On the Steps of Low, Part II

(The author, a sophomore at Columbia, is using a pseudonym.)

FRIDAY, APRIL 26 -- I wake up at 8:55 and run to the crew bus and leave for MIT. In Cambridge I call home. My mother asks me, "Are you on the side of the law-breakers in this thing?" For ten minutes we exchange mother talk and revolutionary rhetoric. She points out that neither Ghandi nor Thoreau would have asked for amnesty. I admit I haven't read them. But Ghandi had no Ghandi to read and Thoreau hadn't read Thoreau. They had to reach their own conclusions and so will I.

SATURDAY, APRIL 27 -- I row a boat race and split. On the MTA to Logan a middle-aged man starts winking and smiling and gesticulating at my right lapel. Looking down, I see that I am wearing a broken rifle pin, symbol of the War Resisters' League. I tell him that it so happens I am on my way back to Columbia right now to carry on a Revolution. He thinks that's fine.

I get back to Math around 4:30 and sit down on the public relations ledge over Broadway. People from the Peace Demonstration are depositing money and food in a bucket at the bottom of a rope. Each time we haul it up and re-lower it we include I.D.'s for people who want to get into the campus. A remarkable number of cars toot their support, and when a bus-driver pulls over to wave to us a victory sign ten people nearly fall off the ledge for ecstasy.

In the evening I discover that the electricity to the kitchen is cut off. I run downstairs and almost call for "some important" but somehow I am unwilling to accept that kind of status relation. I tell several of my peers and one of them finds the fuse box and sets things right.

I volunteer for shopping. We buy $20 worth of food for $18 (the merchants earlier had contributed food outright) and on the way back meet a gentleman who seems to belong to Drunken Faculty to Forget the Whole Mess. Someone whom I think of as a friend threatens to punch me because I am carrying food.

As the evening wears on I feel less useful and more alienated, so I assign myself the task of keeping the mayonnaise covered. After covering it 12 times I give up and decide to write home. I wonder whether the Paris Commune was this boring.

In the letter I try to justify rebelling on my father's money. I point out that one of the dangers of going to college is that you learn things, and that my present actions are much influenced by my Contemporary Civilization C1001 readings. After sealing the letter I realize that my conception of the philosophy of law comes not so much from Rousseau as from Fess Parker as Davy Crockett. I remember his saying that you should decide what you think is right and then go ahead and do it. Walt Disney really bagged that one; the old fascist inadvertently created a whole generation of radicals.

I discover a phone which has not been cut off and call my brother. As I am talking someone puts a piece of paper beside me and writes "This ... phone ... is ... tapped." I address myself briefly to the third party and go on talking. It feels good to talk to someone on the outside, although it is disappointing to find out that the outside world is going on as usual.

SUNDAY, APRIL 28 -- Four hours of meetings about tactical matters, politics, and reports from Strike Central. I begin to long for a benevolent dictator. It is announced that we are spending as much money on cigarettes as food. I wonder as I look about me whether Lenin was as concerned with the breast size of his revolutionary cohorts as I am. It is now daylight savings time; under all the clocks are signs saying "it's later than you think."

I spend the day sunning and reading Lord Jim on the ledge. At 3 p.m. four fire trucks scream up and men go running onto the campus with axes. Some people think this is the bust, but it seems like the wrong public agency to me and turns out to be a false alarm.

The neighborhood little kids are anxious and able to squeeze through the fences. I talk to some of them and they are all conversant with the issues and on our side. I conduct an informal class in peace graffiti and distribute chalk.

The older brothers of these same kids are in the middle of Broadway throwing eggs at us. This action is completely apolitical, however, one of them tells me later.

We have red flags flying from the roof. I explain to a cop on the sidewalk below that these stand for revolution, not for Communism. He says yes, he remembers reading something about that.

I hope he is not referring to the Daily News. The News charges us with vandalism and alcoholism. (Actually we voted to bar both grass and liquor, and there was only one dissident, named Melvin.) One cartoon, titled "Dancing to the Red Tune," shows a beatnik and some sort of cave girl dancing as a band sings "Louse up the campuses, yeah, yeah, yeah."

In the evening I walk into a room where there is a poetry reading. I don't want to be rude so I stay. A med student who looks like Dr. Kildare reads a poem entitled "Ode to Mickey Mantle's Five-hundredth HR."

Mutiny on the Bounty (Gable) is on TV and I find it inspirational, or at least amusing.

WKCR announces that a clergyman is wanted in Fayerweather; a couple wants to get married. This surprises me. Reverend Starr performs the ceremony and says "I pronounce you children of the new age." Shortly after we hear it, we see a candle-light procession approaching. The bride is carrying roses. She hands them to me and I pass them inside. The demonstration peaks for me as I touch the roses--I am stoned on revolutionary zeal. The newlyweds call themselves Mr. and Mrs. Fayerweather.

I volunteer for jock-watch from 2:00 to 3:30 but do not wake up the next man and stay out on the entrance window ledge until five. I am to let no-one in as we now have a population of 150 and we want a stable commune--no tourists. We even consider a Stalinist purge to reduce the mouths to feed. Only tonight does my roommate decide to occupy a building. I have about seven degrees of disdain and contempt for him but he got in before my watch. I stamp on the hand of anyone who leaves "Rush." This allows them to get back in.

During my watch five guys in black cowls come by dragging a coffin and murmuring in Latin.

MONDAY, APRIL 29 -- The "Majority Coalition" (read: jocks) has cordoned off Low and are trying to starve the demonstrators out. We decide to break the blockade. We plan tactics on a blackboard and go, shaking hands with those staying behind as though we might not be back. There are 30 of us with three cartons of food. We march around Low, making our presence known, and spontaneously and at the wrong tactical place the blacks we have in front jump into the jock line. I go charging through the gap with my box of grapefruit and quickly become upon the ground, or, more accurately, on top of two layers of people and beneath two. I manage to throw three grapefruit, two of which make it. Then I become back where I started. Some blood is visible on both sides. Back at Math, some of our people say that the "jocks" they were fighting had handcuffs on their belts. Band-aided noses abound and are a mark of distinction. We discuss alternative plans for feeding Low and someone suggests blockading the jocks--"If they run out of beer they're through." In the meantime, hundreds of green armbands (for amnesty) are throwing food up to the Low windows. We decide on a rope and pulley system, between a tree and the Low windows, but there is some question about how to get the line up to the people in Low without the jocks grabbing it. When one kid suggests tying an end to a broom handle and throwing it like a harpoon, John (Outside Agitator) suggests we train a bird. A helicopter has already been looked into by Strike Central, but the FAA won't allow it. Finally we agree on shooting in a leader line with a bow and arrow.

A girl and myself are despatched to get a bow. We go to the roof of the Barnard Library where the phys. ed. archery range is. We are in the midst of discovering how incredibly locked the cabinet is when a guard comes out on the roof. We crouch. He walks right past us. It would be just like TV except that I am so preoccupied with it being just like TV. After ten minutes he finds us. The girl laughs coyly and alleges that oh, we just came up to spend the night. I am rather taken with the idea, but the guard is unmoved and demands our I.D.'s. This is our first bust.

Our second bust, the real one, begins to take shape at 2:30 a.m. We hear over WBAI that there are bus loads of TPF (Tactical Police Force, Gestapo) at 156th and 125th and that patrol cars are arriving from all precincts with four helmeted cops per auto. I am unimpressed. So many times now we've been going to be busted. It just doesn't touch me anymore. I assume that the cops are there to keep the Mau Mau's out.

A girl comes up to me with some paper towels. Take these, she says, so you can wipe the vaseline off your face when you're in jail. I haven't got vaseline on my face. I am thinking that vaseline is a big petroleum interest, probably makes napalm, and anyway it's too greasy. I hear over the walky-talky that Hamilton has been busted and that the sundial people are moving to Low and Fayer-weather to obstruct the police. I put vaseline on my face. I also put vaseline on my hands and arms and legs above the socks and a cigarette filter in each nostril and carefully refold my plastic bag gas mask so I'll be able to put it me, quickly with the holes at the back of my head so my hair will absorb the gas and I'll be able to breathe long enough to cool the cannister with a CO(2) fire extinguisher and pick it up with my asbestos gloves and throw it back at the cops. Someone tells me that he can't get busted or he'll miss his shrink again.

I take my place with seven others at the front barricade. All along the stairs our people are lined up, ready to hole up in the many lockable-from-within rooms on the three floors above me. We sang "We Shall Not Be Moved" and realize that something is ending. The cops arrive. The officer bullhorns us: "On behalf of the trustees of Columbia University and with the authority vested in me... " That's as far as he is able to get, as we answer his question and all others with our commune motto -- "Up against the wall, mother fuckers." We can't hold the barricade because the doors open out and the cops simply pull the stuff out. They have to cut through ropes and hoses and it takes them fifteen minutes before they can come through. All the while they're not more than 30 feet from me, but all I can do is watch their green-helmeted heads working. I shine a light in their eyes but Tom tells me not to and he's head of the defense committee so I stop.

At 4:00 a.m. the cops come in. The eight of us sit down on the stairs (which we've made slippery with green soap and water) and lock arms. The big cop says don't make it hard for us or you're gonna get hurt. We do not move. We want to make it clear that the police had to step over more chairs to get our people out. They pull us apart and carry us out, stacking us like cord wood under a tree. The press is here so we are not beaten. As I sit under the tree I can see kids looking down at us from every window in the building. We exchange the "V" sign.. The police will have to ax every door to get them out of those offices. They do. Tom Hayden is out now. He yells "Keep the radio on! Peking will instruct you!" When they have 60 of us out they take us to the paddy wagons at mid-campus. I want to make them carry us, but the consensus is that it's a long, dark walk and we'll be killed if we don't co-operate, so I walk. At the paddy wagons there are at least a thousand people cheering us and chanting Strike! Strike! Strike! We are loaded in a wagon and the doors shut. John tells a story about how a cop grabbed the cop that grabbed him and then said "excuse me." We