 | David Dellinger / In Memorium / Be the Changeposted by Susan Meeker-Lowry, Exclusive AccessMonday, September 14th 2009 @ 5:00 PM (not yet rated) |
In Memorium - David Dellinger
August 22, 1915 – May 25, 2004
On May 25, 2004, David Dellinger passed away at the age of 88. Dave was one of the infamous Chicago Eight (later seven) arrested and charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot after the massive demonstration at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. It was he who shouted, “The whole world is watching!” referring to the media coverage of the Chicago police riot. But as a lifelong pacifist and strong believer in nonviolent civil disobedience, Dave had seen the inside a jail cell long before the 1960s. There were union organizing drives in the 1930s and civil rights in the 1950s. In fact, he was jailed so many times that he lost count. Because of his “underlying commitment to nonviolent methods of resolving even the worst human conflicts”, Dave refused to register for the draft in WWII. Upon his release a year later he still refused to register and so was sentenced to three years in the maximum security facility at Lewisburg, PA where he staged hunger strikes and spent time in solitary confinement.
Mostly we think of WWII as a “just war”, a war that had to be fought because Hitler and the Nazis were so evil. And they were. However, in his book From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (Pantheon Books, 1993), Dave wrote about the now “mostly overlooked history of the period” in which the U.S. government and U.S. corporations generated much financial support for Hitler and the Nazis. “And I knew that in addition to the U.S. bank loans, General Motors, Ford, ITT, and other U.S. corporations had jumped at the opportunity provided by Hitler’s anti-labor and other reactionary policies to make profitable investments in factories inside Germany, including armament factories.” In a footnote he added, “Some years after the war, I learned that [the U.S. government] had paid them hundreds of millions of dollars as compensation for the plants they had invested in under Hitler.” There’s a lot of information in Dave’s book that you won’t find in most history books and what’s amazing is that it’s first hand — he lived it all.
This past June a Memorial Service was held for Dave at Peace Park in Montpelier, Vermont. Family members and friends shared stories of Dave, among them film maker, Jay Craven, who met Dave for the first time when he was a 19 year old student activist at Boston University. He decided to be part of a delegation to North Vietnam and Dave was deciding which students should make the trip. “I was pretty intimidated,” Jay recalled. “Although Dave is best and very appropriately remembered for his spirituality, his grace, and his espousal of love, he could also be pretty tough. After all, this guy had led the siege at the ‘68 Chicago Convention, stood down armed troops at the Pentagon, survived solitary confinement at Danbury Prison during two prison terms, and driven an ambulance, unarmed, during the violent upheaval of the Spanish Civil War.” After the trip to North Vietnam, Jay helped Dave organize May Day 1971 — a massive civil disobedience demonstration in Washington: “If the government won’t stop the war, the people will stop the government.”
Although I wasn’t there, I remember that demonstration well. I was a freshman at UNH in the Life Studies Program, an experimental program in which we designed our own course of study, even designing classes and finding teachers, if necessary. Several of our Life Studies teachers participated in the May Day demonstration and were subsequently arrested and we scrambled to raise money for bail.
I met Dave for the first time in the late 1980s. I was invited to be on the board of Toward Freedom, a magazine published in Burlington, Vermont that, since 1952, has offered “a progressive perspective on world events”. International issues weren’t my forte, but I accepted for two reasons — I thought that the magazine needed to pay more attention to the Earth than it did, and I jumped at the chance to meet and work with Dave. I expected to be intimidated by him, but soon learned that while Dave always spoke his mind and had no qualms about being critical when he deemed it necessary, he was also an awesome, gentle man with a generous loving heart and a marvelous sense of humor. And when he thanked me for all I was doing on behalf of the Earth, I was blown away. Compared to Dave, my contributions seem inconsequential indeed. Dave accomplished more in his life, and touched more people around the world, than most of us could even imagine. But that’s how Dave was — he valued us all.
- Susan Meeker-Lowry
Photo: Dave faces the press after the Chicago protest trial. From left: co-defendants Jerry Rubin and Rennie Davis, Dave, attorney William Kunstler, and Tom Hayden
Others remember Dave — Quotes from a tribute in Toward Freedom’s Fall 2004 issue.
Dave was flexible about his nonviolence. That is, he never let the issue of nonviolence block his ability to relate to, and work with, people he considered oppressed, whether the Black Panthers or the North Vietnamese. - Tom Hayden • • • Dave never forgot about those in prison. He visited prisoners in Vermont and in the last 10 years of his activist life he worked for the freedom of political prisoner Leonard Peltier. . . . Dave understood that social change doesn’t come just through grand historic actions or stirring speeches before thousands of cheering supporters. It comes even more through the daily sacrifices necessary to keep organizations together or to make an action come off well. - Ted Glick, Independent Progressive Politics Network • • • Dave championed his own brand of militant nonviolence. It was muscular; it was confrontational; it was rigorously nonsectarian; and it bridged movements and generations, reaching far beyond the choir. He struggled his whole life for true democracy and justice for all. His legacy suggests that we must commit to nothing less. - Matt Meyer and Judith Pasternack, War Resisters League
Be the Change by David Dellinger
Many years ago, I was tempted once to pick up a gun and fight for what I believed in. It was 1936, and I was on my way to Oxford University on a fellowship to get my doctorate. During the sea voyage — there were no trans-Atlantic flights then — the ship’s radio announced that Francisco Franco had launched a military attack on the Popular Front, which had come to power the previous February.
Before enrolling in Oxford, I went to Spain, and discovered that the Front had established, here and there, non-hierarchal communal settlements. In Madrid, I stayed at the People’s University and was much impressed by the people I met. But soon, Franco’s soldiers advanced toward the city. I considered joining the resistance. If my friends were going to die, I was ready, too. Who knew what the outcome would be. Maybe, with the help of the Communists, who had mostly come from other countries to support this people’s republic, we would win!
However, by this time, I also knew that Communists were shooting Trotskyists, both were shooting anarchists, and anarchists had fired at a car in which I had been riding when it made a wrong turn into their sector of Barcelona. Whoever won in an armed struggle, I realized, wouldn’t be the people.
Decades later, I visited Cuba shortly after Fidel Castro assumed power, and met both Fidel and his ally Che Guevera. Over the succeeding years, I saw them both many times, always freely expressing my disagreements (and agreements) with whomever I talked. During one conversation, I told Che that some nonviolent activists I knew were beginning to think that we weren’t making enough progress in accomplishing our aims. Thus, they had decided to turn to violence as an alternative, whether by placing bombs in strategic places, or by gathering arms and engaging in direct armed conflict.
Che replied that the US was the most heavily armed nation in the world, and would make mincemeat out of those who resisted with arms. Or, it would capture them, as well as people using other violent methods, and impose heavily exaggerated prison sentences. In the US, he said, the only way to succeed was through nonviolent protests, including civil disobedience.
Some relevant words from Mohandas Gandhi come to mind. “We must be the change we wish to see,” he said. “If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed — but hate these things in yourself, not in another.” He also said: “Violence is the only basis of all state government. The only way is to remove ourselves from all solidarity with the State itself. . . . We must simply give up the worship of mammon.” No wonder he was killed by a Hindu fanatic, upset by his friendship with the Muslims and commitment to working with them through nonviolence. With his last breath, Gandhi forgave his assassin.
I’m also reminded of an anti-Vietnam War action in October 1967. After the usual government objections and threats, we stood firm and finally received permission to hold a rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, followed by a march to the Pentagon for a second rally in the parking lot. After that, we’d decided that groups committed to civil disobedience in order to “Shut Down the Pentagon” would approach every entrance with bullhorns.
When our group got within sight of the entrance, soldiers came out. Their orders were to attack us. As they approached, we offered friendly messages of solidarity on the bullhorn. As we lay down, technically, they obeyed the command. But to our surprise, they delivered gentle love taps instead of heavy blows. It was another sign that soldiers were turning against the war. In the end, over a thousand people were beaten and arrested by sheriffs. They’d come from behind while our attention was concentrated on the soldiers. We hadn’t reached them with our friendly words.
Meanwhile, Daniel Ellsberg was in the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, when the two men were drafting plans for a US invasion of North Vietnam with heavy bombing and military units. At several of my later trials, Ellsberg testified that, as he looked down at us, he thought: “Those people are living by their consciences. They are putting their bodies where their hearts and minds are. What would happen if I did that?” Later, he released the Pentagon Papers. Even though it took years, his action helped force the government to end the war. When discussing the decision, Ellsberg frequently gave credit to the people he had seen clubbed and arrested for sparking his own act of conscience.
During the same protests, those who didn’t want to practice civil disobedience went to the main Pentagon entrance and faced the soldiers lined up against them. After a while, a Yippie stepped forward and placed a flower in one bayoneted gun barrel. Others followed this example; before long, the demonstrators were not only sharing flowers but also cigarettes, coffee, and friendly words with the military men.
Soon afterward, two paratroopers came to our office and reported that several of their comrades had gone inside, thrown down their guns, and announced that they wouldn’t stand guard any longer. For years, I kept meeting vets who said they were on duty that day and had been affected by our actions.
Today, opposition to our undemocratic capitalist society is as urgent as ever. Although the corporate press typically doesn’t acknowledge the size and depth of the resistance, more and more people are affirming human rights for all and experimenting with deeper, more loving lives. Some work with the poor at home, others participate in Sister Cities and other international solidarity campaigns. In the US alone, 10,000 worker-owned businesses have been formed, with over 10 million members. Whether they know much about Gandhi, all these people are applying some of the truths he enunciated: We must be the change we wish to see. Don’t worship mammon by trying to get more material goods than others. Make loving power a reality in everything we do.
As an aboriginal African once put it, “If you are coming to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
