The Pledge of Allegiance was everywhere in the '60s — "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" — and most kids assumed it was bullshit (consider the source), but no one really knew why until the ghettos burned and some older kids from the neighborhood came home from Vietnam in a box. Add the influence of Students for a Democratic Society to a couple years of that, and you picked up a bad attitude that wouldn't quit. I thought about that while riding the BART train into San Francisco Oct. 26 to protest war plans against Iraq. Thousands of people from Oakland, Berkeley, and beyond were waiting for trains into the city; it took 45 minutes to buy a ticket at MacArthur station, and some trains were too full to take on more passengers. The exits at Embarcadero were jammed. Walking in and around Justin Herman Plaza was painfully, delightfully slow. The world was a mess, but a year of flag waving hadn't fooled these people.
The enormous turnout, estimated between 42,000 and 100,000, was energizing and comforting after months of media coverage as slanted as anything since the McCarthy era. During the Vietnam years, the measuring stick of modern political protest in this country, resistance always lagged behind U.S. involvement. Using 1965 as a crude point of comparison, consider that there were 184,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by the end of the year, and the turnout for the Nov. 27, 1965, march on Washington, D.C., for peace in Vietnam was estimated at 25,000 to 30,000.
More important than the numbers at last month's action, though, were the level of organization and the sophisticated political analysis evident on flyers and banners and in the conversation of groups and individuals too numerous to mention. There were, no doubt, many that day who considered themselves concerned citizens asking for answers. But there was also an unruly, unreasonable army on hand — outlaws, and I mean that in the most flattering sense.
The influence of the antiglobalization organizers was palpable at the Civic Center rally. In 2002 — despite justifiable criticism from nonwhite activists on racial issues and a gaggle of debates about strategy and tactics — they qualify as veterans of the struggle. And the so-called Battle of Seattle has a place in the list of watershed moments like the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, the police riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the 1970 Chicago 7 trial. Seattle was significant for several reasons: It came during a period of unprecedented domestic prosperity, proving, contrary to conventional wisdom, that not every twentysomething was content to grab a diploma and head for dot-com riches. More than that, though, the political leadership was sophisticated, targeting global strategies for world domination in solidarity with oppressed people worldwide. In everyday terms, it emphasized that what happened in Indonesian Nike factories mattered to potential first-world consumers; out of sight didn't mean out of mind. Add to that group — which numbers in the thousands — the activists fighting for affirmative action in education, against police brutality in minority communities, against the death penalty, for gay rights, for prisoners' rights, and for many other progressive causes. Then add the baby boomers, people who grew up demonstrating against the Vietnam War and were out in force Oct. 26, having learned their lesson.
Skimming the morning headlines is an exercise in frustration — all the news is bad, and forget about the treacherous one-way spin. Still, when compared with the status quo in the '60s, today's activists are in a much better position to lead the way forward. Anyone familiar with the Vietnam era can attest to the stuttering, confused arc of involvement and understanding that characterized the early years of resistance. The largely white, naïve, campus-centered movement of the 1960s had an incredibly steep learning curve.
Who, in the '60s, remembered the '30s, when the last mass movement flourished? The ties were cut by World War II and the McCarthy purges. Illusion abounded — fairy tales about JFK; ignorance about the apocryphal ugly American abroad, about the legacy of slavery and racism. It took a head-on, painful collision between wrongheaded notions and bitter reality for things to change, and it was slow going at first. Numbers were small, opposition was fierce, and activists didn't know what they were up against. The importance of independent political action — draft card burnings, blocking inductions centers, organizing of G.I.s, all inspired by SDS — was at first understood by only a relative handful of people.
The turning point didn't come until late August 1968 at the Democratic convention in Chicago. The police, with the backing of national Democratic Party leaders, rioted in the streets. The whole world — a lot of it anyway — was watching, to paraphrase the chant that filled one hot, humid evening as bloodthirsty cops waded into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators. The mood of the country changed that night during the 11 o'clock news, and the antiwar movement was never the same.
Police clubs were instrumental in radicalizing many young protesters (by destroying their faith in the system), but it's crucial to understand the role of SDS and other activists. It took hard, often thankless agitation and education about complex political realities — in leaflets, teach-ins, community canvassing, underground or radical newspapers — to provide new ideas that could replace the old.
I've thought a lot about "liberty and justice for all" since it was emblazoned on the covers of textbooks distributed at Babylon Memorial Grade School during the cold war. The Vietnam War changed my life, as it did so many others — and to this day, the only allegiance I'll pledge is to a vision of the future that doesn't include exporting misery around the globe. That day doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon — and what's going to happen in the Middle East in the next year is anybody's guess. But if war seems likely, we're lucky that the movement won't have to experience the same growing pains it did in the '60s. And we're fortunate that resistance is already in place, and that it isn't going away.
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