Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

confrontation had become fixed the constituted leadership of the mobilization [sic] haddisintegrated—many had been arrested, and others remained in the rear attending to theproblems of bail, supply, and information. In their place arose a spontaneous leadership”(32). The vanguard was composed of the committed radical activists who weredetermined, if not to break into the Pentagon, then at least to demonstrate to the mediaand the authorities their determination to end the war. These individuals decided on theirown what to do: some tried to storm the building, with bloody results, others attempted totalk to the soldiers, still more decided to stay overnight for a vigil on the Pentagon steps.Leaderless, the choice of how to participate was theirs and theirs alone.The future Yippies who participated in the Pentagon March and exorcismwatched this spontaneous leadership emerge at the steps of the Pentagon. As politicalactivists who believed in the power of individuals taking direct action as a way to wrestback the American political system from party elites, the Yippies supported this kind ofindividual political participation, an idea they borrow from the New Left’s studentactivists. It was the concept of participatory democracy.The New Left emerged in the post-war United States as a movement distinct fromthe old “red” left of the Communist party. Although many members of the Communistand Socialist Workers Parties participated in the New Left, the New Left did not focus onthe proletariat as the solution to America’s woes. Rather they looked to students andintellectuals as the vanguard of a new social and political movement. Many of the NewLeft began their activist careers in the civil rights movement, and shared “somecommitment to the realization of civil rights, peace, and some sort of radically72