Demonstrations, peaceful and anarchic, planned and spontaneous, continue to reflect the mood of the times locally and across the nation. In this area, peace marchers paid their respects to the Dow Chemical Corporation’s NAPALM facility in Midland; anti-war and pro-war voices were raised at Campus Martius; and bricks were thrown at the TMU’s in the ghetto.
The day at Midland was calm. But that demonstration, in the perspective of a continuing series of anti-NAPALM protests in all parts of the nation, points up growing dissatisfaction with the wanton cruelty of the Pentagon War Machine. The Washington revival of the Spanish Civil War grows more unpopular each day.
Detroit Police, faced with their first recent encounter with the brick as a mode of expression, acted quickly and professionally to prevent the spread of violence.
The incident, as with so many in other cities, was precipitated by a routine arrest.
At Campus Martius, the ultra-right wing red-baiters, of Donald Lobsinger’s BREAKTHROUGH matched fanaticism with Jerry Younkins and the infantile protest-niks of the League of Revolutionary Poets. The net result of this exercise in idiocy was the total disruption of a peaceful, and to a point successful demonstration, organized by the Ad Hoc Committee for the August Days of Protest; and the arrest of more than a dozen Ad Hoc demonstrators! Why is it that the excesses of the more irresponsible hues of the political spectrum, left and right, most often land the members of OTHER, more conscientious groups in jail? BREAKTHROUGH, in particular, has the knack of turning the most peaceful and well organized demonstrations of the left to violence.
Related
See Fifth Estate’s Vietnam Resource Page.