Some history of anti-war protests

How anti-Vietnam War protests thwarted Nixon’s plans and saved lives

Fifty years ago, the antiwar movement overcame internal disarray to mount the epic Moratorium and Mobilization demonstrations, foiling Nixon's escalation plans.

Robert Levering November 12, 2019

“Demonstrations don’t work.” Next time you hear someone (or yourself) say that, you might consider the Moratorium and Mobilization demonstrations in the fall of 1969 — both commemorating their 50th anniversaries this year.

On Oct.15, 1969, more than two million citizens took part in the Moratorium — a one-day national strike against the war. In hundreds of cities, towns and campuses throughout the country, people from all walks of life took the day off to march, rally, vigil or engage in teach-ins. Until the Women’s March of 2017, the Moratorium held the title as the biggest nationwide demonstration in American history.

Exactly a month later, on Nov. 15, more than a half-million war opponents flooded the nation’s capital for the Mobilization. That was more than double the number of marchers who participated in the famous 1963 March on Washington led by Martin Luther King, Jr. More than 100,000 rallied in a simultaneous antiwar demonstration in San Francisco.

It’s not just the enormous size of these antiwar protests that make them worth recalling. I was on the staff of the coalition that organized the Mobilization action. Though none of us involved knew it then, these demonstrations foiled Richard Nixon’s plans to dramatically escalate the war.

At the time, I was delighted with the massive turnouts. I’d been working full-time as an antiwar organizer for the previous two years and would continue doing so for four more. I believed the antiwar movement was making progress as more and more people from an ever-broadening cross-section of the public were joining the actions. It seemed the tide of public opinion was shifting in our favor.

………

The Mobilization called for major rallies in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco for Nov. 15. To set a peaceful tone, they added a solemn two-day March Against Death immediately prior to the mass rally in Washington. The plan was to march from Arlington Cemetery to the Capitol via the White House with marchers holding placards with the name of a U.S. soldier who’d been killed in the war or the name of a Vietnamese village that had been destroyed.

………

Nixon then had the Pentagon and his National Security Council led by Kissinger draw up plans to deliver a “savage, decisive blow” against North Vietnam because, in Kissinger’s words, “I refuse to believe that a little fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point.” Plans included bombing the country’s dikes — which could have killed tens of thousands of civilians — as well as dropping so-called tactical nuclear bombs near the Chinese border, which could have provoked the nuclear-armed Chinese or Soviets to retaliate.

Unfortunately for Nixon, his ultimatum date of Nov. 1 was sandwiched between the dates for two antiwar demonstrations. When Nixon learned from CIA infiltrators that the Moratorium was “shaping up to be the most widely-supported public action in American history,” he saw trouble ahead. As Nixon later wrote, he saw that “the only chance for my ultimatum to succeed was to convince the Communists that I could depend on solid support at home if they decided to call my bluff.”

“Solid support at home” was not forthcoming. The size and breadth of both the October and November protests surpassed the organizers’ most grandiose expectations. Reading the names of the war dead was used extensively during the Moratorium protests. And the March Against Death drew more than 45,000 protesters who walked single file along the four-mile route with their candles and placards for 36 hours.

……….

Sadly, few of us who were involved in American’s largest nonviolent struggle knew then or know today that we had such power. At the time, we knew opposing the Vietnam War was the right thing to do. But it sure helps to realize that it made a real difference to have marched and rallied, petitioned and lobbied, sat through countless meetings and engaged in civil disobedience.

Hopefully, those involved in today’s struggles will find some helpful lessons from our experiences.

The whole article is at this link.

Helping Refugees

CRP is one of my favorite charities.

Statement on Bolivia

U.S. Peace Council Statement

Mobilize to Stop the Imperialistic Coup and Intervention

in Bolivia and the Latin America!

The U.S. Peace Council (USPC) strongly condemns the U.S.-backed military coup against the democratically elected president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, and stands in solidarity with Bolivia’s first indigenous president and the people of Bolivia. The violence unleashed by the military and members of the right-wing opposition forced the resignation of Evo Morales and his vice-president in the hope of putting an end to the foreign-induced violence and destruction in their country.

This is a coup against a president who has lifted three million Bolivians out of poverty (42% drop in the poverty rate and 60% drop in the extreme poverty rate). He had also dared to close U.S. military bases in Bolivia and had paid to combat fires in the Amazon, actions which have undoubtedly angered the U.S. ruling circles.

This action in Bolivia is in keeping with U.S. efforts to destabilize democratically elected governments in Central and South America — Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and now Bolivia — and brutalizing and suppressing people’s movements in countries like Colombia. The orchestrated protests and violent acts of reactionary forces in the city of La Paz; the threats and attacks on politicians, the media and social movements; and the threats against embassies of Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico in La Paz, are further evidence for the true intentions of the U.S.-backed coup plotters. Since 2001, the USAID has been financing the right-wing opposition to Evo Morales and the U.S. Government has been working closely with them.

It is clear that the U.S. government is deeply concerned with the rise of the left and independent popular movements and governments in Latin America. It has been using every weapon in its arsenal — sabotages, political subversions, imposing trade blockades and killer economic sanctions, expanding the NATO presence in Latin America, and establishing new military bases — to stem the tide. The coup attempt in Bolivia is just the last imperialistic attempt in this direction.

The U.S. Peace Council vehemently opposes the U.S. imperialism’s efforts to re-establish its hegemonic domination of the Latin America. We call for an end to NATO presence and closure of all U.S. military bases in Latin America, an end to the unilaterally imposed sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, U.S. commitment to the Colombian Peace Accords and an end to U.S. regime change efforts in Latin America and throughout the world.

We call upon all peace-loving people of the United States to condemn these imperialist acts of the U.S. Government and mobilize mass protests against the coup in Bolivia and all other U.S. efforts to undermine the national sovereignty of the peoples of Latin America and the world.

Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council 

November 11, 2019

Holiday Parade in Asheville

The local chapter of Veterans for Peace participated in the very wet parade in Asheville on November 23, 2019. Photo by Gerry Werhan.

Water

For Banks and Corporations

And now, they are trying to impeach a president for threatening to stop giving weapons to Ukraine to use on it's eastern border (next to Russia) and digging up political dirt on a opposition candidate.

While the fact that he joined the presidents above in murdering innocent people means nothing to the opposition party in power.

Ironically, Obama had a permanent ban on selling the some weapons to Ukraine. But he was a Democrat so the Democrats did not care. Obama did the correct thing in this case. More weapons to Ukraine mean more dead innocent people.

How do we elect such trash over and over and over and over?

Yes, just ordinary people

And today, it is ordinary people herding people into concentration camps and separating children from their parents. And ordinary people who allow this to happen on our southern border.

They are really monsters.

Armistice Day

Celebrate Armistice Day, Not Veterans Day

By David Swanson for The Humanist

Do not celebrate Veterans Day. Celebrate Armistice Day instead.

Do not celebrate Veterans Day — because of what it has become, and even more so because of what it replaced and erased from U.S. culture.

Former American Humanist Association President Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.” Vonnegut meant by “sacred” wonderful, valuable, worth treasuring. He listed Romeo and Juliet and music as “sacred” things.

Exactly at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, in 1918, 100 years ago this coming November 11th, people across Europe suddenly stopped shooting guns at each other. Up until that moment, they were killing and taking bullets, falling and screaming, moaning and dying, from bullets and from poison gas. And then they stopped, at 11:00 in the morning, one century ago. They stopped, on schedule. It wasn’t that they’d gotten tired or come to their senses. Both before and after 11 o’clock they were simply following orders. The Armistice agreement that ended World War I had set 11 o’clock as quitting time, a decision that allowed 11,000 more men to be killed in the 6 hours between the agreement and the appointed hour.

But that hour in subsequent years, that moment of an ending of a war that was supposed to end all war, that moment that had kicked off a world-wide celebration of joy and of the restoration of some semblance of sanity, became a time of silence, of bell ringing, of remembering, and of dedicating oneself to actually ending all war. That was what Armistice Day was. It was not a celebration of war or of those who participate in war, but of the moment a war had ended.

Congress passed an Armistice Day resolution in 1926 calling for “exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding … inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.” Later, Congress added that November 11th was to be “a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.”

The rest of the article is here.

Free Assange

To Stop Climate Chaos, Stop the US Military

School of the Americas Watch