* Sir, some groups are planning to carry Viet Cong flags in tomorrow's parade. Don't you think that is highly provocative? Do you approve?
The New York Daily News' front-page Saturday morning story on the march was accompanied by one photograph--a picture of a Communist Party official making a statement that Communists controlled the Mobilization. The New Times kept its feelings pretty much on the editorial page where Saturday morning it condemned the demonstration as ineffective, both morally and politically.
In spite of the internal strife and external harrassment, the coalition held together without a single defection, and when King, Spock, McKissick, Dellinger, Bevel, and the other principals led the march out of Central Park toward the U.N. shortly after 12 noon, they had a lot of people behind them.
The leaders marched quietly, almost grimly. They didn't smile except to brush off an occasional insult from the sparse crowd on the sidewalks. The fog had lifted slightly but it was still a very gray day. Appropriately, a little boy marched beside Spock holding onto his hand. "Hey, Spock," somebody yelled. "Take a walk. I shoulda never read your book."
Hecklers
In addition to sporadic heckling, a group of about 200 counter-demonstrators waving American flags buzzed around the protestors all day. They had an answer to "Hey, hey LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today": "Hey Hey Ho Chi Minh, How Many Kids haveyou done in?"
King and company reached the U.N. without incident after an hour's walk. They had been too quiet, too dignified to provoke trouble. But the march continued all afternoon. At 5:30 when rain finished it, thousands had yet to reach the U.N. As the marchers to the rear got younger and hippier and their slogans wittier, incidents multiplied.
Beer cans, eggs, paint, soda bottles, chunks of concrete, and pieces of steel showered from Manhattan skyscrapers. One girl was struck on the head by a bottle of paint dropped from a thirtieth floor window. The paint splattered fifty feet and the girl was taken to a hospital unconscious.
Police went after a few of the bombadiers, but they were pretty powerless against this sort of attack, all 3000 of them. They stood around about every 100 feet looking uncomfortable and humorless, but striving for that "objective" attitude which their chiefs had announced they would maintain. One officer, however, betrayed his feelings when two girls asked if they could cross in front of a part of the parade that was being held up at an intersection. "They might abuse you, but go ahead," he said.
Guffaws
Yet, the incredible get-ups which many of the younger demonstrations sported were often too much even for the police. Many a sergeant broke into a jolly guffaw at the sight of a boy wearing a banana-peel headpiece or a girl covered with psychedelic paint. And on the bus from the U.N. after the rally one cop had a friendly chat with a couple of demonstrators who complimented the police on the handling of the crowd. That was credit where credit was due. No matter what the police thought of it, they handled the protest well.
The marchers handled themselves well, too, with the exception of the "Ad Hoc Committee for a Revolutionary Contingent," which charged down 7th Ave. instead of Madison Ave. and attacked Times Square armed services recruitment booth. After leaving Times Square, they clashed with about 100 police near the U.N. and five or six of them were badly beaten with riot sticks.
Later Saturday evening, Alan Krebs, a leader of the Revolutionary Contigent, accepted his "eight or ten" casualties stoically. "It was a possibility that we would break right through those police," another Revolutionary explained. "But we were playing it by ear and decided not to." Other revolutionaries practiced karate during the post-mortem.
After it was all over, Mobilization headquarters was a scene of happy exhaustion. Demonstration officials felt that the large and diverse turnout proved there was "broadly-based" opposition to the war.
Whether or not the march had significantly helped the peace cause was a different question. With so much publicity going to the Revolutionary Contingent and the Communist Party, it may have repelled many sympathetic people. But the Mobilization people did not worry.
Bevel was happy enough with the way things went to suggest, off-the-cuff, that they march on the White House. Other Mobilization officials jumped at the idea and the date was set, May 17. They telegrammed President Johnson Monday night, telling him to get out of Vietnam in a month or get ready for visitors.
There has not yet been time to enlist support of all the groups involved in last Saturday's march, but people at Mobilization headquarters think they can keep the coalition together for the new march.
That is questionable, however. In the week prior to the march, many of the more radical elements of the peace movement discussed massive civil disobedience as a protest tactic.
They were generally in favor of launching such a program. King, himself, said in a New York Times interview, that "If our nation insists on escalating the war and we don't see any changes, it may be necessary to engage in civil disobedience to further arouse the conscience of the nation and make it clear we feel this is hurting our country." By the end of the week, many were convinced that civil disobedience on a significant scale will be adopted, causing a split in the movement between moderates and those farther left.
But there is just an off-chance that, flushed with the New York success, the whole movement will become more militant. Asked if her group had ever resorted to civil disobedience, Mrs. Dagmar Wilson, founder of Women's Strike for Peace, replied, "No, but I'm not saying we won't. There's a limit to our patience. And we have a fine example in our grand-mothers and mothers who fought to get the vote.