Make War, Not Peace

One of the strengths of last October's Moratorium Day observances was the diversity of the protesters: war veterans, businessmen, clergymen and housewives alongside gentle, earnest students and older radicals. That was not true last week for the third round of Moratorium observances. In too many cities across the nation, the day belonged to a new breed of hard-eyed youth--Brownshirts of radicalism drawn from the streets, many of only high-school age. The keynote was sounded by the Chicago Seven's Tom Hayden, who told a San Fernando Valley State College audience: "We turned out over a million people for the Moratorium last fall, and the Establishment's response was to congratulate us because there was no violence. That wasn't the goal. The goal was to end the war. Demonstrations will not stay peaceful if the war in Viet Nam doesn't end."

A pretty radical named Stella Richardson put it more succinctly to her audience in San Francisco: "You don't do it by hollering peace. You got to pick up the gun." Using the Moratorium for their own ends, radical gangs with no seeming goal beyond closing down the University of California at Berkeley touched off the most violent, anarchistic and ugly riots in the long riot history of the school. Mobs of up to 1,000 roamed the campus, throwing rocks through windows, battling police, attacking the administration and ROTC buildings. Though many university students joined in, the field tacticians of the violence were mostly young street toughs carrying lead pipes and wearing chains, and high school students.

The mood was ugly in New York City too (see box). A rally at Bryant Park, where some 20,000 New Yorkers had gathered peacefully, was disrupted by 100 militants. A mob of white Black Panther sympathizers rampaged through Columbia University, breaking windows and throwing stink bombs.

The worst violence erupted in Cambridge, Mass., where a night of looting, burning (a savings bank) and smashing caused 200 injuries and $500,000 in damage to the Harvard Square area. As elsewhere, student radicals were joined by street gangs for the "trashing." There were 40 arrests. In Washington, D.C., there was little violence but much ugly rhetoric. Said David Otto, 23, a former Peace Corpsman who heads the capital's Moratorium Committee, "Some came in the name of revolution, and there was nothing anyone could do about them. They try to take over everything. The police, the unions, the Government workers--they're against them all. What they want, I think, is a basic end to pacifism."

To Kevin Moran, 22, an honors student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the violence last February that resulted in the burning of the Isla Vista branch of the Bank of America was senseless and unnecessary. When an angry mob of radicals tried once more to fire the bank, Kevin and a small group of moderate students took their stand. After a night of attacks repelled by 250 police using tear gas, the students, in the hope of avoiding bloodshed, asked the police to stay out of the area and let them put down the radicals and defend the bank. The student defenders succeeded, after numerous fistfights with the attackers. But in the melee, Kevin Moran was killed by a sniper's bullet.

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