Once the troops move into Cambodia, the colleges and universities of this country were on the verge of civil war. Many closed down. The students were up in arms. And it looked very much like there were going to be real problems in this country.
Four years earlier I had been selected, with Kay Boyle, the writer, and a number of others, to go to Cambodia and come back and prove that there were no sanctuaries in that country.
But he said Blanket Hill should be a national monument. And so we came out of his chambers feeling, though while we had lost to the powers of darkness, we had at least shown one Federal Judge what the right path would have been.
May 4th is a particularly memorable day in American history because 84 years to the day before May 4, 1970, there was another demonstration at the Haymarket Square in Chicago.
So May 4th in the labor movement has always been an important date.
On the unofficial level it was a glorious moment in our national life because young people decided that this had to stop, that they could no longer stand the shedding of blood in this tragic adventure in Southeast Asia.
Our bodies must always be wherever that struggle and the moment we forget that, the moment we become lazy, the moment we sit back, then then the evil ones do their ordained tasks to us.
At first blush, it seems that the young people who were shot down in the parking lot at the base of Blanket Hill gave up their lives for a dream that died with them.
When we talk about justice in America we're really talking about justice brought about by the people, not by judges who are tools of the establishment or prosecutors who are are equally tools of the establishment or the wardens or the police officers.
We have become the charnel house of the Western World.
