Vietnam war protest and the music Essay Example
Vietnam war protest and the music Essay Example

Vietnam war protest and the music Essay Example

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  • Pages: 6 (1477 words)
  • Published: May 22, 2018
  • Type: Analysis
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It was the y nouns Americans who stood up to voice their opinions concerning this war and create De an antiwar culture whose ideology has continued to have a profound impact on American society up to the present day.

Due to the opposition towards Vietnam War, the ere were a number of demonstrations, particularly among students, calling for the US to end its involvement in Vietnam between 19631965. Student for Democratic Society (S organized the first national antiwar demonstration in Washington, which cons sites of 20,000 people.

The Vietnam war the first war with a strong presence of antiwar r culture and certainly was not the last. Vietnam was the beginning of a new era of you Eng people in America Youth Protest of the Vietnam War In 1961 president Kennedy decid

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ed to send American troops to Vietnam to stop the spread of Communism and to show t he United States' strength of resolve. At the time he did not know the turmoil he would bring to his Allison own country. The United States was split between those who believed it was our job to get involved in Vietnam and those who thought it was none of our business.

A s the war continued people's opinions intensified, especially student's. Youth protests d urine the sass's changed the way many Americans viewed the Vietnam War. In the earl Y sass's protests first became a way of change for the civil rights movement. Then as men started going off to war it became a way of displaying activism. Liberal cities w tit big universities were the first to experience the antiwar movement.

The cities of A

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an Arbor, Bloomington, Chicago, East Lansing, Lawrence, Madison, Milwaukee, and Min Annapolis saw the movement in full effect.

Some people believed that the protesters we disgrace for betraying their own country (Dudley 83). "Teaching" became a WA Y of educating students about what was really happen ins in Vietnam. Speeches, s ones, concussions, and seminars helped get the students involved at the "teaching". After the first "teach in" occurred on March 24, 1965, at the University of Michigan, hung dress more started taking place within a few weeks.

All the administration could do was to send for government officials called "truth teams".

When that did not work, the government realized they should not reveal their policies to the public (Doug n and Weiss 8788) The students from the University of California at Berkeley felt like a minority w hen no one took them seriously at their campus demonstration in September 1 96 because of their long hair and ragged clothes (Kent 74). Many youth joined organization ins that were against the war. They would go to protests such as the one that took pal CE on April 17, 1965.

The 20,000 protesters that were present in Washington that dad y showed Allison how the peace movement was growing. A few days later, thirteenth antiwar organizations came together to form the National Coordinating Committee To End the War in Vietnam. Another group, Vietnam Day Committee, attempted to stop t roof trains but were unsuccessful. Both groups joined together to lead demonstrations I interfere cities, in what was called the "International Days of Protest.

The "International Days of Protest" that took place on October 15 and 16

in 1 965 included 100,000 activists that participated not only in the cities but on college campus sees as well. The way of protest in each of these places varied. In Madison, eleven people were arrested when they tried to make a citizen's arrest on a commander of a local air force base by accusing him of "war crimes. " At a University of Colorado football GA students flashed antiwar slogans to the fans at halftime. Students in Michigan led a 48 hour peace vigil and also picketed the local draft board.

New York had a Para De in which 20,000 people were involved in and a "speak out" that 300 people eaten deed at New Work's arms induction center.

The Students for a Democratic Society (SD ) was one Of the best known and largest organizations. With Tom Hayden, from the university of Michigan, as their president and spokesman, many people who were active SST in or out of the group were inspired. SD had a huge role in the ass's protest movement and changed greatly over time eventually leading to their downfall.

Students for a Democratic Society (S radical youth group established in the United States in 1959, developed out of the youth branch of an older socialist educational organization, the League for Industrial Allison Democracy. The newly formed SD held its first organizational meeting in 19 60 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Robert Alan Huber was elected president. The political manifesto for SD, the Port Huron Statement, was written for the most part by Tom Hayden, a downheartedly former editor of the student newspaper at the University of Michigan.

The document, adopted

in 1 962 byte he sixty or o founding members of SD, criticized the American political system for failing g to achieve international peace or to effectively address a bunch of social ills, inch duding racism, materialism, militarism, poverty, and exploitation. The Port Huron Stats moment called for a fully "participatory democracy," which would empower citizens to share in the social decisions that directly affected their lives and wellbeing. It was the f enders' intense, if somewhat naive, belief that a nonviolent youth movement could try anchors U.

S.

Society into a model political System in which the people, rather than just he social elite, would control social policy. At first SD focused its efforts on helping to promote the civil rights move NT and efforts to improve conditions in urban ghettos. In April of 1965, SD org amazed a national march on Washington, D. C. , and from that point on the movement gar increasingly aggressive, especially in its opposition to the Vietnam War, using t static like rowdy (though not violent) demonstrations and occupation of administration buildings on college campuses.

Rude 6778) After 1 965, SD became known primarily for its leading role in the youth movement against the Vietnam War. Allison SD was part of a more general youth movement aimed at correcting social injustice in the United States. The civil rights movement that led to the format on of SD also triggered another political youth movement, the Berkeley Free Speech M event (FSML), led by a junior philosophy major named Mario Savior.

Savior urged his g enervation to fight against the disproportionately machine, "There is a time when the operation of

the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick to heart that you 'eve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon a II the apparatus, and you've got to make it The Free Speech Movement arose as a reaction against heavyhearted attempt by Berkeley officials, under pressure by local conservatives, to prevent student TTS from collecting donations and recruiting other students for work in the civil rights movement in the segregated South.

Official overreaction to mild student resistance led to massive satins and occupation of the university administration building. (Dudley 110) T he arrest of over five hundred demonstrators led to several weeks of even more massive ministrations and a strike by nearly 70 percent of the Berkeley student body The "counterculture" youth movement that SD and the Free Speech Move were such a prominent part of was driven by a radical minority of liberators majors and graduate students attending some of the country's most elite educational insist tuitions.

This campus political awakening, dubbed the "New Left," developed around a core of "readier babies," the children of parents who were themselves politically AC dive and who had participated in progressive, social movements Of the 1 sass. It was, oaf ere all, Allison the youth branch of a socialist organization that had evolved into SD, and m cost of Sad's early recruits were readier babies.

The somewhat undecided idealism and beliefs of the early SD is captured in t he ringing declarations of the Port Huron Statement: "We would replace power r dotted in possession, privilege or circumstances, with power rooted in love, reflective reason and creativity.

" The port Huron Statement also decried "the permeating g and victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle a GA insist racial bigotry.

... And] the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb," which drove the younger generation "as individuals to take rest pointillist for encounter and resolution. The campus activism lead by the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and Sad's Port Huron Statement soon spread to colleges and universities all over the Un tied States.

Even students who never joined SD heeded the call to action embodied De in the Port Huron Statement and other SD manifestos. SD also used a small grant from the United AutoWorkers union to initiate a campaign for grassroots political awake Nell In workingman's neighborhoods.

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