BY ED FELIEN
National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), Women’s Strike for Peace (WSP) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were sponsoring a March on Washington in April of 1965 to protest the war in Vietnam. Four of us piled into a small Volkswagen and drove out early Friday morning. We were able to stay with some local supporters of WSP Friday night in Chevy Chase, Md., and we cleaned up and put on suits and ties for the demonstration Saturday morning. While we were marching around the White House a flatbed semitruck drove by with a series of gravestones on it representing the countries behind the Iron Curtain. The tableau was sponsored by The Captive Nations, a right-wing group of proto-fascists from Eastern Europe that served as the backbone of George H W Bush’s political campaigns. It was an interesting piece of propaganda meant to counteract our anti-Americanism.
Then we saw another semi pull up and park in front of the White House. The back doors of the trailer opened up, and the scruffiest looking people I had ever seen piled out. Beatniks. Peaceniks. They brought with them 20-foot puppets of L.B.J. and huge papier mache bombs and planes. This was Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theater from the Lower East Side. It was amazing. They didn’t try to look “normal.” And I realized the limits of reform. This would be the last demonstration at which I would wear a suit and tie. No more trying to blend in, trying not to offend. From now on it was shock therapy. In your face! We had been afraid that if we were too casual that would detract from our message. What we found was that looking straight simply allowed the media to completely ignore our message and assume it had been properly delivered and handled through official channels. No. They weren’t listening to us. We had to do something different to get their attention and to win over young people.
There were only about 25,000 to 30,000 people at the March. I. F. Stone was Master of Ceremonies. He introduced Ernest Greuning, who with Wayne Morse were the only two Senators to vote against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which was the flimsy and false basis for justification for involvement in Vietnam. There were folk singers. Paul Potter from SDS gave a speech that sent chills up my back. He talked about how he believed in America when he was growing up and how he gradually became disillusion-ed. How he once believed America was always on the side of righteousness. And when the horror of Vietnam became clear how all of those illusions began to fade away. I remembered my childhood, a good Catholic boy, an Eagle Scout, and I thought about my parents who still believed that America was always right, and I knew it would take a lot to convince Americans that their country was wrong.
After the speeches, we all turned around on the Washington Mall and started marching to the Capitol. I don’t know what we were going to do when we got there. Go in? Declare ourselves the government? But somehow Joan Baez, who had sung at the demonstration, got in front of the impromptu march and started singing and then telling us that the demonstration was over and we should go home. We stopped and eventually disbanded. My first March on Washington ended with a whimper, but it also ended with a fixed resolve.
