The Anti-War Movements, Now and Then: A 1991 Interview With U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert--Part 2

What follows is part 2 of a 1991 interview with jailed former Weather Underground activist David Gilbert.  See part 1 below.

(The following interview originally appeared in the June/July 1991 issue of New York City’s Lower East Side alternative newspaper The Shadow http://shadowpress.org/ )

Q: Why do you think there was such extensive New York City Police Department Red Squad surveillance of the ICV at Columbia in the 1960s? Do you think there is much spying on Columbia’s campus today?

David Gilbert [DG]: Well, it was both the Red Squad and the FBI. What struck me—I think it was even clearer in my FBI files than in the Handschu files—is how early the surveillance began. They started their files on me in 1963, when all I had done was go to some civil rights meetings and a couple of picket lines. The file on the ICV starts right from the beginning, with my very first leaflet on the war, long before they could have had even the remotest conception that we would consider illegal activities.

One lesson is that their surveillance had nothing to do with law enforcement but was simply because they saw any significant dissent as a threat. Second, the surveillance wasn’t just to keep an eye on us: they initiated disruptive activity against us almost from the beginning—usually trying to foment splits and distrust among us.

One of the many examples I remember: an ICV member came to me with a list she said she found while working at some government agency that had the names of five ICV members who were actually police informants. If I had gone for this faked information and accused these people or tried to kick them out, at the very least we would have lost five fine activists; more likely we would have had a major and bitter split in the ICV. Luckily, I knew too much about some of the individuals’ background and integrity to go for the bait.

More examples became clear in retrospect once COINTELPRO—the government’s illegal program to destroy the Black movement and the New Left—was exposed. But there are still situations we’re not sure about—to what degree was it our own weakness and misunderstanding or to what degree had disinformation been consciously planted?

To maintain perspective, the infiltration of the ICV was minor compared to what was done to the Black movement. There, infiltration began a lot earlier, was much more pervasive, and moved beyond character assassination to outright violence.

As for the surveillance at Columbia today, I don’t really know how to assess it from here. The government is so worried about the re-emergence of a student movement, I’d be surprised if they weren’t at least keeping tabs on developments there.

Q: How do you compare the anti-war movement then to the one now [the first Gulf War in 1991 against Iraq]?

DG: That’s a giant question—there are many connections and also major differences. To start with, the U.S. defeat in Vietnam has lain like an insufferable nightmare on the consciousness of the ruling class—like a demon to be exorcised—and has guided almost every detail of what they did in the Iraq war. On the other hand, the legacy of Vietnam—the wellspring of sentiment against interventions in the Third World—meant that this time around we had massive and broad-based anti-war activity before the fighting even began. And the hundreds of thousands of people who marched against the war on January 19 and 26 [1991] certainly dwarfed the 20,000 we found so impressive in April 1965.

The similarities in the wars are that (1) the U.S. government is determined to crush any significant threat to its hegemony, and (2), each war was fought to set an example to other Third World nations and movements.

But there are vast differences, too. For one thing, Vietnam was fighting a national liberation struggle with deep historical roots. With Iraq, while Hussein did connect with important sentiments of Arab nationalism and support for Palestinians, the war developed more suddenly, and involved his own maneuvers for power and aggrandizement. The Vietnam War was very protracted, and we were pretty sure Vietnam would win. With Iraq, it’s just impossible to make up for the vast differential in military technology if you’re not fighting a people’s war—a war with deep roots in the people and for a cause they passionately believe in.

Q: But perhaps another reason for the one-sided slaughter is that Hussein—for all the demonization of him in the U.S. media—was actually not willing to be as ruthless as Bush [I], whose massive bombings killed tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of civilians both directly and through the destruction of sanitation and medical infrastructures. Hussein did release the hostages he initially held as a shield against attack. And he didn’t unleash his chemical weapons [in 1991] or order suicide missions in Europe.

DG: You’re right. And the whole media demonization of Hussein is something we should discuss further on. But first, without in the least justifying the U.S./Allies’ invasion, I was trying to make an analytical point that you just can’t fight a protracted war with any chance of success against a vastly superior military machine unless it’s a people’s war—a guerrilla war with deep popular support for a cause fully embraced by the people.

Another major difference in the context was the impact of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Liberation Movement in the 1960s. It opened people to seeing the need for social change and to questioning the very foundation of this society. It also created an atmosphere where moral questions were much more in the forefront. By contrast, in the 1990s, it seemed that the only issue—and some sectors of the anti-war movement played into this—was how many U.S. body bags came home. It is really shocking to see how little feeling or concern there is for the something like 300,000 Iraqis who were killed in this war.

Even with the impact of civil rights, the 1960s anti-war movement proved inadequate at incorporating anti-racism and in responding to leadership from Third World movements within the U.S. These necessary building blocks are certainly urgent tasks for the anti-war movement of the 1990s.

Another important difference is the role of women. Women played active and leading roles in the 1960s, but they had to do so against all odds. All too often women weren’t listened to, and were shut out of leading positions. Today [in 1991], as I understand it, women are playing prominent and often predominant roles at all levels of leadership and activities.

(end of part 2)

Next: The Anti-War Movements, Now and Then: A 1991 Interview With U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert—Part 3

The Anti-War Movements, Now and Then: A 1991 Interview With U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert--Part 1

What follows is part 1 of a 1991 interview with jailed former Weather Underground activist David Gilbert.

U.S. political prisoner Gilbert is currently in his 27th year of a 75-years-to-life sentence for a “felony murder” conviction stemming from his involvement in an attempted expropriation of a Brink’s truck in Rockland County, New York, in 1981.

In the 1960s, Gilbert was the founder and first chair of the Columbia University Independent Committee on Vietnam (ICV) anti-war student group and was also one of the founding members of the Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter which led the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt.

Years later, Gilbert joined the underground and, after ten years of active resistance, was captured in 1981 in the wake of the armored car robbery and shoot-out with police. Gilbert is currently imprisoned in Clinton State Prison in Dannemora, New York, where he has been an activist around AIDS issues and prisoners’ rights. Since this 1991 interview, he has written a book of essays, No Surrender, and appeared in a film, The Weather Underground.

(The following interview originally appeared in the June/July 1991 issue of New York City’s Lower East Side alternative newspaper The Shadow http://shadowpress.org/ )

Q: How did the Columbia Independent Committee on Vietnam get started?

David Gilbert [DG]: We started in March 1965, about a month after President Johnson began the regular bombings of North Vietnam—LBJ had bombed North Vietnam earlier, after the rigged Tonkin Gulf incident in August 1964, but we were fooled into seeing this as a one-shot outburst—I was sure that some of the more established campus groups and leaders would form something. But when nothing happened after about a month, I called together a small group of people who had long been troubled by U.S. policy toward Vietnam.

Q: Did anti-war sentiment predominate on campus?

DG: Not by a long-shot. Back then it was almost unheard of to question the government on foreign policy. Initially, the vast majority of students accepted what the government and media told them. But it was also a wonderful time of new openness and ferment: students’ social awareness and moral sensibilities were blooming due to the Civil Rights Movement.

The first thing the Independent Vietnam Committee [ICV] did was set up literature tables on Low Plaza. We’d be out there for hours and hours each day debating the war—debating, rather than discussing, because most students opposed us. But there was definitely a burgeoning anti-war sector, and events themselves were changing people rapidly. By 1968, more than two-thirds of the students at Columbia University opposed the war.

Q: What was the relationship of the ICV to Students for a Democratic Society [SDS]?

DG: SDS was a national organization. Their work included support for the Civil Rights Movement, organizing in poor communities, and actions against apartheid. With the benefit of a little more-developed analysis they had a few months earlier—December 1964—put out a call for an April 17, 1965 march on Washington against the war. When the systematic bombing started in February, interest in the march mushroomed, and it ended up with, for then, a tremendous size of 20-25,000. Columbia, incidentally, sent 650 people, despite it being spring vacation—the largest single delegation in the march.

Those of us who started the ICV really liked SDS because it combined the issue of the war with a program against racism and also had some sort of vague socialist perspective. So we started a small SDS chapter at Columbia. Still, there was such energy and awakening around the war that we felt we had to put our main effort into the ICV to provide a vehicle for the broader range of anti-war views and energy.

By 1967, so many students were seeing the connections between the war and the underlying nature of society that SDS became the main organization, at the same time raising the level of militancy—e.g., by disrupting CIA recruiters.

(end of part 1)

To view part 1 of a video of a 1998 interview with David Gilbert, you can click on the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OVW9BIgyYM&feature=related

Next: The Anti-War Movements, Now and Then: A 1991 Interview With U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert—Part 2

`At Age 42'

(chorus)
He started young by driving a truck
He played his guitar, he had much luck
They made him a king, for singing some tunes
But still he died, at age 42.

(verses)
They lifted him from deep poverty
They sold his records and received much money
They made him a super-celebrity
But he didn’t live to be 43.
They merchandised his voice and the way he shook
They cut his hair when he entered the Service
They gave him gold records and a big mansion
But at age 42 he still was dead. (chorus)

They called him the “King of Rock’n’Roll”
But when the Beatles scored, they said he was too old
They cursed him when they thought his weight too high
But rapidly pushed his records when he died.
They took away his rural honesty
They corrupted him with cash and hypocrisy
They never asked if maybe he was lonely
And he didn’t live to be 43. (chorus)

The media vultures gather ‘round his grave
And all now seek to cash in on his pain
And none dare say the words which should be plain:
“He wasted his life in a quest for perpetual fame.”
They changed him from a worker to a rich man
And made him so scared that he needed bodyguards
They twisted up both his mind and his body
And confused his soul completely with girl screams. (chorus)

To listen to this folk song, you can go to following music site link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/More+Biographical+Folk+Songs/At+Age+42

The At Age 42 biographical protest folk song was written shortly after Elvis Presley’s death in 1977. Ironically, one of the earliest times I ever performed before a live audience was when--as a Cub Scout during the 1950s--I played the role of “Elvis Schmelvis” in a satirical skit about U.S. mass media culture that was written by my Cub Scout Den Mother.

To listen to some other biographical protest folk songs, you can check out the “Columbia Songs for a Democratic Society” music site at the following link:

http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music

Next: The Anti-War Movements, Now and Then: A 1991 Interview With U.S. Political Prisoner David Gilbert--Part 1

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 15

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-14.)

After the FCC allowed then-Voice owner Murdoch to purchase Metromedia’s television stations in the United States—despite FCC regulations which prohibited U.S. television stations being owned by foreign businesspeople—the right-wing Australian-born global media baron needed to quickly raise more cash to help finance his entrance into the world of U.S. broadcasting during the 1980s. To raise an additional $55 million, he decided to sell the Voice and his stable of Voice writers to the then-Hartz Mountain Industries owner and NYU trustee Leonard Stern in June 1985. Murdoch earned a net profit of about $30 million (in 1980s money) from buying the Voice in 1977 and selling it in 1985.

Former Voice owner Stern, a then-billionaire like Rupert Murdoch, described himself in 1985 as “right of center on defense issues,” according to the New York Times (6/28/85). And a few weeks after Stern purchased the Voice in 1985, the Times reported that “some Voice employees” were “uncomfortable existing under the same corporate roof with Hartz…” and “some Voice staffers speculate that the desire to recoup some respectability he may have lost because of Hartz’s problems could have motivated him to purchase the newspaper…” Stern’s Hartz Mountain Industries had just pled guilty to some white-collar crimes and antitrust law violations. The Times (7/7/85) also reported the following in July 1985, in reference to the billionaire New Jersey real estate developer who owned the Voice alternative media conglomerate between 1985 and 2000.

“Mr. Stern says he intends to take the same brand of…tenacious management to the Voice…And he is convinced that he has captured a prize: `It was the best media property that’s been offered to me in a long time. Hands down.’”

After NYU expanded eastward and moved its students into high-rise East Village dormitories, NYU trustee Stern also decided to move the Voice’s editorial offices closer to the East Village during the early 1990s. Yet although the Voice’s pre-tax profits exceeded $8 million per year in 1991, local advertisers had started purchasing less classified ad space in Stern’s newspapers by the early 1990s.

By the 1990s, Voice staff writers and senior editors apparently were earning more money than what most antiwar bloggers, antiwar indymedia journalists and grassroots antiwar activists earn from their antiwar work today. From a $6 million per year editorial budget, the owners of the Voice in 1996, for example, were apparently paying a full-time Voice staff writer $51,000 per year and a Voice senior editor $52,000 per year in 1996. And the Voice’s editor-in-chief was being paid $125,000 per year as long ago as 1996.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

June 2008 Update on Post-1996 Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History:

Despite its parent company's annual revenues of over $80 million per year, the journalistic quality of the Village Voice newspaper has, predictably, continued to deteriorate since the October 2005 merger of the New Times alternative media conglomerate with the Village Voice alternative media conglomerate created the Village Voice Media alternative media monopoly.

According to the New York Times (10/24/05), 53 percent of the Village Voice Media’s shares are owned by a trust which Village Voice Media chairman James Larkin and Village Voice Media executive editor, Michael Lacey, control—that is financially backed by a Boston-based private equity firm, Alta Communications. In addition, a minority share of the Village Voice alternative media monopoly is held by Wall Street-based investors like Goldman Sachs, Weiss Peck & Greer and Trimaran Capital Partners.

There’s apparently a possibility that the Village Voice staff writers who haven’t yet been laid-off by Michael Lacey and his Boston Back Bay and Wall Street financial backers since 2005 will be going on strike on July 1, 2008, when their existing union contract is set to expire. But until full control of the Village Voice Media’s alternative media monopoly is democratically shifted to the U.S. anti-corporate and anti-war counter-cultural communities and its staff employees in the various cities where it distributes its weekly newspapers, freedom of the press in the U.S. alternative media world will continue to be threatened by alternative media corporatization and U.S. special corporate interests in the 21st-century.

Next: At Age 42 lyrics

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 14

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-13.)

Although former Voice editor/publisher Schneiderman apparently did not find it objectionable to visit Murdoch in his New York Post office, to chat with the Australian right-winger about the Voice and about the Post’s battle with the News, Schneiderman apparently didn’t like to chat with Voice writers during the 1980s. As the New York Times (6/28/85) noted in 1985, “Mr. Schneiderman left the New York Times, where he was assistant editor…to become editor-in-chief of the Voice, but only after his appointment was delayed several months at the insistence of the Voice’s staff” and “Mr. Schneiderman adopted a policy of not socializing with anyone, which he still largely observes…” Schneiderman was willing, however, to socialize with other U.S. Establishment figures, apparently, as a member of the elite Council on Foreign Relations group during the 1980s.

In the Murdoch-Schneiderman Era, the Voice’s paid circulation started to drop, its appeal to people under 25 started to decline, and only 25 percent of its readers were actually residents of Manhattan—despite its large number of Manhattan resident-oriented classified ads. But because its classified ad publishing business had expanded greatly during the Murdoch-Schneiderman Era [before being ultimately hurt by the internet competition of Craig’s list in the 21st-century], its profitability increased to $5 million per year [in 1980s money] in pre-tax profits, despite the early 1980s decline in circulation. During this same period, the Voice axed its then-media criticism columnist, Alexander Cockburn. In The Nation (9/7/85), Cockburn later asserted that “The Voice is…spawned with Democratic reform politics and self-regard” and “Rolling Stone and the Village Voice may be able to coin revenues for their repugnant proprietors but the future is not with them.”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 15

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 13

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-12.)

David Schneiderman, a former editor and top executive at the Village Voice alternative media conglomerate for many years before it merged with Michael Lacey’s New Times alternative media monopoly a few years ago, had secured an MA from Maryland’s Johns Hopkins University in 1970—not from a school of journalism, but from its “School of Advanced International Studies.” He had been quickly pushed into a deputy editor position at the New York Times, prior to being brought Downtown by Murdoch to manage Murdoch’s stable of Voice writers in the late 1970s.

Before assuming his role as Murdoch’s Voice editor in January 1979, “Schneiderman sat in an office for six months,…mapping his strategy until Partridge’s contract was up,” according to Barefaced Cheek. The same book also revealed in 1983 that Murdoch was “obviously happier” with Schneiderman as Voice editor and that “Murdoch…appears to enjoy his…meetings with Schneiderman” and “occasionally” Schneiderman was “on the receiving end of criticism for individual stories, mainly about Murdoch.” Murdoch by William Shawcross also noted that “Schneiderman received the occasional irate telephone call” from Murdoch during the early 1980s.

Barefaced Cheek also revealed that after the Voice printed in 1981 “a thinly-veiled suggestion that the Post was getting a tax reduction on its South Street office building because of its support for Edward Koch, the [then-New York City] mayor,…Murdoch’s senior henchmen phoned Schneiderman to tell him how badly Murdoch viewed it…” The same book also noted in 1983 that “Murdoch clearly trusts” former Voice publisher/president Schneiderman “as much as he trusts anyone working for a paper that does not relate to anything he knows about” and “when David Schneiderman went for one of his meetings about the Village Voice, he found Murdoch bubbling with enthusiasm for the impending battles with the News, asking advice on what moves he should make.”

Coincidentally, one of the first editorial decisions which former Murdoch Magazines editor Karen Durbin made, after Schneiderman named her as Voice editor in 1994 [before she was eventually replaced by a former editor of New York Newsday], was to publish an article that was critical of the New York Daily News owner with whom New York Post owner Murdoch then did “battle with.”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 14

The `Village Voice' Alternative Media Monopoly's Hidden History--Part 12

(Most of the following article originally appeared in the October 9, 1996 issue of Downtown/Aquarian Weekly. See below for parts 1-11.)

Initially, Rupert Murdoch attempted to change the Voice’s editor immediately during the period when he owned the Village Voice alternative media monopoly. As Barefaced Cheek by Michael Leapman noted, “on the Voice the first thing Murdoch did was to try to replace the editor, Marianne Partridge.” The Australian global media baron apparently ordered the Voice editor to report to his New York Post office on January 11, 1977, where he informed her that she was now fired. But when the Voice staff protested against him giving the axe to then-Voice editor Partridge so soon after his purchase of the Voice, Murdoch decided to back off for another year. But during Partridge’s stint as Voice editor under Murdoch’s ownership, Murdoch sometimes telephoned the Voice office “to complain vociferously about stories, nearly always stories about himself or his papers,” according to Barefaced Cheek.

The same book also revealed that Murdoch “was angry when [then-Voice media critic Alexander] Cockburn wrote an article scoffing at Paul Rigby, the Australian cartoonist and an old friend, then working at the Post.” Murdoch also “phoned and said he did not see why he should be vilified in his own newspaper” when “he heard that [the then-left-liberal] Nat Hentoff…was preparing a critical article about the Post,” and “the Hentoff article did not in fact appear,” according to Barefaced Cheek.

On May 10, 1978, however, Murdoch again decided he needed to replace the Voice editor, so he apparently ordered his Voice publisher at that time, Bill Ryan, to fire Marianne Partridge. But again Voice staff complaints caused Murdoch to back off, and Partridge “got to stay—till January 1979, when Murdoch designee, David Schneiderman, would take over,” according to The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall of The `Village Voice'.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 10/9/96)

Next: The Village Voice Alternative Media Monopoly’s Hidden History—Part 13