Helena Sheehan Writes About Mayday

 

Mayday 1971





An excerpt from book Navigating the Zeitgeist by Helena Sheehan

The national anti-war movement was undergoing major shifts and splits at this time. In January 1971 Joe Miller and I attended the meeting of the National Coalition Against War, Racism and Repression (NCAWRR) in January 1971 in Chicago. This soon became the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ). There was another national anti-war coalition called the National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC). Both of these were descended from previous national anti-war coalitions, resulting from splits in the National Mobilisation Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the Mobe), which organised mass anti-war demonstrations in 1967.  The great divide was single issue (end the war) and single tactic (mass march) versus multi-issue (connecting the war to the system responsible for racism, poverty, repression) and multi-tactic (mass marches plus a whole variety of other forms of protest). NPAC was dominated by the trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and wanted to keep bringing out the maximum number of people in national demonstrations against the war. The NCAWRR was sometimes called the ‘coalition against everything’. PCPJ wanted not only to broaden the focus, but to engage in more varied and more militant tactics to build pressure against the war. It wanted to go beyond repetition of the passive mega-march to more active tactics that would up the ante against the government. It was a coalition of many anti-war, anti-poverty, anti-racist groups, both old and new left. NPAC and PCPJ continued to negotiate to form a united front at least on some activities.

The January 1971 meeting was a new experience for me. It was the first time I met a number of national figures, such as Dave Dellinger and Rennie Davis, whom I had only admired from a distance. There were many tensions between different forces and references to past events that I didn’t quite understand. I was determined to get up to speed, though, and more experienced figures, not least Joe Miller, put me in the picture. We agreed on a spring offensive that would centre on the people’s peace treaty, include a people’s lobby in DC in April and culminate in a series of non-violent but militant protests in DC in May. The degree of militancy was a point of tension. Dave Dellinger and Rennie Davis were arguing for mass civil disobedience that would threaten to stop the government if the government didn’t stop the war.

This line was strengthened after a conference in Ann Arbor, which I also attended, after a long drive in stormy weather. This was followed later in February by a meeting of a May task force in DC in late-February. By this time I was speaking up, joining in the fray and taking positions in debates. I was really flattered when Dave Dellinger spoke and cited me as an example of the sort of leadership that needed to be exercised. I spoke with him many times during these months, including during several inter-city train journeys, and I respected him enormously. In March I flew to Chicago again for a meeting of the PCPJ national co-ordinating committee and took the train to New York for another task force meeting. I also flew to Bloomington in early April for an NUC conference, where I spoke to build support for actions in late April and early May in DC. I met with Science for the People while there and we explored a proposal to set up an international people’s university.

After each of these national meetings, I reported back to Philadelphia, where we were planning our own spring offensive co-ordinated with the national one. We opened up a PCPJ office in Philadelphia. I spoke at a number of rallies, visited many groups and campuses and organised various activities that would mobilise support for the people’s peace treaty and organise our participation in various actions in DC in April and May. We showed a film called Time Is Running Out, an emotionally powerful film about the struggle of the Vietnamese people and the necessity of our spring offensive, featuring Rennie Davis and Judy Collins. At least we did so until Peter unwittingly handed our copy over to someone, probably an FBI agent, and it disappeared.

Within PCPJ there emerged a May Day collective, spearheaded by Rennie Davis and Mike Lerner, which I identified with more and more. I was not comfortable with the banner of being a student-youth coalition though. Although I was only 26, I preferred organising as an adult. Rennie was 30 already. I became quite close to Rennie during these months, first during our talks at national meetings, then during his organising-speaking visits to Philadelphia, where I organised his programme and accompanied him, and then when I came down to DC in mid-April for final preparations for April-May events. I was really moved by his untiring commitment to the movement, his warm interaction with me, his searching conversation, which often went from immediate tactics to cosmic context.

From mid-April to mid-May I was based in DC, while making occasional forays back to Philadelphia. I stayed at a Mayday commune on Lanier Place, worked at the Mayday office on Vermont Avenue, attended meetings there and at various venues. It was a hothouse atmosphere. There were people coming and going all the time, some sensible and hard working and others weird and questionable in their purposes. Obviously some were informers and provocateurs and others were ‘freaks’ (a term used affirmatively at the time). Some, such as myself, represented the anti-war movement in other cities, whereas others just showed up and represented no one but themselves, but had the same voice as those who represented many others. There was much talking, partying, drug taking, mating (however momentarily). I was able to relate to some there better than others. I got on best with Rennie as well as John Froines, Mike Lerner, Chip Marshall and others who were most serious about organising.  John was a scientist and one of the Chicago 8, as was Rennie. Mike and Chip were two of the Seattle 7 and active in the Seattle Liberation Front. Mike was a philosopher, so we had a lot to talk about there.

I was co-ordinating the regional participation from Philadelphia as well as working on national aspects, particularly political education during the ten day encampment at West Potomac Park. There was a reverential way of referring to ‘the land’ and what we were doing there.  There was a romantic back-to-nature tinge to new left culture. Many people were more into blissing out on the land than into teach-ins about political strategy or critical pedagogy, so my efforts on this front met with constant frustration.

The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) were among the first to set up an encampment in DC as part of the spring offensive. Operation Dewey Canyon 3 was ‘a limited incursion into the country of congress’. During a week of VVAW actions, starting 19 April, they wore military fatigues, engaged in guerrilla theatre, including mock search-and-destroy missions, and threw their combat medals on the steps of the Capitol. One day they marched to the Pentagon and demanded to turn themselves in as war criminals. I attended some of their events and visited their encampment. I felt that they made a powerful and distinctive contribution to the anti-war movement, because they came, not as anonymous bodies, but as who they uniquely were, bearing witness to what they had uniquely seen and done.

On 24 April there was a mass march co-sponsored by NPAC and PCPJ bringing 500,000 to DC and 125,000 in San Francisco to demand an end to the war. We leafleted for May Day at it. Many went home after the big march, but many stayed. There was an all night concert that night. The numbers staying at the encampment rose and the level of activity escalated. There was great atmosphere of planning, dreaming, singing, bonding, especially around the campfires at night. During the following week we participated in the people’s lobby by day and had town meetings at the encampment by night. Various groups presented petitions or sat-in at various government departments. On Monday morning I went with Mike Lerner, Chip Marshall, Dave Burak, Susan Gregory, Leslie Bacon and some others to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where we made our points by speaking from the floor and we were removed by the police for disrupting hearings. Some in the group started a buddhist chant ‘Om’, as we were being taken away. We were roughed up a bit, but not arrested. We were later invited to send representative to testify before the committee.

The town meetings in the park provided an open mic to allow anyone to say what was on their minds as well as to make announcements and plans. Some were focused on the war and how to give our actions against it maximum impact. I spoke about the people’s lobby and the different tactics that different groups were employing. Some wanted to talk about sexism in the movement itself, including there in the park. Some of the interventions on this were very acrimonious. A group of lesbians stormed the platform at one stage.

Meanwhile the atmosphere of pressure and paranoia in the office and commune was intensifying. One day there was a bomb threat in the office. One night the commune was raided by FBI agents, who took Leslie Bacon away. This 19 year old was suspected of being implicated in the Capitol bombing. This referred to a bomb exploded in a lavatory on 1 March for which the Weather Underground later claimed responsibility. She was taken to Seattle, a place where she had no connections, and brought before a grand jury. The atmosphere at the house was full of tension, distrust and fear. Chip and Mike split, as did some others, but I stayed the night. I didn’t sleep much and felt quite sick. In the morning the place was crawling with agents and reporters. When I went out, I saw Leslie on the front page of all the newspapers.


Helena Sheehan with Pete Seeger

The following nights I stayed at the encampment. There was discussion, debate, music and more all night long and not much sleep. I met with Science for the People in their tent and we talked more about prospects for an international people’s university. We had a great celebration of May Day, which fell on a Saturday. There was another all night concert and the camp swelled to 50,000 or so. In the early hours of Sunday morning, the authorities revoked the permit for the encampment and police began to evacuate the park. We were in a state of groggy bewilderment as we awoke and did our best to organise to regroup at various centres around DC. There was a heavy military presence around the city, an atmosphere of martial law really. About half of those evicted from the park headed home. I was feeling edgy and angry, but still defiant and determined. I felt a sense of catharsis when singing along with Pete Seeger This Land is Your Land that day. The only photo I have from the week shows me on a platform clapping while Pete Seeger was singing. I spent the day moving frenetically from one meeting to another – a PCPJ meeting at the Ambassador Hotel, a May Day regional reps meeting in Georgetown, an organiser’s meeting in the May Day office.

The main action was to start early morning on Monday 3 May, when we were to engage in mass civil disobedience, militant but non-violent, to obstruct traffic, to block buildings and to stop the government from functioning. Our slogan was “ If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government”. There was a tactical manual issued by the Mayday office outlining targets and tactics, but it was a decentralised operation based on regional organising and affinity groups. The 25,000 unarmed demonstrators were met by 14,000 armed police, national guard and federal troops. As protestors began to block bridges and intersections, they were tear gassed, clubbed and arrested. There were over 7200 arrested that day, including Jack. The dispersal had broken my contact with my Philadelphia group, so I spent the day wandering the streets, assessing the situation and having meetings. The atmosphere in the city was eerie and tense. At a meeting of unarrested regional reps, we had a sense of being survivors of a disaster. Nevertheless we decided to carry on the next day. After a press conference in the afternoon, Rennie was arrested and charged with conspiracy. There was a warrant out for John Froines.

On Tuesday we marched to the Justice Department, where John Froines spoke and was arrested and charged with conspiracy. The rest of us, about 3500, were arrested too. I had connected with Philadelphia people again and was arrested with them. Upon discovering that we were from Philadelphia, the police handled us with added roughness, saying that we were used to it. The police under Rizzo had become nationally notorious in their unsympathetic treatment of protestors. The jails were grossly overcrowded. Many were rounded up in the car park of a stadium with no food or sanitary facilities. I was in a cell meant for two with twenty or more crowded into it. We kept our spirits up, singing Power to the People and such songs all night. On Wednesday we were arraigned and released and attended further meetings and protests.  We had a big demonstration at the Capitol, where over 1200 were arrested. There were 13,500 or so arrests in those three days, setting the record for mass arrests.

On Thursday I returned to Philadelphia with my regional group, but on Friday I returned to DC again. There was a meeting in the office to make last minute preparations for a weekend retreat (with a lot of emphasis on security arrangements). We set out to a big house in the country where we were to evaluate May Day and make plans for further actions. It was one of the weirdest weekends of my life. There was a punch served, which was laced with acid or mescaline or both, and this was the occasion of my bad trip. I was overcome by paranoia. The whole atmosphere of arrests, conspiracy charges, infiltration of the movement made for an atmosphere of paranoia already, but the drugs intensified it to a terrible degree. I cried for much of the night. There were also separate women’s and men’s meetings and heavy criticism-self-criticism about sexism in the movement, particularly in and around May Day. There was a lashing out against the male movement heavies, who were in the limelight, especially Rennie and John, who were there, out on bail. I had my doubts about this grouping conceiving of themselves as the leadership of a national movement. John and Rennie might have had their blind spots, but some of these people represented nobody, did not really think politically, were too self-indulgent in too many ways. Some were undoubtedly informers and provocateurs. A big conspiracy trial could be looming and a number of us, as well as Rennie and John, could be indicted as co-conspirators.

On Monday 10 May I went back to Philadelphia for a meeting of the Philadelphia coalition as well as meetings of smaller groups to evaluate the spring offensive. I spoke at all of these meetings at national and regional levels. I thought that we had succeeded in disrupting the government, set records for mass non-violent civil disobedience and dramatised the high degree of disaffection with the war, both at the mass demonstration organised by NPAC-PCPJ as well as the VVAW and Mayday actions. It had rattled the government and shown them that they could only carry on the war at the price of civil unrest involving high numbers as well as militant actions. The militant actions even got support from some federal workers and national guard as well as many in the local black community. Evidence would later emerge that the government was shaken by having to show such massive force to keep public order in the nation’s capital and that these demonstrations had played a  role in pressurising for an end to the war.

However, some had taken too literally our threat to stop the government and were too in thrall to a romanticised military model and with physical confrontation. I argued for a way going forward that would involve more than physically coming together either in one big demonstration or in disruptive tactics, such as blocking traffic. I thought that we should move forward by finding ways to mobilise scientists as scientists, teachers as teachers, factory workers as factory workers to oppose the war and even to link with their counterparts in Vietnam. The whole thrust of the people’s peace treaty was to make peace with Vietnamese rather than just petitioning the government to do it for us. It was effectively entering into foreign relations on our own, which was considered treasonous, as those who had travelled to North Vietnam had been told by the US government. It was the same with the Veneremos brigades going to Cuba. Projects such as Science for Vietnam and Medical Aid to Indochina carried the movement on in this direction.

On Thursday of that week I returned to DC again, where we had a demonstration where we read the names of those who had signed the people’s peace treaty on the steps of the Capitol. I went to more meetings and more long talks in DC and then at home. On Monday 17 May I headed for New York and then New Haven. There was a high profile BPP trial in which Bobby Seale and Erika Huggins were accused of conspiracy to murder fellow black panther, Alex Rackley, who had been suspected of being an informer. There had been big demonstrations when the trial had begun a year ago. Many Yale students had joined the protests and the president of Yale, Kingman Brewster, stated that he had doubts about whether black panthers could get a fair trial. We kept vigil on New Haven Green, while the jury was charged and deliberated. A week later the jury was deadlocked, a mistrial was declared and the defendants were set free. During the week all through the day we took turns going into the courtroom, but otherwise we were outside having intense discussions on the movement and where it was going.

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