The last major demonstration I was involved in was the anti-Vietnam war demonstration when Nixon was President and he watched television in the White House while 500,000 people, the largest number ever, marched outside. In fact, this demonstration attracted many from the civil rights movement, as well as the peace movement. It was more a group of individuals rather than organizations which organized this march, including Staughton Lynd, Dave Dellinger and myself. We expected violence from some of the angry Vietnam Veterans and decided to take front positions in hopes of deflecting it. As it turned out, Staughton and Dave did receive a bucket of red pain in the face and I caught some it while walking in back of them, but nothing more.

Following this, I decided to put all of my time into building organizations along the lines defined by Schumacher and Borsodi rather than resistance efforts. The idea of creating an American-style Gramdan Movement and starting new communities in the South made the most sense. Gandhi said something like "spend 90% of your time on constructive work and 10% on resistance." A.J Muste had felt that driving this period in hosting 10% resistance was not enough and he spent considerable time trying to persuade Gandhians to this position. Now I felt it was the time (1966) to launch major constructive programs and Borsodi, J.P. Narayan and Schumacher had laid out the plan. I was excited and ready to put major energy into this approach.

About this time, an opportunity to test out some of our ideas presented itself. Two U.S. grape farmers from the Ukiah area of northern California invited us to join forces in a project they had initiated a couple years before. This project was located in northern Mexico in the state of Michoacon. It has a beautiful climate, where the temperature never varies more than 3% from 70 degrees. But an ancient Mayan Indian tribe had settled at a higher level (5,000 ft.) as a protection from the Spanish invaders. They were not only successful in defeating the Spaniards, but also were able to preserve their civilization for thousands of years. Their primitive methods of farming caught the attention of these two California farmers, who managed to convince some of the leaders of this tribe to use modern farming methods. The farmers brought in modern USDA methodology (application of fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) which had shown results in California.

However, when used on fragile mountain soil, the soil began to get muddy. Thus, the two grape farmers began to search for alternative methods and had heard of us. We helped them start to apply organic methods, but the tribal leaders were now sold on chemical farming. When a Mexican foundation from Mexico City came along with offers to fund the entire tribal land, the tribe was already committed to chemical farming. We stood helplessly by while the tribe followed the USDA orthodoxy and within a couple more years, the entire tribe was wallowing in mud as a result of too much money and "scientific" farming. Our California farmers learned a lesson also.