Rude and Raucous Catcalls: Governor’s Day

Abstract

The U.S. invasion of Cambodia on April 30 led to violent protests and strikes across the country, and as historian Tom Wells has it, the month of May “witnessed the greatest display of campus discontent in American history.”¹ By Monday, May 4, strike planning was underway across the state of California, with demonstrations at Sacramento State, Sacramento City College, San Francisco State, UC Riverside, USC, and others. Molotov cocktails had been thrown into an ROTC building at UC Davis (the first violence there), and 400 protestors were preparing for an afternoon rally. Before the day had ended, more than 1,000 Berkeley protestors had set trash fires, shattered windows, and burnt a military truck. To the north of Nevada, even small cities like Lewiston, Idaho, saw violence when 25 National Guard trucks were set on fire.

[I]f action is to be our key term, then drama is the culminative form of action. But if drama, then conflict. And if conflict, then victimage. Dramatism is always at the edge of this vexing problem, that comes to a culmination in tragedy.

—Burke, Language as Symbolic Action