Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories: Chap. 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968

Chapter 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968 (iii)

Dean Coleman was a tall, non-intellectual, athletically-oriented, good-natured white bureaucrat who had previously been the Columbia College Dean of Admissions. Aside from his interest in a career as an academic administrator, he appeared to be not that deeply interested in either the fate of Columbia University or in such “non-university” matters as the war in Viet Nam or IDA. Yet because Dean Coleman saw nothing wrong in just carrying out the orders of Columbia Vice-President Truman with regard to disciplining student activists for political reasons, he quickly became another symbol of administrator complicity in the attempt to repress Columbia SDS on campus.

When he returned to Hamilton Hall after lunch and found the 500 of us in the lobby in front of his office, Dean Coleman refused to debate the issues with us. Instead, he walked back into his office, unaware that once he was inside his office he was going to be held hostage until Wilson was released by the cops.

In the first half-hour of the April 23rd sit-in in Hamilton Hall’s lobby, student activists who were most eager to speak to the crowd—like Stu—began to emerge as mass leaders. Part of the time was also spent singing Civil Rights Movement freedom songs. After Coleman had walked into his office and the consensus was that he was being held hostage, Bill and Ray started to take control of the demonstration from the more confused and divided Columbia SDS people. Mark would get the crowd laughing from time to time, like when he rhetorically asked the crowd: “Is this an indoor demonstration?” And the crowd then answered “Yes” in unison, with laughter. But during the first few hours of the demo, especially, only the Student Afro-American Society “heavies” seemed to have a clear, unified sense of how to direct and organize the demo, based on their clearer understanding of how the Black student occupation of the Howard University Administration Building, earlier in the spring term, had been carried out.

A Hamilton Hall demonstration steering committee was formed with Bill, Ray and Cicero representing the Student Afro-American Society, Mark, Ted and Nick representing Columbia SDS, Juan and a Columbia Citizenship Council bureaucrat from Minneapolis named Ziff representing Citizenship Council and a guy named Jonathan representing the unaffiliated liberal students. Within a few hours, both the bureaucratic Ziff and the unaffiliated liberal Jonathan had resigned, however, because of the growing militancy of the demo. But Juan stayed on the demonstration steering committee and his politics pretty much blended into Columbia SDS politics by the second day of the student revolt.

The Hamilton Hall demonstration steering committee started to meet in one of the classrooms to discuss strategy, while the rest of the demonstrators started to prepare for a long sit-in. People went outside to bring in food and more student support, and telephone calls were made to the local TV and radio stations and newspapers to bring in more media publicity. Telephone calls were also made to community people to bring in more community support from Central Harlem and West Harlem.

Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen. But after it became clear that cops were not going to be sent to clear us out of Hamilton Hall quickly because our numbers were large and more students, media people and community and civil rights activists were joining us, the white anti-racist students started to bring sleeping bags, blankets and guitars from their dormitory rooms into Hamilton Hall. The Citizenship Council offices in Ferrris Booth Hall started to pump out leaflets in support of the sit-in on its mimeograph machine. The Columbia student FM radio station—WKCR—started to broadcast around-the-clock coverage of the revolt—after New York Post editor, James Wechsler (who had led a student strike, himself, at Columbia in the 1930s) put news of our holding the dean hostage and of the sit-in on the Post’s late afternoon edition’s front page.

After its initial meeting, the Hamilton Hall demo steering committee reported back to the sit-in with a list of six demands, and the demonstrators approved of their demands by cheering. These six demands became the six demands of the Columbia Student Revolt and were, more or less, as follows:

1. Stop the construction of the Columbia gymnasium in Morningside Park immediately;
2. End all Columbia ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses by having Columbia President Kirk and Trustee Burden resign their positions on IDA's Executive Committee immediately;
3. End the ban on indoor demonstrations at Columbia;
4. All future disciplinary action decisions be made by a student-faculty committee;
5. Drop all charges against students arrested at the gym site; and
6. Amnesty for the IDA 6 and for all the participants in the current sit-in and demonstration.

In retrospect, the Columbia Revolt was really about just winning 3 essential demands: 1. No “Jim Crow” gym be built in Morningside Park; 2. No more ties to IDA; and 3. No criminal or disciplinary reprisals against any revolt or strike participants. The reason why the Columbia Administration chose to eventually call in police to clear the campus on April 30th was that Kirk and Truman were willing to stop gym construction (because they feared Harlem’s mass anger) and to cut Columbia’s ties to IDA (because it related to the unpopular war in Viet Nam), but they were unwilling to give Mark amnesty.

Somehow the U.S. Establishment felt that the national security of the United States and the security of all Ivy League universities would be threatened if Mark were given amnesty in Spring 1968. And because large numbers of students would not end their sit-in unless everybody—including Mark—was granted amnesty, the Columbia Administration never even got to the point where it felt it was realistic to publicly offer every student amnesty, with the exception of Mark. Mark had somehow touched a vital nerve of the U.S. Establishment’s university system with his style of confrontational politics, and this university system now wanted Mark banished from the Ivy League.

Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories: Chap. 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968

Chapter 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968 (ii)

There was a deeper mood of mass anger and militancy in the first group of demonstrators who we met at W. 116th St. and Morningside Drive. What had happened was that the front of the SDS demonstration that had raced down to the gym site had started ripping down the fence surrounding the construction site. The New York City cop who was guarding the gym site had radioed for reinforcements and, when the additional cops came, they foolishly began shoving around the mostly white male Columbia students.

When the cops tried to arrest a demonstrator, the white Columbia students—both left-liberal and SDS hard-core—instead of just meekly letting the cops take the demonstrator away, tried to prevent the arrest and shoved back at the cops. Although the cops managed to take the Columbia sophomore they had grabbed away—an anti-war guy named Wilson (who was then living with my old roommate Tom in the same Furnald Hall dorm room that I had lived in as a sophomore when I discovered Columbia’s IDA connection)—the gym site demonstrators were enraged. And Columbia Student Afro-American Society activist Bill (who was also involved in the scuffling with the cops) was surprised and emotionally touched by the militant way the anti-racist white student radicals seemed willing to fight back against Columbia’s city cops, in order to protect Harlem’s land.

Mark had correctly realized that it made more sense to bring the mass anger back up to Columbia’s campus quickly, and quickly confront the men who were responsible for both the decision to build the gym and the use of cops—the Columbia Administration—instead of getting trapped in another off-campus brawl with cops—after new police reinforcements arrived to clear the gym site out of demonstrators, totally. He stood up on some point of elevation at the gym site. And, after outlining the tactical options, he supported the mass consensus to return to the campus where, as Mark realized, there were large numbers of additional New Left supporters from the rear of the original march towards Low Library. Mark now showed that he could spontaneously lead and hold together masses of people, when unpredictable obstacles to their mass motion appeared.

Fighting against Columbia’s policies of institutional racism, complicity with the U.S. war machine and repression of student activism was a helluva lot more exciting than sitting in a typical all-male Columbia classroom. And for the first time at Columbia, hundreds of new Columbia and Barnard anti-war students had finally gotten hip to this fact.

The arrested student—Wilson—was a good-natured, bright, tall guy with glasses who, although feeling threatened by the draft, had been more into smoking grass, listening to rock music and hanging out with his hippie-anarchist Columbia and Barnard friends than being that active in Columbia SDS. If the April 23rd demo hadn’t appeared in advance to be the big dramatic confrontational event that it would actually turn out to be, I doubt that Wilson would have made any special effort to be at the demo, despite his New Left sympathies. By singling out Wilson for arrest, instead of somebody who was in the Columbia SDS hard-core, the cops unintentionally further radicalized people. By arresting Wilson, they indicated that any Columbia student who protested against the gym was fair game—no matter how apolitical.

United as one demonstration on W. 116th St. and Amsterdam Ave. again, 500 of us marched back to the sundial and Mark got up on the sundial and started to speak again in a humorous, easygoing way: “The way I see the situation, we've got about four hundred or five hundred people who'll do anything now. On the other hand, I don't know if we've got four hundred or five hundred people who'll do anything tomorrow--but I think you do. I don't think four or five hundred people can close down the university."

Cicero, the Student Afro American Society head, then was asked to speak to the crowd and he said: “SDS can stand on the side and support us, but the black students and the Harlem community will be the ones in the vanguard. Black people alone will decide whether or not they want the gym to be built. It’s not up to you to tell Harlem whether the gym should be built.”

Because Cicero seemed to be equating the white New Left students who opposed the gym construction with the white Columbia Administration that approved the gym construction, the crowd did not cheer his speech and was on the verge of getting demoralized and confused again.

What raised the crowd’s morale again, however, was that Bill rushed to the sundial after Cicero had finished speaking and—luckily for Columbia SDS—Bill praised the white anti-racist students’ militancy, in a revolutionary nationalist rap:

"Okay, I want you to check something out. I thought up until this stage of the game thaat white people weren't ready. But I saw something today that suggests that maybe this is not true. Maybe you are ready. Because when the deal hit the fan, you were there, you were with me. It was almost soulful.

"If you're talking about revolution, if you're talking about identifying with the Vietnamese struggle...you don't need to go marching downtown. There's one oppressor--in the White House, in Low Library, in Albany, New York. To strike a blow at the gym, you strike a blow for the Vietnamese people. You strike a blow at the gym and you strike a blow against the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You strike a blow at Low Library and you strike a blow for the freedom fighters in Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, and Zimbabwe, South Africa.

"All you need is superior organization and superior commitment so that you're not acting like an incoherent mob. Need I say more? I don't want to get arrested for sedition," Bill said in a spirited way.

The crowd cheered Bill enthusiastically. Most white anti-war Columbia and Barnard students would not have sustained their militant anti-racism without the encouragement of Bill. Black radical activist approval appeared to be psychologically required before the mass of anti-war students would fight against institutional racism at Columbia.

After Bill’s great charismatic and spontaneous speech, Mark then proposed that we march into an administration building at Columbia and take a hostage until Wilson was released by the cops:

"We don't have an incoherent mob, it just looks that way. I'll tell you what we want to do. We want to win some demands about IDA, we want IDA to go. We want the people under discipline to get off of discipline. We want this guy who got busted today to get the charges dropped against him. We want them to stop the fucking gym over there. So I think there's really only one thing we have to do, and we're all together here, we're all ready to go--now! We'll start by holding a hostage.

"There's one part of the administration that's responsible for what happened today--and that's the administration of Columbia College," Mark concluded in an easygoing way.

The demonstration cheered in support of Mark’s proposal that we take a hostage in Hamilton. Then somebody shouted “Seize Hamilton!” and Mark shouted, "Hamilton Hall is right over there. Let's go!"

Instantaneously, demonstrators then started to run at a fast pace to the lobby of Hamilton Hall. Within a few minutes, led by Mark, Bill and Ray, 500 of us were standing in front of the door to the office of Columbia College’s Acting Dean in the first floor lobby, waiting to talk to Acting Dean Coleman.

Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories: Chap. 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968

Chapter 16: We Shut Down Columbia University, 1968 (i)

April 23, 1968 marked the last day I sat in a Columbia College classroom as an undergraduate, after nearly 3 years of being a Columbia College student. It marked a personal turning point in my life, as well as a political turning point in 1960s history.

As I sat behind the SDS table on Low Plaza at High Noon on April 23, 1968, observing people as they gathered around the sundial, it became obvious that we had mobilized more than the 400 leftist students required to finally hold a mass sit-in at Low Library. It became clear that I was going to finally join a Berkeley-like student revolt at Columbia. As I watched and listened to Mark speak in his humorous—but charismatic and morally earnest—way, I felt that together with my Movement comrades I could actually make a great impact on U.S. history and change the world in the way I envisioned doing so in Summer 1965 when I wrote my first songs of protest—until everybody on earth was equal, free, in love and at peace. I overestimated the ease with which the United States could be changed.

Each one of the IDA 6 spoke. Cicero, the new head of the SAS, also spoke in opposition to Columbia’s gym construction project. The inter-racial alliance increased the enthusiasm in which the predominantly white New Left student crowd responded to each speech. There was a tense air of anticipation. On the steps in front of Low Library, the right-wing Columbia students and jocks eyed the rally and frowned. The white liberal students watched from further down in Low Plaza, curious about what was going to happen.

A short time before we were all scheduled to march into Low Library, Mark was handed a compromise offer from Columbia Vice-President Truman. Truman agreed to meet with us to discuss our three demands in McMillin Theatre, if we agreed to call off our march into Low Library. Mark informed us of Truman’s proposal and suggested that it only made sense to meet with Truman if he agreed that such a McMillin Theatre meeting would be a “popular tribunal” on the guilt or innocence of the IDA 6. The crowd supported Mark’s rejection of Truman’s “Too little, too late” offer of negotiation, and it began to get more restless as the speeches continued to go on.

Then a tall, beardless guy, with long-hair and a blue bandana around his head, suddenly stepped up on the sundial, pointed his arm to Low Library and shouted: “To Low!” The New Left students cheered, turned around and, in a disorderly fashion, while chanting, started to march up the stairs towards Low Library, led by six or seven Columbia SDS hard-core activists who were linking arms, while searching for an open door into the building.

The wild-eyed, bandana-wearing freak who spontaneously went to the sundial to get SDS people to end their verbosity had not previously been active in Columbia SDS. His name was Hurwitz. His father—Leo—had graduated from Harvard in the 1930s, been apparently active in CP circles and founded Frontier Films, in order to try to use film as a political weapon and an instrument for developing mass revolutionary consciousness and to combat the anti-communist ideological influence of Hollywood. In the 1950s, Leo had apparently been economically forced to scale down his Frontier Films operation because of the anti-communism of most U.S. movie house owners and to trade in his radical film camera for a CBS cameraman career. But Leo had managed to pass on much of his leftist politics and his love of filmmaking to his artistically-oriented son.

Yet when Hurwitz dramatically appeared on the Columbia New Left political scene on April 23, 1968, all you knew about him was that he cut an impressive-looking new figure, he seemed militant and hard-line politically and he appeared devoted to his quiet, but physically beautiful, Barnard woman friend. He also seemed somewhat inarticulate when he tried to express his political views in debate, as well as somewhat cold and elitist when he related to Movement men and women whom he didn’t consider “honchos.” But, despite his political weaknesses, what was great about Hurwitz was that he liked Mark, hated Grayson Kirk and Columbia, had great and deep gut-level revolutionary left feelings and was eager to fight it out with the Establishment. So he seemed a welcome addition to the late 1960s New Left at Columbia.

Standing in front of the main entrance to Low Library was the line of right-wing students, so the Columbia SDS people led the march into Low Library towards the right front side entrance of Low, in order to avert an intra-student, left-wing vs. right-wing fight, a la what had happened in John Jay Hall in April 1967 when Marine recruiting had been stopped. As the demo marched to the right front of Low Library, I put into a box all the SDS literature from the SDS table and walked to the end of the line of march, figuring that, later, somebody else would bring all the SDS literature and the table back to its Earl Hall storage place. I didn’t want to miss out on the expected action inside Low Library.

From the back of the crowd, however, I could see that Columbia security guards were blocking the side door into Low Library, thus frustrating our collective desire to enter the building, confront Kirk and probably sit-in.

Immediately sizing up the situation, two quick-thinking women students from Barnard, who supported SDS and were in the front of the march, shouted out: “To the gym site.” And within a few seconds, the front of the angry demonstration was racing away from the side of Low Library, past St. Paul’s Chapel, down towards Amsterdam Ave. and across W. 116th St. to Morningside Park, chanting “Jim Crow Gym, Must Go!” Because of the unexpected difficulty in getting into Low Library, the back of our demonstration was confused about where the front of the demonstration had run off to. So our demo of 500 participants and 300 onlookers was split in half, with some demonstrators and onlookers marching down to Morningside Park and some demonstrators and onlookers standing around in Low Plaza asking each other “What happened?” and “Where’s the rest of the demo?” and “Why aren’t we inside Low Library?”

Being cut off from the front of the demo and trapped on Low Plaza with the confused rear of the demo, my initial thought was “What a fiasco! Everyone was ready to have a mass sit-in at Low Library a few minutes ago and now nobody knows what’s going on.” Then suddenly Mark and Sokolow, a short sophomore caucus action-faction activist and English major who had become increasingly active during the 67-68 academic year, appeared out of nowhere, from the front of the demo.

In an excited way, Mark started to chant “Jim Crow Gym, Must Go! Jim Crow Gym, Must Go!” But because he was now chanting in the middle of an equal proportion of right-wing, liberal and confused left-wing students, nobody else was chanting along with him. He seemed, suddenly, to be a forlorn, utopian, Jehovah witness-like figure. Both the right-wing students and the liberal students who noticed Mark were laughing at him in a sneering way, because he now looked like a leader without any followers.

Not being able to rally people on Low Plaza to quickly head back down towards the gym site to reunite with the front of the demo, Mark stopped chanting and he and Sokolow quickly ran down to Morningside Park in order to catch up with the action. Along with some other confused Columbia SDS people around Low Plaza, I tried in a more patient way to get our supporters to march across Campus Walk to Amsterdam Ave. and 116th St. to also join up with the people who were already at the gym site. Ted, meanwhile, stood up on the bottom of some street lamp on 116th St. and got people organized enough to regroup so that the original demonstration was reunited by the time we all reached the entrance to Morningside Park on Morningside Drive and W. 116th St.

Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories: Chap. 15: Steering Columbia SDS Into Action, 1968

Chapter 15: Steering Columbia SDS Into Action, 1968 (xi)

The IDA 6 were put on disciplinary probation and Columbia Spectator gave the case much publicity. Then the Columbia SDS underground newspaper hit the campus.

The right-wing white Columbia students and jocks who had attacked us in April 1967 when we protested U.S. Marine recruitment on campus began to panic at seeing how much sympathetic publicity Columbia’s New Left was receiving. They issued a leaflet which asked “Will Mark Rudd be Columbia’s new dean?” and called upon the Columbia Administration to ban Columbia SDS and be hard-line in repressing New Left campus activism. After Columbia SDS announced that an anti-repression demonstration would be held at noon on April 23rd, leaflets circulated around campus which hinted that there might be a replay of the April 1967 right-wing attack on Columbia SDS people.

A well-attended Columbia SDS general assembly meeting was held in Fayerweather Hall to plan our strategy for the April 23, 1968 sundial rally and demonstration. Bill and Ray sat near the front of the classroom in which the meeting was held, listening and observing, while the 100 white SDS people debated possible tactics. Bill and Ray only attended Columbia SDS meetings between 1966 and 1968 when they expected that genuine white radical action might soon follow the meeting.

Frivolously, a guy who had been active in PL circles and the Columbia SDS Labor Committee, named Komm, proposed that we march into Low Library on April 23rd to confront Kirk and then call for a student strike to shut down classes. Mark and the other New Left action-faction people—and even the praxis-axis people—all agreed with the proposal to march into Low Library and confront Kirk, but felt it was too premature to call for a student strike, until we saw how many students turned out for the confrontation in Low Library.

We held some debate about what our substantive demands would be and agreed on the 3 substantive demands: 1. An open hearing for the IDA 6; 2. An end to Columbia’s ties to the IDA; and 3. An end to Columbia’s construction of the “Jim Crow” gymnasium in Morningside Park. We did not include any anti-sexist demands on the Columbia Administration because no demands on the Columbia Administration were yet being raised by either liberal or radical women in 1968, even though the author of Sexual Politics—Kate Millet—was working on her book as a Columbia graduate student while Columbia SDS was attempting to mobilize Barnard and Columbia students to actually fight against the patriarchal Columbia Administration of the patriarchal corporate university. (Ironically, many of the same white liberal democratic women students who did not put forth autonomous feminist demands on the Columbia Administration in 1968 would later place sole blame for the lack of 1960s anti-sexist struggle on the male chauvinism of “patriarchal New Left” men, when they became feminist academics in the 1970s at the patriarchal U.S. corporate universities).

Before the meeting ended in a state of excitement and anticipation, Mark made the following comment: “The usual life span for a leftist organization at Columbia is two years. Columbia SDS is approaching the end of its second year. And we may not survive the Administration’s attempt to repress us. But let’s fight for our right to be free and our right to act politically on this campus as Columbia SDS, for as long as we can.”

A paper had been passed around for volunteers to sit behind the Columbia SDS table on Low Plaza on April 23, 1968 and I signed up for the 12 to 1 p.m. slot. Consequently, I was the last Columbia SDS activist to be at the table before the sundial rally turned into the student revolt, and a new political situation suddenly developed on Columbia’s campus.

Before the 9 o’clock classes were to start on April 23, 1968, some other SDS activists and I went inside the classrooms of Hamilton Hall and chalked up all the blackboards with the following message:

CONFRONT KIRK

HIGH NOON

TODAY, APRIL 23, 1968

Meanwhile, Mark had re-printed a copy of the right-wing leaflet that threatened to bust up our Columbia SDS rally, which now contained humorous, hand-written comments that he had written in the margin of the right-wing leaflet. Some of these “annotated” threatening right-wing leaflets were then circulated and posted around campus by Columbia SDS activists.

There was tension on the campus. A few days before, I had spoken with the head of Harlem CORE, Victor Solomon, briefly, as I sat behind a Columbia SDS table on Broadway and W. 116th St. He was going to meet with some students on campus with regard to stopping the gymnasium project. On the night before the April 23, 1968 noon demo a last-minute alliance was finally forged between Columbia SDS and the Student Afro-American Society [SAS] at Columbia. The Student Afro-American Society’s new leader, Cicero, was scheduled to join the IDA 6 in speaking on the sundial at high noon on the following day.

Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories: Chap. 15: Steering Columbia SDS Into Action, 1968

Chapter 15: Steering Columbia SDS Into Action, 1968 (x)

In the two weeks during which Columbia Vice-President Truman (who was expected to succeed Kirk as President of Columbia and was handling the decision-making process with regard to how to stop New Left student protest at Columbia) was deciding how to punish the IDA 6, Columbia SDS hard-core activists remained busy. Ironically, in a speech earlier in the academic year in Low Library rotunda, Truman had attacked the New Left and made the following vow: “We will not let the University be turned into an instrument of Revolution.”

Yet upon hearing this, Mark had, subsequently, argued at a Columbia SDS steering committee meeting: “Truman says he won’t let the University be turned into an instrument of Revolution. Our political goal should become exactly that: turning Columbia from an instrument of the corporations into an instrument of Revolution.”

Mark’s next dramatic move was at the Administration-sponsored April 9, 1968 memorial to Martin Luther King in St. Paul’s Chapel, at which Columbia President Kirk was present.

Given Columbia’s record of institutional racism in relationship to the thousands of African-American and Latino tenants it forced out of the West Harlem neighborhood surrounding it and to its non-unionized, predominantly African-American and Puerto Rican cafeteria workers, as well as its continued commitment to push ahead with its gym construction project in Morningside Park despite the objections of Harlem community activists, it was understandable why Columbia SDS people leafleted outside the chapel to protest the hypocrisy of Kirk and Company paying tribute to the assassinated King. The African-American students at Columbia and Barnard, despite Bill and Ray’s interest in radical activism, were still ambivalent about the productiveness of, themselves, handing out leaflets at such hypocritical events, on a predominantly white campus.

Mark, Stu and a few other Columbia SDS people were dressed up in suits and ties as I watched them walk into the chapel on a warm spring day. I assumed that Mark and the others were just going into the memorial service to hand out leaflets and, although I was not dressed up, I followed them into the chapel and sat in a back row.

Just before a few of the usual anti-racist platitudes were to be mouthed by Columbia Vice-President Truman, Mark suddenly walked up to the altar and, before a quiet, shocked crowd of a few hundred, said the following: “This memorial service is a moral obscenity. Martin Luther King was killed while fighting for the right of Black workers to be unionized. The Columbia Administration still refuses to let its Black and Puerto Rican cafeteria workers be unionized.”

He then led a walk-out of about 20 people from the memorial service.

I hadn’t expected such an audacious protest by Mark. But, again, he had shown both white Columbia SDS hard-core activists and the most politically conscious African-American students that the issue of racism could be raised dramatically if just one Movement activist-leader was willing to disrupt university functions in a dramatic way and assert, by his actions, that business as usual deserved to be disrupted until there was racial justice.

The Administration was appalled that Mark had been willing to go inside a chapel at one of their most solemn functions and so impolitely disrupt it. He was immediately threatened with more disciplinary action, even though the Chaplain of Columbia—a guy named Cannon—defended the right of Mark to speak if the spirit moved him, although Mark had disrupted a sacred religious service.

There was much debate on the pages of Spectator about whether Mark had the right to disrupt the King Memorial Service. And many writers were more worried about the religious service being disrupted than they were about Columbia’s policies of institutional racism, complicity with the Pentagon’s IDA or political repression of its student activists.

To answer some of the liberal criticisms of Mark’s decision to disrupt Columbia’s official King Memorial Service, I wrote a short essay titled “In Defense of Disruption,” in which I echoed SNCC Chairman H. Rap. Brown [n/k/a Jamil Al-Amin and presently imprisoned in a Southern prison]’s argument that those of us who, unlike Kirk and Truman, valued justice over order and tranquility, must be willing—in the absence of justice—to disrupt an oppressive order just like Mark did, to expose injustice and end injustice.

I brought the essay over to Mark’s apartment and, while he read my essay, I read an “Open Letter to Uncle Grayson,” that Mark had just finished writing himself for a Columbia SDS underground newspaper special edition that he was going to get published for distribution around campus on April 22, 1968.

Mark liked my “In Defense of Disruption” essay, although he altered a few sentences at the end of the essay to re-emphasize the criminal nature of the Columbia Administration’s institutional policies. He then included the piece in Columbia SDS’s Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker underground newspaper. The name of Mark’s newspaper was taken from a line in the LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka poem that inspired Mark’s activism at this time. Like Mark, Jones/Baraka had grown up in New Jersey.

I laughed while reading Mark’s “Open Letter to Uncle Grayson” and complimented him on the skillful, humorous way he had summarized the political differences between Columbia President Grayson Kirk’s corporate liberal ideology and institutional policy positions and interests and Columbia SDS’s New Left view of the world and vision of a democratic society. I felt that Mark’s open letter persuasively indicated why Columbia and Barnard students should mobilize behind Columbia SDS en masse in opposition to the Columbia Administration.

Until Columbia SDS’s Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker newspaper appeared on campus on April 22nd, Mark (helped by Sue) spent much of his time putting the newspaper together and arranging for it to be published. Mark had apparently been an editor of his Columbia High School newspaper in Maplewood, New Jersey, so he had no difficulty in doing most of the work required to put the Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker newspaper out.

On the Saturday before the underground newspaper was to appear, I bumped into Mark and Sue at the W. 115th St. and Broadway campus entrance, while they were on their way into Ferris Booth Hall. With a twinkle in his eye and Sue standing behind him, Mark suddenly gave me an affectionate kiss on the cheek before he walked into Ferris Booth Hall. He seemed to be in touch with some mystical life force that was driving him to pour all his energy into being Columbia SDS chairman and preparing for a final spring confrontation with the Columbia Administration. More so than any other Columbia SDS activist, he seemed to be quite willing to get thrown out of school for the sake of his politics of liberation. He seemed completely fulfilled in his role as Columbia SDS chairman and totally present-oriented, not future-oriented or security-oriented.

Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories: Chap. 15: Steering Columbia SDS Into Action, 1968

Chapter 15: Steering Columbia SDS Into Action, 1968 (ix)

Mark, meanwhile, was solidifying his friendship with the new Columbia Daily Spectator editor-in-chief, Robert. Spectator now began publishing columns by Mark in which he reported on some of his experiences in Cuba, during his brief trip of the previous month. Around this time, I recall dropping by Mark’s apartment and listening to Dylan’s long-awaited John Wesley Harding album for the first time on Mark’s stereo. We spent a half-hour speculating about what Dylan was trying to say in his new album, but I can’t recall whether we reached any definite conclusions. We also listened to FM rock on WNEW’s Night Owl program which was DJ’d by Allison Steele. I recall Mark smiling and saying: “Did you ever wonder what she looks like? I bet you she looks completely different from the way people picture her from her voice.”

Following King’s assassination, Lew appeared out of nowhere—after over a year’s vacation from Columbia SDS activism. When I had asked Ted one night in Ferris Booth Hall in Fall 1967, “What about Lew? What ever happened to Lew?,” Ted grimaced and replied in a sarcastic tone: “He says he’s too busy writing a novel to be involved in SDS.”

But now Lew started to push for more Columbia SDS militancy at various steering committee meetings. He also appeared to push himself aggressively to the top of the white campus left hierarchy again, past many Columbia SDS women and men activists who had been doing political shitwork for months, while Lew had been working on his never-to-be-published “great American novel.” But nobody really cared about this too much, because we all felt it was quite positive to have the talented Lew back in Columbia SDS steering committee circles again. And Lew could be quite charming to people who did not block his “Movement heavy” aspirations.

Lew was still also quite inspiring on a political level. When a left sectarian-type tried to discourage SDS people from speaking positively about the slain King because King was a “bourgeois pacifist” and a “pro-capitalist Uncle Tom,” Lew tore into his sectarian argument in a passionate way which made you feel that, with Lew’s intellect on your side, how could Columbia SDS ever lose politically?

Although large street demonstrations of West German students (led by the German SDS New Left group) against the Springer media-monopoly (following the shooting of a West German New Left leader named Rudi Dutschke) took place in early April 1968, most students at Columbia and Barnard did not follow these demonstrations too closely. In early April 1968, few U.S. students yet had the sense that we were part of a worldwide student movement of New Left radicalism.

There wasn’t time for personal introspection or worrying about loneliness in early April 1968. Just one meeting after another. The Columbia Administration had decided to discipline 6 white Columbia anti-war students for the late March anti-IDA demonstration inside Low Library, because they had violated Kirk’s ban on indoor demonstrations. Why single out just 6—but not everyone—who had demonstrated? It seemed like an obvious case of selective punishment. Columbia SDS protested by having the 6 anti-war students refuse to report to the office of Assistant Dean Platt and thus refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of his disciplining authority in this situation.

The six who were to be disciplined came to be called the “IDA 6.”

No women New Left activists from Barnard were included among the IDA 6, not only because the Columbia College Administration wasn’t responsible for disciplining Barnard students, but also because in 1968 the Columbia Administration, like the Democratic Party, was even more male chauvinist than was Columbia SDS. In the eyes of the Columbia Administration and its recently-appointed Vice-President, David Truman (a noted liberal political scientist of the 1950s and 1960s and former Dean of Columbia College), women students were incapable of being autonomous political activists who exercised political leadership.

Mark was the first member of the IDA 6—because he was the Chairman of Columbia SDS. And, let’s face it, without Mark as Columbia SDS chairman, the chapter would have remained an essentially non-confrontational, academic left discussion group without the collective drive and collective will to actually shut down Columbia. So it was quite logical for the Columbia Administration to attempt to discipline Mark, since he was the SDS activist most willing to risk being expelled from Columbia for the sake of his action-oriented politics of militant confrontation with the Establishment. And if you were able to scare Mark off with the threat of discipline in early 1968, then you wouldn’t have to worry about the other hard-core SDS activists that Mark’s militant spirit was pushing into confrontation.

Nick was the second member of the IDA 6—because he was the new vice-chairman of Columbia SDS. Because he had this title, the Columbia Administration felt that he should also be held responsible for the actions of the organization which gave him this title.

Ted was the third member of the IDA 6 because he had been a thorn in the Administration’s side as chapter vice-chairman from March 1967 to March 1968, when he personally carried on his back the day-to-day work of the chapter. He was also targeted for disciplinary action because, unlike Teddy, Ted didn’t visibly retreat much from Columbia SDS political activism after Mark’s action-faction replaced Ted’s praxis-axis faction as the dominant force within Columbia SDS.

Morris was the fourth member of the IDA 6. Not because he was especially militant or politically influential, but because he had been the guy who generally contacted the Administration and, in his name, reserved all the rooms for Columbia SDS leftist film showings and cultural events and did much of the work in publicizing these events. Consequently, the Administration knew Morris’ name better than the names of more politically active Columbia SDS people.

A short, stocky, bearded guy with long-hair who usually wore a beret—named Nate—was the fifth member of the IDA 6 to be selected by the Columbia Administration. And he wasn’t even a member of Columbia SDS. The Administration only chose him because he was the head of the Joan Baez-oriented Columbia Resistance anti-war group, which specialized in turning-in draft cards and getting arrested at off-campus draft induction centers. Nate had decided to participate in Columbia SDS’s March 27th anti-IDA demo and it appeared that the Administration singled him out to warn other anti-war students in groups other than Columbia SDS to avoid forming united fronts with us to protest against university complicity with that war.

The last member of the IDA 6 was Ed, who had only been active in Columbia SDS’s Labor Committee for a few months. Few people in Columbia SDS could ever really figure out why the Columbia Administration singled out Ed. Perhaps because he had a big mouth, was fast-talking and glib and, because he wasn’t shy about speaking in front of a crowd, he may have done some speaking at the March 27th indoor demo? Or perhaps because the Columbia Administration felt that, being so new to Columbia SDS leadership circles, Ed could be the IDA 6 member who it could best pressure into breaking the solidarity of the IDA 6 by threatening him with disciplinary action? Whether for egotistical or political reasons, however, Ed did not break the IDA 6’s group solidarity. Perhaps one reason why Ed chose to stay firm politically until the summer of 1968 was that he was a personal acquaintance of Phil Ochs’ brother.

Columbia had no constitutional right to legally ban indoor demonstrations because the first amendment did guarantee freedom of assembly—even for Columbia and Barnard students. But the problem the IDA 6 faced was that if they all refused to accept the right of Columbia College to discipline them for their political activism they could, conceivably, be suspended, in an era when suspension meant losing your student deferment and being drafted. Columbia Resistance leader Nate probably didn’t feel any special concern about this, because his political beliefs already strategically justified the logic of going to jail, rather than cooperating with the Selective Service System. But the five other IDA 6 people all wished to remain out of jail, in order to avoid the draft and to remain free to continue their political work and pursue their personal and academic lives.

Yet, emboldened by the support of their Columbia SDS peers, the IDA 6 held firm and demanded that they be given an open hearing before any Administration disciplinary action was taken against them. Not wanting to grant an open hearing to the IDA 6, but also not wanting to throw them out of school because it might provoke more student protest, the Columbia Administration put the IDA 6 on “disciplinary probation.” In response, Columbia SDS was forced to mobilize people and attempt to sit-in at Low Library on April 23, 1968, until the IDA 6 were taken off disciplinary probation for exercising their first amendment rights.

Sundial: Columbia SDS Memories: Chap. 15: Steering Columbia SDS Into Action, 1968

Chapter 15: Steering Columbia SDS Into Action, 1968 (viii)

Over the spring vacation, on April Fool’s Day, the IDA Board of Trustees, meanwhile, had met in order to re-organize IDA’s organizational structure to make it appear that universities like Columbia were not still institutionally-affiliated to IDA as institutional members. As a result of its “April Fool’s Resolution,” Columbia President Kirk and Columbia Trustee Burden were no longer officially serving as “institutional representatives” of Columbia on IDA’s board of trustees and executive committee, but were just sitting there “as individuals.” Because nothing had actually concretely changed regarding Columbia’s ties to IDA, except a shift in the language used to describe this institutional relationship, Columbia SDS people ridiculed this “April Fool’s Resolution” and vowed to continue their anti-IDA campaign until Kirk and Burden formally resigned their seats on IDA’s board of trustees and executive committee.

A Columbia trustees’ meeting was held in early April in the Engineering School building during the late afternoon and Columbia SDS’s IDA Committee organized a picket of about 50 students, which was led by Nick, the Columbia SDS vice-chairman. Entertaining the picket line were Dave and Ted, who sang anti-capitalist lyrics to the tune of a song called “Playin’ With Fire,” that the Rolling Stones used to sing. Both Ted and Dave sang in a very spirited and humorous way.

While Kirk was walking towards the site of the trustees’ meeting, I handed him a Columbia SDS leaflet on Low Plaza that called upon him to resign his seat on IDA's board of trustees and executive committee. Kirk took the leaflet, glanced at it, reddened in anger, gave me a hostile look and then ripped up the leaflet. Other Columbia SDS people started chanting “IDA must go! IDA must go!” while behind Kirk, as he scurried with his entourage to the Engineering School building. After Kirk ripped up the leaflet, I began to feel that SDS had finally psyched him out somewhat with its anti-IDA agitation and that he was beginning to crack psychologically. Instead of offering to negotiate directly about IDA with us before our political conflict escalated and attempting to relate to us in a friendly way, Columbia President Kirk was neurotically ignoring the lessons of the Berkeley Student Revolt and relating to his radical student constituency in an autocratic, anti-democratic, corporate fascist-like way, in order to please the corporate board circles he moved around in.

To more clearly define Columbia SDS’s position on the liberal McCarthy presidential campaign, a general assembly debate was held one night around this time in Hamilton Hall. Paul argued vehemently in opposition to any SDS people supporting McCarthy. Paul had become more politically radical and more Marxist and anti-imperialist in his thinking between 1967 and 1968, as a result of his reading and his Gadfly editorial and literary work. He still appeared to be the best white radical orator around Columbia, with the exception of Mark. But Paul still didn’t appear to be interested in working collectively within Columbia SDS steering committee circles.

“As radicals, we must reject all forms of savior politics. Imperialism will not end just because a liberal savior like McCarthy or Kennedy gets into the White House as a result of an election. In 1960, the liberal savior Kennedy was elected. He brought us the Bay of Pigs and sent more advisors to Viet Nam. In 1964, another liberal savior, LBJ, ran as a peace candidate and promised `no wider war.’ We all know what he did,” argued Paul. “In 1968, we can’t fall into the same old trap of relying on another savior to change imperialism, who will once again double-cross us after the election—as all good liberals do.

“We must rely on ourselves. And work to build a radical mass movement to end imperialism. The election of neither McCarthy nor Kennedy will save us from the moral degeneracy of U.S. imperialism.”

Most Columbia SDS people agreed with Paul about the need to avoid getting bogged down in the “savior politics” of the 1968 presidential primary campaign and to continue to build a mass-based radical movement to end imperialism, not just to end the Viet Nam War. Perhaps if either Kennedy or McCarthy had called for an immediate withdrawal from Viet Nam and an immediate end to the draft, more support for them would have existed among Columbia SDS rank-and-file people. But neither McCarthy nor Kennedy was willing to match National SDS and Columbia SDS’s historically advanced 1968 positions on a whole range of political issues. So the New Left remained a more attractive political option at Columbia for most left-oriented students in April 1968 than the Kennedy or McCarthy campaigns.

The student-sponsored meeting in Wollman Auditorium to pay tribute to Martin Luther King following his assassination was packed with about 200 Columbia and Barnard students, most of whom were white. A panel of four students spoke about the need to do something about ending racism. No one from Columbia SDS was on the panel, but Juan represented Citizenship Council and he gave the first political speech I had ever heard him make at Columbia.

“When Martin Luther King was alive I believed the best way to work for change was to work within the System. Now I’m not so sure. And people like myself, who want to see change, may end up having to become radicals and change the System by working outside the System,” said Juan.

Prior to this speech, I had written Juan off as a good-natured, well-meaning, fun-loving guy who would always be just an apolitical, left-liberal, social worker-type; and always more interested in just having romances with Barnard students and doing concrete community service work than engaging in theoretical political discussion and building a mass-based New Left student movement. He had shown no real interest, previously, in either Puerto Rican nationalism or Columbia SDS politics when he was pouring all his organizing effort and skill into the P.A.C.T. and Columbia Citizenship Council liberal “band-aid” programs.

True, Juan had engaged in non-violent civil disobedience at one of the anti-gym construction demos. But Juan appeared to have had no interest in speaking at campus political rallies or trying to radicalize the consciousness of Columbia and Barnard students. Compared to Teddy, Ted, Lew, Harvey, Josh, John, Dave, Mark and the other SDS men I became close to as I drifted from P.A.C.T. to Columbia’s New Left circles, Juan had seemed less intellectually and politically aware, less morally outraged and politically passionate, and less psychologically alienated from the System.

Yet Juan’s response to the King assassination seemed to indicate that he was beginning to finally feel the same personal hostility towards the whole racist system that SDS people felt. I was also surprised to see that Juan was able to give such a coherent speech before such a large group of people.

The other significant thing I remember about the post-King assassination meeting in Wollman Auditorium was that there was a new mood of mass anger expressed over Columbia’s “Jim Crow” gym construction project. White left-liberal Columbia and Barnard students who had previously been apathetic about Columbia sending its bulldozers into Morningside Park were now talking about why the gym should not be built. African-American students at Columbia and Barnard appeared to be more eager to go public in their opposition to the Jim Crow gym construction plan. The subjective effect of the King assassination seemed to be that large numbers of Columbia and Barnard students felt a special need to fight racism harder and were looking for the most convenient and concrete manifestation of institutional racism around, to be the target of their anti-racist anger. And it became clear in early April that the target was going to be Columbia’s “Jim Crow” gymnasium.