Narrator the modern university is the cradle of the nations future. If this be so, let us not underestimate the path we face. Meanwhile, the explosive growth still increases the demands upon us. The undeveloped peoples look to us for training and guidance for their own governments, the local governments, state governments, National Governments look increasingly to the universities for expert counsel and for scholars who carry the posts of high responsibility. [gunfire] however much terse personality is styled by the Administration May have exacerbated the situation. The situation would have been there whoever was president of the university. He is going to recommend every month or every week, each dean set aside time to talk to students which makes the liberal assumption that what we have here is failure of communication. But that is not so. Because it is an analysis of the entire system of the functioning of a corporate entity that is at question. The students understand very, very well what the ruling class at columbia does, what it is about. The university has now become , to use an old term, the means of production. One little bit for the fbi, another little bit further cia, and this university is now a means of production, producing the mechanism of human oppression that has been bought out by the military. 50 of the Research Done here at this university depends on the defense money. We can see we look at the New Buildings going up, and engineering building, a business school, a law school, a school of international relations. We can tell how much this university is hooked into servicing the corporations and hooked into servicing the war machine. William burden is the director for lockheed aircraft. Council forhe general dynamics. And a junior partner in his law firm with the under secretary of defense. A trustee of the institution of personnel analysis. He is president of Morningside Heights and corporation, the organization which is concerned with institutional expansion of morningside. Also, if you wonder how it was that columbia acquired the land for the gymnasium, a 400 year lease renewable every five years after the first 100 years, at an incredibly low sum of money, all you have to do is look at who the trustees are. Percy, chair of the board of the buildings corporation, a 70 oration which has done of all the building in new york city since the war. Benjamin button, one of the trustees, is on that building corporation. Brown, he is also on the building corporation, one of the directors on the board of cbs. William f. Paley, a trustee, is chairman of the board of the columbia broadcasting system. Arthur sulzberger, he is chairman of the board for the New York Times for two successive sessions of the state legislature, columbias ruling elite made journeys to albany, new york to convince legislators that this was indeed a wonderful thing for the Morningside Heights community, that columbia should build this gym there. But i dont think a gym nine stories high with facilities for black people in the basement with a backdoor is something that black people want. There has never been any dispute as to the position of this community on the placing of a gymnasium by a private institution in a public park. I dont trust anybody in the Administrative Network of Columbia University because they have lied, they have contradicted themselves. Kirk wrote us a letter saying, we have stopped at the gym. And the next damn day, the board of trustees states, we have stopped the gym temporarily. This country is going down on violence. Our house must come down, whether they like it or not. On april 23, the demonstration in which we planned to demonstrate inside the library, to protest columbias complicity with the institute of defense analysis, its racism with building the gym in morningside park, and its attempted suppression of the left by disciplining six students. About 500 people joined us. We were opposed by about 200 jocks. We found that not only were the jocks there blocking our way, but the library was locked by the administration. Of course i thought this would stop this, but it didnt. We went into the gym site. [chanting] the pigs called in reinforcements. [indiscernible chatter] we were weak down in the park. The cops were coming pretty quickly. They came to the building. We had 300 people back at the sundial and were going to meet them. Thinking it was just the perfect thing, after that. It wasnt so perfect because at some point we really, we were moving faster than we knew how. Tremendous snowball. Always despite ourselves, it was something that we really wanted to do, but something we werent sure that we were ready to do. Our responsibility what are your views . We havent completed. This politicals pressure from congressman in the Community Working . You are assuming that if you go through whatever channels you are going through, you are going to come out right. Some of these things have gone on for weeks. At that point we took the dean, thinking he was our trump card, but we really knew that he was there to hold the building. The real thing about the blackwhite split, was that the two groups realize that we had two different political identities. The blacks wanted to stop the gym. They figured the best way to do this was to hold the building, barricade it. The whites on the other hand still see our goal is to radicalize other white people. We didnt want other students coming into class. We thought we should confront our enemies, the administration. But we didnt realize that we were much too timid and what we really had to do was show our moral strength and hold the building. The blacks saw that we had split among ourselves, that we were not disciplined, and that we really did not understand what the correct militant tactic was. So they asked us to leave. A report came down from the stair Committee Meeting we left and took the library. Even the administration. Look, in two days, we have taken five buildings, hamilton, lowe, avery, fairweather. When they do, we want to be here. We barricaded up the basement and the police were trying to come through. What the brothers did was throw water holes and flooded the whole basement. That was one of their tactics, the police were very angry about that. But then they stood and charged the building, and they were pretending that they did not try to come through the tunnels, to the basement of the building. But they were trying to take the building by surprise, quietly, that kind of thing. You know, and beat the movement that way. Try to defeat the movement that before it spreads through the community. They did not want the students at Columbia University, with that kind of militancy, to get other students and other universities to revolt against the system. But the brothers who got it made are revolting too. That is what they were trying to do, but they did not get through. [drumming] there were mothers there. Didnt have any sons in columbia, did not want to see the park there, did not want experiments run in the school against their children and against their families. Everything from the far right to the liberal right such as charles to the far left such as independent black militants. These black high school kids, they wrapped around and there were hundreds of tps. We gathered and walked up the avenue to columbia, we were talking about burning the place down. We came out with baseball bats and hockey sticks, and when we got to columbia, we broke through the police lines. [applause] what . [indiscernible] Statement Released by the students from inside. I will read the statement. Number one, stopping the construction of the gym. Number two, stopping charges against all persons involved in demonstrations against the gym. [applause] number three, breaking all administrative ties with ida. Number four, general amnesty for all the students involved. When the university has stopped construction of the gym and it granted amnesty, we will consider negotiations with the university. We are prepared to remain indefinitely until these conditions are met. The black students of Columbia University, joined by a few members of the black community, have been in hamilton for more than we have established a 56 hours. Cafeteria with adequate stores. Our position is in charge of our infirmary. Morale is high. [applause] [shouting] over 200 went into the library. Only 23 stayed when the first cop scare came. But as the days wore on, we realized our strength is in our militancy and staying in those buildings. It took the example of the blacks to move us. We saw a bunch of papers in these girlie magazines linking columbia to the ida. A lot of letters about cleaning up the area and moving out the blacks and puerto ricans. First day, we set up a Defense Committee which took care setting up the barricades. We decided what our policy would be towards police, towards jocks. We taped the windows, emptied bookcases and put them up in front of the windows in case teargas canisters did get through. A they hung up people with marble top desk. The we decided the barricades were necessary politically and strategically. And anything went in making strong and permanent barricades. Defense was all taken care of. Security was a problem, letting people in and out of the building. Watches. We need people to watch the windows every night. We had a walkietalkie set up. Citizens band walkietalkies. Plus there were Telephone Communications in every building which the university tapped. We had 3 million, and people who did nothing during the strike but related to the machine. There was a sign on the wall in berkeley that said five students machine cangraphed do more harm to a university than an army. Every building had their own mode of communication. We had four or five we were using. One of the things that happened was that each new group of people who came in the building, each new days recruitment into the building would become political. Would understand the life of the commune, would life of the would understand what was going on by the meeting. We were meeting for approximately eight hours a day. A lot of it was political education. A lot of it was just bullshit. A lot of it was learning about what we would do when the police came. Fds is humane representing the human body, but it is a Steering Committee of various people from campus, and we are now trying to [indiscernible] that no amnesty would be granted to students under any circumstances. The question of amnesty is really important because it is a political question, our legitimacy to protest has to be recognized before we can negotiate. There seems to be a lot more dignity amongst the students now because they feel that they have a right to say the things they are saying. That is why i think the amnesty issue has been raised and reraised so many times here, and we have had to reassure ourselves by raising votes of confidence for at every 30 minutes. People are not sure whether they are supposed to be guilty for what they are involved in, and the whole issue of demanding amnesty first is to show that we have rights, and until we get those rights, we have to act in a coercive way. The hangups that are usually present in any kind of collective organizing were there. I got to the library and there were 100 people in three rooms, and there was a sleeping space for three people. The idea of sleeping became so insignificant. We never really got too much sleep. We were always having meetings, and people always yelling and waking us up. But we did not care much, we slept on the floor wherever we could. Communethe life of the was a group of people who were incredibly close to each other, on no other level than the level of struggle. The strikers are getting support. We are getting blankets, food and money. They were also getting opposition from the faculty and from rightwing students. They locked arms and never ry now and then they were trying to throw record players out, they were trying to act like the university at administration. Arms crossed. They are not going to say anything. It is our only position. No comment. [chanting] get out of the way. Im trying to get food. That food is going up. There is nothing else to say. That food is going up. These motherfuckers have been eating, they havent. Of course they have. They dont have any left. They dont have any food. [indiscernible]. They are getting blood you dont need to have any. Put more food in there. That food is going up. Up, passt up, pass it it up [cheers and applause] stop it. You damn fools. The position of the professors was one of being the police, that they had to take sides. Either they were for taking food in, or not taking food in, they were on the side of the jocks or on our side. The faculty wanted to mediate between us and the administration because never understood the nature of our demands when we were struggling. The faculty was in its own way just as naive as the officials were. The only alternative they could see was the maintenance of the system. They could not be beyond the occupation of the building as the creation of something that might be better. For like at least an entire week, living at full capacity, there was a total collective feeling. No one particularly cared about these individual feelings because you never even experienced them. Everything is experienced in the most collective sense i have ever known. If you talk to anyone outside, they immediately will realize coming here they had never seen before. This was one of the new experiences for most people, sort of an electric awakening. The cost of communal food was most important to share everything. We shared oranges, our coke, sandwiches. All of us. We did not want to eat all by ourselves. We are hungry, so there are sandwiches. People are living here. They are living here between meetings, and it is a home. It is a home. I have never been so comfortable on this campus. [drumming] [cheers and applause] has the spirit in fairweather was so high tonight, we decided that it would be entirely appropriate to be married. [laughter] [applause] [laughter] it was such that fairweather was not only holy ground, but was our home. [applause] and we therefore chose to be married at home with our family. [applause] i, andrea, take thee, richard. I, andrea, take thee, richard. I, richard, take thee, andrea. I now pronounce that andrea and richard are children of the new age. [cheers and applause] [fire sirens] [indiscernible] thank you, gentlemen. The university claims you are are trespassing and has contacted the new York Police Department in connection with your activities. We have been informed that the Police Department will take all the necessary action in connection with our complaints against you. This order to remove yourself from the premises it is separate and apart from any question of amnesty. You will be subject to proper disciplinary action by the university in any event, though if you leave the building pursuant to this order, you will have less to answer for than those who do not. [shouting] no violence, no violence. And they managed. They are going to push them all together. They were all sitting on the floor, and they pushed them all together and got them so they could hardly move. They had something in their hands. These people, they dont care they just rushed. They came and rushed us. Watch it, watch it. Ok, get back. Stop. Bring them into the door. Get back. Why you leaving the door . Theres a doctor at the door. There is a doctor in the door. These guys are animals. They dont want you to form. They attack from behind. They talk to you one minute and hit you the next. On the staircase there was a solid line of police. The people in front of me were dragged down, and as they were dragged down, each individual cop standing on this line put his licks in, and they were laughing. I will never forget it. There seem to be orders given, as i thought so often during the demonstration. I dropped my glasses when i was running. I asked the officer, can i please go back and he whacked me in the face. I was hit with a club on the head and i was punched in the nose. I found a student who was dazed, bleeding profusely from the forehead. The police refused to let me pass. I said this man is wounded, can you please help . They said, get out. Police had formed two lines that you had to run through, being pummeled all the time. He was very fortunate in that he wasnt kicked in the groin as most of the demonstrators were. Instead he had his legs kicked in his back punched. However at the end of the line, he was hit with a blackjack at which point he was left unconscious. The next thing that he remembers was that he was at the first aid station. We want peace. We want peace. We want peace. We want peace. [chanting] we have nothing against the cops. We realize the problem. Get the reporters. We have a sense of character. The faculty stood with us. The strikers stood there. We will admit we are guilty. We wish to be charged. I want this all down. We will give names. We will give everything. Here . Re no thinking will people not realize this insanity . Cops do not belong on campus. I am guilty, i want to be arrested. Let them go. The students have already pulled away, and now they are moving on another one. [indiscernible] i am not going to read this. [indistinct chatter] they got over 700 that the time on charges of trespassing. Some of it was real, some of it was fake. I know of nurses and doctors that pleaded with the police not to proceed, to please let these men alone, and they would no, no, get away, this is our job. They would not allow me. My face was cut, i was hit with a pistol under the eye, and it was bleeding. I was not allowed to see about it until i got out of court 10 hours later. I was awarded a fellowship for next year. What does it mean . Im going to strike. I dont see how any teacher, any student can attend this school anymore. I was completely vocal about the whole thing. But this bust has radicalized everybody and me personally. I was a nonviolent student. I did not care what happened. I am not neutral now. I will occupy buildings tomorrow. According to six written affidavits written by a professor of mathematics, much looting and destruction occurred in mathematics between 7 00 a. M. And 2 00 p. M. During these hours, the only people permitted inside the members were policeman, of the press, and a very small group of building staff. When i got out of jail and got back to math, i ran for my camera and light meter that i left behind. All i found was a lot of exposed film and broken lenses. Who else could have done it but the cops . It is interesting to note that arthur hayes sulzberger, one of the trustees, just happens to be the chairman of the board of the New York Times, and one wonders why certain things were distorted in the times coverage of the strike. Other things that appeared in the evening edition changed in the morning edition. And i think the answer is clear enough. I think take a look. What is this, a goddamn police state . Theyve got cops all over the campus. What is this . Need two cards to get in, what is this, iran . Double identification, please. Double identification, please. Okay. Finals, study, get ahead. Work. Get ahead. Grades. Finals. Get ahead. Study. Get ahead. Jobs. Get ahead. Get ahead. Get ahead. Papers. [indiscernible] police, cops, forward march. [growling] private property. [growling] private property. Private property. No cops on campus. We shall not be moved [growling] we shall not be moved strike. Strike. Strike. [shouting] strike. [shouting] we now demand, we no longer ask, a say in decisions that affect our lives. We call on all students, faculty, staff, and workers of the university to support our strike. We ask that all students and faculty not meet or have classes inside buildings. We have taken the power away from an irresponsible and illegitimate administration. We have taken power away from a board of self perpetuating businessmen who call themselves trustees of this university. We are demanding an end to the construction of the gymnasium, a gymnasium being built against the will of the people of the community of harlem. A decision that was made unilaterally by powers of the University Without consultation of people whose lives it affects. We are no longer asking, but demanding an end to all affiliation to the institute for defense analysis. A Defense Department venture, that collaborates the university to study the kill and overkill that has resulted in the slaughter and maiming of thousands of vietnamese and americans. We are no longer asking. We are demanding. That students and faculty have a say in the policies of the university. We find our lives being governed by men who do not understand the problems of the day. It has become increasingly clear they dont understand the elements and the ingredients of the creative discord that begins to show up in the west today. What they are able to do is give to create a world order in which everyone thinks is absolutely on the power of the police to maintain it. They no longer have power. [applause] when you understand the uniform and the badge, and the coercive violence of the billy club, napalm and atomic bombs, then you have understood thosetely the sole legacy legacy of those like jason kirk, who pretends to authority in our world. It is this generation coming towards fertility beyond the barricades in new york, in oakland, and in paris, and rome. Which is about to shape the future. [applause] and i aint gonna be treated this way this way and i aint gonna be treated this way she went up to a room and im going please dont go go where thoseg children would go on top of the world please join on southfield a game called trustee. We start with dice and a checkerboard. Decisions have been made in this university. Then go down and see liberation classes. See how the university should be run, is going to be run, will continue to be run without the offices and the power of the administration. The classes have been set up at this university to focus of the new classes is to establish a free, open, democratic and meaningful discourse between faculty and students. To put an end to the old system and structure of Columbia University. Classes are being held on lawns, on campus, and in apartments of faculty outside of campus. Students were saying three major things. First they were saying that they refused to be produced any longer and sent into society as some kind of a managerial class. Second, they were saying to the faculty that they could no longer accept the paternalistic role that teachers traditionally played in the university. Learning takes place in dialogue between equal men. They said in effect, we will no longer let you play some kind of big daddy to us. Third, they were saying the demands and actions had to be taken seriously, could not be dismissed with some kind of bullshit platitudes about youth and idealism, because they were involved in Political Action on the highest level of human seriousness. Tonight, there is a new liberated area in this neighborhood. [applause] we are going to support those 50 Community Members that have taken over the building. Presently in the building there are 40 to 50 representatives of community groups, of political clubs, of organizations that have been fighting columbias expansive policies for years. This is not a state of occupancy. Students right now are the vanguards. But there are masses of people in areas of new york around columbia which are finally going to stop columbia. At some point there is a contradiction between support action and fighting your own particular kind of oppression, which is what we are always talking about. What we came to see in the strike when you want to oppose an institution of that sort, you want to fight on all fronts. No longer will you close our streets, open the parkland, and force the removal of over 8000 people from their homes. Why is the Community Action committee predominately white of the 8000 tenants of small hotels, sros, and tenements who columbia has systematically displaced, only a specially selected token number of Minority Group families now reside in Morningside Heights. We deplore this deliberate creation of a white ghetto. [shouting] [indiscernible] we dont want to be arrested. Im under arrest . Get in the wagon. You are free to leave. I dont want to be arrested. I dont want to be arrested. Go to the wagon. Go to Riverside Drive if you dont want to be arrested. [applause] we wanted to show solidarity with people and the six strike leaders they tried to suspend. You are hereby directed to clear out of this building. Any further instructions if this building is not cleared out in the next 10 minutes. [indiscernible chatter] a three vote majority decided to stay. Strike. Strike. Strike. Strike. If you do not leave this building, we warn you we have no alternative but to call the police. Any student who is arrested will be immediately suspended. [applause] a lot of the most militant people had left hamilton because they didnt want to get busted a second time. Those were the people that stuck around outside, buildings, barricades, fighting the cops. The crowd is surrounded by police. Here they come. Come on. [shouting] sieg heil sieg heil strike. Strike. Strike. [shouting] strike, strike, strike. [chanting] [shouting] we didnt realize at the time it wasnt enough to build up barricades. The cops would take them down, so they engaged in combat. [shouting] [chanting] take one. All right. Wait. Give it to me again. With reverberations the modern university is the cradle of the nations future. It has been called the chief energizing and Creative Force in our entire social system. [pomp and circumstance playing] here we are at Columbia University, Morningside Heights. 116th street. For the first time in the history of Columbia University, there will be two graduations in Morningside Heights. The one we are looking at now is the official ceremony, acknowledged by the trustees and attended by the faculty and administration, but at a signal from the students, almost the entire graduating class is expected to leave the ceremony, and protest over its legitimacy, and hold their own ceremony in repudiation of the trustees. They expect to be joined by a few members of the faculty. Oh lord oh lord keep your eyes on the prize, oh lord come on, boys. Theres one thing we do know, we will have to go keep your eyes on that prize oh lord oh lord, oh lord, keep your eyes on that prize, oh lord make freedom sing keep your eyes on the prize, oh lord oh lord oh lord, keep your eyes on the prize oh lord that is right, everybody clap. Keep it together. Everybody sing. Go. Oh lord, oh lord, keep your eyes on that prize, oh lord in just a few more hours, this whole campus will be ours keep your eyes on the prize, oh lord oh lord oh lord keep your eyes on that prize, oh lord all our brothers give demands, know that freedom rings keep your eyes on that prize, hold on hold on keep your eyes on that prize, oh lord [sirens] youre watching American History tv, covering history cspan style, with event coverage, eyewitness accounts, archival films, lectures in college classrooms, and visits to museums and historic places, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. 70 years ago on june 25, 1950, north Korean Forces crossed the 38th parallel and invaded south korea, escalating cold war tensions and triggering three years of combat. Wet on reel america, feature four u. S. Government films that tell the story of the war. Orientation film for soldiers assigned to south korea , to help peace survive, followed by two films that aired as part of the armys picture series, the first 40 days in