Teach-In I Politics and the War

HOW MANY people would come? All week the Indochina Teach-In organizers had raised and dropped that question. There was no way of knowing. Since the Cambodia invasion last spring, no one had tried to stimulate the antiwar nerve on the campuses. Just last week. Time magazine had tossed its faded bouquet on the tomb of the campus movement. The campus had "cooled," Time reported. Students were no longer interested in politics: they were now engaged in "finding themselves." And while outside the universities pollsters were describing an apparent popular revulsion against the war, antiwar activists had no reason for optimism. When Lyndon Johnson was pulling the strings, and American soldiers were falling by the thousands, it was clear the war would end sooner or later. Americans would not send their sons to the slaughter indefinitely. But the Nixon nightmare of Vietnamization, which extracts the Americans and then incinerates the region, makes that confidence obsolete. This war can go on forever. Or until a nation and a culture are reduced to ash and rubble.

So the teach-in attendance figures, were a big question mark, and the organizers on the Teach-In Committee worried. They needn't have. For crowds of people crammed into Sanders Theatre Monday night, overflowing into other lecture halls. They came to see Eugene McCarthy, in silverpointed elegance. They came to hear Bella Abzug and TomWicker and Noam Chomsky and the rest of the star-studded cast. Vietnamization had pushed the spectre of death away from their side, and sophisticated news management, trickling pre-invasion news from Laos to avoid the Cambodia-style bang and squelching further reports to starve popular criticism, had threatened to dry up their source of anger. Yet they came, 2500 of them, and for some, that was justification enough for having a teach-in.

"Before the teach-in, we couldn't have known what support we had for doing other things." Martin Peretz, assistant professor of Social Studies, a teach- in organizer, and a key McCarthy backer in 1968, said in an interview. "Having a teach-in also shows that we are no longer willing to remain silent."

Yes, few were silent at the Monday teach-in. As soon as Bella Abzug, in a floppy orange hat, mounted the stage, the crowd began to clap. And the applause broke loose as McCarthy, hair gleaming, face grinning, strode to his seat. The applause quieted but the buzz remained; and the applause was always ready to burst free again. On the Queenfor-a Day popularity register, two sorts of remarks scored highest: the humorous and the radical. In her New York accent. Abzug-who twice raised a weak fist and pulled it down in hasty embarrassment-revealed that she "only went to Hunter College" and that her grandmother would be very proud to see her at Harvard. Her audience responded warmly, with laughter and cheers. Her shouted calls to action-organizing Congressional constituencies, marching to Washington, registering 18 year-olds to vote-drew applause also. But the jokes scored best.

Witty and intellectual as always, McCarthy dazzled and charmed the crowd with his jibes at Nixon, Humphrey, Johnson, and other villains. But the remark which drew the loudest ovation was the one clothed in bloody rhetoric: "It's too bad we don't have a substitute for the medieval practice. Then, if you had counselor who gave bad advice, the custom was to execute them. The practice now is to give them welcome sanctuary in the academic community."

And perhaps the most popular speaker was Tom Wicker, whose recent articles in the New York Times have suggested the need for radical change. "The American people have not just been duped into a disaster," Wicker said. "There is something deeply wrong in our country and it is not merely the war in Vietnam. The war is the sickest fruit, but it is not all." Cheers. And raising the Nazi comparison, Wicker said, "We are spreading the holocaust in Indochina. Twenty-five years ago, I went to Auschwitz. There will never be in Indochina a glass case of the eyeglasses of those who have been butchered. We are incinerating them without taking the booty." Wicker's plea for the redemption of the nation's soul drew loud applause; his request for patience and steady hard work received less acclaim.

THE POPULARITY of the humor and the radicalism was no accident: both were very entertaining. And the students who came to Sanders Theatre expected to be entertained. The teach-in was not the prelude to organized action; this was not a meeting to educate people so they could convert others. The teach-in excited people, but gave them no productive channels for their enthusiasm. The speakers shot their words into the void. The echo reverberated as applause.

But the void may be less than vacuum-tight. The press was at this teach-in; the press will be at all the teach-ins across the nation. So will most of the peace candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Lindsay, Muskie, Clark, McGovern, Bavh, Gardner, Hughes-and. of course, McCarthy. The New York Times account of the Harvard teach-in didn't mention the name of another speaker at the meeting; the entire article was devoted to McCarthy. Although typically coy, McCarthy made clear his desire to win the nomination. "This is not a rerun of what happened in 1968," the former candidate said: "It may have the appearance of a rerun, but the methods will be essentially different and the substance of the campaign-if there is one-will be different form what it was in 1968."

Privately, McCarthy says he is undecided. He would like the Democratic nomination; he might accept a fourth-party slot. His backers point to continuing support among fund-raisers and students. A recent Gallup poll reports that, after Lind say, McCarthy holds second-place in the political hearts of college students. He outdistances. Muskic, Kennedy and McGovern. However, the poll registers all opinions. Among politically active students, McCarthy is doubtless regarded with less esteem. And while most students admire McCarthy, they would not support him with the old fervor.

In the early part of 1968, there were no other peace candidates. Now, it seems, a new one creeps out every day. When asked privately, McCarthy said he thinks numerous contenders for the presidential nomination would not jeopardize the peace movement. He calls for a "depersonalization of candidates," But the multiplicity of candidates is another indication of the fragmentation of the peace movement; and the failure to come up with a strong and attractive personality may prove fatal. Me Carthy can do a great deal to win support for a peace candidate. But his 1968 campaign, which he refers to with dismal regularity, was a failure, and McCarthy himself was largely to blame. His running again would be another depressing example of egoistic interests clouding the cause of peace.

THE TEACH-IN demonstrated the further fragmentation of the peace movement. At planning meetings, the Teach-In Committee discussed the SDS Threat. SDS had asked for a speaker; its request was rejected. And then, the Committee members-largely Peace Action and Social Studies types-worried about a possible reaction. So, five days before the teach-in, a Committee member telephoned Bob Lavietas, past president of the Young Republicans, and asked if he could help provide marshals. And that's how 15 Young Republicans, along with several huge Mather and Eliot students recruited the night before, wound up as the anti-SDS patrol at the antiwar teach-in.

The anti-SDS brigade concentrated its forces near the front of Sanders, ready to lock arms to stop SDS from rushing the platform. But SDS never tried. Instead, they sat behind slogan-painted banners and shouted "Profits" and "American capitalism" and similar consciousness raisers at every available opportunity. When they started chanting "Let SDS speak," Michael Walzer, the moderator, appealed to the audience and easily discredited the disrupters. The crowd was hardly pro-SDS. Similarly, towards the end of the evening, Walzer was able to defuse a questioner who tried to bring up the question of support to Israel. With a strong pro-Israel record, Walzer had the moral authority to say that the question was irrelevant that night. But when a Puerto Rican representative read a 10-minute statement discussing liberation efforts on his island, Walzer had no way to stop him. For a while he stood silent as the Puerto Rican talked. his statement and the man said no, Walzer looked up at the crowd. "Let him speak" was the shout of the 150 people remaining in Sanders Theatre. And with a slight shrug of his shoulders, Walzer sat down. Partisans of Israel and SDS he could talk down. Against blacks and-Latin Americans he was helpless.

The choice of speakers was the major terrain for radical-liberal struggles. Visiting a February 18 Teach-In Committee meeting, after seven speakers had been chosen at previous sessions, Mark Ptashne, Lecturer in Biomhecistry and radical war critic, asked that Noam Chomsky be invited to speak. Most students supported the suggestion: one dissenter thought Chomsky's "ideological position would turn a lot of people off." The students voted to invite Chomsky before the two Faculty members of the group-Peretz and James Thomson, assistant professor of History-arrived at the meeting. Both were lukewarm but willing to invite Chomsky; however, trading one radical for one Republican, they pressed the group to also invite Rep. Donald Riegle (R.Mich.). So Riegle spoke-on the numbers of Americans dying and the amounts of American money being spent-and Chomsky talked (last)-on the implications of the off-shore oil discovery and the effects of Vietnamization. And so the pH of the solution in which McCarthy was immersed remained pretty much the same.

THE TEACH-IN trickled on with questions at the end; students dribbled out steadily. At a Yale teach-in that night, and at other teach-ins across the country on other nights, the events would be duplicated. Students would be excited, but they would be given nothing to do. Yes, President Nixon would see that the campuses were not silent; but the sounds of empty words at teach-ins frighten him no more than do the thud and tinkle of shattered shopfront windows. Action alone impresses him-Eactionalized and paranoid, the Left has been unable to coordinate meaningful action. Marches and teach-ins and trashing readily attract participants; but they are not very meaningful. Only political organizing, performed diligently and persistently by an army of college students working in local communities, supported by a barrage of information dispensed through local media, can break through the glossy shell of Vietnamization and let the muck ooze out. The job is difficult; the absence of an outstanding political candidate increases its difficulty. But glamorous teach-ins cannot end American aggression in Indochina. Hard work can.