t shirts and sandwiches

Demonstrations. Most of us have gone to them. When I was sixteen years old and visiting my big brother at college in Boston I sneaked off and joined a demonstration that was going on in front of his fraternity house. "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh NLF is gonna win", I shouted along with the college students and eventually the NLF did win. I was so proud.

Senior year in high school I went to the Vietnam Demonstration at Van Saun Park in Paramus and the following November I went to the moratorium in Washington on a creaky Newark bus. At college, I slept on the floor of the University president's office. I ended the war in Vietnam and I was happy to know my demonstrating days were over.

Then through a series of events I was nominated to be a shop steward in a public libray. Soon the negotiations were going bad and CWA proposed having a demonstration on the library lawn. We all walked around singing "15 cents don't pay my rent" to the guitar chords of our custodian. Then a bus came up Broad Street and we were joined by "ringers". CWA activists and Bennet Zurofsky playing the guitar. What a memorable evening.

Now I am working in State government and Monday there will be a major demonstration. Somehow I feel old. In the sixties I was protesting for Ho Chi Minh and truth and justice. Now I am protesting for my pension. According to the grapevine, the union will supply t shirts and sandwiches. I hope I can still fit in a large and they don't put too much mayo in the sandwich.