Get where will the rage engend by these events be channelled? u realise it's not rain" McCarthy delegate at Chicago (Our U.S. Correspondent)
e stockyards, as the Convention itself, beat the demonstrators bloody.
thing was obviously and crudely frustration or, worse, depoliticisa- socialisation of the system. Un- the splashing-on of water, the usual Causing more alarm among the whi.h exists in several southern American radicals than Mayor states. The entire group was indicted Daley's lunacy in Chicago is the and tried within a period of a fortgeneral political repression settling night, and he sentences vary beon the movement. The political tween five and thirty years. SNCC flower children and the McCarthy has been smashed in Texas. boy scouts brigade learned several This is not the only example of lessons in Chicago, only one. repression in the same state. It will which was that they now had some be remembered that over forty solidea of the treatment which Ameri- diers were arrested and are still in can blacks suffer day by day, year stockade at Fort Hood, Texas, in year out. The other lessons re- for refusing to go to Chicago to vcive round one central point. The "deal with" the demonstrators there. American establishment will use Close to Fort Hood, members of whatever agencies it considers neces- the Mobilization Against The War sary, allowing them to use whatever group had been running a coffee bar, violence it considers necessary, in the only "non-Army" establishment order to protect what it sees as its within 50 miles, where, apart from interest. colice, the soldiers were introduced Naturally, the radicals of the SDS. to anti-War, socialist ideas in of SNCC and of the Panthers have atmosphere dialectically opposite to known this for some time. They life at Fort Hood. Three weeks ago have not only known that repres. the police raided the coffee shop SIOn would be applied in their and "found" about a pound of grass intellectual analysis; they have been on the premises. Bail on the owners experiencing severe repression for was fixed at 65,000 dollars; the shop come time. Earlier this summer, has been closed. LBI's closest buddy, Governor Con- The situation in Texas is, in fact. nelly of Texas, the one who got typical of the overall situation across away in Dallas, decided that SNCC America. The SDS students from would be smashed in the State. Columbia, New York, who fought a Every senior SNCC committee mem- particularly heroic action in the Uniber in Texas was arrested within versity in the Spring, have been the last month, and almost all mys- fighting throughout this summer to teriously found anth cannibis stay out of jail. It has cost them, so various forms. One or two were held far, over 100,000 dollars to stay under laws which forbid the disrup- free this summer, money spent in tion of work, anti-Union legislation bail, fines. bribes and lawyers" fee. The money has come from libera benefactors in New York, but it i becoming clear that this type financial pressure, apart from the continual police harrassment will be used more frequently, and become more difficult to evade.
Money and brutality: the watch words of the American police force It's not the corruption that should our primary concern (though Dick Gregory points out that there is more money made by the crime syndicates in Chicago, from prostitu a week, than the cost of all the race riots in a year), but rather we should watch the revealed pattern of suppression. Apparently the Ameri can establishment rates its dissidents sufficiently highly to choose the degree of repression they do. The British establishment is so much more appreciates that we haven't yet taxed their restraint. But let's watch the weeks up to October 26th, and directly afterward. Perhaps we will begin to see the bogus charges, conspiracy raps, the heavy bails and fines that are now faced continually by our American Cam. rades. We must be prepared to meet the problem at a sophisticated political level if RSSF is not to operate out of Brixton Prison. Venceremos!
DAVID TRIESMAN.
----- pull-quotes -----
tion, drug peddling, illegal gambling. large scale robbery, in the course of