The Harvard Square Mess

WEDNESDAY night's riot and the tremendous police reaction were the inevitable next steps in the Harvard Square drama. This summer it has been a mixed form; bits of farce, moments of tragedy, but more than anything, a jaded recurring melodrama.

The politics of the last two "riots" have been terrible. Violence has been caused in each case by a group of perhaps 20, who have unilaterally broken off political discussion of tactics and independent of any group decision begun destruction of property. The super-militants would be right in saying that people who aren't into what they are should split instead of arguing rhetoric and wasting time if their actions were truly revolutionary. There is nothing revolutionary about the acts of breaking windows or building barricades in themselves. They become revolutionary acts only when they embody or speak of revolutionary solutions. When they help build a base, or strike almost surgically at institutions like banks. But, as one kid said just before the police charge, he wanted to get into the square quick, so he could get a new shirt. There's nothing wrong with wanting a new shirt, or with ripping one off, but a new shirt is not worth rearing up the Square, or forcing increased repression.

The "riot" of course played into the hands of the police. who got to beat people, make lots of arrests, and show a massive presence in the Square area. One University Policeman said that the police had their tactics and manpower more together this time than ever before. The strict curfew, and attack that cut off the small group near the Common from ever getting to the Square were more military than anything Cambridge has seen yet. They were part of the new "get tough" attitude demanded by Cambridge merchants, and potentially vote-getting for people like Walter J. Sullivan, who is running for Shcriff of Middlesex County.

SO THERE was Wednesday night's overreaction. Hundreds of police secured the Square from a tiny leaderless group that had no idea quite what it wanted to do. Militance was demanded, but the group could not get itself together to go into the Square. So parking meters were broken apart, and fence timber broken off to build a barricade across Mass Ave. And then the police charge, and the gas, and the small group running along with the many onlookers.

The merchants got just what they wanted. Not a single window was broken. Order was re-established in the slum. The merchants have probably been right that the Square is going to hell. Where before they mutely watched the processes. they are now contributing to it. They have read "the problem of street people living in the Square" as the "problem of street people living in the Square ruining business," and with such obvious myopia, it is inevitable that their solution to the problem has been to crack down on street people's means of livlihood in the Square: where they sleep and how they eat, as well as to fill the Square with police. The situation, thus drawn in black and white, is neatly polarized. And as Wednesday night shows, in the end the merchants, through the police, have a near monopoly of violence.

For radicals and revolutionaries, the situation is now impossibly confused. Poorly organized splinter group actions have brought down repression on a "class" that can little afford it. And no blow has been struck that might conceivably hasten the day when the primary oppressive forces in our society no longer exist. Yet in sponsoring repression, the merchants have inevitably betrayed the nature of their interest in the Square, and their inevitable allies.

So the repression, though it results from crazy and non-productive acts, is still real, and must be forcibly resisted. Police cannot go unchallenged as they push people off the streets. Yet a desperate senseless challenge is worse than none at all, for it both betrays the impotence of the movement and inhibits building the broader base that will be necessary if the fight is ever to be successful. It's an impossible situation. one in which regret is emotionally sensible and politically useless.

IF THE MERCHANTS in the Square really want to deal with problems of Cambridge becoming a slum, they cannot let their fear and anger cut them off from potential solutions. By treating street people as if they had no rights whatever-in other words, in treating them the way most businessmen treat slum-dwellers-they reinforce the image of the Square they wish to disspell. Moreover, further repression of an already militant group can only ensure continuing riots. And if the merchants feel that filling the Square with police is really the way back to the quaint comfortable Harvard Square that they say they want, then they have left rationality completely behind in their panic.

It's not impossible to come up with real solutions to the problems that street people have caused. Most important of all would be a commitment to dealing with the problems of street people themselves. This would mean funding more projects like Project Place, Sanctuary, and the Cambrideport Free Medical Center. If merchants don't want kids sleeping on the Common, they have to be prepared to offer an alternative. This would mean setting up an independent hostel, much like a European hostel, where poor transients could sleep. Or it might mean giving money to Sanctuary so that it could expand its already existing sleeping facilities.

If merchants don't want kids panhandling, they have to offer some other way for kids to make enough money to stay alive. This could mean a job training program, or a placement service, or simply making more jobs available to street freaks. Who should have to pay for such programs? It seems unfair to place the burden on Cambridge taxpayers or the City Council. They did not lure young people to Cambridge and try to convince them of what a groovy place it is. Two sectors did that, directly or indirectly. They are the University, (which should have enough money to fund projects of such crucial local importance and who should at least be decent enough to let homeless kids stay in the vacant wasted space of the Harvard Houses); and the merchants themselves, who courted and sought out young people when they were buying fancy clothes. A commitment to a progressive rather than merely repressive solution is absolutely necessary. Without one, Cambridge cannot miss becoming a horribly scarred battleground like Berkeley.

AND FINALLY, if Wednesday's rioters really want to change America, they will have to take themselves and their ideas more seriously. So that each militant action makes independent sense, and is also part of a coherent movement that tries to identify what's wrong with America, and begins to provide real radical solutions.

Revolutionary violence-in itself a terrible holocause-is justifiable only as it moves to end the conditions which make it necessary. More practically, it is justified only if it is successful.