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How the Marches for Gun Control Are Like the Protests Against Vietnam

By James Hohmann, The Washington Post

26 March 18

A key reason the protests against the war in Vietnam were so much more potent than against the war in Iraq is that there was a draft back then.

illions of young people lived in fear that they — or someone they loved — would have their number called, and they’d be shipped off against their will to the rice paddies and jungles of a faraway land for a cause they felt was unjust and futile. From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. military conscripted 2.2 million men — boys, really — out of an eligible pool of 27 million. This helped fuel the mass movement against the war.

Young people today aren’t worried about being drafted to fight Kim Jong Un in North Korea. But many are palpably concerned that they or someone they know could get shot at school. High-profile incidents, culminating with last month’s shooting in Parkland, Fla., have shaken many middle-class kids, who would not otherwise be inclined to activism, out of their suburban comfort zones.

The March for Our Lives was so big on Saturday because the fears are so personal. A whole generation has come of age since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado that left 13 dead. Nearly 200 people have died from gunfire at school since then, and more than 187,000 students attending at least 193 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus during school hours, according to a Washington Post analysis.

These numbers are relatively small when compared to the 58,000 Americans who died during Vietnam, but they are nonetheless staggering. Schools, of course, are also not supposed to be war zones. Like other forms of terrorism, these shootings instill panic in the rest of the population.

From coast to coast, hundreds of thousands of people protested on Saturday for stricter gun laws. Many attendees volunteered during interviews or speeches that they were motivated by dread and anxiety that they could be next.

Thousands gathered in front of San Francisco City Hall for one of the hundreds of sister marches. During a nearly two-hour program, adults introduced a procession of younger people who have been personally impacted by gun violence.

Cathy Richardson, who is now the lead singer of the rock band “Jefferson Starship,” said the energy emanating from the crowd is reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam War protests. The group, which she joined years later, performed at many of those rallies. Their songs became part of the soundtrack of the peace movement.

“No, I am not Grace Slick,” Richardson said. “But as we stand up here, I’m reminded of another youth movement that took place in San Francisco … Here we are 50 years later. Same sh-t. New a--holes.”

John Kerry sees parallels between the Parkland survivors and “many of the Vietnam veterans who returned home and felt compelled to speak out about their experience.”

“Every historic moment has its own power, and these young people deserve their own moment,” the former secretary of state told me in an email early this morning. “Many of them have earned the right to be heard through a shared loss that innocents should never experience. Their moral clarity defies politics or partisanship. … These young people have touched the conscience of the country about common sense on guns, and they have the power to make it a voting issue again.”

Kerry became an antiwar activist after volunteering as a Naval officer in Vietnam, an experience that profoundly shaped his worldview and service in the Senate. “They were compelled because they’d seen friends suffer and die for a policy that they thought was a mistake,” he explained, referring to the veterans who became protesters. “Because they’d served, they couldn’t be dismissed by Spiro Agnew and the Nixon White House. The same way, these young people from Parkland and all over the country can’t be written off by mere politicians. Their moral authority is unimpeachable.”

The 74-year-old also sees analogues between the March for Our Lives and the movement to protect the environment, another issue that many view in existential terms. “The environment was written off for a long time as a minor issue,” he writes. “Earth Day 1970 changed all of that when millions filled the streets of America and turned the environment into a voting issue and forced [Richard] Nixon to create the EPA.”

The march in Washington on Saturday mixed political activism with the raw emotion of teenagers who are dealing with the murder of their friends under the glare of the national spotlight, which in this era means nasty criticism from trolls on the Internet.

“Sam Fuentes, a senior shot in the leg at Stoneman Douglas, threw up on stage while delivering her speech to a national television audience. She recovered and led the crowd in a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ for her slain classmate, Nicholas Dworet, who would have turned 18 on Saturday,” according to The Post’s account.

“Emma González, 18, took the stage in a drab olive coat and torn jeans, speaking of the ‘long, tearful, chaotic hours in scorching afternoon sun’ as students waited outside … on the day of the shooting. With a flinty stare, tears streaming down her face, González stood silent on the rally’s main stage for nearly four minutes — evoking the time it took Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz to carry out his attack. The crowd began chanting, ‘Never again.’”

History tells us that change won’t happen overnight. Zachary Jonathan Jacobson, a historian of the Cold War, saw echoes in the Saturday protests of the nationwide demonstrations against the Vietnam War on Oct. 15, 1969. Students skipped class in 10,000 high schools, and experts estimate that about 2 million Americans protested that day.

“A withdrawal from Vietnam was not negotiated for three more years; a full withdrawal not for another six,” Jacobson said. “But while [Nixon] refused to comment publicly on the demonstrations, letting ‘it be known that he was watching sports on TV in the White House’ that day, we now know that the president was privately spooked. The protests forced Nixon to cancel plans to expand the war with an offensive of aerial bombing, harbor mining [and] even an invasion of North Vietnam.

“The unity of action firmly established that the antiwar movement had a constituency that could be mobilized,” he added. “The great achievement … was to bring a large swath of Americans together in dissent, establishing that their antiwar cause was not fueled by a dangerous fringe that Nixon could, with a few dirty tricks, stamp out or discredit.”