,

to a good sports stadium; a good concert hall ra&

equally with a good stadium in a list of community needs.
%Majoritiesranging from 54 to 78 per cent urged that
suchstudies as creativewriting, painting and sculpture,
playing.a musical instrument, photography and Elm making be given academic credit in the school system.
1A majority said they preferred live music to recordings
and 72 per cent disagreed with the statement: symphony
concerts are just for highbrows.
More details, all tending in the same direction-toward
an appreciation of the arts and a desire for greater access
tothem-are
to be found in the full publication of the
survey: Arts and the People (Cranford-Wood, New York;
$5). Thereport would be extremely heartening, except
that in thesame mail with it came an issue of the Public
Employee Press which devoted a specialsection to the
closing down of cultural facilities in New York City (an
urban center far from unique in this regard). The Public
Library is open shorter hours andis
shutting some
branches; museums are closedoneortwodays
a week,
and when they are open charge admission, often on a particularly distasteful voluntary?basis.
There isinevitably, and properly, a bread-and-circus
aspect to the distribution of public funds. That is,politicians tend to direct the flow into channels they believe
will serve and please their constituents. The trouble comes
becausethosesamepoliticians-perhaps
in a spirit of
becoming modesty-regularly underestimate, what
.their
supporters will consider nourishing,and diverting. We have
nothing against playing fields and beer gardens-no community should be withoutthem. But now,wefind,
the
communitiesalsowant
concert halls,theatres,gallery
space and classes in the arts; andassuredlytheywant

full access tothe libraries and museums that already exist.

Where i s the money to come from? It is no easy question, but no average Americanay approached by the
Harris peopleexpressed
a desire for more trips into
space or heavier bombing of distant Asian lands. If the
man in the street wants Haydn, he wont be fobbeii off
indefinitely with helicopters.

The Grays Drugstore Idea

As if in anticipation of theHarris poll on cultural
priorities, the New , York City Cultural ,Council, the
MayorsOffice of Midtown Planning and the ,Theatre
Development Fund have revived and will put into effect
thismonthone
of the great theatre institutions of predepressionNewYork.
In those years before the bust,
theatre fans of modestmeanscould
stop by early any
weekdayevening at Grays Drugstore on Broadwayand
pick up tickets at bargainprices for plays that had not
sold outthat night.
Now, on lune 25, the Tim& Square Centre w$ open
in a pavilion at 47th Street and Broadway where tickets
will be soldon a day of perfomaye basis at half
price. The, salewindowswill
be open from 3 P.M. to
8 P.M.; from noon on matin6e days. A fund of $70,000
is being raised to run the pavilion for the first year; there
will be a service charge of $1 or 50$, depending on
ticket price, and these receipts will go into an operating
fund or the future.
The purpose of this admirable project is threefold: to
bolster theatre grosses, to attract new theatre patrons and
to encourageimpulsebuyingbymakingticketsreadily
available and reasonably priced.
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WOUNDED KNEE

DETAT
DESMOND SMITH
The seventy-day confrontation between Indian militants
and the government at Wounded Knee was an example
of a new and expanding strategy of political manipulation that neatlycircumvents the ordinary processes of
government. Its essentialelement
is that. it makes a
direct and powerful appeal to thetpublic through the
mass media.
The means employed are always some imaginative and
bold stroke: a staged event such as the Indian takeover
of Alcatraz, or the. Black September attack on the Israeli
compound during the Munich Olympics, or the seizure
of the U.S. Consul in Guadalajara by terrorists who
won a ransom-and, more important, a statement of their
aims on the front pages of Mexican newspapers and, over
all radio and TV facilities in that country.
When a media coup &&tatis successful the machinery
of government is temporarily paralyzed, .the public is
confused as to the issues involved and, to restore public
806

tranquillity, the governmentyields on the essentialdemands made by the leaders of the mediacoup. In the
1970s gaining national air time is the equivalent of seizing Parliament. Moreover, the nature of the national TV
news broadcasts itselfhelps
the plotters of a media
coup. Time is scarce. As Jerry Rubin has observed, TV
packs all the action4into two minutes-a commercial for
the revolution. Such is the methodology of this new
form of political
manipulation
that (unlike the oldfashioned military coup dktat) no singlestagedevent is
intended to win all demands in one move. Each success
produces new coup attempts. This new phenomenon
poses grave -questions for the news-gathering operations
which ,do not themselves stage events, but whichhave
becomeincreasingly aware that they are reporting on
staged events. That is what is new.
Desmond Smith, formerly with CBS i n New York and a frequent contributor to The Nation, is now director of television
in Montreal for the Canadian Broadcasting System.
TWE NhTIoN/June 25, 1973

Oliptiaer, Denver Post

The so-calledSecond Battle of 0 wounded Knee is,

therefore, worthaclose
look. It was a , media c m p
&&tar that wentawry, but nevertheless the coup planners wonasurprising
number of points. Before proceeding,abriefrecapitulation
of the background:
Getting the attention of the national print andbroadcast press is not easy. In the first two months of 1973,
for example, half a dozen major news stories-the windingdown of the war in Vietnam, the Ellsberg trial, the
POW release,inflationandWatergate-made
the activities of the, American Indian Movement (AIM) an in-.
significantnewsstory.Nevertheless,
AIM, a tiny band of militantsamongAmericas 840,000 liidjans, had already won- a formidable reputation for themselves.
.
AIM was founded in 1968 in Cleveland. At that w e
the Indians there werebeing
unfairly arrested, so a
group was formed for self-protection. Two yearsago, at
Reno, the movement rose to. a national level when urban
groups and reservation representatives met together. Before Reno, says DavidRickets, assistant instructor in
WichitaStateUniversitys Minority Studies Department,
the, movementwasfairlyexclusive
to Midwest urban
centers. After that meeting, suppoi% really spread.?
AIM also contributed to andbenefited from apublic
awakening to the plight of the American Indian. Before
1968,the index of The New York Times carries few references to the Indian situation, From 1970 to the present
day the index thickens corisideral>ly. The American Ind i a had- become, news. The Nixon Administration can
claim some of the credit.
,InJuly 1970 President Nixon sent a special message
toCongressannouncinga
new deal fo,r the Indiansincluding the self-determination that they had long sought
t o make themselves autonomous on their reservations,
At the sametime,
the Administrationmoved in other
directidns, shaking up the old Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) and creating a Nationd Council on rzlpian Op~

T&
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NAmON/June 25, 1973

portunity chaired by Spiro Agnew. In the White House

two Presidential aides, Leonard G a h e n t and his assistant, Bradley Patterson, were directed to make sure that
Presidential policy was carried out by the BIA..Unfortunately, the enabling -legislation that might have, turned
Presidential rhetoric into deed was never passed by Congress. Moreover, there was formidable opposition to any
extension of Indian sei-government within the Bureau of
Reclamation (which had built dams that flooded Indian
lands) and in the National Park Service.
In the fall of 1972 a broad coalition of Indian groups
-prominent among them AIM-joined forces to send
three automobile caravans from Los Angeles, San Francisco rand Seattle to Washington. The plan was to arrive
before the national. election, brin&ing Indian demands, to
both candidates (and to the country).. The rest. of the
story is too well known to be, toId in detail here: Indian
expectations wire crushed and the patronizing attitude
of the BIA enraged the visiting delegations and led them
to occupy and vandalize the Bureau of hdian Affairs
building. As such it was legitimate news and the reporting of itwas, by and large, accurate and truthful.
The small band of AIM militants who crossed the
huge Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation on the night
of February 27 imd occupied the villageofWounded
Knee were engaged in a media coup dktat. From- start
tofinish it was a stagedevent, merent in degree but
no d8erent in kind from the group theatre of the Black
September men.
Inthe first hours of the occupation the element of
surprise belonged entirely to AIM. They, werenot welcomed as heroes i n . the streets: On the contrary, the
majority of the residents fled the village in terror. According
to
The Washington Post, the owner of the
Wounded Knee Trading Post, Mrs.ClydeGildersleeve,
was heard shouting on the ten-party telephone line, For
I

897

Gods sake helpus,theyrecoming

in,!? The handful

of residents who remained were. taken hostage.Some
members of AIM referred to them openly as prisoners of
war.
1
It shouldbeclearly
understood that amedia
coup
detat does not needthe support of the local populace.
What it does need is instant access to radio, TV and
the press. The coup leaders use these channels to make
their demands on the government. A seconddistinguish:
h g feature of a media coup is that it doesnot seek
to overthrow the government but rather to seizepower
withinthesystem.
It is an adventurist rather than a
revolutionary tactic.
AsAIM warriors moved into WoundedKnee, the
local NBC
amate, KUTV, was right .alongside; the
trading post was wrecked by
armed activists and fiImed
exclusivelyby KUTVs camera. By the next morning
all three networks-NBC, CBS and ABC-had
crews
and reporters on the scene. Time and Newsweek were
there, as were the h s Angeles Times, The, Washington
Post and The New York Times. ,The AP and UP1 already had lines in,at Salt Lake City and quickly beefed
up their local resources.Overnight,Wounded
Knee had ,
become the ,national headline and Washington found
AMs mediagun pointed squarely at its head. In less
than a week the foreign pressmoved in: there were
print and TV reporters from Sweden, Canada; Japan
and the United Kingdom all landing at Rapid City and
heading for ?heBadlands.Passing
through Pine Ridge,
an Oglala city of 1,300, theycouldsee pickets outside
the BIA building. Their placards read: Wilson Instigator
of WoundedKneeMassacre:
Our Indians May Die.
(Richard Wilson is the Oglala tiibal chairman whom
A I M has accused of running a corrupt reservation gov. ernment with the help of a private goon squad.)
By,the secondweek, AIM wasstrategicallyplaced
for aface-offwith
the federal authorities. FBI agents
and federal marshals had sealed off all roads leading to . ,
Wounded Knee. There was word that Dick Cavett was
prepared to come from New York to broadcast a twohour sbecial on ABC. -Representatives of the National
, Council ofChurches had arrived. Sporadic ,shooting was
also taking place, between the Feds and AIM warriors.
On the nightly T? newssome 200 million Americans
could watch as some 200 (later as many as 800) AIM
members and supporters went through the motions of
preparing for ,a last-ditch stand. On WTTE-TV (Rapid
City) the Rev. Ralph Abemathy said: I wouldhope
the violencewouldstop. We have been successfulsince
Martin Luther Kings death and I hope theyrecognize
this.
Wilsons tribal government had come to a standstill.
All work on ,the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation had
ceased. Ben White Butterfly, his wife and six children,
who had Aed from Wounded Knee, were about to spend
two months as refugeesinacrowdednursinghome
in
the Pine, Ridge village. (No TV crew visited Ben w t e
Butterfly ,for his story.)
1

By March IO thecoup leaders, Dennis Banks

and Russell Means, had succeededbeyond their wildest
dreams.
808

( I ) They totally controlled d e villageofWounded

Knee, keeping the federal government out, but (by means
of back trails) selectively ,allowing the press in.
(2) AIMS activities in Wounded Knee made good
copy and even better pictures. The press is always
hungry for pictures, and A I M greatly increased its coverage with, its quasi-military preparations: cleaning
weapons, digging trenches, preparing roadblocks, holding
powwows, etc.
(3) AIM succeeded in broadcasting the impression
that-unless the government su,nendered to its demands
-a second massacre at WoundedKnee waspossible.
Theywould kill whites and bekilledbecause
(as the
Sioux once cried, at the Little Bighorn), Its a good day
to die.
Not all the presswas favorably moved by what it
saw. Tom Wicker, of , The New York Times, forone,
condemnedAIMs resort to violence and described its
leadership as interlopers atWoundedKnee,of-reser, vation Indians, both physically and culturally more white
than- native. In a March 12th stoiy headlined Indians
Playing-to Cameras, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist
Tom Fitzpatrick described the arrest at gunpoint of
four scared ranchers ,who, after being marched before
cameras like captured U.S. h e n , in Hanoi, werereleased from custody.
To understand why the leadership of A I M (including
the hidden team of backroom thinkers headed by Mark
Lane, who were lodged &Rapid City) rejected an early
offer to negotiate with the Justice Department (March
9) it isnecessary to grasp what AIM had going, As
oneyoung Indian told Washingtor Post reporter William Claiborne, Were getting the whole world to watch
what is happening to ,the Indian inAmerica.Exactly.
,
The immediacyof communications, especiallytelevision
news coverage on whichallmedia coups havecome to
rely,washeavily in AIMs favor.
Terri Schultz, a,reporter for Hurpefs, gives a fascinating insight into the media role at Wounded Knee: After
awhile[Russell
Means] goesnext
door, to a trailer
where the rest of the reporters are watching the six
oclock news. He had helped direct the cameramen that
day,evenrestaged events theyniissed. He is upset they
did not use more footage, but admits the white canvas
tepee they finally put up looks nice. AIMS lengthening
list of nonnegotiable demands was a product of media
leverage and self-justifyingexpectations.
For seventy-one days the armedactivists held out,
raiding the countryside for food, providing a daily story
for the press, and-doubtless-scengthe
govemment
out of its wits.Finally, after two, Indians were killed
anda U.S. mirshal wasparalyzed, AIM threw in its
hand. On May 8, 120 tired and bedraggled AIM war riorsstackedarms
and quietly surrendered to the federal authorities. The nonnegotiable demands that Lawrence Lamont had died for had
suddenly
become
negotiable.
The residents of WoundedKnee returned to find, an
estimated $240,000of damage ,done to their homes. The
museumhad
been vandalized, and theSacred
Heart
Roman Catholic Church, .the activists original headquarters,was daubed withgraffiti and militantslogans. MarI

"

the results, theywantylthere will be more,Wounded Knees;

It goeswithoutsaying
that the politicalgrievances ,'
raised at Wounded Knee are genuine-even the despised
Richard Wilson does not quarrel with many of the arguments, made by AIM. There are, no doubt, politikal injustices in Greece, in Irelan+, in Uruguay. What is new
in all this is the, media coup &&tat. Given ' the impact,
andimmediacy of global cohunications, it is now en-'
tirely, possible for a small ' group of people to intipidate
the strongest of governments. It is quite clear from this
that suchindividuals
can seize upon a real political
'grievance, stage it imaginatively, bring ,in the media, and
proceed to insist that, their own particular solution must ,
,
, be accepted byeveiybodyelse.
The techniques of TV and presstakeover
are in
their infancy, ' , but,we may be sure that wherever the
obsessed are gatheredthere are suchthoughts. To put
an end to @e collective penalization of inno,cent people
is a priority for government and electorate alike. At +e
present timenewsmen are helplessvictims in the adventurist
game
of media
blackmail..

. garet,'-RedEagle, who had been born in Wouqded,Khee,

'

was one Eimong' many who found her home in shambles.

'?'m 'getting, out of, here," she told a New York Times
reporter, #"theysaidtheywould
not bother the bglala
people. I don't know wby they did this to' us.''
To achieve its purpose AIM had- collectively penalized
the village of WouQded p e e ; if was, a casualty of war.
And to a very large extent the media coup d'ktut was
successful.
,

,'

,
AIM forced the government to bypass the elected
Oglala tribal council. It won ,direct negotiationswith
five White House, representati3es to discuss its ' demand
, that the Indian Reorganization,Act o
f 1934 be,.repealed.
AIM putthe militants' doint of' view' before a world
audience for more than .two months, ,and as AIM officid
Vernon' Bellecourt noted, "Indian Nations 4 over Americawillrise
up and fight for >sovereigngovernment as
a result of Wounded Knee. It is inevitable." The tragedy
is "that Be1lecour;t is 'perhaps right. As Jong asarmed
activistshavereason to believetheirmethods will bring

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W E a T H & SQUALOR

INDONESIA HEADS FOR VIOLENCE

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Jakprta
The woist threat to the future of Indonesia is urbanization.
Current development policies are allowing a small, modern
urban sectortomoverapidly
into a ' Western-style consumer society at a growth rate surpassing 12 per cent a
year, while leaving ,behind ,thevast mass of impoverished
villagers and urban sium dwellers, perhaps asmuchas
80 per cent of the 125 millionIndonesians.
Such"trickledown"economicshave
at least ,a chance
to. work, The country,has experienced, on the' surface, a
dramatic comeback ,, since General Suharto purged..the
Communists seven years ago and gradually seized power
from
the
discredited
father of Indonesian independence,the late ,President Sukarno. ' Withthe help of a
Harvard- and Berkeley-trained economic planning board
called ,Bappenas, Suharto staved off bankruptcy, securing
$3 billion in foreign government loans and' another $3.7
billion
in
international
private investment,
and
cutting
the annual rate of inflation from a staggering 635 per
cent in 1966 to as little as 2 per cent last year.
,
' This yeaf's national growth rate of
per cent, even
with' a new upsurge in the, inflation rate to 25 per cent
sinceSeptember, is far above &expectationsand, if already
fantastic oilrevenues of $1 billion a yearkeepflowing
in, may reach 8 per cent next year.
,

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809

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THE NATON/hne 25, 1973

'I

Richard Critchfield, a s$ec?al correspondent of the 'Washington ,Star-News and other papers, is now in Asia to report
problems of the human environmeht. His The. Golden BQ,w~
Be Broken will be published b y Indiana University Press.
, ,

Under Suharto, the country has come to be dmQSt a

model of the new technocratic state that eschews.ideology
and orients' itspoliciessolely to the needs of economic
development.Staid, stodgy, conservative and sternlyauthoritarian, the Suharto regime has avoided the kind of
"Socialist gestures" one associates with India, sought maximum Western aid, and given foreign and domestic private
enterprise its head.
The assumptionis that the econorhic ,fukre
with
the multinational corporations, with a shift' from traditional subsistence, agricultureto modem commercial farming and with ' the 'emergence of technocrats 'ready to advisemillionaires on efficient ways io make still more
money. Indeed, youcould Siy that ,the drama of,Indonesia today is the race between the onset once again of
revolutionarypoliticsand
the arrival ofenoughforeign
and domestic investment ib manufactu+g for export to
make such revolutionary politics unnecessary.That is what
President Suharto is talkingaboutwhen
he appeals for
some $800 million to $900 million in U.S. private investment to follow, up the oil success story with exploitation
of liquefied natural gas.
,
,
Whether the average man agrees with t$is strategy nobody knows. The government is dominated bygenerals,
and Kopkamtib, the much-feared security command, does
not encourage dissent.,There is almost ,no popular padcipation in politics and the, government does not' invite it.
Indeed, Suharto's 'ritualistic re-election last, March to a
secondfive-yearterm
'by the 920-membergovernmentcontrolled people's consultative assembly stirred little evident interest in ,the masses of peasants and city dwellers.
Most seem'to feel that a continuation of the preSent mili-

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RICHARD CRITCHFIELD'

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