I was an antiwar activists. It has a certain romanticism in people's minds but I recall many ugly parts. There was disgust with segregation in the South. Those activists tended to move to the antiwar movement and later the women's movement and gay rights.
My college was shut in 1968 by college strikes. I helped take over a building in 1970. It was childish. Students had these shared middle class values. The Beatles were important and doing well in school was a given. We rubbed shoulders with the old left, however. The building take over was silly but no harm. Some outside agitators joined us. We all wanted to go back to studying to get into Harvard Medical school. The building had exquisite stained glass windows and a priceless library. People ended up staying to protect the place.
The draft was awful but so is a volunteer army recruiting the poor. Most middle class kids who saw a selective service lawyer could get deferments. Not so blacks and poor whites. It was a wide umbrella.
I attended every mass protest in NY and DC. The buses we took to DC were death traps.
Countless books have covered this. I still believe in the core values I had at that point in time. Obama's election was pure triumph. Yet we are still in Afghanistan and iraq. I have no doubt that if the draft were revivied bigger hell would break out.
Many films have covered this, too. When I see my campus on film or documentaries, I break into tears. If I had to do it over again, I would strike harder at the core of the Establishment and pick less on a university that was giving me a first class world education. I would run for office, engage in fund raising. The protest that I respect the most was the Moratorium. A Harvard divinity student conceived of the idea of all Americans taking ten minutes from wherever they were at a certain time and walk out and meet with others in silence. Millions of Americans from sea to shining sea participated. High school kids, factory workers, even some military people. It showed broad based support against the war.
I was shocked b/c all elite colleges competed to have the most dramatic shutdowns and peace-ins ( a group getting together all day with teachers explaining how we got in the war, etc.). The vast majority of college students favored the war in polling. The elites captured the attention of the media. It is sort of like Tianmen Square and the role of Beijing University.
It was also very European, too. France had even bigger protests than the United States in 1968, I believe. Sorbonne students took the lead. Streets were torn up to make weapons. Germany had student terrorists. I don't think Viet Nam explains it all. When I watched Jim Crow on TV and saw the fire hoses turned on little kids in Birmingham, plus the bombings, I had enough. It was respectable to protect.
Most of the Weathermen came in and received minimal sentences. Several were admitted to the NYS bar and became lawyers at large corporate firms.
