This approach seemed hopelessly establishment and uninspiring to radicals of the time. Gay Liberation Front and helped organize the Mayday action. If it's your first time on the site, or you're looking for something specific, it can be difficult to know where to start. Into this fractured political landscape came the Mayday Tribe, a new player with a very different approach. "9 PCPJ didn't openly discourage people from attending the April 24 NPAC march, but focused its efforts on a multiday "People's Lobby," which consisted of sit-ins outside major government buildings. On reflection, while I think that demonstrations are a good way to bring attention to an issue, but then the energy needs to be put into educating and organizing the public about the issue. The Motherfuckers, in their own words, were "flower children with thorns," a fierce and disruptive group devoted to creating a "total break [from the present]: cultural, political, social, everything."

It was, one activist observed, "hate-the-heavies time," and the complaints about Mayday revealed how dramatically the radical landscape was shifting. Waves of helicopters landed alongside the Washington Monument, ferrying Marines into the city.

"16, The Mayday organizers hoped to tap into the revulsion many felt toward the tactics of the Weather Underground and other violent groups, while steering clear of the submissiveness and sanctimony radicals associated with nonviolence. hi.

Mayday Tactical Manual, author's collection, p. 3. The phrase "disruptive confrontation" is from a November 1967 article by Marty Jezer, reprinted in The Movement toward a New America: The Beginnings of Long Revolution, ed. Many, if not most, drifted back to life as students, parents, teachers, government workers, public officials, etc.

"35, The GLF-like the GAA, a primarily gay male organization, with few lesbian members-also saw itself as both inspired and shaped by radical feminism. The group was launched by Rennie Davis, a New Left leader who had become nationally famous after the melees outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968, when the federal government prosecuted him and other prominent organizers-the Chicago 7-for conspiracy. Lesbian activists may have had to take over the stage at Mayday to say their piece, but they would become primary transmitters of the direct-action tradition in the decades to come. 19. The Motherfuckers viewed affinity groups in grander terms as well. Copyright Center For Social Research and Education Dec 2002 Your region makes the tactical decisions within the discipline of nonviolent civil disobedience. Roosevelt park riots in 1971 August 8, 2016 by Lucy V. I am currently researching the riot that occurred in Roosevelt Park in Albuquerque on the 13th and 14th of June 1971. "In the pre-revolutionary period," they wrote, "affinity groups must assemble to project a revolutionary consciousness and to develop forms for particular struggles. "[We're] not going to put our bodies on the line, we're not going to get our heads beaten, but we can at least support these people," she explained. 33. The Gay Activists Alliance was far more conventional in its organization and politics. It's not clear that this action had any measurable impact on the concertgoers or the protests, but the women and gay men's disaffection highlighted the extent to which Mayday, for all its innovations, remained rooted in the male-dominated, old-school movement culture of the 1960s. "You do the organizing. "There's a lot of men and straight women around here who really come down on the gay women when they realize that we're gay," one lesbian activist declared, in footage of the event captured by the Videofreex. As the war ground to a close, did we all drift off to drugs, sex, and religious cults? It was a protest against the Vietnam War, but it wasn't part of the storied Sixties, having taken place in 1971, a year of nationwide but largely unchronicled ferment. 38. Doug Jenness, "The May Day Tribe: Where It Goes Wrong," The Militant (May 14, 1971). ")44, "Small battles raged all over the city as demonstrators would build crude barricades, disperse when the police came and then regroup to rebuild the dismantled obstructions," one underground paper reported. The coalition also felt that stronger tactics than mere marching were called for, and emphatically endorsed civil disobedience. "Mayday: Women and Gay," The Great Speckled Bird (22, August 1971). 43. 45. Or rather -in a sign of the separatism, personalism, and inward focus that would characterize identity politics for much of the Seventies-they were energized by the time they spent among themselves. The barricades were indeed inventive: "We threw everything available into the streets," one participant wrote afterwards in the Berkeley Tribe, "garbage cans, parked cars, broken glass, nails, large rocks, and ourselves. Ever since, affinity groups have been a defining feature of most direct action protests. 34. Capitol.)

"No one seemed to think the conference was functioning to resolve any political problems or effectively to plan any future actions," one attendee reported. Jones interview; Scagliotti interview; telephone interview with John Froines, 23 June 2000. While the troops secured the major intersections and bridges, the police abandoned their usual arrest procedures, roaming through the city making sweep arrests and using tear gas. 247-60; Wells, Ue War Within, pp.

46. I was in the park the night before May Day, when a double line of riot police walked through pushing the campers out (while i was one of several walking backward between the police and the campers coaching non-violent resistance and encouraging those who were not ready to be arrested peacefully to back away slowly but steadily. Explained one participant, "[T]he idea of 'we've tried everything, now there's nothing left but violence' was pretty much replaced with the notion that now that violence-trashing, bombing, off the pigging-had failed it was time for a really radical approach: nonviolent civil disobedience." "25, To pull that off well, you needed some kind of agile, streetwise organization-something, perhaps, like "a street gang with an analysis."

"30, That said, there was a haphazard quality to the Mayday organizing; a lot of the action was put together on the fly. Quicksilver Times (30 April-13 May 1971). "-expressing the desire to be part of the often homophobic New Left, a desire that partly motivated Gay Mayday. 28. "Sources of private troubles" is a quote from SDS's founding document, the Port Huron Statement, which is reprinted in numerous Sixties anthologies and in James Miller, "Democracy Is in the Streets": From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), pp. "No wonder. Thanks mates for your thoughts and for being there.

Others were demonstrators who were arrested preemptively, without having committed any illegal acts. To transport the mass of prisoners, the police had to commandeer city buses; when even that wasn't enough, they hired Hertz and Avis rent-a-trucks.48.

The Gay Mayday Tribe offered up an expansive radical vision, in which gay liberation could not only transform laws or lifestyles, but also undermine the very foundations of war. Perry Brass remembers the scene as one of "high hippieism": "People were dropping acid all over the place, smoking marijuana all over the place, just having a wonderful time with a political context to it." Jerry Coffin, who teamed up with Davis when Mayday was only an idea, recalls it as an attempt "to create a responsible hip alternative" to the Weather Underground: "merging radical politics, Gandhian nonviolence, serious rock and roll, [and] lots of drugs." Says Scagliotti, "I remember being woken up by the FBI one morning and the guy saying, 'And what's her name? The protesters' nonviolence pledge did not preclude building barricades; nobody felt "that because we will be nonviolent that we could not also be militant and creative." 285-99.

Free food! "41, That Saturday, the Mayday Collective threw a rock concert and festival (featuring "Free music!

Conditions were awful, with next to no sanitary facilities, blankets, or food. The government had made a major misstep, which cost it public sympathy. "If you've got no organization, what do you do?

As one participant from Richmond College in Staten Island explained afterwards, "As affinity groups you have to make your own decisions and be fully responsible. "[12], Learn how and when to remove these template messages, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, "Page 5 "Vietnam Demonstrations: 1971 Year in Review, United Press International Accessed 2009-04-13", "May 3, 1971 | Mayday Tribe Holds Antiwar Demonstration", "In 1971, the People Didn't Just March on Washington — They Shut It Down", 1971 Year in Review Archived United Press International 2009-05-05, The Nixon Years Down from the Highest Mountaintop Time Magazine August 19, 1974, issue, Ending a war, inventing a movement: Mayday 1971, Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, April 15, 1967 Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, 1968 Democratic National Convention protest activity, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1971_May_Day_protests&oldid=978589962. Straight white men, including more traditional leftists, just found the whole situation mystifying and uncomfortable.

"We gave them food so they could put their bodies on the line and disrupt the government. "39, In the days before the action, the Mayday Collective set up "movement centers" throughout the city where newly arriving protesters could hook up with others from their region, get information about nonviolence trainings, and obtain medical advice about possible exposure to tear gas or Mace. Do recall the demo By the early 1970s, the small group was the predominant radical feminist form, characterized by "a conscious lack of formal structure, [and] an emphasis on participation by everyone."

No food, water, or sanitary facilities were made available by authorities but sympathetic local residents brought supplies. And indeed, after the protest, Newsweek reported that "[t]he government's most serious problem was faulty intelligence. Interview with Kai Lumumba Barrow, New York, N.Y., 20 September 2000. The protesters engaged in hit perhaps the most useful way to get it, and the way most people would read it, would be for it to be typed up as well. The 1971 May Day Protests were a series of large-scale civil disobedience actions in Washington, D.C., in protest against the Vietnam War.