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January 27: On this day in history, the Paris Peace Accords, signed January 27, 1973, officially ended American involvement in the Vietnam War. On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. military unit left Vietnam.
The antiwar movement in America throughout the 1960s and 1970s created an indispensable legacy in American history, powerfully mobilizing a pro-peace and anti-intervention message that endured for subsequent generations of Americans. The antiwar movement opposing military conscription forced by the government proved that being antiwar does not automatically equate to anti-patriotism or hatred of the military. Defending your constitutional rights and your right to free speech and assembly is patriotic. You show your patriotism in your obligation to stand up for the American men of your generation being forced into deadly circumstances in an unpopular war.
In 1917, activist Emma Goldman was on trial for conspiring against the Selective Service Act which drafted American men to fight in World War One. In defense of her actions, she spoke of how being antiwar does not equate to being unpatriotic:
Who is the real patriot, or rather what is the kind of patriotism that we represent? The kind of patriotism we represent is the kind of patriotism which loves America with open eyes. Our relation towards America is the same as the relation of a man who loves a woman, who is enchanted by her beauty and yet who cannot be blind to her defects. And so I wish to state here, in my own behalf and in behalf of hundreds of thousands whom you decry and state to be antipatriotic, that we love America, we love her beauty, we love her riches, we love her mountains and her forests, and above all we love the people who have produced her wealth and riches, who have created all her beauty, we love the dreamers and the philosophers and the thinkers who are giving America liberty. But that must not make us blind to the social faults of America. That cannot make us deaf to the discords of America. That cannot compel us to be inarticulate to the terrible wrongs committed in the name of patriotism and in the name of the country. We simply insist, regardless of all protests to the contrary, that this war is not a war for democracy. If it were a war for the purpose of making democracy safe for the world, we would say that democracy must first be safe for America before it can be safe for the world.
(Emma Goldman, “Trial and Speech,” Mother Earth, July, 1917.)
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Año 92. PRESOS DE CONCIENCIA ¡LIBERTAD! #antimilitarismo #antimilitary #antimilitarismomundial #antimilitarismosempre #antiwarmovement #antiwar #nowar #nowarplease #bnw_nowar #bnw_nomilitary (en Salamanca, Castilla y León, España)
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Was just watching 1969* (the movie) and am very struck by the pointless death of war. I cannot even imagine what it would’ve been like to be alive at the time but safe from the draft because of XX chromosomes. The guilt would’ve eaten me alive. I respect soldiers and thank them for their service, but I do NOT respect war itself. At least not all wars.
#peace #vietnamwar #antiwar #antiwarmovement #antiwarprotest #1969movie #rdj #kiefersutherland #winonaryder
Photos 1 & 4 from promos and covers for 1969* (movie)
Photo 2 from the PBS documentary “The Vietnam War,” college students protest in Boston on Oct. 16, 1965. (Frank C. Curtin/Frank C. Curtin/AP)
Photo 3 from Lembcke, Jerry. “Home-from-War War Stories: Myth, Media & the Ken Burns Vietnam Series.”Common Dreams, 26 July 2017,http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/07/26/home-war-war-stories-myth-media-ken-burns-vietnam-series
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LA Progressive has a new post on http://bit.ly/2ockPJo
Friday Feedback: Stronger Anti-War Movement Needed
The taking of another life went against everything I had ever been taught in Sunday School as well as lessons I learned from my parents.
