Outside Looking In Read Free

It would be a First Amendment petition for redress of grievance—a demand that Congress recognize the illegitimacy of funding an undeclared war. Some in Congress had agreed to present the petition on the floor, and we would block the entrance to the chamber until it granted our request. I thought of watching Kempton go through the gate in Chicago and shrugged. “I guess it’s my turn.”
    People I respected had already agreed to take part in this action, and they had been joined by a hundred or so others. So I went to Dupont Circle, to the hotel across from the Institute for Policy Studies, where I was a board member. A strategy session was convened there the night before we were to swarm like bees at the door of the House. The session broke into factional disputes over what to do if and when our petition was not met. We could refuse to leave when the Capitol Police tried to clear the entrance. We could resist arrest. We could move away from the door but hover near to chant our protests. The arguments droned in circles, going nowhere.
    Joseph Papp, the director of New York’s Shakespeare in the Park, said it was pointless to get arrested once our demand was rejected. Besides, he had business back in New York—he could not afford to stay overnight in jail. Others demanded a more determined course. Weary of the back-and-forth, I went into the hotel bar. Eva Coffin followed me—I knew her from Yale, where she had been the wife of the chaplain, William Sloan Coffin. Though divorced from him now, she admired the spirited activist he still was. She said, “We need Bill here now.”
    It was finally resolved that everyone should do what he or she wanted on the next day. Dr. Benjamin Spock said that nonviolent noncompliance was the best course, and most followed his advice, though some—Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas among them—would fade away when told that anyone staying was under arrest.
    When we got to the Capitol, Congress members greeted us—Bella Abzug and John Conyers—and said they would offer our petition inside the chamber. We sat down and scroonched ourselves as tightly as we could around the entry, a bottle stopper to block those trying to go in or come out. At one point, Congressman Gerald Ford came to the door to stare at us. Karl Hess, the former Republican who had written speeches for Ford, got up and stepped over bodies to say hello to his old boss. He reminded him of the things they had said against Lyndon Johnson’s war, but Ford, who now supported Nixon’s war, did not remember such “good old days.” Hess, later that night, would tell me in the cell we shared that he was disappointed at Ford for giving him such a cold shoulder.
    The rest of us squirmed around for hours, occasionally distracted by Judy Collins as she sang “Amazing Grace.” Gawkers circled the huddle. And then the arrests began, polite and recorded on police Polaroids. Down the Capitol steps, into buses, to be delayed endlessly in an underground garage. The women (about thirty) were taken to the women’s detention center—including one who would become a very good friend later on, Ida Terkel (wife of the oral historian Studs Terkel). The men (about seventy of us) were driven to the D.C. lockup. Out of the buses. Our names were taken down by a guard who recognized Spock (“Hi, Doc”) from other demonstrations. I smiled to see that Joe Papp was among us, despite all his talk the night before against being arrested. Then taken up for fingerprints and mug shots. (I wondered what Richard Avedon would make of his official photograph.) One phone call (mine to my wife, not a lawyer).
    Then into the cells—four of us in two-man cells—a bunk bed (two metal trays with no mattresses or pillows or blankets) and a metal john with no seat attachment. Across from our cell, Spock was rolling up his suit jacket for a pillow and sliding under the bottom bunk (he was