Vietnam War Protesters were Utopian Heroes

Although I was a hawk in 1968, I now regret that attitude. I now consider the protestors and protest organizers of the Vietnam War era to be Utopian heroes. I salute the protesters of the 1968 era!

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificaviet/ is a great site for information about the Vietnam War Protests.

In August 1963, the first organized Vietnam War protests took place in New York and Philadelphia held by American pacifists during the annual commemorations of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings

On May 2, 1964 400 to 1000 students marched through Times Square, New York and another 700 in San Francisco in the first major student demonstration against the war. Smaller numbers also marched in Boston, Seattle, and Madison, Wisconsin.

In mid-October of 1965, the anti-war movement had significantly expanded to become a national and even global phenomenon, as anti-war protests drawing 100,000 were held simultaneously in as many as 80 major cities around the US, London, Paris and Rome.

In 1966 Anti-war demonstrations were again held around the country and the world March 26 with 20,000 taking part in New York City.

1967 Protest1

On April 15, 1967 about 400,000 people marched to the UN building in New York City to protest the war, where they were addressed by critics of the war such as Benjamin Spock, Martin Luther King, and Jan Barry Crumb, a veteran of the conflict. On the same date 100,000 marched in San Francisco. The next day, a large demonstration took place at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. As many as 100,000 demonstrators attended the event, and at least 30,000 later marched to the Pentagon for another rally and an all night vigil.

News reel of the 1967 protests at:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/videodir/pacificaviet/pentagon67.ram

On October 15, 1969. Millions of Americans took the day off from work and school to participate in local demonstrations against the war.

On 4 May, 100,000 anti-war demonstrators converged on Washington, D.C. to protest the shooting of the students in Ohio and the Nixon administration’s incursion into Cambodia.

Common slogans and chants of the Vietnam Protests:

“Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?”

“The chant “One, two, three, four! We don’t want your fucking war!”

“Draft Beer, not boys”

“Hell no, we won’t go”

“Make love, not war”

“Eighteen today, dead tomorrow”

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