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Student protests, May-December 1971
1971-05-12 Daily Iowan Letters: ""The May Uprising"" Page 1
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1 (of 4) The Daily Iowan OPINIONS PAGE 2 WEDNESDAY. MAY 12, 1971, IOWA CITY, IOWA Editor, Leona Durham, Managing Editor, Amy Chapman, News Editor, Lowell May, City-University Editor, Willard Rawn, Editorial Page Editor, Cheryl Miller, Photography Editor, Diane Hypes, Fine Arts Editor, Valerie Kent, Sports Editor, John Richards, Associate News Editor, Mike McGravey, Assoc. City-University Editor, Debbie Romine, Assoc. City-University Editor, Richard Ter Mast, Assoc. Photo Editor, Jon Williams. Handing it to police. Sometimes you just have to hand it to the police. Credit where credit is due and all that. And few groups ever earn as much credit as the police deserve for Monday night's activities in and around the men's residence halls - those rooms in which men are forced to live. Filling the air indiscriminately with their tear (or pepper) gas, clubbing bystanders, invading the dormitories and firing off cannisters of gas, the police marched like SS troopers around the dormitories for hours, clubbing even those who attempted to escape from their gas-filled rooms. Their faces hidden behind gas masks, the police all look alike; it is hard to suppress an image of sub-human invaders. Their "smoke machine" looks like something out of a bad science fiction movie, but the shotguns they carry look all too real; we've seen those guns before, in Berkeley, Lawrence, Madison, Kent and a dozen less dramatic places. And now Iowa City. Taunting the students as they fogged the entire area with gas, the police managed to make their point in Iowa City Monday night. It is they, acting for the privileged sector of this community, who control Iowa City. It is their town. And they will do anything they damn well please toward that end. "Back in your cells you dirty little urchins. We don't want to see you unless you have money in your pockets and plan to spend it" And it is for this that they should be given a considerable amount of credit - for making this fact of life in Iowa City clear beyond any doubt. Many students in the men's dormitories, of course, already understood this. But those who did not received one of the best crash courses in politics available to them. - Leona Durham The student revolt EDITOR'S NOTE: This excerpt from a section called "The Social Roots of Student Revolt" was written by a leading international Marxist scholar, Ernest Mandel "... (I) n the framework of the third industrial revolution manual labor is expelled from production while intellectual labor is reintroduced into the productive process on a gigantic scale. It thereby becomes to an ever-increasing degree alienated labor - standardized, mechanized, and subjected to rigid rules and regimentation, in the same way that manual labor was in the first and second industrial revolutions. This fact is very closely linked with one of the most spectacular recent developments in American society: the massive student revolt, or more correctly, the growing radicalization of students. "To give an indication of the scope of this transformation in American society, it is enough to consider that the United States, which at the beginning of this century was still essentially a country exporting agricultural products, today contains fewer farmers than students There are today in the United States 6,000,000 students and the number of farmers together with their employes and Letters: Th To the Editor: The reaction has started to grow concerning the protest movement that has moved this country in the past week, Disillusioned people shout down t crowds from their rooftops (or apartment windows) telling us that we're accomplishing nothing but making trouble for ourselves and others. Many students on this campus and more people all over the country have been saying for the past year (since Kent State) that they agree with the ends of the movement, that they too want an end to the war, but they are backing away because they don't believe in violence as a means. There is a lot of talk about "alternative means" of pressuring the government - without violence. So what happens? We all decide to be "good kids" and we have a "flower festival" 20 miles outside of town because the city says we can't have it in the park. We dedicate ourselves to the cause of peace and promise to work for it through peaceful means. But America is not a peaceful country. We are currently (still) forcing a government on a people who don't want it, we're currently (still. always) protecting the rights of the "haves" against the needs to the "have-nots", we still spend at least 40 per cent of our national budget on war and its attendant machinery and the Pentagon answers to nobody - not even a Fulbright investigating committee (when they asked for records on the SST. the Pentagon denied them because they were "classified"}. We've still got millions of people who are poor and need help, and if you're black you're running uphill. Can we afford to worry about our own peace? Do we have the right to protect the property of the people in this country (a country which has no respect for the rights. property or lives of anyone but itself)? We must admit that we exist in a world which is run by violence.There is a war going on and people are dying every day. And the longer we remain peaceful, the longer we allow it to continue. The more we comply, the more we are to blame. This is a moral question we all have faced. So we tried. We tried to get Gene McCarthy elected, but he was dangerous, so we settled for Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. We tried to teach people - again we failed because people had been told by their government 20 years ago that communists were worse than the Nazis they'd just beaten. They would not listen. So we got angry and we marched and we threw rocks and we got busted. Now the President says he's going to run this war the way he wants no matter what the people say. Some people got killed. Some were marching and some were just standing around. to the Old Gold Fun. Leg be given passes to observe of the facult, who would with a discount, Periodic police will provide pract "outings" as well as free variety of research proj sparked by the endeavor federal government gran providing jobs for grad Birth control pills could be discount from the Univers
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1 (of 4) The Daily Iowan OPINIONS PAGE 2 WEDNESDAY. MAY 12, 1971, IOWA CITY, IOWA Editor, Leona Durham, Managing Editor, Amy Chapman, News Editor, Lowell May, City-University Editor, Willard Rawn, Editorial Page Editor, Cheryl Miller, Photography Editor, Diane Hypes, Fine Arts Editor, Valerie Kent, Sports Editor, John Richards, Associate News Editor, Mike McGravey, Assoc. City-University Editor, Debbie Romine, Assoc. City-University Editor, Richard Ter Mast, Assoc. Photo Editor, Jon Williams. Handing it to police. Sometimes you just have to hand it to the police. Credit where credit is due and all that. And few groups ever earn as much credit as the police deserve for Monday night's activities in and around the men's residence halls - those rooms in which men are forced to live. Filling the air indiscriminately with their tear (or pepper) gas, clubbing bystanders, invading the dormitories and firing off cannisters of gas, the police marched like SS troopers around the dormitories for hours, clubbing even those who attempted to escape from their gas-filled rooms. Their faces hidden behind gas masks, the police all look alike; it is hard to suppress an image of sub-human invaders. Their "smoke machine" looks like something out of a bad science fiction movie, but the shotguns they carry look all too real; we've seen those guns before, in Berkeley, Lawrence, Madison, Kent and a dozen less dramatic places. And now Iowa City. Taunting the students as they fogged the entire area with gas, the police managed to make their point in Iowa City Monday night. It is they, acting for the privileged sector of this community, who control Iowa City. It is their town. And they will do anything they damn well please toward that end. "Back in your cells you dirty little urchins. We don't want to see you unless you have money in your pockets and plan to spend it" And it is for this that they should be given a considerable amount of credit - for making this fact of life in Iowa City clear beyond any doubt. Many students in the men's dormitories, of course, already understood this. But those who did not received one of the best crash courses in politics available to them. - Leona Durham The student revolt EDITOR'S NOTE: This excerpt from a section called "The Social Roots of Student Revolt" was written by a leading international Marxist scholar, Ernest Mandel "... (I) n the framework of the third industrial revolution manual labor is expelled from production while intellectual labor is reintroduced into the productive process on a gigantic scale. It thereby becomes to an ever-increasing degree alienated labor - standardized, mechanized, and subjected to rigid rules and regimentation, in the same way that manual labor was in the first and second industrial revolutions. This fact is very closely linked with one of the most spectacular recent developments in American society: the massive student revolt, or more correctly, the growing radicalization of students. "To give an indication of the scope of this transformation in American society, it is enough to consider that the United States, which at the beginning of this century was still essentially a country exporting agricultural products, today contains fewer farmers than students There are today in the United States 6,000,000 students and the number of farmers together with their employes and Letters: Th To the Editor: The reaction has started to grow concerning the protest movement that has moved this country in the past week, Disillusioned people shout down t crowds from their rooftops (or apartment windows) telling us that we're accomplishing nothing but making trouble for ourselves and others. Many students on this campus and more people all over the country have been saying for the past year (since Kent State) that they agree with the ends of the movement, that they too want an end to the war, but they are backing away because they don't believe in violence as a means. There is a lot of talk about "alternative means" of pressuring the government - without violence. So what happens? We all decide to be "good kids" and we have a "flower festival" 20 miles outside of town because the city says we can't have it in the park. We dedicate ourselves to the cause of peace and promise to work for it through peaceful means. But America is not a peaceful country. We are currently (still) forcing a government on a people who don't want it, we're currently (still. always) protecting the rights of the "haves" against the needs to the "have-nots", we still spend at least 40 per cent of our national budget on war and its attendant machinery and the Pentagon answers to nobody - not even a Fulbright investigating committee (when they asked for records on the SST. the Pentagon denied them because they were "classified"}. We've still got millions of people who are poor and need help, and if you're black you're running uphill. Can we afford to worry about our own peace? Do we have the right to protect the property of the people in this country (a country which has no respect for the rights. property or lives of anyone but itself)? We must admit that we exist in a world which is run by violence.There is a war going on and people are dying every day. And the longer we remain peaceful, the longer we allow it to continue. The more we comply, the more we are to blame. This is a moral question we all have faced. So we tried. We tried to get Gene McCarthy elected, but he was dangerous, so we settled for Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. We tried to teach people - again we failed because people had been told by their government 20 years ago that communists were worse than the Nazis they'd just beaten. They would not listen. So we got angry and we marched and we threw rocks and we got busted. Now the President says he's going to run this war the way he wants no matter what the people say. Some people got killed. Some were marching and some were just standing around. to the Old Gold Fun. Leg be given passes to observe of the facult, who would with a discount, Periodic police will provide pract "outings" as well as free variety of research proj sparked by the endeavor federal government gran providing jobs for grad Birth control pills could be discount from the Univers
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