EMK and Protest

JOHN F. KENNEDY and Robert F. Kennedy always commanded the admiration and respect of a great part of the youth of America.

Edward Moore Kennedy is now attempting to build such a following. He is attempting to conciliate the McCarthy forces, and form waves of young people into an irresistible tide that will sweep the ambitions of the thirty-six-year-old Senator up to the high mark on the sands of political ambition.

Who is this youthful office-holder? The assassinated President stated that he was the best politician in the family. And it is apparent to anyone who glances at the records accumulated in the marble corridors of the Senate that John was not wrong; the youngest brother is a profound and capable politician. He accommodates; he cajoles; he forces progress; he has the best assets of a great operative in the legislative art.

Edward Kennedy's performance proves his capability as a Senator: that is a record of the past. In January of 1968, Kennedy published a book about the future. In Decisions For A Decade, among other things, he set out a view of the confrontation politics of this year--a view he reiterated in an article on the draft in the November 17 New York Times Book Review: "I believe that widespread change is possible, peacefully, not only in selective service but in other institutions. I am equally convinced that brutal confrontations and violence will make this change more difficult. The need is, not to tear down the system, but to make use of its possibilities." The statement took aim at an issue that is the jugular vein to the nation's politics and the heart to the movement that activates concerned students. The nation decries violence and disruption while the students protest injustices and the failures of the system.

In his book, Kennedy describes last fall's Pentagon demonstration "a disturbing symbol of developing trends among our dissenting youth"; the trend veers toward divisive and disrupting dissent opposed to the ideals of democracy. "The threat posed by the tactic of disruption," warns Kennedy, "is more than a disturbance of the peace; it is a threat to the invaluable contribution that the disaffected youth have made to their counry." He emphasizes that the system will not tolerate citizens who actively seek to oppose the established order and are intent on breaking the law to oppose' that order. Thus Kennedy, recognizing that those who will oppose the system will always be in a minority, invokes the reasoning of majority power to persuade those who might bring their own demise. Yet Kennedy really fears that the politics of confrontation is a violent threat to society which may bring down the wrath of law and order not only upon those who invoke violence but also upon those who mean to use traditional non-violent dissent legitimate in democratic societies.

THESE legitimate and traditional means of dissent are important to the arguments throughout the book. And Kennedy defends both the aims and the results of the traditional dissent. He says in a parenthesis, "Indeed, those who confidently assert that direct political action breeds 'disrespect for the law' should look more closely at the facts. In Montgomery, Alabama, at the height of the civil rights demonstrations, the Negro crime rate declined almost to zero." In making this statement Kennedy puts forth a notion which pervades the book, but is never clarified. For he supports in the name of traditional dissent many forms of protest whose aim is to break the law and confront the established order. In citing the Alabama protests he recognizes the limited aims of particular acts of civil disobedience; he even defends their good results. Thus, by including the civil rights sit-ins in his examples of legitimate protest, Kennedy enlarges on his usually moderate view of political protest.

Students understand that they are not a majority, but many students see the system as controlled by a majority faction which will give the minority neither rights nor power. They see the figures of authority continually discredited by their acts and by their lack of action, by the police riot in Chicago, by their unwillingness to extricate themselves quickly from the war, by the attempt to reincarcerate Eldridge Cleaver, by the brutality of the police at the Columbia demonstrations, by the selection of a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President who was neither the choice of the people nor the winner of the primaries, by the credibility gap of the President, and finally by the correctness of the Black judgment of America that it is sick with Racism. Too much has happened and continues to happen which undermines the confidence one may have formerly had for the legitimate authorities in this nation. Circumstances have changed since John Kennedy regularly faced the nation at televised news conferences. The attitude toward the authorities by the young has taken a swift turn.

MOREOVER, along with this changed attitude toward authority, students have recognized the effectiveness of the violent protest as a means of political action. They understand the risks but they comprehend that they can actually force the system to change by physically confronting it. In the end students have finally been convinced by the results rather than by the methods.

The aim of the political protest movement has also undergone a change in this process. For whereas the early sixties might have had as an object the highlighting of certain political wrongs when they protested, the aim of dissent is now to force change upon the system.

Edward Kennedy is a politician. He is faced with a youthful faction within the constituency to which he is appealing which wants to change the system. Their form of protest is new and often times ellegitimate. It must be met with action by the authorities.

It can be met as it was in Chicago, or at Columbia. An elected official can choose to use the police, the forces of law, to enforce a regime of order.

But they can also recognize an alternative. One which deals with the intent of violent political protest. If youthful protestors break the law in pursuit of a political objective they do not have to be treated simply as criminals. Kennedy can see this for the civil rights protests; under the new circumstances of 1968, perhaps a wider view of protest is needed.

Kennedy has proved that he can work well within the limits of the system. But Lyndon Johnson was a respected politician within the system before he became President and succumbed to forces outside the system.

The unanswered question for the Senator from Massachusetts is whether he can continue to operate within the system while at the same time loosening the confines of that system to reconcile those who now demonstrate outside in violation of its laws and disruption of its order.