Columbia SDS continued to spend its weekly general assembly meetings in long discussions of political strategy. Mark started to participate more actively in these debates with great enthusiasm. But most of his strategic ideas seemed impractical and somewhat confused to me. At one meeting, Mark enthusiastically suggested that we build a wire fence around Low Library, to symbolize Columbia’s sponsorship of the IDA project which proposed the building of an electronic barrier between North and South Viet Nam to help crush the Vietnamese insurgency, by “preventing `infiltration’” from the north of Viet Nam. At another SDS general assembly meeting, Mark argued in favor of working to build a student strike at Columbia, around university complicity with the Pentagon issues, six months later—in April 1968. And he circulated mimeographed copies of a position paper which argued in favor of Columbia SDS adopting this strategy.
What was good about Mark’s October 1967 position paper was that (unlike the dominant figures in the Praxis-Axis) Mark recognized that unless Columbia SDS was seen by the mass of student radicals as concretely working for some kind of spring strike (and not just simply working to educate students without mobilizing them to act concretely), campus radicals would drift away from active participation in “local organizing” work, as the academic year progressed. What was bad about Mark’s October 1967 position paper was that it failed to show how locking Columbia SDS into a plan to call for a student strike six months later would lead to the mass politicization and radicalization of Columbia and Barnard students any faster than the intensified dorm canvassing, more dorm meetings, more educational activities, more petition-circulating approach being carried out under the Praxis-Axis leadership. Mark’s October 1967 plan appeared to overestimate the degree to which Columbia and Barnard students had already been radicalized and were ready to express their new radicalism in militant non-violent action.
Influenced by Ted, Teddy, Peter Schneider and Al, the mass of Columbia SDS members voted down most of Mark’s October proposals because they seemed overambitious and unrealistic. The “heavy” Columbia SDS theoreticians were still much glibber when it came to discussing political strategy with SDS members than was Mark. Ted, Peter Schneider, Al, Evansohn and the other praxis-axis Marxist intellectuals—like a philosophy graduate student named Andrew—smugly dismissed Mark as being, at best, a “vulgar Marxist” and, at worst, “an anarchist hippie” with “no politics.” Any Columbia SDS person who dared question the chapter’s emphasis on non-alienating, pedantic leftism and consciousness-raising—instead of moralistic, militant non-violent direct actionism—as a means of developing a mass campus base was accused by Columbia SDS’s theoreticians of having “no politics.”
My own strategic position was that Columbia SDS should continue to do dorm canvassing and other kinds of radical education work, in the context of continuing to demand an end to Columbia’s membership in IDA; and not alienate the mass of anti-war left-liberal students by small, premature left-sectarian actions which demanded an end to the Columbia-IDA connection. But when we had won enough people to have a sit-in of 500 in Low Library through this kind of educational work, I felt it would then be most practical to non-violently disrupt business as usual at Columbia, until Columbia’s IDA ties were severed.
Although—like the other Praxis-Axis people on Columbia SDS’s steering committee—I felt that tactics like having a “dirtiest man on campus” contest (in which students voted at the Columbia SDS table on Low Plaza for the Columbia trustee or professor who they felt had the “dirtiest” corporate or personal connections) were clever, I also realized that they weren’t enough. It wasn’t enough, I felt, for Columbia SDS to just be a cute guerrilla theater, radical education, draft counseling, petition-signature-gathering, purely agitational organization. But the intellectualism and intellectual certitude of others within the Praxis-Axis leadership made me assume that they knew what they were doing. If I wasn’t content with Columbia SDS just being a “local organizing” group, that avoided what Teddy called “infantile, masturbatory, left-sectarian action,” in favor of patient campus organizing and patient radical consciousness-raising among future members of “The New Working-Class,” then, perhaps I was being “politically immature.”
I realized that militant confrontational and disruptive non-violent action which exposed and provoked right-wing or Columbia Administration violence was a quicker way to develop mass radical consciousness than just holding teach-ins and forums, and just handing out verbose, pedantic leaflets. But I still felt that not enough students were yet ready to non-violently disrupt campus business as usual. So, unlike Mark, I didn’t think it was that important to agree in October 1967 to call a strike for April 1968—as long as anti-IDA sentiment was going to spread enough on campus by our educational and agitational work to make a mass sit-in or mass non-violent disruption of Columbia in the spring of 1968 possible.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Chapter 11: Ted Gold and Dave Gilbert: Roommates, 1967 (vii)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (66)
During October and November 1967, a number of Movement people stopped by the apartment to spend some time with Dave. From the SDS Regional Office in Washington, D.C. came Cathy Wilkerson, who was visiting New York SDS Regional Office people on Movement business and needed a place to crash for the night. Cathy was in her 20s, dressed in jeans and a work shirt, and used neither make-up nor lipstick. She sounded much more politically conscious and earnestly committed to making radical social change than the Barnard women students I knew, and she seemed very intelligent.
I first met Jeff when he nodded at me on an October 1967 stopover to meet Dave at the apartment. Jeff had dropped out of Antioch College and was also working at the New York Regional SDS Office in Fall 1967. He was a tall, blond-haired guy and was from a Quaker background. But Jeff struck me as more of a rebel and radical Guevarist-type activist in spirit, than a religiously-motivated “pacifist-Quaker”-type activist. I was impressed by his cheerfulness, his good nature, his apparent psychological strength and the energetic way he approached people and moved about. He seemed to be more into being an activist and organizer than an academic radical or a theoretician. I was also impressed by the fact that Jeff had apparently been willing to drop out of school and give up his 2-S deferment, in order to be a full-time Movement organizer before completing college.
A tall Movement guy in his early 20s from Madison, who wore glasses, spent three nights in our apartment, before moving into his own New York City apartment. I can’t recall the guy’s name, but I do recall that he talked about the police riot which squashed the anti-Dow Chemical protest in Madison. Dow Chemical was the company which made the napalm that was being used by the U.S. war machine in Viet Nam to burn civilians.
Madison radicals in Fall 1967 had stopped Dow Chemical Company recruitment at the University of Wisconsin and the University Administration there had called in the police. Many student radicals were then beaten, and Ted and other Columbia SDS people received calls from Madison indicating that Harvey had been brutalized. Given how we all worshipped Harvey, because of his leftist intellectual brilliance, we were, naturally, quite anxious, until we heard that Harvey had not been seriously injured.
Around this same time, Brooklyn College SDS—under the leadership of PL “SDS’ers”, like a guy named Jeff Gordon—had also stopped Dow Chemical recruitment and forced the Brooklyn College Administration to also call cops onto the campus. As a result of the brutal way the NYC cops came onto Brooklyn College’s campus, Brooklyn College SDS, temporarily, acquired a mass student base around anti-repression politics for about a week—until the mass of sympathetic left-liberal students discovered that the Brooklyn College SDS chapter was actually an authoritarian, dogmatic left-sectarian PL chapter, operating under the New Left “SDS” label.
Another Movement visitor who stopped by the apartment one evening was an enthusiastic young activist from Berkeley who had played a leadership role in the mass street actions a few weeks before, in which mobile radical anti-war protesters had succeeded in shutting down the Oakland military induction center for awhile, while bravely confronting Oakland police. For a few hours, the activist—a guy named Kleiman—vividly filled me and the activist from Madison in on details of the anti-draft protest. I was excited by his talk, and felt some envy that more radical and more militant action was happening out near Berkeley than was happening at Columbia. As I listened to his description of the street demonstrations, I once again regretted that I hadn’t been able to afford a transfer to Berkeley.
“We had the cops completely outflanked. So many more people than we ever expected turned out for the protests early in the morning, that the cops were too outnumbered to control us. This was the most militant anti-war protest that’s been held anywhere in the U.S. That’s why they’re trying to pin a `conspiracy’ charge on some of the leaders,” Kleiman explained.
Kleiman’s personal report from Berkeley reinforced my feeling that the pace of mass radicalization and the growth of mass militancy was definitely accelerating. After speaking with Kleiman, I read the West Coast-based newspaper, The Movement, and liked the way it analyzed Oakland’s “Stop The Draft Week.”
I first met Jeff when he nodded at me on an October 1967 stopover to meet Dave at the apartment. Jeff had dropped out of Antioch College and was also working at the New York Regional SDS Office in Fall 1967. He was a tall, blond-haired guy and was from a Quaker background. But Jeff struck me as more of a rebel and radical Guevarist-type activist in spirit, than a religiously-motivated “pacifist-Quaker”-type activist. I was impressed by his cheerfulness, his good nature, his apparent psychological strength and the energetic way he approached people and moved about. He seemed to be more into being an activist and organizer than an academic radical or a theoretician. I was also impressed by the fact that Jeff had apparently been willing to drop out of school and give up his 2-S deferment, in order to be a full-time Movement organizer before completing college.
A tall Movement guy in his early 20s from Madison, who wore glasses, spent three nights in our apartment, before moving into his own New York City apartment. I can’t recall the guy’s name, but I do recall that he talked about the police riot which squashed the anti-Dow Chemical protest in Madison. Dow Chemical was the company which made the napalm that was being used by the U.S. war machine in Viet Nam to burn civilians.
Madison radicals in Fall 1967 had stopped Dow Chemical Company recruitment at the University of Wisconsin and the University Administration there had called in the police. Many student radicals were then beaten, and Ted and other Columbia SDS people received calls from Madison indicating that Harvey had been brutalized. Given how we all worshipped Harvey, because of his leftist intellectual brilliance, we were, naturally, quite anxious, until we heard that Harvey had not been seriously injured.
Around this same time, Brooklyn College SDS—under the leadership of PL “SDS’ers”, like a guy named Jeff Gordon—had also stopped Dow Chemical recruitment and forced the Brooklyn College Administration to also call cops onto the campus. As a result of the brutal way the NYC cops came onto Brooklyn College’s campus, Brooklyn College SDS, temporarily, acquired a mass student base around anti-repression politics for about a week—until the mass of sympathetic left-liberal students discovered that the Brooklyn College SDS chapter was actually an authoritarian, dogmatic left-sectarian PL chapter, operating under the New Left “SDS” label.
Another Movement visitor who stopped by the apartment one evening was an enthusiastic young activist from Berkeley who had played a leadership role in the mass street actions a few weeks before, in which mobile radical anti-war protesters had succeeded in shutting down the Oakland military induction center for awhile, while bravely confronting Oakland police. For a few hours, the activist—a guy named Kleiman—vividly filled me and the activist from Madison in on details of the anti-draft protest. I was excited by his talk, and felt some envy that more radical and more militant action was happening out near Berkeley than was happening at Columbia. As I listened to his description of the street demonstrations, I once again regretted that I hadn’t been able to afford a transfer to Berkeley.
“We had the cops completely outflanked. So many more people than we ever expected turned out for the protests early in the morning, that the cops were too outnumbered to control us. This was the most militant anti-war protest that’s been held anywhere in the U.S. That’s why they’re trying to pin a `conspiracy’ charge on some of the leaders,” Kleiman explained.
Kleiman’s personal report from Berkeley reinforced my feeling that the pace of mass radicalization and the growth of mass militancy was definitely accelerating. After speaking with Kleiman, I read the West Coast-based newspaper, The Movement, and liked the way it analyzed Oakland’s “Stop The Draft Week.”
Chapter 11: Ted Gold and Dave Gilbert: Roommates, 1967 (vi)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (65)
In early October 1967, whenever I found myself alone in the W.94th St. apartment, I usually would pull out from the bookcase an album from Ted’s record collection and put the record on the turntable. It was at this time that I really started listening over and over again to the Another Side of Bob Dylan album which Ted possessed. I liked the way Dylan sang about love relationships in this album and found his “All I Really Want To Do” song mirroring my own attitude towards love relationships with women, at this time. I went downtown to a movie theater on E. 34th St. and I saw the Don’t Look Back movie, which was a film of Dylan’s English tour of a few years before. Although Dylan’s refusal to speak out strongly against the war in Viet Nam disturbed me, I still idolized him in Fall 1967. He still seemed like an alternative bohemian male model to the straight corporate/straight academic male models 1960s white male youth had been programmed to emulate by the U.S. Establishment’s socializing process.
Around this time, Dave worked with Naomi in doing political organizing at both the New School and at the New York SDS Regional Office. Naomi was from an Old Left family in Troy, New York. She was very intellectual and politically aware and committed, and she seemed quite dedicated, sweet and easy-to-get-along with. Long before most liberal Democratic Party women were raising the issues of U.S. male chauvinism and sexism in the U.S., Naomi was writing articles for Ramparts, New Left Notes and the Guardian on this topic. She generally wore jeans and didn’t use lipstick or make-up.
In the 1960s, there weren’t enough professional job slots available for the increasing number of U.S. multiversity female graduates. A woman college graduate who either couldn’t find a husband/boyfriend to support her after college, or just chose to remain single, usually had to work at a menial clerical/typist or secretarial job in order to support herself, unless she landed a social worker, professional nursing or public school teaching job.
Another New Left activist woman at the New York SDS Regional Office, Sue Sutheim, was involved romantically with Dave, around this time. Like Naomi, Sutheim was very intellectual and politically committed. But she seemed less personally warm than Naomi. Sutheim appeared to be in her mid-to-late-20s, and was especially active in attempting to build an organization of young radical professionals—MDS.
Like Naomi, Sutheim seemed more sexually open than most Barnard women. At the time she was romantically involved with Dave, she was also openly having what appeared to be an even more intense love affair with another New York Regional SDS/MDS activist named Bob Gottlieb. Women who worked at the New York SDS Regional Office appeared to be experimenting more not only with grass and drugs, but also with having multiple sexual and multiple love relationships.
Sutheim seemed to combine a radical political commitment and lifestyle with an interest in developing deep emotional relationships. I admired her for being willing, unlike many other U.S. women at this time, to experiment sexually with different men, without pressuring her male lovers to marry her or to be monogamous. Like Naomi, Sutheim seemed to be a strong, independent, non-traditional woman who was intent on challenging 1960s U.S. male supremacy, long before other women got hip to their sexual oppression. And like Naomi, Sutheim showed me that there were Movement women in their 20s who wished to live differently than their more repressed mothers had lived.
After Ted began to spend all his nights at Trude’s apartment, Gottlieb ended up sleeping some nights on the bed in Ted’s room. By the end of October 1967, however, he appeared to be spending his nights at Sutheim’s apartment and Sutheim seemed to be more romantically involved with Gottlieb than she was with Dave. But all three remained close friends, worked politically together and smoked grass as a stoned threesome, either in our apartment or downtown. Gottlieb also attracted another New York Regional SDS/MDS activist named Marge Piercy. Although Marge was being supported by her computer programmer husband, Robert Shapiro, she became romantically involved with Gottlieb for a time. And when Gottlieb soured on her, she suddenly became a female separatist in her politics.
Gottlieb was skillful at flirting with and flattering Movement women, in order to get them to do Movement shitwork for him. He was an articulate, intellectual New Leftist who was action-oriented enough to be more politically appealing than Marxist academic professors who were not activists. He had longer than average hair, was around 6-feet tall and wore glasses. He usually dressed in jeans and a work shirt and not in a white shirt, a tie and a suit. Gottlieb had attended Reed College in Oregon, which was an experimental college.
Gottlieb related in an elitist fashion to younger Movement people who were still undergraduates. But Gottlieb boasted that he, along with John and Dave, was responsible for “bringing Marxism” into what had previously been a reformist, non-Marxist New York SDS Regional Office. Like Sutheim and Dave, Gotllieb was a strong believer in Dave’s “New Working-Class Theory.” And, as the driving force behind MDS attempts to organize and radicalize young professionals, Gottlieb was putting his daily life activity behind his theoretical politics. Both Gottlieb and Sutheim criticized ‘the culture of consumerism” often in private conversation, in public political debate and in their writings.
Around this time, Dave worked with Naomi in doing political organizing at both the New School and at the New York SDS Regional Office. Naomi was from an Old Left family in Troy, New York. She was very intellectual and politically aware and committed, and she seemed quite dedicated, sweet and easy-to-get-along with. Long before most liberal Democratic Party women were raising the issues of U.S. male chauvinism and sexism in the U.S., Naomi was writing articles for Ramparts, New Left Notes and the Guardian on this topic. She generally wore jeans and didn’t use lipstick or make-up.
In the 1960s, there weren’t enough professional job slots available for the increasing number of U.S. multiversity female graduates. A woman college graduate who either couldn’t find a husband/boyfriend to support her after college, or just chose to remain single, usually had to work at a menial clerical/typist or secretarial job in order to support herself, unless she landed a social worker, professional nursing or public school teaching job.
Another New Left activist woman at the New York SDS Regional Office, Sue Sutheim, was involved romantically with Dave, around this time. Like Naomi, Sutheim was very intellectual and politically committed. But she seemed less personally warm than Naomi. Sutheim appeared to be in her mid-to-late-20s, and was especially active in attempting to build an organization of young radical professionals—MDS.
Like Naomi, Sutheim seemed more sexually open than most Barnard women. At the time she was romantically involved with Dave, she was also openly having what appeared to be an even more intense love affair with another New York Regional SDS/MDS activist named Bob Gottlieb. Women who worked at the New York SDS Regional Office appeared to be experimenting more not only with grass and drugs, but also with having multiple sexual and multiple love relationships.
Sutheim seemed to combine a radical political commitment and lifestyle with an interest in developing deep emotional relationships. I admired her for being willing, unlike many other U.S. women at this time, to experiment sexually with different men, without pressuring her male lovers to marry her or to be monogamous. Like Naomi, Sutheim seemed to be a strong, independent, non-traditional woman who was intent on challenging 1960s U.S. male supremacy, long before other women got hip to their sexual oppression. And like Naomi, Sutheim showed me that there were Movement women in their 20s who wished to live differently than their more repressed mothers had lived.
After Ted began to spend all his nights at Trude’s apartment, Gottlieb ended up sleeping some nights on the bed in Ted’s room. By the end of October 1967, however, he appeared to be spending his nights at Sutheim’s apartment and Sutheim seemed to be more romantically involved with Gottlieb than she was with Dave. But all three remained close friends, worked politically together and smoked grass as a stoned threesome, either in our apartment or downtown. Gottlieb also attracted another New York Regional SDS/MDS activist named Marge Piercy. Although Marge was being supported by her computer programmer husband, Robert Shapiro, she became romantically involved with Gottlieb for a time. And when Gottlieb soured on her, she suddenly became a female separatist in her politics.
Gottlieb was skillful at flirting with and flattering Movement women, in order to get them to do Movement shitwork for him. He was an articulate, intellectual New Leftist who was action-oriented enough to be more politically appealing than Marxist academic professors who were not activists. He had longer than average hair, was around 6-feet tall and wore glasses. He usually dressed in jeans and a work shirt and not in a white shirt, a tie and a suit. Gottlieb had attended Reed College in Oregon, which was an experimental college.
Gottlieb related in an elitist fashion to younger Movement people who were still undergraduates. But Gottlieb boasted that he, along with John and Dave, was responsible for “bringing Marxism” into what had previously been a reformist, non-Marxist New York SDS Regional Office. Like Sutheim and Dave, Gotllieb was a strong believer in Dave’s “New Working-Class Theory.” And, as the driving force behind MDS attempts to organize and radicalize young professionals, Gottlieb was putting his daily life activity behind his theoretical politics. Both Gottlieb and Sutheim criticized ‘the culture of consumerism” often in private conversation, in public political debate and in their writings.
Chapter 11: Ted Gold and Dave Gilbert: Roommates, 1967 (v)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (64)
My “Political Sociology” course was taught by Professor Silver, who didn’t impress me as much as he had impressed Ted. At first, I attended Silver’s class regularly because I saw that Linda was also taking the course. Josh was in graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin and Linda, for the first time since I had met her, was walking around campus alone. As a result of being in the same class, we ended up getting into a fairly long conversation one afternoon. She seemed to miss Josh, was easy to talk with and was very intellectual. But by the end of October, Linda had stopped going to Silver’s class and was living again with Josh out in Wisconsin. Once Linda had stopped attending Silver’s class, I started to cut most of his remaining lectures.
One intellectually positive result of Silver’s “Political Sociology” course was that it led me to write a term paper on “The Ideology of Anti-Communism: The Masterful Put-On.” In the course of researching this term paper, I read a book by Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy on the Cuban Revolution and The Free World Colossus by David Horowitz, which was a left-revisionist history of the Cold War that Horowitz wrote before he became a well-paid right-wing propagandist in the late 1980s. I also documented the corporate economic interests that seemed to determine U.S. foreign policy actions since the 1917 Russian Revolution.
My “Shakespeare I” course was taught by F.W. Dupee, who had been some kind of a leftist in the 1930s and had founded Partisan Review with William Philips and Philip Rahv. In 1967, however, Professor Dupee seemed uninterested in radical politics and just interested in literary questions. Because Dupee was somewhat famous in academic circles and lectured on Shakespeare in an entertaining way, about 75 students enrolled in his class.
On the first day of class, I noticed that Mark was sitting on the other side of the lecture hall. After class we said hello to each other and talked for a few minutes, as we walked towards the southern part of the campus. I can’t recall attending many more class sessions with Professor Dupee, and my impression is that Mark also ended up cutting class often. To pass the course, I wrote a paper on Richard III, which noted the similarity of his Machiavellianism to the Machiavellianism of U.S. political leaders, and included a reference to the recent imprisonment of LeRoi Jones [a/k/a Amiri Baraka] by a U.S. judge who disliked his poetry.
Columbia SDS’s first meeting of the 1967-68 school year took place in Harkness Theatre, the basement auditorium of Butler Library. We seemed to have retained much of our mass activist base from the previous spring. About double the number of students who attended the ICV’s first meeting of the previous school year attended this Columbia SDS meeting. Harkness Theatre was packed with students, including many students who were newcomers to the campus.
Teddy spoke for about 30 minutes about Columbia SDS’s general political goals and its local campus goals. I thought Teddy’s keynote speech was coherent and well-organized. But New York SDS Regional Office activist Halliwell whispered to Ted, after Teddy’s speech had been well-received by the Columbia SDS membership, that “his speech was too apolitical” and “Teddy may be in over his head as Columbia SDS chairman.” Halliwell—being more into National SDS politics than Columbia SDS politics—probably preferred Ted politically to Teddy because Ted was much more Marxist-oriented on an ideological level and didn’t throw in so many references to religious values, Reich and psychological behavior patterns as Teddy did in his political speeches.
I don’t remember much else about Columbia SDS’s first general assembly meeting of the school year, except that a mailing list was passed around to be signed. SDS members signed up for various campus organizing and issue committees. Then a red-haired woman in her late 20s or early 30s sat down in the back of the auditorium and acted out in an angry, politically-flipped out way during the period of general debate, for a few minutes. This “crazy” woman was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, although she still used lipstick and makeup.
One intellectually positive result of Silver’s “Political Sociology” course was that it led me to write a term paper on “The Ideology of Anti-Communism: The Masterful Put-On.” In the course of researching this term paper, I read a book by Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy on the Cuban Revolution and The Free World Colossus by David Horowitz, which was a left-revisionist history of the Cold War that Horowitz wrote before he became a well-paid right-wing propagandist in the late 1980s. I also documented the corporate economic interests that seemed to determine U.S. foreign policy actions since the 1917 Russian Revolution.
My “Shakespeare I” course was taught by F.W. Dupee, who had been some kind of a leftist in the 1930s and had founded Partisan Review with William Philips and Philip Rahv. In 1967, however, Professor Dupee seemed uninterested in radical politics and just interested in literary questions. Because Dupee was somewhat famous in academic circles and lectured on Shakespeare in an entertaining way, about 75 students enrolled in his class.
On the first day of class, I noticed that Mark was sitting on the other side of the lecture hall. After class we said hello to each other and talked for a few minutes, as we walked towards the southern part of the campus. I can’t recall attending many more class sessions with Professor Dupee, and my impression is that Mark also ended up cutting class often. To pass the course, I wrote a paper on Richard III, which noted the similarity of his Machiavellianism to the Machiavellianism of U.S. political leaders, and included a reference to the recent imprisonment of LeRoi Jones [a/k/a Amiri Baraka] by a U.S. judge who disliked his poetry.
Columbia SDS’s first meeting of the 1967-68 school year took place in Harkness Theatre, the basement auditorium of Butler Library. We seemed to have retained much of our mass activist base from the previous spring. About double the number of students who attended the ICV’s first meeting of the previous school year attended this Columbia SDS meeting. Harkness Theatre was packed with students, including many students who were newcomers to the campus.
Teddy spoke for about 30 minutes about Columbia SDS’s general political goals and its local campus goals. I thought Teddy’s keynote speech was coherent and well-organized. But New York SDS Regional Office activist Halliwell whispered to Ted, after Teddy’s speech had been well-received by the Columbia SDS membership, that “his speech was too apolitical” and “Teddy may be in over his head as Columbia SDS chairman.” Halliwell—being more into National SDS politics than Columbia SDS politics—probably preferred Ted politically to Teddy because Ted was much more Marxist-oriented on an ideological level and didn’t throw in so many references to religious values, Reich and psychological behavior patterns as Teddy did in his political speeches.
I don’t remember much else about Columbia SDS’s first general assembly meeting of the school year, except that a mailing list was passed around to be signed. SDS members signed up for various campus organizing and issue committees. Then a red-haired woman in her late 20s or early 30s sat down in the back of the auditorium and acted out in an angry, politically-flipped out way during the period of general debate, for a few minutes. This “crazy” woman was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, although she still used lipstick and makeup.
Chapter 11: Ted Gold and Dave Gilbert: Roommates, 1967 (iv)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (63)
I had gotten my part-time job at the Journal of Philosophy as a result of my friendship with Nancy and Teddy. While walking around campus in late September, I bumped into Nancy and Teddy and mentioned that I was looking for a part-time job. Teddy looked at Nancy for a second and then turned to me with a big smile:
“We know of a job. Working where Nancy works. For John Cauman’s mother. At the Journal of Philosophy office.”
Nancy was also smiling and I felt excited at this sudden prospect of working with Nancy. “I’ll speak with John Cauman’s mother about you next time I go to work,” Nancy said.
The previous academic year, Cauman had been a bearded freshman who looked much older than most other freshman. As a freshman, he had served as Columbia SDS’s first treasurer and he seemed to be an efficient radical bureaucrat. He seemed to be politically radical mostly because he was cynical about the U.S. Establishment and intellectually turned-off by the illogical nature of most U.S. government arguments in favor of the war in Viet Nam, because he didn’t wish to be drafted and because he felt intellectually bored by Columbia’s academic life. Columbia SDS steering committee people had held at least one meeting in the Riverside Drive apartment where Cauman lived with his mother.
Cauman’s mother was a tall woman in her late 40s or early 50s who had a deep voice and a strong intellectual interest in philosophy and abstract questions of logic. She was in charge of putting out the Journal of Philosophy and would often raise her voice if she felt frustrated by other people’s inefficiency or demands. She did not like the fact that her son was bearded and more into being a Columbia SDS treasurer or a hippie, than being into academic careerism. Because of Nancy’s recommendation, Cauman’s mother hired me for the minimum wage shipping clerk job.
Nancy’s job was being a clerk-typist and she usually would put on her glasses and type up letters and forms for Cauman’s mother in a serious and efficient way. At the Journal of Philosophy office, Nancy was pleasant, but we rarely talked about more than our academic lives, our political lives or Columbia SDS chapter business. Teddy would often stop by and meet Nancy at 5 p.m. on the days she worked all afternoon, and he remained much friendlier towards me than was Nancy. After six months working at the Journal of Philosophy, I quit because Cauman’s mother was unwilling to give me a small raise.
My classes during Fall 1967 included courses required for my sociology major: “Systematic Sociology Theory;” “Society Transformation Post-1800;” and “Political Sociology.” My other courses were literature courses: “Poetry in the 20th Century I;” and “Shakespeare I.”
The “Systematic Sociology Theory” and “Society Transformation Post-1800” courses were both taught by the Columbia professor who was closest to Columbia SDS people on a personal and ideological level: Professor Dibble.
Dibble appeared to be in his 40s, had a mustache, and was especially fond of Harvey. During Summer 1967, before Harvey enrolled at the University of Wisconsin graduate school, Harvey was able to live in Professor Dibble’s apartment for free, while Dibble was away from New York City for the summer.
As a lecturer in class, Professor Dibble was pretty incomprehensible for many students, was ill at ease and would tend to mumble. But ideologically, Professor Dibble was a hard-line Marxist and staunch anti-imperialist. He also didn’t overestimate the 1960s revolutionary potential of the U.S. industrial working-class. When I mentioned that I might attempt to do factory work and attempt to organize factory workers after I graduated from Columbia, Dibble made the following observation: “I worked in a factory in Philadelphia once. And while the workers would bitch a lot and complain behind the boss’s back a lot, they were not open to radical ideas.”
“We know of a job. Working where Nancy works. For John Cauman’s mother. At the Journal of Philosophy office.”
Nancy was also smiling and I felt excited at this sudden prospect of working with Nancy. “I’ll speak with John Cauman’s mother about you next time I go to work,” Nancy said.
The previous academic year, Cauman had been a bearded freshman who looked much older than most other freshman. As a freshman, he had served as Columbia SDS’s first treasurer and he seemed to be an efficient radical bureaucrat. He seemed to be politically radical mostly because he was cynical about the U.S. Establishment and intellectually turned-off by the illogical nature of most U.S. government arguments in favor of the war in Viet Nam, because he didn’t wish to be drafted and because he felt intellectually bored by Columbia’s academic life. Columbia SDS steering committee people had held at least one meeting in the Riverside Drive apartment where Cauman lived with his mother.
Cauman’s mother was a tall woman in her late 40s or early 50s who had a deep voice and a strong intellectual interest in philosophy and abstract questions of logic. She was in charge of putting out the Journal of Philosophy and would often raise her voice if she felt frustrated by other people’s inefficiency or demands. She did not like the fact that her son was bearded and more into being a Columbia SDS treasurer or a hippie, than being into academic careerism. Because of Nancy’s recommendation, Cauman’s mother hired me for the minimum wage shipping clerk job.
Nancy’s job was being a clerk-typist and she usually would put on her glasses and type up letters and forms for Cauman’s mother in a serious and efficient way. At the Journal of Philosophy office, Nancy was pleasant, but we rarely talked about more than our academic lives, our political lives or Columbia SDS chapter business. Teddy would often stop by and meet Nancy at 5 p.m. on the days she worked all afternoon, and he remained much friendlier towards me than was Nancy. After six months working at the Journal of Philosophy, I quit because Cauman’s mother was unwilling to give me a small raise.
My classes during Fall 1967 included courses required for my sociology major: “Systematic Sociology Theory;” “Society Transformation Post-1800;” and “Political Sociology.” My other courses were literature courses: “Poetry in the 20th Century I;” and “Shakespeare I.”
The “Systematic Sociology Theory” and “Society Transformation Post-1800” courses were both taught by the Columbia professor who was closest to Columbia SDS people on a personal and ideological level: Professor Dibble.
Dibble appeared to be in his 40s, had a mustache, and was especially fond of Harvey. During Summer 1967, before Harvey enrolled at the University of Wisconsin graduate school, Harvey was able to live in Professor Dibble’s apartment for free, while Dibble was away from New York City for the summer.
As a lecturer in class, Professor Dibble was pretty incomprehensible for many students, was ill at ease and would tend to mumble. But ideologically, Professor Dibble was a hard-line Marxist and staunch anti-imperialist. He also didn’t overestimate the 1960s revolutionary potential of the U.S. industrial working-class. When I mentioned that I might attempt to do factory work and attempt to organize factory workers after I graduated from Columbia, Dibble made the following observation: “I worked in a factory in Philadelphia once. And while the workers would bitch a lot and complain behind the boss’s back a lot, they were not open to radical ideas.”
Chapter 11: Ted Gold and Dave Gilbert: Roommates, 1967 (iii)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (62)
As September 1967 passed by, other Columbia and Barnard leftist students began returning to the Upper West Side from around the U.S. and from summers in Europe—just in time for Freshman Week at Columbia College. There was new school year excitement in the air. Everybody at Columbia and Barnard seemed to be against U.S. military intervention in Viet Nam. Everybody with whom you talked seemed to be either a hippie or some kind of political leftist, left-liberal or anarchist. There was a sense of campus leftist momentum as we planned for Freshman Week.
Walking down Broadway on a summer-like September afternoon, I saw a student wearing sunglasses and sandals, who looked vaguely familiar. It was Mark. He had just come back from Berkeley. Although we exchanged some friendly conversation briefly, and I was amused to bump into him again by accident, I still didn’t feel that personally close to him. He still seemed hard to get to know and too impatient to really listen to you, if you spoke too long to him. I respected Mark as an orator and still thought he was a pleasant, interesting and funny guy. But I felt closer politically and personally to Teddy, Ted and Dave, at this time.
The final planning meeting for Columbia SDS’s countercultural Freshman Week was held in Mark’s apartment. Mark’s living room was crowded with Barnard and Columbia student activists, sitting close together on chairs or sprawled out on the floor. For about three hours that evening, we discussed how we could best “turn on the incoming Columbia freshmen” to New Left radical politics and a New Left activist lifestyle. It was suggested that we set up tables outside official Freshman Week events, leaflet the dormitories and hold dorm lobby meetings. Mark suggested, facetiously, that “We should go up to freshmen and offer them joints.”
We eventually held a mass introductory meeting for freshmen in Earl Hall, which was attended by about 100 freshmen. At this meeting, National SDS Secretary Greg Calvert gave the principal speech. Calvert was dressed in proletarian jeans and a blue denim jacket, and had a mustache and medium-length hair.
“I’m not going to congratulate you for getting admitted into Columbia University. Because it’s just a question of luck that you had the right class background to get into the Ivy League,” Calvert said at the beginning of his speech, in a sarcastic tone, as he stood in front of the auditorium. “The difference between a liberal and a radical is that a liberal doesn’t feel himself personally oppressed. He just fights for the freedom of others. A radical does feel himself personally oppressed. He fights for his own freedom, as well as for the freedom of others. SDS people are white radicals, not white liberals.”
Calvert had been on an academic careerist grad student/teaching assistant track in the early 1960s, and had studied in Paris before becoming radicalized and shifting his orientation from academic study to radical activism. In 1967, he was around 30-years-old and, because of the 1960s New Left’s homophobic nature, he hid his gay sexual orientation. He had apparently had his first gay love affairs in Europe. In his public role as a New Left male leader, however, Calvert seemed no different from any comparable heterosexual male activist, and he adopted no stereotyped gay male mannerisms.
In the W. 94th St. apartment, I started to get closer to Dave. By early October 1967, Ted was pretty much spending most of his nights sleeping with Trude in her W. 108th St. apartment. So it was pretty much just Dave and I who lived in the 94th St. apartment.
I would spend most of the day and evening around Columbia’s campus, attending some classes, browsing in the library and bookstore, attending Columbia SDS meetings, doing SDS political work, hanging out in the Lion’s Den cafeteria of Ferris Booth Hall, constantly talking with other SDS people or bringing SDS politics to lectures and meetings that were being addressed by speakers from off-campus. I also started to work at a part-time job from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, at the Journal of Philosophy office, as a shipping clerk at minimum wage, to help pay my off-campus living expenses.
Dave would spend most of his days and evenings downtown attending grad school at the New School, building an SDS chapter there or attending meetings at the SDS Regional Office. He and other Regional SDS people were both working to build SDS and attempting to build an “adult,” non-student Movement for a Democratic Society [MDS] of ex-student radical professionals who had left the campus scene for meaningless off-campus 9-to-5 jobs. In addition, Dave spent his spare-time studying Marx’s Das Kapital book and writing more New Left theoretical papers on imperialism and U.S. domestic consumption, consumerism and “the new working-class.” In October 1967, Dave had begun to look somewhat like Marx, himself, and had grown a long black beard.
In the late evening, Dave and I would each finally return to the apartment. And most evenings—in-between answering the constantly ringing telephone—Dave and I would usually use his water pipe to constantly get smashed to the music of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club and Revolver albums, Rolling Stones albums and early Dylan albums. Most of Dave’s phone calls came from various Movement women with whom he worked at the SDS Regional Office.
Walking down Broadway on a summer-like September afternoon, I saw a student wearing sunglasses and sandals, who looked vaguely familiar. It was Mark. He had just come back from Berkeley. Although we exchanged some friendly conversation briefly, and I was amused to bump into him again by accident, I still didn’t feel that personally close to him. He still seemed hard to get to know and too impatient to really listen to you, if you spoke too long to him. I respected Mark as an orator and still thought he was a pleasant, interesting and funny guy. But I felt closer politically and personally to Teddy, Ted and Dave, at this time.
The final planning meeting for Columbia SDS’s countercultural Freshman Week was held in Mark’s apartment. Mark’s living room was crowded with Barnard and Columbia student activists, sitting close together on chairs or sprawled out on the floor. For about three hours that evening, we discussed how we could best “turn on the incoming Columbia freshmen” to New Left radical politics and a New Left activist lifestyle. It was suggested that we set up tables outside official Freshman Week events, leaflet the dormitories and hold dorm lobby meetings. Mark suggested, facetiously, that “We should go up to freshmen and offer them joints.”
We eventually held a mass introductory meeting for freshmen in Earl Hall, which was attended by about 100 freshmen. At this meeting, National SDS Secretary Greg Calvert gave the principal speech. Calvert was dressed in proletarian jeans and a blue denim jacket, and had a mustache and medium-length hair.
“I’m not going to congratulate you for getting admitted into Columbia University. Because it’s just a question of luck that you had the right class background to get into the Ivy League,” Calvert said at the beginning of his speech, in a sarcastic tone, as he stood in front of the auditorium. “The difference between a liberal and a radical is that a liberal doesn’t feel himself personally oppressed. He just fights for the freedom of others. A radical does feel himself personally oppressed. He fights for his own freedom, as well as for the freedom of others. SDS people are white radicals, not white liberals.”
Calvert had been on an academic careerist grad student/teaching assistant track in the early 1960s, and had studied in Paris before becoming radicalized and shifting his orientation from academic study to radical activism. In 1967, he was around 30-years-old and, because of the 1960s New Left’s homophobic nature, he hid his gay sexual orientation. He had apparently had his first gay love affairs in Europe. In his public role as a New Left male leader, however, Calvert seemed no different from any comparable heterosexual male activist, and he adopted no stereotyped gay male mannerisms.
In the W. 94th St. apartment, I started to get closer to Dave. By early October 1967, Ted was pretty much spending most of his nights sleeping with Trude in her W. 108th St. apartment. So it was pretty much just Dave and I who lived in the 94th St. apartment.
I would spend most of the day and evening around Columbia’s campus, attending some classes, browsing in the library and bookstore, attending Columbia SDS meetings, doing SDS political work, hanging out in the Lion’s Den cafeteria of Ferris Booth Hall, constantly talking with other SDS people or bringing SDS politics to lectures and meetings that were being addressed by speakers from off-campus. I also started to work at a part-time job from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, at the Journal of Philosophy office, as a shipping clerk at minimum wage, to help pay my off-campus living expenses.
Dave would spend most of his days and evenings downtown attending grad school at the New School, building an SDS chapter there or attending meetings at the SDS Regional Office. He and other Regional SDS people were both working to build SDS and attempting to build an “adult,” non-student Movement for a Democratic Society [MDS] of ex-student radical professionals who had left the campus scene for meaningless off-campus 9-to-5 jobs. In addition, Dave spent his spare-time studying Marx’s Das Kapital book and writing more New Left theoretical papers on imperialism and U.S. domestic consumption, consumerism and “the new working-class.” In October 1967, Dave had begun to look somewhat like Marx, himself, and had grown a long black beard.
In the late evening, Dave and I would each finally return to the apartment. And most evenings—in-between answering the constantly ringing telephone—Dave and I would usually use his water pipe to constantly get smashed to the music of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club and Revolver albums, Rolling Stones albums and early Dylan albums. Most of Dave’s phone calls came from various Movement women with whom he worked at the SDS Regional Office.
Chapter 11: Ted Gold and Dave Gilbert: Roommates, 1967 (ii)-Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories (61)
A few days later, I also helped Dave move his stuff from an apartment on W. 110th St., between Amsterdam and Broadway, which he had sublet for the summer. I arrived in the afternoon. We talked for a few hours, while we waited for another friend of Dave to drop off the car and U-haul in which we were going to move his stuff.
As Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde album played on a stereo, Dave told me more about his past life, and discussed his current study of Das Kapital with me. He also gave his interpretation of Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization to me at this time. After talking about the Civil Rights Movement’s continued shift towards Black revolutionary nationalism, Dave mentioned that he used to have intense discussions with a Black woman activist in Harlem during the period when “we were all naïve about the political implications of inter-racial love affairs.”
A few moments later, Dave sang along with the chorus of Dylan’s "Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again" song, where Dylan moans: “Oh, Mama! Can this really be the end?”
“Do you hear that pain, Bob? Dylan’s expressing the pain that you get when you realize that no matter where you go geographically under capitalism, you’re still going to end up feeling the same intense alienation and loneliness that the System produces everywhere,” Dave explained.
Dave, like everyone else around Columbia SDS, liked to spend time analyzing Dylan’s lyrics and philosophical shifts. Dave seemed to empathize more with Dylan’s shift away from his earlier, more politically radical-oriented albums than Ted did.
After the car and U-haul arrived, I helped lift chairs, a desk, drawers, boxes of books and a mattress from the apartment to the elevator, and then into the U-haul. When we had finished moving Dave’s furniture and boxes of books to our new apartment, we returned to the 110th St. apartment in the evening, where we found many people high, and dancing, at some kind of hip left party. I didn’t know any other people at this party, because most of the hip left people there were a few years out of college and not part of the Columbia SDS scene.
Dave introduced me to another New York SDS Regional Office activist at this party, named Joe, who Dave felt was “a hard worker and a dedicated guy.” Joe was blind in one eye and had a speech impediment, but he didn’t let his poor vision and speech impediment stop him from doing more than his share of the SDS Regional Office shitwork. Unlike most Movement activists, Joe lived with his parents.
A final Summer 1967 Columbia SDS steering committee meeting was held one afternoon in September at the Schneiders’ apartment. Ted and Trude, Teddy and Nancy, the Schneiders, Al and I were there. And, for the first time, a Columbia College student named Robby appeared at a summer steering committee meeting. During his 1966-67 freshman year, Robby had chosen not to be that politically active in Columbia SDS circles.
I had first met Robby in a parking lot that we used as a stickball field—inside the Beech Hills development in which I lived—during the 1950s; and he was, thus, an old childhood acquaintance. Robby’s parents were Old Left professionals. After we confronted the Marine recruiters in April 1967, Robby seemed to become less frivolous in his attitude towards life and more interested in radical New Left politics than in Columbia University academic life, although he had still remained outside the SDS steering committee’s inner circle discussion group.
As Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde album played on a stereo, Dave told me more about his past life, and discussed his current study of Das Kapital with me. He also gave his interpretation of Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization to me at this time. After talking about the Civil Rights Movement’s continued shift towards Black revolutionary nationalism, Dave mentioned that he used to have intense discussions with a Black woman activist in Harlem during the period when “we were all naïve about the political implications of inter-racial love affairs.”
A few moments later, Dave sang along with the chorus of Dylan’s "Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again" song, where Dylan moans: “Oh, Mama! Can this really be the end?”
“Do you hear that pain, Bob? Dylan’s expressing the pain that you get when you realize that no matter where you go geographically under capitalism, you’re still going to end up feeling the same intense alienation and loneliness that the System produces everywhere,” Dave explained.
Dave, like everyone else around Columbia SDS, liked to spend time analyzing Dylan’s lyrics and philosophical shifts. Dave seemed to empathize more with Dylan’s shift away from his earlier, more politically radical-oriented albums than Ted did.
After the car and U-haul arrived, I helped lift chairs, a desk, drawers, boxes of books and a mattress from the apartment to the elevator, and then into the U-haul. When we had finished moving Dave’s furniture and boxes of books to our new apartment, we returned to the 110th St. apartment in the evening, where we found many people high, and dancing, at some kind of hip left party. I didn’t know any other people at this party, because most of the hip left people there were a few years out of college and not part of the Columbia SDS scene.
Dave introduced me to another New York SDS Regional Office activist at this party, named Joe, who Dave felt was “a hard worker and a dedicated guy.” Joe was blind in one eye and had a speech impediment, but he didn’t let his poor vision and speech impediment stop him from doing more than his share of the SDS Regional Office shitwork. Unlike most Movement activists, Joe lived with his parents.
A final Summer 1967 Columbia SDS steering committee meeting was held one afternoon in September at the Schneiders’ apartment. Ted and Trude, Teddy and Nancy, the Schneiders, Al and I were there. And, for the first time, a Columbia College student named Robby appeared at a summer steering committee meeting. During his 1966-67 freshman year, Robby had chosen not to be that politically active in Columbia SDS circles.
I had first met Robby in a parking lot that we used as a stickball field—inside the Beech Hills development in which I lived—during the 1950s; and he was, thus, an old childhood acquaintance. Robby’s parents were Old Left professionals. After we confronted the Marine recruiters in April 1967, Robby seemed to become less frivolous in his attitude towards life and more interested in radical New Left politics than in Columbia University academic life, although he had still remained outside the SDS steering committee’s inner circle discussion group.
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