Sanctuary The True Revolutionary

"The true revolutionary is motivated by feelings of love" -Che Guevara.

ALMOST two weeks ago, Paul Couming took sanctuary in the Paulist Center in Boston. His brief rise and fall as an erstwhile Movement hero was noted on the news-page of the CRIMSON at that time. When Couming took sanctuary on Monday, February 8, he faced fifteen years in prison for three draft violations. He stayed at the Center for almost two full days. At quarter to seven Wednesday morning, three Federal marshals came and took Couming off to jail.

Harvard reaction to these stories was virtually nonexistent. Most people were, to put it simply, a bit bored. "Big deal." one person commented. "I remember a few years ago, lots of people were taking sanctuary. It was exciting then." One of my roommates greeted me the next day by saying, "The CRIMSON just called. The Berrigans have taken sanctuary in the Union and they want you to cover it."

A few people, though, were really taken with Paul's father, Tom Couming. He was pretty cool. A "70-year-old janitor from the Columbia Point housing project" who calls the trial of his son "part of the continuing harassment of dissenters against the war" has got potential-he could be the next Charlie McNeil. Especially if he were fired from his job, or something.

Paul spent the Wednesday morning of his arrest before Judge Wyzanski, hero of the Sisson conscientious objection case. The judge set Couming's bail at $10,000 and Paul was taken to Dedham prison. The CRIMSON on Thursday reported his father as saying. "Paul wants the money to be raised not for his own use, but for the Movement." Right On!

Last Tuesday, Couming's one-day trial-in which he defended himself-brought him a one-year suspended sentence and three years probation. As his father said, "It could have been a lot better, but it could have been a lot worse."

So that's your assigned story. That's it, one story, okay job, could have better beds, leads were okay, too bad we had to wait a day on the sentencing, but it didn't run on the front page, so no problems. The pigs got another one, but this time he wasn't some middle-class Jewish kid from New York but a real live Irish Catholic from Dorchester and Boston Tech. But sometimes it's not ?? easy. Even for a news board candidate (read "live body in the newsroom").

When you read this (or even more when you write it) a feeling of impotence easily overtakes you. Somewhere in between the who-what-when-where-and-how, Paul Couming is nowhere to be found. Well, why did he do it, why did he avoid trial anyway? "Because of the absurdity of a government which burns babies and does what it does in Indochina and has the gall to put resisters on trial." (Couming quoted in the CRIMSON, February 9, 1971). We all know what it means and it sounds pretty good, but what does it say about Couming? The CRIMSON only has so many inches, and you really can't expect much more than that when there are demonstrations and invasions to cover, can you? So you look in the Globe. look for his picture, maybe you can read his face. Pictures don't lie, right? Or you look at the Channel 5 News at 6 and 11 to hear what the kid has to say. . . .

HOW CAN you describe the feeling of stepping off Park Street into the Paulist Center and into a world in which people almost seem to care for one another? The girl at the desk asks who you are, and for some reason, you sheepishly tell her you're a reporter. When you tell her you're from the CRIMSON, she brightens a bit and tells you to wait. While you wait, people come out from the room where you assume "he" is, and hug each other. Not in the same way that the stoned-out kids from the Paramus LRY hug each other, but in quite another way. The girl returns. You follow her in and are seized by a feeling of quiet-arising not from the sanctuary but from the people in it. Sitting on the stage (what else can you call the little raised portion where the candles are?), and then coming toward you is a small, short-haired, extremely soft-spoken fellow.

You sit down center stage and your sheepishness increases. While you talk to that incredibly patient boy-man, you are interrupted by a minister from Tufts and an unidentified woman. You watch the lady, who looks like the head of the peace committee from the Unitarian church in Wellesley, beam approvingly at Couming, "We're so proud of you." You think you're going to throw up.

But that feeling passes, and while the three of them talk, you get a bit nervous because underneath your jeans and headband, you realize you're no different from that woman whom you regard with such moral condescension. It's not just being a newspaper reporter. You're an interloper and you know it. When you start to talk again, the words stick in your throat-because you feel you have no right being there. You throat loosens when he asks what's wrong and your talk goes on. With every question you feel more and more like a leach, more and more like a nag, a peeping tom, looking where you know you have no right to pry.

YOU tell him that he shames you. He takes it much more gracefully than you do. The photo man from the AP comes and wants to take pictures. He notices that behind the stage where the two of you are talking there is a poster saying "Shalom." "Hey, that Shalom, isn't that the Jewish word for peace? Why don't you two move up a step and I'll get you guys talking in a church with the Jewish word for peace in the picture. And could you move apart a bit, right that's good." Snap. This time your desire to vomit passes quicker and you want to kick the guy's camera right into his face. But then it sickeningly dawns on you that the only difference between you and him is that you're younger and know the tune to go along with the words.

By this time, the man from Channel 5 has arrived. He and the photo man get together and decide that they want Paul to stand on a pew in view of many of the antiwar posters that adorn the sanctuary. "Right, that's good. Hey, Paul, let's stick that fist up. Right, higher, higher, a bit higher, really high. Great, that's good." The lights from the television make Paul squint and suddenly the quietly eloquent pacifist whose faith in people is innocent but not naive is transformed into some kind of squinty, fist-raised freak.

This is the end, you say, no more. And you really do get scared when you realize that you too have played at that game. You want to write about how easy it is to lose people in this shuffle. How even you. bone-weary of the tired moralisms thrown around all over this place, are really touched and shamed by someone who acts on his beliefs without pretension. You want to take savage revenge on the people who so ???? ??? ??? imperatives. The ones who go to Harvard, who can always find some deferment, some lawyer who could handle their "radical" excesses.

Paul Couming had everything to lose. Long before it was popular, he was a conscientious objector. Long before it was cool, he, whose family scraped along on a janitor's salary, joined VISTA after getting out of Boston Tech. He had his C.O., and a nice cushy alternative service in Newton-Wellesley Hospital, but he felt he was needed at Boston City, so he transferred. He was safe-but he responded to calls for more anti-draft action by turning in his cards. Where were all those people who call for revolution? Perhaps Che really is right.

But even as you write this, you realize that you too have failed. You wanted to show what this "draft evader" was like as a person, and you didn't. Instead, you used him to make your point. That is the trap of this game. And, very sadly, you have fallen right into it.