University of Virginia Library

David Giltinan

Behind The Failure Of The Big March

The March on Washington was a
nice, inoffensive, liberal tactic. It
was very very big, but so concerned
about it's potential strength that in
the end it had none. It was so
anxious to create a non-aggressive
atmosphere in the face of Nixon's
aggressive bluster that what was
billed as a united demand for peace
seemed to come off as an insipid
whine for attention. The March
generally ignored its own most
dedicated people when they
stormed off to the Justice Department,
preferring to sit on the Mall,
only to be contemptuously teargassed
into oblivion later by the
Washington Police (who were generally
praised for not beating the hell
out of everyone) (as if they would
have bothered).

The gesture seemed fitting. You
can ask the 113 men who died this
week in Viet Nam if the Big March
Stopped The War Now.

Remember that Nixon watched
the football game while we teeming
millions, colorful, friendly and
harmless, froze on the Mall. Nixon
watched television because nothing
happened to force him to do
otherwise. Remember that, all you
liberals, when you call the people
who marched on the Justice
Department 'fools' and 'clowns.'
Remember also that John Mitchell,
on the fifth floor of that building,
did not watch television. He was
tear-gassed out of his own office.
He was not happy about it, but the
march was not supposed to make
John Mitchell happy, it was supposed
to make him aware.

Active Opposition

When you deal with an oppressive
government, such as we draft
age males consider ourselves to be
dealing with, you have just three
philosophies of action available to
you. You can support the government
and reap the rewards. You
can actively oppose the government,
either within the political
system in elections, or within the
politically acceptable framework of
actions, such as with peaceful
demonstrations, or confrontations
(perhaps not so peaceful) or,
ultimately, with revolution. You
can also oppose the government
passively, which involved simply
refusing to recognize its existence
or its right to influence your
existence. What ever you do, from
enlistment to assassination to getting
stoned falls into one of these
categories. How effective your
action is generally depends upon
how wholeheartedly it adheres to
tenets of its particular category.
This is why the Big March failed.

The Big March fell in the
category of active opposition to the
government. The democratic
system is an active system. The
philosophy of the March, active
dissent, was no different from the
philosophy of an election or a
Justice Department Confrontation,
or a revolution.

But the Big March did not have
the strength of its own convictions.
It's activist philosophy was painfully
contradicted by wishy-washy
passivist liberal techniques. We
demonstrated in the empty streets
of an empty city, we flung our
most virulent epithets (Tricky
Dick!!) at empty buses a block
from the White House. We copped
out, by the hundreds of thousands
on a chance to really confront
somebody at the Justice Department.
No wonder Nixon watched
TV, the whole scene was pretty
boring.

Chicken Majority

There were plenty of good
reasons for the March to have been
the way it was. It requires daring,
to say the least, to attempt a
violent confrontation with the only
government in the world that has
ever dropped atomic bombs on real
live people. A major axiom of
revolutionary philosophy (which
manifests itself in guerrilla warfare
tactics) is not to fight unless you
think you will win, and had we
fought in Washington we would
have lost, physically to forty-thousand
armed troops and politically
to those who would discredit the
Movement.

All of this leads to a dilemma, as
long as you choose to oppose the
government in traditional, which is
to say activist, manners. If you stay
liberal you are ignored, and in the
process of working within a political
framework you run the risk of
appearing to justify that framework,
thus giving rise to incredible
situations, such as Melvin Laird's
pronouncement that he was 'very
heartened' by the March. On the
other hand, if you choose to be an
activist and you get radical about it
and really fight, then you are (a)
summarily stomped by the most
powerful military machine anywhere
ever and (b) abandoned by
the chicken majority (of whom
the author is a member) who
simply don't care for violence
period. Co-opted or creamed, either
way you lose.

Although the March on Washington
was founded on a traditional
activist political philosophy, it was