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<h1 id="reader-title">Levitating the Pentagon</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/crathewech3vefr/"
rel="nofollow">Nancy Kurshan</a> - October 27, 2017<br>
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<p>The summer of 1967 the Israeli military seized the West
Bank and Gaza from the Palestinians in what came to be
known as the Six Day War. My friend Doug. whom I had
left in Israel in 1962, returned home disillusioned.
Whatever lingering hope I had for Israeli socialism was
forever shattered. How could there be socialism at the
expense of the Palestinians? Socialism was about
sharing the wealth with all. It couldn’t be built on
the backs of another people.</p>
<p>That was once more a summer of serious urban rebellions
in over a dozen major U.S. cities, among them Detroit,
Newark, Atlanta, Cleveland and New York. On August 9th
President Johnson approved sixteen additional Rolling
Thunder targets and an expansion of armed reconnaissance
in Vietnam. U.S. imperialism and its allies were
moving on all fronts but there was resistance everywhere
from Black urban centers to Palestine and, of course, to
Vietnam.</p>
<p>The Berkeley anti-war leader Jerry Rubin, my boyfriend
at the time, was already in New York assuming his new
job as Project Coordinator for the October national
demonstration against the war. The National
Mobilization Committee Against the War (affectionately
known as “The Mobe”) had agreed to hire a few of Jerry’s
posse from the Bay Area. While activists Stew Albert,
Karen Wald and I got ready to leave Berkeley, Jerry was
already embroiled in internal debates about the nature
of the October plans. The Mobe was made up of much more
moderate elements in contrast with us West Coast
radicals. Some of the main players were Women Strike
for Peace, the New York Parade Committee, Chicago Peace
Council, Student Mobilization, and the Ohio Peace Action
Committee.</p>
<p>Out west in California we all loved the idea of a huge
national mobilization that included civil disobedience
and we felt it was important for the Pentagon to be the
focus. Our argument went something like this.
Demonstrations were always taking place at the Capitol.
It would be humdrum and we would never actually get in
there. We felt that the Pentagon was the best symbol of
U.S. militarism, the real face of U.S. policy, and
that demonstrating there would channel the anger that we
all felt into a real political weapon. It wasn’t only a
clash of ideas. People were dying because of the war
machine. We didn’t want to target the civil
government. We wanted to target the true center, the
war machine. We knew that our presence at the Pentagon
would result in a confrontation but we welcomed that
confrontation in order to visibly demonstrate the true
nature of the U.S., to illustrate that it dominated not
through its moral power, not through its Peace Corps,
but by force and violence. We wanted the War Machine to
be Shut Down! And we wanted to be the agents of
history. We wanted to actually shut it down. Shut It
Down! That was the slogan we proposed.</p>
<p>Two processes had developed immediately upon Jerry’s
arrival in New York. One was the interaction between
Jerry and the Mobe. He had to convince the Mobe that
the targeting of the Pentagon was a good idea. Among
other things, we Californians were in the dark about
logistics. We didn’t know that the Pentagon wasn’t even
in DC but was actually across the bridge in Virginia.
Legitimate practical problems were raised and we were
unsure how to respond. There was only one way to solve
our lack of knowledge and that was to scope out the
Pentagon itself. Bob Greenblatt, the coordinator of the
Mobe and a Cornell Professor, Fred Halsted of the
Socialist Workers Party and Jerry went off together to
take a look. A discussion followed about the pros and
cons. The Pentagon won out and our plan was to shut it
down.</p>
<p>On August 28, the Mobe held a press conference at the
Overseas Press Club in New York to announce its
intention to shut down the Pentagon in less than two
months time. Participants ranged from Monsignor Rice of
Pittsburgh to H. Rap Brown of SNCC. Father Hayes of
the Episcopal Peace Fellowship announced:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…we will shut down the Pentagon. We will fill the
hallways and block the entrances. Thousands of people
will disrupt the center of the American war machine.
In the name of humanity we will call the warmakers to
task.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Abbie quipped that “We’re going to raise the Pentagon
three hundred feet in the air,” while Rap Brown noted
that “I would be unwise to say I’m going there with a
gun because you all took my gun last time. I may bring
a bomb, sucker.” Dellinger stated there would be no
government building left unattacked although it would
all be done nonviolently. Jerry warned that “We’re now
in the business of wholesale disruption and widespread
resistance and dislocation of the American society.”</p>
<p>The Pentagon demonstration was off to a roaring start.</p>
<p>The other parallel process was Jerry’s developing
relationship with Abbie Hoffman and various
counterculture figures in the New York area.
Haight-Ashbury was known as the center of the hippie
explosion, but the East Village in New York was also an
extremely vibrant nexus where artists, musicians, poets,
journalists and activists were forging a
counter-cultural community. Abbie was right in the
middle of that mix. With a long, bushy mane of curly
dark hair, more energy than a spark plug, and a
distinctively Boston accent, Abbie was an unforgettable
character. It wasn’t just his physical appearance that
was remarkable but he was also as funny and clever as
any standup comedian. A divorced father of two, he had
just married Anita Kushner in a public hippie wedding in
Central Park that was splashed across the media. At
first, Anita was not an activist, but she was alienated
from middle class society and madly in love with Abbie.</p>
<p>Jerry had been known in California as the PT Barnum of
the political left. What began as a derogatory
characterization coming from the “straight left” would
now become a proud emblem for Jerry. Through Abbie,
Jerry was introduced to a whole community of people who
would resonate to his theatricality and lead him to
embrace thoroughly the PT Barnum designation.</p>
<p>One evening Jerry telephoned me back in California to
share his excitement. Abbie Hoffman, Jim Fourat and
about a dozen others had gone to the third-floor gallery
at the Stock Exchange and rained down a thousand single
dollar bills onto the floor below. Jerry reported that
the stockbrokers stopped trading, got down on their
hands and knees, and fought over the money while one
young woman shouted, “This is a paradise on earth.
There’s enough for all.” Then Jerry and Abbie set a
handful of money on fire, to the outrage of all around,
and for all the media to photograph. They hadn’t
forgotten to notify the press and images of the event
spread like wildfire.</p>
<p>From that moment on, life changed. Back in Berkeley,
we had been trying to figure out ways to meld radical
politics with the hippie counterculture. But now here
were these people actually doing it. What’s more Jerry
and Abbie seemed to be soul mates. Both wanted to unite
radical politics with the counter culture. Both
understood the power of the media and wanted to figure
out creative ways to reach people.</p>
<p>Abbie was surely a hippie, but he had also been deeply
influenced by the civil rights movement. Most recently
he had founded Liberty House, an outlet for goods
produced in the south by various poor people’s
cooperatives.</p>
<p>By the time I arrived in New York, talks were
proceeding with a whole range of people in the
counter-cultural scene about participating in the
Pentagon action and there was great enthusiasm. Instead
of behaving like the usual “Project Director” he was
hired to be, Jerry was spending his time with his new
friends, planning a Levitation of the Pentagon. It had
been discovered that the five-sided polygon known as the
“pentagon” was a baroque symbol of evil and
oppression. So what better than an exorcism? A group
of “Holy Men” would encircle the Pentagon and conduct a
ritual of drum beating, chanting, incantations and
incense that would raise the Pentagon a hundred feet in
the air and exorcise the evil spirits. When we applied
for a permit to exorcise the Pentagon, it was reported
in the mainstream media that the government said okay,
but no more than three feet off the ground.</p>
<p>Jerry, Stew Albert, Karen Wald and I – the crazies from
California– published the first issue of <em>The
Mobilizer,</em> a newsletter we would mail to peace
groups across the country. The editorial stated:</p>
<p>We live in a society which trains its sons to be
killers and which channels its immense wealth into the
business of suppressing courageous men from Vietnam to
Detroit who struggle for the simple human right to
control their own lives and destinies. We Americans
have no right to call ourselves human beings unless,
personally and collectively, we stand up and say NO to
the death and destruction perpetrated in our name.</p>
<p>We also included a piece by Keith Lampe. Lampe was a
committed pacifist and anti-war activist who possessed a
lively and creative imagination. Keith’s article “On
Making A Perfect Mess” suggested that, “A thousand
children stage Loot-ins at department stores to strike
at the property fetish that underlies genocidal war.”
When <em>The Mobilizer</em> came out there was a wave
of indignation from the Mobe regulars and all hell broke
loose. They confiscated the 5,000 copies of <em>The
Mobilizer</em> and put out a new, respectable version
featuring, “Sid Peck Answers the Questions of Housewives
About the October 21 Demonstration.” (Sid Peck was the
leader of the Ohio Peace Action Council.)</p>
<p>Dave Dellinger, who had invited us to come east, was
out of the country when the conflict erupted. Dave was
a very respected long-time peace activist and editor of
<em>Liberation</em> magazine. He was the people’s
ambassador for peace with a gentle, friendly demeanor,
very much the consensus maker. He was the perfect
coordinator but also as hard as nails in his own way.
Dave very much wanted to see the anti-war movement
advance “from protest to resistance.” He had no problem
personally with going to jail. In fact, he had been
imprisoned for close to two years for being a
conscientious objector in World War II. We counted on
Dave to absorb and deflect the anger of the Mobe
regulars, but unfortunately he was not around for this
skirmish. When he returned even Dave could not bridge
that gulf.</p>
<p>We were upset. We knew that if we had a
confrontational demonstration at the Pentagon, it would
be young people who would be the troops. Yet here were
these over-40 type people who were censoring us and
holding us back. It was more than a controversy over
obscene language, although it was that too; it was a
controversy about the nature of the action itself. They
didn’t like our writings. They didn’t like our art.
They didn’t like our looks. They didn’t like our
levitation. They didn’t like our militancy. They
didn’t like our resistance to U.S. society. They
increasingly stressed the safe, legal and I felt humdrum
side of the demonstration and things were looking bad.</p>
<p>As for me personally, that fall I was having my own
hard time with The Mobe. I was 23-years-old and
supposed to be the staff person in charge of “The
Midwest.” I didn’t have a clue about how to be “in
charge of the Midwest.” I tried to carry out by rote
some tasks that I was given but it was too far outside
my realm of experience and familiarity. I was used to
talking to people, door to door, one on one. I was used
to being part of small groups working together on a
collective vision on activities in a familiar and
close-at-hand area. I was used to working in situations
where people helped each other. I was not experienced
at being part of an administrative staff.</p>
<p>In addition, I was moving away from the “Straight
Left”. I feel a need to explain that further since many
books on the period, often written by academics who are
cut out of the same mold as the “Straight Left”,
underestimate what people like us were trying to do and
what we were able to accomplish. I am often asked: Were
you really a yippie? What would be the draw of sex,
dope and rock ‘n roll for a person like you? How could
you make the mistake of elevating the hippie phenomenon
beyond that? But I looked at it this way. For the
first time, the opportunity seemed to exist to really
connect with masses of people in our society. There
were thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people
who were alienated from America. And it wasn’t an
opportunist connection, we really were a part of them
and they of us.</p>
<p>We had shared values, values that appeared to be very
different from the dominant society, from the older
generation. A large number of young people had dropped
out of society, rejecting the roles that had been
assigned to them, just as we were. In some ways they
were more communistic than we were. They lived
communally, sharing food and material goods. They spoke
of peace and love, not war. They believed in living for
the moment and exploring with their senses and valued
joy, laughter and the human imagination. They
unapologetically preferred smoking marijuana above
guzzling alcohol. They hated the police and the
authorities as much as we did and were not afraid to
commit illegal acts. We had a lot in common.</p>
<p>Hippies were developing counter-cultural institutions.
In New York there was a Free Clinic and a Free Store.
There were alternative newspapers like the <em>East
Village Other</em> (EVO) and <em>The Rat.</em> Major
rock bands identified with this counter culture.
Country Joe and the Fish’s “<em>Vietnam Rag</em>” was
played everywhere and The Jefferson Airplane’s “<em>Gotta
Revolution</em>” became an anthem. All these people
identified with the counterculture. It was a much
broader cross-section of America than those involved in
“straight” politics. It was a force bigger than the
Socialist Club, bigger than the Socialist Workers Party
or the Communist Party. And it was way more fun.
Hippies seemed to be in it with the whole of their
hearts, minds and bodies. They were not going to school
or work in the daytime and then having an occasional
meeting or demonstration. They were talking about
changing their entire lives. For me this resonated with
what Paul Potter and SDS (Students for a Democratic
Society) had been saying about turning our lives over to
building a movement. It made sense in terms of what
Stokely Carmichael of SNCC (Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee) had encouraged us to do, to go
into the white community and influence consciousness and
behavior. We thought that as part of the political
element of this counter-culture, we could influence it
towards a politically revolutionary direction. If there
could be a melding of the New Left and the hippies, it
would be social and political dynamite. We were not
totally wrong.</p>
<p>I had dropped out of graduate school and now I dropped
out of the Mobe. I spent time with Abbie, getting to
know the “Free” community on the lower east side and
talking up the Pentagon action wherever we went. Abbie
knew everybody! Many of his friends were cultural
icons, opinion-setters who influenced thousands of other
people, particularly youth: poet Alan Ginsburg, satirist
Paul Krassner, radio MC Bob Fass of WBAI and folksinger
Phil Ochs.</p>
<p>Jerry and I became good friends with Anita and Abbie in
a couples sort of a way. By that I mean that Anita and
I never spent much time together alone, just the two of
us. However, the four of us spent a good deal of time
together, often with others such as Paul Krassner, Phil
Ochs and many others. Frequently we would just hang out
in the small living room in their ground floor apartment
on St. Marks Place. The room had very little
furniture, mostly pillows along the walls and various
people would come and go, hang out, smoke some weed and
talk, talk, talk.</p>
<p>I don’t think we ever talked about the past—our
families, relationships, past academic or career paths.
We were single-mindedly focused on the present. I was
aware that all four of us– Jerry, Abbie, Anita and I
were raised in Jewish families. If I didn’t know it
then, I later found out that all three of us—Abbie,
Anita and I were dropouts of psychology graduation
school. But these were not things we ever dwelled upon
as we were so busy living in the present and trying to
prepare for the near future.</p>
<p>Being in the eye of the generation gap maelstrom had
some personal implications for me. Returning to New
York had accentuated the situation. It meant closer
proximity of Jerry and my parents. My mother and father
had always been extremely supportive of me, no matter
what I did. Anyone that I brought home, they would try
to love. This had always been the case and there was no
reason to expect it to be different. But I hadn’t
considered Jerry and the baggage that he brought along.</p>
<p>I believed in the Generation Gap (“Don’t trust anyone
over 30!”) but I didn’t intend to apply the maxim to my
own parents. Jerry on the other hand, once described
living in his home as an education in psychological
warfare. He was also orphaned at a relatively young age,
had never really dealt with his childhood issues and
could not accept my closeness with my parents. Perhaps
the relationship was threatening to him in some way or
another. It’s hard to second-guess what was going
through his mind and I don’t recall us having adult,
serious discussions about this. But I do remember that
I brought him home to my parents’ house on Long Island
and he insisted on smoking marijuana in their house.
They let it be known very clearly that they had
difficulty tolerating that. He and I were unwilling to
gracefully compromise with them. We disregarded their
feelings and responded with a disrespectful act– smoking
in the bathroom. My parents were disappointed but they
created no scene and life went on. In retrospect, it’s
hard to imagine that I would treat my parents so
disrespectfully. I believe this was an instance of
Jerry’s bad influence me. I don’t blame him for almost
anything else. Everything else we did was consensual; I
was in there heart and soul, and take responsibility for
all decisions. But I allowed him to influence my
relationship with my parents and to treat them shabbily
and that I do regret.</p>
<p>While I went off to hang out with Abbie, Anita and
others, Jerry kept working for the Mobe although their
mutual dissatisfaction was increasing. The Mobe had
been meeting with Harry Van Cleve, a government lawyer
from the General Services Administration, selected to do
their negotiating. He said that if The Mobe planned to
“close down the Pentagon,” the government would not
issue permits for any rally or march, not even a legal
rally or march. In fact, our buses would not even be
allowed to unload people in Washington at all. Well,
that was the worst thing he could have done for his
team! Suddenly, people who had been luke-warm or opposed
to the demonstration were calling in their
endorsements. We heard from Martin Luther King,
Benjamin Spock and SDS among others.</p>
<p>As this momentum developed the government was thrown
into a quandary. Van Cleve then telephoned, requesting
another meeting, and in the next two weeks there were
six meetings. They had a new strategy to defuse the
impact in a myriad of different ways: can’t use the
preferred bridge, no sound at the Pentagon, can’t arrive
at the Pentagon until 4:30 (buses were returning to NY
at 5:00). Jerry was concerned that our whole vision was
being compromised and wanted to break off the
negotiations. He also felt that it was somewhat ironic
to be planning civil disobedience, an illegal activity,
while negotiating with those who would do the
arresting. On a more profound level, he understood that
the government really had to negotiate with the
protest. If we stood firm, he felt the government would
have to back down and grant us some of our vision.
Ultimately, Dellinger signed what my friends and I
believed was a less-than-perfect agreement. The
unfolding of the day seemed to render the agreement
fairly irrelevant but we had no way of knowing that in
advance.</p>
<p>On Saturday October 20, 1967 more than 100,000 (some
say 200,000) people streamed into Washington for the
legal rally at the Lincoln Memorial. The usual speeches
went on for hours. I don’t remember any of them. My
friends and I were eager to get on with the action.
Eventually a mass of people, perhaps 50,000 began the
two-hour march across the Arlington Memorial Bridge with
helicopters buzzing menacingly overhead.</p>
<p>I remember feeling that day that we were in some kind
of a funnel, where the numbers of people kept
narrowing. At the outset there were possibly a hundred
thousand people at the Lincoln Memorial with perhaps
50,000 people continuing the march across the bridge.
The majority of the demonstrators left Washington on the
5:00 o’clock buses after leaving us much of the food
they had brought along, their final donation to our
well-being. The crowd got younger as we headed out
towards the bridge.</p>
<p>As we walked, we talked about what had happened the
week before in California. <em>Stop the Draft Week</em>
had erupted in Oakland with 3000 demonstrators
converging on the Oakland induction center. Some of the
demonstrators were wearing helmets and carrying shields
to ward off police attacks but the cops had used Mace on
the demonstrators and attacked them with a vengeance,
injuring about 20 and arresting 25. By Friday morning
there were 10,000 demonstrators around the induction
center, many of them using what came to be known as
“mobile tactics.” When the police began to attack, they
blockaded intersections with whatever they could lay
their hands on and then took off running. The stories
of that confrontation rippled through the march and it
was rumored that some veterans of that battle had driven
across country to join us. These were our people and I
wondered which of our old friends from Berkeley had been
involved and who was in the crowd with us.</p>
<p>We crossed the bridge with great anticipation. At some
point, the police blocked us from marching toward our
preferred route. In response we sat down on the bridge,
tens of thousands of us as far as you could see, forcing
the government to yield.</p>
<p>The government had brought in more than 6,000 Army
troops. Twenty thousand were on alert around the
country. Two thousand National Guard troops and 2,000
Washington police were on hand. Eight hundred cops were
stationed at the capitol and secret service helicopters
hovered over the White House. Their central command
post was inside the Pentagon.</p>
<p>The levitation of the Pentagon was one of the first
successful aspects of the day, providing creative
imagery of the fusing of politicos and acid heads into
an activist community. Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg
of the The Fugs, decked out in multi-colored capes,
provided the music. Alan Ginsberg opened the ceremony
with what would become his hallmark “Ommmmmmmmm.”
Others led incantations of “Out, demons, out!”
Truthfully I think the actual nuts and bolts of a
levitation were not that high on my interest list, since
my mind is foggy on the facts. Or perhaps the
levitation has just been overshadowed in my mind by the
following events.</p>
<p>As we left the bridge area, there was a rush on the
Pentagon by a militant contingent made up of SDS and a
group calling themselves the Revolutionary Contingent.
They broke down a fence and got right up to the
Pentagon. In fact, a few people actually made it inside
for a brief moment until they were swiftly arrested. As
more protestors came across the bridge, this group that
had rushed to the Pentagon began to swell into the
largest contingent, putting ourselves in a direct
confrontation with the troops who were lined up at the
top of the stairs at the main entrance to the War
Machine.</p>
<p>SDS and the Revolutionary Contingent were joined by
hundreds of other protestors who were willing to risk
arrest, but at the same time a legal rally was going on
over at another area of the Pentagon. As evening came
on, many of the people from that legal rally left as
well and we were down to a couple of thousand people.</p>
<p>Though SDS was not a sponsor, because of disagreements
with the conception, they had joined the mobilization in
the final hours and their contribution to the actual
confrontation was significant. They were a group of
people who were able to coordinate their activities and
move as one. I remember feeling how we were just
separate individuals, Jerry, Abbie, Anita, our friend
Stew Albert and me. You might think that we had some
kind of tactical leadership role to play, or at least
Jerry would have. But that was not the case, as far as
I can remember. As would happen many times in the
future, we had helped to create the stage, had set up
the situation as best we could, but had no clue as to
how to physically influence the actual event.
Inevitably there were others who would move in to fill
that vacuum.</p>
<p>As the sun went down, it became cooler and cooler. The
crowd was getting younger and younger. We were on our
own. The protection of the older generation was
disappearing. Even Uncle Dave was gone. We heard that
Dellinger, Norman Mailer and several others had been
arrested early on in a choreographed civil disobedience
action, crossing over a forbidden line and being taken
into custody. I had never been arrested before and I
remember feeling apprehensive about what was going to
happen. It was a volatile and unpredictable situation.
We had no idea what was going to transpire. Would we be
there for an hour? Would they mace us as in Oakland?</p>
<p>Maybe they would even shoot us? This was not a
situation for anyone who needed to be in control, who
needed to know for sure what was going to happen next.
You had to go with the flow and some of the
possibilities were really frightening.</p>
<p>As it played out, there were moments of exhilaration
and community. And there were moments of outright
fear. As we jockeyed for space there was physical,
literally face-to-face, confrontation with the army.
The scene became very tense and we finally, at the
suggestion of SDS, all sat down. When we started out
that day we had no idea how many people would stay.
Maybe it would just be a handful in the end. However,
the actual numbers lifted our spirits; there were well
over a thousand of us. But what’s more, the group that
remained seemed to beat with one heart and that gave
everyone strength. We were on a mission and we knew we
were right. We looked to the right and we looked to the
left and we knew that all of us would remain up until
the point of arrest. For hours there was an impromptu
teach-in to the troops. People climbed up on a ledge
and, using a bullhorn, spoke to the troops. There was
an open mike (well, actually a bullhorn) for anyone who
wanted to speak. I did not have the confidence to
speak, but I was very proud of what people said.</p>
<p>It has been said that our movement was disrespectful of
the troops, but I don’t think so at all. We were
speaking the truth to them. Those truths had the
potential to save their lives, as well as the lives of
millions of Vietnamese.</p>
<p>That evening at the Pentagon, Berkeley non-student
activist and future yippie Stew Albert addressed the
troops:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I went to PS 206 in Brooklyn, and when I was in
school nobody liked the monitors. They were kids like
us, but they worked for the strict teachers. We
didn’t like them when we were kids, so why should we
like them now? We always considered the monitors to
be finks. And now you guys are acting like monitors.
Join us!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In unison, the crowd spontaneously chanted “Join us!
Join us!”</p>
<p>We were right up against the troops. When Super Joel,
one of the earlier levitators, stepped forward and
placed a flower in the bayoneted gun barrel of one of
the soldiers, it became an iconic image. Other
protestors followed suit. (Paul Krassner later pointed
out that Super Joel’s grandfather was the mafia boss Sam
Giancana and that Super Joel had dropped out of the
family business.) The confrontation between
demonstrators and troops lasted thirty-three hours, all
through the first night and until midnight of the second
night. Especially during the night, the soldiers would
every now and then make forays into the front of the
crowd, clubbing a few people and dragging a few others
away to be arrested. We sat, arms locked as tight as
possible, to impede them as much as possible and to
protect one another. In the end they dragged away
everyone who remained. Well over a thousand people were
arrested, with 780 of us held and several hundred
released. Some people were beaten or gassed.</p>
<p>I was arrested alongside Anita Hoffman. It was the
first time either of us had been under arrest. I would
later learn that it was a very atypical arrest
experience. They took hundreds of us, all women, to
what seemed to be a huge dormitory. There were scores
and scores of cots lined up next to each other, like
being in a huge summer camp. Anita and I were able to
stay together and were on cots right alongside each
other. The camaraderie was palpable and exciting.
After spending the night on our cots, we were herded to
court and as counseled by our movement lawyers, we
pleaded <em>nolo contendre</em>, meaning we don’t say
we’re guilty, we don’t say we’re not guilty, we just
don’t contest it. This was worked out between the
government and our lawyers. We did what we were
advised, paid a small fine and went home.</p>
<p>Later, we learned that several paratroopers had left
the line, saying they wouldn’t be part of the military
any more, and they were now held in the stockade. Dave
Dellinger reported that over the years he kept meeting
veterans who said they were on duty that day and had
been affected by the teach-in. Much later we learned
that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had watched
the entire battle from his fifth floor office,
accompanied by his young assistant Daniel Ellsberg who
later released the famous Pentagon Papers.</p>
<p>Years later, when asked about Jerry and the hippie
entry into the peace movement, Dave Dellinger offered
this: “What I remember is just being thrilled and
excited that this whole new element of humor and
creativity and youthful zest was coming into things”</p>
<p>Were we right or wrong in our conflict with The Mobe?
The final outcome of the Pentagon demonstration was
awesome. It was one of the most successful activities I
have ever been involved with. I believe the character
was greatly affected by our continuously agitating for a
militant, theatrical, unpredictable scenario. It was
that projection that attracted thousands of young people
and forced the government to dig in its heels,
threatening to deny our basic civil liberties. That
denial then brought thousands of additional people into
the protest. In our estimation of the final
negotiations with the government lawyer Van Cleve,
perhaps we were too pessimistic about what we had
already won, but that’s much easier to say in
hindsight. We wanted no rock left unturned in our
effort to make this a successful political
confrontation. In the end, the victory was really a
result of the energy and the numbers of the people that
participated. Even the children of officials in the
Johnson Administration were joining us. In a political
sense the country was now really at war with itself.
This realization seemed to hold within itself the
possibility that we could end the war with Vietnam.</p>
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