Armies Of The Night, Oops,
Armies Of The Day- The October 21, 2018 Women’s March On The Pentagon-Another
Sam Eaton And Ralph Morris Story From The Archives
By Frank Jackman
Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton
have never been skimpy about doing things for the cause, the cause for them
some peace in this wicked old world, some end to the endless wars their county,
their America is embroiled in, leading to wicked out of whack U.S. military
budgets that are wasteful and wanton. It was not always like that for this
pair-they were as patriotic as any other 1960s citizen having in Ralph’s case
served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam during the hellish times in 1967 and 1968.
Sam Eaton not thinking much about the war since he had a serious childhood leg
deformation and therefore was militarily unfit had his sad epiphany when his
best friend Jeff Mullins had sent him a letter begging him that if anything
happened to him in Vietnam to tell everybody who would listen to oppose the
damn war against peasants who were fighting for their land and independence and
we had no rationale quarrel with them.
Ralph had come back from
Vietnam without any illusions about what he had done, what he had watched
others do to people he had no quarrel with and Jeff Mullins had not returned
from the war. This unlikely pairing despite both being from serious
working-class backgrounds and hence tight in some matters met in the field of
fire down in Washington, D.C. on May 1971 where they “met” in Robert Kennedy
Stadium not for a professional game but
having been rounded up in a police sweep
on the streets when they were among thousands who had decided to up the ante
and try to shut down the government if it would not shut down the war. Those
were desperate times for anti-war advocates, Ralph ha gone down there with a
contingent from Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) from the Albany area.
The area where he grew up and Sam had come down with a cohort of radicals from
Cambridge near where he grew up in Carver (at one time the cranberry bog
capital of the world he would tell everybody who would listen.
That meeting, better
meeting of the minds would last until this day through thick and thin. Both men
had raised families and that had curtailed their activities somewhat over the
years. They would not meet sometimes for extended periods of time but they
always felt a bond that time and distance would not, could not break. Ralph had
joined Veterans for Peace in the early part of the 21st century and
Sam had joined as an associate so a lot of the events they went to were under
the black and white dove-etched flags of that organization. As they had come of
retirement age, Ralph turning over the high end electronics business his father
had started to his youngest son and Sam’s his printing business over to a
trusted employee they had become if anything more active as the times demanded
their efforts what with endless wars, bloated military budgets and cuts in
necessary social programs rocking the country well beyond even the most
egregious acts of the Vietnam War governments. Ralph would make Sam laugh when
he suggested that they buy a condo in Washington they were down there so much
lately back in June around the Poor Peoples Campaign.
That endless war, endless
increase in the military budgets and the endless cuts in social programs (and
add in general boorishness of the governments of late) made them prime subjects
for any event that would highlight those issues. During the summer of 2018 they
had seen during one march or other an advertisement calling for a women’s march
on the Pentagon in October. Actually the exact days of the 1967 actions,
October 20th and 21st. The call issued by antiwar
activist Cindy Sheehan. The combination of the name Cindy Sheehan and March of
the Pentagon sent flashes through their minds. Cindy Sheehan whatever her
subsequent trajectory, not all for the better, earned a lot of “street cred,”
an important characteristic to them when she almost single-handedly revived the
peace movement, the anti-Iraq opposition when that war turned into another
long-term American military quagmire when she “camped out” down at George W.
Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas back in 2005-2006 looking for answers to one question-why
was her son killed in Iraq when there was no rational reason to have gone into
that benighted country in the first place since there were no weapons of mass
destruction on the premises. That got a lot of peace activists, including Ralph
and Sam, back on track after a period of quiescence after the invasion was
started despite mass opposition. No, forget “back on track” shamed them back
onto the streets. Her name alone was enough for them to make plans.
Sam, the reader and writer
of the pair, although Ralph had plenty of ideas in his own right and on those
occasions would do himself proud with whatever “think piece” he would put
together, had been indifferent to the anti-war movement as mentioned before in
1967 and of course Ralph had been in Vietnam then so neither for their
respective reasons had been involved in the original march on the Pentagon that
year. Sam had actually later read Norman Mailer’s account of his part the
action, his self-serving part in the award-winning Armies of the Night and despite some of Mailer’s over the top
language in explaining the course of events had at that point wished he had
been part of the action which included many acts of civil disobedience when got
those, including Mailer himself, a taste
of federal or local justice. (This “later” after Sam had, and Ralph too their
own fair share of arrest for acts of non-violent civil disobedience.)
When the pair discussed the
up-coming action they knew, given the marginal condition of the active
anti-war/peace movement that there would be no literati like Mailer, Dwight
MacDonald from Partisan Review and a
fistful of other writerly types. No glitterati like William Sloane Coffin and
Doc Spock, they of draft resistance fame for which they would stand trial. And
no known heavy politicos like Allan Ginsberg OMing the building to the mist of
mind, Abbie Hoffman “levitating” the place or even left-liberal types and if
things of late ran true to form despite a deluge of press releases no
mainstream press (although they knew from Boston/Albany/New York City/
Washington D.C. experience there would be plenty of student journalists sent by
their professors to hone their skills on the cheap to people talking to like
Ralph and Sam who had learned that talking “to the kids” would hone their own interviewing
skills at least giving some pithy line worthy of the mainstream press-if they
had bothered to show up. The long and short of it was that this pair were
pumped to go do battle against Moloch on its terms and see what came of it.
Only to be for one of the
few times in their long and sometimes lonely anti-war careers disappointed or
rather perplexed at what had been so promising but which was by any standard a
bust. There would be no blame placed, although some scuttlebutt placed blame on
the lack of organization, lack of a united front with other peace and social
action groups beyond Ms. Sheehan’s name, lack of proper publicity and lack of
dramatic effect. Both men had come down by plane from Boston, gone were the
days when they would think nothing of the ten hour drive from either Albany or
Boston, think nothing of having to go through or around bitch New York City
traffic, think nothing of sleeping on church floors sleeping bag in hand, think
nothing of the gruel provided for food, thinking nothing of no sleep for three
days running of necessary. But poor bladders, poor eyesight, poor energy levels
and a little sense that bourgeois flight was not so bad for the soul after all that
had made that previous mode of travel outmoded. Even the million bus rides were
out for those same reasons.
The plan of action was for the
“masses” to meet at Pentagon City Metro stop which Sam knew from previous trips
down was the perfect place to meet to head to the Pentagon a mile or two away.
But that meeting spot should have also rung bells in their ears because no way
would the place take a mass march. And it didn’t since perhaps three or four
hundred, at the outside five, people showed up before the noon starting time
(which for one of the few times in anti-war march history actually did go off
around that time-both men thinking that fact amazing). (By Sam’s count there
between police and military far more of them than demonstrators which is a sad
commentary on the state of the peace movement as refracted trough this event.
The march route was fairly short by Washington march standards but the route,
the Sunday-driven route, meant that there would be nothing but empty parking
lots that ring the building to greet the crowd. In the event the march ended at
the North Parking lot and the dwindling crowd ( a “choir” crowd so once the
march was completed there was drift since the line-up of speakers and
performers in the vast empty parking lot, mercifully though with a sizable
number of port-a- johns for the AARP-worthy crowd was not enough to hold those
who had heard it all before) heard what they expected to hear from anti-warrior
veterans and performers.
If this was to be the
jump-off to a new revived anti-war movement like the 1967 Pentagon march had
been this did not go down well with two long-time activists. If this was that
start-please have mercy. They left the
place late that afternoon scratching their heads searching for answers-no doubt
about that hard fact
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