Dotson Rader
THE NEW REVOLUTIONARIES
Several months ago, in New Y.ork, on a rainy, windy, mis–
erable day, I participated in yet another demonstration against the
war in Vietnam. The event was sponsored by the Fifth Avenue Com–
mittee To End The War In Vietnam. It drew several thousand protest–
ers, an astonishing number of them of high school age
or
younger. I saw
barely a handful .of middle-aged demonstrators, those who used to pro–
vide most of the cash and about one-third of the Movement's troops.
At the demonstration I felt again what has become for many of
us a correlative to ·dissent in America: the consciousness that this nation's
institutions had already lost the battle at home. Pressing us from the
rear was a new generation, more militant than we, ready to use with
ease extraconstitutional tactics which were for many radicals still debata–
ble, tor some, unthinkable. It was the consciousness that the Johnson–
Nixon war. coupled with their administrations' domestic policies, had
molded a new generation, a new kind of American teen-ager, more
estranged than his college brothers, politically more sophisticated, tough–
er, more authentically revolutionary than we were at our posturing
leftist best.
I walked alongside the Westchester contingent until the march
ended in the park. Hank was nominal leader ot the group, I suppose
by virtue of the fact that he hoisted the largest placard: END THE
WAR IN VIETNAM! BRING THE WAR HOME! After the demon–
stration I took Hank up to Columbia, where I had gone to school for
four years. We walked around the campus and I pointe.d out various
landmarks- the Mathematics Building, the sundial, Hamilton Hall,
the window of the president's office
-
where the Columbia Liberation
had made its stand. As we strolled I boasted away, feeling heroic in
retrospect, like a Bolivian exile escaped to blather in self-exaggeration
about the historic days with Che.
