As you know, baby boomers like me won the Vietnam War, lost it, ended it and made a mess of it. The movement to end the war started out as a political movement and ended up with the Doors, Steppenwolf, Fritz the Cat and Dennis Hopper.
Fact: A lot of the people were already high before they knew the anti-war movement had started. I know because I wasn't one of them. I refused to get high the whole time.
I made the decision, for ill or for good, that I would deliberately not be "where it was happening" so that I could be conscious and know what was happening.
The anti-war movement did not begin with boomers. Most boomers were playing the alternate universe game "Davy Crockett saves the Alamo" while Catholic Prime Minister Diem of South Vietnam was using the communist threat to suppress his political opposition, which he apparently took to include the entire Buddhist majority of the nation he was ruling.
The first two casualties listed on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., died the day before my tenth birthday, in 1959. In the following 12 months only six U.S. servicemen died there. But the next twelve months it was 13. The next, 42. Then 73, 153, 531, and by 1965-66, there were 4,595. Deaths on all sides by reports at the time, including civilians, were much higher.
For each American, whenever enough was enough was when the anti-war movement began for them. Not everyone, not even every boomer, waited until boomers got to draft age. There was opposition before it was called a war, when it was a police action, conducted by military advisors.
Finally, though, boomers started getting drafted in droves, and protests became common on college campuses. At first, you'd never see more than 300 people at an anti-war rally in Seattle, but around about 1968, protesting got popular.
Now, protesting had just had some big successes in ending segregation, which was pretty cool. Plus, folks were taking courses in college and learning about stuff they never thought about before, such as the French Revolution, and Indian Wars, and Camus, and Ginsberg, and all. They finally started connecting the dots, and they wanted to be cool, too.
They wanted to be revolutionaries, too.
Here's an example. On May 5, 1970, about 7,000 UW students, faculty and staff engaged in a "spontaneous" march down i-5 from the University District, to protest the Vietnam War and the Kent State massacre.
Well, not exactly spontaneous. For months before, organizers wanted students to march down the freeway, and no one wanted to do it but them. Then, the Kent State massacre happened, and people set aside their reservations and marched en masse toward the general direction of Roosevelt Way. Next thing you know we were being egged onto the freeway, and we shrugged, collectively, and went there.
But it was stupid.
Fortunately, the Seattle police saved us from ruining a great protest. The spd formed a wall blocking us at the Boylston-Roanoke exit, and their guns and mean looks convinced us to get off the freeway and onto Eastlake, where the protest should have been in the first place and where it was a rousing success. What made it a success was that we were now marching in front of residences. People in apartment buildings were cheering us on from their windows or running out and joining us.
Let me put it this way. Those who want to be real revolutionaries need to put away the attitude. Put away the masks and the posturing. Put the stupid revolutionary rhetoric away.
Revolution is not about winning skirmishes; it's about reaching supporters. You aren't reaching them by breaking through windows.