Librury
needs space
Pet&
IVo lot D bu;ld;ng: There will be no administration building on lot D. Instead, the parking lot site, which is adjacent to the arts library, will be saved for a necessary library expansion expected about 1978. Interim administration president Howard Petch said friday the administration building will probably go on the previously planned site north of the phys-ed building adjacent to Columbia street. Petch only learned of the arts libr?ry building’s future inadequacy two weeks ago. His staff assistant Ken Swanton and academicservices director Pat Robertson handed him a report on library space projections just before the beginning of the open meeting called to hear the architect’s proposal for an administration building on the lot D site. However, Petch said nothing
Renison tippler Mary Clark does her bit to help Camp Columbia reach financial solvency. Benefit pub nites have grossed $1000 so far and the group hopes to be clear by july 14 when the north campus camp opens. Help Mary again july 24.
friday
4 july 1969
about the library’s needs at the meeting, and the faculty and students present voted overwhelmingly to oppose an administration building, or any other building, on the site. Petch said friday the problem of final library capacity had come up about three years agq, before he came to Waterloo, but the subject was dropped. Interim academic vicepresident Jay Minas, who was philosophy department chairman three years ago, explained the situation. “At that time there was no need to make a definite commitment. There was no unanimity on concepts of library-whether there should be study space- or a ciosedstack system, whether library facilities should be decentralized.” Minas personally prefers a system of undergraduate reading
IO:9
rooms and specialized collections for upper-year and graduate students. When the humanities building was in planning, he proposed a large undergrad reading room for humanities students in years one and two. This proposal was defeated in favor of keeping all arts library facilities in one area. “Dr. Petch is interested in getting substantive studies going now on the problem, but no hard decision is needed for six months,” said Minas. At the meeting two weeks ago, the architect maintained that he only wanted to see a building on the lot D site for esthetic reasons. Most present opposed a building on the site because it was an administration building that was under consideration. Speakers suggested such uses as a fine arts building or another arts lecture building.
University
of WaterIoo,
Waterloo,
Ontario
THE
overenro/ment doesn’t worry Minus
Arts
There will be 400-500 more students enrol in arts in September than was planned for during the but only about 200 of winter, these will be in regular arts programs. Administration treasurer Bruce Gellatly told the board of governors two weeks ago arts would overenrol by 500 to provide a better budget base. Then-arts dean, now interim academic vicepresident, Jay Minas views it differently. He said Wednesday he expects 50-60 . who might normally register in arts to go into the integrated studies program and another 150-200 will go into environmental-studies programs. In i-egular arts programs, Minas feels he needs more than the originally-planned-for 675 because The university’s of budgeting.
’
operating budget comes from tuition and provincial grants for the number of students that actually register. As arts dean, Minas has already planned large commitments to library and new faculty, and if insufficient students register, these developments will have to be cut back. Even with 825-900 students in regular arts, Minas says there will be, a “substantial enrichment.” Minas feels there will be no large lower-year courses that do not break down at some point into discussion groups, and a minimum of one course for freshmen will be in a small class. Space will not be a problem either, because the humanities building will be finished on schedule-for September.
Housing office revampd but still admin-controlled The off-campus housing and foreign student office has been completely reorganized According to the administration’s Gazette the reorganization is in line with recommendations contained in the student affairs review committee report.
Freshmen now read Chevron The Chevron begins this week to mail copies to all freshmen who have been admitted to the University of Waterloo. The mailing list begins this week with over 2500 admitted and will increase as that number reaches 3000 and over. New admission procedures and the abolition of grade 13 departmental exams have speeded the admissions procedures. Costs for mailing Chevrons to freshmen are being shared with the orientation committee. Also this week, the Chevron adds summer school students at both Waterloo universities to its circulationAbout 500 copies will be available on the Waterloo Lutheran campus fridays until the Chevron ceases regular summer publication july 25.
But not everyone agrees. In the words of one member of the committee, history prof Leo Johnson, “Since Dr. Petch is reorganizing housing administration, it’s a pity he has not seen fit to implement the main recommendation of the affairs committee.” In a report submitted to Petch in early march of this year, the committee suggested both on and off-campus housing be coordinated under a residence council, consisting of a student majority. The recommendation was m.ade after detailed study of the problem and was unanimously endorsed by the joint student-faculty-administration committee. Petch has placed offcampus housing under the direction of Al Woodcock in the residence administration office. Former coordinator of that department, Edith Beausoleil remains as foreign student advisor. It is anticipated the ‘graduate student union will be relieving Beausoleil of some of her duties soon, with planned foreign student programs. Dean of grad studies George Cross will also be working with the foreign students in this capacity.
Some people think they should be kicked out. Others, the campus center board included, say they have as much right as anyone to be there. The people in question are local high school students, who have found the campus center a relaxed place to float around in.
Prophylactics, concern
teenyboppers
campus
A decision to instal prophylactic vending machines in the campus center cannot be made by the campus center board, board member and operations vicepresident Al Adlington said at the board’s june 26 meeting. Leo Johnson, History prof board chairman, read a letter from a Toronto distributing firm requesting permission to instal the machines in the building. Some board members were obviously in favor. Adlington, however, took the letter from Johnson’s hand, saying he would “take care of it.” He cited an instance last -year when Village warden Ron Eydt had requisitioned such vending machines for installation in the Village. Then-administration pres-
center
ident Gerry Hagey denied Eydt’s request. Tim Jones, speaking for EngSOC A, opened a discussion on use of the campus center by non-university persons. He was concerned about the state of cleanup and the number of high school students in the campus center. The board felt it would be unfair to exclude some non-university persons when others who might be considered more desirable were welcome. The members felt, however, that ways must be found to get students to pick up their own trash and encourage others to do the same. The board struck a committee, composed of one student from each faculty and school, to investigate cleanup and the possibility of conducting a campaign to im-
board prove ding.
the appearance
of the buil-
In other business, the board approved an allocation of $5000 for a sound system. This, together with the amount alloted to replace pub furnishings, will deplete the original campus center furnishings budget. The barbershop, to be located in the basement opposite the bank, is expected to be in operation by September registration, with one fulltime and one parttime barber. The university’s anc i 11 a r y-enterprises committee will grant a loan for set-up, as well as administer profits. The board also agreed that an investigation should be made into all possible aspects of improving service or renovating the coffeeshop area.
. d
I
Fred Pizza joins co-op program \’ I AI STUDENT
REPRESENTATIVE
Cr)AAAAITTsFF
i
ON
SCHOLARSHIPS
APPLY IN WRITING,
STATING
.BY, F”Rl \ DAY, JUsLY ,i 1 / .
AND
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m
QUALIFI’CATIONS,
’.
-._ _
TO: PRESIDENT FErjERATlON .-
Pizza Palace may become an were scarce, and Fred wants’ to official cooperative program emcontinue using cooperative studployer. Fred Pizza, alias Fred ents. The job scarcity is expected Spaghetti, who runs the Waterloo to continue. Pizza Palace, said hi! is planning Fred is undecided as yet wheto take co-op students on a reguther he will run for a seat on the lar basis. industrial advisory council, which .The co-op program aims to represents industry’s point-offind meaningful work-term jobs. view to the administration. Fred for students in engineering, mathematics, phys-ed, ‘applied _ feels they have a lot to learn about free enterprise and the value science and architecture. In the of co-op students. . last year, difficulties in the economy have forced several Anyone wishing to contact Fred students to seek alternate employor try some of his famous pizza ment. or spaghetti, is invited to call Pizza -Palac,e -employed two co744-4446 or 7444447 during office op architects last terra? when jobs hours: llam to 2am. I
FOR T.HE SENATE.
---r
OF STUDENTS
UNIVERSITY ,OF _ WATERLOO
I
Japqnese
Environmental
- _
irrcrioh
dW”S
SHOP
Basement
Campus
--* If this night is successful, it will be followed by presentations by other foreign student
groups.
. The program is part of the SCM . summer project international which is studying problems of foreign students in Canada and interaction .between Canadian and foreign students.
posts confirmed the tendency in recent years for architects and planners to ’ work independently of engineers.
Approximately 300 students will be attending classes in the newlyformed environmental studies division. With executive appointments confirmed, the division officially began operations tuesday; Geography prof Leonard Gert-‘ ler is director .of the school of urban and regional planning, and prof Tore Bjornstad is director of the school of architecture. A chairman for the department of man-environment studies and a dean for the division’ have not yet been appointed. The new division, grew out of
New
Centre
Communication Services ltd., in coYoperation with the . Federation of Students, is presenting EFFICIENT c READING classes at the Univ.ersity of Waterloo this I a summer. This course is being presented at several Canadian. Universities and, on the average, participants ‘have _.tripled their original reading rate, without any loss in’ comprehension. The courses consist of ten 1 l/2 hour lectures. The fee is $37.00 jincludes all books .and materials). The classes . will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays for five consecutive. weeks commencing July 8 and conclrrding August 7, -There are three-separate times to choose from. class 1 +I:00 .p:m. on Tues. and Thur. h. class ,.2-&08p.m. on Tues. and Thurclass 3-7:00 p.m. on Tues. and Thur. , , .All classes will be held in Room 150 of the Physics Bldg. Registration-is ape-n to, everyone. _
In addition to offering undergraduate and graduate programs in- the division, the department will-also maintain its honors and general programs in the arts faculty ’ Interim academic vicepresident Jay Minas twill serve as chairman of the exec committee and prof Jack Ellis as member at large until a permanent dean is appointed.
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Drawbridge coffeehouse will present a Japanese culture theme this saturday night.- ! . The special feature will be a performance on the koto (traditional Japanese stringed musical instrument). Films, one on living art in Japan and another on Zen-Buddhism, will be shown. Japanese students will be speaking.and some discussion should be generated..
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Hire profs for competence,. not nuthxdity, says CAUT OTTAWA (GINS)-Competence should be the sole criterion for appointment of university faculty members, the Canadian Association of University Teachers has said. Entering the current controversy on the “Americanization” of Canadian universities, the association said a professor’s competence must be considered in the broad sense of his capacity to carry out the functions for which he has been engaged, regardless of his national origin.
4-H club member and pastpresident of the University’s junior farmers club, Jim Keron plants the spring crop (of corn, that is) in the fertile fields o.f Lobban @and.
. Summer
weekend
Booze,
bands
“It looks like fun.” That seems to be the general impression of summer weekend 1969. Many of the events have . never been tried, but a good turnout is expected. Tonight’s concert was to be held on the Village roof with beer flowing through the crowd. Almost everything was arranged when PP and P decided to fix leaks in the roof. It’s a four-week job and they want it done by September, so they’re rushing to get - at it right away. The new location is on the grass near food services. The acts and early arrivals will be on the west patio, with the rain location the H-Ig;y111.
It took until quite recently to get confirmation that the Elmira express will come equipped with the only baggage car in Canada capable of carrying a band. At the same time, CN had to change
Campus
presents
population
Interim administration president Howard Petch is doing his part to put a limit on student population on the south campus. Friday, Petch ‘said the eventual limit on south campus population would be “14,000 gross, or 11,000 net.” In non-commodity terms, that means a total of 14,000’ students registered including off-term co-opers, or 11,000 the most on campus at any one time. This includes using as campus a small part of the as-yet undev-
& boats
the start time from 2 pm to 3:30 because of traffic problems on the main line. ,However, time to hit Elmira’s pubs has been increased to an hour and a half. There were only *two problems with the boat race, both of them electric fences strung across the river. Now at least the power will be off. Saturday’s big semi-INformal survived a band change, and will now feature the 13 piece M-J Ensemble. A buffet meal will be included in the admission price and Ian, Oliver and Nora will fill in during band breaks. Other weekend events include tricycle races, a motorcycle hare-and-hound rally, a baseball tournament 7 a pub thursday night at the dance, and a quicky warm-up pub from 2 pm Saturday until the train leaves. All tickets, are available in the federation office, as well as all entry forms.
limit
,Where familiarity with things Canadian is important, such as in teaching Canadian history, government or literature, competence requires Canadian knowledge. Such knowledge is not confined to Canadian citizens, the association noted. “From this viewpoint, the chairman of a department . . . who is unsympathetic or indifferent to the development of Canadian studies is clearly incompetent regardless of his academic qualifications, his citizenship, or national origin,” CAUT continued. The association said it is opposed to any system of quotas or formal regulations requiring that some fixed proportion of faculty or new appointees be Canadian citizens or which would reduce or restrict the status or rights of non-Canadian faculty members. It added, however, that it is concerned with the problem of
set
eloped 750-acre north campus. The fringe along Columbia street will be used for optometry and environmental studies. In stating a limit, Petch will be trying to do something that has seemed impossible in the past, as open quadrangles and parking lots have been eaten up by buildings. Years ago, the absolute, final south campus population was to be 7500 students. Then it became 10,000, soon to be followed by 12,000.
Narcs don’t like cameras. They hide when they see you. Keep this pie with you. There may not be more.
finding jobs for gradyates of Canadian universities. At present, some appointments are made on the-basis of personal contacts “which in many cases operate on international rather than on east-west trans-Canada lines.” The association has urged various groups such as the university presidents, graduate deans and learned societies to make known to Canadian students and faculty any openings available at Canadian universities. “We are confident that Canadians’ given the opportunity to apply, can compete successfully with applicants from anywhere
in the said.
world,”
the
association
It also urged co-operation of academic, professional and government agencies in the preparpublication and annual ation, revision of 5 to lo-year projections of available jobs and graduate degrees granted in each academic discipline at Canadian universities. This would allow a better opportunity for students to plan future careers and for universities to encourage Canadian talents in areas of projected needs through the development of adequate graduate programs in such areas.
Unstructured education awaits IS. students While most of Waterloo’s potential freshmen are busy deciding on their major fields of study and choosing their elective courses, a few are looking forward to joining the first unstructured educational program at this university. Integrated studies, originally conceived by former politicalscience prof Donald Gordon, has been worked on by a student-faculty committee over the past eight months and has received senate approval. The integrated studies unit, as it will be called, was originally to be a college of the university, “designed to foster and facilitate integrated interdisciplinary approaches to higher education, to provide alternative ways of acquiring the substance of higher education and to incorporate a high degree of shared authority and responsibility among participating students and faculty,” the Gordon brief said. Students who opts for the I.S. unit will work with faculty in determining curriculum and program requirements. Unlike other students, they will not enrol in regular classes unless they want to, and they will not take regular examinations. Instead the members of the program will establish their own evaluation procedures and will have a voice in the appointment of resource personnel. However, some potential I.S. students and some members of the committee which studied the idea are complaining that the cart has been put before the horse. Three resource people have been employed already, several manths before the first group of stu-
dents sit down to create own learning situation.
their
The three are: Ken Rowe, a Waterloo math prof; Alice Koller, a PhD in philosophy who is a writer and has worked on logic systems for U.S. defence projects; and John Gray, a Canadian playwright and one-time editor of Maclean’s magazine. About three more resource people will be hired. There are expected to be about 60-75 students in the unit. There are, however, no predetermined admissions criteria. A student will be accepted into I.S. on the basis of a personal interview and possibly a written essay. After a period of study over several years, a student may petition for a degree which may be called bachelor of integated studies. Associate arts dean Jack Gray who was chairman of. the study committee is excited about the idea. “The concept sounds revolutionary until you realize this was the original concept of the university-a universe of learning in which the students and their teachers evolved a curriculum together, in an unstructured environment. “Students had a voice in the selection of their teachers and their readiness to be granted a degree was not determined by written exams but by the conviction of their professors that they were mature enough and educated enough to leave the university,” he -=? said. “The older the world gets,” Gray said, “the more it begins to return to the insights it gathered in its youth.”
Heb for all home hardware needs
friday
4 july
1969 (10:9)
103
3
Mills - Sylvia Syms
Hail Scrawdyke. j Hail scrawdyke!-members of the Dynamic Erection Party salute their leader and mentar portrayed by Paul-Emile Frappier in a scene from Little Malcolm and his struggle against the eunuchs which played july 1, 2 & 3 in the Arts theater. .
/I4TH&FINALWEEK -_ l .. . . ..oo~o~***@*Qo....
m
EVENINGS MATINEES &SUNDAY )
at 830 p.m. 4ATURDAY at 2 pm
Mu/co/m
gets his com.e-upin’s
“I’ve got to act...” declares .the moppy-haired, squinty-eyed Scrawdyke, hoping his volume and gesticulations will conceal the shyness and lack of “You’re a case,” says Wick Blagden, “of a man commitment he is secretly ashamed of. “. . .actwritten by a book.” NOW.” e And in the fantasy pages of this book, Wick and * * * all the unbelievably possible neurotics in David It is indeed a shame this play could not have been Halliwell’s “Little Malcolm” strut and fret as each’ presented to the larger audience that spring term manacts out the role set for him by his imaginawould have brought. For the acting was genuinely tion. .> * The tragiceentreof the play, Malcolm Scrawdyke’ superb on all levels and at times was brilliantexecution of the ‘dynamic’ script. ’ a bluztering ‘student dismissed for misdemeanors from a London art school-becomes a moving and One such incident belongs to Ian Gaskell (Nipple), whose ten-minute monologue acting out an ” pathetic psbchotic if not a likely revolutionary , imaginary sexual experience with a “negro womthrough the incisive and searing eyes of veteran uni” with “thick, fleshy lips and ‘uge, ‘eavin’ versity actor Paul Frappier. c beasts” was a superlative effort of timing and Then again, the Dynamic Erection Party Scrawemotion. dyke conceives to wreak revenge upon a world which Nick Rees as Wick also deserves special mention has only persecuted himis never intended to exist as _ in the portrayal of a mousy little chap who spends a satire of revolutionary zeal. It is instead the manihalf his time ashamedly excusing the zealous allegfestation of Scrawdyke’s reaction Bgainst the emiance he continues to give Scrawdyke. >asculation he fears through his inability to sucDavid Ditner as tall, sullen- and moody Irwin, and cessfully approach the female he loves-Ann Gedge. Pat Connor who appears in one, intense scene as 1 The whole play progresses as a series of fantasy Scrawdyke’s nemesis Ann Gedge both maintained climaxes in the intercourse%crawdyke conjures fine portrayals. up to replace the love he’is incapable of attempting, The technical arrangement in the cutting of recbut which he wtints so desperately. ords and tapes to assist the actors in’ the many The formation of the-party; the hilarious plan to blackmail Allard, the school principal who. ousted scenes when their fantasy plans of revenge are acted out was almost flawless, as was Johanna Scrawdyke, and the elaborate acting-out of his . ._ Faulk’s detailed and convincing prop work. abduction in Scrawdyke’s attic room; the sublimaSo we-were givenan extremely funny and poigtion of personal frustration in the ostracism and nant play augmented by an excellent cast with the persecution of one party member fantasized as a best of imaginative stage and technical direction traitor to the cause, .and ultimately the physical by Alec Cooper and director Paul Mills: attack upon Ann, the catalyst of Scrawdyke’s neur: Would that some of the regular term offeringsosis all illustrate the pathetic attempts by Scrawproduced on much larger budgets and with much dyke to infuse an -existentially stagnant life with more fanfare-were nearly as good. meaning and action. 1 I by Alex Smith Chevron staff
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OF THE BEST FltM
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104 the Chevron
ENTERTAINMENT IN THE PUB ON THE WEEKEND
’ --.
Ah, sweet - registration, may I never see your stifled face again. Monday’s summer-school farce at Seagram gym can only be a promise of better things to come. Let us pray John Bonesteel who’s in charge of registration among other things, has compiled sufficient evidence to warrant more than three fee-collectors from the business office, and hopefully a few new ID cameras. He feels the $6,000 price tag on the cameras will be prohibitive, but if one were to compute the enormous number of man-hours \ wasted at every registration .waiting for one camera to take several thousand pictures, then multiplied that figure by an appropriate representation of the dollar value of one hour at university, I’m sure the cost of a camera would be justified in about two registration days. Hopefully, the cameras last a few years. These two weren’t the only areas of confusion, however. Upon entry into the ring, we were handed the provevbial docket with two forms in it. Presumably we were to fill out parts of these forms while sitting somewhere (where? ), but no one seemed sure what to do. Then we went to get our course approved ; that is you found someone without a docket (they’re in charge). Actually you don’t get your course approved, you get your name put on the class list. Next you’re supposed to pay. But before you do, some official is supposed to look and compute and say “two courses at $100 is $200 plus $6 incidentals makes $206. ” These people were there -1 saw two of them. Then some one of the three fee collectors would write $206 in about 12 places just to make sure she got it right, and take the money. Next was the ID line which was three lines going towards, away and towards the camera-all in a three-foot aisle. Even those of us with cards n.eeding a five-second validation patiently stood in this line for an hour or so, at least until we discovered one of the secretarys was there for validation only and was almost bored to death. Last was the final checkout. That was easy. Throughout the gym were various directional signs (one) and reference point signs (two). Unfortunately these were at chest level at the main congestion areas. Eventually, everyone had to pass “checkpoint one”. . What the hell “checkpoint one” was I’ll never know. It appeared to be the place where St. Jerome’s College and Uniwat students were to merge, yield, switch lines, pay, talk and swear. Come to thing of it one never knew he was at “checkpoint one” until he’d been there a while. And nothing was checked there, not even your watch. * * *
Considering the large number of nuns who registered, how many have you ever seen in swimming? or weight lifting? or squashing? No one was present from the jocks to justify this fee although they were asked to send an ambassador early in the morning. All going well, registration will kill itself this fall. People, that is PEOPLE, will not be herded around wasting time like they were waiting to get into the Czeckoslovakia pavilion.
* * * Some radicals, you know the ones who want to destroy and burn and never offer anything like a viable alternative, were at registration too. They were placing gold and red and bIue stars on the fee statements of those who managed to reach the final checkout. Some people really accepted the things as part of the normal mickey-mouse procedure. Others were incredulous enough to laugh, perhaps as a signal that the world was still going around. Few, very few, people thought it was a prank. Notwithstanding the ordeal, the summer-school people turned out in droves for their 8 : 30 classes keen, eager and raring to go. The phenonoma, known in academic circles as first-week follies, beginners bounce, the freshman farce and other complimentary terms should subside by wednesday, the day of the first midterms.
The only decent thing they’ve done with registration is take down the no-smoking signs. The $6 incidental fee irked several people. $1.50 went to campus health which keeps health-services open. $4.50 went to the athletics people to keep their building closed. It will close at the end of the month, you know, so ‘they can try to re-construct it again. Did it ever occur to those assessing $4.50 that taking two courses in six weeks leaves very little time for squash? friday
4 july
7969 (70:9)
705
5
At the local
cinema
Oliver
theme
by Rich Degrass Chevron
staff
Charles
Dickens’ book Oliver showed the immorality of the class distinctions and the plight of the people in the waterfront slums of Victorian England. The movie adaptation Oliver ignores that theme to concentrate on the story of boy-makes-good around which Dickens’ theme revolves. The producer and director have made character adaptations that have changed completely the significance of the story. They have sublimated the filth, poverty and starvation of the people in Dickens’ book to their new theme of love and happinesS for those who are lucky. The twisting of the characters to fit the simpler theme is important to the story. It fits to have Oliver played as a very adorable young boy and his companion, Dodger, as a precocious imp who is _lovingly immoral. Both Mark Lester and Jack Wild play their parts well and both have singing talents that complement their acting expressiveness. The most important twist in characters is the changing of
Twistthat
Apartheid
twisted
Fagin’ from Dickens’ totally greedy trickster into a lovable pld shyster who is trying to help the lads to become more sophisticated thieves. ’ This makes the boys’ thievery acceptable to the audience because it removes the element of reality from their activities. Any time part of Dickens’ theme broke through it was a member of the supporting cast who brought it to light. Musically the style of large production numbers interspersed with soft ballads creates a great contrast and an unwelcome one. The show would have been greatly helped if most of the production number songs were changed into singles or duets which would clarify whatevermessage they wished to import. Since I disagree with the message of love and happiness solving all problems there seems to be some inconsistency between Dickens’ theme of suffering and this theme of how to answer that suffering. This theme says nothing about solving the problems it just tells people to submit to them-to sing one’s hunger away.
Si, Castro No
Let me make clear at the outset that our economic relations with other countries should not and do not imply approval or disapproval of their forms of government or of their policies . . . We do not believe that economic quarantine or isolation would lead the south African government to abandon apartheid. -deputy the
assistant
house
from
secretary
African
south
affairs
of
state
Julius
subcommittee
Katz,
why
the
15
U.S.
april,
still
telling
buys
sugar
Africa.
HAVANA ( AP)-Eight Roman Catholic bishops have called for a lifting of the economic boycott of Cuba, which is fostered by the United States. The appeal was made in a four-page pastoral letter... (which) refers to the boycott as an ‘economic blockade’. The bishops said that Cuba’s economic isolation is creating grave difficulties “that weigh principally on our workers of city and field, upon our housewives, upon our growing children, upon our sick, upon so many families affected by separation from loved ones.. . ” --New
York
Times,
Ontario Phone
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In
a true story about the land of the free and the home of the brave, by Art Goldberg and Gene Marine, from Ramparts, july 1969
THE SCENE: San Francisco. Its climate is moderate; tempers do not flare; passions are not abraded by the heat. It is renowned for an easy-going, live-and-let-liire attitude: It prides itseflon its cultural diversity.
Chapter
M
I.
.
O’BRIEN WASRETURNING with some friends <from a Sunday outing at Lake Berryessa. The double date had not gone well: O’Brien had be&n drinking and was in an unpleasant mood. At one point, he made his date get out of the car with him and told her to “be a little more affectionate” or walk home. She calmed him down a little, though, and they got back into the car. On the way across the San FranciscoOakland Bay Bridge, he suddenly brandished a 38 revolver. After a minute he put the gun away, and a few minutes later they were at Brush Place. You’d have to be a pretty determined San Franciscan to know where Brush -Place is. About two and a half blocks from the ugly new Hall of Justice, there’s a little dead-end alley off Folsom Street called Hallam Street. Off that alley there’s an even smaller alley, also a dead end. That’s Brush Place. O’Brien kept his boat in one of ‘the garages in Brush Place that are rented out for that purpose. Carl Hawkins, a mild-mannered black streetcar motorman, seems to have boat trailer with scraped O’Brien’s his car. Hawkins immediately stopped and got out. This is how all the witnesses who were not police described what happened next: One thing quickly led to another. O’Brien yellkd at Hawkins, “If you scrape ICHAEL
my-car, I’ll shoot you! ” People in the neighborhood, many of them black, came out or looked out their windows to see what was happening. Suddenly O’Brien pulled out his .38 and shouted, “Get your heads back in, niggers, or 1’11 kill all of you. I’ll blow your heads off.” Hawkins wife went inside to phone the police ; Mike’s companion, Willis Garriot’t, went out toward Folsom Street on the same errand. As Garriott returned with Special Patrol Officer Raymond Adkins (a private policeman, but one with a uniform and a gun), there was the sound of a shot and confusion in the street; O’Brien had three’ black men at gunpoint, their hands against the wall at the end of the alley. O’Brien was getting nastier by the minute; according to witnesses, he said, “I want to kill a nigger-I want to kill a nigger so goddamned bad I can taste it! ” A black truck driver and neighbor of Hawkins, George Baskett-five inches shorterr than O’Brien and. 75 pounds lighter-picked up a slat out of a chair back, a thin piece of wood about 23 inches long and about an inch and a half wide, and tried to knock the gun away from O’Brien. Garriott and the special cop had their guns out by now and watched as O’Brien growled,“Drop the stick, drop it, goddammit.” He counted in a rapid cadence, “One. ..two . ..three . ...” There was a sharp crack. The bullet ripped through Baskett’s chest, severing a major artery. As Baskett lay moaning and dying in the street,
O’Brien approached him. “Shut up, dammit, ” he growled, “shut up.” He kicked at Baskett’s side, turning his victim over on his back. Baskett’s pregnant wife ran out toward her ‘husband. “Get out of here, you black bitch”’ O’Brien shouted, forcing her down the street. Then he looked up at the black faces peering down from the windows above him. “Get your heads back in niggers,” he shouted, “before I blow them off.” Within five minutes, Baskett, twenty-eight years old and the father of five children, was dead. Michael O’Brien had killed his nigger. The police came, including San Francisco’s head-cracking Tactical Squad. They immediately began questioning “suspects.” They arrested Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hawkins, Mrs. Hawkins’ son Richard Dickerson, and Otis Baskett, on charges of conspiracy, assault to commit murder, and assault with a deadly weapon. Then they helped the dazed O’Brien out of the alley and away from the angry crowd. ‘BRIEN OF COURSE WAS WHITE And although he had never said so to anybody in Brush Place, that night or at any other time, Michael O’Brien was a cop. *“If he had only identified himself as a policeman,” recalled the soft-spoken ,Carl Hawkins, a man of fifty, “this whole business would never have happened. ” And then-not apparently conscious himself of the ironic significance with which his words illuminated the
0
growing chasm between law and people in the country as a whole-“People around here have a lot of respect for a police officer.” Within four hours of the shooting of George Baskett in Brush Place, the official police investigation of the incident had been conducted and concluded. The two officers who submitted the report admitted in court that it had been rewritten three times on the orders of their sup&ior 7 Lieutenant Daniel Mahoney, who had specifically ordered them not to mention any witnesses other than the policemen present. The report concluded that the killing of Baskett was “justifiable homicide. “It was only after reaching this conclusion that the police questioned the arrested blacks, who for three hours had been kept handcuffed in the paddy wagon outside the Hall of Justice. Early Monday morning, Chief Thomas Cahill told reporters that the whole affair was a “sad situation,” but “a man has a right to defend himself. ” He termed the shooting “accidental” and informed them that his own private investigation was closed. But it was soon clear that sweeping the “accident” under the rug was not going to be quite so easy. Word had spread fast, and an aroused black community was soon denouncing Cahill’s expeditious review of the case as a police department “whitewash.” On top of this came some exceptional newspaper reporting by two local continued
friday
4 july
over page
1969 (10:9)
107
7
.
Qffice~
IWic~qe~~~Q IBriec
. A ‘I want to kill a nigger so goddamned bad I can taste it.’ r
:
journalists, Birney Jarvis and Charles Raudebaugh. The police story stank. They knew it and they said so-on the front pages of the San Francisco Chronicle. By October 1, Cahill was forced to announce a reopening of the investigation. On October 9, Michael O’Brien was arrested and formally charged with murder. In these times of popular backlash against “coddling” of accused criminals, it is instructive to note what kind of support is available to a rank-and-file policeman with no “connections” who has killed a black citizen. First, of course, there are his comrades-in-arms, who came through with two crucial commodities : money and testimony. The accused O’Brien had other help. He did not, for instance, have to resort to the public defender or to penny ante private counsel. The earliest moves in his case were handled by prominent San Francisco attorney Edward Dullea. Dullea’s brother is president of the prestigious Catholic University of San Francisco, whose law school has given the city a large proportion of its ,judges (including Judge Karesh, who ended up trying the case). The father of the Dullea brothers was a former San Francisco chief of police. But Dullea was soon replaced ,on the case by his even more prominent partner-through whom still other lines of influential support became available to the humble cop-the fire-eating,. legendary trial lawyer, Jake Ehrlich. AKE EHRLICH IS THE Best Criminal Lawyer in San Francisco. That doesn’t mean that he is the best criminal lawyer in San Francisco; it means that that’s his local title, though it rests mostly on past laurels-he doesn’t have to work much any more. His reputation rests on Jhe fact that, while he has occasionally compromised on conviction for manslaughter, he has never had a client convicted of murderand he’s handled over 50 murder cases. The reason he doesn’t have to work is that he’s a member-possibly even a charter member-of the San Francisco Establishment. This has brought him into contact, and ultimately into friendship, with financier Louis Lurie, who juggles local hotels as a hobby. According to Ehrlich, Lurie is “the owner of more real estate than the Department of the Interior. ” For a couple of generations or so, Jake has been putting a buck wherever Lurie puts ten, and that’s been a painless way to amass a sizable bundle. ’ Jake is a liberal. He took on Senator McClellan when he criticized use of the Fifth Amendment. He defended poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti against obscenity charges conHe did a lot of other cerning “Howl.” things that might have led someone to think that his life would make a great movie. It never did, but it did make a tele-
J
8
108 the Chevron
vision series, starring Edmond O’Brien. They called it “Sam Benedict,” because the incipiently portly actor could hardly play tiny, skinny Jake; besides, Eddie would have had to play a lawyer who by now is over seventy. Ehrlich is also, now and for some time past, the attorney for the Police Officers’ voluntary Association-a organization which, when you become a cop, you join if you’re white and stay away from if you aren’t. One of the things that Ehrlich has going for him is that any jury that could conceivably be put together in San Francisco is going to be in awe just because it’s the nearly legendary Jake Ehrlich before the bench. He’s not only Sam Benedict, he’s Perry Mason, Judd, and the Defenders, all at once. Another thing about Jake is that he will use whatever will win; if racism will win, he’ll use that. “And so he did. He played it like a fiddle. Although almost everyone had assumed that murder is unbailable in . California, a municipal judge released O’Brien after he was booked. Black leaders were furious, and the noise was so loud for a day or so that a second municipal judge overruled his colleague and mdered O’Brien back to jail. Then Ehrlich moved in, going up to Superior Court where he obtained a ruling granting $25,000 bail. “This man is not going. to run,” the judge explained. Half the bail came from a bail bondsman. The other half was put up by Louis Lurie. “If this is a murder case,” Ehrlich’s friend told a reporter, “I’m the Pope of Rome. ” He’s not; and Michael O’Brien never was, and never will be, tried for the murder of George Baskett. The Grand Jury members, as always, were prosperous middle-class 7 predominantly white, and predominantly male. They meet in closed session and the disattorney tells them pretty trict much what he wants them to know. After hearing the witnesses, the Grand Jury deliberated for 15 minutes and indicted Michael O’Brien-not for murder, but for manslaughter. The foreman said that, in the light of the testimony, there wasn’t tha’t much difference between murder and manslaughter in this case. (Huey Newton, who was ultimately convicted of manslaughter, was indicted for first degree murder by the Alameda County Grand Jury across the bay, without benefit of eyewitness testimony or a murder weapon. ) The city’s black leaders hit the roof. A blistering statement was issued charagencies ging that law enforcement had “connived and conspired to thwart justice.” Jake Ehrlich, on the other hand, had the grace to concede that manslaughter though is a better rap than murder, he still insisted it was justifiable homitide. “But this is one of those ljolitical footballs,‘,’ he went on. “Everyone wants to be heard, and all they’re doing is creating class feelings. ” O’Brien’s bail .was reduced to $3125.
UPERIOR COURT JUDGE JOSEPH KARESH grew up in South Carolina, but that does not make him a bigot. In fact, he is proud of the fact that his father, a rabbi, taught Hebrew to the local black ministers. Like Jake Ehrlich and Mayor Joseph Alioto, Karish is a liberal. When a probation officer was fired for having a beard, Karesh ordered him rehired with back pay. He ruled that the city could have topless joints and ordered the police to allow performances of Michael McClure’s play, “The Beard.” He has, however, a couple of minor hang-ups. He doesn’t like student dissidents, he loves cops, and he appears to have a somewhat racist way of not being a bigot. One local attorney recalls, “In many previous dealings I had with Karesh, he seemed to have a very strong block against perceiving that any policeman could be guilty of any misconduct. One sure way to arouse his anger would be to suggest that the police were guilty of any impropriety. It would sort of destroy his world if he thought O’Brien really called those people ‘Niggers’ or shot to kill.” And a local reporter notes that, “. . . in his chambers he’d cut up prosecution witnesses, and talk about how the blacks are getting away with everything, how juries are .afraid to convict them, how they are arrested one day and walk away free the next day.”
S
Chapter II.
’
N JANUARY 13, 1969, IN THE SUPERIOR COURT of California, Joseph Karesh pre,siding, Michael O’Brien went on trial for manslaughter in the death of George Baskett. Two days later George Baskett’s sixth child was born. It took only one day to choose a jury. Ehrlich used two peremptory challenges ; one eliminated airlines supervisor George A. Buckner Jr., the only black called. No “personal reflection,” said Ehrlich. Similarly, any lawyer can insure an all white jury by use of his allotment of the peremptory challenges, which judge cannot review. Ehrlich made it quite clear, when questioning jurors, what the trial was going to be about. A key issue, he said, would be “this black-white entanglemerit.” Judge Karesh found nothing to criticize in that formulation. Attention on the second’ day focused on Elizabeth Hawkins, a tall, striking woman who said flatly that she had watched Michael O’Brien deliberately murder George Baskett. The next day, Ehrlich moved in, contempt dripping from his tiny frame. He accused Mrs. Hawkins of having lied outright on three occasions. But she refused to be Ehrlich’s pigeon. After she insisted again that she had seen O’Brien kick the dying Baskett : Ehrlich : “Then he couldn’t have hurt
0
Baskett much if he kicked him. could he?” Mrs. Hawkins : “I have no idea--I have never been shot and then kicked.” Carl Hawkins followed his wife to the stand and corroborated her story. with additional details. During the early part of the incident, he said, his stepson, qichard Dickerson, had arrived and asked a neighbor, Mrs. Anne Thomas, what was going on. “Your father’s having trouble with the white man,” she replied. That, she testified, angered O’Brien further. “Shut up, you goddamn nigger bitch! ” be yelled. Mrs. Thomas promptly yelled back, “Ask God why he made me a niggc bitch and made you a honky.” Baskett had picked up a stick and tried to use it to knock the pistol from O’Brien’s hand, but O’Brien ordered him to drop it and began to count. “O’Brien,” Hawkins testified, “extended his arm, braced his right arm with his left hand to steady the pistol, and fired one shot. I saw the flash of the Otis Baskett, the’ dead man’s brother, appeared and told the sade story. Ehrlich tore into him, shoutirg that he was a “professional liar.” Assistant District Attorney Walter Giubbini, who prosecuted the case, called the use of the phrase “disgusting.” Karesh, however, let Ehrlich rant. But the next witness-Special Officer Adkins-had seen none of this at all. What he had seen was a silent confrontation, no words at all, in which Baskett was beating O’Brien on the head. “O’Brien stumbled backwards, kind of shaking his head. Mr. Baskett was preparing to strike him again when the gun discharged. ” Later he said that O’Brien was “tensing up, trying to regain his balance, ” but that he was off balance and “back-pedaling,” leaning backward with his gun “straight out in his hand,” when it went off. On redirect examination Adkins admitted to consulting with Ehrlich about a week after the shooting. The police department had been “harassing” him to talk to the district attorney, he explained. Ehrlich interrupted to say that he had advised Adkins only to tell the truth. Dickerson’s turn came next, and his story varied from that of the other black witnesses only in the quotation from O’Brien, which he remembered as, “Drop it-drop it, goddamn it, nigger, I’ll kill you.” Then the count. The score, by witnesses, was: four who matched each other almost exactly, one who differed. Up to this point memory divided along racial lines. AVID ANDERSON, THE EI. GHTEEN-YEAR-OL,D son of an elementary school principal, testified that he was listening to a rock record “when I heard shots and a big commotion.” He went up on his roof, which commanded an excellent view of Brush Place, to see what was going on, and he told the court what he saw.
.
gun.”
D
,
George
Ba skett
D eceased. David Anderson is not only white, he’s “clean”: his father’s professional job is in San Leandro, just south of Oakland across the bay, and the family lives in the pristine suburb of Castro Valley. Anderson had taken his apartment while going to college. From the roof, he said, he saw three black men spread-eagled against the wall and a white man with a gun; he identified the white man as O’Brien. Then, Anderson went on, a fourth black picked up a stick and swung it, hitting O’Brien either in the left side or on the left elbow. As Baskett backed away, crouching, O’Brien deliberately shot him. Shortly thereafter, he went on, O’Brien held his gun on one of the men leaning against the wall, and deliberately kicked him in the seat of the pants. “Just give me an excuse-just give me a reason and I’ll shoot you!” O’Brien was quoted as shouting. Then O’Brien moved back and yelled at the people looking out of the apartments to get their heads back in. Ehrlich was faced with a calm and believable young witness, and one who was white-apparently beyond the reach of simple racism. But he knew his judge, and he knew his jurors. The key lay in Anderson’s attendance at San Francisco State College, and the possibility of making the young man appear a traitor to his race. Ehrlich immediately asked whether Anderson was participating in the strike there; Anderson answered that he was. There followed a barrage of questions about Black Panthers, hair, SDS, prejudice, and a number of other subjects, none of which were .particularly relevant, though they seemed to fascinate the judge, and Giubbini gave up trying to stem the flow. What Anderson actually said was fairly mild. He is not a member of Students for a Democratic Society, though he is in sympathy with some of its aims (which no one asked about). He thinks students and teachers have a right to strike. He hopes the strike will help to end institutional racism. But this alone doesn’t convey the effect. Ehrlich met Giubbini’s objection to the whole line of questioning by saying that he was trying to prove bias, because “these people who are part of SDS think every white policeman is a pig.” He asked Anderson: “If there is any feeling between white man and black man, you are standing against the white man?” Ehrlich kept Anderson on the stand for two more days, hammering at leftwing associations that weren’t there and ideas that Anderson refused to agree with. He demanded that Anderson show his draft card and pretended surprise when Anderson produced one. Having raised the specter of SDS, the bombastic attorney made another try, this time with the Black Panthers. He asked whether Anderson knew Richard E. Brown, a Panther who had given a lower apartment in the same building as his address when arrested five times
between March and November, 1968. Anderson said he didn’t know Brown, but that he had moved into the building in September and that no blacks lived there. Finally, Ehrlich said that he “had been informed” that a police report, dated the night after the shooting, involved Anderson’s apartment, and that the report said a black youth was living with Anderson and his white roommate, David Dixon, and that the apartment was decorated with “Free Huey,” “Black Revolution” and Che Guevara posters. Anderson merely noted that his apartment is decorated with travel posters, not revolutionary posters, and that he and Dixon have no other roommate. Y A STRANGE COINCIDENCE the Tactical Squad was called out in the area of Rodgers Street “to protect fire engines against possible sniper fire” on the night following the Brush Place shooting. And a couple of the boys just happened to bust into the front of, and out the back of, 35 Rodgers Street, where that stupid white punk lived who had backed up the black people’s story about what happened the night before. When they busted in, one’ Tat Sqad member testified, he saw somebody else going out the back; he trained his pistol on the man and told him to stop -then discovered that it was Richard Brown, who cried out, “We live here, we live here.” The cops were there, of course, without a warrant, without any cause to break into the apartment, and without permission. They didn’t even call out that they were police. John Coate is white, but he has lon,g hair and is obviously another traitor to his race. Coate, it seems, was visiting David Anderson on the night of September 30, when the Tat Squad came, and he said there was no black man there and no revolutionary posters on the walls. Ehrlich decided Coate was biased against the police, too, and started on the same bit with questions about State; Coate replied that he believes in nonviolence and is opposed to both police and student violence on the campus. Anderson, he said, is a rather conscientious person who cares about the world in which he lives. ” And the jury apparently just plain didn’t hear Anderson’s father, the school principal, because he was there that night too, and while he left before the cops came, he left Coate and Anderson and Dixon alone. He also described the posters on the wall. He could. describe them, he said, because he had provided them-they were travel posters. At one point during the testimony, Ehrlich found reason to thunder an accusation which, in its wording, effectively let the jury know which side Anderson was supposed to be on. “This is a white and black fight,” Ehrlich shouted. “This man Anderson is an unmitigated liar. Any man who would sit there and lie a man’s life away is not
B
entitled to a fair trial-he should be taken out and shot.” For this bit of- legal theory from the city’s foremost criminal attorney, the judge had not a word of rebuke. But that wasn’t Ehrlich’s most extravagant’shot for the day. He made his position, his tactics and his opinion of the judge all very clear just a short time later, when a Tat Squad officer said that he believed Richard Brown was in the courtroom. Ehrlich strode to the railing separating the spectators from the front of the court, leaned over, and bellowed, “What’s your name? Stand up, boy! ” There were some audible gasps in the courtroom, but Ehrlich ignored them. The black youth, after a brief but obvious struggle for control, said quietlY7 “My name is not ‘boy.’ My name is Richard Brown. ” Ehrlich walked back to the counsel table, threw himself into the cair, and said,“Why don’t you lock him up?” That’s a little obscure, but that’s what he said. Judge Karesh leaned solicitously forward and said, “I’m sure you didn’t mean to offend anybody, Mr. Ehrlich.” Jake took the cue and leaped up again. Facing the jury,’ he th~undered, “Some black people seem to think it disgraceful to be called ‘boy’ My grandfather and father called me that. What’s wrong with it? I don’t understand this childish, infantile feeling. I have defended these people many times without fee. I have no hatred for these people, no feeling for them at all. But I won’t take any backtalk out of them, either! ” Karesh finally decided that maybe it was time for the jury to leave. When they were gone, he repeated to Ehrlich, “I did not mean to imply earlier that you meant any offense to anyone. ” ICHAEL O’BRIEN TOLD HIS OWN STORY earnestly and well. He’d had a few of the Red Mountain burgundy, it was true, but he wasn’t drunk at all. He would never do a thing like threatening a girl with a long walk home-he’ was only a little put out because she had turned moody and was spoiling his “fun day. ” When Baskett attacked him with a stick, he said, he tried to shoot him “between the knee and the thigh, but the gun clicked and didn’t go off,” so he thought it was empty. “Here’s this man with a club,” O’Brien explained. “He made a real lunge at me. I backed away but he caught me across the right side of the head. I fell backward and hit the ground. As I’m* falling backward the gun discharged.” The stick, he said, looked bigger in the alley. And, when they told him in the police station that Baskett was dead, he said, “I couldn’t talk any more. I was crying.” He also said that his “Gas Huey” tie clip (which he wore in the Hunter’s Point ghetto during Huey Newton’s trial) was only a gag. It didn’t have anything to do with gassing Huey. O’Brien was convincing, and the jury
M
probably didn’t pay all that much attention to the one serious use of physical evidence by Giubbini, who asked O’Brien to demonstrate what had happened. When he demonstrated, his gun arminevitably-moved upward. Giubbini quietly pointed out that 1) the bullet that killed Baskett traveled downward, and 2) there were no powder burns on Baskett’s clothes, as there would have had to have been according to O’Brien’s reenaction. (A .38 police revolver will spray powder into clothing three feet away. It’s hard to hit a guy over the head with a 23-inch stick from more than three feet away. ) Giubbini got in a description of another episode in O’Brien’s life-when on a drinking spree at a Broadway topless joint called Pierre’s, he took off after a topless waitress and chased her into her dressing room, waving his .38 all the way. O’Brien tried to say that it was a water pistol, then backtracked when Giubbini seemed to know what he was talking about. But hearing it all, Karesh decided it was irrelevant and ruled the whole thing inadmissible. The rest of the witnesses all supported the’prosecution in one way or another, and serveral demonstrated that there was a conscious attempt to alter evidence in O’Brien’s favor. But by then the jury had the message:black people lie;’ white people tell the truth, unless they’re traitors to their race and belong to SDS and fraternize with Black Panthers, in which case they lie about that too. Finally, nobody listened when Giubbini-who had started out in mildmannered enough fashion, but who got increasingly incensed as he watched the Ehrlich-Karesh racism tandemblasted the police department of the errors and omissions in its reports and investigations, and’said that the original report (written without any black witnesses having been questioned) showed “some effot to...reflect what the lieutenant thought it should reflect, not what the facts were.. . We’re talking,” he told the jury, “about credibility in this case. We have to keep our eyes open.” But he was the only one talking about credibility. The others were talking about niggers. AKE EHRLICH SPENT SIX DAYS on his summation. Not preparing it-giving it. It was the longest defense summation in tne history of San Francisco criminal law. It was also the most vicious, bigoted, nauseating, low and piggish performance any local courtroom has ever seen. Contrary to press suggestions, it was not racist; it was nothing that subtle. It is a disgrace to the Bar that the Bar Association did not meet the next day with censure and possible disbarment in mind; it is a disgrace to the bench that Joseph Karesh was not hounded out of his robes-and out of town as well- for letting it happen. Any Mississippi backwoods judge in the past ten continued over page
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l%ience
. ,
attorney
Jake
Ehrlich
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...the most viciotisq bigoted,
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pefiormance ever seen.
\has
-.
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any courtroom .
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license. To understand the way the testified that he never uses the term on the block” came to welcome them as years would have told an attorney O’Brien case played itself out, one must making the same speech to tone it ‘.‘pig.“) friends. , ‘Ehrlich called one or* another witsee how the conditions that set the Inside the department, however, down. * stage for it came about. Ehrlich started things ,off by referring ness “liar,” “punk,” “knucklehead,” things were, not going as well. Cahill conThomas Cahill was lifted to the top * tinued to defend CRU again& outside to Brush :Place as “a hellhole, with 206 ’ “little fool,” “perjurer,” ‘+killer.” He charged that Giubbini had. deliberately echelon of the SF. Police Department criticism, but privately his support turnhyenas in there.” implied that all 19 policemen who testion a wave of reform that shook the ed lukewarm and then cool. Many obHe slashed at Alioto for “ordering” department up in the mid-1956’s. He servers fied were liars and had “manufactured claim that the chief was res- ’ the trial because the mayor is “looking evidence, ” and he added, “This breaks was noted then for the integrity he had ponding to pressures from below. One for the minority vote.” shown working”in Senator Estes Kefaumy heart when I see it.” says flatly : “Chief Cahill doesnt run Banging- on a lectern with the stick crime, investigation in the department. Finally, he would up with an almost - ver’s famous The Police Officers Asused by Baskett, he shouted, “Mike 1950-1951. And he was remembered sociation does.” And most of the didn’t .,do what I would have done. I tearful plea for poor victimized Mike even better for the case of Inez Burns, O’Brien, begging, “Don’t sacrifice this po1ic.e force hated the CRU would have shot him then and there. But an abortionist who had.offered him and remembering his boy on the altar of chicanery to get a few he backed away, Lieutenant Andreotti -had little trouble his partner a quarter-million-doll-ar lousy, dirty votes. If you don’t find personally, but his staff caught hellpoliceman’s training ” payoff. They turned it down. The part‘~‘should O’Brien, not guilty, there is only one Mrs. Hawkins, he shouted, “commie-relations department” and ner was named chief in February 1956, “niggerlovers” answer-the Golden Gate Bridge.” He wei-e the most combe in jail for perjury. The blood of Basand Cahill succeeded, him when he died mon terms. Andreotti’s troubles came kett is on her hands. I don’t know how didn’t say for whom. in September, 1958. , Unaccountably, Ehrlich and Giubbini on another level7 with. the station capshe can sleep at night.” ’ As the 1960’s .began, Chief Cahill seem to have made an agreement in adtains and with (‘downtown.” There were He repeatedly returned to racism, ‘started to feel the pressure of the rising each other’s four black officers in the unit-and when and told the jury that the residents’ of vance not to interrupt consciousness of the civil rights moveclosing statements-and Giubbini is a Andreotti asked for more , blacks, Brush Placehad manufactured “a false gentleman,, though it must have taken merit fused with the insistence of its Cahill refused, saying there were too facade of lies; chicknery and trickery,” leaders that something be done to many in the unit already. A neighborand that-Giubbini had “patched up all considerable effort. make the police more sensitive to the hood community relations .committee <For Judge Karesh, there. is not even ‘these stories to make them fit one mold.” needs of the black community. In 1962, that excuse. He sought to interrupt Ehrheld a Christm,as party, ~and Andreotti The “litany of lies” was to be expected, without much personal. enthusiasm, he invited lich’ only when Ehrlich launched into a the entire force; not one cop however : “You must realize. we’re established the police Community Reshowed up. dealing here with people. of little or no tirade against the Chronicle; -and then lations Unit( CRU). To head up the , only on the grounds that -, the jury had Andreotti is quick to point out that it moral honesty or integrity.” ’ new program he chose Lieutenant Dan* been instructed to avoid or ignore all Carl Hawkins, in Ehrlich’s perorawasn’t just his fellow cops. The mayor a native San Franmention of communications media dur- \ te (Dan) Andreotti, never came to a community relations tion, became “Mr. Holier than Thou,” ciscan and a man who had spent 21 y+ars ameeting. .A form letter to 4500 members .“Old Mr. Prayer Meeting” and most ing the trial! on-the police force. Andreottiwas directOne lawyer ~who -was there put his of a merchants’ association, regarding often, “The Deacon,” after Ehrlich ed by Cahill to go out into the communopinion graphic,ally : “Any judge with summer jobs for blacks, got no jobs, said that Hawkins reminded him of ity and “teach respect for law and orany balls would have cut Ehrlich off summer or otherwise; the same plea on “the old. prayer meetings down home.” der.” For this task he was given one % TV brought only hate mail. right away. A member of the Bar is not Hawkins “manufactured” the story of “I was naive, ” Andreotti allowed to make racist remarks.” A assistant. OT$Brien kicking Baskett, Ehrlich said, In September of 1966, a San Francisco now recalls. reporter who was at many of the trial policeman shot and killed *an unarmed and was in any case “a sanctimonious Andreotti started out by holding meetsessions said that Karesh’s role in thefifteen-year-old black,- Matthew . Johnlittle liar.” ings and giving speeches. But he found In the -middle of the attack on Hawkentire trial’ was vital: “The judge son, who was running from a stolen car. that that approach didn’t work, SO’ he A wave of anger. swept through the practically turned into a defense atins, Ehrlich suddenly. said, “I’d better started bucking for more men (he ulti(the same reporter also called Hunter’s Point ghetto and the surroundstick to the record; , *otherwise, I’ll be-, torney” mately got 15) and set them not to talkEhrlich “a racist of the Bilbo type” and ing area. The cops and National Guards.accused . . .of being ,-a racist .or some, ing but to listening-and helping. “To said that. ‘.‘at times, the word ‘nigger’ men, riot-alerted that year, swept along thing.” be effective, we had to address ourselves slipped out of his mouth accidentally”). outer Third Street, the neighborhood’s “These people,” Ehrlich told the jury, to social problems that could lead to principal artery, turning a minor disThe jury reported itself deadlocked, apparently relishing l the hated phrase,, -police problems. We had to be, involved, turbance into a “riot.” There was .a lot it turned out), “would have killed’ . . . O’Brien, and ten to two (for acquittal, but the judge sent them back. The jury get around,, know what the order of the of shooting-almost all of it by COPS at they would have killed y.ou, too, if .you’d community was. We Practically. as to whether lived unarmed peo,ple-but no one was killed been there. They have absolutely. no .asked for instruction in theneighborhoods. ” they should give weight to O’Brien’s pol,~ except Johnson. ” respect for anoath;the truth or for corn- ~ ice trainingwhether, in ’ effect , .they% It would undoubtedly have been far mon decency. They would just as soon CRU’ men went along on job *intershould expect more restraint from him worse had it not beenfor the CRU people sacrifice you as they did this boy here.” views with men who .had minor. police than from an ordinary twenty-seven-year-. who rushed to the scene and the “cool records, ‘explaining to employers the Otis Baskett, whom Ehrlich accused old kid with a gun and a jug of Red it” work of several groups of young peomeaning. of -the records and persuading of. “bobbing, weaving and double-talkMountain. The judge refused to give pie, with whom the. mayor’s office had them not to bar -applicants from jobs. ,ing,” became “that bigi <phony.” And such an instruction (Giubbini wanted it, .The policeman could indicate which offbeen maintaining contact (one youth had *what David, Anderson became was someEhrlich didn’t) ; shortly thereafter the enses were minor, or where there were just succeeded in calming and turning kthing else again. ., . L jury acquitted Michael O’Brien. extenuating circumstances. In one back an angry group of blacks when a ‘:This boy is a member of SDS and police bullet hit ,him in the back). Still, case, a young man was under the impreshates poiice as sure as I’m standing &jn he had been convicted of’ rape, tO1 the nation’s -press, it W& a “riot,” here. He hates them and’ would shoot ; -and Big Red ‘Cahill was furious. *‘I’ll which- made finding a good job almost ’ them if he ihad a chance. . . (He) is a a the impossible. In checking -his -record, the know how to handle this, situation vicious young punk. who- wants to destroy T community relations officer found out ’ next ’ time,” he stormed, to Andreotti. %‘TER O’BRIEN. W’AS INou.r government1 , ‘our ,homes, our “After ‘all 9 did for those people! I was ’ that the. individual had been arrested -DICTED Reverend Hamilton ’ children,,-200 year$ of ,American demothe only police chief in the country withand charged with rape, but that the charg- Boswell said, “We hope you. cracz and the flag and all that stands es. were later dismissed. Andreotti.3 rrien out a riot! They spoiled my record! “. A. white folk mean business when for*-“! .“. : ‘, ‘sYOU say law and order and- would so’metimes make court appearances for defendants, urging judges to parBut it wasn’t .,-America. that %hrlich equality for all," But the O’Brien inciN AUGUST 1967, Andreotti retirwanted the jury to see. Anderson as be- dent ,and the trial reveal instead a case ’ ale- people who could be found jobs., They ed from the police department would also try to have the arrest records +traying ; that was incidental. study of the distortions of justice that after 27 years of service. He reof juveniles expunged or permanently are produced by ‘,a pervasive crisis of “I can realiie our black brethren tired because he felt the communclosed. The CRU also raised money for authority in American cities: the growity relations program was being. understicking together,*‘. the tiny lawyer inthings iike a recreation center and for mined, and because he felt he could no. toned. “They -do things I don’t approve ing independent power of the police, who clothing for job applicants. of, but I can understand. What I can’t * are so -deter-mined to “protecttheir longer be effective *in a “general whiteown” and ~SO virulent in their racism Th?eCRU worked with blacks, .Latinracist atmosphere.” - Andreotti now understand i’s Anderson, coming apparently from~ a good home .and selling< .that they assert a virtual license to kill; OS; Orientals and, eventually, the hip- works for the Community Relations Serand the politicians and the legal system pies of the Haight-Ashbury. Not only vice of the U.S. Department of Justice. his so,ul. to ~prove! his hatred for a. pohceman,, what he calls $,a pig.” (Anderson that. go \along, essentially granting that “community leaders” but the “brothers Thinking back to the John BirchSociety
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literature he saw on some station house bulletin boards in San Francisco, and the big picture of the Imperial Wizard of the KU Klux Klan labeled “Our Hero” which he observed in at least one precinct, he now says, “Our war was with the police department.” Andreotti’s own experience convinced him that “the majority of police opposed the concepts of equal opportunity in housing, education and employment long before civil disorders. and violence struck our cities. ” When these disorders did erupt, as in the Hunter’s Point incident of 1966, the police response was to use the occasion as an excuse to expand their forces. Thus in the wake of the police killing of Matthew Johnson, Cahill persuaded then San Francisco Mayor John Shelley to allow the creation of a Tactical Squad, an “elite” group of troubleshooters with training in judo and karate-but not in community relations. Another good index of the change in priorities in the police department is provided by Los Angeles’ recently resigned police chief, Tom Reddin, who says Cahill told him that “a few years ago, 95 percent of our intelligence work used to go towards combatting organized crime. Now, 95 per cent of our intelligence work is in civil rights and riots.” No wonder J. Edgar Hoover thinks that “Tom Cahill is one of the finest police chiefs-in this country. ” Cahill would never admit it, but he probably owes his job and whatever prestige he has to Dan Andreotti. Andreotti made Cahill and the SFPD nationally known for “community relaA President’s commistions” work. sion praised the department for opening “new communication channels with community segments never before considered ‘reachable.’ ” Cahill was rewarded with a vice presidency in the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), which is one of those outfits in which the various officers all move up one notch each year. This past September, the same month in which George Baskett was shot, Cahill moved to the presidency of the organization. Even his vice presidency in the IACP might not have saved Cahill’s job back in 1963-64, when John Shelley was elected mayor of San Francisco and wanted to replace Cahill. Cahill, who needed four more years to be eligible for a police chief’s pension, asked Andreotti to go to black community leaders\ and seek their support for his efforts to stay on as chief. “For two or three years there was wonderful rapport between the blacks and the police department,” Andreotti said. “The police weren’t shooting at people, and they weren’t getting shot at. Cahill was going along with the liberal, even the radical ideas the Community Relations Unit came up with. I went to the black leaders and told them the chief was learning more about race relations every day. They went along with Cahill. As soon as Cahill got his 25 years in, in 1967, he began to emasculate the police Community Relations Unit. We were taken.”
J
OSEPH ALIOTO IS A CLASSIC big city mayor in the liberal Democratic tradition. (The Christian Science Monitor has referred to him as “Lindsay We%t.“) He sticks firm with the regulars and went to Chicago to second Hubert Humphrey’s nomination at the convention last year. Alioto relies on the liberal political base of ethnic consensus, and is therefore profoundly threatened by being held accountable for gratuitous, racially provocative police violence. Yet here, as in other American cities caught in a rising spiral of urban violence, the liberal politicians have increasingly lost control over the police, who have emerged as a formidable, vindictive and independent political power. This was made clear in New York when the police dealt a crushing blow to the review board proposal backed by political leaders from Lindsay to Jacob Javits and Bobby Kennedy, defeating it by two to one in a city-wide referendum campaign heavy with racism. For Alioto, the aggressive power of the police has made it increasingly difficult to pull together the team of ethnic constituencies that he hopes to ride to the governorship and beyond. Two things of importance happened in the San Francisco Police Department during 1967, the year of Alioto’s election. Dante Andreotti quit. And a few days after the election, Chief Cahill signed his General Order 105, creating the Tat Squad in its present Mace-carrying, paramilitary form as the department’s super-bullies. Actually, it was the liberal Alioto who gave the green light to the new special forces. As a metiber of Alioto’s family explained it afterwards to one reporter: “When my uncle got elected last November he thought he needed to take advantage of the contacts he had built up within the department over the years. He knew he could cause a split in the ‘Irish Mafia’ that controlled the cops because he had several good friends, from college and all, who were on his side, but what he had to do was create a public climate within the department that would be favorable to him. So he gave the go-ahead to Cahill both to stay on as chief, and to remake the Tactical Squad into the kind of a thing the other cops would really dig. This would not only give him good entree to the cops but would solidify the Republicans and rightwingers in the city behind him as mayor.” It wasn’t until a city-wide newspaper strike began in January 1968, that the squad got its real chance to practice. The first opportunity was a demonstration outside the Fairmont Hotel, on top of Nob Hill, on the occasion of a speech inside the hotel by then Secretary of State- Dean Rusk. Demonstrators threw bags of blood at the hofel and some of them were prepared to be arrested. But no one was ready for the club-swinging, head-cracking police riot that followed. We shall forego description; you have read such descriptions before. Let us merely say that this was a bad one, and there are several lawsuits pending from that night.
Alioto, who had only television to contend with, said that he didn’t believe there was any police brutality and characterized the demonstrators as “neofascist storm troopers.” The abandoned behavior of the Tat Squad was a clear projection of the mayor’s political strategy with the p01ice: to consolidate his base by winning them o+er (from Cahill ) with a free hand and a blanket endorsement. A few weeks later the Tat Squad struck again, this time in the HaightAshbury, where they simply ran a “sweep” of Haight Street and beat the hell out of everybody in sight, young or old, male or female, hippie or straight, including a few undercover cops and a couple of reporters. Alioto was again quick to defend the marauding forces against irresponsible charges of police brutality. Having resolved to replace Cahill, he was getting ready to make his move. In August, the mayor had Terry Francois, a black member of the Board of Supervisors who is a close political ally of his, float a trial balloon. With Alioto out of town for a speech, Francois, acting mayor for the period, publicly stated that Tom Cahill should be replaced. The outcry from San Francisco’s prominent and politically powerful business interests was strong enough for Alioto to hear all the way in New York, where he was speaking. On top of that, about 15 top men in the police department, all Cahill appointees, threatened to quit. (Patronage is a prime source of the police chief’s power. All inspectors, and the commanding officers of stations, units and bureaus in the San Francisco Police Department serve by the appointment of the chief. ) The rank and file Police Officers Association was also unhappy and made its views known. What the thoughts of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco were on the matter is not known, but since that body is thought to have a veto power over who actually heads the police department, it is . assumed that Alioto heard plenty. In any case, his trial balloon collapsed, and no more criticism of Cahill was heard from City Hall. So by late September 1968, when Patrolman O’Brien and George Baskett squared off-gun to wooden stick-in Brush Place, Cahill was firmly in command of the police and the police were beyond mayoral reproach. When two Tat Squad officers went berserk in San Francisco’s Mission District earlier in the month, and- a commission of inquiry was called, it was Alioto who made certain that the commission did not lay the ground for a police review board. No one could have been more satisfied by the mayor’s performance than Cahill, who two years earlier, in a tirade before the San J?rancisco Press Club, proclaim&d : “The day this town has a police review board, I’ll quit. The poljce department can investigate any charges of malpractice against a policeman. ’ ’
Chapter IV.
M
ICHAEL O’BRIEN WAS FREED on March 20. On March 30. Patrolman Gerald Roberts, with his gun drawn, chased Alvert Joe Linthcome into a record shop, erroneously suspecting him of stealing a car. Linthcome’s younger sister, who was standing outside the store, screamed at Roberts, “Don’t shoot him, please, don’t shoot him.” Linthcome, black, nineteen, and unarmed, turned around and put his elbows on the counter behind him. Roberts stepped into the doorway and killed him, The police, and ultimately the coroner, said it was justifiable homicide. Patrolman Roberts said, “I thought he had a gun.” John L. Brennan, attorney for the Linthcome family, has been denied permission to see the police report on the case. Elmo E. Ferraki, president of the civilian Police Commission, told him: “I’m sure Chief Cahill will give you all the documents he thinks you should have. . . . We’ll leave this in the chief’s good hands.” The polarization deepens at all levels. The mayor courts the backlash by spewing hysteria about the Black Panthers: he informs a Presbyterian group that the Panthers’ ten-point program calls for “robbing and raping.” The police raid the Panther office in force, on the pretext of a sound permit violation, sparking a near riot in the angry neighborhood that is quelled, according to reporters, only by ihe Panthers themselves. The mayor is not impressed: “The young men who did react so quickly and so well were probably mistaken for Panthers.” A group called Officers for Justice is formed representing nearly all of the city’s 78 black policemen-the highest ranking blacks are two sergeants, the total police force is 1800-as an alternative to the white police Officers Association. The new group cheers Reverend Cecil Williams when he calls the POA “the most racist organization we have in San Francisco.” The businessmen’s Downtown Association on the other hand cosponsors with the POA a testimonial dinner for O’Brien’s attorney, Jake Ehrlich. One black policeman, Robert Jeffrey, on the force for more than four years, resigned four days after George Baskett was killed, saying, “. . . I can no longer be the recipient of this hatred and outright prejudice . . . ..I can no longer go forth into the community and tell the people of the ghetto areas that everything is all right if we just wait a little longer. ’ ’ A few years ago in the South, blacks refusing any longer to wait and trust in the white man’s justice to protect them, armed and organized themselvei into the Deacons for Defense. Northern liberals, convinced that no other channel of justice existed for the black man in the South, reluctantly accepted this. Now they must face the fact that if the liberal cities of the North are going to practice Mississippi justice, a similar response from northern blacks may have to be accepted as well.
The end
Judge
Joseph
Karesh a
in his chambers talk about how lacks are getting t away with everything
frida y 4 july
7969 (70:9)
777
feedback Lettef goes
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on towing incident to Mrs. Robinson
Dear Mrs. Robinson: I hear that you’re kind of ‘hung up’ in New York. I can understand that. You see, I was born and brought up in that metropolis which is so soulless because it’s so cosmopolitan and to have a soul you have to have of individuality. some degree And so, a number of years ago I fled from the land of the freak to seek freedom here in Canada. Canada, Mrs. Robinson, is a strange land. It has many defects. For example it can on occasion be petty, parochial and puerile. But it does have soul and a large part of that soul consists of an elusive sense of existing in a society that is more personal, less structural, and most important of all, more just than our riative city. Oh, I know, all this is very relative and all this is very vague and perhaps mushy. But it has real meaning to me as an individual and even-more meaning to me as a Christian, And so, when I see these values being stepped on by an institution in the society that has generously adopted this refugee from the ‘great white way’, I have to protest, even though I expect that institution probably will not even listen, much less act. You see, Mrs. Robinson, I teach up here at St. Jerome’s college which is federated with the University of Waterloo. And at the University of Waterloo there is an institution called the “campus police”. (They are also called a number of other things but I am hoping to get this letter printed.) There is also another institution, far larger but apparently far less powerful, called the student body. Well, the other evening the latter institution did something that I though. was pretty personal, certainly not structured, and most important of all, aimed at producing a little more justice in our society. They decided to hold a benefit at the pub (the local beer hall) for Camp Columbia, a summer camp for underprivileged children. You had to pay 50 cents to get in, and then pay your own way, at quite reasonable rates, if you wanted to go boat racing. Well, my wife and I thought it might be a nice thing if a faculty member and his spouse participated in one of these wild, but worthy, student orgies. (Actually it wasn’t nearly as wild as National Review had led me to think these things are, but it was still quite wirthy.) By the time we were able to go, around 10 o’clock, I picked up my wife at St. Jerome’s where she had been att.ending a meeting. We originally thought of leaving the car at the college and walking across to the pub. But it looked like a severe thunderstorm was on the way, and we had only one umbrella, and I remembered how soaking wet we had gotten under similar circumstances last summer. And SO I got the brilliant idea of parking as close to the pub as possible. I was not too familiar with the parking facilities in the area, but’ as we approached the pub, we noticed a number of iars parked on the notorious ringroad that sort of encircles the university. And so there we parked amidst a number of cars,
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and a dearth of warning signs or (if one wanted to be more personal ) warning policemen (but I guess they couldn’t be spared until later in the evening until presumably as many cars as possible were illegally parked). Well, Mrs. Robinson, after two beers and some good conversation, I left the pub and returned to find my car had vanished. At first I thought it must have been stolen, dispantled by student radicals (because I’ve been told they simply love to destroy for the sake of destruction), or some such horrible thing. While standing at the place where my car had been parked less than two hours earlier, another car stopped beside my wife and me and someone shouted out to me. He had a beard, was obviously a student, and so I was immediately on guard. However, to my dismay, he proved to be quite a decent guy, informing me (which the campus police had not attempted to do in any visible fashion) that my car had been towed away and that it would be wise to report to the campus police center so that hopefully they would tell- me where I could reclaim it. Well, with the help of two close friends, I did just that, and all this merriment cost me a mere $15! However, things could have been worse; it was near twelve by the time I redeemed my car and apparently after twelve my penance would have risen to around $20. But, Mrs. Robinson, I proved a pretty poor penitent. Because while weeping in another beer at home, some very irreverential thoughts kept passing through my mind. Like the contrast between the imagination and generosity of those who organized and participated in the benefit, and the seeming irrational and mean behavicur of the University of Waterloo’s finest. Like how $15 might have been used to help underprivileged children instead of the coffers of the A-l Towing Service. Like how last year , (this year I’ve been on leave of absence), I was unable to park in iny designated area (for which I paid the appropriate fee) more than twenty six times (I only started counting after the first eight or nine times and towards the end I simply gave up! ) . Like how when I called the police center to bring these violations , to their attention, there were only evasive replies and no action and strangely enough no tow trucks. Like how impersonal, inconsistent and unjust the whole situation seemed to me. Yes, Mrs. Robinson, for a moment I thought I was back in New York, and not in Canada, which has generally been far more personal, less structural, and more just to me. No, Mrs. Robinson, I am not the faculty advisor of the Radical Student Movement nor am I a member of the IWW-for that matter I do not even have a membership card in the NDP (that stands for New Democratic Party which isn’t much different than the old Democratic Party with which we are familiar except occasionally the former has the political effrontery to ennunciate some definite principle or take some definite stand on political issues ) . I guess my personal philosphy
Address te ttem to Feedback, The Chevron, U of W. Be concise. The Chevron reserves the right to shorten letters. Those typed (double-spaced) get priority. Sign it - name, co&se, year, telephone. For legal reasons unsigned letters cannot be published, A pseudonym bill be printed if you have a good reason.
is close to that expressed by expresident Hagey (i.e. ex President of the university-the monarchy is constantly under attack up here, but so far sentiment, common sense, and reason have combined to preserve an institution which, as you know, we Americans profess to disdaic, but in fact, desperately crave) at a recent convocation where-he is reported to have expressed the hope that “change will be pursued in an orderly and organized manner with the goal being a general improvement of our social conditions-not just to change for the sake of change or destroy for the sake of destruction”. Perhaps ex-president Hagey should address the same wise words to the campus police. And so, Mrs. Robinson, if things get unbearable in New York, do think of coming up to Canada, because incidents like the one the other night are still fortunately the exception rather than the rule here. But remember not to park your car on the ringroadafter all some sins are unforgivable! PETER DEMBSKI history department St. Jeromes College
hfo-sef vices disappointecf
&rector by feuture
When I saw Cyril Levitt’s article on Harvard (Chevron, june 20), I thought I was going to learn what was in the “secret” files that the students lifted during their occupation. Instead, I found I was simply rereading slightly rewritten passages from James Ridgeway’s book, The closed corporation.Very disappointing (as was Ridgeway’s book). JACK ADAMS information-services director Levitt’s sources were papers removed froh Harvard offices during the occupation and pubtished in the underground paper, the O/d Mole. #ie did not use Ridgewa y’s book in his research. -the
(ettitor
Suggests replies be cut, is he opening up Guzette? It would be a serious mistake to amend the policy on printing all letters to the editor (feedback) as suggested in your june 27 editorial.
This is the best feature of the Chevron and presents an almost unique opportunity for cross-campus dialog. You could save space by eliminating the lettitor’s retorts to the letters. They are repressive and unnecessary and are a restriction on the freedom you profess in your feedback policy. JACK ADAMS information-services director Feedback replies are normally in which the res tric.ted to letters coverage, con tent or operations of the Chevron are in question. When readers initiate a new disCussion, the lettitor stays out of the dialog, except when objective facts are in error. As for freedom and repression, the Chevron does print all letters, unlike the administration’s Gazette, for which you are responsible, which prints only administration-approved, everything’s just-hunky-dory propaganda, with no opportunity for reader response. Perhaps we can assume from your recent contributions to feedback that the Gazette is now WiUing to reciprocate ? -the lettitor
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GRADUATE INTERVIEWS On-campus Interviews have been scheduled for the following dates: November 17 - December 5,1969 -all disciplines excluding engin> eers and honours co-operative mathematics January 12 - 30,19i’O -all disciplines Some firms have already reserved interviewing space. It is suggested that you acquaint yourself with these listings by periodically visiting the, PLACEMENT DEPARTMENT 6th FLOOR, MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER BLDG.
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Aputhetic shodcf hve suy in fededion’s existence I resent. the tone Larry Burke used in reply to his letter of june 20, to Philip English. Such phrases as “keep your mouth shut”, “incessant noise”, and his liberty of- calling federation representatives, not of his particular view, “fascist”, reflect not on English’s letter but on Burke’s intelligence. Federation president Tom Patterson, in his letter of the same date and subject, was very articulate in setting out the philosophy of the federation. I agree in part that if an organisation is democratic it has some basis for compulsory fees. There is on this campus and other universities, a political force that is not yet fully understood. This is the force of “apathy”-people who don’t care to participate in the political struc-
ture as it exists. Now if in an election less than 50 percent of the electorate vote, the campus is obviously divided into two camps; those who actively support the present structure in some form (voters) and those who don’t (non-voters). Now if as I have supposed more than 50 percent don’t vote the federation is by definition undemocratic, ie. does not have the support of the majority. I believe the federation has been very undemocratic at times. Furthermore, since the membership of the federation changes every year a referendum should be called each year to maintain that the federation by Patterson’s definition, is still democratic. Lastly, an idea with which the radicals do not agree is becoming increasingly labeled as “right wing”. To me this is just as dangerous as McCarthyism in which dissenting views were indiscrim-
inately lumped under “communism”. English I believe was not advocating a position of either left or right, but one of non-polit, ical government. DERRYCK SMITH them 3A Sokkwity cd compassion, not Eng/ish’s competition The recent letters of Phillip S. English (june 13, june 27) make interesting reading. In actual practice, though, there seems little need to change the present Federation of Students structure. It’s difficult for any organization to cater to the general interests of the campus in a better way than what it is done now and I think Larry Burko et al are doing a fine job. I would like to make a few points regarding the. philosophy of personal freedom before everything else-which English purports so avidly. This philosophy is nothing new, ‘liberty, power to do as one pleases’, ‘ . . .a competitive system-a system which can only be feared by those incompetents who could never survive in it’, etc., have been proclaimed long back. This logic of survival of, the fittest or free competition, whatever you call it, is basically the same old jungle law. I would personally like to think that the human civilization has long passed that stage and we are in an era where solidarity with our fellow beings and compassion for the handicapped are everyday accepted facts. GAUTAM MITRA grad them eng On behalf he protests
of summer fegistfution
sheep
The semi-annual sheep-herding contest took place here at Uniwat on monday last. As usual, the administration were the winners. The animals were herded, penned, sheared and tagged in a “processing” which took up to two hours. Missing was that familiar figure-the man with the crook, and three or four collie dogs which might have speeded up the event slightly; however, the winner did not complain. The event was billed to commence at 9 am, but did not get underway until 9:35 am. That this meant these poor animals had to stand in hot, humid weather was of no concern to the administration; after all, they were in this game to win. In any case, conditions inside the arena were little better with animals bleating and baa-ing away, their wool getting all bedraggled with the close confinement of the pens. ln case you feel you might have missed this event, it was billed under the misnomer “registration for the summer session”. What’s that you say? The above an afront to human dignity. Don’t tell it to the Marinesbut try the administration. JOHN H. BATTYE flock 3 history department friday
4 july
7969 (70:91
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This Ramparts tiagazine editorial was included in the same issue (july 1969) as the article published on pages 7 - 11.
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The nation has recently been subjected to a totally misleading controversy over and camquestions of urban “violence” pus “unrest” based on a false dichotomy between those who supposedly believe in violence, chaos, and the destruction of normal political channels for change and those who favor nonviolence, order and democracy. Such a simplistic scheme, of course, begs the question: everyone who is not an undercover police agent or an outright psychotic would of course prefer order to chaos or nonviolence to violence, if these categories were compatible with justice; all would prefer to use routine political channels rather than be forced to invent new ones, if those channels were indeed open. But they are not. The history of the past ten years of left dissent in America however has demonstrated that “normal” channels close most suddenly when protest centers on any of the vital power relations in the society. In every important case, movements of protest heve gone from the most benign of tactics to those that are more troublesome because of the intransigence of established power, not because of their own degeneracy or protesters’ eagerness for violence. The student nonviolent coordinating committee (SNCC) began as a pacifist organization patiently involved in voter registration; it ended in a militant avowal of black power. In the interim, society managed to bust as many pacifist heads as militant ones, and the only difference was that SNCC began to fight back. The movement for campus change began with the nonviolent sit-ins of the free speech movement (FSM) at Berkeley, with prayer and song by Joan Baez, but governor Brown liberal California called out the troopers all the same, and soon the students were showing up with protective helmets and occasionally giving back some of what they got. The peace movement tried its letterwriting campaigns and electoral politics, but as it amassed support, the elites of the major parties moved decisively to prevent a vote cn the war in the national election. Those who dissent are admittedly more bitter now, and increasingly cynical about a Gandhian appeal to the good will of men of power; but assertions that they are the purveyors of violence in this society are a deliberate distortion of the facts. It is still the police who are the major source of violence in American ghettos. The O’Brien case, discussed in this issue (p. 7), documents the contention of the Black Panthers that cops are an alien, violent force unleashed on the black community, that the courts will not convict cops who kill blacks, and that black self-defense has become a necessity. It is still the U.S. government which is, as Martin Luther King said shortly befog his death, “the major l&cveyor of. violence in the world,” in Vietnam and elsewhere; and it is the rankest hypocrisy to focus on student protesters who occasionally harass a Dow recruiter, disrupt classes, or break the windows of an ROTC building, as seriously competitive with this officially sanctioned violence. It is also quite illogical to argue that all violence is the same, both quantitatively and otherwise, for clearly a tomato thrown at a Dow recruiter is a very different matter, by any reasonable standards, from napalm thrown upon Vietnamese, and no one has yet even spoken about napalming Dow Chemical itself, which would certainly be morally more justifiable in terms of saving human lives than the bombing of Hiroshima or many other grand acts of national policy. Which is just the point: when mass death is officially disseminated it is
14
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“policy,” but when a Harvard dean is shaken a bit it’s “violence.” The liberal mentality, because it is almost constitutionally unable to focus on ultimate causes, must focus instead on that which is most obvious: tactics. But the central question is one of power, not tactics. All government bureaucracies have their own violence. They call it moral. They call it law. Such governments everywhere are united in branding those who challenge the legitimacy of their laws as purveyors of violence and chaos. Those who have power have the police and the courts, and if they do not permit channels for a basic challenge to their pbwer, then they are the ones who impel the use of illegal tactics. * * * The protesters are then left with the choice of remaining within the system as an entertainment-the loyal, ineffectual opposition-or thrashing about for ways of rudely confronting that system and forcing it to give. This last is not a neat alternative; there is much confusion and error as men shorn of power attempt “by any means necessary” to assert themselves. It would be far better if the system would simply give way or open up, but it doesn’t. It rather becomes more and more oppressive: conspiracy indictments against the Chicago protesters; long sentences for the Presidio “mutine.ers” ; Smith Act indictments against the leaders of the Black Panthers. The “mutineers’‘-who simply followed Martin Luther King’s tactics by sitting in a circle, holding up fingers in the peace sign while singing “We shall overcome” -received harsher sentences than all other protesters, even though their tactics were totally nonviolent, precisely because they challenged the center of government violence, the army, proving once again that it is the challenge to established power and not the choice of tac-
tics which is troubling to the men who run this country-the “they.” And if there is one thing which separates the protesters from those who administer the government or form the backlash or are simply apathetic, it is over the recognition of the “they.” We were all raised on the myth of the egalitarian American politic : power is diffuse, the political channels permit a redress of grievance for all, and what imperfections appear from time to time are marginal to the system and may be corrected without troubling the whole. ’ But the last ten years of government have revealed all too clearly that power is highly concentrated in those corporate and political elites which run America, benefit from its empire and political status-quo and control its universities toward that end. The FSM’ers soon discovered that the regents of their university were not simply neutral citizens but rather representatives of the top economic corporations in the state, from Matson shipping to Pauley oil and the Hearst corporation. ’ Vietnam protesters soon learned that the war was no accident of American foreign policy but rather necessary to the maintenance of the empire, and the activities of black militarits revealed that racism was not a Southern aberration but rather something built into the very core of the American experience. And when protesters moved beyond marginal criticism to a fundamental challenge to established power they became a recognized threat-“new left wreckers” rather than sincere reformers. The latter could be abided, even coddled, but the former no matter what their choice of tactics, need to be eliminated. They will repress the left no matter what its tactics whenever the left gets near the jugular-be it denying the university to the military, organizing in the army or organizing black people
as revolutionaries rather than as black capitalists. They will bemoan the left’s choice of tactics, but what they really resent is its program which challenges prevailing power. * * * But nonetheless, the left ought to be terribly concerned with matters of tactics, not because it will convince the powerful but because incorrect tactics will confuse the majority and make the program easier. It must organise as a serious factor in American political life. A tactic which merely confronts without at the same time providing an educational basis for organizing those who are most affected is obviously to be rejected. Tab often radicals seem bent on proving their revolutionary ardor in the eyes of their family or friends and stressing the degree of their alienation rather than the content of their program. Such tactics merely indulge one3 sense of cultural uniqueness or political impotence, as in the case of the selfannointed “crazies** and other lumpen groups who provide ammunition for the enemy, confuse the majority that has i real stake’ in bringing about change in America, and force the left to argue endlessly about dubious tactics rather than advancing its program. The press has chosen to identify the wilder ploys of a small minority of radicals (increasingly the work of police agents) with the main activity of the movement in order to denounce it. But it is the left which has been the victim of *violence rather thin its purveyor. At San Francisco State, Harvard, Cornell and Berkeley, violence was first brought to the campus by the police and not the protesters. The press has also frequently equated civil disobedience with violence. It is assumed that the student seizure of a campus building is inherently a violent act even if conducted peaceably, but that the original purchase of a building by trustees (whatever social hardship it may entail) is not-even though that purchase could hardly stand were the cops not ready to crack the heads of those who acted to deny its legitimacy. It was “lawful” and presumably “nonviolent” for the regents of the University of California to level the housing in the bohemian student quarter in Berkeley, leaving a square block of dust in its place. But when people began planting trees and grass with swings for kids, making it a park, the pigs came in. At the request of urbane chancellor Roger Heyns, they ripped it up and imprisoned the park within a grotesque iron fence. And the cops were lawful and orderly when they used tear gas, clubs and shotguns, shooting. scores of people at random-which was not an example of “Pigs gone wild, ” as the headline in one underground paper had it, but rather the precise observance of sheriff Madigan’s orders to shoot, issued in compliance with Heyns’ directives. If Heyns were shot we’d never hear the end of it, but the students and street people simply didn’t matter. And those who had planted the grass were held responsible for the violence. It proved once again that the game is rigged. Neither could the line between ghetto and non-ghetto, or have and\ have-not, stand, were not the police primed by law and custom to preserve it. This power arrangement works most efficiently if it is not noticed, but it has been increa$ingly revealed as a result of the protesters’ challenge to that power. The police are on the offensive; as the O’Brien case illustrates, the courts will no longer contain their excesses for fear of, jeopardizing the very foufiation of that official violenbe. But the establishment blows its own civilized cover in the process and is then forced to develop more obvious and ugly rationalizations for what is simply a fast-developing police state. There is no longer a middle ground; it is necessary that people stand against that official violence, or they become responsible for it.
.
Capitalists people.
generally
-Abraham
Lincoln,
act harmoniously,
and in concert, to fleece the
7837
Succinctly the method of compromise might be described as the method whereby one hopes to control events by abandoning oneself to them. -Harold
Stearns,
author
of Liberalism
in America,
79 79.
The wise fools who sit in the high places of justice fail to see that in revolutionary times, vital issues are settled not by statutes, decrees and authorities but in spite of them. -Helen
Keller,
79 19
The truth is we are all caught in a great economic heartless. . -Woodrow
Wilson,
system which is
1912.
The doctrine of the harmony of interests is the natural assumption of a prosperous and privileged class whose members have a dominant voice in the community and are therefore naturally prone to identify its interest with their own. -E.H.
Carr,
7939
There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to every one who is striking at the root. -Henry
David
Thoreau,
7858
We are an island of Indians in a lake of whites. We must stand together or they will rub us out separately. These soldiers have come up shooting; they want war. All right; we’ll give it to them. -Sitting
Bull,
1878
You will reach the point where you will realize that it takes power to talk to power, it takes power to make power r’espect you and it takes madness to deal with a power structure that is so corrupt. -Malcolm
The country is run by business. There are haves, and they want to keep what they’ve got. The changes that ard going on directly threaten their hold on things, so they hold on harder. That’s exactly the way it is in the television industry. The haves, like CBS, aren’t letting go of anything. -Tommy
Smothers,
7969
Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, dirty hunger for dollars. -Henry
Ford,
greed, the
79 75
We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do. -He/en
Keller,
79 7 6
God forbid we should ever be 20 years without a revolution. -Thomas
Jefferson,
Democracy -Senator
7 787
is meaningless LaFollette,
as long as money controls its machinery.
7898
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and sacred righta right we hope and believe is to liberate the world. right
-Abraham
Lincoln,
In God We Trust?
J
X, 7967
7848
It’s amazing what’s not printed in history textbooks.
-editor
Many. people will finish reading the article on pages 7-11 and the Ramparts editorial on the opposite page and breathe -a deep sigh of relief.. .aren’t you glad you live in Canada: don’t you wish everybody did? Those who accept that line will be joining that bastion of motherhood, the K-W Record, which attacked “American police ideology” in an editorial may 12, after Louisville Kentucky police chief C.J. Hyde had addressed the southern Ontario Optimist clubs in Stratford. Hyde had said that policemen were too soft and lenient and that “we must stop this unbridled appeasement toward criminals with probation and parole. ” The Record said, “What we do not need is a guest who tells us that this is the right prescription -for law enforcement in Canada.. .Louisville may benefit by having more of its citizens in jail at any given moment, but we do not believe this is true of Ontario. ” Brave words, indeed. A speaker at the Ontario association of police chiefs: recent convention was wildly applauded when he told social workers and other “do-gooders” to stop trying to help hardened criminals. In may, the Waterloo township police chief, at Preston’s police
Canadian Liberation
University
Press Member,
appreciation day, said he didn’t believe in legal aid, because “you and I are often helping professional criminals. ” In Canada, an arrested citizen has no recognized “right” to a phone call and police are not restricted from badgering a “confession” from persons in custodv. ’ The Canadian law‘n’order mentality is right in there with the trigger-happy Yankees. But it doesn’t even end there. We read American magazines (that our postoffice handles at a * loss) and we watch American television and movies (the most of ’ which preach mass alienation, American style). The majority of our economy is operated by American subsidiaries. Their profits, through our sufferance, are now at such a level that some economists claim there is more Canadian capital going south as profit than American capital coming north as investment. We still exercise a few independent Canadian political policies, like thinking about recognizing the People’s Republic of ( China-700 million people are hard to ignore. Even this meager-and progressive-independence will . be lost to the American police state, if we fail to gain control of our social and economic existence. -_.r
Underground
Press Syndicate
associate
member,
News Service subscriber. thechevron ispublished every friday by the publications ^ board of the Federation of Students (inc), University of Watsrloo. Content is independent of the publications board, the student council and the university administration. Offices in the campus center, phone (519) 744-6111, local 3443 (news and sports), 3444 (ads), 3445 (editor), direct nightline 744-0111, editor&chief: Bob Verdun 12,500 copies
v#OWl
CAR 39 THINKS HE JUST SEEN A SUSPECTED BLACK PANT&s HE IMAGINES COULD BE A CONCEALED LETHAL WEAPON!”
WHAT
Welcome to our new readers-all you innocent young teenyboppers just itchin to g,et into the good old UofW, sure that it’s the place of your dreams, having been told that by Ken Fryer and the computer god, the jocks, or the friendliest radicals in Ontario. Here’s the staff of the paper that will probably make your parents wish you weren’t going to be reading it for the next few years: Jim Klinck, Alex Smith, Bill Brown, Tom Purdy, Dave X Stephenson, dumdum jones, swireland, Steve Izma, Bryan Douglas, Brenda Wilson, Louis Silcox, Cyril Levitt, Wayne Smith,‘ Pat Starkey, Bob Epp, Ross Taylor, Pat Conner. If you’re ever asked, this was the week that howiepetch got egg on his face, edie finally was relieved of her ill-performed duties, and al ,adIington is going to guarantee your next few years are SAFE ones.
friday
4 july
7969 (7629)
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