San Jose State Awakens

In l968, I campaigned for Robert Kennedy in California under the rubric "Students for Kennedy". He died. King was dead. Chicago was just plain nuts. and then Tommie Smith, San Jose State student athlete stood on the victory stand in the Mexico City Olympics. Clenched fist and all. We were 'committed.'

I worked the next two years in student government from the 'inside' of the South Bay Movement; first as Assistant to the student body president; then as Treasurer of the student body under James Edwards, brother of brain child Black Boycott organizer Harry Edwards. You should read up on Edwards and the Black Boycott, SNCC and the Black Panthers to get some feel for the 'movement' as San Jose State in those two years. Kent State put and end to dissent, gagging protest on the West Coast as Berkeley's PeopleÕs Park never did (circa l969)...

I think it was an important rite of passage for our generation to come to terms with Vietnam. In many cases, it marked our first incursions into adulthood. I think an important aspect of the anthology is to indicate how each of us personally came to terms with a war that some of us claimed was grossly immoral, while others considered its support to be an expression of patriotism. I would like to learn more of your "existential journey" as you came to terms with Vietnam, or joined the antiwar movement.

"Joined" the antiwar movement... I think that is a very strange term. We didn't have to enlist or enroll or anything. If the antiwar movement wasn't "joined" as an established entity, one merely "became" a part of it as it evolved. How did it happen for you?

From my viewpoint and experience people entered the 'movement' by degrees, I certainly did. I didn't consider myself an 'activist' until much later in the 70's and long after I already behaved like I was a target.

I generally link my 'activist' days now with the dawn of the Kennedy campaign in l968.

Kennnedy was just a lot of work. I was the Coordinator at Cal State Hayward for Southern Alameda County Students for Kennedy. I had just got off one campaign, for student body President for Richard Miner and found myself once again doing the thankless tasks behind the scenes to organize a grass roots movement. My roomate was the front man and spokesperson of the organization. He had heard of my escapade at San Jose and contacted me, I did not at first approach him. I only visited the Northern California Headquarters once, in San Francisco where a former San Jose State student leader from the mid sixties was on the staff as a co-ordinator(one Dick Wolf) The Assissination was devastating. I was with my brother in San Jose the night of the election, and witnessed the televised report. All I could do was sit in the corner an cry. The student movement dissolved overnight people in Hayward were speechless. We moved to an era beyond hope beyond even will...

I suppose you studied Thoreau and civil disobedience. Did your studies influence your thinking in any way? I remember reading a lot of existentialist writers at the time -- people like Sartre and Kafka. Writers who portrayed a mad, upside-down society, where the only antidote for madness was for people to take control of the world and society and establish their own values of good and evil.

On Philosphy, I've had Instructors try to tell me the era was neolistic. I doubt that. I too remember much about Existentialism and read quite a lot of extra - outside - reading, for a student. Yes, Sarte and Camus were reviewed, as was -- later after Kent state and the attacks -- Martin Buber and the life of Gandhi. I spent two weeks in the summer of l970 on Joan Baez's Ranch, The Institute for Study of Non-Violence, and only there came in contact with Throeau. F. Fanon was also popular in those dark days after the Masacre in Ohio, but I was more interested in putting my world, shattered as it was back together, rather than continue to pull it apart.

I met Ms. Baez in May of l970 on campus speaking on behalf of her husband for the Resistance. She invited a group of us after the presentation up to her ranch in Palo Alto where she maintained an Institute on Non-Violence under the guidance of Ira Sandperil. I traveled there that summer from a retreat in Yosemite, and spent two weeks studying radical community alternatives on "The Land" and commune Joan maintained on some property a half mile up Page Mill road from her own house. Mid way through the stay, she cancelled a trip to France,and invited the seminar on the "land" down to her house for steak dinner. She had a film of David before his arrest and told stories around the campfire. I was seriously concerned about her safety (a la Kent State ) and spoke with her briefly. The meeting was causual and neighborly, me being from the next province down from Stanford, that being San Jose State. I returned in l973 on the weekend of the Viet Nam truce, but broke and retiring I remained in the background.

Which major public gatherings did you attend during the Vietnam era?

I only attended actual major events rallies, if you will, in l969. Those included a) a rally at the Presidio in San Francisco, b) a March on Sacramento in response to the brutality at Berkeley in People's Park, participation as a witness to the protest on campus in the Viet Nam Day Mobilization (Oct. l5th), the March to the Polo Gounds in San Francisco of an est. l/2 million demonstrators (all peaceful- I think timed with the outpouring in Washington DC), e) the Altamont Rock Concert, advertised as the Woodstock of the West and a bit of a let down. -- the violense widely reported must have occured late, because we left early and rather disappointed.

The march on Sacramento was a festive occasion with students (l0,000) waving peace signs to onlookers and Richard Miner speaking for indictment of Sheriff Frank Madigan. The San Jose State student body officers and office staff had co-ordinated the march on the State Colllege trunk line, over the weekend contacting every college in Northern California. It was highly orchestrated and organized. A very peaceful protest, ...considering what was going on in Berkeley at that very moment.

Major events prior to that include the campaign in California for Robert Kennedy in the Spring and Hubert Humphrey in the fall - after a much touted visit to San Jose State (see Theodre White's Making of a President l968). Prior to that I was in Army ROTC and would not compromise my obligations with conflict of interest. Though I campaigned heavily in spring l967 against the Greek House's conservative and Independent's Moderate candidate, you may deduct from that my own support was Liberal though the Radicals had their own separate fourth ticket and the aliance of l969 was two years in the making.

Humphrey never did seem to span the 'generation gap' that seperated youth from adult worlds after Chicago. He came to San Jose to rally youth to the cause, and was taken off guard when Miner, a McCarthy supporter, challenged him to defend his position on Viet Nam. Humphrey was caught by surprise, but his response and the receptiveness of his campaign in the llth hour of the election to students, (we had the run of the place on his visit) turned many to re-evaluate our relation with Democrats. Later in l969 I was with Miner in Sacramento when "Big Daddy" Jess Unrah, speaker of the Assembly running against Reagan for Governor on the Demo ticket, advocated student support in return for [favors - unstated] after he beat Reagan. The word was out Unrah wanted to keep a lid on the campuses and not give Reagan any ammuninion for the Governors race.

What can you say about the political atmosphere on campus during the Vietnam era?

Amongst the leadership was a small family that feuded bitterly. We all knew one another. We associated with one another at campus events and dialogue never broke down between extremes. This in itself marks San Jose State as unusual by my understanding of events. But after the forming and re-forming of alliances over three previously bitter years, one could or certainly shouldn't have taken support at face value. Fifth column and covert activity was well underway when I took office as student body treasurer in Nov. l969. Secondly though it seemed easy to plug the civil rights movement into the anti-war movement it blew the fuse!! Racism proved to have survived the later years of anti-war movement - though they used the same tactics and in some cases strategy. I never should have trusted the Dean of Students the office was obviously meant to defuse an real movement on campus and they proved the 'mine field' when most of my own associates had long ago graduated.

I often crossed the line, as one of the more 'straight' liberal students to confer with the Reactionaries and Greek row in the mid and late sixties. I was considered more open minded and receptive to listen to their concerns than the other left leaders who, once in control, in turn locked out the Right - much as the right had locked them out since l960. In turn I had much intellegience on movement amongst right leadership that was prized by left leaders. The ring leader in the 'show down of l969 was one Marles Aliamo, a Graduate Sociology student, who backed one Jim McMasters as the conservative, 'straight' wing of the campus. McMasters, head of the Business School student council , waged unrelenting warefare on and off campus for 9 months in an effort to re-capture the Executive Offices the Greeks had lost in the battle of l967. (James Edwards won). The right collapased in the aftermath of moblization over Kent State six months later. It didn't seriously figure in campuse discourse for a decade thereafter.

S.D.S. always maintained a seperate base even after Edwards victory. Taking up their cause, did not rally them to our side in great numbers. But it did alienate the moderate middle and was the reason the moderates made one return visit in l970-7l before they too became passe'. Mike Buck (student body President l97l-72 and Dennis King A.S.President l972-73 solidified the coalition built by Edwards and I with a lot of Miner backers support into a semi-permanent institution on campus and a formidable force...

I can see from your thesis that the early years of the antiwar movement forged a strong camraderie between students, Blacks and the New Left, but you think this caolition started to evaporate after Kent State. Why do you suppose this coalition got started?

The early years were rivalry between Greeks and Indpendents (all non-Greeks). The Greek houses had run the campus political machinery since world war II. and there were several barriers to enter built right in to regulate freedom of speech and assembly by the Greeks on campus here at San Jose State.

Rallies were disrupted. Permits for tabling were denied, Meeting on campus were confounded. Everything orginated out of the campus cafeteria as a result. Assembly there could not be regulated. It became as a result a hot bed of activism. Poetry reading by radical leaders became common place on the cafeteria front lawn on 7th streeet. They became known as 7th street forums. and the campuses first exercise of Free speech. But the symbol of authority was Campus Government which exercised final veto power over these activities. Not that the radicals didn't try ... they were repeatedly rebuffed and thwarted. Tempers flared, sides were taken, lines were drawn.

Prior to Johnson, the issue was mostly 'Student Power' enfranchising the disenfranchised on campus. The fraternity system finally divided aided by activist like Miner and Lokey and that allowed the Independents to drive a radical wedge between factions and gain a stonghold in l968...

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