An Open Letter from 1968 to 2024 Demonstrators
I know the last thing any college student wants to hear is lessons from some old-fart from a by-gone era, but I am going to do it any way.
By Gregg Robinson
As an 18 year-old arriving on the UCSD campus in 1968, I was sucked up into the anti-Viet Nam war movement. I can’t remember how many buildings on campus I helped occupy over the next few years. There was the sit-in to establish Lumumba-Zapata college (now Thurgood Marshall), the anti-war research building occupations (at least 3 that I remember), and an anti-CIA recruitment demonstration for which I was threatened with expulsion.
Like most of the students today, I was not a leader in any of the events in which I participated, but they changed my life. When you have participated in historic events it is hard to settle for anything less. So I am aware of the power of events like we have seen across U.S. campuses this spring. Another brutal conflict has taken the lives of thousands, and there is justifiable outrage at this carnage. I know the last thing any college student wants to hear is lessons from some old-fart from a by-gone era, but I am going to do it any way.
Here are 5 messages from a 1968 veteran to 2024 demonstrators.
Message #1 Labor’s Support is a Big F…ing Deal!
One of the most important contrasts with the anti-Viet Nam war movement of the 1960s, and too little appreciated, is the support that is coming from organized labor. Labor in the 1960s was part of Cold-War liberalism, and the overwhelming majority of unions supported Lyndon Johnson’s and the Democratic Party’s war. That is not true today.
The largest organization representing organized labor, the AFL-CIO, has called for both an immediate cease fire and freeing of hostages. Our local Labor Council supports an even more progressive response to the Gaza war. A strike has been authorized by the UAW at UC demanding that the administration drop all charges against nonviolent demonstrators. Holy Shit! Those of us in 1968 would have thought the revolution was underway if we had gotten anything close to this kind of support.
Message #2 UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
The demonstrations of today are much less confrontational than those of the 1960s--mostly they are engaged in a campout for peace. Given this, the attempt by over-paid administrators to shut them down was a serious over-reaction. Do they really think they will intimidate their students into refraining from expressing their moral outrage at the murder of Palestinian children by getting tough? Speaking from experience, there are three things that student activists on university campuses actually fear and it’s NOT administration threats. It is June, July, and August. Nothing stops a campus movement cold in its tracks like the onset of summer. So why didn’t administrators simply wait it out?
The most likely answer is that they have capitulated to the rightwing attack on universities by McCarthyite wannabees like Elise Stefanik and Tom Cotton. Sucking up to the right wing never appeases, it only encourages them. Dr. King, Mohammed Ali, and Noam Chomsky pushed back against the rightwing attacks during the 1960s and are admired today. A little bit of backbone goes a long way, but our current university administrators have failed to learn that lesson.
Message 3: Only for the Sake of the Hopeless Are We Given Hope (Walter Benjamin)
Your biggest enemy is not administrators or the rightwing, but hopelessness. The mainstream media are going to tell you that your efforts are ineffectual. Corporate Democrats will claim that the country opposes you. AIPAC and other right-wing organizations will scream that your demonstrations are anti-Semitic. DON’T LISTEN TO THEM.
Those of us in the antiwar movement in the 1960s heard similar things. We were told that we were anti-American; that we were disrespectful of our troops; and that the vast majority of Americans supported the war. That latter claim was true in 1968, but, in part through our persistence, by the early 1970’s that support had turned to opposition. The sociologist Max Weber once said that “politics is the slow boring of hard wood,” and you must be able to come back demonstration after demonstration to bore that wood. The people of Palestine as well as those who support a truly secure state of Israel depend on you doing this work.
Message 4: Don’t Give in to Frustration
The worst of what the 1960’s bequeathed us was the violence that frustration eventually produced. The Weather Underground was a violent organization that grew out of what at the time was one of the largest anti-war organizations, Students for a Democratic Society. The tactics of the Weather Underground were more than stupid, they were counterproductive. With few exceptions, the leaders of this faction have repudiated their activities.
1960s veterans know how frustrating and enraging it can be to keep demonstrating with so little impact. There is an inevitable hunger to do something, anything, that will have an impact. Don’t give into this. The model shouldn’t be the late period of the anti-war movement with its “Days of Rage”, but the Civil Rights and Farm Worker movements that knew the true power of non-violent demonstrations.
On a related issue, you need to go out of your way to oppose antisemitism in your demonstrations. I know how tempting it is to feel that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, but organizations like Hamas are terrorist and antisemitic. Similarly, in the late 1960s, it was too easy to apologize for authoritarian regimes in China and Russia because they opposed the war in Viet Nam. Don’t make the same mistake. Yes, the horror of Oct 7th does not justify the even greater horror of Israel’s’ attack on Gaza, but it is still a horror. You will play into the rightwing media machine if you do not expend every effort to show you are not antisemitic.
Message 5 : Hey Hey LBJ/After Hitler, Us
I promise this is my last point, but it may the most important. In 1968, the major enemy of the antiwar movement was the Democratic Party under Lyndon Johnson. Yes, Johnson gave us an immoral war, but he also gave us the most moral series of social legislation since Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Civil Rights, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.). The Movement at the time ignored the latter and therefore opposed Johnson’s re-election. This helped elect Nixon who gave us the same war, but without LBJ’s social legislation.
Even more similar to our current situation was the response of the German Left to the rise of Hitler and Fascism. The extreme left (the Communists) in the early 1930s believed that the mainstream left (the Social Democrats) were the real enemy and branded them “Social Fascists.” They argued that Hitler would make things so bad that the real left would come to power after he was elected: their slogan was “After Hitler, Us”. They were right. After Hitler came to power, he did “come after us.” The first into the concentration camps were not Jewish or gay people, or the mentally ill, but the entire German left.
I get that “Genocide Joe” has helped fund the slaughter in Gaza, and I understand that too many mainstream Democratic Party elected officials are afraid to take a stand against Netanyahu for fear AIPAC will come after them. BUT VOTE FOR BIDEN ANYWAY! We really are risking the loss of our democracy if Trump is re-elected, and the polls suggest that is a real possibility.
Here is a suggestion from the Nader campaigns a few years ago. In a state like California, voting for a 3rd party will not jeopardize Biden’s re-election, while voting for a third party in a state like Michigan may deliver the election to Trump. So, you guys are good at social media, create a website where you can trade votes with similarly angry people in Michigan and other swing states. In strongly blue states you can agree to vote for someone like Jill Stein (but I would suggest Cornel West) if those in swing states will vote for Biden.
Around the world the slide toward authoritarianism is nearly universal. From India, to Italy, to Hungary, to Turkey, and yes to Israel, authoritarian leaders have come to power. Let’s not add the U.S. to that list. Trump’s first administration was viciousness moderated by incompetence. All the viciousness is back with an even greater authoritarian competence.
As someone has said, Trump’s speeches today sound better in the original German. Please help us keep this all too fragile democracy by holding your nose and voting for Biden in November!
Gregg Robinson is a long-time activist, retired Grossmont College Sociology professor, and a member of the AFT Guild, Local 1931 Retiree Chapter.