Let's get a few things straight about the anti-war movement back in 68...

[WCGreen]

People seem to believe that the anti-war activists left the democratic party in 1968 and that is why the democrats lost the election...

The incidents in Chicago did result in Humphrey loosing the election, but it wasn't because the anti-war folks were not participating in the voting process. It was caused by a wide variety of events political and otherwise that resulted in a Nixon November victory....

For one, a good majority of the anti-war protesters couldn't even vote, they weren't 21 and it wasn't until the 1972 election that the majority of college age citizens could actually vote. So they were never actually considered as a viable voting bloc...

Second, The Democratic party was already splitting apart due to the Johnson administrations de-segregationist policies. The violence at the convention pushed a whole bunch of democratic party members to George Wallace who ran an effective Third Party Movement that took states away from the traditional democratic coalition. Even without the Chicago debacle, it would have been pretty hard for Humphrey to get elected...

Third, the anti-war movement was not yet embraced by a majority of the public as it is now... The TET Offensive of early 1968 was a huge factor in changing the minds and hearts of Americans, but the effect of that propaganda nightmare hadn't hit a negative critical mass with the American people by the time the convention or the election occured...

Fourth, Humphrey was part of the Johnson Administration and was saddled with the war whether he liked it or not...

Fifth, while Humphrey was out trying to repair the political damage within the Democratic Party caused, in part, by Chicago and the Civil Rights movement, Nixon was free to campaign basically unchallenged. His team ran a ground breaking campaign that was, in all essence, the first modern media political campaign. Read Joe McGuinniss's groundbreaking book The Selling of the President...

Sixth, Humphrey wasn't Robert Kennedy. Plain and simple, he lacked the charisma and the mystic of RFK. Humphrey was a great man, one of the pioneers in the Civil Rights movement all the way back to the 1940's. He just wasn't, for lack of a better word, media "hot". The people craved JFK and HHH just wasn't good enough...

Circumstances always drive outcomes. There is no getting around that. But 1968 isn't 2007. It wasn't even 2006. Remember, most of the people in leadership positions in our party were seasoned by events in 1968 and 1970 and 1972. Perhaps now they should look at the situation in 2007 as it unfolds and judge their responses accordingly.

[wyldwolf]

1. all of this is true, but the fact remains

The way the anti-war movement / counter culture presented themselves was identified with the Democratic party. All middle america saw was "long haired hippies" in the streets protesting our military. That was a very strong image to FDR/Truman/Kennedy Democrats and Eisenhower Republicans.

It is also a fact that leaders of the movement threatened to sit out the election. Whether they did or not can't really be proven.

[WCGreen]

2. The only reason the Anti-War movement was associated

with the democratic party was because of the events in Chicago...

They were pissed that no one was listening to them and they basically threw a tantrum on the national stage...

They tried to do the same thing in Miami, but the GOP was ready...

You also need to remember that there were only a handful of nominating primaries and very few caucuses. Most of the delegates were allocated through state and local party bosses. That makes a huge difference in the political atmosphere.

[wyldwolf]

3. I'm not disputing your points. But the image portrayed was a very strong one

... and one that dogged the Dems for decades afterwards.

[WCGreen]

4. It sure did....

More so in 1972 than in 1968...

[damntexdem]

11. Oh, boo hoo hoo for the Vietnam era's Dems.

Back then, it was a DEMOCRAT who escalated the War (Nixon later widened it). The Dems associated with the anti-war movement -- for the most part, they were the ENEMY. The Dem President and much of the Party abandoned the people by escalating the stupid War. In 1968, it truly was nothing more than the lesser of two evils, and it didn't appear all that much less evil, for that matter.

[wyldwolf]

14. we're just discussing history.

[Zensea]

5. Threw a tantrum on the national stage?

man that sounds close to a rightwing talking point to me.
Or some heavy historical revisionism.
Kind of leaves out the Chicago police department"s tactics for one thing.

I'm not surprised really. The right wing has been fairly successful at rewriting history and shaping how that period gets viewed these days, even by people who are not right wing at all.

[wyldwolf]

6. what would you call it if not a "tantrum."

Would you say they tried to rush the stage, uninvited, for a love in?

[Zensea]

13. I'm just more inclined to think the tantrum was on the other side.

mainly.

This is from wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Convention), but is how I remember things also.

Expecting protests, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley repeatedly announced "Law and order will be maintained" and an 11 p.m. curfew was implemented. <1>

The mob scene was agitated by various speeches and a raucous electric performance from the rock band the MC5, as well as the "nomination" of Pigasus for president. Though many musicians were scheduled to perform, the MC5 were the only band to play at the convention, and turned in a legendary eight-hour gig.

Anti-war demonstrators protested throughout the convention. Initially the protests were uneventful, but tempers gradually heated, and soon police and protestors were clashing all around the convention center, the Chicago International Amphitheater (in the streets, as well in Lincoln Park and Grant Park).

Daley took a particularly hard line against the protesters, refusing permits for rallies and marches, and calling for whatever use of force necessary to subdue the crowds. A 1968 Time article noted that "demonstrators constantly taunted the police and in some cases deliberately disobeyed reasonable orders."<2> There was also widespread criticism that the Chicago police and National Guard used excessive force: a 1968 Time article declared that

With nightsticks, tear gas and Mace, the blue-shirted, blue-helmeted cops violated the civil rights of countless innocent citizens and contravened every accepted code of professional police discipline ... No one could accuse the Chicago cops of discrimination. They savagely attacked hippies, yippies, New Leftists, revolutionaries, dissident Democrats, newsmen, photographers, passers-by, clergymen and at least one cripple. Winston Churchill's journalist grandson got roughed up. Playboy's Hugh Hefner took a whack on the backside. The police even victimized a member of the British Parliament, Mrs. Anne Kerr, a vacationing Labourite who was Maced outside the Conrad Hilton and hustled off to the lockup."<3>

In 1968, Jo Freeman wrote, "Over three dozen newsmen were injured in their attempts to cover the action.<4> In trying to explain his decision to quell the protests, Daley uttered one of the most famous quotes of the era: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder."<5>

This hard line was also seen on the convention floor itself. In 1968, Terry Southern described the convention hall as "exactly like approaching a military installation; barbed-wire, checkpoints, the whole bit".<6> Inside the convention, journalists such as Mike Wallace and Dan Rather were roughed up by security; both these events were broadcast live on television. When Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn) delivered a speech nominating George McGovern for President, he infuriated Daley by saying, "with George McGovern as President of the United States, we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."<7> Daley responded by shaking his fist at Ribicoff, and shouting a phrase that was inaudible, and which has generated much speculation. An uncredited author for CNN wrote, "Most reports of the event also say Daley yelled an off-color epithet beginning with an "F," but according to CNN executive producer Jack Smith, others close to Daley insist he shouted 'Faker,' meaning Ribicoff was not a man of his word, the lowest name one can be called in Chicago's Irish politics."<8>

Subsequently, the Walker Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence assigned blame for the mayhem in the streets to the police force, calling the violence a "police riot."

[WCGreen]

24. You gotta remember that race riots were breaking out all

across America and that two major political figures had been assassinated just months before the convention...

I am not excusing the actions of Daley, just putting a little perspective on the whole thing...

[The Magistrate]

27. The Police Actions, Sir, Were Wholly Out Of Line

Not only that, they were in some degree pre-meditated, and practiced at earlier anti-war demonstrations the previous spring in Chicago. Though it is my practice to avoid arguing here from personal life exoerience only, this statement is based on having been an eyewitness, both in the spring and summer that year in Chicago.

[WCGreen]

32. I didn't say they weren't Wholly Out of Line....

I just stated that there were mitigating circumstances that perhaps added to the fervor...

[The Magistrate]

35. Not Really, Sir

What was actually going on was very different: it was an explosion of working class adult anger against privileged youth. Whether accurately or not, the protesters were seen as mostly college kids from good backgrounds enaged in self-indulgence and dissipation as a sort of career choice, and this enraged a great many people who put in hard shifts at disagreeable work that did not pay nearly enough. Policeman fall cleanly into the latter group, however often and traditionally they may serve as tools of the boss against working people....

[WCGreen]

38. You don't have to be condesending....

I get that we disagree...

But I stand by my point that you can never totally divorce the mood and tenor of times from the events...

BTW, that sounds a little like the script of Joe...

[The Magistrate]

39. Who Is 'Joe', Sir?

It is a fairly common name, and has been for a long time....

Nor is there anything in my comments against the idea that 'the tenor of times' bore upon what happened, although my view of things that are part of my own past seems to incorporate a different understanding of them you have put forward. Security concerns were a pretext; working class anger against 'hippies' was the motivating factor for the police riot.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

45. He's referring to the movie

Executive's daughter (Susan Sarandon) takes up with drug dealer, Dad tries to intervene, accidently kills dealer, inadvertently confesses to blue-collar stranger in bar (Peter Boyle) - and yes, before you ask, the executive is too stupid to live - who declares the exec a hero, they track down the hippies to their commune and start killing everyone, including Sarandon. Oops. Best thing about the movie: Mad Magazine did a very funny parody of it. Ooh that Mort Drucker, he always slayed me.

[The Magistrate]

48. Thank You, Honey: I Never Saw That Movie

Did encounter a number of hostile neighborhood types in grey baggies and kicks, as well as a number of suburb-born long-hairs in the commune, though....

The long-hairs who were wards of the state out on the corner were not very political....

[WCGreen]

47. It's a movie that pretty much followed the script you laid out in

the post I answered...

[The Magistrate]

49. Hardly An Argument Against The Proposition, Sir

Popular entertainments derive their popularity from embodiment of popular feelings....

[ProudDad]

69. You can decide that you don't believe

the facts but that doesn't mean that they weren't the facts.

It WAS a police riot instigated by daley and his black shirts.

As for Joe -- that movie did have a ring of truth in the attitude of an emerging right-wing (deluded) working class...that eventually voted in great numbers for ray-gun the fascist.

[Morgana LaFey]

53. Thank you -- this was abuse of power on the part of the cops and

it was plainly visible on MY TV set, I'll tell you that.

On another note, this post from you strikes me as SO out of character that I can hardly believe my eyes. I am, however, grateful for it. Whodathunkit, though?

[Morgana LaFey]

54. Oh, look. Here's H2O Man's perspective, too

1968: Unconventional Perspectives
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x600309

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

43. race riots also triggered by rotten cops.

[WCGreen]

51. Why does anyone think that I believe the cops were innocent...

I just see how anyone get's that from what I wrote...

If you do, well, perhpas you are reading what you want to into what it is I post...

[damntexdem]

15. I call it a calling the Party to account for its sins -- for its betrayal.

And that could happen again in 2008.

[ProudDad]

68. At the time

it was correctly called what it was -- a police riot instigated by richard daley's gestapo...

[WCGreen]

7. I should have put the Daily response in the answer...

I did in another post in another thread....

[Zensea]

16. No worries

I guess I get concerned that people who weren't around at the time may not know about that part of the dynamic.
Should have realized you did.

[The Magistrate]

25. One Other Factor Cementing The Identification, Mr. Green

Was the fact that there were two well-puiblicized Democratic Presidential contenders who ran for the nomination on an anti-war platform, namely Sen. McCarthy and the murdered Sen. Kennedy. Elements of the protests were at least proclaimed to be in support of Sen. McCarthy emerging as the nominee. This was sufficient to establish 'anti-war protesters' as an element of the Democratic Party ion the minds of many people, and most particularly in the minds of many people hostile to counter-culture 'hippie' types. That latter included a great portion of the working class of the time.

[WCGreen]

36. McCarthy was trounced after Humphrey entered the process...

And RFK had just a few primary victories....

McCarthy really wasn't a factor after LBJ dropped out of the race and Humphrey announced...

[The Magistrate]

40. Which Had Zero Effect On His Publicity, Sir

Nor on the hopes of many protesters that they could 'un-rig', as they saw it, the convention's nominating process, and see the 'people's choice' awarded the Party's nomination.

The fact remains that highly publicized candidacies for the Democratic party's nomination incorporating an 'anti-war' plank in their platforms worked to identify anti-war protesters with the Democratic party in the minds of many people. Argument that this was a mistaken view is beside the point of whether or not it was a common view.

[ProudDad]

70. RFK had just WON the California primary

when he was murdered. He was on the upsurge and I have little doubt that he would have been the nominee.

The Vietnam war would have been ended by 1970 under President Kennedy II...

ray-gun would have never happened.

It was a historically pivotal moment, the end of New Deal optimism and idealism when RFK was shot.

Then we got nixon...

[Morgana LaFey]

55. Remember, too, there were a LOT of Vets in Chicago, incl.

Ron Kovich. Some of those poor guys in wheel chairs got pretty beaten up, and it wasn't by other vets or anti-war protesters. It was by the cops.

[coalition_unwilling]

34. "they basically threw a tantrum on the national stage..." - your

revisionist history does a disservice to reality. It was Daley's cops who threw a tantrum on the national stage, not the antiwar movement, as the commission investigating it shortly thereafter concluded when they labeled the antics of the Chicago PD a "police riot"

[ChiciB1]

41. You Forgot Something... The U.S. Army Was SENDING Soldiers To

the Convention to quell the upheaval, most of them black and MOST OF THEM said "hell NO, I Won't Go!"

The soldiers were the ones who began the Anti-War Movement way back when. I lived at Ft. Hood, TX back then I I REMEMBER!! Jane Fonda even came there and the soldiers LOVED HER, back then!!

History wrote a different story than the one many have embraced over the years!!

I suggest everyone buy the CD, Sir, No, Sir!

[damntexdem]

8. It was the first election in which I could vote. I was an anti-war protester.

I held my nose and voted for Humphrey.

I track it all back to Johnson's betrayal of the Party by escalating the Vietnam War. The segregationists were leaving the party anyway; but Johnson shattered it over Vietnam.

"Hey, hey, LBJ; how many kids did you kill today?"

[WCGreen]

9. That's why LBJ didn't run...

McCarthy almost beat him in the NH primary and he saw the writing on the wall...

[wyldwolf]

10. How was escalating the war a "betrayal of the party?"

The Dem party had been the war party since Woodrow Wilson first developed his liberal internationalism policy. FDR wanted in WWII years before Pearl Harbor, Truman and Kennedy were both fierce cold warriors.

[WCGreen]

18. Very good point...

[wyldwolf]

20. too many people believe the Dem party was at one time or another...

...some sort of liberal pacifist utopian party that became corrupted by Johnson. If the movement then (and the movement now) would show the courage of their convictions, they would not claim to be Democrats now.

[WCGreen]

22. There was that brief time after the Watergate Hearings when

a more liberal group of legislators actually attained some committee chairmanships and did some great stuff...

They established a good legislative party...

But it imploded during the Carter Administration and the only liberals we seemed to have for a very long time are those liberals who could be liberals because of safe seats...

[wyldwolf]

23. The reform commission that McGovern chaired opened up the door...

...for more liberal legislators. But like I always say, the electoral system is like the free market system. People will vote for who they like best.

[ProudDad]

71. Indeed

both systems are driven by ignorance.

[damntexdem]

28. Are you trying to run us off?

Do you think the Dems have any chances whatsoever without us?

Just look at all the success the DLC brought us: yes, two Clinton administrations, but loss of Congress. It has been the progressive wing, and the public's increasing upset with the occupation of Iraq, that has regained the Dem toehold in Congress.

[wyldwolf]

31. does history disturb you?

It is very much like a group of vegetarians entering an all-you-can-eat steak buffet and imagining that at one time it was a salad bar.

Just look at all the success the DLC brought us: yes, two Clinton administrations, but loss of Congress.

There is ZERO evidence to support your contention the DLC lost the congress.

It has been the progressive wing, and the public's increasing upset with the occupation of Iraq, that has regained the Dem toehold in Congress.

Sure. :sarcasm: which is why over half the new house members joined the DLC.

[Morgana LaFey]

56. I wouldn't give the DLC the Clinton victories -- no way

FIrst, don't forget Perot. Second, Clinton has more charisma (and raw political talent) in his little finger than any Congressional Committee has together. That wasn't the DLC's doing.

[Douglas Carpenter]

62. should we all vote Green?

I decided a long time ago that would not be prudent.

Should Democrats who support not a pacifist or utopian, but a less militaristic/less imperial world view at least cease identifying with the Democratic Party? That would be a major portion of people who vote Democrat and consider themselves to be Democrats.

Imagine if that happened.

Probably no other factor lead to the defeat of the Republicans in November more than the perception that the Democrats would get us out of the war in Iraq and keep us out of future misadventures. It was certainly not a perception that Democrats would simply do a better job "at staying the course". Or that Democrats would be more competent about leading us into better managed intractable conflicts such as an endless state of hostility with the Arab and Islamic world.

You are absolutely correct that JFK was no dove. And it is absolutely true that hawkish views completely dominated both major political parties at that time. And it is also absolutely true that the Democratic Party's identification with the Viet Nam war and failed foreign adventures did at least as much and probably more to weaken the party in the long run as any imagery of long-haired peace-nicks. But it was probably the Democratic Party's support of the civil right movement that fractured the southern alliance coupled with Nixon's southern strategy with its message of subliminal racism that did more than anything else to end Democratic Party dominance. But I still cannot see the taking of a principled position for civil rights as a bad thing. Nor can I imagine that if the Democratic Party had "stayed the course" in Indo-China that the party would have been salvaged by more carnage in that hopeless misadventure. Does anyone in their right mind seriously believe that the Democratic Party should have continued down a hawkish path in Indo-China? Would the Democratic Party be in better shape if they had? Would America and the world be in better shape?

There certainly are times when reflexive militarism sells. And there are also times when most of the public realize they have made an ill advised purchase.

In the height of the cold war and the comically ridiculous propaganda campaign that went with it -- or more recently in the aftermath of September 11 -- much of the public could have been convinced to nuke Tahiti on Sunday afternoon. But that is hardly the atmosphere now.

Reality has set in and the American people are sick of war.

"You don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing".

.

[damntexdem]

26. Guns versus butter.

That was COLD WAR. Truman did get his hot war in Korea, but that was not just an American escapade. Kennedy suffered from the Bay of Pigs, but that was a holdover from Eisenhower. The Missle Crisis involved a naval blockade (and act of war), but it was resolved diplomatically. Kennedy inherited a low-level conflict in Vietnam and kept it going; but Johnson escalated it into a hot war. His administration perpetrated the Gulf of Tonkin fake and tricked the country into supporting escalation.

Johnson had made great gains with his New Society. He actually got through Congress what Kennedy only said he wanted enacted. In 1965 alone, there was: Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Older Americans Act, ... and so on. In 1964, Johnson was given an overwhelming landslide. And this was all for DOMESTIC REFORMS that were starting to remake America. Johnson tossed it all in the toilet by escalating in Vietnam. It went sour very, very rapidly.

Johnson promised both guns and butter; but he betrayed butter for guns.

[wyldwolf]

29. Wilsonian Internationalism

That was COLD WAR. Truman did get his hot war in Korea, but that was not just an American escapade.

A war the Dem party, including Kennedy, supported. Any biography of Kennedy will tell you how he felt about the Communists in Eastern Europe and Asia and what he was prepared to do if he felt need be. JFK was a student of Wilsonian liberal internationalism. One of his famous speeches said as much, too: Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

There is really no logical or factual way to paint JFK as a pacifist of dove.

[Odin2005]

42. IIRC LBJ was told by the retired Gen. MacArthur "Sonny, never fight a land war in Asia."

Unfortunately LBJ had a temper tantrum after MacArthur called him "Sonny" and ignored the geopolitical advice.

[Hissyspit]

12. The Passage of Time Obscures Nuance.

[WCGreen]

17. It always does....

The sweep of history takes care of that....

[Bitwit1234]

19. And you have to remember the age thing for this also.

You are correct, most of the people protesting were under 21. They were the ones who were doing the protesting because they were being drafted to go to Viet Nam. When the war closed down there was no more need to protest any more.

Just like now there is no overwhelming protests. If there was a draft, the people marching on DC and all the big cities would be ten times more than during the 60's, and I will bet you anything on that.

[WCGreen]

21. I wouldn't take that bet....

[damntexdem]

30. Hear, hear! Of that, I have no doubt.

But even a move to reinstitute the draft would likely accomplish that.

[onenote]

44. I'd like to see evidence that a majority of the protesters were under 21

In 1968 I was 15 and my brother was 21. My friends weren't into protesting yet (it took another year or so). But my brother's friends were and from what I saw, it included a lot of folks over 21. Certainly on campuses, the protests probably were predominantly under the age of 21 -- most college students are under 21. But the organizers of the Chicago protesters were not teenagers -- Rubin, Hayden, Hoffman etc. were close to or older than 30 in 1968 (I think Rennie Davis was the "kid" at around 27 years of age) and while they had a lot of followers who were younger than them, many were older than 21.

[OneBlueSky]

33. the violence at the convention -- though instigated by the cops, not the protesters --

scared a lot of "middle" Americans . . . if the Democrats couldn't even conduct a convention without chaos, they reasoned, how could they possibly run the government? . . . and remember, the Republican convention was scripted as a patriotic rally of major proportions, so the contrast was marked . . .

at the time, of course, the fact that Chicago was a police riot was not being communicated by the media . . . what people saw was a lot of young (for the most part) demonstrators clashing with law enforcement -- and gave the benefit of the doubt to the cops . . .

I had several friends who attended the convention, and they came back with absolute horror stories . . . one, though, got his licks it by bashing a Chicago cop who was beating the crap out of people lying on the ground . . . he just ran up and beat the cop over the head with something or other, and then ran like hell . . . got away, too . . .

[WCGreen]

37. The GOP was ready down in Miami...

But remember how tense that year was...

Violence was, unfortunately, a viable means political expression...

Thank god that has, for the most part, changed...

[Morgana LaFey]

57. You are completely wrong. Insultingly wrong. Stupidly wrong.

But remember how tense that year was...
Violence was, unfortunately, a viable means political expression...

You just don't get it, do you. THE PROTESTERS WERE NOT THE VIOLENT ONES, not at the 1968 Convention, not at any other protests where things turned "violent." Everywhere, everywhere were/are agents provocateurs, usually FBI, who were there specifically to make trouble and CAUSE violence (so the cops could, in turn, crack down on the "violent" protesters - - see how that works? Clever, huh?). And they, the agents provocateurs
One common piece of conventional wisdom among organizers and protesters back then was: if anyone suggests doing anything violent, illegal, etc., THAT's your FBI plant. Don't do it.

It's still true today, btw. Seattle, Genoa, Portland, Miami. They want nothing more than to discredit us and stop us. They will do anything they can to sow seeds of division to break us up, as they did with the Black Panthers.

Do NOT imagine for a minute that those on the left are in any way violent. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE is not violence, and in fact is the very antithesis of violence. Civil disobedience as taught and practiced by Martin Luther King is a spiritual practice.

There is precious little violence on the Left. Get your head straight on that issue and stop maligning the Left with rightwing lies about us.

[WCGreen]

61. You are the one projecting your bias... And in a very insulting way....

Where in those few lines that you quote from me do I say it was the anti-war people who incited riots...

But remember how tense that year was...
Violence was, unfortunately, a viable means political expression...

Where are is the mention of students in that phrase...

I was referring to violence against the anti-war protestors becoming a viable form of politcal expression...

I was referring to violence against the black communities...

And violence against MLK and RFK...

[Morgana LaFey]

65. Oh, please, cops don't make political expression, nor does the

FBI and CIA.

Spin it how you like, whatever.

[WCGreen]

66. Cops don't make political expressions...

Give me a break...

When acting in the public field, actions are political expression...

Do you think these cops gave up their politics when they strap on a ubiform...

Or how about the racists that were beating the Civil Rights Activists while wearing a uniform...

If you don't think that those two instances, attacking anti-war protestor and using the law to protect entrenched racism, were anything but naked political expression, naked power wielded to enhance a political agenda, then you are truly naive...

Orgnaized and sanctioned brute force is a form poltical expression just as much as protesting or voting...

[ben_meyers]

46. It was the result of the draft

All of what you say is the effect, the cause was that we were personally invested in JFK/LBJ's adventure. Many of us were just waiting for "Greetings" and orders to report for induction. I volunteered for the draft (2 years active instead of 4) because you couldn't find a job with a 1A classification. Mix in a few "uppity negroes" and a few "girls gone wild" (no bras? horrors!) and you could put together a pretty good rally. And all this before the internets, cell phones, faxes or any other modern communication device. Most meet ups were word of mouth. Levitate the Pentagon! Get out there and do something!
What has this war cost you! How are you invested? Where are the mobs in the street?
Until a large portion of the population is affected by the war the powers that be can ignore the few.

[WCGreen]

50. It's definatly a point...

But I just wanted to make clear to many of our younger posters that to simply say the Anti-war protestors either caused the defeat of Humphrey or that the Anti-war movement is just not the whole story...

[Morgana LaFey]

58. You know, I've asked myself a number of times, maybe you've got

some insight.

you could put together a pretty good rally. And all this before the internets, cell phones, faxes or any other modern communication device. Most meet ups were word of mouth.

It's TRUE. How did that work, for heaven's sake? I can't imagine it now. Nowadays you can't get anything near the coverage and we've got all the technology in the world. Of course, there's a lot more noise, but still -- how did we DO that???

[ben_meyers]

59. Insight

Ya, I have some insight, and a lot of younger people aren’t going to like it. If you’ll remember those days, like I do, we actually got out of our rooms and saw each other. Parties, homes, coffee houses, parks and just plain gatherings. I was a “traveler” when I got back to the world, picked up news here carried it there, remember us? Maybe carried a bag. Nobody sat in front of a computer all day ranting to a newsgroup. Did you ever wait for Randi or Olbermann or Malloy to tell you what to think or do? It was us, out there talking, planning, arguing and doing things. Recall happenings? Well Woodstock happened, DC happened, Chicago happened, San Francisco happened. Imagine that HUMAN INTERACTION, person to person.
Go to a coffee house today and everyone is on a cell and banging on a laptop. Try to say HI THERE! And it’s like you’re interrupting something important! 200 channels of TV and where is the call to action? Stewart? Olberman?
Where do you start? GET OUT OF YOUR ROOM! Meet up with people, leaders will emerge, believe me it works.

Thanks for letting me rant, hope I didn’t offend. (Actually that’s a lie, I hope I did offend and somebody gets pissed.)

[Morgana LaFey]

64. Well, you didn't offend me. Does that make your rant a failure?

:evilgrin:

So, in your opinion were we more mobile between cities, etc? I know you're reminding me we were much more mobile in our individual locales, but did that also include more mobility between more distant areas?

How did all those people learn about Woodstock, for instance? At least half a million people showed up, probably more.

[ben_meyers]

67. Some of us were more "mobile"

Now you’re going to get me to sound like some old hippy. Those of us who “traveled” always seemed to find a place to “crash”. Communes, dorm rooms, apartments and the like, with people of like minds. People would know where, and more importantly, who the “heat” were. Xerox (good old 813) and mimeograph were our friends. Remember the blue ink and the smell? High school and college print shops for fliers, pamphlets and “underground newspapers”
I could drop into a town and do a few weeks of “draft counseling” and move on down the road. Mostly college towns were the place to meet people. Most had a college radio station that could get out the word.
The closest thing to the internets was phreaking (blue-boxing). Some nights we could get 50 to 100 people "online"
As to Woodstock, the festival itself was heavily promoted on radio in the east. I heard about it when I was “visiting” the U of Mn., and no, I’m not one of the 6 million people that now claim to have been there.
I do go on though “flashback”. Tell the truth, I think if we had all the stuff that is available today it would have hampered the effort. Nobody would have left their room.
And of course the real sad truth is we didn’t end the war, but we sure had fun trying!

[democrat2thecore]

52. Good analysis

I agree with you on all points. Things would have been different had HHH not been saddled with LBJ's war. Humphrey was a great Liberal Lion - the biography of HHH by Carl Solberg is one of my favorites. But, no denying, he was no RFK.

[question everything]

60. And, as was reported recently on the program about the 60s

many just chose to stay home and not to vote.

This is what I constantly am trying to remind DUers who hate the front runners, who hate the Democratic party - staying home will just keep Republicans in power longer.

[WCGreen]

63. That was a very critical factor....

BTW, I am kicking this myself because another this is just like '68 thread has surfaced...

[Douglas Carpenter]

72. one more kick for info

[Douglas Carpenter]

73. one more kick for an interesting discussion