Has Anybody Seen The Anti-War Movement?

[Jcrowley]

The Anti-War Movement

We bled inside each other's wounds
we had caught the same disease
we all sang the songs of peace.
Melanie - Lay Down



Protesters in D.C.

The Vietnam war divided the country into hawks and doves. Thousands of young men fled to Canada rather than allow themselves to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. Those who remained took to the streets to protest in ever growing numbers.




"What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?"
-Dr. Benjamin Spock, pediatrician, author, antiwar activist

Protesters used many non-violent tactics to get their message across. These included teach-ins which explained what was going on in Vietnam, marches which drew as many as 500,000 people at one time, draft card burnings which indicated non-cooperation with the war machine, protests at induction centers where attempts were made to stop people from signing up for the war. They even went so far as to surround the Pentagon!



Vietnam War Veterans Protested Too!

Soon returning veterans who had experienced the horror of the war first hand, joined the ranks of the protesters, adding to their credibility and influence. Some even threw their medals into the Potomac river in protest.

http://www.hippy.com/article-203.html

[Monkeyman]

1. VVAW check in

1

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Fellow-traveler here.

Never actually joined, although I did join Vets for Peace.

[Monkeyman]

4. Peace is the only way

[Jcrowley]

5. A veteran speaks out against the war

Bob Muller, Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Presented at a meeting of the Student Assembly of Columbia University Student Assembly, July 23, 1971.

Vietnam is something you have to experience firsthand to believe. I know I didn't believe what anybody told me about Vietnam before I went; it was something I had to go through myself.

Let me go back and tell you who I am and what I'm about. I'm a retired first lieutenant in the Marines -- retired, because today, when you're separated from service for a disability, you're put on a retired basis; you're not simply discharged as you were in World War II.

In 1967, I was in my senior year in college at Hofstra University. And one day that spring, I went into the Student Union Building, and there was a Marine officer standing there. He looked very sharp: he had his dress blues on, and he had the old crimson stripe down the side of his trousers. I said, "That looks good! I'm going to be a marine."

Right there, in that sentence, is really the tragedy of my life, as I view it. The tragedy of my life was not being shot in Vietnam; the tragedy in my life is one that has been shared by all too many Americans, and is still being shared today. For me, knowledge of the fact that my government had seen fit to involve us militarily in Vietnam was sufficient for me. I never asked the reason why. I just took it on blind faith that my government knew a hell of a lot more than I ever could, and that they must be right. My opinion has changed since then....

<snip>

You go through this environment of the military, and everything sort of works on itself. Your instructors, the guys you're going through with, your peers, what have you -- all the time it's an indoctrination. "We're out there, and we're fighting the `gooks.'" You get a couple of hundred guys out in the field, and they put the old bayonet on the rifle. "Kill, kill." Who do you kill? "Luke the Gook" and "Link the Chink." You get psyched up on this stuff.

<snip>

You ask me, "What can I do for peace?" I don't know. I've seen a lot of suffering, and I'm aware because I saw it. I hope you can become aware, because then you will take on your responsibility as a citizen to know what we've done in Vietnam, and to broaden our horizons. Look at what's going on in Pakistan, with this Administration still wanting to send military aid to Pakistan, where hundreds of thousands of Bengalis have been slaughtered. This is what I'm talking about, this sensitivity. Look at us supporting a military hunta in Greece, in Athens, or having Spiro T. going around to all these fascist countries, saying "Right on! Right on!" That's what I oppose. And that's why I say, "Open up your heads and be aware."


Source: The Fight for the Right to Know the Truth: A Study of the War in S.E. Asia through the Pentagon Papers and Other Sources (monograph). New York: The Student Assembly of Columbia University, 1971.

http://www.hippy.com/php/article.php?sid=212

Peace to you and yours.

[Monkeyman]

8. Bobby Randy Doc and my other brothers

We stood on the stairs and said no more. We got slammed by veterans for truth and stood our ground. We rode in convoy's across the Country for a Democratic win. Yes Virginia there is a peace movement.

[Redstone]

3. What anti-war movement?

Andit wouldn't matter if there WAS one, because, you know, bushyboy "doesn't pay attention for focus groups."

Redstone

[Jackpine Radical]

6. There is an antiwar movement.

Every Saturday in my small town, protestors stand for an hour on a main corner. Every Saturday in the next two little towns, Women in Black stand. On Veterans day the Vets for Peace organized a ceremony on the steps of the Federal building.

There is an antiwar movement.

[Redstone]

7. There's one in Willimantic, CT, too. I was talkng about the kind of scale it had

in the 1960s.

Redstone

[Monkeyman]

10. Redstone it seems only us old fart from the 60's

Would remember 100,000 in the streets. I don't think that will ever happen again. Its a shame but there it is

[Redstone]

11. One old fart to another...yes, it's sad.

Redstone

[Alamom]

19. I remember and I'm not that old and don't consider myself

the other, either. :hippie:

I was in High School and I was so impressed with the incredible masses of people who protested the war. We saw so much of the WAR on TV and everyone knew someone there or sadly, knew some that didn't make it....at least, they were shown with their caskets draped with dignity on the journey home.

I grew up thinking "THIS" is what we (Americans) would do if something went wrong or the government did something stupid.


Even kids knew a lot about the war.....I bet few know about it now. I'm not into showing kids violence, but our future lawmakers need to see what war is. It's not a game.






NEVER AGAIN ! NEVER AGAIN ! NEVER AGAIN ! NEVER AGAIN ! NEVER AGAIN ! NEVER AGAIN !




I guess they forgot.






edit spelling

[Hekate]

12. I've been to Washington DC a couple of times during this Bush era, and we were a million strong

Just because the MSM can't be bothered to report our activities honestly doesn't mean there's no action. For honest reporting and communication -- that's what we have the Internet and sites like DU for.

On a positive note about the MSM, however, there was a front-page article with big photo in the Los Angeles Times November 10 issue. I can't get LA Times online to connect me to the story, so I can't give you the url, but it's about Santa Barbara's VFP project called Arlington West and the title is "Crosses becoming too many for group to bear." When the project started 3 years ago there were 340 crosses, and now there are almost 3,000; when installed they cover an acre of beach, and volunteers labor for hours every Sunday to see it done right.

Hekate

[cali]

15. A million strong?

I was there for three marches, and although the crowds were impressive, there weren't a million of us in any of them.

[Hekate]

23. The organizers of the Women's March almost 3 years ago kept count

I'm sure the pilots of the black helicopters did, too, but they aren't sayin'. I went again for another major protest right after Katrina, and it certainly felt like a similar number of the citizenry turned out. I waved at the choppers again.

Hekate

[Jcrowley]

9. Is it notable?

We have seen that one of the features of total war has been the growing scope and efficiency of communication. As early as 1914, war could no longer be "localized." It had to spread throughout the whole world. In 1967, this process is being intensified. The ties of the "One World," on which the United States wants to impose its hegemony, have grown tighter and tighter. For this reason, as the American government very well knows, the current genocide is conceived as an answer to people's war and perpetrated in Vietnam not against the Vietnamese alone, but against humanity.

When a peasant falls in his rice paddy, mowed down by a machine gun, every one of us is hit. The Vietnamese fight for all men and the American forces against an. Neither figuratively nor abstractly. And not only because genocide would be a crime universally condemned by international law but because little by little the whole human race is being sub jeered to this genocidal blackmail piled on top of atomic blackmail, that is, to absolute, total war. This crime, carried out every day before the eyes of the world, renders all who do not denounce it accomplices of those who commit it, so that we are being degraded today for our future enslavement.

In this sense imperialist genocide can only become more complete. The group which the United States wants to intimidate and terrorize by way of the Vietnamese nation is the human group in its entirety.

http://www.hippy.com/php/article.php?sid=90

Is it effective? Is it a threat to the PTB? Is it even a movement?

I do as you do and sense there is no really large-scale meaningful and sustained protest that even merits much attention from the PTB. Hopefully more will awaken from their somnambulistic dreams.

[jarnocan]

21. my town has an active group- mostly via World Can't Wait.(Bush visit)

[roody]

24. 22,000 vigilers today at Fort Benning, Ga.

[951-Riverside]

13. Two words....

Volunteer Army

[Hardrada]

14. Link to the SDS site and you will see some of our actions

against the war. Also working with other groups. I have been in four antiwar marches and peace organizing events this year in Iowa. And in one march for Dem candidates where we carried antiwar signs.

[leftchick]

16. great site Jc!

and post!

I had no idea Dr. Spock said that.

Thank you :)

[bowens43]

17. I saw them in the voting booth on Nov 7th.

You can bet bush saw them too.

[jarnocan]

20. Anti-war pics AND remember: Election fraud cost millions of votes 20 dem seats.

Election fraud is a serious crime against our democracy. We need accountability for this crime which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives world wide.
Millions of votes altered/lost 20 dems likely lost due to it in 2006.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_rob_kall_061117_clear_evidence_2006_.htm

It ALL relates the PNAC and the election fraud that enabled them to come into and retain power.

Rev.Lennox Yearwood at the Whitehouse gate with Ann Wright ,David Swanson from afterdowningstreet.org and Cindy Sheehan delivering the Don't attack Iran petition signed by around 80,000 people, the day after the elction, but BU**SH** refused to send an aide to fetch it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jarnocan/

[WinkyDink]

18. I was there. And I was here, in NYC, 2003. The young'uns today?

Good question.

[bobbolink]

22. As an aging dirtyhippiepinkocommiebum, I'm gonna risk sharing my

perceptions here...

I'm seeing some connections here, and will throw them out for your consideration----

"We bled inside each other's wounds"
During the protests of Vietnam, there was, indeed, more of a connection between us. I look at those pictures from those times, and I *feel* more of that connection. We weren't isolated bodies, assembled for a scene. I can't put it into words--maybe you can help me with that, especially you veterans--but we had a commitment towards each other, too. No, we weren't perfect, we made mistakes, and we were learning by the seat of our pants. BUT, there were some important differences, and they need to be said.

It wasn't just our numbers. We built communities. Maybe it was because most of us had some form of non-violence training. It wasn't just a matter of putting on some costume and lettering a sign. We took the dictum "Let there be peace, and let it begin with me" seriously. We learned how to interact with those who disagreed. We had kind words for each other, rather than the verbal flipping off of others that I observe right here on DU. We hitchhiked, and picked each other up, and thereby constantly met "strangers" who became friends in the course of a ride. There weren't the barriers--both the barriers of individual differences ("you do your thing and I"ll do mine" was a credo), and the barriers of isolation by culture. We cheered each other on, and supported each other, rather than being seperated by our different struggles. Men provided child care and brought cookies for women's meetings; whites and other cultures attended the rallies of the Indians at Alcatraz, the farm workers etc; straights supported gays and gays supporters others in their struggles for rights; in short, we were there for each other, celebrated our various struggles and cultural differences and recognized that we either came together and listened to and helped each other, or none of us would make it, rather than tearing each other down and finding each small difference and amplifying it and splitting ourselves into smaller and smaller units.

One thing that made a huge difference in our effectiveness, and our ability to grow and learn was that we met before each action and discussed our goals and means to reach those goals. After each action, we came together and "processed" it by sharing our feelings and observations, and distilled what that meant for the next action. We LISTENED to each other, and LEARNED from each other in these ways, rather than simply congratulating ourselves on another thumbing of our noses at authority and going our separate ways.

During the action, we were aware of each other, and what was happening. If we saw somebody being hassled by cops, we found out what was happening. During the actions I've participated in, I've even seen people hauled off, and nobody bothers to find out who it was, and where they were taken, so there is no followup to learn if they need help, etc. It's everyone for themselves. That doesn't create a strong community which gives people the strength to keep it up over the long haul.

In short, we've lost that sense of connection. We've lost that sense of creating peace between ourselves, as well as our goal for peace across the world. We've toughened, and in the process, lost that sense of safety with each other. That leaves us more vulnerable to the tactics of our adversaries, and much less committed to speaking out on behalf of each other (as we witnessed with the tasering at the university, being lamented in other threads.)

Are we willing to bleed inside each others wounds again? Are we willing to give up the tough language we fling at each other in order to strenghten our links with each other? Are we willing to again make it more possible to create the safety so we can again be more vulnerable with each other? Are we willing to listen more and confront less?

At some point, we need to stand back and observe ourselves objectively, and look at what part we play in some of the disintegration of peacemaking. We need to decide if it's important enough to create a peaceful community between ourselves.