Festival of Life, 1971, A remembrance

[Steve Plonk]

In 1971, in the third & fourth week of April, 1971, there was a massive protest for the environment, Earth Day; for voting rights ; & for the ending of the Vietnam War...I was one of the southern participants & organizers in the MOBE at the time and Vietnam Veterans Against the War protest.

We were for eighteen-year-olds to get voting rights, clean air, clean water and cessation of hostilities in Vietnam. This was the climax of
the sixties and seventies protest marches. We got results... Shortly after this march, young people got the vote, the clean air and water acts were put into practice and the Vietnam War finally started winding down. I am very happy that I stuck my neck out
and participated in this "Festival of Life".

During the "Festival of Life" as it was called, Peter, Paul & Mary; & John Denver played music along with many others. In addition, John Kerry spoke along with Renny Davis and many more. We were organized and determined...Here's some surviving clips... See below: Here's clip of Peter, Paul, & Mary--


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8U6Oh9uSY8

Here"s a another surviving clip of John Denver:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBcwAJZG ... re=related

During the first week of May, 1971, there were mass arrests and &
between 7,500 and 12,000 people were rounded up and imprisoned in DC stadium. ( I left shortly before the end of April , and was not imprisoned. ) It was the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.
We had rubber bullets & tear gas canisters fired at us
if we had overstayed our welcome...which i did. However, our contingent was prepared with helmets, and gas masks, so we were
not hurt. Some of us had flak jackets and vests filled with newsprint to deflect rubber bullets. We were prepared to retreat if
our protest at the Arlington Cemetery was not permitted. We got inside during our second attempt. Many of us threw away our military medals in protest on the capitol steps. It was an exciting march...more to follow.

Here's another clip of Barry McGuire's. War causes the most environmental damage which humans can do to this planet.
We may ban the bomb, but can we stop the military madness?! See link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EyGcXj8 ... re=related

Keep in mind, now, that "the shoe is on the other foot" . I support
Obama's handling of the current wars, but I think possibly that the
"timetable" to withdraw from Afghanistan may have to be adjusted.
We have had high amounts of wounded, but few deaths so far.

Folks are growing impatient, but Afghanstan is a poor country and may have to be propped up for years ...See my Afghanistan topic...
The 1970s were a different time and different approaches to activism were called for. ..We elected Obama so that Iraq would wind down and so that our mission in Afghanistan would be clarified.

I think that our President has done his best so far.
We may have to march in support of President Obama. I urge
everyone to vote Democratic this November. We can't afford another right wing congress that would get us further into debt and destroy the environmental and social/health legislation we worked so hard to pass this term. We are in the greatest recession since the great depression and we need to give the
Obama administration continued support so his social and economic programs will not be cut in mid-stream.

[Steve Plonk]

Addendum:

The official name of the 1971 VVAW protest was "Operation Dewey Canyon III" Here is a video clip of Vietnam Veterans tossing their medals. The initial script, for March 1971, on the video is wrong. The protest was in April, 1971. To see the correct dates, click on the script added on below the video. (Some other stuff was tacked on to the end of the April, 1971 clip, which had the arrest of Kathy Boudin.) See link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOpl9LUF ... re=related


Here is the written caption accompanying the video:

"Dewey Canyon III - Washington, D.C., April 1971

This peaceful anti-war protest organized by VVAW took its name from two short military invasions of Laos by US and South Vietnamese forces. Dubbed "Operation Dewey Canyon III," it took place in Washington, D.C, April 19 through April 23, 1971. It was referred to by the participants as "a limited incursion into the country of Congress." The level of media publicity and Vietnam veteran participation at the Dewey Canyon week of protest events far exceeded the Winter Soldier Investigation and any previous VVAW protest event.

The march re-formed and continued to the Capitol, with Congressman Pete McCloskey joining the procession en route. McCloskey and fellow Representatives Bella Abzug, Donald Edwards, Shirley Chisholm, Edmund Muskie and Ogden Reid addressed the large crowd in a show of support. VVAW members defied a Justice Department-ordered injunction that they not camp on The Mall and set up camp anyway. Later that day, the District Court of Appeals lifted the injunction. Some members personally visited their Congressmen to lobby against the U.S. participation in the war. They presented Congress with their 16-point suggested resolution for ending the war in Vietnam.

On Tuesday, April 20, 200 veterans listened to hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on proposals to end the war. Other veterans, still angry at the insult to the Gold Star Mothers when they were refused entry to Arlington National Cemetery the previous day, marched back to the front gate. After initial refusal of entry, the veterans were finally allowed in. Veterans performed guerrilla theater on the Capitol steps, re-enacting combat scenes and search and destroy missions from Vietnam. Later that evening, Democratic Senators Claiborne Pell and Philip Hart held a fund-raising party for the veterans. During the party it was announced that Chief Justice Warren Burger of the United States Supreme Court had reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals and reinstated the injunction. The veterans were given until 4:30 the following afternoon to break camp and leave the National Mall. This was the fastest reversal of an Appeals Court decision in the Supreme Court's history.

On Friday, April 23, more than 800 veterans, one by one, tossed their medals, ribbons, discharge papers and other war mementos on the steps of the Capitol, rejecting the Vietnam war and the significance of those awards. Several hearings in Congress were held that week regarding atrocities committed in Vietnam and the media's inaccurate coverage of the war. There were also hearings on proposals to end the United States' participation in the war. The vets planted a tree on the mall as part of a ceremony symbolizing the veterans' wish to preserve life and the environment.

In 1975, after Emile de Antonio, Mary Lampson and Haskell Wexler had completed filming for Underground, the FBI learned of their project and served all three with subpoenas in an attempt to confiscate their material in order to gain information about the location of the Weathermen that might lead to their arrest. The three, all prominent within the Hollywood community, hired the best lawyers that they could find, and with the support of other filmmakers and actors, including Elia Kazan, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, were able to get the subpoenas repealed (Hess 1975). The three were able to use their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, as well as the rights of journalistic integrity which allow for confidentiality of sources, to fight the courts and retain the right to make the film (Hess 1975; Waugh 1976; Jackson 2004). While the legal matters surrounding the production of Underground gained it extensive media coverage, it received mixed reviews from critics, with most damming the Weather Underground on the basis of its tactics, rather than addressing the style or merits of the film itself. Others criticized the film for being boring, relying too heavily on narrative by the Weathermen to hold it together, yet others praised it for its striking juxtapositions and its role as a history of the situation and motivations of the radical left (Waugh 1976). Reviews aside, the film is, to this day, difficult to obtain, but, in the words of de Antonio, is significant because a film always captures history at 24 frames per second and that is it (Rosenthal 1978)."

[stilltrucking]

I was there too as a "street medic" with the Medical Cadre for Human Rights which was part of The New Mobe. The M.C.H.R. was started by doctors and combat medics who served in Vietnam, they were determined to do everything in their power to stop the war. They looked like kids to me I was thirty one years old at the time.



Listening to a interview on the radio:
an American soldier asks an Afghani elder if he has seen any foreign troops today?
The elder says, "Only you."

[Steve Plonk]

Yes, still truckin', those were the days...
"Time heals all wounds, or wounds all heals, or a little of both."
I was twenty-one going on twenty-two back then, in April 1971.
To me, it was our political "Woodstock". Things got done that year.

Unfortunately, the Democrats did not win back the presidency the following year. But we stuck it to Nixon in 1973 and he resigned in disgrace the following year. But that was then and this is now...

I still am supporting Obama and am generally happy with his policies.

[stilltrucking]

Obama is a good man. I would vote for him again. I think he is doing a good job considering the mess he took over. I hate to think about the Republicans regaining control of congress. For one thing congressman Joe Barton would take over the congressional committee that has oversight of our energy policies.

Rep. Joe Barton apologizes to BP for Obama 'shakedown'


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts2660

[Steve Plonk]

Let's hope that Joe Barton doesn't get his mitts into that committee.
Hopefully, unlike 1972, 2011 will find the Democrats still pulling
the purse strings, be those as they may...We need this chance,
as a country, to turn ourselves toward a sustainable future.

It is too bad that politics is such a fickle and mean-spirited business.
Let's hope that the ideals of this new administration aren't lost in
this shell game which is being played this fall.

[Steve Plonk]

All the above stuff happened forty years ago this week. "It was a long time coming and it's been a long time gone...Reach out, you got to reach out and
speak out against the madness, if you dare..." To paraphrase & quote, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young... So get moving, folks, we need to remember
our sacrifices and not let the country fall into a hole because they back-pedaled...The Democrats can get us out of this mess...