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UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHERFUCKER! |
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By late April 1968 at Columbia University it was clear that the issues
plaguing the university were not going away. The university continued to
insist on its right to build a gym on land then occupied by apartment
buildings housing hundreds of Harlem's residents, and hundreds of students
and neighborhood residents continued to oppose those plans. In addition,
the university's ties to the U. S. defense establishment via its
sponsorship of a branch of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) was
angering more and more students and younger faculty as the bloodshed in
Vietnam increased in volume and intensity. The Institute's rumored
involvement in the death of revolutionary Che Guevara didn't help matters,
either. In the minds of the student radicals these issues were not only connected, they shared the same roots. Consequently , those who carried out those policies were equally culpable. That included Grayson Kirk, president of Columbia, just as much as it included Lyndon Johnson and General Westmoreland. That left those who opposed the university's desire to build a gym on land bought out from underneath those who lived on it and its involvement in the war in Vietnam only one route of opposition. Confrontation On April 23, 1968, after a march opposing the gym construction, Columbia students and neighborhood residents headed back to the Columbia campus. Enroute, a group of black and white students headed towards Hamilton Hall and took it over. Early the next morning another group of students, including white students asked to leave Hamilton Hall after a consensus reached by the students inside the building, took over the Low Library which housed many of the school's administrative offices. By the end of the following day, a total of six Columbia buildings had been liberated by the students and their sympathizers. These occupations continued for several days and nights. Meanwhile, rallies in support of the takeovers took place daily-one even featured an impromptu concert by the Grateful Dead who were in town for a series of shows in Manhattan. These rallies were attacked occasionally by right wing students and professors egged on by plainclothes cops. But those scuffles were nothing compared to the police raid and attack which occurred the night of April 29. It was this attack which convinced much of the student population who had been previously uncommitted to support the radicals in their demands-which had been increased to include a demand that all disciplinary and legal charges be dropped on those involved in the takeover. The radicals' statement that the university would call in the police and beat its own students before it gave up its ties to the military or changed its construction plans were validated. A strike was called and classes became a joke. Meanwhile in France, a revolutionary insurrection was erupting. What began as a demonstration against curfew rules in university dormitories in Nanterres spread across France, igniting universities and the streets of Paris. By the middle of May the workers of France had joined in and President DeGaulle was considering launching a military attack against the French people-something which had not occurred in France since the days of the Commune in 1870. Students spent their days holding open organizing meetings in the commons areas of their schools and spent the nights fighting the police. Workers throughout France took over their factories and ran them with workers' councils. Workers in one Renault plant in the hinterlands locked their managers in their office and ran the plant themselves. Their goal was to show how needless management really is. Then, just as they did at Columbia, the powers regrouped. The workers' political parties-the Communists and the Socialists-reneged on their support of the strike in favor of immediate pay raises and some changes in working conditions. In addition, the Socialists ended up with a substantial share of political power. Although the more conservative Gaullists and their allies did lose some ground and it could be argued that the balance of power shifted in France after May 1968, one would be hard put to prove that now.
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At Columbia (as a microcosm of the United States) and in France, the corporate powers are more entrenched than ever. Students still protest, only now it's just to get a bit of recognition for the decreased status of youth in their respective societies. As recently as two years ago in France students and workers took to the streets to maintain decent wages for young people. At Columbia, students took over the Low Library that same year in protest of policies which favored the majority wealthy white student population. Neither set of protests called into question the role of the university in the corporate state, like those of 1968 did. Like the European student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit said: … "the present educational structure ensures that the majority of working-class children are barred not only from the bourgeois society we are trying to overthrow, but also from the intellectual means to see through it." (Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative)In an even more fundamental way, these words are true today. What with the rapid increase in the cost of post high-school education, the plummet in the availability and amount of government student aid, the lack of support by those same governments for K-12 public education resulting in the destruction of the educational infrastructure and the continuing "dumbing down" of our children, working class youth are more disenfranchised not only from our educational system, they are removed from society itself. Unfortunately, they also seem to be at a loss as to how to combat that removal. While certain campuses maintain a healthy oppositional culture which expresses itself both socially and politically, many more do not. Working class youth and those youth who have rejected their privilege continue to congregate in the larger cities forming youth "ghettoes" and cultures, but at this point on the eve of the millenium, most youth are reduced, like their older counterparts to merely figuring out a way to survive. Unfortunately, many of their elders who have "made it" economically (and who were once part of the generation of 1968) insist on criminalizing (or increasing the penalties for those already illegal) the very same acts they trumpeted when they were young: drug use, open sexuality, opposition to the empire, etc. The acts they have not succeeded in criminalizing (and some of those they have) are commodified, leaving young people feeling cynical even about justifiable acts of rebellion-as they perceive today's revolutionary act to be tomorrow's soft drink commercial.
Of course, it would probably take only a single spark to ignite a new prairie fire. Recent protests against the threat of renewed hostilities against the people of Iraq and for the release of North American political prisoners have been decidedly radical in character. Although these protests have drawn only a small number of participants up to now, this could change quickly. In addition, those of us in the generation represented by the events of 1968 who have not taken the road traveled by Bill Clinton or Francois Mitterand have the opportunity to join and combine what we have learned with what the young radicals of today know. The grass on the prairie is very dry.
