In Unity Is Strength

Ir WAS COLD Friday morning, and still pitch black as about 120 students sat waiting and shivering on the steps of University Hall. Two or three out-of-tune guitar players strummed out Woodie Guthrie songs, while several even more out-of-tune voices harmonized them as best they could. Cups of hot chocolate appeared out of somewhere, and people sipped at them, huddled together in the dark and feeling proud, even exuberant over what they had achieved the night before--and for what they would accomplish the following day.

The night before they marched against Harvard's role in apartheid, 3500 of them, across the Harvard campus. In the morning, they planned, they would stage a sit-out around University Hall, shutting the College's central administrative building down for a day.

Then a member of the Asian-American Association (AAA) came along, reading a statement to the vigilers that transformed their enthusiasm into sickly panic, leaving them with grave doubts for the following day. After a brief meeting, he said, leaders of the AAA and the Black Students Association (BSA) had decided not to support the sit-out. These two United Front organizations had not been given enough input into the sit-out plan, he said, adding that many in the organizations did not clearly understand the objectives of a sit-out. Furthermore, minority students would be more vulnerable to discipline after a protest of this sort, he said. The AAA spokesman advocated instead a series of "educational programs," to inform people of broader, related issues such as racism in America, as well as to provide them with information concerning South Africa.

At first, the vigilers seemed only dumbstruck, but anger was quick to follow. When the AAA member left, it was unclear whether the BSA and AAA would publicly denounce the sit-out, or merely withhold their support. (As it turned out the next day, various leaders of these groups participated in the sit-out activities.) The sky was getting lighter by this time, and the coming day was clearly The Enemy, a foot-tapping, non-verbal "Hurry up please, it's time." The approximately 120 people who remained had no idea what to expect: perhaps they would have to cancel the sit-out and slink home to bed, or else maybe they would stay and forge something for the coming day and the future.

But before 7 a.m., when Archie C. Epps III, dean of students, strolled up to University Hall with something like business as usual in mind, a key transformation occurred: a group of 120 people, many of them strangers to one another, managed to pull together and organize the sit-out, in the face of fear and exhaustion and a gnawing feeling of "Why the hell should this work, anyway?" They were not representatives of the SASC, nor of the Democratic Socialists, nor the BSA, nor even the United Front. They were individuals.

They all considered the Corporation's decision on divestiture an unacceptable policy, and they all cared enough to do something about it, despite their lack of formal leadership. By the start of the working day, the four flights of stairs to U-Hall were entirely filled with protesters. Another 250 people picketed the building, forming a human wall around it.

THE NIGHT BEFORE, when the three-or four-mile march had turned into a rally around the John Harvard side of U-Hall, the crowd clapped and chanted, filled with energy and confidence. They were proud: Not only had they helped create the largest demonstration at Harvard since 1972, but they had done so in the middle of the night, in spite of cold weather and a seemingly unmovable Corporation.

If they had surprised themselves, they had more than startled the administration.

Yet it was at this crucial point that the United Front leadership faltered. To sustain the incredible momentum from three hours of marching and chanting the demonstrators needed confidence and a means of channeling that energy. In hesitating, the leadership committed an error--but one that ultimately proved instructive.

Before the march, its organizers had predicted a turn-out between several hundred and 1000 protesters. No one had been prepared to handle a crowd of the size that ultimately assembled in the Yard at about midnight. Equally important, many of the United Front leaders had seemed to hang back, debating over who might take the responsibility of announcing a sit-out. The best solution, some decided, would be for the demonstrators "spontaneously" to stage a sit-out on their own, without any single leader putting his or her neck on the line by urging the crowd to participate.

The fear the United Front leadership felt that night was understandable. The leaders had no way of knowing whether they were marshaling 3000 committed anti-apartheid protesters, or just a large group of college kids out for a good time. And not knowing, they ran the risk of leading an impassioned group of, say, 13 students in an assault on U-Hall reminiscent of Custer's last stand, while everyone else held back and watched. But, though they did not know it, the leaders had received a mandate from the core of protesters who remained throughout the night, and those who helped blockade U-Hall throughout the following day: If they would lead the struggle against Harvard's role in apartheid, they would be followed with commitment. Perhaps also with fear--there exists a certain amount of fear in almost every demonstrator, not so much of consequences, but of appearing ridiculous--but they would still be followed.

A crowd of 3500 marchers, or even a crowd of 400 sit-outers, does not look ridiculous--it looks formidable, in fact. The fear of ridicule may be a legitimate concern, but if a group's leadership too readily reflects it, that fear easily destroys a movement. This was the United Front's problem--although some members of the group were willing to risk leading the crowd in the sit-out, many were not. Yet it is absurd to expect a crowd to do what its leaders are clearly afraid to.

On Friday morning, we learned that enough people are fundamentally united againt apartheid to carry on with only impromptu leaders, and still succeed. And that knowledge should inspire everyone connected with the anti-apartheid movement with confidence and optimism.

THE MOVEMENT that fostered last week's protests is simple only with respect to the horrendous way in which the minority leadership in South Africa treats the non-whites. In both subtle and direct ways, the struggle against America's role in apartheid involves a broad range of important issues, from racism in America, to the future of capitalism. But these related issues are clearly not what united the marchers on Thursday night, or the U-Hall protesters Friday. Many of these participants still refuse to address the broad economic question South Africa raises; others, even now, fail to recognize the connection between American corporate racism abroad and racism in America.

For someone who makes these connections, this myopia is frustrating. Nevertheless, the anti apartheid movement at Harvard will dry up and die if some of its members act on that frustration by seeking to place extensive emphasis on related issues. The movement will then only go the way of virtually all broad-based movements of the past, if it allows political and ideological infighting to distract them from the one fundamental point that unites all its members--getting Harvard, and U.S. dollars, out of South Africa.