Pine Trees Make Last Stand

After considerable kicking and shoving, the 22 protesters arrested in Saturday's demonstration against draft registration were carted off by Cambridge police for perfunctory processing and formal charging. The activists paid $5 each to a bail bondsman and left the Central Square police station by mid-afternoon. Most will probably get a lecture and six months' probation.

Some of their allies on the picket line were not so lucky. After first appearing at a protest Tuesday, where they lay down and formed a partial barricade of the Central Square post office, the remains of a hardy squad of unemployed Christmas trees showed up again over the weekend to make their political beliefs known.

This time, however, police and postal authorities had little patience with the dissident evergreens. Post office employees grabbed two of the trees and passed them back into the building for questioning, while Cambridge police decided on a quick execution for the rest.

As their human compatriots looked on with horror, the pines were fed to a gurgling garbage truck--martyrs for their cause and stoically silent to the end.

Adding to protesters' woes, Joseph Mlot-Mroz of the mysterious Polish Freedom Fighters, Inc. showed up for Saturday's demonstration. The scourge of Boston area demonstrations, this stocky middle-aged man attends many public gatherings with a carefully painted placard disparaging Israel and praising the United States. He gives no explanation for the connection between Polish workers and politics in the Middle East.

As usual, he joined right in Saturday and began shouting, "God bless America." Warned by more experienced picketers to ignore the uninvited marcher, protesters first ignored the man, but later began calling him a "fascist pig" and an "anti-Semite."

When several people doused him with ink and tried to take his sign away a small fight broke out and police jumped in to arrest everyone involved, including the Polish freedom fighter. "The problem is that if they want to protest, they have to be prepared to let other people join them," one policeman said after the scuffle was broken up and the picket line reformed.

A more subtle tension has been apparent all week. Anti-registration groups have muttered discontentedly about the various Marxist groups that tag along with the crowd and condemn all of American society along with registration. "We don't seek their support, but many fringe groups are attracted to us," Frank Broadhead, director of the Boston Alliance Against Registration and the Draft, said earlier in the week.

Despite their ideological differences, members of the Marxist-Leninist Party have provided the week-long string of rallies with a touch of the dramatic as they perform and re-perform a morality play showing Mean Ole Uncle Sam deceiving the ignorant army recruit with the blather-headed aid of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Saturday's 11:30 a.m. matinee drew a polite round of applause from onlookers, as recruits-turned-revolutionaries bayoneted the three villains into submission. But at a demonstration organized by Vietnam veterans several days ago, one vet said, "I don't think what they [the Marxist-Leninist] have to say has a hell of a lot to do with what we are saying."

One thing protesters seem to agree upon is the pressure big oil companies put on the government to fight in needless foreign wars. The "Hell, no; we won't go! We won't fight for Texaco!" chant has been a favorite for many. Thus it seemed particularly appropriate that the driver of a tremendous Mobil Oil truck driving past Saturday's march to the Central Square police station would shout at demonstrators, "What's the matter with you, you bunch of assholes--" Protesters pelted him with snowballs.

One of the most enthusiastic participants in Saturday's rally was David MacMillan, a student at the Divinity School. MacMillan was one of the four people who parked themselves inside the post office entrance, only to be forcibly removed by postal inspectors. Police later arrested him during one of the confrontations outside.

"There is certainly a moral reason behind anti-registration; it's an example of social injustice," MacMillan said, adding, "We have too much army anyway."

He explained that he and four fellow Div School students attended the rally as the first formal action of a Div School affinity group which will participate in similar events in the future.