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Five Activists Look Back:
cont...
WHAT LED UP TO THE BANK BEING BURNED AND THE OTHER PROTESTS?
Kronman: A lot of things came together. I think that it was the
Black Student's Union takeover of North Hall in 1968 that really
started it off, locally at least. This galvanized a lot of people,
woke them up.
 Wilson: We were all
really impressed with the boldness of that action--it was an example
to all of us of commitment that took risks. But a month before
the Bank went down, 3-4,000 people had been gathered peacefully,
and politely, in front of the UCSB Administration Building to
protest the firing of Bill Allen without the required open hearing.
We had the petition signed by 7,776 people in favor of the hearing.
And they called in the police to remove us! And the police beat
up a lot of us. It was a shock to all of us, both that the administration
was completely unwilling to negotiate and that they would order
police to come onto campus to remove us. Plus, there had been
months of police harassment and brutality in I.V.
de la Rocha: But behind all of this was the war in Vietnam. The war was the real unifying force among a lot of divergent groups. The activism of the Black Student Union demonstrated the common bonds between all of these groups.
Kronman: Plus, you cant leave out the cultural revolution, which
was sweeping the country at that time. It was the music, drugs,
the into-the-streets culture, the throwing off of old ways such
as the challenging of sexism and racism. All of this was being-covered
by the national media, and it wasn't lost on us that we were part
of a much bigger phenomena.
 Langfelder: While
this may have been the only bank to be burned to the ground, a
lot of banks across the U.S. were being trashed, and people were
being killed by authorities in a lot of places.
WHAT WAS YOUR VISION OF THE FUTURE AT THAT TIME?
Frankfort: We were intoxicated with a sense that there was going
to be a revolution not any further away than two years. There
was a mood of great change expected sweeping across the land,
and we felt that these changes would have tremendous long-term
impacts on the way everyone lived.
Langfelder: We thought that people should put their personal career-development
plans on hold and to dedicate themselves to this big change: If
we could push it over the top, everything else would workout.
Frankfort: We had a political vision of the future, not a personal
one. We were all welded into what we thought was a very large
movement and we weren't thinking about personal goals such as
jobs, homes, new cars, etc.
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