Is there anything we can learn from protests of yesteryear to help calm those of today? No, a “peace” concert ain’t gonna do the trick either – PB/TK
What the 1960s Reveal About What’s Next for American Protesters – By David Kaiser (time.com) / Aug 25 2017
For more than two years after Columbia University erupted in protest in the spring of 1968, U.S. college campuses were the scene of many violent demonstrations, building occupations, police busts and temporary campus closings. Now, recent events in Charlottesville, Va., suggest that the nation appears to be on the verge of a new era of protest, this time on our streets and in the parks of major cities. Though nearly 50 years have passed, the pattern that emerged in 1968-70 could be the template for what we are about to witness over the next few years.
All around the nation in 1968-70, college students were becoming more and more hostile to the war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. A huge earlier protest, at Berkeley in 1964-5, dealt with campus regulations, but by 1968 student hostility focused on the war. Gradually students shifted their hostility to symbols of the war on campus, such as research institutes doing work for the Department of Defense and ROTC programs. The most militant students—never more than a small minority—joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and sharply escalated these protests. ROTC buildings at various campus—including Kent State and Harvard—were set afire. And beginning at Columbia, students took the equally disruptive step of occupying administration buildings and rifling their files. In the spring of 1969, I saw this happen at Harvard
The occupations never commanded the support of a majority of the student body. At Harvard, the occupation had not even been voted for by the majority of the SDS chapter. But the occupations triggered a response from school authorities, who summoned the police (and on some campuses, the National Guard) to remove the occupiers. They often did so violently. That, invariably, turned the bulk of the student body—who felt that the SDS was on the morally right side of the great issues of the day, even if they disagreed with their tactics—against the administration. Broader protests often led to the shutdown of universities for days or weeks.
Continue to time.com article: http://time.com/4915622/protest-cycle-1960s-charlottesville/?xid=homepage
