OT?..let's tell our demonstration stories from the old days! when walking was easy!

[Lazarus]

Here's one of mine:

I still have a sign from one demonstration in the early 70s. It is in the back of a closet......just reminding me. we had a successful demonstration against a Miss World Pageant being held nearby. Hosted by Bob Hope.
We had big crowds....guerrilla theatre in the streets. Three of us had written a pamphlet that looked like a program for the beauty pageant. I dressed up in a gown and snuck into the building. I greeted people and handed out the program. It took half an hour before they came to throw me out.

Outside, friends rushed toward the private bus bringing Sammy Davis Junior to perform. Realizing that something big was going on he pushed the police away and allowed my friends into his bus. They handed him the program I had written. He sat down and read it. He said that he did not fully understand all the issues but he felt that we were the same (type) of people who had marched with him in Selma. He refused to cross our line. His bus pulled back out.
We cheered. Thumbs up! The protests continued. Until the paddy wagons pulled up. And that is a different story for another day.

[Howie]

Ohhhhhh, one of those radical hippies, eh?

[Sunshine]

Want to hear the paddy wagon story!

I marched against the Vietnsm War in New Haven Connecticut. It was wall to wall people packed into the city Green, a big parcel of open grass in the center of town. Very huge numbers of people and Yale students. I was a college student, made out of rubber and could run around all day with impunity.

It got blended into a Black Panther March as well, somehow. If memory serves me correctly, it's possible Angela Davis spoke...maybe about freeing Bobby seale. But I could be making that up, it was during her era, maybe it was her compatriot. I think he was on trial in New Haven.

[Parsi]

I didn't walk in demonstrations.

Back in the Vietnam days.
It didn't start as a protest against the war. There was a busy street that cut through campus that the students wished closed. One night several of them I believe had been drinking and started tearing up the road. The next morning I saw students under our highrise dorm on one side and the National Guard on the other. Students would try to cross the road and the Guard would push them back. There was a constant back and forth. I suspect that most of those students were simply trying to get to classes (which necessitated crossing the street) rather than confronting the Guard, but I'm not certain. It looked a bit ridiculous when watching the action from the 10th floor. I either didn't have classes that day or chose not to go. If I had been trying to go to class I would have been frustrated.

I was told later there were objects thrown but I didn't see them. (Perhaps the night before???)
The news (both paper and tv) reported it as one of several anti-war demonstrations around the state and country.
I was left wondering if the reports had been blown out of proportion.

[Virginia]

I would like to have protested against the Viet Nam war, but was married to a military man and could not do so. I also worked for the military. People sometime do not understand that caring as deeply and respecting our Military has nothing to do with feelings about war or conflicts and weather or not we should be in them.

Back then I had heard that President Johnson was trying to negotiate a peace with the Vietnamese people that would be an honorable one to end the war, and that Nixon was doing all in his power to stop the negotiations from take place. I recently heard on the news that this now has been proven to be a fact. Richard Nixon was going behind the government's back and telling them not to negotiate a peace treaty that he would make them a better deal when he became President. I think 30,000 military served over there after he did that. I doubt that it ever bothered him that so many of them either came home wounded or did not come home alive.

[stillstANNding]

I worked at the lical VA hospital for the last 7 years of my career. Those guys are anti-war.

ANN