Armies Of The Night, Oops, Armies Of The Day- The October 21, 2018 Women’s March On The Pentagon-Another Sam Eaton And Ralph Morris Story From The Archives

By Frank Jackman

Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton have never been skimpy about doing things for the cause, the cause for them some peace in this wicked old world, some end to the endless wars their county, their America is embroiled in, leading to wicked out of whack U.S. military budgets that are wasteful and wanton. It was not always like that for this pair-they were as patriotic as any other 1960s citizen having in Ralph’s case served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam during the hellish times in 1967 and 1968. Sam Eaton not thinking much about the war since he had a serious childhood leg deformation and therefore was militarily unfit had his sad epiphany when his best friend Jeff Mullins had sent him a letter begging him that if anything happened to him in Vietnam to tell everybody who would listen to oppose the damn war against peasants who were fighting for their land and independence and we had no rationale quarrel with them.

Ralph had come back from Vietnam without any illusions about what he had done, what he had watched others do to people he had no quarrel with and Jeff Mullins had not returned from the war. This unlikely pairing despite both being from serious working-class backgrounds and hence tight in some matters met in the field of fire down in Washington, D.C. on May 1971 where they “met” in Robert Kennedy Stadium  not for a professional game but having been rounded up  in a police sweep on the streets when they were among thousands who had decided to up the ante and try to shut down the government if it would not shut down the war. Those were desperate times for anti-war advocates, Ralph ha gone down there with a contingent from Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) from the Albany area. The area where he grew up and Sam had come down with a cohort of radicals from Cambridge near where he grew up in Carver (at one time the cranberry bog capital of the world he would tell everybody who would listen.      

That meeting, better meeting of the minds would last until this day through thick and thin. Both men had raised families and that had curtailed their activities somewhat over the years. They would not meet sometimes for extended periods of time but they always felt a bond that time and distance would not, could not break. Ralph had joined Veterans for Peace in the early part of the 21^st century and Sam had joined as an associate so a lot of the events they went to were under the black and white dove-etched flags of that organization. As they had come of retirement age, Ralph turning over the high end electronics business his father had started to his youngest son and Sam’s his printing business over to a trusted employee they had become if anything more active as the times demanded their efforts what with endless wars, bloated military budgets and cuts in necessary social programs rocking the country well beyond even the most egregious acts of the Vietnam War governments. Ralph would make Sam laugh when he suggested that they buy a condo in Washington they were down there so much lately back in June around the Poor Peoples Campaign.

That endless war, endless increase in the military budgets and the endless cuts in social programs (and add in general boorishness of the governments of late) made them prime subjects for any event that would highlight those issues. During the summer of 2018 they had seen during one march or other an advertisement calling for a women’s march on the Pentagon in October. Actually the exact days of the 1967 actions, October 20^th and 21^st. The call issued by antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. The combination of the name Cindy Sheehan and March of the Pentagon sent flashes through their minds. Cindy Sheehan whatever her subsequent trajectory, not all for the better, earned a lot of “street cred,” an important characteristic to them when she almost single-handedly revived the peace movement, the anti-Iraq opposition when that war turned into another long-term American military quagmire when she “camped out” down at George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas back in 2005-2006 looking for answers to one question-why was her son killed in Iraq when there was no rational reason to have gone into that benighted country in the first place since there were no weapons of mass destruction on the premises. That got a lot of peace activists, including Ralph and Sam, back on track after a period of quiescence after the invasion was started despite mass opposition. No, forget “back on track” shamed them back onto the streets. Her name alone was enough for them to make plans.  

Sam, the reader and writer of the pair, although Ralph had plenty of ideas in his own right and on those occasions would do himself proud with whatever “think piece” he would put together, had been indifferent to the anti-war movement as mentioned before in 1967 and of course Ralph had been in Vietnam then so neither for their respective reasons had been involved in the original march on the Pentagon that year. Sam had actually later read Norman Mailer’s account of his part the action, his self-serving part in the award-winning Armies of the Night and despite some of Mailer’s over the top language in explaining the course of events had at that point wished he had been part of the action which included many acts of civil disobedience when got those, including Mailer himself,  a taste of federal or local justice. (This “later” after Sam had, and Ralph too their own fair share of arrest for acts of non-violent civil disobedience.)

When the pair discussed the up-coming action they knew, given the marginal condition of the active anti-war/peace movement that there would be no literati like Mailer, Dwight MacDonald from Partisan Review and a fistful of other writerly types. No glitterati like William Sloane Coffin and Doc Spock, they of draft resistance fame for which they would stand trial. And no known heavy politicos like Allan Ginsberg OMing the building to the mist of mind, Abbie Hoffman “levitating” the place or even left-liberal types and if things of late ran true to form despite a deluge of press releases no mainstream press (although they knew from Boston/Albany/New York City/ Washington D.C. experience there would be plenty of student journalists sent by their professors to hone their skills on the cheap to people talking to like Ralph and Sam who had learned that talking “to the kids” would hone their own interviewing skills at least giving some pithy line worthy of the mainstream press-if they had bothered to show up. The long and short of it was that this pair were pumped to go do battle against Moloch on its terms and see what came of it.

Only to be for one of the few times in their long and sometimes lonely anti-war careers disappointed or rather perplexed at what had been so promising but which was by any standard a bust. There would be no blame placed, although some scuttlebutt placed blame on the lack of organization, lack of a united front with other peace and social action groups beyond Ms. Sheehan’s name, lack of proper publicity and lack of dramatic effect. Both men had come down by plane from Boston, gone were the days when they would think nothing of the ten hour drive from either Albany or Boston, think nothing of having to go through or around bitch New York City traffic, think nothing of sleeping on church floors sleeping bag in hand, think nothing of the gruel provided for food, thinking nothing of no sleep for three days running of necessary. But poor bladders, poor eyesight, poor energy levels and a little sense that bourgeois flight was not so bad for the soul after all that had made that previous mode of travel outmoded. Even the million bus rides were out for those same reasons.

The plan of action was for the “masses” to meet at Pentagon City Metro stop which Sam knew from previous trips down was the perfect place to meet to head to the Pentagon a mile or two away. But that meeting spot should have also rung bells in their ears because no way would the place take a mass march. And it didn’t since perhaps three or four hundred, at the outside five, people showed up before the noon starting time (which for one of the few times in anti-war march history actually did go off around that time-both men thinking that fact amazing). (By Sam’s count there between police and military far more of them than demonstrators which is a sad commentary on the state of the peace movement as refracted trough this event. The march route was fairly short by Washington march standards but the route, the Sunday-driven route, meant that there would be nothing but empty parking lots that ring the building to greet the crowd. In the event the march ended at the North Parking lot and the dwindling crowd ( a “choir” crowd so once the march was completed there was drift since the line-up of speakers and performers in the vast empty parking lot, mercifully though with a sizable number of port-a- johns for the AARP-worthy crowd was not enough to hold those who had heard it all before) heard what they expected to hear from anti-warrior veterans and performers.

If this was to be the jump-off to a new revived anti-war movement like the 1967 Pentagon march had been this did not go down well with two long-time activists. If this was that start-please have mercy.  They left the place late that afternoon scratching their heads searching for answers-no doubt about that hard fact