Ron Halstead

On August 7 and 8 about 100 persons from cities in Michigan and Ohio gathered at Midland, Michigan, national headquarters of Dow Chemical Corp., to protest Dow’s participation in the manufacture of napalm.

On Sunday, groups of protesters distributed leaflets to churchgoers, calling on the people of Midland to be aware of their involvement in the deaths of people in Vietnam. In the early afternoon a rally was held in Central Park. This soon became an open forum as people from Midland came forward to voice their opposition to the making of napalm or to voice their support of its manufacture. Lane Vanderslice and Peter Steinberger of Ann Arbor Students for a Democratic Society fielded questions from the audience. One resident of Midland challenged the assertion that Dow is profiting from napalm and suggested that it may be losing money instead, to which Barbara Burris, of Detroit SDS, replied that Chemical and Engineering News of March 14, 1966, reported that Dow raised the price of its polystyrene shortly after they began using it in their new napalm.

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On June 19 a group of young men declared their intention to confront the draft. The ceremony, originally scheduled for St. Patrick’s Church had to be quickly rescheduled for St. Joseph’s Church when church authorities declared the meeting would not be of a suitable nature for a church setting.

Father Michael J. O’Hara of St. Patrick’s Church began his talk by denouncing the war in Vietnam. He declared that conscientious opposition to the State is part of his religious heritage. He then read the letters from the Archdiocese of Detroit which had closed St. Patrick’s to the meeting.

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