Interview with Mitchell Nussbaum

Partial Transcript: So Mitchell. What would you want to tell us about...

Segment Synopsis: At the time, Mitchell was involved in SDS and other clubs and they decided to protest the coming of Dow on campus. He remembered that Dow had come the year before to interview students and people went to occupy the Chancellor’s office. The Chancellor went to the faculty and asked for authorization to call in city police if students did that again. They didn’t expect the police to come.

Keywords: Bascom Hall; Madison City Police; SDS

Partial Transcript: Although you guys were warned...

Segment Synopsis: Yes but no one expected the cops to come up there. The day before Dow (October 17), the San Francisco Mime Troupe was in town. They performed radical political shows. They did this show, ironically, and Mitchell remembers it being very powerful and at the end, they told everyone to go to the Dow demonstration. Mitchell went to the Dow demonstration to support the students sitting in the Commerce Building. Mitchell remembers it being fun and festive, he sold cookies as a fundraiser for another activist group.

Keywords: San Francisco Mime Troupe; the Commerce Building

Partial Transcript: In the building? Outside...

Segment Synopsis: Mitchell was outside and then he went inside where people were sitting. He heard glass smashing and ran to the front and saw that “all Hell was breaking loose.” It was expected that they would pick the demonstrators up and take them downtown but instead the police were hitting the students. People gathered around the entrance, the cops came out, and there they were, surrounded by a crowd of angry people and swung their clubs. People had blood running down their faces. Then at some point, the police threw tear gas. It broke up the crowd. It was a new thing, Mitchell thought that even the police didn’t know how to use it because they weren’t wearing protective masks.

Keywords: clubing; tear gas; the Commerce Building

Partial Transcript: The Mifflin Street Block Party...

Segment Synopsis: During the Mifflin Street Block Party, the police wanted everyone to go home, and they threw tear gas into the apartments. It became something you’d expect during the year. Mitchell believes that the police tried to pick fights with the students.

Keywords: Mifflin Street Block Party

Partial Transcript: Have you heard...

Segment Synopsis: Mitchell didn’t hear it, but he remembers it. Did you still have any impression of the UW Madison police chief, Ralph Hanson? The violence was from the city cops. Mitchell felt that the campus police were smarter about it. After David Cooper became police chief, the campus police were the hard asses.

Keywords: Madison City Police; Ralph Hanson; UW Police

Partial Transcript: Thanks for letting us know...

Segment Synopsis: In his high school in New York, Mitchell was involved in a precursor SDS. Then he was involved in a militant SDS during his undergraduate. It was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and community organizing. SDS wasn’t eager to get involved in opposing the Vietnam War.

Keywords: SDS; Vietnam War

Partial Transcript: Speaking of the organization...

Segment Synopsis: Mitchell remembers that there was an open planning meeting. SDS made it a principal to be open. Mitchell doesn’t remember any people in charge of keeping things going, there was no experience in running mass demonstrations at that point. Mitchell attended the March on Washington, the first national anti-war march. He took a bus from Kalamazoo during his junior year as an undergrad. Did you vote on things? He doesn’t remember because there wasn’t any disagreement. Mitchell is sure that SDS brought the mime troupe to Madison.

Keywords: March on Washington

Partial Transcript: There was the demonstration on the seventeenth

Segment Synopsis: There was the demonstration on the seventeenth, the demonstration on the eighteenth, a strike on the nineteenth, and then there was a national demonstration in Washington D.C.

Partial Transcript: I am just wondering if you could give us a brief

Segment Synopsis: Mitchell was born in New York and went to high school there, he remembers it being a hot bed of activism, the old left was turning into the new left. There were a lot of children of communists. He went to Kalamazoo College which was very different. Then he went to graduate school at UW Madison for math.

Keywords: Kalamazoo College; Student activism

Partial Transcript: I am just wondering if you have anything more to add

Segment Synopsis: Mitchell thinks that there is a direct line from the Dow demonstration to the Sterling Hall bombing. The demonstration was like what was seen in the South with the clubs and tear gas.

Keywords: Sterling Hall bombing