Saturday, May 13, 1972
Antiwar Protests Slacken A Little
(AP) --Antiwar demonstrators forced the United Nations to close its New York headquarters to tourists and isolated the public from the historic frigate Constitution in Boston Harbor Thursday, in a third day of intense but scattered protest against President Nixon's new Vietnam policy.More than 500 arrests, most of them peaceful, were logged during the day. But riot police with tear gas battled rock-hurling demonstrators at the University of California in Berkeley.In New England, the president of Amherst College, his wife, and the wife of the president of Smith College were arrested after they joined students in blocking traffic at Westover Air Force Base at Chicopee, Mass.Eighteen demonstrators were arrested at New Brunswick, N.J., during a vain attempt to block local trains on the main line of the Penn Central Railroad. But five Southern Pacific trains were rerouted at Davis, Calif., after University of California students there spent most of the night sitting on the tracks.Other groups of protesters tied up auto traffic, at Santa Barbara, Calif., and on Chicago's South Lake Shore drive, among a number of target areas.Three days of window-smashing protest by University of California students at Berkeley left small merchants with an estimated loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars. More than 100 firms reported damage.Seventeen students and faculty members from Columbia University and Brooklyn Community College chained themselves to seats in the visitors' gallery of the U.N. Security Council. They demanded to see U.S. Ambassador George Bush, currently president of the council.A U.N. spokesman, William Powell, said U.N. headquarters would be closed to the public for the remainder of the day and Friday because of "the rising tide of demonstrations taking place."Marines removed 11 members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War who chained themselves in the old captain's quarters of the Constitution, "Old Ironsides" of historic accomplishment in the War of 1812.More than 300 demonstrators were arrested at Westover Air Force Base. Among them were Amherst President John Williams Ward, his wife, and Cornelia Mendenhall, wife of Smith President Thomas Mendenhall. Nearly a score of Amherst faculty members also were taken into custody.Police estimated attendance at an antiwar rally on the steps of the Capitol in Washington at 1,500. The crowd heard speeches by more than a dozen congressmen, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.Supporters of Nixon's policies gathered later on the capitol steps to hear brief speeches by Sen. Robert J. Dole of Kansas, who is the Republican national chairman, and other GOP lawmakers."Antiwar Protests Slacken a Little", by (AP), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes Saturday, May 13, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.