ustxtxb_obs_1967_08_04_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

KENNEDY raQ FULBRIGHT VU Fluorescent, genuine peel-off bumperstrip stock. 2 for 25c 10 for $1 150 for $10 1,000 for $50 Texas Division Citizens for Kennedy-Fulbright P.O. Box 1056 Austin. Texas 78767 chamber of commerce to provide room for the demonstrators. The chamber of commerce adjoins the coliseum property. Had the President entered through the main entrance he might have seen the demonstrators, thought not necessarily, as they were well out of the way. However, Johnson entered through a door on the side of the building opposite the demonstrators and didn’t see them. A group of several Austin couples had planned an interesting move for the occasion. The plan was to drive up to the main entrance of the coliseum with a selection of signs protesting the war in the back seats of their cars, alight, and parade around with the signs. The couples were to dress in evening wear as if they were invited to the dinner. All but two persons backed out. Going through with it were an Austin woman, Gwen Gardner, and a friend. Mrs. Gardner wore a formal length black sheath gown, festooning the bodice with three buttons: two in support of La Huelga, the Valley farm workers’ strike, and a third that read “Part of the With LBJ,” a relic of the 1964 Presidential campaign. Mrs. Gardner’s escort settled for wearing a shirt ankbluejeans. They had a few signs with them in the rear of their car, reading such as “Even the Upper Crust Won’t Eat Johnson Pie,” “Noblesse Oblige, but Bargain with Ho Chi Minh,” and “What’s Good for Ling-TemcoVought Is Not Good for the Country.” However, the plot fell asunder when it developed that officers were checking guests’ invitations at the entrance to the coliseum driveway before permitting them to drive on up to the main entrance. Mrs. Gardner, still in formal regalia, and her escort parked in the parking lot and joined the demonstrators. About 7 o’clock, 30 minutes after the peace groups had begun gathering, a motorcade carrying members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars drove up opposite the demonstration, lead by a flagbedecked pickup truck that bore a banner reading “War Veterans and Proud To Be Americans.” Six cars followed, three of them bearing U.S. flags. Alighting from their vehicles the veterans’ group, numbering about 30, displayed a sign that said “We Are With You, Mr. President” and “Freedom Is Worth Fighting For.” CARS CARRYING dinner guests to the coliseum passed along a driveway that separated the two opposing groups. Some of the peace demonstrators waved at the people in the cars as they drove by, at times yelling, “Enjoy your meal,” “Eat hearty,” and similar remarks. One lady, in fur, drove by waving, and then realized the bystanders were peace demonstrators and began trying verbally to cancel her waving, saying, “Oh, no. Oh, no!” A gentleman in formal evening wear, seated in the back seat of a black Cadillac, signalled his reaction to the demonstration by brandishing the manual digit that is located between the forefinger and the ring finger. This pleased the demonstrators enormously. At times word would pass through the crowd of the President’s progress in arriving at Bergstrom Air Force Base and then driving by motorcade to the site. After a time it was concluded that the President was inside, though no one had seen him. After the traffic along the driveway had stopped, the diners all inside eating, one or two of the VFW group took to yelling imprecations at the peace demonstrators. One young man in the VFW ranks loudly said, surveying the crowd, “I don’t see any men over there.” Seeing a peace demonstrator’s sign that indicated the bearer was a veteran, the same young man in the VFW yelled, “How far did you go, [Fort] Hood?” Another of the VFW said, referring to one of the peace demonstrators, “I wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire.” About 8:10, the pro-war people packed their signs and left. The peace demonstrators then took their leave. The next morning’s Austin American described the scene outside the auditorium as consisting of “loyal Americans waving the flag and what has come to be the usual number of Austin beatniks in ragged attire and waving pre-arranged placards.” Plans to let reporters watch from a discreet distance didn’t work out, to the great annoyance of the press. The reporters were told by officers at the scene that they would have to stand in the same general area as the demonstrators and could not, as some of the press wished, stand by the entrance to note who attended the event. Several reporters expressed indignation at this treatment and finally some of them defied the order, going to the door to watch who went in. Will Davis, state Democratic chairman and a co-host of the affair, said that the annual President’s Club gatherings are private parties and the Democratic Party “does not want reporters attending them.” G.O. Vietnam: History and Policy Austin Although I believe that fundamental disagreements on Vietnam involve political and moral, not simple factual, considerations, I am also convinced that a more consistent appeal to established facts would raise the general level of debate The writer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas and is active with the U.T. Committee to End the War in Vietnam. 10 The Texas Observer BUMPERSTRIPS: between the defenders of present policy and their critics. It would be less than candid of me, however, not to express at Robert Palter the outset my opinion that the official spokesmen for present policy have blatantly and repeatedly misrepresented the essential facts about Vietnam and U.S. involvement there; and that, generally, the higher the office of the spokesman, the greater has been the degree of misrepresentation. Furthermore, the constant repetition of outrageous falsehoods finally pushes many otherwise intelligent and critical people into a fantasy world from which communication with the real world becomes ever more uncertain and infrequent. Illustrations of this process abound; one which is perhaps of some special local interest may be found in the letter from ing some excerpts from a sermon on Vietnam by Rabbi Levi Olan of Dallas \(Obs., Olan’s errors, Lt. Quinn in fact presents us with an almost unrelieved succession of false and misleading statements of his own and this in spite of the fact that the lieutenant sets himself up as an onthe-spot specialist in the current debate on Vietnam , \( see his articles datelined Saigon in The Daily Texan during the emplary case of the self-styled “expert” who turns out to be nothing more than a slightly disguised apologist for whatever the U.S. government chooses to do in Vietnam. In reflecting on this deplorable led over the past few months to seek some solid basis in historical fact for evaluating what is happening, and what could happen, in Vietnam. My own qualifications for discussing Vietnam may be simply stated: I have read critically a fair amount of material on Vietnam, deliberately selecting authors about whose intelligence, honesty, and scholarship there could be no reasonable doubt. Naturally, these authors do not agree on all points of interpretation, nor even on the facts about every obscure place in, the historical record; still less do they advocate a single set of policy recommendations. Nevertheless, on most