Under A Glumping Sky

THERE'S A RUMBLE "We say no, We say no. We say no to the racists..." shivers across the Fenway in the gray drizzle quivers a pale, unshaven man. He's baby-blue double-knit dressed chic and he's bitching at a hulking, red lumber jacketed Militant vendor who's tucked his Militant under his arm in a white, plastic garbage bag Disposable.

At 10:30 a.m. the turn-out is light for the Boston March Against Racism" as its organizers' (the Emergency Committee for a National Mobilization Against Racism) buttons read, or the "Freedom march," according to the student Committee for the December 14 National March Against Racism's leaflet. It's a multi-shaded crowd of a few hundred glum people. And two Rent-a-Trucks.

Roberto Clemente Park, where the march is assembling, is where Boston curbs its dogs and under the glumping sky it's schlepping back into the harbour. As the morning wears on, the dog shit, the mud, and the rain get churned into a fine mess by 5,000 pairs of feet. Globe's estimate. The "Fred Hampton contingent, one of the many groups reaching today, is huddled about some low concrete stands on the far side of a baseball diamond. Murdered in 1969 by the F.B.I. and the Chicago police Fred Hampton, a Black Panther leader advocated a class--not a racial--struggle. The contingent has four or five vivid red banners, roughly ten feet by three feet, that turn this message to the larger crowd on Park Drive.

A wild-eyed oriental scurries about the group welcoming new arrivals. "Hey man. How are you?" he asks a yellow banded security man; short, Irish, build like a longshoreman. "You sure are looking goods continues the Oriental. But the Irishman is tough not good-looking. Perhaps this is a coded message that completes the gestalt of the scene; barren steppes, flooded with water, disappearing under a tide of people and their carefully-lettered banners ripped by the cold wind.

An enormous waxy-faced man carooms through the front of the crowd. He is rounder and crazier than helium balloon, and he's spreading false information about the march's route. Losing his temper a black man shoves his hand into the fat man face, crumpling a leaflet into his mouth. Under a bare tree, two securitymen twist the black to the ground. He's screaming, "I won't let any motherfucking son-of-a-bitch stand in our way." With cries of "police agent," and "white racist pig" the crowd tries to bounce the fat man into Park Drive where the police have established their security line. But nobody wants to touch him.

Two women, one from the organizing committee, the other from a group marching, bicker over whether to go up Commonwealth Avenue or Boylston Street, A police permit has been issued for Commonwealth, a pleasant tree-shaded avenue lined with grimy brick apartments, but not for Boylston,' which cuts through one of Boston's more affluent shopping districts. Later the Globe said that shopkeepers had complained to the Mayor that the march would disrupt their business. The two ladies, one short with short brown hair, the other taller in a long brown coat and with an ugly motley-skinned face, engage in minor histrionics. Raising her eyes to the sky, the short one beseeches the crowd to acknowledge her conciliatory stance.

Perhaps a decision is in the making, for the Socialist Workers contingent, about a thousand strong marches off before the main group. But it isn't evident. Though many people run around with yellow rags tied around their arms, and despite large numbers of walkie-talkies circulating about, and maybe because of the outlandish number of groups involved, each with their own hierarchy of leaders, organizers, and speechmakers, there is a remarkable lack of decision-making. Everyone gets spilled onto Clemente Park, mixed up with everyone else while the ideologues scream about identity. The Anti-Racist Coalition "says the march leaders have a wrong approach." The Congress of Afrikan People is "critical of the Trotskyite and revisionist influence on the march." The Workers League and Young Socialists say "The Freedom March for Human Dignity,' by seeking to place the responsibility for racism on the working class itself, is directed against the workers of Boston."

BUT OTHER PEOPLE evidently felt otherwise, Fifty busloads of anti-somethings were dumped on Clemente Park from Chicago. New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., Baltimore, St. Louis, and South Dakota. There were also fantastic groups with esoteric names and nifty leaflets.

The Erytreans For Liberty in America all have the same color skins, a mixture arrived at by melting a bar of Suchard's milk chocolate in a pint of walnut finish. They're all males, all under 5'10", all have arabic features, and all sport little black moustaches. They speak a foreign tongue.

An enthusiastic newspaper vendor boosts the October Movement, "We're for the workers overthrowing the billionaires and telling them what to do." Doesn't he plan for the workers to un billionaire the billionaires? "Oh yeah We'd throw them all in jail and try to re-educate the ones that were savable." He is offering a great deal on his paper, "Buy this month's and you get last month's tree."

"The Political Statement of the Weather Underground" is printed in pink by Prairie Fire. It comes with a "Name the Enemies" crossword puzzle and chants conveniently printed on the verse. They have their neo-Indian war shield white with streaming yellow ribbons, that bobbies through the crowd on a pole about 15 feet high.

The shield might just as well belong to Ganienkeh, a group trying to "Help Eagle Bay." They are a group of "native Americans, Mohawk primarily," who have taken over a former girls camp in New York and kicked all the motel owners out. "They have the right to this land. They will appeal to the United Nations and the International Coort |sic| if necessary." In their pamphlet they fall to elucidate their stand on busing.

The rain stops. From the top of the stands, where it is less damp, this congregation is a crusade with hundreds of pennants strewn in the glowering breeze. The button sellers offer their indulgences. Their most popular model is the "March Against Racism" sold to defray the organizers' costs. It is in the same black and green color scheme as their banners and has a logo with six white, eight black, six polka dotted, and a few incomplete heads. If costs a dollar. There are also two black button models. One is a $.2 bargain, the other is larger and more expensive, though its price seems to fluctuate as the day wears on.

At 12:40 p.m. there is some action. The F.H. contingent must swing around a quarter turn. The result is hectic. Under the Defend the Democratic Rights of Oppressed Nationalities banner stands a short and stumpy man. A faded version of the Pillsbury Doughboy dressed in gray cap, jacked and pants, he stomps his feet in cadence with the archings of his eyebrows and the mechanical chomp of his tight-lipped mouth.

By 1:15 the sound truck has forced its way onto the third baseline. The march must disassemble and regroup behind it, the black schoolchildren near the very front. Other contingents, vying for the lead positions, have cut the F.H. contingent's banner from the group's main body. "If you're missing your organization," instructs their sound truck, "just get in someplace." Later the sound truck announces that the march will leave when state senator-elect William Owens, one of its sponsors, arrives. "Let's go. We don't need him..."urges the crowd. In response, "We shall overcome..." gasps from the speakers. It is hoarse and breathy and staggers into a self-parody. But there is little humor in this crowd. The travesty soon dies: unnoted, surrendering to the mud's sweet juicy suck.

Owens arrives at 1:40, ten minutes after the Commons' rally was to have started. Suddenly the crowd appears to be in a great mood. "The people. United, Will never be defeated..." surges out. As it empties out onto Park Drive the march is at last a reality.

WINDING UP Park Drive, the march crosses the Fens and heads into downtown Boston via Boylston Street. The leafleteers scour the sidewalks and pizza parlors, distributing their literature. A little blond boy of about four chants in his mother's arms, "Who's got the money? Who makes the rules? Kids can't learn in racist schools." Suddenly the march halts. It creeps forward. There is a spasmodic jerk back. A spray of placards spumes to the pavement. All is quiet. Then it erupts.

A torrent of screaming black mothers: faces stretched wide in terror, skin dewy in fight, peels back from the front. They have pulled the wings of their coats over their children. From beneath his mother's mantle, a boy whoops with delight.

Oblivious to the sound truck's directive, "Stay calm. Stay quiet..." a disjointed mass of bodies thrashes into the intersection of Mass Ave and Boylston Street. A barrage of over a hundred armed, billy-clubbed, helmeted riot police blocks their path. At their center are seven mounted police. Behind them a fleet of squad cars and paddy wagons jams Boylston Street.

The crowd advances, tossing rocks and cardboard tubes. Behind the closed ranks of the police, a black man is pummeled. A white woman in a beaver coat lunges next to him. She is clubbed on the back and falls face down in the gutter. Owens climbs onto the roof of the sound truck at the front of the column. He asks for attention. The crowd won't listen. His brown color-coordinated coat, pants and tie have the look of Esquire's fashion page. His moustache is definitely in Vogue.

By himself, Owens lacks the force of character to harness this group he has helped to assemble and loves to lead. Owens needs help.

The crowd claws forward, crushing against the police wall. Owens screams for its attention. Voices, cries, Shrieks down him out.

But the front eventually holds back. Boylston Street is not worth a shattered skull. Owens, taking advantage of the calm, offers to go alone to be arrested. He cannot, "in good faith," let others, for whom he feels a responsibility, be arrested or injured. As he talks, two black physicians attend a young man slumped on a car's hood on the far corner. Peter Pogorski is calm and glum and will be taken to the hospital for X-rays and stitches.

At the center of the front line, a group of brown-jacketed people accuses Owens, about whom they are clustered of "selling out," of "betraying the people." If the first group had pressed forward, if they had not been told to stop, everyone else would have made it through untouched. Apparently.

But the October Movement has control of the sound truck "Down Commonwealth Avenue...Don't stop at the intersection..." The police relax their lines. The march swings left, chanting "The people United. Will never be defeated..." The brown jackets fall to the rear. They are the African Unity League and their leader, Imamu Barak is the only one among them who will acknowledge any questions, All Baraks will reply is, "Just write the story."

The march cannot get off Commonwealth Avenue. Riot police block the side-streets. The Irish security man for the Fred Hampton Contingents is "pissed off" at the police, but thinks the change of route was necessary, Indeed you must pretend to ignore the police--but do all they demand. There is a tacit agreement. Don't make a fuss and there will be no split craniums, Quiver.

But the confrontation isn't the police's fault. They are a faceless tool belonging to whomever is in control of the city. The march leaders only precipitated the conflict. They let the march's outcome be inevitable. Go down on road or go down the other, but prepare for the consequences. To have your head opened for no purpose would be damn maddening.

The spectators, however, think the march is O.K.

"The march is a good idea," says an elderly lady from Brookline.

A red-faced man from Hingham bills it as "a splendid action to balance a contrary impression being fostered by other Bostonians."

"I don't know about the march..." confesses an elderly lady from Beacon Hill, Her husband nods in agreement.

A middle-aged man with slicked-back hair lounges outside a florist's. "The march is good, It will point out that the issue isn't racist. It's a busing issue..."He is from Dorchester and smiles and shrugs.

Had they been on Boylston Street their opinion would not have been much different. To march down Boylston would surely be a symbolic victory, but the civil rights movement had plenty of those and people still stone black children. "We shall overcome..." is a beautiful song, but the issue is not spiritual it is nuts and bolts. Do not stone the buses. Build better schools. People do not have to like each other, a little respect is all that is needed. But nobody wants to assume that load, so the brunt of it falls on the schoolchildren. Ant they are far too mutable to support it.

At 3:05 P.M., it is warm and sunny. The sky had broken down on Commonwealth Avenue. The march arrives at the Commons where an estimated 15,000 people joins it. But it was over. The action had come and had passed and had been more disturbing than conclusive. Nothing could be said that had not already been done. Or left undone.

At 3:10 the speeches start. Day lapses into evening. The red sun cases behind the speaker's platform until finally hidden by the Prudential Tower. The crowd swells over the rising field then shrinks about the snow-fence-enclosed platform. The speechmakers rise to the podium and fall back into the mounting obscurity.

The keynote speaker, Reverend Ralph Abernathy of the S.C.L.C., gets a big hand with "Power to the people." Dick Gregory's "This is a sick, insane, unethical country..." gets a bigger hand. "We will oppose the reactionary violence of the Capitalists and their lackeys." Jesus Lopez a Puerto Rican predicts, "With the revolutionary violence of the workers."

Linda Lawrence, a Boston schoolgirl, tells the crowd she is called a "nigger lover." A man in the crowd shrieks with delight. "Oh yeah! My woman's called that too..." Bebopping through the crowd, he stops to hassle a lesbian wearing a "Dyke" button.

Claudette Furlong, the leader of Women United for Action, announces, "We're ready to lay ourselves on the line, as we have shown today..." The crowd loves her, too.

Over the heckling of the African Unity League, senator-elect Owens delivers his words. "Sellout..." they scream as he smoothly relates his decision to march down Boylston Street accompanied by a few companions. He is made for T.V. consumption. Something to believe in.

A young oriental man stands before a huge yellow banner covered with about 10 lines of slogans. These words were on it. "We Defend National Democratic Rights. Socialist Working Class Anti-Racist Unity Struggle." "Quite a mouthful," someone says to him. The man smiles and nods, then resumes pacing before it. He seemed to be trying to fit the banner into one frame.

Night arrives and the Young Eternal Souls from St. Louis replace Professor George Wald at the microphone. Two kids spray-paint a sidewalk red and blue. It is too dark to read their message. The Commons is sodded with cans, lunchbags, styrofoam cups and leaflets. The trees are strung with red, white and blue lights, with some green ones over by Park Street.

The world appears different from those brief flashes during the march when all was focused on the present and nothing else really mattered.

But this was only a play of light and shadow. For the real issue had never been approached. In the midst of 'honest-to-God' battle it was forgotten, while 'Viva la Revolucion' et al was the day's chant. Though the revolution might be coming, the march was supposed to have been for the children. And not much was heard of them. They floated around somewhere in the background, but only as an abstract concept, lingering in the shadow of the ultimate truth the revolution. Perhaps children are too small an issue. Certainly they pale in comparison with revolution. But just give them another ten years. Then we will have a humdinger of a march.