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STEPHEN DONADIO
primary goal of radicals engaging in this kind of issue-oriented strug–
gle. Any particular issue we raise probably can't change things all
that much and even our getting power in the University can't change
things all that much, but changing people's understanding of society,
getting them to understand the forces at work to create the university
the way it is, the forces at work to create the war in Vietnam, to create
racism: this is
the
primary goal of radicals. And the harvest of this
planting will not be seen this year when we gain a modicum of stu–
dent power, not in ten years when students have all the bipartite
committees they want, but sometime in the future when this under–
standing of capitalist society bears fruit
in
much higher level struggle.
In revolution. And so what we're engaged in, to use a piece of SDS
rhetoric, is the process of radicalization; we make no bones about this.
COLE:
I think that may be true for us, but I don't think it's true for
the five thousand who were out on campus fighting the cops. What
happened at Columbia pointed up something that's been going on
for the last three years, and that is that the whole student movement
has, in some way and for some reason I don't really understand, be–
come a social movement. Throughout this whole year it seemed in–
evitable that sooner or later one university was going to have some
kind of explosion because it was as though there was an underground
fire going on all year, what with the Dow demonstrations, etc. But
that it should have happened at Columbia, that it should have taken
the form it did-I still don't know exactly why.
RUOO:
I think one of the things that led to this was a very active left
for four years, probably the most active in the country, which kept
talking about the same issues-the war in Vietnam, lately imperial–
ism and racism-and which accustomed people to radical tactics.
Even though people perhaps didn't accept those tactics, they became
more and more accustomed to the idea of people taking strong prin–
cipled action. Perhaps the most important thing the left did was to
break through what most SDS kids recognize as apathy: there is no
such thing as apathy at Columbia anymore.
And this four-year educational campaign bore fruit during a crisis
period when a lot of things were going on: the war in Vietnam, the
draft (which hit about three months ago), the assassination of Martin
Luther King-perhaps
the
most important critical event-and Mc–
Carthy. My analysis of the McCarthy student movement is that stu–
dents were caught
in
a bind between the possibility of becoming radi–
cals and engaging in direct action, and the possibility of being co–
opted back into the electoral system. The first day the McCarthy
Committee set up on campus, 650 people signed up. Now in part
I think this was because they were afraid of SDS; but at the same
time they understood what we were saying, and the truth in it. And
the moment we began to
act-to
act directly against racism and
im–
perialism-the McCarthy buttons disappeared.
INTERVIEWER:
Your plan to have a "Liberation School" over the sum–
mer seems to suggest that much of what you want cannot be con–
tained within the University. Is that so?
RUOO:
We've said as much.
INTER'VIEWER:
In that case" I'd like to ask what your reaction is to this
