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Report Filed by David L. Rosheim, Iowa SDS
I heard about this rally from some friends in Iowa City where I am trying to
visit when I can to restart the SDS at the University of Iowa. I have called
to try and find contacts and have sent emails. With no response thus far, I
decided to make it to the Peace March which was being sponsored by a coalition
of campus antiwar groups. I was hoping to see some other folks interested in SDS
there. My wife and I had made signs and brochures and buttons over the weekend.
I think it's OK for me to make SDS buttons since I am also an old IWW member!
I brought all these and parked very close to the rally center so I could get my
materials out of the van quickly. I met some friends there, an older couple,
and tried to get them to stay for the march but they remove themselves in some
haste once the antiwar people began to gather. It was cold and windy and the other
potential SDSers did not materialize. I had wanted to hand off one of the signs
to them or the large peace flag but ome of the organizers noticed me standing
there and announced that I would be leading the march with my flag. After the
speeches and some singing, off we went on the mile walk. We stopped to deliver
messages and letters at a congressional office (phony moderate republican Jim Leach)
and at an Army recruiter's office (no one home). At the conclusion of the march
I passed out the SDS brochures and a button or two and then walked over to Prairie
Lights Bookstore and left about ten brochures there, also putting one up on the
store's bulletin board. Incidentally, the flag had drawn the attention of the local
media and a reporter from the Daily Iowan, the UI student newspaper interviewed me
and I discussed SDS participation in the march. However none of the SDS references
got into the printed or online press coverage EXCEPT that I was at the head of the
column and my SDS sign was unmistakeable.
After the march, I also visited the Memorial Union at U Iowa and posted and
left brochures there also in noticeable places and remembered all the SDS meeting we
had had there (and all the SDS literature we mimeographed there) in the Sixties. Two days
later I was in Des Moines in connection with my business and left the remainder of the
brochures in big chain bookstores and coffeehouses. It occurred to me then that people who
travel for business reasons can distribute quite a lot of radical literature and do quite
a lot of mischief to the War Machine. So that is what I have done so far. I have also been
emailing pictures of the peace march and information about the revived SDS to nearly everyone
I know and a few I barely know, using a tool we did not have in the Sixties. I think this
covers my activities so far in behalf of what I hope will become a renewed SDS in Iowa.
Peace and Freedom.
David L. Rosheim
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