NOTE: Contents of this paper do not reflect views of Printers. or How Twenty-Four Inches of Snow Made January 29, 19* Nature has accomplished with two feet of snow what God, Science, City By DALE WALKER Hall and the Free Enterprise System a Better Place of East Lansing have been unable to do for decades. East Lansing is suddenly a better place to live. People seem freer and happier, and a sense of community has developed overnight. It's as though the city has somehow loosened its grip on us. It's a holiday without obligations. No traveling. No gifts. No relatives. Today, at least, the city is ours. I've seen the people in the streets all day, smiling as they pass. Ahead of me in Abbott Road is a football game. Boys against the girls. The air is vibrant and people are shouting. It sounds like a revolution. It's the victory, for a day, of man over machine—of snow over steel and concrete. Everybody laughs at the snowbound monsters buried at the side of the road. Obsolete. Use­ less. It feels good to have a side­ walk twenty feet wide. "Off the grass!*' and "Out of the street!'f have no meaning. The boun­ daries have disappeared under tons of snow. The metronome which runs our lives has been slowed down to human speed. Now we can stand and talk awhile. We can congregate with­ out ''loitering" or "blocking traffic." It all makes mc long for the Cur- rier-and-Ives world I've never had. Will I be the Oldtimer who remem­ bers the Great Winter of '67, or is legend obsolete now that microfilm is here? Classes have been cancelled and most businesses are closed. No one seems to mind. For a day or two we've been rescued from the Good- manish "useless work" andLearyish "meaningless activity" of everyday life. There are walks to clear and driveways to shovel, but this is use­ ful work. Snow is a pleasant hard­ ship, because it is relevant. People are smiling* Their troubles aren't so terribly individual; our common misery is really joy. People continued on page 13 FOLLOWING ARE THE TEXTS OF SDS' DUAL ANTI-DRAFT EDITORIALS PLEDGES. INTERESTED READERS ARE INVITED TO SIGN AND CLIP THEM AND SEND THEM TO SDS (c/o THE PAPER, Box 367, East Lansing) FOR INCLUSION IN THE MAIN PETI­ Draft SDS, Not Beer TION. We, the undersigned, are young Americans of draft age opposed By MICHAEL KINDMAN to United States intervention in Vietnam. Several weeks after it was first reported, there is now news to report about the Students for a Democratic Society's new anti-draft union. We hereby form an anti-draft union and declare our intention to: At its meeting last Wednesday, MSU SDS at last adopted a formulation 1. refused to fight against the people of Vietnam; of the union it had been discussing, and began circulating a pledge to be 2. refuse to be inducted into the armed forces of the signed by the union's "members" and another to be signed by girlfriends and other supporters of the members. This good news gets the full support United States; of THE PAPER; like SDS, we have long since tired of talking about how 3. resist the draft; people are having their lives unjustly and unnecessarily upset by the de­ 4. aid and encourage others to do the same. mands of the Vietnam war, and are anxious to push for change that would free Americans from the draft. But news of a pledge circulating does not really satisfy us. It strikes us as simply an extension of the incestuous creeping radicalism that SDS has been engaging in at MSU practically since' its inception and nationally for a shorter but equally frustrating period. Many of SDS' leaders seem only slightly aware that they are operating in a socio-political context to which they must make concessions. We, the undersigned, are citizens of the United States, opposed to 1 The tendency of SDS small membership here to in-fight and to persist United States intervention in Vietnam. in testing itself on the degree and congency of its alienation is exactly what has kept it from becoming a more broad-based organization. Without go­ We hereby declare our support and encouragement of all men who ing into the strange psychological habits that drive a group of collegiate wiill : radicals to band together in their radicalism and repeatedly compare each 1. refuse to fight against the people of Vietnam; other's politics, we can safely say that this is not the best way to build a radical movement, which was always the intention pursued in SDS' best 2. refuse to be inducted into the armed forces of the United moments. States; The anti-draft union, even more than many other SDS activities, requires 3. resist the draft. wide support both within and outside the organization; it is toward winning this support that most of the early efforts of the anti-draft program should be aimed. The reason is clear: the Selective Service System is much too big and much too entrenched in "The System" that wages wars to be hurt by a small, self-consciously radical protest, and, isolated, the protestors stand to be hurt more than their protest is worth. The national SDS anti-draft proposal (which, as we pointed out in our article reprinted from New Left Notes, SDS' internal newspaper, as an January 16 issue, is still unimplemented pending further preparations) de­ insight on the new left. It was prepared not by national SDS but by SDS' Rad­ pends on FIRST getting support for the idea of a union and THEN forming ical Education Project, the Ann Arbor-based intellectual critics of the it, in the way that will have the biggest impact on the Selective Service national organization. people. 'I he point, theoretically, is to win people over to opposing the draft, which shouldn't be too difficult considering how many oppose the war in one way or anorhcr (see Eric Peterson's article, p. 3 this issue). The point is NOT to show the strength of SDS' faith in its politics, although some 16 Plagues members seem intent on doing only this. THE SIXTEEN PLAGUES OF PARTICIPATORY If not restrained will try to break into the MSU SDS„ already dangerously ahead of the national SDS timetable if it DEMOCRACY AND THEIR INSIDIOUS VAR­ mimeograph room at 3:00 A.M IATIONS. CataloguedbyDr.VitreousHumor expects to be successful with its union, would do very well to concentrate numorlessness its efforts on its current plans to reach high school students and young who hath cum to compleate this worke after the studie of manie a corpse. Symptoms: The afflicted believe that this has workers, as well as larger number of college students; it must remember a secret political purpose that many people have not had the chance to think through issues of per­ (or "Physician, Heal Thyself) sonally relevant politics such as the draft. The very valuable concept on Luce'i Disease which SDS has grown nationally is the introduction to the people of the Surregionalism Symptoms: Victim will display a marked politics by which they are ruled. The attempt should be primarily to gain Of which the substrains are: ability to hold down a good steady job. -subway power the widest possible support for, even if not participation in, the union. Agendaism; Spread by a virus which is -prairie power Meanwhile, more or less appropos of the above, we offer the following invariably found in the presence of ob- -cowboy power structuralism. -surfing power THE PAPE: -pussy power Anti-agendoism THE PAPER is publ V kly during regular school terms -NO power Symptoms: During the second day of a hed wee meeting the afflicted will stand up and ask by students of MichigkW rsity and a bunch of their off- The Berkeley Analogy Syndrome State Unive who the hell wrote this agenda after the campus friends. It is\\tended as a channel for expression and Symptoms: Victim tends to ignore small agenda debate has closed. communication of those 1 Ylas events and creative impulses which campuses, rhetoric sometimes resembles make of the university c»PC *it a'fertile ground for the growth that observable in the Confrontation Syn­ Irreledelicism of human learning. THE V^p^R hopes to help the university drome. Argues for or against a tactic on Symptom: Victim believes that his opponent strive toward fulfillment of t»0^ignest ideals of learning and free inquiry, by reporting and comm^X^a on the university experience the basis of that it either happened at !•< debate has been taking drugs and says and by encouraging others to do so^" Berkeley or failed at Berkeley. In the critical so. phase the victim reads Upset. Death is Tautologism incipient when the victim confuses Hal and addressed to: Symptoms: Patient believes that, if give', Correspondence sh< Theodore Draper. THE PAPE enough time, the people will decide on an Box 367 Resurrecf/omsm ideology for SDS. East ^nsing, Mich. 48823 Of which the substrains are: Offices are 1< ated at 601 Abbott Road ;ast Lansing, Mich. Tel: REPatitis (517) 351-737! -historical resurrectionism; The infected Symptoms: Patient believes that we can will make counter-productive associa­ get McGeorge Bundy in the movement if THE PAPE: member of the UndergWound press Syndicate. tion with one or more of the following; we would only write more grant proposals EDITORIAL BOARD Wobblies, Hitler, Spanish Civil War, for the Ford Foundation.