Workers are too tired 420 Mayna 1rSft anBaI Seventy-nine years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan for poliotics Ird St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editoriois printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. 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. .. . , f - Y "".the 1tbewte a,,d Ti but S} dicstt S..on . .. 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 Ty ,: .. Ww9OSTOc