A Declaration of Liberation

The following is the Preamble of "A Declaration of Liberation." It was written by students occupying Low Library.

When things get so rotten and screwed up that the people and the students of a country have to smash their power structure and the repressive, imperialist system that sustains it, and to go it on their own, everyone doing his own thing--as their natural rights entitle them to do--then they really should tell everybody, openly, why they are forced to do it.

Look, there are certain truths that no one can deny. Everybody is created good and beautiful and equal. So we're as great as anybody else in this sick culture, and probably a hell of a lot better. Second, everybody has their rights, lots of them, and no one on earth, not even a professor or a mother, has any business interfering with any of them. Among these is the right to Life, a big, full, beautiful life--without middle-class hangups like money, responsibility, examinations and grades, the Puritan ethic, military service, and pressures. Another is Liberty, the right to come and go as you please, whenever you please, without the government manipulators, crummy businessmen, religious spooks, uptight parent, the stupid CIA, the sadistic cop, and the really out-of-it college Administrators imposing their totalitarianism. Also, there is the pursuit of Happiness, the moral right to have a fun time, to blow your mind, to sleep around, to turn on, however and whenever you like--so long as you don't interfere with anybody else.

Now, it's only because you sometimes have to protect these rights from right-wing idiots and jocks that governments have any rights to exist at all. But politicians and everybody in authority must be totally and at every minute responsible to the people in the streets. That's where all power comes from. As soon as government, or authority of any kind, starts pushing people around or impinging on any liberties with their decrees, the people have a perfect right to tear down that power structure and build a better one based on love and total freedom.

Of course, you don't have to start a revolution every time something bugs you. You really should wait until the guys in charge prove how totally corrupt and inept they actually are. If you check out recent experiences, you'll see that most people do keep their cool and tend to put up with an amazing amount of crap before they move into action.

But, when things just get ridiculous, and one incredibly stupid or brutal act after another by The Establishment leaves you no choice except to become an alienated person, a digit in their IBM set-up, a helpless part of their murderous machine, you just have to wipe it out. In fact, at such times it's the absolute moral obligation of the people in the streets and the students, who have thought through a lot about these things (but not so much that they have become bogged down in facts and ideas and forgotten the necessity for action) to go into guerrilla warfare, using wild, imaginative tactics--as well as the press and television--until they win. No compromises! No deals!

That's the situation in this country, man, right now. Like here are the facts on some of the absurd and repressive deals we have had to put up with....