Conflict in the Movement

(2 of 2)

Actually, each organization will concentrate almost exclusively on its own plans—and each has its hands full. "We don't want people to say we peaked in October," explains Verne Newton, a coordinator of the Viet Nam Moratorium Committee in New York. "Yet we almost achieved our capacity for mobilizing every possible person against the war then." He concedes that the Washington march, which seeks to rally 45,000 people who will walk single file from Arlington National Cemetery to the Capitol over a period of 36 hours, bearing the names of U.S. war dead and destroyed Vietnamese villages, will lure many demonstrators away from New York. Said Newton: "This is a movement of people and we must go where the people want to go—and right now Washington is sexier." Similar factional arguments over what kind of political spectrum the demonstrations should embrace have broken out in Massachusetts and California.

Peace movement leaders insist that their disagreements are not serious. "Many people prefer to act out their feelings on the war in large rallies," contends Boston's Jerome Grossman, one of the Moratorium's creators. "Others prefer to work on the nitty-gritty local activities. There is no rivalry, just a difference of function." Perhaps. But many leaders in both camps are worried that the November demonstration may be used as a stage for the wild and the ultraradical. In a lengthy mass march, a determined handful could start serious trouble. That could evoke a popular reaction against the entire peace movement.