"What Do We Do with Our Lives?

After the angry Moratorium last month, TIME Contributing Editor Mayo Mods wrote in disenchantment about the evident shift away from pacifism among antiwar dissenters toward a "fresh new hate." He received a rejoinder from Linda Eldredge, 19, a student at California's Monterey Peninsula College. Many will disagree with her and consider some of her points exaggerated and unfair, but her letter well conveys the passion and anguish of the youthful protesters in America and helps explain their actions:

IT was not the march of five years ago, it was frightening. Is it because things have changed since the days of the first Washington march? No. The hatred and bitterness you saw are there because things are essentially the same. God, they are worse. What happens to a human being who is once full of hope and confidence that he can make his presence felt in the world in a useful and healthy way? What happens when he is scorned and criticized and laughed at? We marched. O God, how we marched and sang and tried to turn from death to life.

We made mistakes. Sometimes we were rash and arrogant, but it was to push away the overwhelmingly helpless and insignificant feelings. We felt horror and grief and rage. We wanted to shake President Johnson and tell him to stop! stop! And the more we spoke out and marched and felt horror, the more the killing grew. Finally, a few more people joined in the protests and we were no longer cowards or traitors. But we were still helpless. We were drafted and trained to kill and sent to a very far away place to die. And our parents watched their children go to this insanity and did not seem to mind. Even when we came back in boxes.

sb

We watched our cities crumbling and dying. We saw people of black and brown and red being denied their humanity. We went to the South and cried out to the Government for help and got nothing. A little here and there, but mostly it amounted to nothing. And we died there too.

We watched men whom we loved and had hope in (though they were not saints and were tainted with inhumanity as we all are) shot and buried.

An election approached and we once again had hope. He was no saint, but we worked our hearts out for him and had them broken. And hardened. At Chicago we grew up and felt our youth withering. Whom to turn to? Most of the people in the nation approved of the beating we received.

Nixon had a chance and he did not act. The Viet Nam War is not being ended. The cities are still dying; much of the countryside is dead. The "defense" budgets for the major countries of this earth are staggering, criminal.

"The System"--does it work? To some extent, yes. But not enough, not quickly enough. What are we supposed to do with our lives? How do we go about solving the complex problems of our world? "Work with the System," we hear. "You're young and strong, and besides, the problems aren't really as bad as you think."

sb

There comes a time when pure frustration builds and breaks out and is ugly. You throw a bottle and it feels good. You say, "F--!" and it feels good. If you can't change it, blow it up. It becomes a very personal and illogical thing. Cops hate the damn Commie kids and the kids hate the damn pigs. We feel horror at death and find ourselves planning it in Weatherman basements. You say America is better than other places in the world. It is better than most, but brother, it's nothing to be proud of, and it's getting worse each day.

Violence? I abhor it. Somehow throughout all the broken promises and worthless agreements and "reforms," I still abhor it and condemn it. We cannot change this world through violence--we can only end it. But I wonder if people will work in any other way. The young people--my brothers --I see them growing ugly and irrational and I hear them saying things that are not different from Johnson's words and justifications about Viet Nam. Our parents hate us, our politicians desert us, our hopes simply grew old and died.

I sound as though I am wallowing in self-pity because the world is too harsh. I'm not. I am only very tired.

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