
tremely easy to make institutions
into scapegoats. While I would
agree that this University a n d
most other universities are in
some degree guilty as charged of
dehumanizing society, supporting
the war effort, and ignoring rele-
vant social questions, I have be-
come increasingly reluctant to
single out the university as totally
responsible. We have all of these
nice phrases in our language now:
"the military-industrial establish-
ment," "the system," "corpora-
tion land," "over 30" and ad infin-
itum. They are the bad guys; we
are the good guys.
Perhaps I am old fashioned but
I still believe that this country is
not simply a coalition of these
rhetorical phrases, but is the 200
million people who live in it. And
we have all been fools. We are all
guilty - not only our parents'
generatinn It is true that young
"boutique," with every penny of
federal income tax paid, with ev-
ery 10 per cent of your phone bill,
with every automobile you buy or
use, you * too are supporting the
system and are providing the
economy with its most sought af-
ter consumer group. Thoreau in
"Walden" talks about the cor-
ruption of language and its ef-
fect on the people who use it.
This, I think, is one of the ma-
jor problems in our society; we
have lots of emotion-charged,
rhetorical, persuasive, cunning,
meaningless words a n d phrases
and we a r e foolish enough to
swallow them without even real-
izing it. I am almost tempted to
think: any bunch of people that
can be fooled into thinking' it
needs pink, flower-scented toilet
paper just about deserves what-
ever it gets.
MY SECOND THOUGHT on
the subject of university strikes is
this. However much students may
wish to change or criticize the
university, it remains as one of
the few institutions in this coun-
try that is still conductive to free
thought and f r e e exchange of
ideas. It may not be the "univer-
sity" per se but the university
community; the collection around
a single point of many people of
diverse backgrounds, philosophi-
cal points of view, cultural blind-
ers and insights, and patterns of
action that provides this atmos-
phere of freedom that is seldom to
be found anywhere else in this
doors and windows of what are, in
fact, only empty buildings. They
should start living what t h e y
think they believe.
What is needed now are no t
demonstrations, strikes, slogans,
rhetoric, and other publicity prone
actions. What is needed now is
life - a living out of beliefs, a
change from noisy protest to quiet
affirmation. Institutions cannot
be changed; only people can be
changed. Now is the time for the
more quiet a c t s of revolution.
They won't get you on the front
page of the New York Times or
The Michigan Daily and they may
get you in jail and inconvenience
your life. Now is the time to stop
paying that 60 per cent of your
income tax that goes for the de-
fense budget, to stop paying 10
per cent of your phone bill, to
stop subsidizing Detroit's auto in-
dustry and the oil industries, and
all of the other industries that
rely for a major portion of their
income on young people. But its
too late for that, you say..We are
angry and we must demand and
be violent if necessary. But we
have demanded and we have been
violent for many years now. We
may even think we are getting re-
suIts. But fear and violence and
demands do not make lasting
changes. Surely that is one lesson
we should have learned by now.
-Cecilia Paul '71
May 14