Throughout the week of turmoil, WKCR radio broadcast news of the revolt constantly—on-campus and off-campus. The Establishment’s mass media also had correctly focused-in on Mark as the revolt’s white radical spark plug and he was doing a great job speaking in front of the TV cameras. But on the second or third day of the revolt, Mark temporarily resigned as Columbia SDS chairman.
The reason why Mark resigned was because of what happened at an emergency Columbia SDS steering committee meeting in Ferris Booth Hall. Ted, Peter Schneider, Dave and other old Praxis-Axis people—while excited by the depth of politicization on campus—were against Columbia SDS people occupying as many more campus buildings, in support of the Black students, as they could. Instead, Ted, Schneider, Dave, Nick and other Praxis-Axis people proposed that Columbia SDS—in the middle of the developing revolt—start knocking on dormitory doors, do dorm canvassing, hand-out informational leaflets and hold more dorm lobby meetings to explain the New Left politics behind the student strike that Columbia SDS was calling.
Mark, however, argued that Columbia SDS people seizing more buildings would do more to both win the demands of the revolt and encourage Columbia and Barnard students to strike, than any more dorm canvassing would do. Mark argued that, given the occupation of Hamilton and Low and the constant threat of a police bust, now was not the time for “business-as-usual” radical educational work. And that it was totally ridiculous not to focus on engaging in more militant action, since “militant action, not dorm canvassing, is what has gotten us so far during the past few weeks.”
Mark, as usual, turned out to be correct. But the Praxis-Axis people had argued that more building seizures by Columbia SDS would decrease support for a student strike and leave no New Left cadre outside of buildings to do the necessary radical educational work to both pull-off a successful strike and create more revolutionary consciousness among our mass base. And their arguments had sounded more plausible than Mark’s at this time. So, by about a 70 to 3 vote, Mark’s proposal to take more buildings was voted down. Only JJ and one other Columbia SDS person voted with Mark. I, myself, mistakenly fell for the Praxis-Axis argument that it wasn’t necessary for Columbia SDS to hold more than one building in order to maximize its political impact and bargaining power. After the vote went against him, Mark said with disgust: “I resign as chairman of this fuckin’ organization.” Then he stalked out.
Ted, Dave, Nick and the rest of us all shrugged. Then people went ahead with the process of planning for the writing, printing and distribution of more strike leaflets, and the planning of a mass meeting of strikers and an intensified dorm canvassing drive. I can recall feeling quite confused. The Praxis Axis seemed to make more sense at this time. But there also seemed some validity in Mark’s argument. And it seemed foolish for him to resign the Columbia SDS chairmanship, just because a vote went against him once, since he had been doing such a great job.
As it turned out, however, events moved so rapidly that Mark quickly agreed to reassume his Columbia SDS chairmanship post and continue being the white spokesperson for the media. The mass of Columbia SDS people and supportive students turned out to be much more interested in seizing more buildings, than in doing more dorm canvassing.
Although Columbia’s graduate students were generally more politically and personally conservative—and less personally desperate and angry—than its undergraduates, the effect of the mass media publicity was to cause the left-liberal “trendy” graduate students to occupy Fayerweather Hall. Around the same time, white left-liberal School of Architecture students occupied Avery Hall. The revolt seemed to be expanding.
With so many buildings occupied, there was no longer any need for the African-American students to hold Dean Coleman hostage as a bargaining chip, and he was allowed to just leave his office in Hamilton Hall. Everybody in Columbia SDS steering committee circles—even Praxis Axis people—realized that, finally, the mass of New Left students on campus had moved beyond the need for more dorm canvassing. We had collectively not been audacious enough during the first two days of the revolt and had, initially, underestimated the speed of campus radicalization produced by the firm stand of the Black students in Hamilton Hall and the subsequent mass media publicity generated by that stand and by our willingness to open up a second front in Low Library. Plans were made by SDS people to “liberate” another building, Mathematics Hall.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Chapter 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968 (vii)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (103)
Meetings were being held all around the campus. Non-student leftists from Manhattan and around the country were getting eager to jump into the scene and join the fight against the Columbia Administration.
Hundreds of previously apolitical and politically apathetic Columbia and Barnard students, as a result of the mass media attention and the disruption of classes, were now willing to come to Columbia SDS mass meetings and forget about their academic work or their personal-relationship problems for awhile.
Columbia SDS people rejoined “Tony and his 20 disciples” in Low on the night of April 24th. I spent one night inside Low Library, after running in-and-out of other buildings and around campus, helping to do all the political tasks that large numbers of people were sharing.
Inside Low Library, much of people’s energy went to arranging for food to be brought in-and-out, discussing political strategy in endless meetings and just sitting, talking and napping. There was a lot of time just spent waiting, but you also became personally closer to the people you sat-in with and new friendships were formed easily.
One of the top administrators at Columbia—a guy named Fraenkel—spoke with Mark, Lew and a few other Columbia SDS people in the rotunda of Low Library and tried to scare us into surrendering. After Mark raised some objections to his negotiating proposal, Fraenkel said in an angry tone: “Look, Mr. Rudd! You’re through at this University! There’s no way you’re ever going to be let back into Columbia! So why are you trying to prevent the other students from being reasonable?”
Lew and Mark both snickered and started to smirk after Fraenkel’s outburst. And Fraenkel left Low Library a few moments later.
By the night of April 24, 1968, some “Motherfucker” anarchist people from the Lower East Side were among the people sitting in Kirk’s office and they were helping to harden the spirit of resistance there. They also had good concrete suggestions as to how Kirk’s office could best be barricaded.
Seeing the non-student Lower East Side hippie “Motherfuckers” (who were mostly in their mid-to-late 20s) mingling with the slightly younger Columbia and Barnard students, made me feel more certain that the Columbia Administration would have more difficulty getting the anti-racist whites to leave Low by a few verbal promises. The white non-students had joined us inside Low Library because they wanted to strike a blow against a U.S. ruling-class corporate establishment that they hated vehemently. Unlike the more privileged white Columbia and white Barnard students (many of whom had never had to work 9-to-5 in corporate offices for more than a summer), the white hip non-student radicals from the Lower East Side felt that off-campus America was a death culture and that work-life after college in the plastic 9-to-5 world represented slavery and psychological death for white leftists. Hence, they were ready to trash Low Library if Columbia SDS people had chosen to give them our tacit approval. But this we did not do.
Between the night of April 24th and the police invasion of April 30th, what happened exactly remains a blur in my mind, for the most part, with the exception of a few significant events and scenes.
I can recall contributing to an endless tactical debate on the evening of April 24th in Kirk’s office, by saying the following: “Our collective power is that as long as we stay here, the only way Kirk can get us out is by creating an embarrassing scene of police dragging us out. Just like the cops had to drag students out of Sproul Hall in Berkeley in 1964. We have to stay here and show Kirk that if he doesn’t give into our demands, there’s going to be an embarrassing scene at Columbia.”
After the first day of the revolt, the Black student leaders in Hamilton acted autonomously and there developed an uncertainty among some Columbia SDS people about whether they would end their occupation once gym construction was stopped and amnesty was granted to all Black students, but before Columbia’s IDA ties were severed. As it turned out, although the Columbia Administration quickly agreed to stop construction of the Jim Crow gym, it was never willing (or legally able) to offer amnesty just to the African-American students alone. So there was never any incentive for the African-American students in Hamilton Hall to drop the anti-IDA demand and make a separate peace.
Hundreds of previously apolitical and politically apathetic Columbia and Barnard students, as a result of the mass media attention and the disruption of classes, were now willing to come to Columbia SDS mass meetings and forget about their academic work or their personal-relationship problems for awhile.
Columbia SDS people rejoined “Tony and his 20 disciples” in Low on the night of April 24th. I spent one night inside Low Library, after running in-and-out of other buildings and around campus, helping to do all the political tasks that large numbers of people were sharing.
Inside Low Library, much of people’s energy went to arranging for food to be brought in-and-out, discussing political strategy in endless meetings and just sitting, talking and napping. There was a lot of time just spent waiting, but you also became personally closer to the people you sat-in with and new friendships were formed easily.
One of the top administrators at Columbia—a guy named Fraenkel—spoke with Mark, Lew and a few other Columbia SDS people in the rotunda of Low Library and tried to scare us into surrendering. After Mark raised some objections to his negotiating proposal, Fraenkel said in an angry tone: “Look, Mr. Rudd! You’re through at this University! There’s no way you’re ever going to be let back into Columbia! So why are you trying to prevent the other students from being reasonable?”
Lew and Mark both snickered and started to smirk after Fraenkel’s outburst. And Fraenkel left Low Library a few moments later.
By the night of April 24, 1968, some “Motherfucker” anarchist people from the Lower East Side were among the people sitting in Kirk’s office and they were helping to harden the spirit of resistance there. They also had good concrete suggestions as to how Kirk’s office could best be barricaded.
Seeing the non-student Lower East Side hippie “Motherfuckers” (who were mostly in their mid-to-late 20s) mingling with the slightly younger Columbia and Barnard students, made me feel more certain that the Columbia Administration would have more difficulty getting the anti-racist whites to leave Low by a few verbal promises. The white non-students had joined us inside Low Library because they wanted to strike a blow against a U.S. ruling-class corporate establishment that they hated vehemently. Unlike the more privileged white Columbia and white Barnard students (many of whom had never had to work 9-to-5 in corporate offices for more than a summer), the white hip non-student radicals from the Lower East Side felt that off-campus America was a death culture and that work-life after college in the plastic 9-to-5 world represented slavery and psychological death for white leftists. Hence, they were ready to trash Low Library if Columbia SDS people had chosen to give them our tacit approval. But this we did not do.
Between the night of April 24th and the police invasion of April 30th, what happened exactly remains a blur in my mind, for the most part, with the exception of a few significant events and scenes.
I can recall contributing to an endless tactical debate on the evening of April 24th in Kirk’s office, by saying the following: “Our collective power is that as long as we stay here, the only way Kirk can get us out is by creating an embarrassing scene of police dragging us out. Just like the cops had to drag students out of Sproul Hall in Berkeley in 1964. We have to stay here and show Kirk that if he doesn’t give into our demands, there’s going to be an embarrassing scene at Columbia.”
After the first day of the revolt, the Black student leaders in Hamilton acted autonomously and there developed an uncertainty among some Columbia SDS people about whether they would end their occupation once gym construction was stopped and amnesty was granted to all Black students, but before Columbia’s IDA ties were severed. As it turned out, although the Columbia Administration quickly agreed to stop construction of the Jim Crow gym, it was never willing (or legally able) to offer amnesty just to the African-American students alone. So there was never any incentive for the African-American students in Hamilton Hall to drop the anti-IDA demand and make a separate peace.
Chapter 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968 (vi)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (102)
As the early morning hours passed, news that the cops were arriving on campus reached us inside Kirk’s office and people had to decide whether to stay seated in the office and submit to arrest, or whether to leave Low Library before the cops came. Most of the white students in Low Library on the morning of April 24th felt like I did: Why get arrested in Low Library, when we could be more productive in organizing students on campus to support the Black take-over of Hamilton Hall if we were out of jail? About 20 students, however, led by PL and Columbia SDS Labor Committee leader Tony, chose not to flee when news came of the cops’ arrival on campus. When the NYC cops started knocking on the door to Kirk’s office, Mark, myself and everybody else—except the 20 students that Tony had won over—began to exit through the open windows of Kirk’s office. From the ledge outside his windows, most of us jumped down or lowered ourselves to the grass, and headed back to our dorm rooms or off-campus apartments to get some sleep.
Surprisingly, the cops who entered Kirk’s office were not ordered to arrest the remaining 20 students who continued sitting there. All the cops did was remove a valuable painting from Kirk’s office. In retrospect, Tony and the students who remained in Low on the morning of April 24th, despite the arrival of the cops, had made the correct move in calling Kirk’s bluff of a quick police bust. Were it not for their refusal to leave on the morning of April 24th from Kirk’s office, Columbia SDS people would not have been able to re-join them en masse in Kirk’s office by the evening of April 24th, when it became evident that no separate bust of the white radicals was going to quickly take place.
After leaving Low Library and heading back to my Furnald Hall dorm room, I collapsed on my bed for a few hours. When I awoke and bought a copy of the New York Times and read through Spectator, I realized that Columbia SDS had finally made a political impact historically and that Mark, like Savio, was going to be a New Left mass media object and celebrity. I hurried over to Hamilton Hall to see how the Black student occupation was going.
A hard rain was falling on the campus. Campus life was obviously disrupted by the student revolt and there seemed to be much confusion. Large numbers of disgruntled right-wing students were gathered in the courtyard in front of Hamilton Hall, angry over their inability to attend class. Desks and chairs and wastepaper baskets were shoved against the front doors of Hamilton Hall from the inside, to form a barricade. The African-American students controlled who could and could not enter the building. Columbia SDS people took turns throughout the day standing in front of Hamilton Hall in the rain with a bullhorn, acting as a kind of white shield for the Black students inside Hamilton, although the African-American students really didn’t need white radicals as a shield as long as they maintained their community contacts. The Harlem community—not the white New Left—was the real external shield of the Black students in Hamilton.
On the 2nd floor of Hamilton, one or two male African-American students coolly looked down and out over the crowds outside the building from an outside balcony, but did not attempt to speak to the half-supportive, half-hostile crowd. In front of the building, Sokolow spoke at length through the bullhorn for the first time, trying to develop more white support for the revolt. His speech was clever. Like Stu, he blossomed as an orator during the revolt, although he never became as skillful or entertaining as Mark.
“As far as the IDA research goes. It’s not dirty because it’s secret. But it’s secret because it’s dirty. And it’s dirty because it helps the Pentagon murder millions of Vietnamese,” Sokolow said.
Sokolow was a very short, mustached guy who wore wire-framed glasses. The son of an Upper East Side corporate lawyer who did legal work for his law firm's CBS client (and who was a Robert Kennedy liberal-type Democrat), Sokolow had gone to prep school in Manhattan and tended to dress more often in a sport jacket and shirt and tie than in jeans (although Sokolow, in later years, no longer recalled himself wearing a sport jacket on campus as frequently as did I). But he was very intellectual. A sophomore in April 1968, he was an English major who had become quite radicalized during his first two years at Columbia. Although his father was wealthy and Sokolow sometimes took cabs instead of the subway to get around Manhattan, he worked part-time in the Butler Library as a sophomore, making sure that all books that left the Burgess-Carpenter library had been checked out.
During the 1967-68 academic year, I had become friendly with Sokolow because he was very enthusiastic about his commitment to New Left radicalism, very intellectual and extremely hard-working. He became a hard-core Columbia SDS activist who chose to spend his time doing Movement work (no matter how menial) on campus rather than spend it pumping out term papers or being into academic careerism. Sometimes, his enthusiasm hurt his organizing because, when talking with liberals, he would hammer away verbally at them in such a heavy way over an intellectual point of contention that, while winning the argument, he turned them off to the New Left by his vibes and his intellectually domineering approach. I thought Sokolow’s best quality was the moral outrage he felt at the System and at Columbia.
During the day of rain after Hamilton was first seized, Columbia SDS also handed out leaflets around campus explaining why the Columbia revolt was justified and calling for a mass meeting in Wollman Auditorium. Columbia’s campus was now completely politicized and polarized, and Establishment mass media cameras were everywhere.
Instead of seriously negotiating with the African-American students in Hamilton and immediately agreeing to the fairly moderate 6 demands, Kirk and Truman and the Columbia trustees refused to end the revolt quickly, by negotiation. As a result of this delay, more and more students began to polarize on campus in support of the New Left, more Harlem residents began to polarize in opposition to Columbia and more mass media attention began to focus on Columbia’s anti-democratic institutional policies.
Surprisingly, the cops who entered Kirk’s office were not ordered to arrest the remaining 20 students who continued sitting there. All the cops did was remove a valuable painting from Kirk’s office. In retrospect, Tony and the students who remained in Low on the morning of April 24th, despite the arrival of the cops, had made the correct move in calling Kirk’s bluff of a quick police bust. Were it not for their refusal to leave on the morning of April 24th from Kirk’s office, Columbia SDS people would not have been able to re-join them en masse in Kirk’s office by the evening of April 24th, when it became evident that no separate bust of the white radicals was going to quickly take place.
After leaving Low Library and heading back to my Furnald Hall dorm room, I collapsed on my bed for a few hours. When I awoke and bought a copy of the New York Times and read through Spectator, I realized that Columbia SDS had finally made a political impact historically and that Mark, like Savio, was going to be a New Left mass media object and celebrity. I hurried over to Hamilton Hall to see how the Black student occupation was going.
A hard rain was falling on the campus. Campus life was obviously disrupted by the student revolt and there seemed to be much confusion. Large numbers of disgruntled right-wing students were gathered in the courtyard in front of Hamilton Hall, angry over their inability to attend class. Desks and chairs and wastepaper baskets were shoved against the front doors of Hamilton Hall from the inside, to form a barricade. The African-American students controlled who could and could not enter the building. Columbia SDS people took turns throughout the day standing in front of Hamilton Hall in the rain with a bullhorn, acting as a kind of white shield for the Black students inside Hamilton, although the African-American students really didn’t need white radicals as a shield as long as they maintained their community contacts. The Harlem community—not the white New Left—was the real external shield of the Black students in Hamilton.
On the 2nd floor of Hamilton, one or two male African-American students coolly looked down and out over the crowds outside the building from an outside balcony, but did not attempt to speak to the half-supportive, half-hostile crowd. In front of the building, Sokolow spoke at length through the bullhorn for the first time, trying to develop more white support for the revolt. His speech was clever. Like Stu, he blossomed as an orator during the revolt, although he never became as skillful or entertaining as Mark.
“As far as the IDA research goes. It’s not dirty because it’s secret. But it’s secret because it’s dirty. And it’s dirty because it helps the Pentagon murder millions of Vietnamese,” Sokolow said.
Sokolow was a very short, mustached guy who wore wire-framed glasses. The son of an Upper East Side corporate lawyer who did legal work for his law firm's CBS client (and who was a Robert Kennedy liberal-type Democrat), Sokolow had gone to prep school in Manhattan and tended to dress more often in a sport jacket and shirt and tie than in jeans (although Sokolow, in later years, no longer recalled himself wearing a sport jacket on campus as frequently as did I). But he was very intellectual. A sophomore in April 1968, he was an English major who had become quite radicalized during his first two years at Columbia. Although his father was wealthy and Sokolow sometimes took cabs instead of the subway to get around Manhattan, he worked part-time in the Butler Library as a sophomore, making sure that all books that left the Burgess-Carpenter library had been checked out.
During the 1967-68 academic year, I had become friendly with Sokolow because he was very enthusiastic about his commitment to New Left radicalism, very intellectual and extremely hard-working. He became a hard-core Columbia SDS activist who chose to spend his time doing Movement work (no matter how menial) on campus rather than spend it pumping out term papers or being into academic careerism. Sometimes, his enthusiasm hurt his organizing because, when talking with liberals, he would hammer away verbally at them in such a heavy way over an intellectual point of contention that, while winning the argument, he turned them off to the New Left by his vibes and his intellectually domineering approach. I thought Sokolow’s best quality was the moral outrage he felt at the System and at Columbia.
During the day of rain after Hamilton was first seized, Columbia SDS also handed out leaflets around campus explaining why the Columbia revolt was justified and calling for a mass meeting in Wollman Auditorium. Columbia’s campus was now completely politicized and polarized, and Establishment mass media cameras were everywhere.
Instead of seriously negotiating with the African-American students in Hamilton and immediately agreeing to the fairly moderate 6 demands, Kirk and Truman and the Columbia trustees refused to end the revolt quickly, by negotiation. As a result of this delay, more and more students began to polarize on campus in support of the New Left, more Harlem residents began to polarize in opposition to Columbia and more mass media attention began to focus on Columbia’s anti-democratic institutional policies.
Chapter 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968 (v)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (101)
There was some concern among some of the white students inside Hamilton Hall about a possible “threat to Dean Coleman’s life” if the Black students were left alone inside Hamilton Hall. This concern stemmed from a combination of white racist paranoia and rumor-mongering. During the evening of April 23rd, some non-student Harlem young men had joined the Black students in Hamilton and rumors were being spread that Black non-students—not Student Afro-American Society people—now controlled the demonstration. Another rumor being circulated was that Black non-students had brought guns into the building in preparation for self-defense in response to a police bust. Despite these rumors, I saw no indication that there were ever any guns brought inside Hamilton or that Student Afro-American Society people ever relinquished control of their sit-in/occupation.
After Mark’s surprise announcement, all the white students quickly ran to whichever part of the building they had dumped their sleeping bags, blankets or guitars at and gathered en masse down in the lobby. Many white students were tense and emotionally freaked-out. A few white students were crying, but the more politically and emotionally mature African-American students looked cool and determined, as Columbia SDS people led our demoralized band of 300 to 400 white anti-racist students out of Hamilton Hall and up to Low Library, in the early dawn hours.
About a third of the white left demonstrators immediately returned to their dormitory rooms or off-campus apartments to get some sleep, after being told to leave Hamilton Hall. The rest of us quietly walked across Low Plaza and towards the right entrance of Low Library, in order to occupy Low Library. When the first SDS people got to the glass door and tried to enter, they found the door was locked. Frustrated, some of the SDS people then picked up a wooden bench and—using it as a battering ram—slammed it into the glass door, in order to get inside Low Library. After the glass broke, I heard some gasping among the white students behind me on the plaza. About one-third of the white students who had been expecting to occupy Low Library with SDS turned around, and went back to their dormitory rooms and off-campus apartments, as soon as they heard the glass break.
I shook my head with disgust and thought to myself: “They’re only into fighting institutional racism when property doesn’t get damaged. Typical white liberals.” Then I went into Low Library and waited in the rotunda, until about 100 of us were all gathered together, and Mark began to speak to us:
“The reason why we had to leave Hamilton is that the Black students felt that we weren’t solid enough. They’ve chosen to make their stand in Hamilton Hall. And they’re ready to die.
“I’m not ready to die yet. But I think we can continue to support the Black students by holding this building.
“For many of us, our academic careers at Columbia are over. But before the police are called in, we have to decide what we’re going to do.”
There was some concern expressed about the possible fate of Dean Coleman. And even Robby, who would later become very hard-line politically, felt that Dean Coleman might get killed if cops were sent into Hamilton. After a few minutes of discussion, a consensus emerged that sitting down in the rotunda was tactically stupid, because the space around us was so large that when the cops came to arrest us they would be able to clear us out in no time, by just forming a circle around us. We therefore decided to take over Columbia President Kirk’s office. His door was closed and locked, but somebody figured out a way to get in. Then the 100 of us went inside the office.
It was the first time any of us had been inside the office of an Ivy League university president and it felt good to be there. I immediately began to pull open the drawers and files of Columbia President, IDA Director and Mobil Oil Director Kirk to see if I could discover some more dirt on Columbia to reveal to the people of New York City. I was curious. And I felt that people in New York City had a democratic right to go through the office files of Columbia’s President.
Surprisingly, as soon as I began to gleefully go through Columbia President Kirk’s office files, the white students around me started to look frightened.
“What are you doing?”
“Leave those files alone. We’re here to make a political statement, not to vandalize his office!”
There were just a few of the comments that greeted me when I started to do some more research inside Kirk’s office. I couldn’t believe my ears at first.
“We have a right to know what’s in these files,” I argued.
“It’s Kirk’s private property. We have a right to sit-in here, but we don’t have the right to go through his private files,” another white anti-racist student replied.
I was flabbergasted. Were these, indeed, the same students who, under Black student leadership, were willing to hold Dean Coleman hostage for many hours?
Since no other students in the portion of Kirk’s office where the files were kept were willing to join me in going through Kirk’s files, and I was getting bad vibes from the other students, I stopped going through Kirk’s files. Within a few days, however,--as white anti-racist resistance to the Columbia Administration hardened and people began to lose their bourgeois hang-ups about Columbia’s “property rights”—other students completed the search of Kirk’s files. Copies of some choice documents found their way into the Rat underground newspaper. The photocopied documents from Kirk’s files would reveal additional dirt on Columbia University expansion activity, its IDA ties and intra-Establishment conspiring.
After Mark’s surprise announcement, all the white students quickly ran to whichever part of the building they had dumped their sleeping bags, blankets or guitars at and gathered en masse down in the lobby. Many white students were tense and emotionally freaked-out. A few white students were crying, but the more politically and emotionally mature African-American students looked cool and determined, as Columbia SDS people led our demoralized band of 300 to 400 white anti-racist students out of Hamilton Hall and up to Low Library, in the early dawn hours.
About a third of the white left demonstrators immediately returned to their dormitory rooms or off-campus apartments to get some sleep, after being told to leave Hamilton Hall. The rest of us quietly walked across Low Plaza and towards the right entrance of Low Library, in order to occupy Low Library. When the first SDS people got to the glass door and tried to enter, they found the door was locked. Frustrated, some of the SDS people then picked up a wooden bench and—using it as a battering ram—slammed it into the glass door, in order to get inside Low Library. After the glass broke, I heard some gasping among the white students behind me on the plaza. About one-third of the white students who had been expecting to occupy Low Library with SDS turned around, and went back to their dormitory rooms and off-campus apartments, as soon as they heard the glass break.
I shook my head with disgust and thought to myself: “They’re only into fighting institutional racism when property doesn’t get damaged. Typical white liberals.” Then I went into Low Library and waited in the rotunda, until about 100 of us were all gathered together, and Mark began to speak to us:
“The reason why we had to leave Hamilton is that the Black students felt that we weren’t solid enough. They’ve chosen to make their stand in Hamilton Hall. And they’re ready to die.
“I’m not ready to die yet. But I think we can continue to support the Black students by holding this building.
“For many of us, our academic careers at Columbia are over. But before the police are called in, we have to decide what we’re going to do.”
There was some concern expressed about the possible fate of Dean Coleman. And even Robby, who would later become very hard-line politically, felt that Dean Coleman might get killed if cops were sent into Hamilton. After a few minutes of discussion, a consensus emerged that sitting down in the rotunda was tactically stupid, because the space around us was so large that when the cops came to arrest us they would be able to clear us out in no time, by just forming a circle around us. We therefore decided to take over Columbia President Kirk’s office. His door was closed and locked, but somebody figured out a way to get in. Then the 100 of us went inside the office.
It was the first time any of us had been inside the office of an Ivy League university president and it felt good to be there. I immediately began to pull open the drawers and files of Columbia President, IDA Director and Mobil Oil Director Kirk to see if I could discover some more dirt on Columbia to reveal to the people of New York City. I was curious. And I felt that people in New York City had a democratic right to go through the office files of Columbia’s President.
Surprisingly, as soon as I began to gleefully go through Columbia President Kirk’s office files, the white students around me started to look frightened.
“What are you doing?”
“Leave those files alone. We’re here to make a political statement, not to vandalize his office!”
There were just a few of the comments that greeted me when I started to do some more research inside Kirk’s office. I couldn’t believe my ears at first.
“We have a right to know what’s in these files,” I argued.
“It’s Kirk’s private property. We have a right to sit-in here, but we don’t have the right to go through his private files,” another white anti-racist student replied.
I was flabbergasted. Were these, indeed, the same students who, under Black student leadership, were willing to hold Dean Coleman hostage for many hours?
Since no other students in the portion of Kirk’s office where the files were kept were willing to join me in going through Kirk’s files, and I was getting bad vibes from the other students, I stopped going through Kirk’s files. Within a few days, however,--as white anti-racist resistance to the Columbia Administration hardened and people began to lose their bourgeois hang-ups about Columbia’s “property rights”—other students completed the search of Kirk’s files. Copies of some choice documents found their way into the Rat underground newspaper. The photocopied documents from Kirk’s files would reveal additional dirt on Columbia University expansion activity, its IDA ties and intra-Establishment conspiring.
Chapter 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968 (iv)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (100)
By the late evening inside Hamilton Hall, although the steering committee was continuing to meet and had agreed on the 6 demands, it was becoming apparent that tactical divisions between the Black radical students and the white radical students were developing. The more apolitical Barnard and Columbia African-American students who hadn’t bothered to even attend the noon rally had, by now, joined in the demo at Hamilton and the SAS leaders had used the phone effectively to gather community support rapidly in Harlem. Harlem community residents were already starting to send food parcels to the African-American students.
The number of white anti-racist students in Hamilton Hall had also grown, after the mass media publicized the sit-in and holding of the dean as a hostage. But many of the white students inside Hamilton seemed to be there more as trendies than as serious political activists. The Columbia and Barnard African-American students in Hamilton seemed serious, disciplined and all business. Columbia SDS’s mass base in the building seemed frivolous and more into a partying, sleep-away camp, hippie-anarchist mentality and undisciplined.
Within the steering committee meeting, a division appeared between Columbia SDS and SAS leaders over whether classes in Hamilton Hall should be shut down for students on April 24th or whether the sit-in should not interfere with Hamilton Hall classes. Ted and other Columbia SDS leaders still felt in the late evening hours of April 23rd and early morning of April 24th that too many white students at Columbia would be alienated from the New Left and polarized to support the Columbia Administration, if we prevented them from going to class, by completely shutting down Hamilton Hall. Bill and Ray argued that, if the white leftist students were really serious about winning demands and really politically solid, they should have no qualms about shutting down Hamilton Hall classes completely, until the demands were won. And now was not the time to be worried about “not alienating” Columbia students.
In retrospect, the Black radical students were correct about it being necessary to shut down classes at Hamilton Hall in order to have any chance of forcing concessions from Columbia. But in the late evening of April 23, 1968 and early morning hours of April 24, 1968, most of the white students in Hamilton Hall were confused about whether the sit-in and holding of Dean Coleman hostage should be expanded into an occupation and total shut-down of Hamilton Hall.
People were allowed to walk in-and-out of Hamilton Hall on the evening of April 23rd. I can recall talking inside Hamilton Hall that night to the hostile right-wing Professor Schilling, whose term paper assignment had led me to discover Columbia’s IDA ties. Schilling had left an outdoor gathering of a few hundred hostile right-wing students in front of Hamilton Hall, in order to try to use his right-wing logic inside Hamilton Hall to persuade us to give up our bargaining chip of being inside the building—in exchange for a promise of negotiation.
To determine democratically what Columbia SDS’s formal position should be on the Black students' call to shut down classes in Hamilton on April 24, 1968, a packed early morning emergency meeting of a few hundred white anti-racists was held in one of the larger classrooms of Hamilton Hall, which began with Mark chairing.
People were confused and divided. And most speakers—unlike Mark—seemed to feel Columbia SDS shouldn’t support the African-American students' call to prevent classes from being held in Hamilton. Mark seemed to be showing the strain of the day’s events on him. Because the head of Columbia’s Student Homophile League—one of the first gay liberation student organizations to appear on U.S. campus in the 1960s—was wearing a suit and tie and had not been involved in leftist political activity before, Mark irrationally focused on his presence at the emergency meeting of white demonstrators. Knowing only that the mustached and short-haired Student Homophile League head was dressed like a preppie-tweed, looked like a Young Republican and looked only vaguely familiar, Mark suddenly pointed him out and yelled: “You! You’re an Administration informant! Get out of here!”
Before anyone could tell Mark that the Student Homophile League head was probably just a newly-radicalized student and not necessarily an informant for the Administration, Mark had verbally bullied the guy out of the building.
While the debate over whether to back the Black students' call to shut down classes dragged on and on, Mark was suddenly called from the lecturer’s podium. Bill and Ray wanted to speak with him, Ted and Nick, immediately. In the debate, Ted had been one of the most persuasive opponents of shutting down Hamilton Hall.
“If we prevent classes from being held, we end up defining the student constituency SDS wants to radicalize and organize as the enemy. We don’t have to alienate our student constituency in order to maintain a militant sit-in and win the six demands,” Ted had said. Within a few days, even Ted, himself, had realized that this argument reflected an excessively cautious tactical sense. But in the early a.m. hours of April 24, 1968, it sounded plausible to most people and was only being opposed by a few white anti-racists because the Black student leadership, which seemed more politically mature than the white New Left student leadership, had challenged us to shut down classes.
Not seeing another SDS person who he felt could chair the disorderly meeting while he, Ted and Nick met with Ray and Bill, Mark tried to persuade me to start chairing the meeting. But not feeling confident that I could keep the debate going in a meeting that included confused white left-liberals, as well as confused SDS people, I declined to take over from Mark as the emergency meeting chairperson. Mark then spotted Halliwell, the Regional SDS organizer and Columbia Russian History graduate student, who agreed to chair the rest of the meeting. Mark left and the debate continued. But about 5 minutes later, Mark, Ted and Nick returned. And with a sad look, Mark said the following:
“The Black students want us to leave the building. They don’t think we’re solid enough. They feel they can get more community support if only Black students are in Hamilton Hall. They’ve chosen to make their stand alone here and we have to respect that choice. They’ve suggested that, if we want to continue to support them, we should open up a second front by occupying another building on campus.”
Most of us were momentarily stunned. We did not wish to leave our Black brothers and sisters alone to face a possible police bust, since most of us, initially, mistakenly assumed that the presence of white students—not the threat of Harlem’s mass anger—was what prevented the Columbia Administration from ordering the arrest of its Black student protesters. Many of the white anti-racist students were emotionally hurt by the Black students' decision to ask them to leave Hamilton Hall, because part of the attraction of the demo for them had been its inter-racial, early Civil Rights period nature. But given the anti-militant, divided tone of the early morning general assembly white student debate over whether to support the African-American student desire to prevent classes from being held on April 24th, it was also obvious that Columbia SDS’s mass base was too wavering a group of people at this time for the Black students to politically risk having within the same occupied building.
The number of white anti-racist students in Hamilton Hall had also grown, after the mass media publicized the sit-in and holding of the dean as a hostage. But many of the white students inside Hamilton seemed to be there more as trendies than as serious political activists. The Columbia and Barnard African-American students in Hamilton seemed serious, disciplined and all business. Columbia SDS’s mass base in the building seemed frivolous and more into a partying, sleep-away camp, hippie-anarchist mentality and undisciplined.
Within the steering committee meeting, a division appeared between Columbia SDS and SAS leaders over whether classes in Hamilton Hall should be shut down for students on April 24th or whether the sit-in should not interfere with Hamilton Hall classes. Ted and other Columbia SDS leaders still felt in the late evening hours of April 23rd and early morning of April 24th that too many white students at Columbia would be alienated from the New Left and polarized to support the Columbia Administration, if we prevented them from going to class, by completely shutting down Hamilton Hall. Bill and Ray argued that, if the white leftist students were really serious about winning demands and really politically solid, they should have no qualms about shutting down Hamilton Hall classes completely, until the demands were won. And now was not the time to be worried about “not alienating” Columbia students.
In retrospect, the Black radical students were correct about it being necessary to shut down classes at Hamilton Hall in order to have any chance of forcing concessions from Columbia. But in the late evening of April 23, 1968 and early morning hours of April 24, 1968, most of the white students in Hamilton Hall were confused about whether the sit-in and holding of Dean Coleman hostage should be expanded into an occupation and total shut-down of Hamilton Hall.
People were allowed to walk in-and-out of Hamilton Hall on the evening of April 23rd. I can recall talking inside Hamilton Hall that night to the hostile right-wing Professor Schilling, whose term paper assignment had led me to discover Columbia’s IDA ties. Schilling had left an outdoor gathering of a few hundred hostile right-wing students in front of Hamilton Hall, in order to try to use his right-wing logic inside Hamilton Hall to persuade us to give up our bargaining chip of being inside the building—in exchange for a promise of negotiation.
To determine democratically what Columbia SDS’s formal position should be on the Black students' call to shut down classes in Hamilton on April 24, 1968, a packed early morning emergency meeting of a few hundred white anti-racists was held in one of the larger classrooms of Hamilton Hall, which began with Mark chairing.
People were confused and divided. And most speakers—unlike Mark—seemed to feel Columbia SDS shouldn’t support the African-American students' call to prevent classes from being held in Hamilton. Mark seemed to be showing the strain of the day’s events on him. Because the head of Columbia’s Student Homophile League—one of the first gay liberation student organizations to appear on U.S. campus in the 1960s—was wearing a suit and tie and had not been involved in leftist political activity before, Mark irrationally focused on his presence at the emergency meeting of white demonstrators. Knowing only that the mustached and short-haired Student Homophile League head was dressed like a preppie-tweed, looked like a Young Republican and looked only vaguely familiar, Mark suddenly pointed him out and yelled: “You! You’re an Administration informant! Get out of here!”
Before anyone could tell Mark that the Student Homophile League head was probably just a newly-radicalized student and not necessarily an informant for the Administration, Mark had verbally bullied the guy out of the building.
While the debate over whether to back the Black students' call to shut down classes dragged on and on, Mark was suddenly called from the lecturer’s podium. Bill and Ray wanted to speak with him, Ted and Nick, immediately. In the debate, Ted had been one of the most persuasive opponents of shutting down Hamilton Hall.
“If we prevent classes from being held, we end up defining the student constituency SDS wants to radicalize and organize as the enemy. We don’t have to alienate our student constituency in order to maintain a militant sit-in and win the six demands,” Ted had said. Within a few days, even Ted, himself, had realized that this argument reflected an excessively cautious tactical sense. But in the early a.m. hours of April 24, 1968, it sounded plausible to most people and was only being opposed by a few white anti-racists because the Black student leadership, which seemed more politically mature than the white New Left student leadership, had challenged us to shut down classes.
Not seeing another SDS person who he felt could chair the disorderly meeting while he, Ted and Nick met with Ray and Bill, Mark tried to persuade me to start chairing the meeting. But not feeling confident that I could keep the debate going in a meeting that included confused white left-liberals, as well as confused SDS people, I declined to take over from Mark as the emergency meeting chairperson. Mark then spotted Halliwell, the Regional SDS organizer and Columbia Russian History graduate student, who agreed to chair the rest of the meeting. Mark left and the debate continued. But about 5 minutes later, Mark, Ted and Nick returned. And with a sad look, Mark said the following:
“The Black students want us to leave the building. They don’t think we’re solid enough. They feel they can get more community support if only Black students are in Hamilton Hall. They’ve chosen to make their stand alone here and we have to respect that choice. They’ve suggested that, if we want to continue to support them, we should open up a second front by occupying another building on campus.”
Most of us were momentarily stunned. We did not wish to leave our Black brothers and sisters alone to face a possible police bust, since most of us, initially, mistakenly assumed that the presence of white students—not the threat of Harlem’s mass anger—was what prevented the Columbia Administration from ordering the arrest of its Black student protesters. Many of the white anti-racist students were emotionally hurt by the Black students' decision to ask them to leave Hamilton Hall, because part of the attraction of the demo for them had been its inter-racial, early Civil Rights period nature. But given the anti-militant, divided tone of the early morning general assembly white student debate over whether to support the African-American student desire to prevent classes from being held on April 24th, it was also obvious that Columbia SDS’s mass base was too wavering a group of people at this time for the Black students to politically risk having within the same occupied building.
Chapter 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968 (iii)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (99)
Dean Coleman was a tall, non-intellectual, athletically-oriented, good-natured white bureaucrat who had previously been the Columbia College Dean of Admissions. Aside from his interest in a career as an academic administrator, he appeared to be not that deeply interested in either the fate of Columbia University or in such “non-university” matters as the war in Viet Nam or IDA. Yet because Dean Coleman saw nothing wrong in just carrying out the orders of Columbia Vice-President Truman with regard to disciplining student activists for political reasons, he quickly became another symbol of administrator complicity in the attempt to repress Columbia SDS on campus.
When he returned to Hamilton Hall after lunch and found the 500 of us in the lobby in front of his office, Dean Coleman refused to debate the issues with us. Instead, he walked back into his office, unaware that once he was inside his office he was going to be held hostage until Wilson was released by the cops.
In the first half-hour of the April 23rd sit-in in Hamilton Hall’s lobby, student activists who were most eager to speak to the crowd—like Stu—began to emerge as mass leaders. Part of the time was also spent singing Civil Rights Movement freedom songs. After Coleman had walked into his office and the consensus was that he was being held hostage, Bill and Ray started to take control of the demonstration from the more confused and divided Columbia SDS people. Mark would get the crowd laughing from time to time, like when he rhetorically asked the crowd: “Is this an indoor demonstration?” And the crowd then answered “Yes” in unison, with laughter. But during the first few hours of the demo, especially, only the Student Afro-American Society “heavies” seemed to have a clear, unified sense of how to direct and organize the demo, based on their clearer understanding of how the Black student occupation of the Howard University Administration Building, earlier in the spring term, had been carried out.
A Hamilton Hall demonstration steering committee was formed with Bill, Ray and Cicero representing the Student Afro-American Society, Mark, Ted and Nick representing Columbia SDS, Juan and a Columbia Citizenship Council bureaucrat from Minneapolis named Zift representing Citizenship Council and a guy named Jonathan representing the unaffiliated liberal students. Within a few hours, both the bureaucratic Zift and the unaffiliated liberal Jonathan had resigned, however, because of the growing militancy of the demo. But Juan stayed on the demonstration steering committee and his politics pretty much blended into Columbia SDS politics by the second day of the student revolt.
The Hamilton Hall demonstration steering committee started to meet in one of the classrooms to discuss strategy, while the rest of the demonstrators started to prepare for a long sit-in. People went outside to bring in food and more student support, and telephone calls were made to the local TV and radio stations and newspapers to bring in more media publicity. Telephone calls were also made to community people to bring in more community support from Central Harlem and West Harlem.
Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen. But after it became clear that cops were not going to be sent to clear us out of Hamilton Hall quickly because our numbers were large and more students, media people and community and civil rights activists were joining us, the white anti-racist students started to bring sleeping bags, blankets and guitars from their dormitory rooms into Hamilton Hall. The Citizenship Council offices in Ferrris Booth Hall started to pump out leaflets in support of the sit-in on its mimeograph machine. The Columbia student FM radio station—WKCR—started to broadcast around-the-clock coverage of the revolt—after New York Post editor, James Wechsler (who had led a student strike, himself, at Columbia in the 1930s) put news of our holding the dean hostage and of the sit-in on the ’s late afternoon edition’s front page.
After its initial meeting, the Hamilton Hall demo steering committee reported back to the sit-in with a list of six demands, and the demonstrators approved of their demands by cheering. These six demands became the six demands of the Columbia Student Revolt and were, more or less, as follows:
1. Stop the construction of the Columbia gymnasium in Morningside Park;
2. End all Columbia ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses and that Columbia President Kirk and Columbia Trustee Burden resign from IDA's Executive committee;
3. End the ban on indoor demonstrations at Columbia;
4. All future disciplinary action decisions be made by a student-faculty committee;
5. Drop all charges against all people arrested at the gym site; and
6. Amnesty for the IDA 6 and for all the participants in the current sit-in and demonstration.
In retrospect, the Columbia Revolt was really about just winning 3 essential demands: 1. No “Jim Crow” gym be built in Morningside Park; 2. No more ties to IDA; and 3. No criminal or disciplinary reprisals against any revolt or strike participants. The reason why the Columbia Administration chose to eventually call in police to clear the campus on April 30th was that Kirk and Truman were willing to stop gym construction (because they feared Harlem’s mass anger) and to cut Columbia’s ties to IDA (because it related to the unpopular war in Viet Nam), but they were unwilling to give Mark amnesty.
Somehow the U.S. Establishment felt that the national security of the United States and the security of all Ivy League universities would be threatened if Mark were given amnesty in Spring 1968. And because large numbers of students would not end their sit-in unless everybody—including Mark—was granted amnesty, the Columbia Administration never even got to the point where it felt it was realistic to publicly offer every student amnesty, with the exception of Mark. Mark had somehow touched a vital nerve of the U.S. Establishment’s university system with his style of confrontational politics, and this university system now wanted Mark banished from the Ivy League.
When he returned to Hamilton Hall after lunch and found the 500 of us in the lobby in front of his office, Dean Coleman refused to debate the issues with us. Instead, he walked back into his office, unaware that once he was inside his office he was going to be held hostage until Wilson was released by the cops.
In the first half-hour of the April 23rd sit-in in Hamilton Hall’s lobby, student activists who were most eager to speak to the crowd—like Stu—began to emerge as mass leaders. Part of the time was also spent singing Civil Rights Movement freedom songs. After Coleman had walked into his office and the consensus was that he was being held hostage, Bill and Ray started to take control of the demonstration from the more confused and divided Columbia SDS people. Mark would get the crowd laughing from time to time, like when he rhetorically asked the crowd: “Is this an indoor demonstration?” And the crowd then answered “Yes” in unison, with laughter. But during the first few hours of the demo, especially, only the Student Afro-American Society “heavies” seemed to have a clear, unified sense of how to direct and organize the demo, based on their clearer understanding of how the Black student occupation of the Howard University Administration Building, earlier in the spring term, had been carried out.
A Hamilton Hall demonstration steering committee was formed with Bill, Ray and Cicero representing the Student Afro-American Society, Mark, Ted and Nick representing Columbia SDS, Juan and a Columbia Citizenship Council bureaucrat from Minneapolis named Zift representing Citizenship Council and a guy named Jonathan representing the unaffiliated liberal students. Within a few hours, both the bureaucratic Zift and the unaffiliated liberal Jonathan had resigned, however, because of the growing militancy of the demo. But Juan stayed on the demonstration steering committee and his politics pretty much blended into Columbia SDS politics by the second day of the student revolt.
The Hamilton Hall demonstration steering committee started to meet in one of the classrooms to discuss strategy, while the rest of the demonstrators started to prepare for a long sit-in. People went outside to bring in food and more student support, and telephone calls were made to the local TV and radio stations and newspapers to bring in more media publicity. Telephone calls were also made to community people to bring in more community support from Central Harlem and West Harlem.
Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen. But after it became clear that cops were not going to be sent to clear us out of Hamilton Hall quickly because our numbers were large and more students, media people and community and civil rights activists were joining us, the white anti-racist students started to bring sleeping bags, blankets and guitars from their dormitory rooms into Hamilton Hall. The Citizenship Council offices in Ferrris Booth Hall started to pump out leaflets in support of the sit-in on its mimeograph machine. The Columbia student FM radio station—WKCR—started to broadcast around-the-clock coverage of the revolt—after New York Post editor, James Wechsler (who had led a student strike, himself, at Columbia in the 1930s) put news of our holding the dean hostage and of the sit-in on the ’s late afternoon edition’s front page.
After its initial meeting, the Hamilton Hall demo steering committee reported back to the sit-in with a list of six demands, and the demonstrators approved of their demands by cheering. These six demands became the six demands of the Columbia Student Revolt and were, more or less, as follows:
1. Stop the construction of the Columbia gymnasium in Morningside Park;
2. End all Columbia ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses and that Columbia President Kirk and Columbia Trustee Burden resign from IDA's Executive committee;
3. End the ban on indoor demonstrations at Columbia;
4. All future disciplinary action decisions be made by a student-faculty committee;
5. Drop all charges against all people arrested at the gym site; and
6. Amnesty for the IDA 6 and for all the participants in the current sit-in and demonstration.
In retrospect, the Columbia Revolt was really about just winning 3 essential demands: 1. No “Jim Crow” gym be built in Morningside Park; 2. No more ties to IDA; and 3. No criminal or disciplinary reprisals against any revolt or strike participants. The reason why the Columbia Administration chose to eventually call in police to clear the campus on April 30th was that Kirk and Truman were willing to stop gym construction (because they feared Harlem’s mass anger) and to cut Columbia’s ties to IDA (because it related to the unpopular war in Viet Nam), but they were unwilling to give Mark amnesty.
Somehow the U.S. Establishment felt that the national security of the United States and the security of all Ivy League universities would be threatened if Mark were given amnesty in Spring 1968. And because large numbers of students would not end their sit-in unless everybody—including Mark—was granted amnesty, the Columbia Administration never even got to the point where it felt it was realistic to publicly offer every student amnesty, with the exception of Mark. Mark had somehow touched a vital nerve of the U.S. Establishment’s university system with his style of confrontational politics, and this university system now wanted Mark banished from the Ivy League.
Chapter 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968 (ii)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (98)
There was a deeper mood of mass anger and militancy in the first group of demonstrators who we met at W. 116th St. and Morningside Drive. What had happened was that the front of the SDS demonstration that had raced down to the gym site had started ripping down the fence surrounding the construction site. The New York City cop who was guarding the gym site had radioed for reinforcements and, when the additional cops came, they foolishly began shoving around the mostly white male Columbia students.
When the cops tried to arrest a demonstrator, the white Columbia students—both left-liberal and SDS hard-core—instead of just meekly letting the cops take the demonstrator away, tried to prevent the arrest and shoved back at the cops. Although the cops managed to take the Columbia sophomore they had grabbed away—an anti-war guy named Wilson (who was then living with my old roommate Tom in the same Furnald Hall dorm room that I had lived in as a sophomore when I discovered Columbia’s IDA connection)—the gym site demonstrators were enraged. And Columbia Student Afro-American Society activist Bill (who was also involved in the scuffling with the cops) was surprised and emotionally touched by the militant way the anti-racist white student radicals seemed willing to fight back against Columbia’s city cops, in order to protect Harlem’s land.
Mark had correctly realized that it made more sense to bring the mass anger back up to Columbia’s campus quickly, and quickly confront the men who were responsible for both the decision to build the gym and the use of cops—the Columbia Administration—instead of getting trapped in another off-campus brawl with cops—after new police reinforcements arrived to clear the gym site out of demonstrators, totally. He stood up on some point of elevation at the gym site. And, after outlining the tactical options, he supported the mass consensus to return to the campus where, as Mark realized, there were large numbers of additional New Left supporters from the rear of the original march towards Low Library. Mark now showed that he could spontaneously lead and hold together masses of people, when unpredictable obstacles to their mass motion appeared.
Fighting against Columbia’s policies of institutional racism, complicity with the U.S. war machine and repression of student activism was a helluva lot more exciting than sitting in a typical all-male Columbia classroom. And for the first time at Columbia, hundreds of new Columbia and Barnard anti-war students had finally gotten hip to this fact.
The arrested student—Wilson—was a good-natured, bright, tall guy with glasses who, although feeling threatened by the draft, had been more into smoking grass, listening to rock music and hanging out with his hippie-anarchist Columbia and Barnard friends than being that active in Columbia SDS. If the April 23rd demo hadn’t appeared in advance to be the big dramatic confrontational event that it would actually turn out to be, I doubt that Wilson would have made any special effort to be at the demo, despite his New Left sympathies. By singling out Wilson for arrest, instead of somebody who was in the Columbia SDS hard-core, the cops unintentionally further radicalized people. By arresting Wilson, they indicated that any Columbia student who protested against the gym was fair game—no matter how apolitical.
United as one demonstration on W. 116th St. and Amsterdam Ave. again, 500 of us marched back to the sundial and Mark got up on the sundial and started to speak again in a humorous, easygoing way: “The way I see the situation, we've got about four hundred or five hundred people who'll do anything now. On the other hand, I don't know if we've got four hundred or five hundred people who'll do anything tomorrow--but I think you do. I don't think four or five hundred people can close down the university."
Cicero, the Student Afro American Society head, then was asked to speak to the crowd and he said: “SDS can stand on the side and support us, but the black students and the Harlem community will be the ones in the vanguard. Black people alone will decide whether or not they want the gym to be built. It’s not up to you to tell Harlem whether the gym should be built.”
Because Cicero seemed to be equating the white New Left students who opposed the gym construction with the white Columbia Administration that approved the gym construction, the crowd did not cheer his speech and was on the verge of getting demoralized and confused again.
What raised the crowd’s morale again, however, was that Bill rushed to the sundial after Cicero had finished speaking and—luckily for Columbia SDS—Bill praised the white anti-racist students’ militancy, in a revolutionary nationalist rap:
"Okay, I want you to check something out. I thought up until this stage of the game thaat white people weren't ready. But I saw something today that suggests that maybe this is not true. Maybe you are ready. Because when the deal hit the fan, you were there, you were with me. It was almost soulful.
"If you're talking about revolution, if you're talking about identifying with the Vietnamese struggle...you don't need to go marching downtown. There's one oppressor--in the White House, in Low Library, in Albany, New York. To strike a blow at the gym, you strike a blow for the Vietnamese people. You strike a blow at the gym and you strike a blow against the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You strike a blow at Low Library and you strike a blow for the freedom fighters in Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, and Zimbabwe, South Africa.
"All you need is superior organization and superior commitment so that you're not acting like an incoherent mob. Need I say more? I don't want to get arrested for sedition," Bill said in a spirited way.
The crowd cheered Bill enthusiastically. Most white anti-war Columbia and Barnard students would not have sustained their militant anti-racism without the encouragement of Bill. Black radical activist approval appeared to be psychologically required before the mass of anti-war students would fight against institutional racism at Columbia.
After Bill’s great charismatic and spontaneous speech, Mark then proposed that we march into an administration building at Columbia and take a hostage until Wilson was released by the cops:
"We don't have an incoherent mob, it just looks that way. I'll tell you what we want to do. We want to win some demands about IDA, we want IDA to go. We want the people under discipline to get off of discipline. We want this guy who got busted today to get the charges dropped against him. We want them to stop the fucking gym over there. So I think there's really only one thing we have to do, and we're all together here, we're all ready to go--now! We'll start by holding a hostage.
"There's one part of the administration that's responsible for what happened today--and that's the administration of Columbia College," Mark concluded in an easygoing way.
The demonstration cheered in support of Mark’s proposal that we take a hostage in Hamilton. Then somebody shouted “Seize Hamilton!” and Mark shouted, "Hamilton Hall is right over there. Let's go!"
Instantaneously, demonstrators then started to run at a fast pace to the lobby of Hamilton Hall. Within a few minutes, led by Mark, Bill and Ray, 500 of us were standing in front of the door to the office of Columbia College’s Acting Dean in the first floor lobby, waiting to talk to Acting Dean Coleman.
When the cops tried to arrest a demonstrator, the white Columbia students—both left-liberal and SDS hard-core—instead of just meekly letting the cops take the demonstrator away, tried to prevent the arrest and shoved back at the cops. Although the cops managed to take the Columbia sophomore they had grabbed away—an anti-war guy named Wilson (who was then living with my old roommate Tom in the same Furnald Hall dorm room that I had lived in as a sophomore when I discovered Columbia’s IDA connection)—the gym site demonstrators were enraged. And Columbia Student Afro-American Society activist Bill (who was also involved in the scuffling with the cops) was surprised and emotionally touched by the militant way the anti-racist white student radicals seemed willing to fight back against Columbia’s city cops, in order to protect Harlem’s land.
Mark had correctly realized that it made more sense to bring the mass anger back up to Columbia’s campus quickly, and quickly confront the men who were responsible for both the decision to build the gym and the use of cops—the Columbia Administration—instead of getting trapped in another off-campus brawl with cops—after new police reinforcements arrived to clear the gym site out of demonstrators, totally. He stood up on some point of elevation at the gym site. And, after outlining the tactical options, he supported the mass consensus to return to the campus where, as Mark realized, there were large numbers of additional New Left supporters from the rear of the original march towards Low Library. Mark now showed that he could spontaneously lead and hold together masses of people, when unpredictable obstacles to their mass motion appeared.
Fighting against Columbia’s policies of institutional racism, complicity with the U.S. war machine and repression of student activism was a helluva lot more exciting than sitting in a typical all-male Columbia classroom. And for the first time at Columbia, hundreds of new Columbia and Barnard anti-war students had finally gotten hip to this fact.
The arrested student—Wilson—was a good-natured, bright, tall guy with glasses who, although feeling threatened by the draft, had been more into smoking grass, listening to rock music and hanging out with his hippie-anarchist Columbia and Barnard friends than being that active in Columbia SDS. If the April 23rd demo hadn’t appeared in advance to be the big dramatic confrontational event that it would actually turn out to be, I doubt that Wilson would have made any special effort to be at the demo, despite his New Left sympathies. By singling out Wilson for arrest, instead of somebody who was in the Columbia SDS hard-core, the cops unintentionally further radicalized people. By arresting Wilson, they indicated that any Columbia student who protested against the gym was fair game—no matter how apolitical.
United as one demonstration on W. 116th St. and Amsterdam Ave. again, 500 of us marched back to the sundial and Mark got up on the sundial and started to speak again in a humorous, easygoing way: “The way I see the situation, we've got about four hundred or five hundred people who'll do anything now. On the other hand, I don't know if we've got four hundred or five hundred people who'll do anything tomorrow--but I think you do. I don't think four or five hundred people can close down the university."
Cicero, the Student Afro American Society head, then was asked to speak to the crowd and he said: “SDS can stand on the side and support us, but the black students and the Harlem community will be the ones in the vanguard. Black people alone will decide whether or not they want the gym to be built. It’s not up to you to tell Harlem whether the gym should be built.”
Because Cicero seemed to be equating the white New Left students who opposed the gym construction with the white Columbia Administration that approved the gym construction, the crowd did not cheer his speech and was on the verge of getting demoralized and confused again.
What raised the crowd’s morale again, however, was that Bill rushed to the sundial after Cicero had finished speaking and—luckily for Columbia SDS—Bill praised the white anti-racist students’ militancy, in a revolutionary nationalist rap:
"Okay, I want you to check something out. I thought up until this stage of the game thaat white people weren't ready. But I saw something today that suggests that maybe this is not true. Maybe you are ready. Because when the deal hit the fan, you were there, you were with me. It was almost soulful.
"If you're talking about revolution, if you're talking about identifying with the Vietnamese struggle...you don't need to go marching downtown. There's one oppressor--in the White House, in Low Library, in Albany, New York. To strike a blow at the gym, you strike a blow for the Vietnamese people. You strike a blow at the gym and you strike a blow against the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You strike a blow at Low Library and you strike a blow for the freedom fighters in Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, and Zimbabwe, South Africa.
"All you need is superior organization and superior commitment so that you're not acting like an incoherent mob. Need I say more? I don't want to get arrested for sedition," Bill said in a spirited way.
The crowd cheered Bill enthusiastically. Most white anti-war Columbia and Barnard students would not have sustained their militant anti-racism without the encouragement of Bill. Black radical activist approval appeared to be psychologically required before the mass of anti-war students would fight against institutional racism at Columbia.
After Bill’s great charismatic and spontaneous speech, Mark then proposed that we march into an administration building at Columbia and take a hostage until Wilson was released by the cops:
"We don't have an incoherent mob, it just looks that way. I'll tell you what we want to do. We want to win some demands about IDA, we want IDA to go. We want the people under discipline to get off of discipline. We want this guy who got busted today to get the charges dropped against him. We want them to stop the fucking gym over there. So I think there's really only one thing we have to do, and we're all together here, we're all ready to go--now! We'll start by holding a hostage.
"There's one part of the administration that's responsible for what happened today--and that's the administration of Columbia College," Mark concluded in an easygoing way.
The demonstration cheered in support of Mark’s proposal that we take a hostage in Hamilton. Then somebody shouted “Seize Hamilton!” and Mark shouted, "Hamilton Hall is right over there. Let's go!"
Instantaneously, demonstrators then started to run at a fast pace to the lobby of Hamilton Hall. Within a few minutes, led by Mark, Bill and Ray, 500 of us were standing in front of the door to the office of Columbia College’s Acting Dean in the first floor lobby, waiting to talk to Acting Dean Coleman.
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