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cont...
Boy were we happy! We remained there for several hours,
burning fires, singing revolutionary songs, huddling together,
and cheering wildly at the announcement that the flights had been
cancelled for the rest of the day.
At sunset we marched back to I.V. and partied way into the night
in the vacant lots of what now is Anisq'Oyo Park. While most of
the marchers celebrated, the more radical leadership met in small
groups around town where they decided there should be an attempt
to take over U.S. 101 the next morning. Word spread quickly and
a caravan crept out of Isla Vista at dawn.
But Carpenter was having none of this. As thirty or forty cars
moved onto U.S. 101 from the Ward Memorial Drive on ramp, Sheriff's
deputies walked along the road banging cars with their night sticks,
creating a lot of dents and even breaking some windows. Everyone
moved out quickly. Some people were even forced to leave their
cars and they were chased by deputies most of the way back to
I.V.
A Second Chance
Two years later, an antiwar march down State Street in Santa Barbara
had to cross U.S. 101 at the traffic lights in order to get to
the beach area. Some three or four thousand people were in the
march and it was a pretty high-spirited event. As the crowd crossed
101 under the protection of Sheriff's deputies, a veteran of the
attempted takeover of 101 in 1972 shouted: "Everybody sit
down--we've finally got 101!"
Well, everybody did. We began chanting, locking arms together,
and hooting those eerie high-pitched war hoops adopted from the
Arabs fighting the French during the Algerian revolution.
The Sheriff let us sit for about 20 minutes, but when the Sunday afternoon traffic got backed up five miles in each direction, one of the deputies began banging a metal utility pole with his nightstick. Another collective thought process struck the crowd, because almost at once, everyone rose and began walking again toward the beach.
Carpenter had let us have the highway for a few minutes--perhaps
so we could feel that we had accomplished something--and then
fulfilled his responsibility by moving us out.
Smart man. Maybe even a caring man.
Sometime later I spoke to him about these two events. He told
me that he had a son who was just coming of draft age, and he
understood what we were trying to say in our rambunctious efforts.
He didn't say he agreed with us--he just said he could empathize
with us.
Recently, Carpenter announced that he would retire at the end of his term in 1990. I wish him well.
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