Everyone has read horror stories about the war. Some people are unable to read anymore of them. I figure that if the Vietnamese have to live through them, I should be able to read them. Every person who carries an NLF flag in a demonstration has probably internalized a thousand horror stories about the war. That's one of the reasons he's for the NLF.

What I see in nightmares at night, in case you're interested, is faces. Mostly kids. One of a kid rolling over andover on the ground, trying to extinguish the burning napalm, his flesh turning to charcoal underneath.

When you read a story about a battle, pretend you were in it. I was going to spare you from meeting one of my friends. but I thought that the 43 per cent of the freshman class who still wanted Thieu and Ky to win needed him. If you think hard enough about him, and his friends, you'll be in the streets Wednesday afternoon too.

From a report by a Quaker worker in Quang Ngai:

"How can I tell you what it was like! These people coming in filthy, with glazed looks, numb. Nobody talking, nobody crying and the sounds of furious battle not yet ended pursuing them in the door. The emergency room floor, still covered with blood from yesterday's casualties, smelled in the heat of the day and was oppressive. . . .

"One little fells of ten or so, shot in the face. There are bullet or fragment holes in the back and buttocks, one of which had exited through his abdomen, the others lodged somewhere. He, like most of the others, came in lying in a pool of blood. Feces and ground up bits of bone were flowing out of the buttocks wound. Vomit ran from his mouth and mixed with the blood pouring from his mouth and mixed with the blood pouring from the face wound. We worked with him for a long time but his chances were slim. He was in shock (most of them were) and struggling to get up from time to time. at times opening his eyes wide to beg for water or complain of the pain in his belly and then lapsing into unconsciousness. His father stood by silently. . . ."

A quick lesson about understanding America: If you want to know why something exists in America. try to figure out who benefits by having it. Why does the government spend so much money on roads and so little on efficient mass transportation? Well. roads are for cars, and GM. Ford. and American Motors make cars. Did you know that there is no longer any way to get from San Diego to Los Angeles by bicycle?

Lesson number two for understanding America: He who pays is never he who benefits. The American taxpayer pays for the continued production of planes and guns and bombs. He pays for training the Guatemalan army and, of course, for U.S. troops in Vietnam. The profits go to the major corporations. Most people in this country can now buy less with their wages than they could five years ago. They certainly haven't benefitted.

In the fall of 1968, I helped Peace and Freedom canvas Cambridge for rent control. Most of the people just stared back blankly when I tried to tell them that their rents were too high and that their rooms were pits. After a while I just couldn't take trying to make another person unhappy.

The system has forced people to think that they live in hell because they deserve no better. You are poor because you are dumb and uncreative and your breath smells.

I went into one old woman's apartment that had an inch-wide crack running the width of the ceiling. I tried to tell her that with rent control, she could force the landlord to abide by the housing code. She could make him fix the crack.

"No," she said, "everywhere I go I have cracks in my ceilings. It's not the landlord's fault. it's mine. Somehow leaky ceilings are part of my life."

Jesus, I thought, You mean that this woman has lived sixty-odd years thinking that her presence in rooms causes the ceilings to leak?

I grabbed her by the hand and took her next door to her neighbors. where of course, she had never been. In this atomistic society. you are crammed into your own room and told not to visit your neighbor. When the neighbors answered, we went inside and looked at their ceilings. The crack continued all the way across their room too.

"You see." I said. "it isn't your crack, it's the landlord's crack. You didn't cause it, he did. He let your apartment deteriorate. He's only interested in taking your money."