BLACK (Friday Nov. 14, 1969) Page 3 Continuing...

We passed by the table with hundred of buttons of all sizes. A blue and white button with black crosses said, “No more Vietnams” Another one in red and white and blue, “If you are not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” – Eldridge Cleaver.” “Buttons, please buy a button.”

Two hundred of us were crowded into the first tent. The translucent light filtering through the walls of the tent suddenly extinguished. The incandescent light bulbs hanging from the main beam of the tent begin to sway wildly. The skirts of the tent flapped precariously away from their stakes. The sun had lost its brief battle with the weather. A crash of thunder and the rain poured. We heard the desperate yells of the people outside. Shadows on the screen of the tent walls flashed by. We, crammed shoulder to shoulder inside the tent, felt warm and protected by the self-generated heat of close bodies.

As we passed out into the narrow corridor between the two tents, we could still see many marchers waiting in the relentless rain. The second tent was only a way station to the third. The only messages included two telephone numbers – one for emergency medical aid, the other for legal help in the case of any political trouble; and that the March should take between 2 to 2 ½ hours from the staging ground to the Capitol although we were presently running ½ to 1 hour behind schedule. It was now 4:15; we had been waiting nearly 2 ½ hours.

Ten minutes later half of the second tent passed into the third and final tent which was much smaller than the other two. On each side of the tent on long narrow tables lay hundreds of cardboard placards each with the name of a deceased soldier in large black felt pen letters and his home state. Behind the tables New Mobe volunteers handed the cardboard corpses to the waiting marchers. A thin brown cord dangled over the top of the placard. At the end of the line we picked up a candle and a cup. It would soon be dark and Pat and I and Steve would be marching at night fall with the same flickering candles and spectral faces as yesterday’s marchers. I looped a rope around my neck and the name card fluttered in protest as the cold wind blasted us as we finally commenced to march. The rain had again abated but it was bitterly cold, partially because of the wind but mainly because I still hadn’t had enough time to dry out. We climbed up the now muddy path of the knoll and started across the bridge.


Washington rush hour traffic winded its way around the Lincoln Memorial and onto the Memorial Bridge where it stalled. The marchers trooped irregularly in odd formations of two’s, three’s, and more. The wind was as hostile as ever: it snapped at the placards and nearly hoisted them off our necks. I grabbed hold of the name plate to keep it from sailing away. Pat, Steve and I walked three abreast across the bridge, Steve on the curbside. We flashed the V for victory sign to the stalled outward bound traffic to the Virginian suburbs escaping their Washington captivity. A pattern emerged. Those drivers in the curb lane responded to the prodding V signs of Steve, Pat and the other marchers. Either their consciences were pricked by this very cold, scraggily band of marchers or else they genuinely felt at one with them. The V-sign and the good natured smile of the marchers encouraged them to respond with the V-sign in return. However, those in the middle lane seemed more insulated and safe from the marchers and many refused even to glance at the prodding, flashing two fingers. And those in the outer lane were downright hostile and impervious.

Steve became vexed at the drivers in the outside lane. He waved and flashed the sign even more vigorously to those in the outside land looking directly at them and shouting: “Yes, I mean you.” The usual response however, was to pretend that we marchers didn’t even exist, that today was like any other day in the mechanical routine of going home. Yet in the perseverance of the divers in averting our gestures and glances in fact, acknowledged our presence and purpose. “Goddamned you cocksuckers—raise your hands” Pat and I chuckled as Steve turned to us and grinned. A car in the outside lane was stuffed with six stodgy bureaucrats. Steve shot them the V-sign. As the car started up again, one of the exemplary silent majoritarians gave us the finger in return.


“That son-of-a-bitch, Steve ranted. “Just let one of those cocksuckers try to do it near me. I’ll give him good.”


How strange. Here we were marching in this ungodly weather. It began to rain again, coming down in heavy whipping torrents. The wind tore into our hind sides completely soaking my water repellent coat and the back side of my corduroy pants, and flailed my head ripping the hair off my frozen scalp.

What a day for a march. All of us were so bedraggled and so cold I would have thought that those citizens of our country who were so snug in their hermetically sealed worlds with the heaters going full blast, would look sympathetically at us: we who were their proxies paying our respect and honoring the memory of our fallen deal in Vietnam. Few, however, were able to arouse themselves from the smugness and complacency of their selfish, trifling little worlds. Most were unaffected by the war, so why get involved? They could not even raise their two fucking fingers to register their moral voice of protest to the ongoing tragedy, both American and Vietnamese, to the war in Vietnam. No, if Americans were to involve themselves with anything, it would have to affect their wallets, like the rising cost of living or heavy taxes due, in large measure to the war itself. But reasons of humanity or morality went beyond the ken of action of the “great silent Majority.” Mr. Nixon had been only partially right in his appellation: silent yes, but great, NO; crass was surely most accurate