I was just reminiscing about 1972...

[PCIntern]

I was in an English class at my University and when I exited, there was a great gathering in the center of the academic quadrangle. It seemed that the Nixon Administration had announced that it had mined Haiphong Harbor in North Vietnam and this was considered by the student leaders to be so reprehensible that we should act as a revolutionary body and take over the administration building. So a large group of us went over there and very politely asked the staff to leave, which they did for the most part, and the Administration officials stayed around to talk and even posed for pictures with some of the demonstrators!!

I for one, avoided such 'social' contacts...a month later, charges were brought against many of the students pictured in the photos, with proof of their participation being the pictures themselves. It was a mess...they held 'trials' on campus and a few students were in REAL trouble...the results of which I don't specifically recall, but it wasn't great. They were show trials and punishment was meted out - and for you younger folk, in those days, there was not a prayer that a med school or law school would take you if you were the subject of significant University disciplinary action. Lives were changed that day.

But what I found fascinating about that moment in the center of the quad was that a group of people was moved to action by a particularly egregious (at that time) spark and we acted as a herd and performed actions rather precipitously without thinking of consequences. Now I'm not saying that we did anything wrong, it was just the manner in which we acted was so spontaneous, and the one thing which TPTB know, is that one bad judgement call can cause a movement to gel almost instantaneously with unknown but possibly significant results.

[rug]

1. Lesson: don't pose for pictures with TPTB.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. With cameras *everywhere* today, if you demonstrate, expect to be identified

[rug]

4. That's what masks are for.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. Which is illlegal in many states

Which cited the KKK when they passed it

[rug]

6. Much of what goes on in protests is illegal

That's not a reason to not protest.

And I don't think there will be any KKK masks at a left protest.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Actions have consequences...put it is a measure of the seriousness of the participants

Is it really civil disobedience is there is no down side to the protesters?

[Cirque du So-What]

7. Desensitization

The intervening years between the Vietnam War and today have heaped successively larger atrocities upon our national consciousness to the point that it requires an act that pushes the envelope into absolutely 'monstrous' behavior to get people riled up enough to take direct action.

[PCIntern]

8. you're so right...n/t

[Cirque du So-What]

9. 'National Novocaine' for the brain

delivered in greater-than-therapeutic but less-than-lethal doses daily on the evening news.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

10. I was one of many students who DID take over the

administration building. Way back in April of 1969. We wanted to talk to the University President about unhappy we were about Dow Chemical Company recruiting on our campus. He refused to see us, so we decided to wait.. and wait.... and wait. I think we were there 2 weeks before they called the cops. I didn't get arrested, but many did. I went to a safe house with others to work on more signs because we were going back the next day to picket.


Given the chance, I would do it all over again

[PCIntern]

11. I was in the group...but declined the

offer of a picture with the administration officials...

and I would do it again myself...

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

12. Sorry, I misunderstood.

I seem to remember some student being on trial at the school, too.

[PCIntern]

14. That's OK...I was ambiguous in one of my sentences...

and I can totally see how you got that impression...

what an era that was...

[starroute]

13. Because of this, it's important not to let OWS be demonized

The students who had charges brought against them in 1972 represent an extreme case -- but in many ways an entire generation of progressives has been stigmatized and excluded from the political sphere as a result of those years.

Think about it -- as active and creative as the early Boomers have been in general, Bill Clinton is the only progressive early Boomer president we've had or are likely to have. And even he came from the most moderate wing of the anti-war movement and had to do a lot of triangulating in the years that followed.

In contrast, the current field of would-be GOP candidates is still loaded with people born between about 1946 and 1950. And it's not that there was an over-abundance of young conservatives in the late 60s and early 70's -- it's that those people thrived and were able to make their way up the ladder while the progressives were being weeded out.

Part of the difference may have begun very early, in terms of who was able to get into law school. But even for those with no arrest record, having "60s activist" on your resume has been a political death sentence.

And that is what we can't let happen this time around. We want these hopeful young people of OWS to become a generation of leaders who will still be making their mark 40 years from now. And that means that starting at this moment, we have to make it a badge of honor and not a stigma.