Alinsky adovcates change
Saul Alinsky, sociologist, activist and author, denounced student activists who depend on empty rhetoric and stressed the need for organized activists who are unafraid to face the existing society.
The bespectacled self-proclaimed "professional radical" spoke to a capacity crowd in the Union Ballroom Tuesday night.
Alinsky spoke in a mildly abrasive manner of the activists, who by working outside the system, are placing themselves "out in space." He continually insisted the only way for activists to beat the establishment was to work within.
Alinsky, who looked more like a professor than a radical, suggested that students stop looking down on their middle class background. He said students who know the middle class world should start organizing and educating toward middle class ideals. He referred to the student revolution as more of a revelation of ideas and values which have long been ignored and should be brought back to life.
Alinsky says change will come only by working within the system.
Alinsky said that for the first time stock proxies would be used for the people, and suggested that student activists propose a
Alinsky suggested that one of the best ways to jolt the establishment was to organize student proxies. He insisted that hitting corporate society in the pocket was a far more effective way of causing a major shakeup than a sit-in or riot.
Photos by Ron Bishop
stockholder's meeting in New York City stadium.
Alinsky spoke of change as a natural and productive environment. He said that conflict is part of the difficult act of settling differences.
Alinsky warned of an approaching period which would be dangerously right, where people
would begin the day reciting the words of the "Star Spangled Banner" and the United States would risk losing its way of life.
He spoke of a Madison Avenue, middle class, moral hygiene attitude which he named as one of the most subversive forces in the country. Alinsky said that public support for Ronald Reagan could
not have jumped from 52% to 80% without help from this subversive attitude.
Alinsky drew laughter and applause in several parts of his speech, titled "American Revolution—Act II," but portions of the audience appeared mildly irritated when he spoke of John Brown and Carry action as the last Kansas radicals.
80th Year, No.71
The University of Kansas—Lawrence, Kansas Wednesday, Feb. 4, 1970
Critics attack war policy
WASHINGTON (UPI)—Senate critics described the administration's Vietnam War policies Tuesday as a public relations success fostered by a "pistol-whipped" news media, but a strategic failure.
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, accused by Sen. Harold Hughes, D-Iowa, and Sen. J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., of doing the pistol whipping, countered with charges Democrats are "casting about aimlessly" for a way to discredit the administration.
The exchange came as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened two days of hearings on a bill by Sen. Charles E. Goodell, R-N.Y., and other measures concerning Vietnam. Goodell again called for passage of legislation requiring total U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam by Dec. 1.
Goodell told the committee the administration's Vietnamization policies were a "public relations success" but, at best, would only scale down U.S. activities to a residual force level of perhaps 200,000 American troops. He said the war had been "cosmetized," not Vietnamized.
Goodell said estimates of the U.S. residual force in Vietnam ranged from 250,000 men as discussed by "Americans and Vietnamese officials in Saigon", to 30,000, which Goodell said had been mentioned by Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird.
Hughes and Chairman Fulbright said Agnew was responsible for the current state of national "euphoria" about Vietnam because he had "pistol whipped" news media into telling only the good side of the war.
Agnew bristled when told of the charges as he emerged from a briefing session for Republican senators on his recent swing through Asia.
"I think that some of the opposition party people who've dropped all their eggs in one basket by attempting to discredit the U.S. position in Vietnam have found such a little bit of public support for themselves that now they're casting about aimlessly for some way to try to turn the gun back on the administration.
Agnew said, "the people are with the President on this. They've shown this, and no amount of self serving by opposition senators is going to change that."
The hearing, itself, was comparatively restrained. Fulbright even gave the administration some credit for helping reverse the course of the war. Little support emerged for the Goodell proposal.
Fulbright said there had been "signal improvement" in U.S. war policy.
He described the hearings as an attempt to "assist the President in bringing an early end to this war which has divided and irritated the American people for the last five years."
Abernathy refuses to testify in Chicago conspiracy trial
De-escalation policies begun by (Continued to page 20)
Kunstler Monday accused the judge of presiding at "a legal lynching" after the judge ruled
CHICAGO (UPI)—The Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy passed up a chance to testify in the riot conspiracy trial Tuesday. A defense attorney read a purported message from the civil rights leader criticizing the court's refusal to hear him Monday and calling the defendants "brothers on trial."
The judge refused to explain Abernathy's failure to appear to the jury lest he make himself the target of "another vilifying tirade" by William M. Kunstler, the chief defense attorney.
U. S. District Court Judge Julius J. Hoffman called the Abernathy statement "vilifying" and "a pretty horrible thing."
the defense had to abide by an agreement reached with the prosecution Friday and rest its case without presenting another witness.
Hoffman reversed that decision late Monday after the government protested its case had been prejudiced when Kunstler embraced and kissed the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in open court with the jury present.
But Abernathy left Chicago Monday and Kunstler read in court Tuesday the "regrets" which he said were dictated to him by telephone from Clarksdale, Miss.
Kunstler quoted Abernathy as saying he left Chicago with "a heavy heart." He said Abernathy (Continued to page 20)
Inside...
“Goodbye, Mr. Chips” ... page 5
Gymnastics ... page 8
More on Ecology ... page 4
Fluoridation ... page 18
By United Press International
UDK News Roundup
Judge refuses defence
WASHINGTON—A federal court judge has refused to allow nine defendants, including four Roman Catholic priests, to defend themselves in a trial on charges they destroyed equipment of the Dow Chemical Co. in March, 1969, as a protest to Dow's manufacture of napalm.
Judge John H. Pratt twice denied the request of the "D.C. Nine" on the first day of the trial Tuesday to speak for themselves. He also admonished them several times for speaking out of turn and at one point he said: "Either sit down or the marshal will put you down."
Lieutenant fights dismissal
FORT ORD, Calif.-A 24-year-old lieutenant, dismissed from the Army for refusing to go to Vietnam, says he will appeal his dismissal and ask for an honorable discharge.
Second Lt. Harold Bernt of Montclair, N.J., was sentenced to dismissal Monday by a one-officer court-martial board. For an officer, dismissal is equivalent to a dishonorable discharge for an enlisted man. All military benefits are forfeited.
Asian policy called a hoax
WASHINGTON—Sen. George S. McGovern, S.-S.D., said today President Nixon's program for gradual U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was a "political hoax" anticipating a 300,000-man American force in Southeast Asia for 15 or 20 more years.
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