And once again the war. And once again an army of desperate people take up arms against the governmental madness called Vietnam. With buttons and leaflets their only weapons, with candles and slogans their only defense, once again they march into the streets searching for some act or some symbol which would end the killing once and for all.
And once again the children with their posters and their paints, too young for sex and too old for the lies of the State Department. Once again the movie stars and the thin suburban matrons, the late-night mailings and the ads in the New York Times. And once again and always the dying and the dead, for the war goes on.
Out of the campuses and the suburbs, from Palo Alto to Washington D.C., the lost army of 1968 came together once again. Reports of its death on the streets of Chicago proved much too premature. Instead of dying, the army had merely melted away from Michigan Avenue, returning to their homes to wait for another signal to fight.
That signal was a long time coming. Last spring, Sam Brown and Dave Mixner, two ex-McCarthy workers started organizing or “putting things together.” At first their idea was to hold a series of one-day nationwide student strikes. Mixner and Brown located enough money to open an office and install some telephones. But their format ran into some unexpected opposition. Many student leaders around the country were leery of organizing college-centered protests. Short of murder, there was little the kids could do that hadn’t been done already to show how much they hated the war. Most of the leadership of the New Democratic Coalition, a shaky national alliance of Kennedy, McCarthy and even a few old Stevenson supporters rightly felt that closing the schools for a day was like swearing off work for Lent. It was neither impressive nor particularly effective. Finally, Allard Lowenstein, perennial college student cum congressional office and leader of the Dump Johnson Movement, opposed the Moratorium for his own murky reasons.
By the end of July, Brown and Mixner were sending young, and often inexperienced organizers to major American cities in order to scout out possible support. With colleges closed and everyone else either opposed to or bored by the idea, the leaders quickly decided to postpone the Moratorium from September to October, hoping that a month of scholastic tedium would be sufficient to prime the students for a one-day strike.
Shortly after Labor Day, however, the tide of public opinion started running against the war. A sudden, subtle change of attitude toward the war occurred in this country sometime in September. The people who fought to dump Johnson and later ignored Humphrey never forgot that the war was still going on. But many wanted to believe that Nixon was searching for a way to get us out quickly and most were frightened by what might happen if they opened old wounds of 1968. The slender threads that hold us together as a nation can no longer withstand too much strain, and whenever Americans assemble in large numbers we now think of riots and tanks in our streets. This much has Vietnam done to us, so the people were hesitant to take to the streets.
Then one day in late September Nixon drove the first nail into his own political coffin by saying, “I understand that there has been and continues to be opposition to the war in Vietnam.... However, under no circumstances will I be affected whatsoever by it.” If Johnson was a proud, profoundly determined man, Nixon is simply a dumb one. He gave the signal and suddenly the silent army wasn’t silent anymore. A student strike had become a national day of protest.
Nixon misjudged the mood of the country. He read the nation’s reluctance to demonstrate as approval of his cautious, indefinite policy of limited engagement. But instead of dissipating opposition to the war, Nixon’s strategy of minor troop withdrawals and drawn-out negotiations merely deepened most people’s desire for final termination of the conflict and to some extent legitimized the position of those calling for immediate and total withdrawal. By flaunting his intentions to ignore the wishes of those opposed to the war, he gave the Moratorium leaders an issue around which the broad middle ground of anti-Vietnam .sentiment could crystallize.
Two days after Nixon’s ill-fated press conference, the Moratorium office in Washington no longer had need for organizers. Politicians and peace groups started calling up offering to set up activities in cities like Detroit, Houston and Salt Lake City. The old Kennedy and McCarthy hands reached into drawers they had all but forgotten about and came up with lists of people just waiting to be told what needed to be done. In one major city, a businessman placed an ad in the local paper which gave his phone number and simply read, “Vietnam Moratorium—we need your help to end this war.” Twenty-four hours later, his lines were jammed and ten people were already at work full-time in his office. The scene was repeated all around the country. Three weeks before M-Day, little was planned in New York City outside of high school and college activities. Shortly after Nixon’s statement, Brown got hold of an ex-Lowenstein aide and together with Adam Walinsky, a former Kennedy staffer and Sarah Kovner, who ran the McCarthy operation in New York, they started calling up people they knew only to discover that half of them were already planning some kind of activity.
What was more astounding was the background of the people who were asking to participate. Congressmen, Senators, Mayors, Wall Street lawyers, investment bankers, the backbone of the establishment was now demanding the right to publicly protest the war. During the final week before M-Day, many of the Moratorium leaders seriously wondered whether or not the Administration would co-opt the protest by supporting it. When Thruston C. B. Morton, Chairman of the Republican National Committee announced his support, it momentarily looked as if Goliath were about to close ranks with David. Vice President Agnew’s red-baiting remarks were accepted by the Moratorium officials with a certain degree of relief.
At the same time, fear of possible violence, planned or unplanned, began to worry the leaders of the Moratorium. Having already staked the middle ground of the peace movement by refusing to clarify demands or issue harsh, stringent denunciations, M-Day officials sent out word that all types of confrontations were to be avoided like the plague, lest the effect of their numbers be diminished by adverse publicity. On the day itself, various groups were assigned the job of watching for any possible trouble that might mar the placid protests. Moratorium marshals were instructed to move through the crowds and look for people, especially SDS Weathermen, who might grab a mike or hoist a Cong flag. It was the first peace demonstration ever to supply its own “red squad.”
In the end, the organizers of the Moratorium privately expressed mixed reactions to the way the day worked out. It was successful beyond their wildest dreams. “Can you imagine?” said one. “We’re the majority,” Nonetheless the meaning and the manner of the day were not quite what they had expected. Too many who participated were once considered the enemy. The trouble with broadening your base of support is that you have to dilute the meaning for your message and make peace with yesterday’s villains. The importance of such esthetic considerations, however, are difficult to understand from a fox hole in Vietnam.
It is impossible to determine where the Moratorium effort will go from here. Brown and Mixner have already called for a two-day halt of “business as usual” on the 13th and 14th of November. It is tough to see how they can keep” up the momentum since their supporters are not expected to be quite willing to give up two days of work. Yet two months ago the idea of asking people to take off even one day was considered quixotic by most observers. For Nixon, waiting to see if the Moratorium will peter out is a little like playing Russian roulette. The odds are with him but if he loses, it could prove very deadly.
