Some may say, HEY! Isn't this page about action? Of course it is! Yet,
I've barely survived some thoughtless action - enough times to teach me to
think things through deeply and as calmly as possible. When such
consideration becomes practice, the chances of accomplishing goals
reasonably well planned and implemented increases.
A case in point is an attempt to blockade Port Richmond in California's
San Francisco's Bay Area, back in the summer of 1968, when the Vietnam
conflict was raging (I call it conflict because "WAR" was never
formally declared). All the supply for the entire effort was shipped from
this naval depot. People well trained in non-violent civil dis-obedience,
following an approach developed by Mahatma Gandhi in India, and applied
during Civil Rights Demostrations in the American Southern states,
were sitting down in the truck entry supply road.
(By 1968, I had already participated in a non-violent Peace Walk from
Central Park in New York City's Manhattan to the Riverside Church on the
East River. It's next to the United Nations Plaza. There were upwards of
500,000 people led by the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King,
Jr. and
the eminent pediatrician Doctor Benjamin Spock. April 15, 1967. In his
address to the crowd, the press, and the world, King declared his public
opposition to the military campaign in South Vietnam - which by then was
being called a WAR, even though Congress never did get around to
declaring it such, as required by the US Constitution.)
I knew the people sitting in on the road had gone through rigorous
non-violence sensitivity training. Going through staging of how to
respond to police carrying limp bodies to waiting school buses
commameered for the day by the authorities, the demonstrators had
informed the government exactly what they would be doing - no active
resistance, just the limp response. The police agreed to participate in
the nature of the demonstration by carrying the people willing to be
arrested - tow to a demonstator. I had never had the opportunity to
volunteer for such activity. I and a friend had accepted a ride from
Berkeley about 8 miles south of the Naval Depot, and were observing from
the side walk acrross the road from the entrance.
Suddenly, one of the county deputy sherriff's "lost" it and began
attacking one of the demonstrator's with a billy club. A hue and cry
arose from the crowd. I felt a raging fury, and a wrenching need in my
guts to run over and sit down myself!
A calm voice spoke in my head: You are not trained in non-violent
resistance, you will not help the situation by jumping into the melee in
a rage...I stood my ground. As I put these thoughts into words, I assure
my readers that they are an attempt to convey what went through my mind
more rapidly than words can travel...I was learning the skill of
thinking on my feet - call that day a survival course in the school of
sudden change.
