University of Maryland Activists Reunite!

Forty Years in the Fray

In 1998, longtime UM activist Richard J. Ochs (Dick to his friends) wrote a 91 page memoir of his 40 years in the Movement. Dick is still an activist and recently fought off a cancer invasion. In many ways, Dick represents the spirit of the 1960's at UM and how that spirit followed stayed with him up to the present day

MEMOIRS: Forty Years in the Fray by Richard J. Ochs
Published by
Workers Action Press, Inc.

1443 Gorsuch Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland 21218
410-254-8674
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 98-90478
Originally Published June 1998

DEDICATION:

I dedicate this book to Rudi Vlasits (1909-1997), who was my printing partner, comrade, and friend. Rudi spent his life working for social justice, socialism, and peace.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

At this point in my life, as I look back at many events, I want to express my love and appreciation for my family, comrades and friends, without whose support and participation I could never have accomplished what I have.

I want to thank Tom Chalkley for doing the drawings for this book. I also want to thank Mike Bardoff and Glen Simpson for making corrections to the text, Max Obuszewski for compiling several years of anti-contra history, and Kay Dellinger for editing the book.

PREFACE:

My memoirs recall the highlights of forty years of personal struggle for equality, justice, peace, socialism and the environment. It contains brief descriptions of selected events experienced and/or witnessed by the author, told with the purpose of encouraging others to struggle for a better world.

This book also aims to encourage others to similarly chronicle their experiences. A future peoples' history project (perhaps a student's graduate paper) could compile such memoirs to publish a comprehensive history of struggles in the Maryland/D.C. area. Toward this end, nothing in this book is protected by copyright and may be quoted or copied without express permission. Your comments and corrections are welcome.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I was born on June 9, 1938, the second of three sons of Alfred L. Ochs, Jr., who married Ann Elizabeth Fox, my mother, in 1934. My older brother, Alfred (Larry) lives in Richmond and my younger brother, Bill resides in Baltimore.

I still remember the World War II air raid blackouts in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I was born. Civil Defense wardens would go house to house to make sure lights were out or shades were drawn to make the city invisible to any German pilots, or so they said. It was more likely to psych the population.

Other experiences, listed below, combined to form my consciousness against man’s inhumanity to man, resulting in a life of advocacy. From the age of twenty in 1958 to sixty in 1998, I have been arrested for civil disobedience more times than I have years of life. However, I have never spent more than a week in jail.

The Holocaust on a Child’s Mind

My family moved to Baltimore in 1942 when I was four years old. Any description of the early development of my anti-war consciousness would be incomplete without telling about my watching an Auschwitz documentary on TV when I was twelve. Shocked by what I saw, I was horrified by the realization that I was born into a world where people would do such things to each other. When the film clip was finished, I immediately caught a bus at night, transferred to another bus, and went to my schools’ church, St. Vincent’s in Baltimore. I was so horrified I did not know where else to turn for answers or solace, so I went to where the so-called Creator lived. But the church door was locked. No one was there. Dejected and rejected, I returned home to deal with my devastation by myself. I never mentioned it to anyone.

The Holocaust had changed my life. In addition to motivating my struggles against war and racism, it exposed a Catholic Church that never mentioned the crime. The inaccessible church was symbolic. It is no surprise that I later became an atheist.

Fraternizing While Fratriciding

My godfather, Uncle John, told this story about when he was a soldier in France during World War II. After fighting the Germans all week, the troops would often get a weekend leave and go to the local town to relax. They would go to bars, where they discovered German soldiers also on leave. The allied soldiers and German soldiers would drink and play cards all night together. Since I come from a German-American family, Uncle John spoke German. The next morning they would all find themselves back on the battlefield shooting at each other again. Other than that story and showing us his shrapnel scars, Johnny never talked about the war.

Influence

I can thank my mother for my social consciousness. She was a self-made woman who took flying lessons in her twenties and later was editor of the community newspaper while working and raising three kids. She worked for Americans for Democratic Action, collected food for the poor and organized the community to get a school built at Armistead Gardens, where I was raised in east Baltimore.

I received an early lesson about sexism from Mother, who told this story: During World War II, she worked on the assembly line at Martin's Aircraft Corporation in Middle River, Maryland. Her boss fired women workers who refused his advances. She refused, got fired and had to return to Allentown to find another job. She was hired in the personnel department of another aircraft firm there. Then Martin's had a layoff and her former boss came looking for a job at the Allentown factory. Mother said, "You should have seen his face when he walked into our office and saw me. He just turned white, turned around and we never saw him again." Would that such poetic justice could happen in more sexual abuse cases.

My brothers and I are all very nearsighted, wore glasses at an early age and have big feet. On top of that, older brother Larry's ears stuck out like Dumbo the Elephant. He was the recipient of much abuse from other kids. Once some bullies put him in a box and dropped him off a bridge into a creek. We had to stick together for self defense. Because of this discrimination, Larry empathized with people of color. Both of us later became active in civil rights and Larry married Bienvenida from Santo Domingo and they have two daughters, Paz and Sarah.

I also received class consciousness from my extended family. Daddy came from a business family in Allentown. The Ochs Construction Company built the high school, hospital and many homes there, until they lost everything in the Great Depression. Mother's father was a working foreman of the casting and plate press in the steel plant in Bethlehem. Daddy's relatives were mostly snobs and Mother's folks were the salt of the earth. My class allegiance was formed at an early age.

Uncivil Defense

When I was a high school student in the late 50's, I spent many nights and weekends volunteering for the Air Force Ground Observer Corps. We would sit in the tower of the Clifton Park mansion and report the height, direction and type of any plane we saw in the sky. This was supposedly to warn the U.S. Air Force and prevent Russians from bombing us. Like the Allentown air raid tests, this was probably done more to brainwash the public, which I naively fell for.

I did not, however, fall for the next step: fallout shelters. When Civil Defense took us to inspect shelters in Olney to encourage a shelter program for everyone, I balked. Even as a gullible student, I knew fallout shelters were a ridiculous response to the threat of nuclear war.

Poetry Invasion

As a college student at Muhlenberg College back in Allentown in 1959, I was a serious physics major. That, however, did not prevent me from falling in with a bunch of rebels to form the Poetry Club, whose only event was to invite Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti to campus from New York for a reading. Muhlenberg was a small, provincial Lutheran college with a required religion course and compulsory chapel attendance.

The Beat Generation poets had a reputation for dumping on every cultural value of our civilization, religion included. Obviously we were not surprised when the campus administration banned the poets, which made headlines in the Allentown paper. We then rented a hotel meeting room and staged the reading. Not only did the campus empty out to attend, but the publicity brought out many townspeople as well. Ginsberg’s “Howl” was eye-opening, but Corso’s “Fuck Ode” had only shock value. Nevertheless, Muhlenberg was never the same, nor was I.

Nike Missile Removal

But that was not enough. At the annual Science Fair held at the campus gym next to my dorm, there was parked a giant flatbed trailer with a Nike missile on it to publicize the fair. I had just returned that evening from the local bar, where I was drinking brew to relieve college pressures. Feeling gutsy and rebellious, I removed the chocks from the trailer wheels and instigated fellow travelers of life's absurdities to push the humongous thing off campus. I was not motivated by any social analysis or political theory. This was pure psychological alienation, unconscious rebellion against the status quo.

We pushed the missile down the street toward town, but somebody called the cops. We let the trailer go against the curb and ran back to campus, the cops on our tail. The cops were trying to grab me but, being the recipient of a track scholarship, I was fast. Feeling frisky, I went close to the cops and taunted them. Two made a lunge for me, I sidestepped them, they crashed into one another and then fell down. A roar of approval went up from the crowd, which had formed from the commotion, and I sprinted away. That was all the encouragement I needed for a life of "crime."

It was ironic because a year earlier I tried to join the U.S. Army Rocket Corps. When I had graduated from high school, I wanted to learn the trade of electronics, but it wasn’t to be. Without lenses, I could not see the big E on the eye chart at the Fort Holabird Induction Center. I was a 4-F reject. It is strange to think how an accident of nature turned me into a peacenik instead of an Army rocketeer.

Atheist Invasion

After two years at Muhlenberg, I transferred to the University of Maryland in College Park. By then I had kicked the Catholic religion and became a Unitarian. The switch had as much to do with the hypocrisy of Christians as their irrational restrictions on sexuality. I was also influenced by my high school sweetheart, Sharon Maroose, who was a Unitarian and the most intellectual young person I had ever met.

At College Park, I joined the Diogenes Society, the campus Unitarian youth group. Our first event was to invite Madelyn Murray (now Madelyn O'Hair), Chairwoman of American Atheists and filer of the successful Supreme Court suit to end prayer in public schools. She spoke to a standing room audience of hundreds, which continued past midnight in the dorm lounge after the hall closed. Her astounding intellect had a profound effect on hundreds of young minds, including mine. Thank you, Madelyn, wherever you are!

Un-American Activity

While the red-baiting rage of Senator Joe McCarthy had subsided, right wing representatives were still subpoenaing citizens whose patriotism was suspect. Hearings around 1960 of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) turned into a riot in San Francisco when protesters who disrupted it were dragged out. Frank Wilkenson, Chairman of the Committee to Abolish HUAC, was touring campuses and showing film clips of the riot.

I worked with other Diogenes Society members to invite Wilkenson to speak at College Park against HUAC the week before hearings were scheduled in D.C. Dozens of anti-HUAC protesters attended the hearings, including my brother Larry and me. The red-baiting fanatics running the hearings were ridiculous. Their banters brought hilarious laughter from many in the audience. Chairman Stennis of Mississippi then ruled that any more outbreaks would result in expulsions, a statement that caused even more laughter.

"Bang!" went the gavel and cops started grabbing anyone who looked irreverent, including Larry and me. Dozens were thrown out, resulting in much publicity. HUAC was exposed for being the circus it was. Within the term, HUAC was abolished.

CIA Close to Home

I traveled to Key West, Florida that summer with another radical student, Eli Zaretsky, who later became an editor of Socialist Revolution. We were sitting at a bar sipping brew and happened to chat with a captain of a fishing fleet. He related a story about how some Time and Life reporters paid him to take them to Cuba, which he did even though it violated U.S. law.

On the way back from Cuba, they were stopped by the Coast Guard and taken aboard the ship for questioning. After a while, the so-called reporters were allowed to return to the fishing boat and return to Key West. Nothing was ever done to them. The captain said they told him the reporters were with the CIA.

Ever since then, I've never trusted the American so-called free press. To this day the head of the CIA defends using reporters as CIA agents. With reporters on the CIA payroll, the agency might as well be writing the news.

Civil Rights Sit-ins

In the early 60's, some restaurants near College Park still refused to serve people of color. The Prince George's County NAACP called for sit-ins on Route 1 between D.C. and Baltimore. About a dozen students and I joined NAACP members and were arrested about ten times for trespassing.

Even though Anne Arundel County passed an equal accommodations bill, one restaurant a block from the State House still refused to serve black people. Andrew Busby and I joined an integrated team to test the restaurant's policy. Because of the county law, the owners could not call the cops to evict us. Instead they got some toughs to pick us up and throw us out on the sidewalk, whereupon cops arrested us when we landed, presumably for blocking the sidewalk.

Speaking of police complicity, when we picketed a restaurant in Belair, Maryland, right across the street from the police station, the owner drenched us with water from a garden hose while the police looked the other way.

The Ku Klux Klan was trying to organize in Prince Georges County. We counter-demonstrated whenever they appeared. Once a fat robed Klansman was belly-to-belly with comrade Andrew Busby (also no lightweight), both snarling in each other's face like two bulldogs. Only the police prevented a fight. We were not inclined to be pacifists when it came to the Klan.

A friend Norman Kirkpatrick was able to infiltrate the White Citizens Council and informed us when and where they had meetings. Our protests outside their meetings were instrumental in destroying their organizing drive in P.G. County and they disappeared.

SDS in the Hood

Prince Georges County, with its county seat in Upper Marlboro, was still run by tobacco southerners. The county police might as well be Klansmen themselves. They had a long track record of shooting down black men in cold blood and getting away with it. I will never forget that after Sgt. Snow killed an unarmed black man, receiving much notoriety, he was given a paid vacation and then named "Detective of the Year" by the Chief. Our protests did not change anything, but the deceased Curtis William's brother Leroy became a life-long friend and comrade.

When we visited Leroy's neighborhood in Cedar Heights, Maryland, one could still see the ruins of slave quarters there. The rusty chains and shackles were still attached to the basement walls of one long-gone building, which was used to hold slaves overnight in Maryland because quartering slaves was illegal in D.C. where they were taken every day to work.

Cedar Heights had no paved roads, no garbage collection, no street lighting, and no county services to speak of. It was separated from a white neighborhood next to it by a long, high fence. This was not only an insult, but a great inconvenience for shoppers who had to carry groceries several blocks to go around the fence.

In 1963 I attended a conference of the Students for a Democratic Society in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then returned to College Park where I helped establish an SDS chapter. Our first project was to help Cedar Heights. Students worked with residents to organize demonstrations for county services and infrastructure improvements. We protested at a local bank to hire people of color. We tore down the fence separating the black neighborhood from the white one, allowing foot traffic to the store. The community organization was empowered and soon the streets were paved, lighting installed and garbage collection initiated.

Racist FHA Loans Killed

The Prince George's County Congress of Racial Equality was then established to combat housing discrimination. The co-chairs were University of Maryland math instructor Cephus Donald Hughes and my brother Larry, who was a physics student there. We picketed an all-white development being built in P.G. County called Bel Air in Bowie, patterned after Levittown, Pennsylvania. They would not sell to people of color even though they received Federal Housing Authority loans from the government.

We demonstrated at their model homes every weekend for a whole summer. At the end of the summer, we had a sleep-in in a model home and were arrested. They squeezed six of us into a ten foot square drunk tank at the Upper Marlboro jail overnight. The jury found us guilty of trespass and fined us $500 apiece. The NAACP paid our fines, but the publicity got President Kennedy's attention. He then made it illegal to grant FHA loans to any builder in the U.S. who discriminated. Our victory was written up in the Wall Street Journal. Bel Air and many other developments in the U.S. became desegregated soon after that.

Kwame Toure (formerly Stokley Carmichael) visited us during our last protest at Bel Air, Bowie. He told the mostly white CORE members that we should forget about helping middle class blacks get housing and deal with the fact that most black people had more serious problems: they did not have the money to spend in desegregated facilities. He said we should work to change the fundamental economic injustice in society. We took that advice seriously. From that point on, I was committed to working for socialism.

But the civil rights struggle was not over. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a Dream" speech in 1963, the Congress Of Racial Equality chapter from Brooklyn, New York, marched all the way to D.C. for the event. More people joined them en route. When they came through Baltimore, I joined the march with my guitar. We sang freedom songs all the way to Washington. After two days of walking, we made a triumphant entry into the crowd, singing all the way. Our feet and my fingers were sore, but our spirits were high.

Assassination Riots

In 1968, when Dr. King was assassinated, I was living in D.C. The popular rebellion in the streets gave me an outlet for my rage. Fires and rioting were widespread. I was not the only white person who helped sack chain stores either.

It was a fascinating lesson in urban guerilla tactics to watch how the people advanced and retreated. Being spontaneous, but ingenious, the sacking of chain stores consisted of three distinct waves of people. The first wave of outrage was glass-breaking. When a storefront was smashed by rocks, the police would respond. But the rock-throwers had disappeared by then. The cops would leave right away to respond to other break-ins.

As soon as the cops were gone, the second waved commenced. Crowds of people would reach through the smashed windows and grab what they could and pile it up on the sidewalk. Some would go inside and pass things out. Then the cops would be called again.

The cops appeared and found piles of goods all over the sidewalk, but no one in sight. There was nothing they could do and they had to leave right away to respond to other calls.

Then the third wave of people came. Crowds, including grandmothers and kids, would pick up what was on the sidewalks and take it home. By the time the cops came the third time, almost everything and everyone was gone.

This happened all over the city and all over the country. I participated in the second and third wave. I jumped through the jagged glass opening of a Safeway supermarket near 14th and P Sts., N.W., and headed for the meat coolers. They were already empty - the first to be ripped off. I had to settle for canned goods. I grabbed all I could and beat it home to the eerie glow of burning liquor stores and screaming sirens. Now that was a night to remember. Revolution was now in my blood.

Solidarity Inspirations

I hitch-hiked to Wisconsin in 1965 to attend an SDS convention. On the trip out, I found myself passing through a very small town. It seemed like a ghost town, almost too peaceful. Then all hell broke loose. Just like a Charlie Chaplin movie, around the corner came a raucous crowd of marchers with banners and signs, singing and shouting. The whole town must have been out because there were hundreds of people. And what is more amazing, there were no spectators. Everyone, kids and grandmothers, were marching. I got a rush of adrenalin: what is going on?

Having asked a passing marcher, I was astounded to hear that this march was a sympathy protest in support of workers in Milwaukee, fifty miles away, who had been on strike for a year. I had never heard of this sort of thing happening in the East. It was like stepping into another country or another century, but it was real. Working class solidarity was never again just a theoretical formulation for me. I had seen the miracle with my own eyes. I felt like Malcolm in Mecca. The SDS convention gave organization to the old time religion I had seen in the streets. I returned home a true believer.

Years later I had a similar experience in Toronto, Canada, where I was touring to take a break from AmeriKKKa. I saw a poster taped to a light pole downtown. It announced a march in sympathy with striking Bolivian miners in South America. I had never seen such a thing back home. I joined the march and was suitably inspired. That was the shot in the arm I needed. With my batteries recharged, I returned home to carry on the struggle with more vigor.

Hippie Pioneers

In addition to the political and social revolution, my comrades and I were into a cultural revolution. Being thoroughly alienated by the cultural values of capitalism, we found ourselves living together in what turned out to be the first hippie commune in the College Park area. More than mere social misfits or hedonistic, aimless youth, we were rebels in every sense of the word.

We rented a large run-down house in Hyattsville, Maryland, where the alienated vanguard of College Park either lived or "freak-wented": Tom the poet/dancer, John the artist, Busby the anarchist, Marvin the sculptor, and Leroy the protector. Tom would spellbind us with rapid and endless verbal creations. The meanings, if any, were anyone's guess. Then he would dance just as intensely, endlessly, until he would collapse in total exhaustion. John covered every inch of wall with murals of nude, dancing Greek gods in colored oils. The quality of his work approached Raphael. Marvin, who studied in Czechoslovakia under a master sculptor, put us in the company of Ho Chi Minh and Vladimir Lenin with his gift of bringing life and spirit out of mere clay. Busby would start singing revolutionary songs from memory in five languages at midnight and still be singing when the sun came up. Leroy was the streetwise brother from the hood who was always there protecting us from a hostile real world we were often oblivious to.

For my part, I was the printer and flagmaker who also dabbled in art by carving designs in the external wood of the frame house (since burned down) next to the Hyattsville bridge. This house became known as the Flag Factory, which I will explain later.

I learned my printing trade the hard way: trial and error (mostly error). The floor was covered with more wasted paper than we had good prints. It was a task of necessity. Ending the war in Vietnam and other projects required lots of printing, which we could ill afford. Hence we had to train ourselves in Ben Franklin's art.

One Christmas eve, John drew a rendition from a famous news photo of a Vietnamese family cowering from a U.S. napalm attack. Above his artful depiction, I added the red flaming words "napalm" and printed hundreds on sticky paper, which were then pasted to church doors before midnight mass.

Our commune got the name "Flag Factory" when Busby and I started to manufacture flags of the National Liberation Front of Vietnam (Viet Cong). I invented a system to place the cloth accurately on the home-made silk screen frame so the consecutive printings of three colors would fall in the right place. I drilled five holes in the table where the points of the star fell and focused the light from a single bulb under the table with five pieces of broken mirror. The light beams coming through the table allowed us to accurately place the bed sheets that Leroy lifted from Pullman railroad cars. We had hundreds of three-color Vietcong flags hanging from our high ceilings to dry. Then they were stretched all over the lawn to bake in the sun to seal the colors.

We would then sell these flags, both large and small ones, at anti-war demonstrations in D.C. They were quite popular. They also changed the character of the demonstrations. What started out as peace protests were seen as support for the communist Viet Cong. That was fine with me.

The other part of our cultural rebellion was the hippie part: lots of psychedelic drugs, mostly hemp. Two characters in zoot suits that could have been from Central Casting used to drive up from Annapolis in an antique limousine (like Bonny and Clyde) to furnish us our dope. Occasionally we would get in the “zeen” and do several orbits on the beltway with a cloud inside till the sun came up. Our life style was to sleep during the day. We stayed high. We were down only when the dope ran out. This went on for years. Later, as a serious revolutionary and grim Marxist, I gave up dope forever.

Being on the fringes of society also put us into contact with fringe elements who were not as altruistic. After we were evicted from the Flag Factory (for burning the back porch, piece-by-piece, for firewood), we had the misfortune of renting a house in Riverdale which had the distinction of being formerly inhabited by members of the Pagan Motorcycle Club. Their friends, who didn't know they had moved, would visit the house looking for them. Since we were nice guys, we would invite them in to socialize.

To be fair, they were not all bad, just some of them. One Pagan couple joined us at a demonstration at the White House but that proved to be the exception. Leroy stayed up all night once, talking to a Spanish Pagan who was sympathetic to the fascist Franco. One painted swastikas on my printing press and doused it with oil (it could have been worse). Another one raped a woman who used to visit us. Years later I heard that John, our artist, had been murdered by some homophobic bikers who didn't like his effeminate manner.

There is a suicide that deserves chronicling. Marvin Green was a Black graduate student of Marxist economics who fell in love with a white member of SDS. Her family did not want a black in-law so she broke up with him. In his anguish, he killed himself, much to the dismay of all his comrades. Such a tragic loss.

Science to Society

My extra-curricular (political) activities coincided with my change from a physics major to a history and political science major, then to a part-time student, then to a senior year drop-out. All my efforts and studies were turned to stopping the war in Vietnam. If they were giving degrees in anti-war activities, I would have acquired at least a Masters by the end of the 60's. But these so-called “citadels of learning” were instead getting lots of money doing military research. Several Marxist professors were fired. Bertell Ollman, a socialist who was elected to head the Government and Politics Department, was denied this job by the Governor, so he left Maryland. The A.A.U.P. protested.

Earlier, I had taken a course in atomic and nuclear physics at Muhlenberg College, which qualified me to work for three years as a radioisotopes technician in Clarksburg while I was at the University of Maryland. This training would help me later when I became involved in protesting the uranium contamination at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, which I describe in the Environment chapter of these memoirs.

The high point in my short-lived scientific career was the co-authoring of an article in Science magazine (Dec.6, 1963), which featured a front cover photo of my work. My career ended abruptly when a NASA contract was canceled in 1965 after my picture appeared on the front page of the /Washington Post/ being dragged out of the State Department protesting the U.S. war in Vietnam. I had called in sick that day. I was sick - sick of the war.

Vietnam Comes to College Park

When the Vietnam War broke out, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the University of Maryland hit the ground running. The Young Americans for Freedom, a right-wing student group, challenged us to a debate on the war. We eagerly accepted the challenge and publicized the event. The Student Union auditorium was packed with at least 500 students. I gave the opening rap for SDS and Bob Levine, now a famous porcelain potter and Tai Chi teacher in Baltimore, gave the rebuttal. Before the debate, most of the audience was non-committal on the subject, but by the end Bob and I had them eating out of our hands. We won the applause. Quick-witted Levine demolished the opposition so completely that nothing more was ever heard from the YAF in College Park, while SDS grew in size, activism and influence. Our movement culminated a few years later when thousands of students blocked Route One and the Maryland National Guard had to be called out.

But before that great crescendo, many campus anti-war protests led up to it. One was a march against the campus ROTC, which trained students to be silly soldiers, marching around in dumb uniforms. A few hundred of us marched to the campus Armory, headquarters of the ROTC. Being fast, I was the first one to the door and got my foot inside before they could lock it closed. Now it is time for the confession: I dropped the ball in the fourth quarter with two downs and a tie score. And it was a home game. While thousands of brothers and sisters were being burned alive in Vietnam, I let fear of a little pain get the best of me. When they pushed the door against my arm and leg, I chickened out to my eternal disgrace. I retracted my limbs in shame. We were locked out and lost our opportunity to trash the ROTC.

I tried to make up for it a little bit by trashing the ROTC recruitment table during registration week. We flipped their table, dumping their propaganda, then tossed anti-war confetti-fliers high up in the air so they floated down over the hall to be read by curious registrants.

We also marched against the Administration Building, demanding an end to military research on campus. We were locked out, depriving us of a sit-in, so we set a bonfire on the steps and I smashed out some windows with a long pole. Then we charged President Elkin's home on the west side of campus, but it was surrounded by Maryland State troopers. I tried to lead a charge up the hill, but no one would follow. The attack fizzled.

Another time we marched against the physics and math buildings to protest military research. When we detoured past the dorms to recruit more marchers, a streaker flashed by and got all the attention. I don't know who that streaker was, but he ruined our plans. While we are on the subject of streaking, years later my friend Sue told me she and three cohorts streaked through the National Catholic Cathedral during Christmas midnight mass. They ran in one side, right in front of the congregation and out the other side.

We did have some successes against campus military research. I wrote a series of letters in the campus Diamondback newspaper exposing some biology professors with contracts with Fort Detrick in Frederick, which does biological warfare research. After my letter accused one of being a potential war criminal, he resigned and left College Park.

Unfortunately, I was not present to witness the fruition of years of anti-war work on campus: the great Route One Blockade and battle with the National Guard. I was busy printing around the clock in the basement of the Black Panther Headquarters in D.C. I hope a participant in the tear-gassed highway riot will step forward and give posterity a blow-by-blow description of this great Maryland historical event.

Before I left Maryland and moved to D.C., we left a parting shot against the military, namely the U.S. Air Force. Bob Levine, Sabrina Williamson and I got hired by a sub-contractor at the IBM Federal Systems Division in Gaithersburg, which was working on an Air Force intelligence contract. Our job was to read intercepted radio transcripts from around the world and classify them like a Dewey decimal system to fit information categories. For instance, if workers were rebelling somewhere in the world, the U.S. intelligence community would classify the event as "communist subversion." But Bob, Sabrina and I labeled it "freedom" or "liberation". All the struggles of the world can be viewed from a capitalist or socialist perspective. Ours was definitely socialist and we taught the other workers on the job to see it our way. After a few months of warping the intelligence system to our viewpoint, we were fired and they had to start the project all over again.

Vietnam Comes to Chicago

I was arrested twice in Chicago, once at the SDS "Days of Rage" and again at the Democratic National Convention riot of 1968. In 1967, SDS split into two camps: the Weather Underground and the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM). The Weather Underground gave up on the working class as an instrument of revolution and advocated guerilla warfare by covert cadres. I sided with RYM, which was trying to unite the international working class. RYM organized three days of demonstrations in Chicago to support some strikes there as well as support the Chicago Black Panthers and their Puerto Rican counterparts, the Young Lords.

The three "Days of Rage" consisted of marching with the Panthers and Young Lords to demand racial justice and attending rallies for striking hospital workers and International Harvester Workers. The cops broke up our march after we heard the Chicago Panther chairman, Fred Hampton, speak at a rally. Three Baltimoreans, including myself, were detained and charged with possession of dangerous weapons. The "weapons" we were carrying were small wooden dowels, six inches long and one inch in diameter. While these can be used in karate jabs, we were using them to tap out signals in a crowd. Two taps meant assemble and three taps meant disperse. Eventually the charges were dropped.

In 1968, the D.C. Regional SDS decided to organize a contingent at the Democratic National Convention to protest the war. I was selected to be the "quartermaster", a military term for chief of procurement. I went to the largest military surplus store in D.C. and purchased some bull horns and a few dozen gas masks and steel helmets for our group. As events proved, this turned out to be a very wise decision.

The first day in Chicago, we were at the amphitheater in Grant Park near the convention hotel with thousands of peaceful people. Somebody lowered the American flag on the pole next to the stage where leaders were speaking to the crowd. Then, as if on cue and without warning, dozens of cops charged the seated, peaceful crowd and started swinging clubs and knocking over chairs. Women and children were not spared. People were screaming and scattered as the cops went on a rampage. I ran with everybody else.

A crowd of thousands then re-assembled in the intersection in front of the convention hotel. We were giving a "Sieg Heil" Nazi salute en masse to the hotel when a line of cops appeared with full riot gear next to the hotel. Then all hell broke loose.

With batons raised high, the cops broke into a running charge straight at the huge crowd. Everybody stampeded to avoid the cops. In a matter of seconds, the entire intersection was cleared - except for me. I, alone, stood on the sidewalk where I had been situated, as if watching a movie, as hundreds of cops were running right at me (and at the crowd which was now behind me, retreating). I stared at them as they ran up to me and established eye contact with the closest ones as I calmly stepped behind a park bench so the cops would have to break their run and face me slowly rather than hit me on the run.

The animal psychology worked. A hostile dog will chase you if you run, but if you stand your ground, the dog will have second thoughts about attacking you. I had never thought about this before. It was just spontaneous instinct.

The cops did not hit me, but they did arrest me and put me in a paddy wagon. The next person put into the wagon was covered with blood. It was Professor Sidney Lens, a progressive author. I asked him what happened. He said he was fighting a cop. Now there was a teacher who put theory into practice! When the wagon was filled, they took us to jail and booked us, but didn't keep us, probably because the jails were full.

We spent the night at Lincoln Park about one mile north of the convention. The next day, the crowd started to march back toward the convention. There must have been ten thousand of us from all over the country. Mayor Daley and the governor called out all the cops and National Guardsmen to stop our approaching the convention, but could not stop us. When we approached intersections with National Guard trucks blocking the streets, our masses would swarm all over them like ants.

Plate glass windows of banks were smashed and trash cans were ignited on the way. I saw a brick smash the windshield of a National Guard truck driving down the street and the driver jammed on the brakes and put both hands up to his eyes.

But then everything came to an abrupt halt. We came to the Chicago River, which has dozens of bridges a block apart in the downtown area. Three cops were visible standing in the street on the far end of the bridge. I was the first one to reach one bridge. I waited for people to catch up, then I yelled "charge!" and started to run across the bridge. Then I looked behind me and saw I was alone. Everyone else was afraid to get caught on a bridge between cops with no escape route available. I pleaded with the crowd but to no avail. After all, I was one of only a few who had a steel helmet on. Unfortunately, our march was stymied at the bridges and got no further.

The streets of Chicago were filled that night with marauding masses, who the cops wanted to get rid of. The way the cops did it was an interesting, if bloody, police tactic. They wore us down, literally. They would wade into the crowded streets and chase people down the street, cracking heads on the way. Then more cops would come from the opposite direction and chase the crowd back where they came from. They pushed us back and forth, back and forth, all night long, breaking heads by the hundreds, until people were totally exhausted or injured and dispersed.

I had on my steel helmet when the cops chased me. I sprinted down the street as fast as I could run, but I could not outrun one cop. That surprised me because I was a track athlete in high school and college. This cop stayed with me for a whole block, repeatedly hitting me on my helmet with his baton. "Clang, clang, clang": he rang my bell all the way down the street. I think he must have been enjoying himself. If he really wanted to hurt me, he could have aimed for my shoulder blade.

Since I excelled in endurance running, the cop stopped before I did. When I got to the end of the block, I was witness to a horrifying sight. Prostrate people by the dozens, lying on the street with severe head wounds, some attended by white-coated medic teams who came for the purpose of aiding the expected casualties. I had never seen such carnage. Boy, was I glad I had a steel helmet.

Viet Nam Comes to DC

I also participated in many anti-war demonstrations in the D.C. area, including the giant march on the Pentagon which caused Robert McNamara to drop the idea of using nuclear weapons on Vietnam. It also encouraged Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers, exposing the secrets of the war. I was arrested twice in that demonstration because the back door of the police bus was unlocked. We escaped from the bus and sat back down where the cops were grabbing people and got arrested a second time.

On another occasion, there was a demonstration on Capital Hill to vent our spleen against Congress. We were down in the Mall and a line of cops was trying to keep us from marching on the Capitol. There were a few thousand demonstrators marching around in circles unable to penetrate the police line. I decided to try to break the standoff by escalating the level of struggle. I convinced our leaders to take the march past a construction site where there were lots of stones to pick up. The marchers picked up stones. When we approached the cops again, some of us behind the front lines hurled stones at the cops and they could not see who was throwing them. I remember I hit one cop who was wearing a white hat in the head. The next day the Chief of Police, Jerry Wilson, was on the front page of the Washington Post with a bloody face.

A plainclothes cop had a comrade, Alan Nader, who was also my karate teacher, down on the ground. I beat the cop on the head with a cardboard pole, which did not hurt him but distracted him enough to let Allen escape.

Some of my pacifist friends may be shocked by my violent behavior, especially when I was trained by the civil rights movement to be non-violent. I had been arrested ten times in non-violent protests during the Vietnam War over a period of five years, as many other people had. But instead of decreasing the war, the government was escalating. The body bags were coming home by the thousands. Non-violence was not slowing the war down. Many people felt we had to try something else and I was one of them.

Some pacifists at the Capitol Hill protest wanted to stop violence between the demonstrators and the cops, even though we outnumbered the cops ten to one. We could have busted through the police lines to get to the Capitol, but these pacifists lined up in front of the cops facing us to try to prevent us from attacking the cops. Some of the pacifists may have been hit by stones meant for cops. I am sorry if any peace people were hurt, but I felt they should not have kept us from getting to Congress.

There are times when a demonstration needs peacekeepers to prevent provocateurs from setting us up to be attacked by cops, however this was not one of those times. In this case, the protesters had the upper hand and the cops were on the defensive. I have been a peacekeeper myself when the cops were a threat, but I would not try to stop an offensive action by anti-war forces if it could win a political objective.

I see non-violence as a tactic, not as a way of life. Under certain conditions it works very well. Other times I believe it doesn't work at all. When the majority of people are apathetic or hostile, non-violent “witnessing” or begging is the best we can do. But when the majority of the people sympathize with us and we outnumber the cops, we can use physical power to enforce the majority will.

In the context of the Vietnam War, I didn’t believe we were going to stop it with non-violence alone, although it was an important part of the struggle. I believe that the war was stopped by a combination of several factors: 1) the military victories of the Viet Cong, 2) the refusal of U.S. troops, especially blacks, to fight, 3) the non-violent anti-war movement, 4) disruptions and sabotage, including anti-war violence, 5) world opinion and diplomatic pressure, 6) financial cost.

According to Scanlon’s magazine, there were over 200 anti-war bombings in the U.S.; the most famous was at the Army Math Building at Madison. There were thousands of cases of sabotage, including in the armed forces. When the anti-war movement stopped being non-violent, the hawks had one more thing to worry about: disruptions and property destruction. Social disruption is a form of power. If a movement is small and isolated, non-violence is the only way to go, but once the movement has widespread sympathy, commensurate violence can be effective in my opinion.

I was not at the big anti-war demonstration in D.C. on May Day, 1971, because I was back in Baltimore leafleting factory workers about the war. Hundreds of people were illegally arrested in D.C., resulting in thousands of dollars being paid to them because their civil liberties were violated. I hope an eyewitness publishes an account of this important event.

I joined a mass burn-in of draft cards in front of the White House. We gave our names to the press at the time. The next week I received a notice from Selective Service to report for induction for duty in Vietnam. So much for the unbiased “drawing” of names for the draft. I had to scurry to get my bad eyes and pinched back nerve documented to avoid the death machine.

Of the scores of arrests I experienced over the years, only one was not in a demonstration and that one could have gotten me killed. One day I was walking with some friends around DuPont Circle where all the hippies hung out. I had just had a few beers and was feeling frisky. I crossed the street against the light and a cop arrested me for jaywalking. I was not a resident of D.C., so instead of writing me a citation, the cop took me to a call box and started calling a vehicle to take me to the station. I thought the whole thing was absurd, so I sprinted away while the cop was trying to phone. My friends told me later that he was trying to get his gun out of his holster while he was chasing me, and didn’t do either one well. They said he was like the Keystone Kops.

But that was just the beginning. I had the misfortune of running past a car full of narcs, who were cruising the hippie hangout area looking for dopers. The whole car emptied out and they all started chasing me. They were no doubt ignorant of the nature of my crime. All they knew is I was a fugitive chased by a cop. If I were black, I probably would have been shot.

I ran down P Street, cut left into an alley, vaulted a five foot fence, landed on some trash cans and played dead. All I could hear was my heart pounding and I was trying not to breathe. The next thing I knew, I felt cold steel on my temple and heard the "click" of a hammer being pulled back on a revolver. I said, "Cool it man, I was only jaywalking!"

Three police vehicles showed up with lights blinking. A crowd of hippies from the circle swarmed in to see what all the commotion was about. The cop who put the gun on me took me to the wagon and said, "Watch this guy. He's a rabbit." They took me to the station, I paid a $7 fine and I was back at DuPont Circle twenty minutes later.

The Underground Press

I was a founding member and writer for the radical tabloid Washington Free Press before I left College Park. When I moved to D.C., I became part of the collective with Frank and Ann Speltz, Art Grossman, Margie Stamburg, Mike Grossman, Sheila Ryan and Bill Blum. We provided news and radical analysis for about eight years in the D.C. area. I also established a print shop on the premises and printed all kinds of literature for the radical movement. We all sold papers on the street to barely make a subsistence living.

Servicemen on leave from Fort Bragg in North Carolina used to bus to D.C. on weekends to have anti-war papers printed, which they then discreetly distributed among the troops, including those leaving for the war. No doubt our literature was surreptitiously circulated in Vietnam, helping the very important GI anti-war movement. Over 50,000 U.S. troops deserted during the war. This was essential in stopping the war.

Black Panthers

When Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Chicago Panthers, and Mark Clark were murdered in their beds by the police and FBI, Black internationalists in D.C. got enough local support to organize a chapter of the Black Panther Party in spite of the opposition of Black nationalists. White supporters simultaneously organized the National Committee to Combat Fascism, which evolved into the Panther Support Committee. I was active in both these groups and sold the Panther paper in Georgetown.

The D.C. chapter invited me to establish a print shop in the basement of their headquarters on 18th Street near Columbia Road, which I considered a great honor. A press was obtained from FBI surplus and it still had a wanted poster image on the attached printing plate. It was ironic because J.Edgar Hoover considered the Panthers "public enemy number one."

White comrades in the Defense Committee studied political education and trained in firearms together with Party members. We all memorized the Ten Point Program of the Party and read the Panther newspaper and the works of Marx, Lenin and Mao Tse-tung. Panther members worked on Breakfast for Children programs and community education. I lived and worked at the headquarters for a year, printing around the clock: booklets, fliers and posters for the east coast party branches. I was especially proud to print the famous revolutionary posters of Emory, the artist. To me that was more exciting than printing dollar bills (which I never did, by the way).

My year with the Panthers was hard but rewarding. I will never forget the dedicated brothers and sisters I knew there: Abdu, Gwyn, Malik, Mono, Maxine and chairman Jim Williams. Like them, I was ready to die for the cause. A lot of Panthers were dying. I had lunch with Sam Napier, editor of the Panther Paper from New York, and was devastated to learn that he was later murdered. He was a beautiful, intelligent human being. Over 200 Panthers around the country were assassinated by the cops in five years, mostly by police raids on their homes and offices. Panther guns were for defense only. It was against Party rules to use firearms offensively and it would have been suicidal to do so.

The D.C. comrades were prepared for a police raid. We had all kinds of guns and we were prepared to shoot it out with the cops if they raided us. I found a place north of Beltsville, where we did target practice in a sand quarry. I also bought guns and ammunition for the Panthers at InterArmCo in Arlington, which is a gun warehouse that supplies the CIA's secret wars all around the world. The Panthers, some of whom were Vietnam vets, converted an AR-14 I bought to an M-16 by pulling a pin out of it. That is, they made a hunting rifle into a semi-automatic combat weapon.

One time I was at InterArmCo, where all the Virginia right-wingers and gun nuts like to shop. Arlington was the headquarters of Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party. The guy behind the counter asked with a proud smile if I had checked out the coat rack. I went to the rack and there were a bunch of World War II surplus German greatcoats. They were made of quality thick wool, but the thing that blew me away were the labels: Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald. The smile on that salesman's face put chills down my spine.

One day we received an alert that the cops were getting ready to raid our headquarters. We mobilized for defense by putting sandbags in all the windows and behind doors. We established an around-the-clock armed guard in every window. We had four-hour shifts, loaded guns ready. White comrades in the Panther Defense Committee, including myself, did guard duty. Each one had a window. I sat alone in the middle of the night by my sandbagged window with a rifle in my hand ready and willing to kill cops.

Other Defense Committee members, including Dennis Livingston (now a veteran community organizer in South Baltimore), established all-night roving patrols on a motorcycle with phone contact to report any unusual police activity in the neighborhood. For days we waited for the attack that never came. After a week, we received orders to stand down. The alert was over.

Dozens of Panther headquarters had been raided all over the country. Why not in D.C.? I believe there were two main reasons: the capitol city had an international press corps and the imperialists were worried about their image around the world, and secondly, white college students were beside Black defenders. The racist power structure didn't mind slaughtering Blacks, but they hesitated to shoot white students. Baltimore had a similar experience: a Pollyanna white teenager named Sue Spellman (now Sue Cosner of south Baltimore) sat on the front steps of the Panther office on Gay Street with a shotgun in her hands. She saved lives. Bless her heart!

I believe that a non-violent sit-in outside by whites would not have worked. The cops would have removed us before killing Panthers. When someone is coming to kill, I think self-defense is the only logical thing to attempt. Whites had to put themselves in the same situation as Blacks in order to defeat violent racism. There was no other choice.

One day the Party had a community rally outside the headquarters. The people spilled into the street and the cops came to clear them out. When I saw the cops getting rough, I placed my body between the cops and people, who were then able to evade apprehension. They funny thing is the cops did not detain me. They did detain my car, however, which was used for Party work. When I called the cops to locate my missing Rambler, they said it had been used in a murder and the owner may be apprehended as an accomplice. I was worried they were going to get me on a frame-up, just like they were doing to Panthers around the country. They never came, but I never saw my car again.

On the occasion of a huge national anti-war mobilization in D.C., the Panther headquarters was bombed. No one was hurt, but the ground floor wall in the back was entirely blown in and bricks and debris were all over the printing presses. Fortunately, I was able to remove the sand from the machinery and save the equipment. I went to an iron dealer and bought a 3/4 inch steel plate, which we put in place of the brick wall. We were then relatively bombproof.

By the end of the 60's, the Party was beleaguered and disintegrating. The combination of assassinations, police infiltrators, frame-ups and FBI Co-Intel tactics had taken its toll. The open feud between Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver was the final straw. I saw the writing on the wall and left D.C.

The Panther legacy will shine in history forever. Even though they were destroyed by the racist pig power structure, they have many accomplishments to be proud of. The Breakfast for Children programs that the schools now run are a direct co-optation from the Panther's initiative. Likewise, the integrated police forces are a result of the Panther's "Off the Pig!" war against the former white army of occupation in Black communities. Black leadership and community improvements sprouted. The pride of self-determination is priceless. If nothing else, these things alone justify the sacrifices of our beautiful Black warriors. Long may their spirits live in our hearts!

The Proletariat

In 1971, several fellow radicals moved to Baltimore for the express purpose of advancing the working class revolution as predicted by Karl Marx. The RYM faction of SDS and several other New Left tendencies joined industrial unions all over the U.S. to struggle for an international labor movement which could overthrow the main cause of exploitation, war and racism: the capitalist system. We formed the Baltimore Revolutionary Workers Organization, later changed to the Socialist Union of Baltimore (SUB), which organized radical caucuses in a dozen unions in Baltimore over the next ten years.

Even before I found a job, my first act was to leaflet General Motors workers on May Day against the Vietnam War. That was the same day there was a tear-gassed demonstration in D.C. against the war. As it turned out, it might have been safer to be in the demonstration.

I was at the main gate with my girl friend who was on crutches from a motorcycle accident. A 6-foot-3 beefy, white worker grabbed the papers out of my hand, threw them in a trash can and said, "Get out of here and take your douche-bag with you!" He was in my face probably hoping I would defend the honor of my girl friend so he could paste me. But before I could be put to the test, a thin Black worker stepped between us, facing the hulk and told him to leave us alone because he agreed with us. The hulk left. The Black proletarian had saved my ass! We could see, however, that our work was cut out for us and it would not be easy.

I found a non-union job driving an inter-state bread truck, delivering bread to all the military commissaries in the Baltimore-Washington area. The United Farm Workers were in the middle of a lettuce boycott so I was planting boycott literature at the produce departments of the stores. I had just dropped off some literature at the Cameroon Station Commissary in Virginia when I was caught by the brass, a Major Powers, who went into a rage and ordered me off the base.

When I got back to the bread factory my boss said, "You don't work here anymore." He informed me that Military Police were waiting for me at another commissary to stop me from entering. I was amazed that the pentagon felt so threatened by some migrant workers.

I was having trouble getting an industrial union job and I heard that the FBI was circulating a black list of "communists" to potential employers. I gave a false name and social security number at Bethlehem Steel Shipyard and was employed at the Key Highway yard for the next ten years. For that period of time, my alias was "John Reynolds." A few years later, when management found out I had lied on my application, they tried to fire me. When I told them that my lawyer, Harold Buchman, cited legal precedent in my favor, they forgot about it. Courts have ruled that the only reason for a job application is to give an employer reason to believe a worker can do the job. After successfully doing the job for over six months, what is on the application becomes moot.

The shipyard union contract struggle was in progress. Several other radicals and I formed a caucus to agitate for a better contract when it appeared that the union officers were selling-out to the company. They had cushy jobs and didn't want to rock the boat. We circulated a newsletter called The Shipbuilder, itemizing improvements to the contract. The officers responded by calling us "communists" at a crowded union assembly. An older worker who didn't even know us then hollered, "So what, they are telling the truth!" Some workers joined our caucus.

At the following union meeting, the officers brought in an American flag and had the meeting pledge allegiance for the first time ever. I did not stand or pledge because I had been battling U.S. imperialism for ten years. The officers immediately pointed out my refusal to the meeting and I responded by saying flags are used to get workers of different countries to kill each other. An older worker named Dorsey Bowling hollered, "I have metal in my leg fighting for that flag!" A few years later, after seeing how we fought for the workers, Dorsey became one of our strongest supporters even though I never saluted the flag at meetings.

I started out as a laborer, painter and sandblaster. After breaking my back for a year, I trained in welding at night school. A few dozen welders from Trinidad were brought to the States by the company to augment the workforce. They were subjected to the worst jobs and insulted by some supervisors. One was fired for hitting a boss who called him a racial epithet. I went to bat for him with some strong words to management, so they fired me too. Our caucus held a picket line to protest the racist treatment and we were joined by dozens of co-workers. I got my job back with back pay, but the fired worker had returned to Trinidad.

I was then elected union shop steward of the welders and burners, the largest department in the yard. The sell-out union officers freaked and would not allow me to assume my duties. They said the elections were fraudulent. Another election was held and I was elected again. But they still would not let me take the position. Many workers were getting angry about it, so the officers let me be acting steward pending a third election. After I won three times, they capitulated and let me have it.

The working conditions were dusty and dangerous, so I started calling in the inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which was something new at the yard. As a result, management started issuing filter respirators and increased ventilation.

Dorsey Bowling was in the hospital with lung cancer caused by asbestos, so we publicized his case in our caucus newsletter. The shipyard union officers met with some lawyers and initiated an ambitious liability and compensation project, which applied to all workers whose x-rays showed lung damage. Our officers seemed to be fighting for the workers for a change.

I was fired a second time when the head of my department accused me of threatening him during a heated argument over a worker's grievance. The case went to arbitration and I won my job back again.

Our radical caucus ran opposition candidates for all the union offices for eight years and every year we were getting stronger. The year before Bethlehem Steel closed the Key Highway yard, our caucus was part of a slate that came within 10% of replacing the union officers. Not bad for people who were called "communist" (and never denied it).

Contrary to the image of “hard hats” being anti-communist zealots, I discovered that there was a tradition of sympathy for communists among industrial unionists. The old timers knew from personal experience that communists organized the unions in the first place. They told me that the best union man they ever knew was a communist by the name of Milton Seip. He was always organizing work stoppages for one reason or another. They said whenever a worker was killed on the job, he would call a memorial service outside the gate and no work would get done that day.

However, our challenge to the status quo did not go without risks. During one union election campaign, some cronies of the officers surrounded us and beat up one of our supporters. The next day, I went to each of the cronies separately and challenged each to a fist fight outside the gate. They all refused the challenge and never bothered us again. Another time, an officer took a swing at me in the union hall. I ducked, then left, to avoid a brawl at a union reception. Instead, I waited for him at the gate after work and challenged him to fight then and there. He chickened out. I have never been in a fist fight in my life and I have always walked away from fights. But I felt it was important to stand up to threats because if it appeared we could be pushed around, the threats would get worse. I think non-violence does not work in all situations.

After news of these altercations got around, a young Black worker who taught karate brought his martial arts class to guard our candidates at the following election. He was so covert that no one knew we had bodyguards till it was over, including us.

However, the main threat was the working conditions. A fellow shop steward, Paul Murphy, got his head blown off when a steam pipe ruptured. A welder died when he fell through the roof. Another died falling to the bottom of a ship. I almost fell off the top of a smoke stack when the railing gave way.

The most painful story to tell is how I almost caused the deaths of some co-workers, and while I was safety man to boot! As shop steward, I was doing safety checks four stories up above dozens of workers on the deck below. I was picking up metal debris which might fall off and hit someone. As I was moving things around, my foot inadvertently hit a steel pipe which was five feet long and four inches in diameter, weighing about fifty pounds. To my horror, the pipe rolled off the edge before I could stop it.

The deck below was crowded with people. When the pipe hit the steel deck, it sounded like an explosion. I ran down to see if anybody was hurt and apologized profusely. The pipe miraculously landed vertically an arm's length between three people: a supervisor, my assistant shop steward and a young woman. No one was hurt. The older workers were very magnanimous and forgiving. The young woman, experiencing her first day on the job, was never seen again.

I did not like working on navy ships even though the Vietnam War was over. One day a navy ship which left our yard was towed back before it reached the Bay Bridge. The boilermakers accused me of screwing up the welding on a boiler. They could not prove it and I really do not remember intentionally sabotaging anything. However, I must admit my heart was not in the job.

Dinner with a Vietnamese Torturer

One of our welders was Vietnamese. Although he spoke English, nobody would talk to him - except me. He was so happy that he found someone to talk to, he invited me to his home in Dundalk. I had dinner with him and his lovely Vietnamese wife and daughter. The food was delicious: fish with garlic.

Loc Ngoyan told me he spoke four languages, but could not get another job. He said he learned English in the CIA academy and he showed me his CIA graduation certificate. He was so proud of himself; I just nodded and let him do all the talking. He said he was chief of security under Col Ky. I gulped and tried to swallow my food. I knew that Ky was a quisling for the French before he became dictator and that the chief of security must have been his hatchet man. Eating dinner with someone I would just as soon kill was hard to take. This war criminal must have tortured and murdered thousands of brave people who were struggling for liberation. His beautiful wife and innocent daughter seemed so incongruous next to this monster.

He kept talking. It got worse. He said he learned French as a pilot for the French during the French-Indo China War. I could not believe I was in a room with this person who waged war against his own people for the French colonialists. I was polite and thanked him when I left, not to reveal my feelings, just in case I wanted to covertly retaliate against him later. I was shaking with rage on my way home.

But I was denied the opportunity to retaliate. Maybe someone told him I was the shipyard communist, because he quit immediately without saying goodbye and never got back in touch. If I had it to do over again, I would have told him what I thought of him in front of his wife and daughter.

I just hope he has nightmares of being surrounded by communists, even in America where he probably least expected it. I hope he is paranoid enough to have moved away for fear that I would get him. But more than that, I hope he realizes that it was a communist that befriended this brown-skinned immigrant when other Americans shunned him. I hope that haunts him forever.

FBI Files and Red Squad Agents

When I was a student at College Park, I worked part-time in the campus printing department. Months after I left the job, my former boss told me the FBI had visited him, asking questions about me. After I moved back to Baltimore, I returned home from work one day to see a suited guy knocking on my door. He asked if Dan, a comrade, was there. "Are you a cop?," I asked, "because I don't talk to pigs." This young agent, fresh out of school, appeared to have hurt feelings, because he responded, "I'm not a policeman, I'm with the FBI." Before I slammed the door in his face, I retorted, "As I said, I don't talk to pigs!" No agent ever bothered me again.

That was not the case with a comrade in my collective, who made the mistake of talking with the FBI because he was intimidated. He did not know that one can legally refuse to talk to the FBI. The FBI also visited the neighbors of another comrade in South Baltimore, who had visited Cuba.

The Baltimore Red Squad infiltrated another collective called Mother Jones. Wayne Pugh was an agent who tried to entrap me by offering to supply explosives. The cops also used extortion on a drug offender on probation to get information on the collective.

A few years ago, the Baltimore Emergency Response Network made the mistake of placing a meeting notice in the City Paper. A police informer showed up. Since BERN does non-violent direct actions which often result in arrests, it was a bad idea. We never made that mistake again.

In 1971 I filed a Freedom of Information request for my FBI files, which I obtained a year later. They gave me a stack of paper three inches thick with lots of magic marker blackout lines throughout, making the records almost useless to me. Two things were very clear, however. The FBI goes to great lengths to incriminate by association, that is, if one attends a movie or rally sponsored by a subversive group, they associate the person with that group. In my files, the agents were trying to decide if I was a member of the Revolutionary Union or the October League, when in fact I was a member of neither. In any event, this information is available in case a demagogue wants to initiate anther wave of McCarthyism.

The other thing the FBI feels compelled to do is stay up to date on every place a person has lived or worked in their life, presumably to be able to get their hands on someone whenever they want to. Everything is in place for Oliver North's plan with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to round us up for detention in FEMA camps should it be deemed for national security just as the Palmer Raids did during World War I.

My FBI files of 1971 had a substantial omission: they left out mentioning my connection with the Black Panther Party. Considering the fact I lived at the headquarters for a year and bought guns and ammunition for J. Edgar Hoover's "public enemy number one," I find that very curious. What reason could the FBI have for keeping my Panther files super-secret?

Central America Solidarity Arrests

In 1979, a popular rebellion in Nicaragua overthrew the U.S.-supported dictator Somoza and established an egalitarian society under the leadership of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Irene Reville and I joined a delegation to Nicaragua in 1982 and shared what we learned with a slide presentation upon our return. Nicaragua was making great improvements in health care, education and welfare, but the Contra forces, organized, equipped and directed by the U.S., staged their first attack when we were there, killing eleven people near the Honduras border.

So much activity against the U.S. policy in Central America has happened that it is difficult to remember it all. Max Obuszewski has compiled a chronology of dozens of civil disobedience actions over a three year period starting in 1985. Subsequent actions, just as numerous, need to be summarized, but this is beyond the scope of this book. While I was arrested over forty times for Central America solidarity, I will limit these memoirs to the biggest and best actions by myself and other members of the Baltimore Emergency Response Network.

In a convenient knee-jerk reaction to U.S. Marines being blown up in Lebanon in 1983, then-President Reagan quickly invaded Granada, recouping his image as Mr. Tough Guy. Just as quickly, 2,000 people in Philadelphia protested the invasion the very next day, organized by a phone tree system among the many Quakers there.

Many people thought that Nicaragua would be next, based on the vitriolic hyperbole spewed out by Reagan. Activists started mobilizing contingency plans and phone trees around the country. By mid-1984, 90,000 people nationwide had signed a “Pledge of Resistance”, vowing to take direct action including civil disobedience (CD) if the U.S. invaded Nicaragua. In the next few years, thousands of people were arrested in hundreds of actions to preempt any invasion. I believe the Pledge of Resistance (POR) can take credit for preventing a U.S. military invasion of Nicaragua.

The Baltimore Emergency Response Network (BERN) was founded in 1984 to be part of the POR. It grew to a dozen “affinity groups” with sixty people pledged to risk arrest in CD actions. Twenty of us were arrested the next spring with 329 others who blocked the White House gate. Our first Baltimore action was blocking the doors with a symbolic die-in at Representative Helen Bentley’s Towson office, resulting in 37 arrests in June, 1985. Our largest CD was in 1986 at the Federal Building in Baltimore, where 43 people out of 200 protesters were arrested for blocking the doors.

Over the next few years, BERN members were arrested at the Baltimore Customs House, Senator Dole’s office in D.C., an Air Force Base in Florida, Representative Beverly Byron’s office in Frederick, again at Representative Helen Bentley’s office, Governor Schaefer’s office, several times at the Maryland Air National Guard base, twice at the Iran-Contra Hearings in D.C., Baltimore Convention Center when Reagan spoke, the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, Senator Sarbanes’ office, the State Department, several at the White House and several other places.

In 1986, I found myself in jail with Bob Burkett of Frederick, Maryland, after four of us refused to leave Beverly Byron’s office. Bob is famous for burying a child sized casket in Byron’s front lawn to point out the effects of the Congresswoman’s support of the Contras. In April, 1987, 550 people, including twenty BERN members, were arrested in Langley, Virginia, for blocking the gates to the CIA.

In June, 1987, seven BERN members went to Annapolis to dissuade Governor Schaefer from sending the Maryland Air National Guard to Central America with supplies. He refused to see us, so we stayed until they dragged us out. We were tried and sentenced from three to ten days in the Anne Arundel County Detention Center.

A funny thing happened when we were released. I had just been ushered out of the jail gate by guards when the siren went off. As I was walking down the driveway, I looked back and saw dozens of guards with drawn guns running right at me. I froze. They ran right past me and fanned out in all directions, the siren still blaring. That was quite an adrenalin rush after a calm week behind bars. I never did find out what was going on.

President Ronald Reagan came to the Baltimore Convention Center and security was high. About fifty demonstrators assembled about 100 feet from the the west entrance to protest his crimes in Central America. Then the mounted police came to move us further away from the doors. We did not want to move, so we sat down on the sidewalk.

A mounted policeman drove his horse over seated demonstrators, but the horse was too "humane" to step on people and the agile horse carefully stepped between people. That was not good enough for the two-legged animal riding the horse. The rider then pulled back the harness to cause the horse to step backwards, where the gentle animal could not see.

Jonathan Reidy and Debra Williams were stepped on by the 1,000 pound horse. Fortunately Debra was not seriously injured, but Jonathan suffered severe lacerations and trauma.

The cops then grabbed people and pushed them away. In the ruckus, one cop was accidentally slapped by D.L.Hamilton, but he realized it was unintentional and she was not prosecuted for it. She was arrested, however, with several others for disorderly conduct.

Airport Runway Blockade

The biggest high was when four of us snuck past an all-night police stake-out designed to prevent protesters from gaining access to the Martin State Airport in Middle River, Maryland. That is the site of the Maryland Air National Guard base. On July 4, 1987, Debra, Dale, Mickey and I stood on the runway at 6 a.m. with a banner, delaying the take-off of a C-130 cargo plane bound for Central America. While the giant plane was waiting, a State police helicopter landed on the runway and the cop told us to move. Instead, we sat down and linked arms.

A few minutes later, National Guardsmen with M-16's appeared and took us to the county police waiting at the gate. The cops wanted to know how we got past their all-night guard at the airport perimeter, but gloatingly, we would not tell them.

Now the ruse can be publicly revealed. It was simple. Liz McAlister drove a station wagon full of kids past the guard gate. Since the National Guard shares the runway with the State public airport, family traffic is not uncommon. But the cops did not look under the tarp in the back of the wagon. Having outwitted the cops, we were dancing with glee on the tarmac.

Iran-Contra Hearing Bust

The most famous action of all was when Mike Bardoff and Mickey Kreis held a banner and shouted "Ask about the cocaine!" during Oliver North's testimony at the Iran-contra Hearings in D.C. On July 9, 1987, Kim Donahue smuggled a banner under her skirt because guards were checking everyone entering the hearing room. After they gained entry, Kim pulled out the banner and handed it to Mike and Mickey.

At that moment, Oliver North was bragging that he would meet Abu Nadal "any place, any time" to settle scores. In the middle of his macho pontification, a shout came from the back of the hearing room. This brave marine immediately ducked down, leaving his wife next to him unprotected from the perceived threat.

The shouting was Mike and Mickey, holding the banner reading: "Ask about the cocaine." With the worldwide press corps snapping away, a phalanx of cops pushed and pulled the Baltimoreans out of the Senate Hearing room. But there was one problem. The BERN disruption was at the back of the room and the only exit was all the way in the front. So the cops had to push the two protesters, still shouting questions about drugs, the murder of civilians and respect for the Geneva Conventions, right by the tables where the witnesses and Committee members were seated, as the press shot pictures that were seen all over the world.

The next day, Senator Orrin Hatch asked Col. North if he, General Secord or anyone in the Contra operation had any involvement in drug smuggling. “No, sir,” he said. “With the exception of General Secord, I can’t think of anyone who hates drugs more than I do,” lied the Colonel. No one asked any more questions about it, including our great, liberal Senator Sarbanes, who was on the Iran-contra Committee, even though Senator Kerry's committee had already presented evidence of Contra complicity with drug trafficking.

Instead of thanking our gutsy BERN comrades for their suggestion, the Committee had them arrested. This Committee also covered up North's collaboration with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to establish detention camps for dissidents in case of a U.S. invasion of Central America. When Representative Jack Brooks tried to raise the question, Chairman Inouye twice gavelled him down and said the subject would be discussed in secret session. Again, Senator Sarbanes was silent.

The following week, Judy Geisler and Morning Sunday of Baltimore repeated the action as Secretary of "War" Casper Weinberger testified before the Iran-contra Committee. They held a banner and shouted: "Contras kill families!" They were also arrested.

Since then, Mike Bardoff continued to expose the Contra drug connection by roaming the halls of the Senate Office Building, giving out plastic baggies filled with white powder, labeled "Official CIA Cocaine - to benefit the Contras." The guards detained Mike until the contents were tested for illegal substance.

The largest demonstration against U.S. aid to the bloody junta in El Salvador took place the following year in 1988. One thousand people demonstrated at the Pentagon, resulting in 214 arrests of those blocking the doors, including thirty from Baltimore. This action was organized by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). The following year BERN members were arrested with 95 others for blocking Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House during another CISPES protest.

Limousine Blockade

I had a few run-ins with Cristiani, the President of El Salvador, who also represented the death-squad ARENA Party. In 1988, CISPES organized a blockade of his motorcade coming to the White House. The plan was for everyone to block the street and throw baggies of ketchup at Cristiani's limousine.

I got there late. Dozens of CISPES comrades had already been dragged off Pennsylvania Avenue and the motorcade was proceeding toward the White House gate to enter for a meeting with the President.

It was like the movie "High Noon." I walked down the middle of the street alone toward the motorcade coming slowly straight toward me. When I reached throwing distance, I reached under the lapel of my coat (where concealed weapons are usually kept) and drew my "weapon" - a baggie of ketchup. The next thing I knew, I was flying towards the sidewalk because a cop tackled me from behind. The limousine, preceded by a "death squad" Bronco with black windows, entered the White House gate.

The cops had not arrested me, so I waited for the motorcade to leave the White House. When they drove out of the gate, I jumped on the hood of the limousine and leaned on the windshield as they accelerated. When they turned on the windshield wipers, I lost my balance and jumped off the car, but I was not hurt.

My next run-in with Cristiani happened in 1989 when he came to the National Press Club for a press conference. I dressed appropriately and blended in with a TV crew who flashed their press ID's to gain entry. As Cristiani was speaking, I held a poster of an amputee war victim and shouted, "When are you going to stop the death squads? You are a war criminal!" He ended the press conference and they threw me out.

Dangling

A month later, I was back at the National Press Club again, but this time I had a different plan. In May, 1989, Ken Butigan, Chairman of the National Pledge of Resistance, asked me if I knew anyone who could hang a banner from a high place in D.C. to coincide with similar actions in six other cities. I said no, but I would consider trying it myself. Reading some books on mountain climbing was essential. The climbing gear cost $300. My practice consisted of rappeling from tree limbs and high voltage electric towers. A make-shift stirrup helped me dismount from straddling a beam. In two weeks, I was ready for the action.

Most buildings in D.C. were unsuitable to hang from because access to roof tops was usually restricted, the wind conditions were unfavorable for banner stability, and windows which could be opened could be used to grab me and my banner. However, the National Press Club had a twelve story high atrium inside. What could be better?

Since bicycle delivery people were a common sight there, my hard hat and back pack did not raise any suspicions. Like an airline pilot, I had a check-off list to make sure I did everything just right. Judy Geisler and Ken Butigan were there for moral support.

I shimmied out on a beam on the seventh floor level, threw a rug over the beam, put a long rope over the rug, unfolded and lowered the sixteen foot square banner, attached stirrups to step off the beam, attached the rappel device to my harness, and swung into space, to the applause of spectators below.

Once I was dangling seven floors up, I was untouchable. Twenty cops and firemen could not do anything but wait for me to come down. I hung for four hours and occasionally threw down fliers about U.S. policy in El Salvador to the crowd. The firemen put a big inflated bag on the ground floor in case I fell.

The cops couldn't touch me, but they started to push camera crews and reporters away from me. Otherwise, I could have been interviewed while dangling. Every floor had a balcony, including one twenty feet from me, but the cops made them off limits. I was amazed that the media did not demand their constitutional rights, especially in their own world media center. They should have stood their ground and gone to jail to prove a point. It is frightening that the media will roll over when bullied. It does not bode well for democracy.

I was high with the emotion of success and invincibility, but I was also in pain. The straps of the harness were chafing my buttocks. I would have dangled longer, but the discomfort became unbearable. After hanging from 2 to 6 p.m., I decided to rappel to the ground floor.

This was the most dangerous part, because I had to disconnect the extra safety ropes which I had attached for redundancy. I actually had enough ropes on me to hold a Volkswagen. The disconnection was scary because I had to hold the rappel rope, while trying to unhook the safety ropes. I had not practiced this part. In fact, my hand muscles were cramped because I had been clutching the rappel rope for four hours out of fear. The night before, I had called an experienced climber to ask how to tie off the rappel rope at the harness for hanging, but I had forgotten how he told me to do it. I was sweating bullets, but I managed to transfer my weight from the safety lines to the rappel line and descended smoothly to the floor.

Once on the ground, I was arrested and taken to jail. The confiscated climbing gear was returned to me later, which I have used since then to trim trees and fix roofs. Just as with printing, skills learned in struggle often turn out to be money-makers. The welts on my buttocks turned into scabs and took a month to heal. My hands recovered in a few days, but my joy will last forever.

Covert Postering

Another fun action was the cat-and-mouse postering with Jonathan Reidy, Debbie Grattan and Vicki Gass. We wheat-pasted anti-war posters at many Army recruitment centers and National Guard Armories in Baltimore and never got caught. Getting caught is bad news because there is a stiff fine plus removal costs to bear.

We had it down to a science. Four people are necessary: a driver who stays in the car, a sentry who is dropped off at a close intersection, and two wheat-pasters. The driver and sentry have walkie-talkies. Postering is done at night, preferably between 3 and 5 a.m. The least traffic is after the bars close and before the early morning commuting starts. The driver stays close to the pasters to warn them if s/he or the sentry sees a car or pedestrian coming. Any car is assumed to be a police car.

If there is a danger signal, the pasting can be aborted and the team can drive away or they can hide in the shadows until the threat passes. More often the latter is possible.

The pasting itself is an art. If one wants the poster to stay up forever, paste it on a smooth surface like glass, marble or metal and use a half-and-half mixture of wheat flower and evaporated milk. The milk turns the paste to stone when dry and it can be removed only with a razor blade.

First swab the hard surface with a wall paper brush or large paint brush. Then lay the poster, preferably of thin paper, face down on the sidewalk and swab it, especially the corners. Then contact the poster to the hard surface and swab the face of the poster, soaking it thoroughly.

If the poster information will become dated in a few weeks, do not use milk. There is no need for permanent eye-sores, creating bad public relations. If a permanent message is desired, however, do not use red printing ink because it disappears in a month due to sunlight, resulting in a useless eye-sore. Red silk-screen ink is OK though. Lastly, wear old clothes and wash up paste spilled in the car as soon as you get home. Pasting is a sloppy job and spilled milk in a car will smell foul forever once it dries.

Sun Paper Caper

The most fun action of all was the famous Sun BERN paper caper. On the inauguration day of George Bush, January 20, 1989, thirty people organized by BERN wrapped phony front pages around 5,000 Sun papers which were in hundreds of boxes in many parts of Baltimore. The new front page exposed the U.S. crimes against Central America and highlighted the role of Bush and the pro-war bias of the Sun.

My article was entitled: "Editors Apology: Sun Distortions and Lies Retracted." It recounted the many demonstrations against U.S. policy in Central America which were ignored by the Sun and rebutted the many pro-war editorials.

The thirty BERN volunteers divided into fifteen teams of two to a car. Between 4 and 6 a.m., they fanned out across the city with designated routes of fifteen boxes for each team. Each team opened the first box on its route by inserting a quarter and removing all the papers. While driving to the second box, the passenger wrapped each paper in the stack with the BERN cover page. At the second box, the stacks were switched and the second stack was wrapped on the way to the third box, and so on. The stack from the last box was wrapped and returned to the first box. It cost each team about four dollars to open all the boxes.

We heard through the grapevine that employees of the Sun, especially journalists, loved the BERN issue. Copies of it were taped to the walls by staff inside the Sun building. Articles about the paper caper appeared in the Washington Post, Daily Record, Washington Times, City Paper, Chronicle,/ and the morning and evening editions of the Sun itself. It was the first story on the evening news on all of the local TV stations.

Reg Murphy, President of the Sun, threatened to prosecute "to the fullest extent of the law," which came to nothing because lawyers could find no law which was violated. Speaking for BERN, Max Obuszewski said, "We welcome a trial so we can bring out our views on Central America, U.S. policy and the Sun's complicity." No trial was ever held.

Culinary Guide to Jail Menus

For the discriminating arrestee, palate pampering may be a factor in choosing an arrest site. By far, the best menu to be found is in Fairfax, Virginia, conveniently located near the palatial CIA headquarters in Langley. The Fairfax jail is the only jail I ever heard of which serves the same menu to the prisoners as the guards and administrators. Other amenities we experienced, when we were herded into the gym, were sports equipment. I really enjoyed watching Jim Litkey out-shoot guys half his age on the hoops.

Probably the worst food outside of Mexican jails is in the D.C. jail. Be prepared for a slice of baloney on dry white bread and a cup of black coffee that could take the paint off the floor if spilled. The smelly trash and roaches running around are not conducive to enjoying a meal anyway. Maybe Max Obuszewski was apprenticed in the D.C. jail, because he never eats anything in any slammer at all. Michelle Naar-Obed and I fasted for five days in jail after protesting the launching of the fifteenth Trident nuclear submarine named “Maryland” in Groton, Connecticut, about seven years ago. I fasted to get media sympathy, but it did not work in that case.

Most jails will not serve any food the same day one is arrested. If a prisoner is not released by midnight, s/he is kept until morning, and then released without breakfast as well. One gets breakfast only if kept past mid-morning. After that, one gets three so-called meals a day until released.

Military bases seem to be an exception, at least in my limited experience. When Mickey Kreis and I were arrested at Hurlbert Field near Pensacola, Florida, we got the royal treatment. Not only were we detained in the lounge, seated on overstuffed chairs, but uniformed personnel asked us what we wanted in our coffee or tea and what channel we wanted to watch on TV. Now that’s service! Similarly, when we were arrested at Cape Canaveral last year, sandwiches were waiting for us when we arrived at the jail.

The quality of food in Maryland area jails varies greatly and falls somewhere between Fairfax jail food and D.C. jail food. For a more accurate description of menus and jail conditions, I refer the discriminating arrestee to Jonah House. They are the experts.

Sailing Against the System

When the City was planning to dedicate the brand new Harbor Place, Abu el-Zarabi and I decided to disrupt the party. We were offended by the City and State spending so much money on glitter instead of on housing, schools and health care. It reminded me that Adolf Hitler built elaborate stadiums to get the people's minds off the depression.

We also wanted to publicize an affirmative action bill currently before the City Council. We borrowed a fifteen foot sailboat from a friend. Our plan was to sail between Mayor Schaefer's speaking platform and the TV cameras, which were on a barge in the harbor. We attached banners to the sides of the mainsail on our boat reading "Support Rent Control" and "Fight Racism."

Many fancy yachts and cabin cruisers motored into the Inner Harbor for the festivities. We got in line in our humble daysailer, but having no motor, we had to sail in with the banners in full view. If we had to do it over again, I would row in, then raise the sails for a surprise attack, because they saw us coming.

The water gestapo was upon us well before we reached the site. A police power boat roared across our bow and the cop told us over his loudspeaker to turn around. When we kept going, the police boat crossed our path closer, almost swamping our boat, and yelled obscenities at us. We could see that they meant business. I did not want to lose Mark's boat, so we reluctantly turned ninety degrees toward a media helicopter on the pier.

I thought that the press might be interested that our freedom of speech was being denied, not to speak of the freedom of the seas, but they couldn’t care less. Our first attempt at waterborne political activity was a dismal failure, but we did better the next time.

Columbus Capers

The next water protest took place in 1992 for the 500-year anniversary of Christopher Columbus. Three replicas of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria sailed from Spain to re-enact the "discovery of America," as if no one lived here already. Since then, a Native American went to Italy, put his tribe's flag in the soil and "discovered Europe", but unlike the “civilized” whites, he didn't kill anyone or steal their land.

Members of the Baltimore Emergency Response Network (BERN) decided to have a floating protest of this travesty. Brian Barrett and Greg Boertje held a banner in their canoe, saying "500 Years of Genocide," beside the ships docked at Harbor Place. They were chased away, but not before getting some attention from the crowd.

Linda Goddard and I met the flotilla in a sailboat when they approached the Key Bridge near Sparrows Point. Dozens of other boats were accompanying them as a welcome, but we rained on their party. With banners on our sails reading, "Columbus Raped, Murdered & Maimed Natives," we accompanied the flotilla all the way to Harbor Place.

We also attached a large reproduction of Chief Sitting Bull on the foresail. Linda was dressed in black and stood on the deck holding a bloody mannequin in her arms, depicting a murdered person. A press boat with camera crew approached us and interviewed us as we proceeded toward the harbor.

Our sailboat was named "Arawak" for the native tribe of the Dominican Republic where Columbus first landed. There are no known survivors of this tribe. Columbus's crew cut off their hands when they did not submit to slavery, then later colonists from Europe totally annihilated them. When we got too close to the Spanish ships, the water police yelled on their loudspeaker, "Arawak! Back Off! Keep your distance!"

BERN members also protested the Columbus travesty by land and almost by air. That happened when an irate Spanish crewman tried to throw Glenn Simpson off the top of the mast, where he had climbed to unfurl a banner saying “Why Celebrate Genocide?” Mike Bardoff and Glenn had scaled the rigging of the ship docked at the Columbus Center while a demonstration proceeded on the pier. The statue of Columbus near the harbor was splattered with red liquid and the street signs were altered to read "Killer Columbus Place" by Charles "Walking Eagle" Swiden of the Environmental Crisis Center, right under the noses of the cops.

While we are on the topic of Columbus, a cinco-centennial monument was erected in Santo Domingo for the occasion. I had visited there with brother Larry's Dominican in-laws for a month in 1984 and learned that many Dominicans are very proud of their Columbus heritage. However, the monument is ludicrous because it cost millions of pesos while thousands of Dominicans live in tin shacks.

The monument is a gigantic sarcophagus a city block long, 100 feet high, made of cement and, like a cathedral, in the shape of a cross. Attached to the roof of the structure is a string of powerful search lights, also in the shape of a cross, pointing straight upward. At night, one can see a giant cross projected on the clouds.

Aside from this reminder of what Christianity has brought to Native Americans, there is one little problem. When the lights are turned on, the whole city of Santo Domingo goes dark, because there is not enough electricity to power it.

When the Columbus Center had its grand opening in Baltimore, BERN leafleted the visitors coming in the gate. As Governor Schaefer approached, I attempted to hand him a flier, but his State trooper bodyguards pushed me away. Later, Senator Barbara Mikulski approached and I held out a flier within arm’s reach. She didn’t even look at me. Instead two cops grabbed me and the flier fell at her feet. She kept walking as the cops took me away. We got the last laugh, however, because the Columbus Center is a complete failure.

Since then, BERN members joined with Black Planet anarchists to disrupt the Columbus Day parade several times. In addition to holding banners and leafleting, the anarchists and I tried to block the approaching parade. Several police held cans of mace pointed at our faces and said, “We’ll give you ten seconds to move.” We moved. After the parade reached its destination, Erica Freudenberger was held face down on the sidewalk by the cops when she tried to cross the street to get to the reviewing stand.

The Columbus parades are now much smaller in Baltimore because of a feud between the Italians and the Latinos. Originally the parade featured representatives from many Latin American countries, who celebrate “El Dia de la Raza,” or Peoples Day, on the same date. When the Latinos marched by us, we used to remind them that Columbus and his successors killed their people. They often nodded in agreement. Last year most of the Latinos were not in the parade because the Italians would not include them in the leadership decisions.

Arms Bazaar Stealth

The best stories about stealthful disruptions of the annual Air Force Arms Bazaar at the Washington Hilton in D.C. need to be told by people like Lin Romano and Marsha Trimmel. I will not relate here how Lin dressed up to take the microphone during the dignitaries' banquet. This and other remarkable and historic capers can best be told by their gutsy creators.

Suffice it to say that my humble contribution was when I borrowed a pint of Marsha's blood, printed counterfeit passes to get in, then poured blood all over the archway entrance to the bazaar. I was apprehended by the chief of hotel security. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and escorted me out to the police. As I non-violently went along with him, he said, "I hope you own a home, so we can take it away from you!" I answered, "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't own anything." He retorted, "That's what I thought, you worthless piece of shit!"

At the following year's bazaar, I noticed that he was no longer head of security, if he still worked there at all. I wonder if he was fired for not being able to keep us out. He was probably more at risk of losing a home than any of us were.

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab

JHU receives the second largest military research and development funding in the U.S., most of it for the APL in Howard County. The lab has worked on the Tomahawk Cruise Missile, the Trident Intercontinental Ballistic Missile in nuclear submarines, the Aegis Weapons Control System, orbiting nuclear reactors, Star Wars systems and blinding weapons. BERN and Jonah House have been protesting there for over ten years, experiencing many arrests. Occasionally we have also demonstrated against APL at the Homewood campus in Baltimore.

To make it more difficult for cops to get rid of us, we have often gotten on roof tops and held banners so workers at APL or students at Homewood would get our message. Police would then have to remove us with a cherry picker: a long, hydraulic arm with a basket on the end. We had such an action on the roof of the Eisenhower Library on campus and several times on the roof of the Visitors Center at APL.

On one occasion, BERN members climbed the water tower at APL and held a banner. Another time, we blocked the door of the Visitors Center at APL to protest blinding weapons, which destroy the eyesight of their victims. These actions usually resulted in our being arrested.

The most sensational action, however, was when we disrupted the commencement speech by Lee Iacocca at Homewood. As Chairman of Chrysler, he facilitated the manufacture of the main battle tank and lots of other military hardware. We wanted to expose the military-industrial-academic complex at Hopkins, including the APL and Chrysler.

A departing graduate student, Timothy Guiles, allowed us to use his office on the third floor right next to the commencement stage. Four of us barricaded ourselves in the office by jamming the door closed with a row of desks the length of the room. We then hung a banner out of the window for the commencement audience to see and used a bull horn to tell them what we wanted them to hear.

As you can imagine, the Administration and their gendarmes did not want to hear it. As we were preaching to the captive audience, the cops were trying to batter in the door but could not open it. We felt invincible, but that was premature. Somehow they managed to get a hefty cop to fly through the air and hit the top half of the door, which tore the door in half, since the bottom half was held with immovable objects. The first cop in made a bee-line for the bull horn in the window and confiscated it.

Then something amazing happened. A well-dressed young man came flying through the top half of the door. We thought at first it was a vigilante Young Republican coming to help the cops. When the young man tackled the cop who was then holding the bull horn and started wrestling with him, we were totally mystified. What the hell was going on? His behavior was in sharp contrast to ours because we were gentle as lambs, being non-violent.

After the dust settled, we found out that this political science graduate student named "T.L.," who had been sitting with his family in the audience, liked what we were saying. He then left his family, intending to join us on the bull horn with some words of his own, but by the time he got there the cop had taken the bull horn. T.L. was only trying to get the bull horn so he could address the audience himself.

For the last four years, even quietly leafleting at APL has been punished by arrest. Though classes are taught at APL, this institution of higher learning evidently does not believe in the free flow of ideas. They do believe in the free flow of money and weapons, however.

Iraq Attack

In January, 1991, before President Bush invaded Iraq, BERN members and others tried to persuade Congress, including Representative Cardin, to vote against it. To prove we meant business, a few dozen demonstrators blocked the intersection at Northern Parkway and York Road, which was close to Cardin’s office. After the police arrested six of us, Mike Bardoff was arrested again inside the police station for writing graffiti on the cop’s bathroom mirror.

One week later, after Bush invaded Iraq, six BERN members got on the roof of the Fifth Regiment Armory and poured red liquid on the Armory billboard. The cops used a cherry picker to get us down and put us in jail. Four hundred people picketed the Armory that day.

The most courageous action, however, was after the war when all the patriots had a victory “wargasm” on the mall in D.C. BERN members and Jonah House went to confront the hawks, but frankly, I was afraid to go. Linda Goddard, for instance, carried a bloody mannequin as she wandered alone through the crowd in black attire and white face. I was surprised to hear that some revelers even thanked her for doing that.

That gave me the courage to help crash the annual July Fourth parade in Catonsville that year. About a dozen of us, including Marilyn Carlisle, Julie Gonzalez and Alan Barysh, snuck in the parade right after the Women’s Club of Catonsville who were bannering for Freedom of Speech. We carried banners condemning the war and sympathetic to Iraqi victims and children. One of us carried Linda’s bloody mannequin. When the marshals discovered us, they came with a cop to tell us to get out, but we refused. We were prepared to go to jail if necessary. Rather than experience an ugly scene in public, they gave up.

We marched the mile-long route through a big, patriotic, white crowd. As soon as the noisy spectators saw our contingent, a hush swept over them. One could almost feel their thoughts from the dead silence. Then came the jeers and sneers and beer lids thrown at us. It is a strange feeling to be hated. Some jingoes in the crowd were no doubt drunk. We were afraid of what would happen when we reached the end and had to retrace our steps through an unruly crowd back to our cars.

Then an angel appeared. A friendly face was at the end of the parade, a person who happened to live there and offered to transport us back to our cars. We were ecstatic. We peed on their obscene parade with in-your-face gall and got away without getting beat up!

Soon after that, Baltimore County passed the “BERN law,” making it illegal to crash a parade and giving the July Fourth Parade Committee exclusive rights to reject anyone for any or no reason. Even a gay military service contingent was refused permission to march. We tried to tell them that July Fourth was all about the Bill of Rights, but they did not care.

The Pope Comes to Baltimore

All my relatives are Catholic and I went to a Catholic middle school. But when the Pope tells people not to use condoms when six million have already died of AIDS, I go ballistic. Millions of African children are born with AIDS, spread mostly by heterosexual relationships, in places that cannot afford health care. One wonders, adding up the total AIDS victims spread from generation to generation, if the "Holy Father" will be responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler.

Believing fervently that his is a crime against humanity, not to speak of sanity, I attended a demonstration against John Paul II a few years ago when he came to Baltimore. The best act there was staged by members of Act Up, a local AIDS victims advocacy group. They had a trash bag full of condoms which were re-wrapped. They were going through the crowds, handing them out to spectators. The wrapper was imprinted with the wo