Problem is, you can return to your trust funds when your four years of intentional poverty are up. The poor people can’t. That’s why very few people, even the poor people you were trying to help, ever took you seriously.

Most people would agree that Fleming was skillful. But it seems to me that that is not the point; the point is what interests he chose to apply his skills to. No one expected that Fleming would go against his employers’ demand that he oppose the bookstore. But he was not even willing to allow a free and equal discussion of the issue to occur. In the bookstore issue Jeff Gaynor went home inmpressed that Fleming heard him out even though Fleming and the U refused to change its policies of denying students access to spread their point of view in the same manner that the U used. (After all the U was using students’ mailboxes to spread its viewpoint; it would seem that students should have the same opportunity).

Nor is it accurate to say that Fleming averted police violence. As has been described above, the police rioted on and off campus in 1967. Fleming’s response was to dodge the issue until the amount of violence forced him to issue a “very weak” statement.

As to student violence or the lack of it, those of us who engaged in demostrations and civil disobedience at the U and in Ann Arbor made our own decisions whether to engage in non-violence. The vast, vast majority didn’t. That wasn’t because of Fleming, it was because of our own values. And when the police rioted many, many students and non-students alike responded.

And, of course, after a group of students took action and committed civil disobedience, the U and Fleming sudddenly decided that a bookstore wasn’t such a bad idea after all. What’s the lesson in that? Why did it take students getting arrested to ghet the U to enter into real discussion?

I wrote an article for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education entitled “Michigan Muddles Through” about the 60′s at Michigan. I did not know Robben Fleming, though I met with him once about the article. I asked in the article why Michigan didn’t go violent like other campuses around the country– Berkeley and Columbia especially. I argued that the liberal faculty –in the social sciences and law–who were dominant at Michigan mediated between the students as well as young faculty and the administration. This happened in the first anti-Vietnam teach-in in 1965 (in which I was involved) and during the protests on South University Ave. when the faculty were on the street talking to the protestors. Law students led BAM. Their sense of strategy and understanding of negotiating tactics made BAM tough and realistic.

Of course, Fleming’s professional training in negotiation and his unflappable personality helped avert violence by students and the police. His greatest contribution was the way he handled the Regents by explaining the students’ concerns and by resisting their pressure to use force.

I notice that you published comments by UM grad Bill Ayers, one of the leaders of the Jesse James Gang, which morphed into the Weather Underground. I don’t recall whether that group ever engaged in action on the UM campus. They would not then have come to the attention of Robben Fleming.

Without thinking really, I grabbed a friend and walked down South U to President Fleming’s house at about 4:30 in the afternoon. My only previous experience with his house was at rallies the previous year when hundreds of protesting students would rally on his lawn. I never knew anyone to knock on his door, expecting to talk with him.

But this is what I did. I was asked to wait, and after 5-10 minutes Fleming came down, offered us a seat and asked what was on our mind. I explained and demanded the right for students to also have the right to blanket the mailboxes with our side of the story, free of charge.

He listened, he disagreed with our statements, he denied our request, but he gave us time, and was civil throughout. Make of this what you will. It was only afterwards that I understood that this experience was out of the ordinary. Too often we feel powerless, unable or unwilling to speak up, and out of reach of leaders and decision makers. This showed at least not all of the above is true.

2. The only comment by Cain I see that ascribes anything to anyone’s personality at all is “I suspect that Chester and Rothberger remain the prisoners of what they see through their ideological lenses and that their comments reveal more about them than they do about Fleming.” He may be wrong in that, but I don’t see him attacking “anyone who disagrees” or calling anyone a liar.

3. …no, this is too boring to go on with. You are painting some pretty specific claims and disagreements as something much larger by going on and on about how he “paints anyone who disagrees” as this and that, and it’s just bogus. In fact, you took a relatively limited disagreement and, OK, an ill-advised but essentially pretty mild crack about your ideological lenses, refracted it through your own resentment and, expended many, many lines being a big, whiny, posturing baby.

I’ve never met Stephen Cain and was not of fan of his reporting for the Ann Arbor News (I don’t remember his byline in the Detroit News–I grew up in a Free Press family–but have always felt as you do about the editorial policies of the News, and the Ann Arbor News wasn’t much better). So I have no axe to grind here. But the reason I “jumped on” your comments and not his is that he wasn’t being a jackass and you are.

1. Actually, I was responding to a comment that angrily attacked people for presenting a point of view that the commentator disagreed with.

2. Actually I was responding to Cain’s comments that seemed to focus on the supposed personality deficits of anyone who had a different point of view about Fleming. I don’t claim a monopoly on the truth. In fact, its Cain who does so. He attacks anyone who describes events that he wasn’t present when that description is contrary to the image of Fleming that he wants to spin out. And inplies that thye are lying. I didn’t challenge any of his facts. I just don’t think whether Fleming tossled him on the head when he was young has much to do witrh whether Fleming acted properly while prez of the U.

3. Actually I was responding to Cain’s cheap shots concerning my truthfullness and his attempts to bolster his credibility by referring to his former job at the News. And I don’t accept that the extremely well known News policies, distorting the facts, somehow knot to be discussed. I was also referring to his attempt to imply that any critisicm of him would be because the News was extremely right wing. The critism is based on the News’ policy of distorting facts not its right wing, rascist, anti-labor editorial policies.

4. Actually having grown up in Detroit IS relevant. I was reading the News since I was approximately 7 years old while growing up in the city that it was vreporting on. You might disagree with my opinion but certainly the fact that I was reading the News since I was about 7 years old while living, hanging out, working and going to school in the city that it was reporting on must seem relevant even to someone looking to use semi-cheap neo-logic to respond to anyone that expresses an oponion that you don’t like.

5. Actually, the truth matters. And I don’t know anyone who disagrees with my statement RE: the News. Do you?

6. Come on; you can do better than that. I was responding to Cain’s attempts to paint anyone who disagreed with him as having an idealogical time warp. He expressed a clear point of view and then personally demonized anyone who disagreed. You’r not really suggesting that anyone who states that someone else is engaging in personal attacks is him or herself engaging in personal attacks are you?

If you wanted to accuse me of being thinking that Cain’s comments are silly, you’d be more accuarte.

Finally, your point of view might have more weight if you were more even handed in which comments that you choose to jump on.

But, thats the nature of intrernet comments, isn’t it?

1. Deride any attempt to inject nuance into a controversial discussion as an apology for evil. It usually comes just before Godwin’s Law is invoked.

2. Claim a monopoly on the truth (“you seem to be more into demonizing people that disagree with your historical re-creations than getting at the truth”).

3. Deny someone’s moral standing to speak because of an association they once had (“I cannot help wondering why someone who worked as a reporter for the News would think that (s)he is in a position to comment on the credibility of others”).

4. Mix in some irrelevant claim to authenticity so you can look like you’re keepin’ it real (“As someone who grew up in Detroit…”).

5. Claim that everyone agrees with you. (“Simlilarly, I don’t know of anyone who disagrees with that sentiment”).

6. Project, project, project (“Cain seems very wrapped up in his fantasies and daydreams about the 60’s and seems to get incredibly angry and hostil;e when anyone disagrees with him”).

I think readers will decide for themselves where the anger is mainly coming from in this thread.

Cain seems very wrapped up in his fantasies and daydreams about the 60′s and seems to get incredibly angry and hostil;e when anyone disagrees with him.

I’m not sure what an idealiogical timewarp is but I believe that the US is a country with an ever widening gap between the income of the very rich and that of working and poor people; that the US is still a racially segregated society; that it is harder and harder for a person without money to get a decent education and/or decent job; that those who run the economy are willing to destroy working people’s pensions and livelihoods, in fact are willing bring it down, in order that they might make a few million more; that the US government suuports and enables governments around the world that oppress, supress and murder people in order to stay rich and stay in power, that the US government actively seeks to bring down other governments that seek to empower their own people. I don’t see much that has happened in the last 40 years to change that opinion And that guys like Fleming spend their careers trying to prevent democratic change. But hey, Cain, if it knocks you out, be angry.