In 1967 against a Vietnam war that lacked for wide patriotic support, a group of high-school students including me carried anti-war placards in front of the then-Marin County Courthouse onFourth Street in San Rafael, California. On that sunny sidewalk, we weredoing fine until cars pulled up carrying some of our classmates, football players. These were led, curiously, by a non-jock student in a Nazi helmet.
The football players strode to girl demonstrators and took away theirplacards (these were students they knew). Right then on busy Fourth Street, two motorcyclists saw what was occurring and pulled up. Apparently perceiving the actions of the jocks as unjust and cowardly,the two Gypsy Jokers riders waded into the altercation, against about seven jocks. At this point, the jocks were encumbered with signs they had taken from the girl demonstrators, and the experienced Joker fighters jumped them all and held sway, for several minutes. After that,bloodied but victorious, jocks gathered up the girls’ placards and left.
The non-jock leader was unscathed, he never entered the fray. These young men “countering” our anti-war demonstration mostly hailed from a rich enclave, in neighboring San Anselmo, known as Sleepy Hollow, developed on the former Butterfield estate – yes, Butterfield stage line. Sleepy Hollow featured a Homeowners Association policy that excluded Blacks, Jews, and Asians. This policymay have been informal, enforced only by discriminating Realtors.
Weakly busting that policy in 1965 was the Tang household, headed by a former Nationalist Chinese military man, supporter of the anti-communist, US-supported dictator Chiang Kai Shek, ruler on the island of Taiwan from 1950 to 1975. The Tang sons, my friend Rick and a younger brother, attended San Rafael Military Academy. As such, the Tangs were white enough for Sleepy Hollow.
The non-jock in the Nazi helmet was one Terry Lawson, a confused person who less than ten years later would sport long hair and hippie behavior.
Showing that day on that sunny sidewalk, I think, was a desire to flaunt power over a situationally weaker person, expressed by the vigilante group as a whole and expressed to a fine point with Lawson’s flaunted Nazi helmet. I believe the psychoanalyst and political philosopher Felix Guattari best described this emotion in writing,
“Everyone wants to be a fascist.”
After the fight, one of the Gypsy Jokers said effectively that he believed supporters of the Vietnam war were dupes.
“Johnson (president Lyndon B.) wants the Mekong Delta,” he said.
Our demonstration was organized by student body president Jared Rossman, a smarty headed for Harvard. Jared is the younger brother of Michael Rossman, who co-organized the series of demonstrations at UC Berkeley in 1964 known as the Free Speech Movement, which successfully held sit-ins against UC Berkeley’s then-existing ban of on-campus political activities.
As far as I know, no counter moves – no hecklers, no attackers – came against the Free Speech Movement demonstrators.