Ann Arbor Moves Against The War

   "President Nixon may automate the battlefield, but the anti-war movement should prove that he has not turned our people into robots."

           --- Tom Hayden

   Back in April, after nearly a year of totally ignoring the North Vietnamese seven-point peace proposal, Nixon openly resumed heavy bombing of North Vietnam, including the beautiful city of Hanoi and one of the mainstays of the North Vietnamese people, the dykes that prevent their farmland from flooding, as well as attacking and blockading the harbor at Haiphong. The response in Ann Arbor varied from the usual marches and trashing the ROTC building, to traffic blocking on US 23 and traffic slow downs at the Detroit airport. None of these actions had the full support of the many anti-war groups and individuals in town. Finally, on May 19, the birthday of Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X, Ann Arbor viewed and participated in an anti-war demonstration that brought together almost all of Ann Arbor's anti-war groups and was designed to point out the specific responsibility of the University of Michigan for the Indochina war. Hundreds of people gathered on the diag and dug four bomb craters, one of which was to remain until the end of the war as a daily reminder of the terror the Vietnamese live with every day of their lives. Negotiations with President Fleming before the dig revealed that the University was extremely uptight about such exposure and the sites the University agreed we could dig on were out of the way and unacceptable to most people involved in the planning.

    The digging took place where the people decided it would: on the diag, with rock and roll music and films and speakers and went on literally all night with people camping out and burning bonfires in the craters to keep warm. Early Monday morning University workers filled in all the craters (even the one on the site they had agreed to, where the more conservative of the anti-war people agreed to dig, like Mayor Harris and the Interfaith Council for Peace). This filling in angered a lot of people who were sincerely trying to find a non-violent and yet really strong anti-war thing to do. Compared to the extensive responsibility of the University for the vicious automated war going on right now, digging a few bomb craters seemed like a small thing to do, especially in light of other demonstrations that had been suggested by some very angry people.

     As a result of this digging four people were picked out of the hundreds and charged with "malicious destruction of property." This is a predictable tactic used to scare people and pick off the so called leaders so that no further actions will take place. Hundreds of people signed a petition admitting to full responsibility and the police refused to arrest them even when we all went to the police station together. But the people heroically foiled such attempts at squashing us by planning another crater dig to point out the ridiculousness of the University's charges, to show again that we were not malicious at all, but masses of people in this community in that in fact the University s clearly the malicious criminal. We believe, as Pun pointed out in another issue of the Sun, "that America, the most powerful nation on earth, would turn its vast technological resources against a poor and backward country, that they would unleash science fiction nightmares on a peaceful rice eating people, that the national energy is channeled to push button death, points to the unholy alliance between the University and US Octopus Imperialism."

    This time we knew we would be arrested. In negotiations with police Chief Krasny and other city officials everyone agreed that it would be a non-violent demonstration and the police would arrest people only as they were digging. Our plan was for hundreds of people to get arrested together and stay in jail until they let us out with no bond so they wouldn't get away with charging just four people with an action hundreds took part in. We planned the day all over again with speakers and music and workshops that didn't happen at the first crater dig, and to make a long story short the police totally reneged on their agreement and showed up in force early that morning with riot sticks looking for trouble (it was June 17th - which we realized later was the anniversary of the police riot back in 1969 on South University), and as people linked arms to give people time to start digging the police started pushing the crowd, knocking people over and beating people with their sticks. At this point there was a short and heavy scuffle between the police and the people with the police ripping off all the shovels. People righteously stopped trying to dig so they wouldn't get beaten and around 38 people were taken off to jail.

    The ensuing court hassles over the summer have been a confusing mess. Half the people charged with one thing, half the charges dropped to another, and more charges dropped on a few people for "hindering and opposing," a disorderly conduct, a simple assault, and an assault and battery charge on one brother who was just traveling through and happened to be there. (Full reports with pictures are available in past issues of the Sun still at 1520 Hill Street). And more will be happening as we go to court again and again with about 10 different progressive lawyers working to whatever degree they can on straightening out the legal farce that has developed. We wanted to be peaceful, and they wouldn't let us. Instead they charged us with "malicious destruction of property."

   What's important still is that the war in Indochina continues and even escalates as a direct result of the type of research that goes on right here in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan. The Rainbow People's Party believes that a vote for McGovern is a vote to end the war in Indochina, but even when the war in Indochina is over we can be assured that war research at the U of M will continue unless the students, U of M workers, professors and community get it together to force an end to such research once and for all.

   We know there must be concrete question: people have about the extent of the automated war that's going on now and the extent of ts connection with the University. So we in the Rainbow People's Party are joining the Indochina Peace Campaign. People like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, Tony Russo, Daniel Ellsberg, and Ruthie Gordon are all involved in organizing a touring company which will present slide shows about the current situation in Vietnam, guerilla theater, lectures, workshops and printed material to communicate with people. They will be concentrating on the seven states key to the November election, and Michigan is one of them. Watch the Sun and the walls and windows on the streets for posters with information about when they'll be here and what will be happening. We think the students should decide with the community whether there should be symbolic bomb craters, whether there should be war research done with students' money and energy. Tom Hayden wrote recently:

    "WE often think of ourselves as less important than we are. But it is ordinary people who first raised the issue of the war, first caught our rulers in lies, first made it comfortable for politicians to take anti war stands, and ordinary people who finally have made it necessary for their elected officials to make the Vietnam war invisible to the American public. Twenty years ago U.S. officials could embark on the cold war with popular support; now they tread around Indochina in semi-secrecy.

     "It will be ordinary people who force the war to end. This is a time, whether they are peasants in Vietnam. or farmworker delegates in Miami Beach, when simple people, with a cause clear and just, are more than the Kissingers can comprehend, more than Pentagon equipment can defeat."

    In Ann Arbor we have a strong community that s getting stronger all the time. People, Let's Stop the War! 

           ---Genie Plamondon