Cambridge Votes on the Vietnam War

...Led by Michael Walzer, a 31yearold professor at Harvard and an editorof DISSENT, CNCV helped mobilize hundreds of students, faculty members, and housewives to ring doorbells and set up neighborhood discussion groups about the war...

...They did manage to make Election Day look like an American Legion parade (dozens of sound trucks and cars decked out with flags and posters...

...WHAT, FINALLY, WERE THE EFFECTS of the CNCV's campaign on the Cambridge electorate...

...Indeed, an intimidating atmosphere prevailed at many polling places: some CNCV poll workers were threatened and maligned, and entering voters were sternly admonished to do their patriotic duty by voting against the referendum...

...But most of the radical students have simply turned away from such work, preferring draft resistance and university protest...

...On November 28, when the results were finally tabulated, 11,349 persons (39 per cent) had voted for the referendum and 17,742 (61 per cent) had voted against it, with a remarkably small number of abstentions (1,960, less than 6 per cent of all who had voted...

...The CNCV was clearly a middle-class, university-oriented outfit, and many working-class people voted against the referendum because of who they perceived was running or backing the effort...

...About half the population has not completed high school and earns less than $6000 a year...

...but it probably served to give many who had doubts about the war the feeling that dissent at the ballot box was an acceptable form of opposition...

...Nevertheless, the campaign failed to bridge the hostility between town and gown and to establish any solid organization among workingclass people, even though the referendum received a substantial vote in some working-class neighborhoods...

...Soon after the CNCV submitted its petitions with signatures of nearly 8,000 Cambridge voters, the City Solicitor refused to permit the certification process to proceed, holding that the subject of the petition was not a fit matter for city business...

...This decision was made despite the fact that the City Council had passed three prowar resolutions in the recent past...

...should get out of Vietnam" because "the war is not in the interests of American workers and students and serves only the interests of business...

...As it turned out, the estimated 2,000 to 2,500 people who registered in behalf of the referendum probably were responsible for the election of the one Council candidate who openly supported the referendum...

...The Cambridge referendum has undoubtedly established the CNCV as a potent political force in the city...

...In the limited time available to the canvassers, it was impossible to engage in prolonged discussions...

...FROM ITS INCEPTION, THE CNCV attempted to draw support from all sectors of the Cambridge community and to establish an image of responsibility...

...The Boston Globe editorialized on Nov...

...troops...

...With almost no significant disagreement, the CNCV endorsed a formulation which stated that: "Whereas: thousands of American and Vietnamese are dying in the Vietnam War...

...Now therefore be it resolved: that the people of the City of Cambridge urge the prompt return home of American soldiers from Vietnam...

...Only two cities, San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts, succeeded in reach * Although for simplicity's sake, the term "referendum" is usually used in this article, the correctlegal term for the Cambridge and San Franciscoactivities is "initiative petition...

...content and attempted, in several brisk sentences, to answer some of the main Adminis-• tration arguments (that we are containing...

...Following several acrimonious meetings, the CNCV finally voted to conduct its own referendum campaign...

...The affirmative vote is all the more remarkable because it was registered in the face of the most concentrated prowar propaganda campaign the Administration has yet mounted...

...THIS PAST FALL, peace groups in over a dozen cities across the nation sought to place the issue of the Vietnam War before the voters in the November municipal election through use of the initiative petition or referendum.* This novel use of the referendum formally to register opinion on a foreign policy issue was first tried in 1966 in Dearborn, Michigan, where 40 per cent of the voters supported a resolution calling for "an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of United States troops from Vietnam...

...Even if the two predominantly university wards are omitted from the vote, better than one out of three voters (35 per cent) expressed themselves against the war...

...As it turned out, the specific wording of the referendum was never an important issue in the campaign...

...This steady stream of new registrants aroused fears on the part of local politicians that these new anti-Vietnam voters would significantly alter the balance of power in the city...

...The group's image was further enhanced by the respected Cam bridge lawyer Hans Loeser, who represented the CNCV in its court battle...

...Few SDS-ers joined the campaign, and most of the young radicals who had originally opposed the referendum drifted away from the organization...

...The second major item distributed was a reprint of Boston Globe editorials, selected primarily because of their "respectability...

...Hundreds of people have become involved in active political work—some for the first time—and many citizens have been made aware that they do not stand alone in feeling uneasy about, if not absolutely opposed to, the war in Vietnam...

...In general, the campaign pivoted around the basic issue of the war and not around "prompt return home" of U.S...

...There was not a single incident of "red-baiting" during the entire campaign...

...30: That the Cambridge antiwar proposal should lose by just 6,372 votes out of more than 29,000 cast should be as much a shocker to Washington policy-makers as was the 36.5 per cent vote in favor of a similarly worded antiwar proposal in San Francisco three weeks ago...

...Whereas: this war is not in the interests of either the American or Vietnamese people...

...The principal piece of campaign...

...Few undergraduates were involved in the canvassing, in large part due to the CNCV's desire to avoid giving the referendum campaign a "student image...

...The referendum won in 14 of the city's 55 precincts, and tied in another...

...Another 25 per cent work in business and sales, the same percentage as in the nearby Boston metropolis...

...Cambridge, despite its popular image as a university town, is in many respects typical of other American cities...

...In the circumstances, the White House would err grievously if it interpreted the Cambridge vote, following right on the heels of the vote in San Francisco, as anything but a startling demonstration of a steadily growing antiwar sentiment...

...The CNCV campaign led to a large-scale registration drive directed toward graduate students and young faculty members, many of whom were eligible to vote but were not registered...

...The actual campaign for the referendum lasted only four weeks (due to the late court decision) , but was exceptionally well-organized...

...Undergraduates were active in distributing leaflets and in Election Day work...

...In all, nearly 500 people, organized into 40 ward and precinct groups, canvassed for the referendum...

...Yet Cambridge is somewhat unusual because of its two major universities, Harvard and MIT...

...This meant that in effect a few working-class areas were canvassed lightly or not at all...

...In sum, the campaign probably did little to change preconceived notions about the war...

...only some middle-class opponents of the war were troubled by the withdrawal formulation...

...The Massachusetts court, relying heavily on the California Supreme Court's decision on the San Francisco referendum, held that, in effect, anything the Cambridge City Council could do could also be done by right of initiative petition...

...The CNCV's reach into the community remains confined to predominantly middle-class sections of the city...

...Later, news paper ads were placed in the local weekly, bearing the names of some 500 respected Cambridge clergymen and citizens, urging people to "Vote Yes on the Cambridge Referendum...

...one predominantly Irish-Catholic working-class ward did not even have a CNCV organization...

...Support for the referendum was lower than anticipated in the predominantly upperincome university sections but substantially higher than anticipated in the working-class districts...

...3) the political impact of a strong vote in favor of a withdrawal statement would be far greater than a somewhat larger vote supporting negotiations or a halt to the bombing...

...In retrospect, it would appear that the inherent time constraints and the inevitable drive to maximize the vote are powerful barriers to in-depth organizing...

...There was surprisingly little organized antireferendum activity until the final ten days, when the city's veterans' groups published some ads in the local weekly and organized for Election Day...

...Canadians, Irish, and Italians are the largest ethnic groups, and nearly twothirds of the people are Roman Catholic...

...Adoption of this wording that called, subtly, for immediate unilateral withdrawal of American troops was based on three assumptions: (1) most of the campaign workers, particularly in the early signature-gathering phase, would probably be drawn from the radical students who would find a milder formulation unacceptable...

...For the most part, the people who worked were recent recruits to the peace movement...

...Technically, thelatter term refers to an effort to introduce a legislative act or resolve through popular petition, while the former term refers to an effortto amend or repeal an existing law...

...When the CNCV first began considering the idea of a Vietnam referendum, there was some opposition within its leadership, principally from the radical students, who argued that involvement in electoral politics would undermine community organizing, by sacrificing indepth canvassing for the superficial contacts of a political campaign...

...The principal emphasis was placed on doortodoor canvassing, which succeeded in reaching 50-60 per cent of all households in the COMMENTS AND OPINIONS city...

...The educational aspect of the campaign had several weaknesses...

...Among the public supporters were John Kenneth Galbraith, ex-Senator Maureen Neu berger, and Nobel Prize winners George Wald and James Dewey Watson...

...The large number of students and faculty who live there has a major impact on the peace movement in the city, and antagonisms between town and gown create serious difficulties for organizing antiwar sentiment among workingclass people...

...The CNCV promptly brought the case to Middlesex Superior Court and after much skillful maneuvering by its lawyer, a favorable judgment was rendered in time for the referendum to appear on the November ballot...

...THE REFERENDUM IDEA grew out of a need to provide meaningful activity for people already organized by a local peace group, the Cambridge Neighborhood Committee on Vietnam (CNCV...

...In the working-class areas the vote went as low as 18 per cent and as high as 43 per cent, generally ranging between 22-35 per cent...

...The Globe editorials similarly failed to challenge the basic assumptions of the war...

...The concept of the referendum, with its emphasis on familiar forms of electoral politics and its potential for reaching out into the community, greatly appealed to the antiwar coalition that proliferated throughout the country in response to the call for a Vietnam Summer...

...This group undertook its referendum primarily as a means to organize the working-class com COMMENTS AND OPINIONS munity and educate workers to a "Marxist interpretation" of the war...

...The first step was the choice of three sponsors for the referendum whose names had to appear on each petition sheet: a local Roman Catholic parish priest, a wellknown Negro Episcopal minister, and Professor David Riesman of Harvard...

...The canvassing effort was concentrated in areas which appeared to have some potential for success...

...It has built an extensive ward and precinct organization that is well suited to future electoral activities...

...This meant that the burden of educating fell to the literature that was left in every home willing to take it (some 100,000 pieces of literature were distributed...

...CNCV tried mightily to give itself the aura of a city-wide organization of all races and all classes—and indeed there was some truth to the claim— but the popular image was that CNCV and a "yes" vote were associated with intellectuals, hippies, and draft-dodgers...

...Ideological differ ences between this group and the CNCV lead ership were very great, and differences were greater still when compared with the CNCV constituency, which was predominantly liberal in orientation...

...China, stopping Communism, etc...

...2) people who opposed the war would probably vote for the referendum even if they preferred a milder position...

...The very choice of electoral activity, however, appealed strongly to people—many of them under 30—who only recently had become sufficiently disenchanted with the course of American policy to devote their personal energies to opposing it...

...The situation was complicated by the fact that another group, composed largely of Progressive Labor party members and SDS-ers, had for several months been gathering signatures for a Vietnam referendum which asserted that "the U.S...

...Whenever possible, canvassing crews were composed of local residents, although in working-class areas this was possible only to a minimal extent...

...As it turned out, the other petition failed to obtain sufficient signatures to secure a place on the ballot...

...Most of the canvassing was done by housewives, young faculty members, and graduate students...

...ing the ballot, and then only after prolonged and costly court battles...

...With a population of 100,000, Cambridge has a high concentration of manufacturing industries which employ about 30 per cent of its residents...

...This was slightly better than the San Francisco results had been (37 per cent for, 63 per cent against...

...The local press interpreted the results as a clear repudiation of the Administration's policies...

...literature was a leaflet that was shallow in...

...The larger question must be raised as to whether a campaign of this sort can really provide the opportunity for any meaningful education...

...The university areas voted between 50-64 per cent in favor of the referendum...

...In most cities, however, legal and practical obstacles proved so formidable that the Vietnam referendum never reached the ballot...

...without ever suggesting that these might not be the most important questions to ask, and without COMMENTS AND OPINIONS presenting any facts (for example, that it is basically a civil war) which might enable people to challenge the fundamental assumptions that led to our involvement in Vietnam...

...One voter wrote on his referendum ballot: "Get the hippies out of Cambridge...

...The trend, as exemplified by Cambridge, is for increasing numbers of such moderate people to join the peace movement in order to work on projects like the referendum and, perhaps, in Senator McCarthy's campaign...