The North Coast times-eagle., March 01, 2001, Page 13, Image 13

PAGE 13
NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E, MARPRIL2001
At first the government wanted to play what was known
as The Daley Game' after the late mayor of Chicago vrfto kept
antiwar demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic National
Convention on the run, allowing them no place to settle and
dialogue their opposition to Vietnam. The tactic did not work
wth us, essentially because we refused to move and many
of us were veterans of Chicago. We managed to get an appeal
of an initial injunction to throw us off the mall, then Supreme
Court Chief Justice Burgher threw out the appeal Efforts to
overrule him through legal means (including representation
on our behalf by a former attorney general) failed.
We voted to violate the stringent conditions of our
being allowed to stay: we were not allowed to sleep or make
preparations for sleep such as unrolling bedrolls, nor could
we have fires or pitch tents. There was never any question
about not staying. The vote was only whether we would sleep
pretending to stay awake or sleep in outright civil disobedience
The federal park police sided with us and pretended
they did not see anyone sleeping. The next day the order was
rescinded. The mall was ours. A headline that day summed it
well:
VETS OVERRULE SUPREME COURTI
Columnist Mary McGrory wrote that our stubborn band
of ex-warriors successfully stood off the government In the
meantime several hundred active-duty soldiers promised they
would throw down their rifles if they were mobilized against us.
So we stayed. On the last day we threw our combat
medals over a barricade onto the steps of the U.S. Capitol.
One man screamed out the names of his dead before
he ripped the flashy pieces of tin off his tattered Gl shirt and
threw them like a long shot from left field. Another threw the
cane he limped with from a wounded leg. Their faces were hard
and angry as one by one they threw away their rewards for
causing and surviving death. 'The next time I pick up a rifle it'll
be to take this place," shouted one. 'These are just garbage,"
said another. "I've got all these medals," a vet cried, "but the
one I'm most ashamed of is my 'good conduct' medal. I'm
ashamed of my fucking good conduct.”
They walked and limped and passed by in wheelchairs.
Some had empty sleeves, one or two patches over empty eyes.
A young Army officer read off the names of 34 officers
v/io were resigning from the Army because of the Vietnam
War, from a full-bird colonel down, then dumped the contents
of a box of their collective medals.
The statue of John Marshall was slung with half a dozen
articles of military uniforms dripping like green blood from his
face and arms. Later the medals were swept into a long pile in
the form of a coffin and a soldier's helmet was stuck on a long
stick at its head.
Throwing our medals at Congress was the last act of our
show, which I underestimated as overly showy: a goodly portion
of the American people thought our finale was an audacious
and tragic gesture that "won their hearts and minds." The day
after we threw our medals a huge march of 500,000 people
from just about every type of job, union, church and political
group from all over the USA tramped through the streets of
Washington in opposition to Vietnam (the official bodycount
of U.S. forces in Vietnam). We dug in for May Day, which was
a week away.
The last major demonstration of the old New Left was
planned for May Day 1971 and was intended to commit mass
civil disobedience by creating mass chaos in Washington. The
city was to be shut down, for a morning at least. War resisters
migrated into the city from all over the country in the following
v®ek. Although most of the vets had gone home a few of us
stayed and maintained a bunker watch over Algonquin City, a
growing encampment in a park on the banks of the Potomac
River (and site of the Depression 'Bonus Army' of World War 1
veterans). When cops finally raided us on the day before May
Day most of the ersatz medics were vets. No heads were
broken because almost everyone left and set up scattered
camps in three startled universities, half a hundred churches
and hundreds of private homes, and anywhere else anybody
could find a place to wait for the next day's attempt to close
down the government.
Few expected to seriously interrupt the government
or that the war would end as a result What mattered was that
several thousand American citizens were determined to commit
civil disobedience on a scale never attempted in this country,
with the possible exception of the Civil War. They intended to
be arrested so that they might take the war to court.
Most of the Vietnam veterans who stayed for May Day
were scattered among various delegations that planned to
blockade the main targets of highway bridges into Washington
and traffic circles inside the city to prevent as long and as often
as possible federal workers from reaching their jobs. Those of
us vtfio wanted to act together as vets planned the chickenshit
strike on the Pentagon A few wanted to blow up the bridges
and highways — the idea of throwing chickenshit was an
acceptable compromise. Just after midnight a group of us
proved softly through dark Maryland fields to a chicken
farm and filled several plastic bags wth slimy odoriferous
substances from open coops
At dawn we were on the road in a rented van I don't
remember which traffic circle we jumped into but it was right
in the middle of a large bust, cops and gas everywhere We
surprised the police by charging into them, which was how
w® survived ambushes in Vietnam. We ran down several
streets wth cops in pursuit, evading police vehicles and
blocking forces setting up in front of us — pure slapstick:
a gaudy gang of movie villains chased by Keystone Kops
We finally got onto a highway bridge after escaping a
squadron of motorcycle cops popping off pepper gas clouds
and managed to tie up traffic for a few minutes. Foot cops
behind us shouted and blew whistles and tried to run through
honking stalled cars. In front of us a skirmish line of soldiers
w®s attempting to sweep down on us.
We responded as if we were back in combat We took
advantage of what was there, and it happened to be a stretch
of railroad track. We jumped down onto the tracks and ran
toward the river while cops and troops bumped into each other
and acted confused about chasing us or staying in position on
the bridge. Some finally came in pursuit but by then we were
far ahead. We didn't bother to duck reconnaissance helicopters,
nervously assuring ourselves that they wouldn't hit us wth
rockets or machinegun fire. Several of us extended arms and
upraised fingers at the pilots and we cut a fast march across
the long railway bridge over the Potomac River into Virginia
We moved in a single file at a fast clip in case we
were thought dangerous enough to shoot at, a combat patrol
penetrating the Pentagon At a distance behind a force of
soldiers and cops was attempting to catch up wth us Over­
head the helicopters buzzed like crazed raptors unable to get
at their prey. Behind us in the city clouds of pepper and tear
gas grayed the sky, sirens screamed like hurt children On the
river below a patrol boat swjng around in tight circles while a
man standing on deck shouted threats into a bullhorn, ignored
by the twenty of us strung out on the long bridge from D.C. to
Arlington, Virginia.
Cops waited for us on the opposite shore a hundred
yards down the spur. We took a different track. We went right
around the edge of an Army headquarters camp and by the
time soldiers started climbing a few fences to get at us we w®re
long gone
The helicopters overhead went crazy. Voices from the
air shouted at us to stop.
We approached an underpass and on the highway
above police cars began to form up, but they were also too
late We dashed under the bridge and around a few boxcars
standing on a siding along a high wre fence. Soldiers were
on the other side of the fence but they just looked at us. We
climbed a grassy knoll and directly in front of us across a two
lane highway was the low flat Pentagon building.
With hardly a word we formed into a skirmish line and
ran across the highway and onto the Pentagon lawn
We laughed and cheered until tears were in our eyes,
hugging each other and dancing wldly. We had made it
through every defense, past hundreds of cops and soldiers.
Out of thousands who tried to penetrate the Pentagon that
day we were the only ones who reached it. The rest had been
busted or turned away at the bridge wth tear gas and clubs.
The aging Dr. Benjamin Spock was among the gassed and
arrested
We stopped laughing and formed into a column of tw>s
and began to march. One counted cadence.
Armed with a small plastic grenade or two of chickenshit
apiece we marched past two surprised security cops vtfio yelled
frantically into 2-way pagers. Whoever was in charge of
Pentagon security that day seriously neglected the inner
defenses in favor of a tight ring outside. We marched around
its sides past several shocked and enraged military officers,
past a window from which a smiling voman formed a peace
sign with her hand, past two more cops who tned to stop us.
One of them grabbed at a bag and it emptied on his white
uniform We rounded a comer and suddenly found ourselves
at the Pentagon's main entrance. The porch was crowded with
high ranking officers, a squad of bewildered cops and several
secretaries.
We came to an orderly halt, executed a right face and
snapped to attention. Then we attacked. Screams and shouts
burst into shocked cadence with the nauseating plop of plastic
bags smashed on cement as officers, cops and secretaries
scrambled for a single door in wildeyed panic. An army major
stepped forward to bark an order at us, then tore through a
group of frightened women like a bowiing ball in his haste to
get inside the building
We went mad, the twenty of us, hurling our smelly little
bombs everywhere. With our wild maddened eyes and hoarse
laughing curses, we must have seemed berserker Vikings.
I began grabbing globs of chickenshit in my bare hands and
running up the steps throwng it at windows, the glassed door,
the walls, heaping piles of it on the porch, slinging it at horrified
faces pressed against the inside windows
Our attack lasted only a few minutes. After w® depleted
our ammunition, the porch and windows resembling a scarred
battlefield, we regrouped on the sidewalk, turned to the left and
began to march off. Our pursuers finally caught up with us.
Armed soldiers came at us from front and rear but a squad of
club wielding police reached us first.
And so w® were busted.
"...for fowl defecation distribution" one of us laughed
We were searched (one ex-grunt dropped two joints into
an FBI agent's coat pocket), loaded onto a bus from which w®
jeered at passing Army officers and various government
employees, and sent off to a federal prison in Virginia although
an Army enlisted driver purposely got us lost a few times He
winked at us while FBI agents frowned over a map. At the
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prison we teased grim U.S. Marshals who were dressed in blue
jump suits with shiny scarlet scarves tucked into their collars
and shiny black boots on their feet. We assumed positions of
POWs, hands flat atop our heads, giving out only names, dates
of birth, rank and serial numbers as specified in the U.S. Code
of Military Justice. Our rallying cry became
"FREE THE CHICKENSHIT 20!"
and our bail was set at $50 apiece with a direct order w®
get out of D.C. within three hours or the minimum sentence
would be thirty days and most probably ninety, according to a
reproachful federal magistrate whose grim bespectacled face
resembled a Grant Wood portrait.
It took us eight hours to get out of jail and by then more
than 7,000 had been arrested for May Day "disruptions." It was
the largest mass arrest ever made in any American city in a
single day and the jails and courts broke down. People were
shoved into sports stadiums in the manner of South American
countries during public roundups, and fences were broken down
allowing many to escape The stadium was gassed several
times when the pnsoners got too unruly, and once the crowd
toppled a goalpost.
The next day more than 3,000 submitted to anrest at the
Justice Department. That day, thinking of ninety days, I was not
especially interested in being caught again and slipped out of
the trap just before the back door slammed shut. Cops chased
a friend and I down a block but w® lost them in a crowd I was
unable to get to the Capitol the following day. Cops were hard
on the prowi for everybody on the move. I got a face full of gas
but managed to evade arrest by ducking into a drugstore A
second try got more gas in my eyes so I settled for a glass of
red wine instead.
The immediate reaction to our raid on the Pentagon was
for the most part respectful, from both soldiers standing picket
line along D.C.'s streets and the freaks ducking in and out of
trouble. "You vets got your shit together," was the usual term of
approval. It was, of course, only a symbolic act carried out with
a good deal of relish and humor. I believe that almost everyone
who has spent time in the military, that old chickenshit outfit,
has wished to do what w® did. I thought throwing chickenshit
at the Pentagon was a fitting and unmistakable escalation of
throwing our war medals at Congress, a passionately robust
and irreverent declaration of independence from the bloody
brotherhood of war
The Vietnam War ended April 30, 1975 when the North
Vietnamese Army extinguished the army and government of
the South. Twenty years later, in 1995, Robert McNamara,
Pentagon chief (under two Presidents) most of the decade the
war was fought, admitted it was "terribly wrong" and that the
American public was consistently deceived to justify the deaths
and maiming of its young sons and daughters, not to mention
the million or more deaths of Southeast Asians, which includes
Laotians and Cambodians as well as Vietnamese
McNamara's mea culpa inspired me to write letters
to newspapers in almost every city or town I antiwarred in,
requesting "every cop and National Guardsman who clubbed,
maced or arrested me and every politician and 'patriot' who
called me a traitor and threatened my life because I protested
the w®r. to apologize." Of course, none repented
I was denied a job wth Census 2000 as a legacy of my
antiwor arrests, in particular by the federáis for the Chickenshit
20 episode thirty years ago. Dissent is not yet a crime in the
USA, but it is never forgotten nor forgiven.
The history of protest and dissent in this country is
largely neglected (except for the Revolution and the Civil War),
and there is a pervasive tendency in American society to rapidly
move on from anything past as if nothing will stick if only we
move hurriedly enough
Ironically, the state of New Hampshire is embroiled in a
controversy over a memorial to a dozen now deceased soldiers
of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought against Franco's
fascists dunng the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 The Lincoln
Bngade's veterans are fervently denounced as communists by
mainstream veterans groups that seem to overtook their defacto
defense of the Nazis and Mussolini's Italian Fascisti who aided
Franco's military coup against the 'Republican' government
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade is indeed on the U.S
subversive list, indicted as "prematurely anti-Fascist" My hope
is that Vietnam Veterans Against the War is added to the list
and that we might be defined as "prematurely anti-Vietnam
War"
There are a million histories in the USA. The story of the
Vietnam Veterans Against the War is one of them