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Here's a memory of Dave. It's spring of 1961, and the Ban the Bomb movement was coming off a big victory in New York. We had held an outdoor rally in front of City Hall during a city-wide fallout shelter drill when everyone in the City was supposed to stay indoors, and schoolkids would t under their desks. Over two thousand people stayed outside to protest the drill. The New York Post, then the most liberal paper in the country, supported the protest. It was the last such drill in the City's history. A dozen or so were arrested by the cops, among them, I think was Dave, but don't quote me on that. A few weeks later, we held another rally, on a Friday afternoon, in Duffy Square, which is the northern end of Times Square, where the TKTS booths and the bleachers are now. It had been agreed in advance by the groups organizing the demo that there would be no civil disobedience. The rally was pretty big, with maybe a thousand people including a fair number of women with kids. All of a sudden, a group of people from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA as it was called) led by Paul Goodman (google him if you don't know who he was) decided that it was their moral obligation (the kind of rhetoric used back then) to block Broadway. Immediately, the cops starting pulling the people who were blocking the street up and away, fast. I was standing maybe ten feet from Paul when he was yanked to his feet and taken away. Suddenly, from the opposite side of the crowd came a loud, high voice, "Get back! Get back! The cops are charging the crowd! Get back!" It was Dave, waving his arms frantically, and behind him, I could see a line of about ten cops on horseback riding into the crowd, swinging two-foot-long batons. (No puny nightsticks for these Cossack wannabes. If you've never been charged by cops on horseback, think of the biggest, meanest nzi you ever saw, multiply him by five and give him fists and feet made of rocks.) Dave was quite tall for back then, about 6'2", and he had a good, high-pitched voice that carried, so he could be seen and heard. He stood his ground as the horses streamed around him and the crowd scattered. A few people were hurt, but thanks to Dave, it was a lot less than it could have been. That's the stuff Dave was made of. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
