ustxtxb_obs_1970_05_01_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

Boy’s Life, June, 1964 OUR WERITAGE OF g=1.4.0 t…”0.PA ARTICLE -QME SUARANTEE-FREEDOM OF RELIGiON, OF THE PRE: ’73G, AND SPEECH; THE RjGHT OF PEACEFUL: A5GEM2LY, AND THE RIGHT TO Pt TMON THE VERN MEW ‘FOP A REDRE-ISS OF GRIEVANCEV’ ARTICLF.. FOUR GUARANTE:EG THE PRIVACY OF EG AGAN S I GEARCHES AND SE17.:HOM URP-3 wTTHOUT GPECIFICI .1!LED SEARCH kA/ARRANIT5, But the seven merchants who make up the Austin City Council supplied another issue above and beyond sentiment about the war. After having “allowed” the SMC the benefit of the First Amendment by issuing antiwar parade permits in April and October of 1969, the City Council then denied a permit last December and twice turned down the SMC request for Saturday’s march. On Thursday, the Council’s decision was upheld in 126th District Court. Furthermore, the Council said it intends to pass an ordinance requiring the people to pay for the cops to control whatever parades the people are allowed to have. This ordinance may not mean much to the Aqua Festival or to Roundup or other organizations that routinely take to the street in Austin, but it is significant to groups that have less money and are forced to use more cops. So people began coming together. A coalition of seven groups formed the Austin Parade Committee and held a press conference on the City Hall steps \(the Junior League was occupying the council announce plans to march. The SMC met on Thursday night and voted to march on the sidewalks, in a legal manner, thus giving the courts another chance to show, in the future, whether the First Amendment is more powerful than seven minor league salesmen. The decision to stay on the sidewalks was far from unanimous. Many students felt they should rush into the streets and defy the Council. Anticipating this, Austin Police Chief Bob Miles placed about 100 city cops in the six blocks the march would cover. Looking out from the Capitol grounds, through trees, you could see clumps of blue uniforms waiting on the pavement. A platoon from the Department of Public Safety, in brown uniforms with plastic-visored ‘helmets and long, 4 The Texas Observer darkly-gleaming clubs, had lined up in a parking lot across from the front of the Capitol grounds. Some Council members were hanging around to watch the action. Councilman D. R. Price, a honkytonk operator who admits he has carried a pistol in the glove compartment of his car for the last 20 years, told reporters he wished he could have voted to keep marchers off the sidewalks, too. GLANCING AROUND the crowd as it grew and the 2 p.m. march time approached, one could not help but be impressed by those who were missing. Cam Cunningham, lawyer who filed the SMC request for an injunction against the City Council ruling, said many of those present had been drawn there by resentment against the Council more than by emotion about the war. But how many who did still feel inclined to protest the war had stayed away because of the threat of violence or of rain? Regardless of the war issue, it was downright impressive how many did not seem to wish to protest the shaming of the First Amendment. The crowd was almost entirely under 30 years of age. There were a few aging beatniks, and a few faculty members, and some ACLU people wearing armbands that said OBSERVER and standing in the streets so they could be easily distinguished from the marchers. One might have wondered where were the middleaged liberals? It was a funny thing to think about. On Friday night, the eve of the sidewalk march, the Civil Liberties Union bunch had gathered for a $5 per person liberal benefit at the hilltop home of Sterling Holloway, a wealthy lawyer and land developer in Westlake Hills, an Austin suburb. Holloway lives a few blocks from Walt Rostow, whose decisions as an adviser to Lyndon Johnson were influential in our involvement in Vietnam and whose son was at the peace march. The guest of honor at the benefit was Ramsay Clark, former Attorney General of the United States. Clark, rather gloomy about national prospects, warned of repression in a speech Thursday night at the University of Texas, saying, “Dissent has been the principal catalyst in the oncoming of truth … Those who make peaceful change i m possible, make violent change inevitable.” Hardly anyone who heard that speech, or went to the Friday night benefit, came out Saturday afternoon to see what Clark had been talking about. Instead, there were thousands of young people, and they began to get very restless at the sight of the assembling cops. Fifteen minutes before the announced starting time, the march began moving off the Capitol grounds. During the jam as marshals in red arm bands funneled the crowd onto the sidewalk, people shouted: “Streets now! Streets now!” But the marshals kept urging the marchers to stay on the sidewalk, and the cops stood by passively. As the march progressed, one could see that it was a real dress-up affair. The cops wore their shiny plastic hats and carried bags of tear gas cannisters, their motorbikes were polished, their leather glistened. The marchers had outfits to match the most stylish of rock festival mode: some wore red, white and blue shirts decorated with stars, some wore top hats, some had on Wyatt Earp costumes, few of the girls were bound by brassieres. One girl in a floppy hat walked along feeding a baby from a bottle, and a look of distaste crossed the face of a cop as he noticed this baby out here being exposed to all this peace. The marchers were in a beautiful humor. The long parade moved slowly down the sidewalk on the west side of Congress, crossed the street at Sixth, and moved back up the east sidewalk to the Capitol grounds again. Motorcycle cops cruised the street, Frisbees sailing above their heads. Plainclothesmen in outlandish civilian