My rap sheet

Fall, 1968. Earlier in the year, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis. Two months later, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in L.A. That summer was ugly and violent. Fires burned in our major cities.

I was in love. And editing the summer edition of my college newspaper. Once classes started up again, in late August, the tension in the air above Ann Arbor was palpable. Someone bombed the office building where the CIA had a local liaison office. Anti-war and civil-rights demonstrations were at least as regular as classes, and just as well attended, maybe better.

As an activist-journalist, I always faced a moral dilemma: Should I try to write about these developments or take a stand myself? Most of the time, I found a balance, covering demonstrations and writing about them from the point of view of a participant; even though I was too busy gathering factual information to really do things like carry signs or chant.

That fall, however, one cause captured my (activist's) heart, as opposed to my (journalist's) brain. A group of poor black women in Ann Arbor staged what was widely known as a "welfare mother's campaign" against policies meant to reduce their benefits.

This was a movement composed not of college students, with all of our mixed-up, youthful energy, but of middle-aged black women struggling to raise their kids with a paucity of resources in the richest country on earth.

They occupied the county building and a bunch of us from the university decided to join them. That's how I acquired a "record," for trespassing, i.e., sitting down and refusing to move when ordered to do so by the police.

I got roughed up as I was arrested. My glasses were broken as two officers took me into a door as opposed to through it. Slightly dazed and definitely not seeing clearly, I did recognize my friend, the photographer Tom Copi, as I was hauled outside to the paddy wagon.

Bravely (I thought) I raised the Victory signal, but truth to tell, I was shaken by the violence I had just experienced, especially because it was so minor compared to the vicious beatings I'd seen cops deal protestors when I was on the sidelines, wearing my journalistic credential around my neck.

This night, I put the press ID in my pocket and joined the people.

Sometimes, you have to do something like that. As my former colleague at Stanford, Ted Glasser, has said, "Citizenship trumps Journalism."

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