The Cavalier daily :: Friday, May 14, 1971 :: University of Virginia Library

On Monday, May 3, about 30
students from U. Va. were arrested
on the Virginia side of Key Bridge.
We were charged with "obstructing
traffic" or "disorderly conduct"
and taken to the Arlington County
Jail. On Wednesday about 20 more
of us were arrested at the Capital,
charged with "unlawful entry" and
taken to the D.C. Coliseum. We
were part of a group of over 12,000
persons arrested last week in this
country's first experience with mass
nonviolent civil disobedience.

While this country was getting
its first taste of mass nonviolent
civil disobedience, well over 10,000
persons were getting their first taste
of jail. If it is true that the level of
civilization of a society can be
measured by the quality of its jail,
12,000 persons found out just
where America is at. What we saw
was a dying system gasping for
breath. We were beat, gassed, and
jailed, but our spirit was not
broken, because we knew we had
won. We knew that the system we
were fighting was fighting for
survival, and we knew it was too
late. We had learned from the
Vietnamese that all the military
might in the world cannot stop a
people's struggle for peace and
justice. The same system that is
being beaten in Vietnam will also
be beaten in this country.

First came the realization that
we could and, in fact, would win.
There was a second revelation,
which was that we could do it
nonviolently. Until the formation
of the People's Coalition and the
Mayday Tribe, nonviolence had
been considered old hat. However,
last week we saw that nonviolence
can work. Despite the greatly
distorted picture painted by the
news media, most of the Mayday
participants were not into trashing,
but were doing nonviolent civil
disobedience. Monday's action
showed us how it works.

On Monday, 300 of us were
arrested in the state of Virginia,
most in Arlington County. During
the nine hours we spent in jail, and
court, we watched the judicial
process in Arlington County fall
apart. Better than 200 of the
persons arrested were
null-processed or charges were
dropped, because of blunders in the
judicial process. Confusion and
disorder greeted us at every turn. It
soon became obvious that just 300
people had brought the judicial
process in Arlington County to its
knees. When we were busted in
D.C. on Wednesday we saw the
same picture.

The question popped into our
heads: If 12,000 people can do this
much damage, what would have
happened had the 300,000 who
were here the week before, sat
down in the streets? Or, what if we
could have had one or two
thousand people arrested every day
for a week, or a month? The
government of Washington D.C.
and the government of the United
States of Amerika simply could not
handle it. We can win!

The most common objection we
heard to this line of reasoning was
that the judicial process is not our
target - that it is, in fact, our
friend. I agree. However, in a
bureaucracy, there is no target,
because in a bureaucracy no one
rules. There is another important
point. Social systems exist in a
delicate balance and are highly
interrelated What affects one will
affect all of the others. We may
compare these systems and their
interrelationships to a chain, and of
course, the place to break a chain is
at its weakest link. The judicial
branch of our government is that
link.

Realizing these things brought
me great joy, but this was stifled by
another fact: the great majority of
America's youth either do not
accept this tactic or lack the
commitment to spend two or three
days in jail. The illusion that we can
end the struggle and suffering
without struggling & suffering
ourselves still exists.

The great majority of our
antiwar activists still feel that
demonstrating and marching and
shouting and singing "Give peace a
chance," will end the war. But it
won't. Power yields only to power,
and until we realize this, and until
we are willing to put our bodies
between the war machine and the
Vietnamese people, the war will
continue. The war will end when
we want it to, and not before.