Word: protestations
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that they get black people killed and secondly, that they are not politically instrumental. The same people who are involved in riots aren't around for political organization later. But how can I condemn riots when they happen to be the only form of dissent black people have to protest the estranged position they hold in this society...
...know how it looks to you, but it looks to me like they're biting the hand that feeds." That it looks that way to Robert Gordon is one of the predictable ironies of last week's SDS demonstration at Boston University. The protest tried to raise the large question of moral priorities and University neutrality but became snagged on the commonplace frustration and anger of SDS's targets, the Gordons...
...protest began back in January when a B.U. press release announced the $500,000 gift by "philanthropist" Maurice Gordon. SDS and B.U. would have preferred the epithet "slumlord" for the wealthy Boston real estate man. The News printed a story documenting Gordon's conviction for violation of the building code and pointing to his apartment holdings in Roxbury. SDS called on the University to refuse Gordon's "blood money...
THOUGH in one sense the protest got through to the Gordons, the protestors' message probably was not listened to. The money won't, as SDS asked, go to improving living conditions for Mr. Gordon's tenants; Gordon's son indicated Friday that his family would try to find another way to give the funds to B.U. He serenely dismisses the SDS "allegations" ("people took it upon themselves to say things without any basis, to act as both judge and jury. We're not even an owner in most of those areas any more . . ."). Gordon's son doesn't sound repentent...
THIS morass can be traced back to the original rationale of the protest. The demonstration was naturally tied to the demand that the University invest its assets with a social conscience. Like their counterparts at Harvard, the B.U. SDS attacked their University for its holding in Middle South Utilities, arguing that under the cover of "neutrality" the University was supporting repressive institutions. But the specific attack on Gordon involved a second, more radical premise--that the University couldn't accept a bad man's money, even for uses of its own. The reasoning leads down a path to nihilism...