I was conducting a little research today and ran across this incredible picture. It really struck me! Compare your image of 1960's war protesters with the young people in this picture. Anti-war demonstrators were, of course, villified during that time. They were tear gassed, infiltrated, spied upon, spat upon, arrested, and at least one I know was almost run down by a pick up truck that deliberately swerved onto the sidewalk where she was handing out leaflets for the Student Mobilization Committee. I wonder where these students are today and I wonder if they still view war as a failure of the collective imagination.
6 comments:
Great post. Yes, we're still suffering a collective failure of imagination or common sense. What ever happened to enlightened self-interest? More fun in the Middle East today. The more things
change. . . The photo. shows very mod. or academic looking people, hardly the hippie rads seen through the weird prisms of pop culture.
That's why I posted it--I think people don't realize that the student movement was made up of pretty diverse group--even though these seem to be the white boys.
Great Pic!
I went to school at UW Madison, 1966-71. There is a movie out called "The War at Home" that documents the antiwar movement there.
While watching it, I was sure I spotted myself hundreds of times, but who could tell-- glasses, Beatle haircut, nascent mustache...WE ALL LOOKED THE SAME!!
And all girls were wearing head bands.
One of them WAS me though, by God, and I like to think that I'd take it to the streets again to stop an illegal, immoral war.
Get ready, Bill. I was teaching a class last week when my student's cell phone rang--a relative in Lebenon had just been killed. It goes on and on...
Some of us did take to the streets to protest an illegal, immoral war—as recently as January and February of 2003, in Indianapolis and lots of other cities. It felt like the beginnings of the Viet Nam protests, and even though it was really really cold hundreds of people were there in our Midwestern, usually conservative city. Gail and her husband were there too. We all left knowing it was futile.
Scant lot of good it did. Some of the protesters took off on buses for marches on Washington. The media ignored us at best, at worst painted us as unpatriotic cowards who love terrorists. What a long strange trip it’s been.
Great photo and post! I'm constantly perplexed about how to connect global citizens to the issues of global suffering. I think people should care about war and hunger around the world but then I'm shocked to see people so hostile to the hungry right here in Detroit. How do you get people to care? Do you have to make it real to them? Vietnam had its draft, but aren't there better ways to organize people against this than threatening their lives? Social insurance programs only gained traction during and after a brutal depression. Does the media fuel or just reflect our apathetic view towards major social problems? There are certainly major social movements happening all over the globe and even in the U.S. recently (WTO protests, etc.), but these are often so misreported by the media, highlighting extremists and simplifying the issues. We just have to keep battling, I guess...
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