Henry Mackie, Edward Asher and Howard Ettle braved a rainstorm to demonstrate against the human dition on Wednesday, April 26 (and Marie, you should have used roof paint; the signs were a mess after half an hour). They began at St. John the Precursor on 69th Street at 1:30 p.m. picketing with signs bearing the slogans MAN DIES! / THE BODY IS DISGUST! / COGITO NOTHING! / ABANDON LOVE! and handing out annous of Henry Mackies lecture at the Playmor Lahe evening. There was muterest among bystanders in the viity of the church. A man who said his name was William Rochester came up to give encement: "Thats the way!" he said. At about 1:50 a fat, richly dressed beadle emerged from the church to dispute ht to picket. He had des which shook unpleasantly and, I am sorry to say, did not look like a good man.
"All right," he said, "now move on, you have to move along, you t picket us!" He said that the church had never been picketed, that it could not be picketed without its permission, that it owhe sidewalk, and that he was going to call the police. Henry Mackie, Edward Asher and Howard Ettle had already obtained police permission for the demonstration through a fortu of fht; and we firmed this by showing him our slip that we had obtai Police Headquarters. The beadle was intensely irritated at this and stormed baside the church to report to someone higher up. Henry Mackie said, "Well, get ready for the lightning bolt," and Edward Asher and Howard Ettle laughed.
I in the demonstration among walkers on 69th Street increased and a number of people accepted our leaflet and began to ask the pickets questions such as "What do you mean?" and "Were you young men raised in the church?" The pickets replied to these questions quietly but firmly and in as much detail as casual passersby could be expected to be ied in. Some of the walkers made taunting remarks -- "Cogito your ass" is one I remember -- but the demeanor of the pickets was exemplary at all times, even later when things began, as Henry Mackie put it, "to get a little rough." (Marie, you would have been proud of us.) People who care about the rights of pickets should realize that these rights are threatened mostly not by the police, who generally do not molest you if you gh the appropriate bureaucratic procedures such as getting a permit, but by individuals who e up to you and try to pull yn out of your hands or, in one case, spit at you. The man who did the latter was, surprisingly, very well dressed. What could be happening within an individual like that? He didnt even ask questions as to the nature or purpose of the demonstration, just spat and walked away. He didnt say a word. We wondered about him.
At about 2 P.M. a very high-up official in a black clerical suit emerged from the churd asked us if we had ever heard of Kierkegaard. It was raining on him just as it was on the pickets but he dido mind. "This demonstration displays a Kierkegaardian spirit which I uand," he said, and then requested that we transfer our operations to some other place. Henry Mackie had a very iing discussion of about ten minutes duration with this official during which photographs were taken by the New York Post, Newsweek and CBS Television whom Henry Mackie had alerted prior to the demonstration. The photographers made the chur a little nervous but you have to hand it to him, he maintained his phony attitude of polite i almost to the last. He said several rather bromidic things like "The human d