Looking Back
1969
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What Goes Around Comes Around
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By Ron Munden
Today, my OneDrive Memories displayed the above images. The photos were taken 55 years ago when I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley and a photographer documenting the National Guard on campus. The 55 years have not been good to the color slides but my memories of those days are still very clear.
It has been 55 years and we again are seeing protests on college campuses across the country. Have we learned anything from the 60s?
I attended Berkeley in 1968, 1969 and 1970. 1968 and 1969 were interesting times.
While I had concerns about the war in Vietnam, the Department of Defense was paying me to go to school so I did my best to stay clear of the protests but that was not always possible.
My first involvement was with SIS and a black protest movement.
The shortest path between the Naval Architecture building and the student union building was through Sather Gate. I made the trip frequently for food and supplies.
One day after I finished lunch, I started back to the NA building. I found that a group of black students had blocked Sather Gate and were not letting people walk through the gate. I had a bag of materials so I turned around and took a long, out of the way path back to the NA building. In those days, I was not the kind sweet person I am today. As I walked back, my dislike of these protesters increased with each step.
That night when I got home, I went up and talked to the guy that lived in the apartment above me. I borrowed a leather jacket and a pair of steel toed boots. He also gave me something that I could carry that would serve as a club if required. I had my wardrobe for the next day.
The next day was a repeat of the previous day. The group came back and blocked Sather again. This time, armed with my steel toed boots and potential club, I walked up to the line. A guy, my size or maybe smaller, stood in front of me and said “you can’t come through this gate.” I politely said, “Yes I can and I would suggest you might want to step out of the fucking way”. I was very confident I could get him to move. His spread-leg stance would have allowed me to make one quick leg movement to deposit his testicals in his throat. Others in the group might have beat the shit out of me but he would not have been able to participate. Fortunately, for everyone, he stepped aside and I walked through the gate and he continued to block the gate.
I wore my uniform for another week but the protesters and I never crossed paths again.
That was 1968.
The real action on campus came in 1969. The citizens of Berkeley had built a park on a vacant lot that was owned by the University. The administration announced they were going to build a parking lot on the spot where the park was located. This sparked a big protest involving Berkeley citizens and students. The action centered around Sather Gate again. The protests were loud but I did not see any violence.
Governor Ronald Reagan did not ask me my opinion. He did order the National Guard on campus. As you might recall, this was the era when a student at Kent State was killed by the National Guard.
After observing what happened at Berkeley I understand how this could happen.
Over reaction is an understatement. When a group of protesters formed, helicopters would fly overhead and discharge pepper spray on the crowd. Of course, the wind dispersed the pepper spray across campus. On more than one occasion, I and other students sat in class with eyes watering from the pepper spray dropped halfway across campus.
For some unknown reason the National Guard members carried rifles with fixed bayonets.
On one occasion, a line of NG members blocked Sather Gate. I did not see any protesters but a large group of students, like me, found our normal path across campus blocked. I don’t know what happened, maybe someone threw a bottle of water or something. For some reason one of the NG members broke formation and began chasing a student. Other students, including me, began to run. That provoked the other 20+ NG members to start chasing the other students.
In my 20s, I was still able to run fast enough to outrun most people. Particularly, a person with a rifle with a fixed barnet attached.
This experience taught me that in demonstrations and protests a lot of innocent bystanders can get involved through no fault of their own and you should not send a group of poorly trained, poorly managed people in to break up a protest.
I believe violent protests need to be controlled but it needs to be done by trained professionals.
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