University of Maine - Prism Yearbook (Orono, ME)

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It was a brisk day in the middle of October. Winter was biding its time. Kids had started to dig out their suedes and plaid hunting jackets. Football season was well under way and the Stillwater didn’t look so bad with fall foliage reflecting on it. Twelve hundred people gathered on the steps of Fogler Library. They stood around in groups rubbing their hands briskly, leaning away from the wind. Some carried signs, many carried textbooks, a few carried babies. Too often they couldn't hear the speakers, but the spirit was still there. It was a feeling of, “Brother, we can end this damned war if we try hard enough!” Charlie Jacobs spoke first. His was not a pretty speech, but it was articulate and real. A vivid portrait of American atrocity, delivered by a stern young man who, soon enough, would learn that his number was not a ■safe one. “Vietnam is the most terrible manifestation of a warped foreign policy that kills in the name of freedom. he said and the applause thundered on the autumn air. Then it was Dave Bright who was talking, his curly shock of hair blowing in the wind. He was saying the University should have shut down ... because it is a real bad problem.” And the applause began for him. another stern-faced young man. After Bright it was a history professor, Lawrence McCaffrey, who talked of nationalism and the spirit leveled off. It was a lean, long-haired pacifist named Rick Straud. who had been convicted of refusing induction that very week, who talked of peace and walking together. He looked far too old and defeated for his twenty years. 21

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It's a long, hard road, but the only way we can make it is to walk that road together. —Rick Straud

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It was craggy old socialist Scott Nearing, who spoke in economic terms to a crowd that looked in wonder at the history on his face. And the spirit was. It was Steve Gotlieb, a veteran -who could no longer support the war he had fought in and Prof. David Smith who advocated refusing to pay taxes. October 15, Moratorium Day, day of brotherhood, day of spirit. 22