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A Participant’s Comments on “The War at Home” by Robin David December 2018 As I remember it, when I originally saw “The War at Home,” made in 1979 by Glenn Silber, my first reaction was that I was glad to see a generally positive documentary about the Vietnam antiwar movement, especially one centered at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where I was a student and politically active between 1961 and 1969. I also remember being quite critical. I’m in the movie confronting Massachusetts Democratic Senator Teddy Kennedy, although not named. I, of course, assumed it was a film about the antiwar movement at UW in Madison. I am not alone. Netflix describes the movie as, “ ‘The War at Home,” this documentary vividly chronicles the Vietnam War protest movement….” IMDb, the internet movie reviewer says, “Interviews with people involved with and leading the Madison, Wisconsin area resistance to the Vietnam war.” Seeing the movie several times recently, it is clear to me that the film maker, Glen Silber, is not so sure. That made the contradictions and confusions in the movie much more understandable. Starting in 1963, Silber takes us through the ‘60s virtually year by year. He starts with the impact of the civil right movement on those who would become antiwar activists, an accurate connection, and includes events around the Mifflin Street Coop and the ensuing police riot. He later tries to connect the Black led student strike for demands for Black studies and greater opportunities for Black students back to the antiwar movement which is more of a stretch. In reality, the Black movement had been evolving on its own trajectory and the strike at UW was directly inspired by the Black student strike at San Francisco State College (now University). Silber wanted to make a movie about the social explosion of the ‘60s, rather than about the antiwar movement. The film, though, is dominated by the Vietnam war and the movement against it because to make a movie of any honesty it couldn’t be otherwise. The irony of his dilemma is expressed by Hank Haslach. Hank is the main interviewee in the film so it is reasonable to take what he says as speaking for the film maker. Hank says soon after he came to Madison, he became aware of the Vietnam war but he joined SDS because it wasn’t just an antiwar organization. It was for a more sweeping and general change. He later goes on to say that he and SDS didn’t think the war was the main issue they should be organizing around. The film only shows how wrong both he and its director are. It is ironic that the only two things Hank claims credit for having a major hand in, the DOW sit-in and the occupation of the administration building were totally focused around the war. I’m not going to go on any further about the general cultural and political explosion of the ‘60s. Since the film is, in fact, dominated by the war and the antiwar movement and Silber so badly presents it, I want to focus on that. The kindest thing I can say is that movie seriously misrepresents the dynamic of that movement in general and especially as it unfolded in Madison. Some might see it as the revenge of those whose strategy and tactics for the movement was largely rejected to rewrite that history. Madison has a radical tradition that goes back, unbroken, to at least the 1930s. It was one of the very first centers of the anti-Vietnam War Movement embodied in the Committee to the Vietnam War (CEWV). Throughout this period, it was the main antiwar organization on the UW campus, although Silber chooses never to mention it. The three central factors in ending the war were, first and foremost, the refusal on the Vietnamese people to be defeated; second, the eventual refusal of the troops to fight; third the antiwar movement. The antiwar movement became a powerful force because it involved hundreds of thousands united around what became the central demand to “Bring the GIs Home Now!” This slogan embodied three important concepts. First, the only real way to end the war was to get out, now. Second, the best way to “support our boys” was to bring them home, now. Third, the only way to insure Vietnamese self-determination was to end U.S. intervention, now. Hundreds of thousands of antiwar activists embraced these ideas to different degrees based on their own understanding. The movement was able to grow to have such numbers, to have such power and clearly represent a majority opinion because its dominant strategy was to build mass demonstrations that were legal, peaceful expressions of people’s First Amendment rights. That allowed the average person to feel safe and confident in participating and made it clear that any violence would be initiated by pro-war forces, the police and other government agencies. There were other strategies embodied in the Oakland anti-draft demonstrations that tried to physically stop the working of the Oakland Induction Center, draft card burnings and demonstrations like the one against the DOW recruiters portrayed in the movie. These actions had both positive and negative effects, the sum total still debated today. The dominant strategy though, overwhelmingly, was that of legal, peaceful mass action, approved over and over again by mass democratically organized conferences and meeting both local and national. “The War at Home” rather than focusing on the dominant strategy of the movement, chooses to highlight every other kind of action from civil disobedience to draft card burning to sailing off to Vietnam to campaigning for McCarthy to blowing up the Math Army Research Center as the heart and soul of the antiwar movement. The main interviewees, with the exception of Evan Stark, were not leaders of the antiwar movement. By his own words Haslach tells us that SDS didn’t want to concentrate on the war and it didn’t. Contrasting the action around Kennedy and the DOW sit-in is a good way to see both the different strategic approaches and the attempt of Silber to rewrite history. Evan Stark says that “we” announced at the beginning of that school year that no pro-war speakers would be allowed on campus. I’m not sure who the “we” was but some held that position. It was soon announced that Vice President Humphrey would come to campaign for Patrick J. Lucey, the Democratic candidate for governor, and that set off sparks, so Ted Kennedy who was seen as maybe antiwar was switched in. A few weeks before he was due to speak, antiwar students at Harvard had physically blocked State Department speakers and the reaction was to circulate petitions of apology. Tens of thousands signed. The antiwar activists were isolated. I don’t recall whether or not they were expelled. We, the Committee to End the War in Vietnam (CEWV) and other activists, knew that Kennedy actually had a pro-war record. We were also very much aware of what had happened at Harvard. At a CEWV meeting of over 300 people we decided what to do. We drafted a leaflet that included Kennedy’s actual record on the war, insisted that in the spirit of free speech and the universities policy of open debate that he open himself to questions and we listed questions that seemed appropriate. We distributed 15 to 20,000 copies of the leaflet in the week leading up to Kennedy’s speaking. We planned how to get our signs in and where to sit. We decided who would speak and who would direct our actions. We were on the edge. Kennedy did not really confront his program and fled the stage but we also did not win over the majority of the audience. Witness the shot of Seymour Kramer with his jacket pulled back from people around him trying to get him to sit down. But because we insisted that he speak rather than not speak we were able keep the war rather than his rights in the forefront. All hell broke loose in the aftermath. The administration wanted to expel the leaders and ban the CEWV. A petition of apology was circulated. We held a CEWV meeting on how to respond, again 300+. The overwhelming majority voted to defend ourselves. We drafted a statement apologizing for not being more effective and distributed another 15 to 20,000 copies. We spoke everywhere, dining halls, dorms, fraternities and sororities. After a week, the student senate which was supposed to rule on banning the committee and expelling us, apologized to us. The faculty senate refused to take the issue up. We continued to organize and grow. Interestingly, Silber chose not to mention that the CEWV organized the action or to interview myself who was chair of the Committee or any of the other leading participants in the action. Demonstrations had been going on against DOW recruiters across the country. So, with DOW coming back to UW, the question of what to do naturally came up. Just as naturally it was taken up by the CEWV, the main antiwar organization on campus. At a meeting of several hundred a narrow majority voted to sit-in in the building where DOW would be recruiting. This vote was passed despite the opposition of the Committee chair, myself, and various other Committee leaders. We opposed it because it was clear that the University would not allow this to be a peaceful demonstration. A fundamental link between the university, business and the military was being called into question and, breaking an historic precedent, city police would be called onto campus. Police violence was a given and we felt that the issue of DOW, Napalm and the war would be obscured by the questions of free speech, the right of students to get a job and who caused the violence. As a result, there was virtually no prior organization for the sit-in and many who participated thought they would be involved in a peaceful, none obstructive sit-in rather than a police riot, especially after a first day of peaceful activity as portrayed in the movie. Whatever leadership or direction actually took place was a matter of self-appointed individuals rather than elected leaders. Haslach and Paul Soglin are quoted on length about the sit-in, implying that they were somehow leaders of it but there is no evidence in the film or otherwise to back that up. The film recounts a successful defense campaign in the aftermath, but Soglin and others are quoted as saying that in the aftermath things died down on campus and moved into the community. The movie provides us with a cascade of quotes from Haslach on down about the frustration that our demonstrations aren’t doing anything to stop the war and how we have to do something dramatic to up the ante. By 1968, at the campuses that had long been the centers of student antiwar activity, like Madison, Berkeley and Harvard, frustrations began to set in. We had been active for so long -- for students, three or four years is “so long” -- and worked so hard and yet the war machine goes on. The idea that we had to “escalate” our activity, somehow put our bodies on the line, throw ourselves onto the gears, began to gain currency. Actions like DOW, trying to bar recruiters from industries that fed the war machine, barring pro-war speakers and vandalizing ROTC offices became more common. The mistake caused by this frustration is not to understand that the real way to “escalate” the movement is to make it bigger and more representative not do things that would allow the pro-war forces to isolate us from the majority. Our tactics and strategy must keep the focus on ending the war not on our right to bar somebody from campus, destroy property or fight with the police. This frustration was grounded in a profound miscalculation of the political dynamic in the country at that time and led to a serious miscalculation of what strategy would build the movement and actually help end U.S. intervention in Vietnam. By 1968 antiwar sentiment was growing, overt actions by disaffected GIs increasing and the Democratic Party felt forced to field an “antiwar” candidate, as tepid and ineffectual as he was. Police and the media can deal with several thousands of students throwing a fit, but when demonstrations of hundreds of thousands begin to reflect the will of the majority, it’s another matter. Silber includes a young woman repeating Nixon’s claim to be watching football during the demonstrations. Some of us knew then and by 1979 when the film was made everybody knew that was a fiction. Nixon was peeking out from the curtains quaking in his boots and on the phone to J. Edgar to launch a campaign to disrupt the antiwar movement. Silber quotes Ken Mate as saying that sit-ins were play revolution and bombing was real revolution. The reality is that the potential for revolution is only on the agenda when hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters become frustrated. The movie highlights two focuses for antiwar activists after DOW. One focus was going into the community which, in this case, meant campaigning for Eugene McCarthy, trying to lead the movement out of the streets and into the Democratic Party behind a uninspiring candidate and a tepid opponent of the war. The other focus was “escalation” and the ultimate “escalation” was the bombing of the Math Army Research Center. Although the film attempts to cast the bombing in a sympathetic, even heroic, light it did nothing to build the movement, end the war or even stop collaboration between the university and the war machine. To the contrary it totally chilled the antiwar atmosphere and tended to isolate campus activists from the growing antiwar political climate. DOW was not so much a high point as the film tend to portray. It was more of a watershed as the even division in the CEWV vote indicates. Those who would stay the course and play a major part in ending the Vietnam War fell off to one side. Those who would let their frustration get the better of them would fall off to the other. This film tends to focus on and salute those who gave in to their frustrations. A note on rewriting history not directly related to the antiwar movement: Silber quotes Ken Mate to saying that the organizers of the Black student strike called SDS to inform it of their plans to strike and asked them how many they could turn out. Mate, in a burst of wishful thinking, says 300 or so. SDS could never turn out more than a dozen or so on its best day. The impression is that SDS was somehow the left ally of the strike. In fact, the organizers approached every left group to seek collaboration. I met with Rashad. Also, in fact, support from the student body, of all colors and stripes, went far beyond anything the left could “mobilize.” Mate goes on to say the motherfuckers were going to burn the place down which can only be seen as patronizing tinged with liberal racism when, in fact, the Black students were launching a carefully planned strike with very specific demands aimed at winning broad support from the student body which they got. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
