Operation Drop-of-Water
Mayer, Milton
Operation Drop-of-Water by MILTON MAYER The common creed of the Yippies and the Yahoos is: Do It! Inactivity—just standing there doing nothing—is the most unamerican of all unamerican activities....
...But those who stood there doing nothing could still reach them by virtue of their standing there doing nothing...
...The Vietnam vigils (like everything else) came out of Quakerism...
...Do not answer any prowcation...
...But today's spectacular is tomorrow's yawn...
...Do not bring posters or placards...
...But they were always irreproachable: Please keep the silence...
...I don't know" But by-and-by Pop himself began to wonder what the man was reading, and he found out, maybe from the copper on the corner, that the man was reading the roll call of the Vietnam dead from the Congressional Record...
...Of course there were other, more spectacular, things that helped bring the people around...
...The American people were coming around...
...He didn't know why people would stand there doing nothing, or what they thought they were doing just standing there...
...They just stood there silently side by side for an hour, with a modestly lettered sign at each end of the line: Weekly Vigil for Peace in Vietnam...
...Nothing...
...But some few will go on standing there doing nothing until we Americans stop killing and being killed in Vietnam...
...I don't know" "But gosh, Pop...
...The man walking up and down in front of them" "I don't know" "He's reading something...
...By the time of Cambodia the taunts and the hoots had ended, and the man who for two or three years, or four, had parked his car across the street with a big sign on it, Support Our Boys in Vietnam, gave up...
...Shut up...
...And perhaps —perhaps—Operation Drop - of -Water has completed its mission...
...The drop of water wears away the stone...
...The Movements have attracted some people (from Nonmovement), and some have got tired, and some have been trickied by Dickie's Withdrawal and Vietnamization...
...But by the time Nixon succeeded Johnson, somebody's Pop had had to try to figure out an answer, just to keep the kid quiet...
...Comply with proper requests of authorities...
...That's the way it went, at first...
...What's he reading, Pop...
...There they are again, Pop" "Who...
...At some point people go deaf in self-defense...
...An occasional, and then more than an occasional, passer-by made the V-sign...
...But it was just standing there doing nothing that brought the country around on Vietnam...
...that way or a taunt or a hoot or an obscenity...
...At some point nobody wants to hear any more atrocities, triumphs, lies, damned lies, and statistics...
...But why are they standing there...
...The Quakes are the world's heavyweight champions at turning the world upside-down by just standing (or sitting) there doing nothing...
...Week after week, year after year, in every wind and weather, the roll call went on: the Vietnam dead...
...not the cave-man government, which doesn't understand anything but jawboning, but the people...
...The vigils have fallen off in number and size...
...whoever does anything right in the right way reproaches the world...
...And the kid who got an answer told the other kids...
...Those people, standing there" "Shut up...
...And that's when Pop's troubles began, because kids are question marks and the questions keep coming...
...What are those people doing...
...Pop really didn't know...
...To express our sorrow and our protest because we Americans are killing and being killed in Vietnam: we hold this vigil...
...Then: "What's that man doing, Pop...
...Stood there doing nothing, and their doing nothing mystified, and then annoyed, and then outraged, and then moved their fellow-Americans who went walking or riding by...
...What man...
...The vigils were (and are) not religious...
...For three or four years, three or four people (or occasionally three or four hundred) just stood there, at the same time and place each week, in every wind and weather, in three or four hundred cities and towns: the Vietnam vigils...
...But they were (and are) solemn and, I suppose, sanctimonious...
...MILTON MAYER, the Roving Editor of The Progressive, is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts and professor of the humanities at Windham College in Ver/tiont...
...From San Diego up to Maine—and out to Honolulu—just standing there...
Vol. 35 • February 1971 • No. 2
