Central America Pullout Urged

Many Harvard Square political demonstrations use pamphlets and hand-lettered posters as props. But yesterday Cambridge's protesters took to the air.

In an effort to urge the administration of President Bush to withdraw from Central America by Christmas, and to further other activist causes, Joseph Moynahan founded the local group "U.S. Citizens Revolt." At his demonstration yesterday, Moynahan attached $500 in one-dollar bills--each inscribed with "BO" for "Bush Out"--to helium balloons, which he then released over the Square.

Moynahan said he hopes the money will send a message to the politicians who find it; otherwise, he speculates, the balloons may hit the jet stream and waft down to Central America.

"If you work in government, jam it," Moynahan said in an anti-Bush administration statement he distributed. "If in the military, you may be in a position to spike the weapons systems. If you're in media or if you're an electronics whiz, you might break into a boring Bush speech with a jest, or loudly repeat BO-BO-BO, or insert a blinking image of a gunman shooting down a child. What an imaginative computer hacker might contrive boggles the mind."

Though many Harvard Square passersby showed brief interest in U.S. Citizens Revolt, the demonstration itself was joined by only a few auxiliary protesters. The small group that clustered around Moynahan's make-shift table, said protester Courtney Miller, was "a loose group of crazy artist-types" participating in "the soap opera of social unrest."

Moynahan said he expected help from politically minded Harvard students, but that the biting cold apparently deterred all but the most committed activists.

But some students questioned Moynahan's creative use of funds. "There are hundreds and hundreds of people who need the money right here in Cambridge," said Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student Nigel Gould-Davies. "They should find a way to distribute it here."

And Moynahan also met adversity in a small counter-protest, as a former member of his group attacked additional signs that used the term "Japs" to criticize rising Japanese investment in America.

At times, Moynahan's use of what he called an "abbreviation" for the Japanese proved more controversial than his calls for the U.S. to leave Central America, a position to which most of the passersby appeared sympathetic.

But despite their disparate stances, the spectators came around in the end, smiling as the first balloon shuttle and its expensive tail were launched with protester Miller's jubilant cry, "That's dollar diplomacy for you!"