General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumswas there a protest or gathering back in the 1970s
that surrounded ... ? the capitol? the white house?
i'm thinking either vietnam or environmental of some sort.
anyone remember anything like this?
or am i just delusional?
Wounded Bear
(58,440 posts)but I was kind of busy in the early 70's.
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radical noodle
(7,990 posts)Don't know which one you're referring to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protest_marches_on_Washington,_D.C.
k8conant
(3,030 posts)k8conant
(3,030 posts)elleng
(130,156 posts)The most influential large-scale political action of the 60s was actually in 1971, and youve never heard of it. It was called the Mayday action, and it provides invaluable lessons for today.
'If the government wont stop the war, well stop the government.
The largest and most audacious direct action in US history is also among the least remembered, a protest that has slipped into deep historical obscurity. It was a protest against the Vietnam War, but it wasnt part of the storied sixties, having taken place in 1971, a year of nationwide but largely unchronicled ferment. To many, infighting, violence, and police repression had effectively destroyed the movement two years earlier in 1969.
That year, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the totemic organization of the white New Left, had disintegrated into dogmatic and squabbling factions; the Black Panther Party, meanwhile, had been so thoroughly infiltrated and targeted by law enforcement that factionalism and paranoia had come to eclipse its expansive program of revolutionary nationalism. But the war had certainly not ended, and neither had the underlying economic and racial injustices that organizers had sought to address across a long decade of protest politics. If anything, the recent flourishing of heterodox new radicalismsfrom the womens and gay liberation movements to radical ecology to militant Native American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Asian-American movementshad given those who dreamed of a world free of war and oppression a sobering new awareness of the range and scale of the challenges they faced.'>>>
https://longreads.com/2017/01/20/in-1971-the-people-didnt-just-march-on-washington-they-shut-it-down/
randr
(12,408 posts)WH protests everyday during VNW
flamingdem
(39,304 posts)Those were the days..
randr
(12,408 posts)Of course the media never presented the actual ideology behind the anti war movement.
They presented it as strange theater dismissing any real discussion.
I wish people today who love to diss the press could have the perspective to see how much better it really is now.
Not sayi g it's perfect, just better.
flamingdem
(39,304 posts)I posted about the levitation - so funny that they got a permit to lift it 3 feet vs the 300 they asked for!
Warpy
(110,913 posts)I think you're thinking of the 1969 anti Vietnam protest in DC wherein vets threw their medals over the White House fence.
I have a feeling these things are going to get bigger and bigger.
Republicans, of course, will sit on their suburban couches and sneer that we all need to go get jobs.
FDT
cilla4progress
(24,589 posts)Was there, am I right?
Another example of the alt right doing its nasty against an American hero. War Veteran peace activist.
dalton99a
(81,073 posts)Metropolitan Police Lt. Robert Klotz found himself in a thin blue line of officers decked out in riot gear. In front of Klotz that November day in 1969 stood a barricade formed out of 57 city buses. Behind the buses came the constant thrum of thousands of unseen anti-war demonstrators. And behind Klotz was the White House. Richard Nixon was inside, watching the Ohio State-Purdue football game on television.
As the 30-year-old Klotz stood his ground, a sergeant to his left went down in a heap. A bottle clattered to the pavement nearby.
"When you get involved in a situation where they're throwing things, you don't look straight ahead," recalled Klotz, who retired from the D.C. force as deputy chief in 1980. "You look up."
It has been a long time since D.C. police have had to master the intricacies of rock-and-bottle trajectory. But things were different in the '60s, when Washington served as a fulcrum for the forces that swirled around the divisive war in Vietnam. Every year from 1967 to 1971, a major march occurred in the District, including four of the biggest anti-war demonstrations in American history.
GReedDiamond
(5,299 posts)...including Abbie Hoffman, Alan Ginsberg and the above cited Fugs.
k8conant
(3,030 posts)I did go to the U.S. Embassy in Paris with protestors to sign a "protest book". We had to go past a long line of "flics" (cops) in their riot gear to get there.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,280 posts)There were many major protests in the late '60s and early '70s but IIRC one of the largest was in '71.
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)Nixon famously snuck ou late one night and chatted with protesters at thevLincoln Memorial. There is debate as to whether or not this really happened, but I knew someone in college who swears he spoke with Nixon. And he's not a UFO, Bigfoot, Elvis sighting type person.
LunaSea
(2,892 posts)Standing in silence.
?bdc2e0
braddy
(3,585 posts)From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_May_Day_protests
"10,000 federal troops were quickly moved to various locations in the Washington, D.C. area. At one point, so many soldiers and marines were being moved into the area from bases along the East Coast that troop transports were landing at the rate of one every three minutes at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland, about 15 miles from the White House. Among these troops were 4,000 paratroopers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division,troops from Marine Barracks lined both sides of the 14th St bridge. These troops were to back up the 5,100 D.C. Metropolitan Police, 2,000 D.C. National Guard and Nixons internal security forces that were already in place. Every monument, park and traffic circle in the nation's capital had troops protecting its perimeters. Paratroopers and marines deployed via helicopter to the grounds of the Washington Monument."
(snip)
"While the troops secured the major intersections and bridges, the police roamed through the city making massive arrest sweeps and used tear gas. They arrested anyone who looked like a demonstrator, including construction workers who had come out to support the government. By 8 am 7,000 protesters had been arrested. The city's prisons did not have the capacity to handle that many people thus an emergency detention center surrounded by an 8-foot-high (2.4 m) fence was set up next to RFK Stadium. No food, water, or sanitary facilities were made available by authorities but sympathetic local residents brought supplies. Skirmishes between protesters and police occurred up until about mid-day. In Georgetown, the police herded the protesters and onlookers through the streets to the Georgetown University campus. The police then engaged in a back and forth with the protesters outside the university's main gate on O Street, lobbing tear gas over the gate each time they pushed the crowd back. Other forms of gas were used including pepper based and one that induced vomiting. Police helicopters also dropped tear gas on the university's lower athletic field where protesters had camped the night before. Numerous people were severely injured and treated by volunteers on campus. By afternoon the police had suppressed the disruption efforts and the protesters had mainly dispersed.
Smaller protests continued resulting in the arrests of several thousand more, bringing the total to 12,614 people, making this the largest mass arrest in U.S. history."
eleny
(46,166 posts)I don't recall surrounding the White House or the Capitol.
But one I attended in 1967 was when the Pentagon was surrounded. A group surged forward and tried to gain entry. Tear gas was fired into the crowd by Nat'l Guardsmen on the hill up from the building. They set up their gas cannon a few yards to my left.
This is one chronicle of what happened that day.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/100000-people-march-on-the-pentagon
MyOwnPeace
(16,888 posts)Drumpf's will be "YUGHHHHER!"
orleans
(33,987 posts)i guess my initial thought was a vague memory of the story about levitating the pentagon
the mayday protest was sooo interesting to read about.