Some Lessons from the Movement in the U.S. Against the Vietnam War

In the past year, millions in the United States have protested Washington’s attacks on democratic rights, ICE terror, and imperialist war. Among them are many young people, alongside others who have never before taken to the streets.

These activists are testing strategies and tactics and debating how to push back Trump’s march toward one-man rule. Many of the questions they face have been posed before, perhaps most notably during the anti-Vietnam War movement in the United States in the 1960s and early ’70s.

In July 1959, when the first U.S. soldiers were killed in Vietnam, opposing a war in Southeast Asia was not part of the psyche of the large majority in the United States. The working class was enjoying a period of relative stability. The tiny peace movement of the time was focused on the issue of nuclear weapons. The cold-war era anti-communist witch hunt led by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy still weighed on any impulse toward political action and, for many, dropping bombs on “communists” abroad was not a source of concern.

The mood began to change as the movement for civil rights — which began in the mid-1950s and lasted through the end of the 1960s — fought to overturn Jim Crow laws in the South and de facto segregation in the North. In addition, in 1959 the Cuban people threw off the yoke of a U.S.-backed dictatorship, took destiny into their own hands, and started building a society based on human solidarity — opening the road to socialism in the Americas.

Radicalizing youth, some of them drawn to traditional peace organizations, entered the stage with fewer of the fetters of the anti-communist hysteria that had bound their parents. By 1965, the anti-Vietnam War movement started taking shape.

As the war escalated and opposition broadened, discussion flourished over how to build the movement. Debates often centered on the effectiveness of “direct action,” or civil disobedience, vs. mass marches and rallies, and on the demands promoted in these actions.

Should anti-war activists demand a negotiated settlement in Vietnam that would allow the war to continue for a period of time — which increasingly dove-tailed with the leanings of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party — or press for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops?

Could the most effective coalitions be built around single demands, like “Bring the Troops Home Now,” or multi-issue alliances that set ending the war on par with other goals such as improving social programs and alleviating poverty?

Should the target audience be Democratic and Republican politicians and others among the ruling elites, or the mass of workers and their allies in the United States?

Mass action, civil disobedience, or electoral politics?

Although the mass-action, immediate withdrawal approach was drawing the greatest numbers into the streets, a large section of the movement grew impatient. The war continued to drag on and the devastation in Vietnam, alongside losses of U.S. troops, mounted.

It’s important to keep in mind here that the war on Vietnam, lasting from 1960 to 1975, was the longest continuous war in U.S. history. (It is now only second in duration after the U.S. war in Afghanistan that lasted almost 20 years.) More than 2 million Indochinese were killed alongside 60,000 U.S. soldiers. The Pentagon dropped more bombs on Vietnam than in all previous wars combined.

Many activists questioned whether the strategy of mass mobilizations was going anywhere, even though each major demonstration reflected deepening antiwar sentiment, or at least questioning of U.S. policy, among broad sections of the population. On all sides of the debate over strategy and tactics were activists whose focus was on trying to elect liberal politicians and pushing for congressional action against the war.

In April 1970, U.S. forces invaded Cambodia, sparking a wave of protests. During one of those, on May 4 of that year, National Guard troops opened fire on protesters at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four and wounding nine students. Eleven days later, cops fired more than 460 shots at a women’s dormitory in the majority-Black Jackson State College in Mississippi, killing two and injuring twelve.

These events sparked nationwide student strikes and drove a split in the national antiwar coalition over the summer. From that divide emerged the National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC), supporting mass antiwar mobilizations, on one side. On the other was the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ) led by a group calling itself the May Day Collective (or Tribe), representing the multi-issue, direct action wing.

That winter, NPAC issued a call for a mass peaceful demonstration on April 24, 1971, in Washington, D.C. The May Day Collective — which had agreed to cosponsor the march — began organizing civil disobedience for the international working-class holiday. The May Day Collective announced it would give Washington until May 1 to ratify the “People’s Peace Treaty” — a document calling for a negotiated settlement in Vietnam — or it would shut the government down.

Surrounding these two protests, antiwar veterans planned Operation Dewey Canyon III — an encampment and series of antiwar actions by Vietnam veterans to be held the week leading up to April 24. Between the April 24 march and the May Day events, various groups outlined teach-ins, lobbying, and other activities.

On April 24, on the heels of escalation of the war and the U.S. invasion of Laos in February, an estimated 500,000 marched in Washington demanding immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and an end to the draft. A contingent of active-duty GIs and veterans led the march. As many as 350,000 demonstrated the same day in San Francisco under the same slogans.

A week later, the Mayday Tribe gathered about 40,000 in Washington, beginning on Saturday, May 1, with a plan to block bridges and thoroughfares into the nation’s capital May 3-5 to “shut the government down.” About 12,000 of those who stayed in Washington to participate in direct actions were arrested.

Eyewitness account of a leader of the antiwar movement

Fred Halstead was a leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement from its early days and a central figure in the National Peace Action Coalition. A World War II veteran, Halstead had joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1948 at the age of 21. He became a skilled cutter in the garment industry in Los Angeles and was active in the labor movement.

In 1953, in the depths of the anti-communist witch hunt, he moved to Detroit and got a job as an upholstery cutter in the auto industry. There he became active in the civil rights movement, building support for the Montgomery bus boycott. In 1968, by then well-known in antiwar circles, Halstead ran for U.S. president as the SWP candidate.

Halstead played a central role in the discussions leading up to the April 24, 1971, demonstration and was chief marshal at the action, as well as an eyewitness to the May Day activities a week later. In the column “Some Comments on the Mayday Actions,” written a few weeks after these events, Halstead offered his observations about the protests, drawing lessons for the movement as it sought to reach broader layers of the U.S. population.

These lessons — just a few of the many Halstead treats in much greater depth in his book Out Now! A Participant’s Account of the Movement in the United States against the Vietnam War — will be of interest to many. As a contribution to the discussion of strategy and tactics in today’s struggles, World-Outlook is publishing Halstead’s commentary below.

The column that follows first appeared in the July-August 1971 International Socialist Review. The headline and text below are from the original. Breakers, photos, and notes are by World-Outlook.

— World-Outlook editors

*

Some Comments on the Mayday Actions

International Socialist Review, July-August 1971

By Fred Halstead

One problem with the Mayday Tribe demonstrations that took place in Washington May 3-5 is that they were initially advertised as more of a battle plan than a demonstration. It is true, however, that in some ways antiwar demonstrations — even nonviolent ones — are like military battles in a civil war. I am not referring here to the obvious and superficial similarities like the fact that a certain number of police or troops may be deployed on the one hand and a certain number of demonstrators on the other. Nor am I referring to the quaint Mayday map of Washington with the key points marked where traffic was to be blocked. The immediate outcome of any confrontation under that circumstance is never even slightly in doubt.

But whether there is confrontation or not, mass demonstrations resemble civil war battles in that each is a test of forces and wills; that the immediate results depend largely upon the prior preparations and the social context; and that the effects of the actions are molecular. That is, they touch the stuff of which the society is constructed and the effects can be profound and much more widespread than the people directly involved.

It is these latter effects that are the crucial factor for revolutionary socialists when they judge the results of any particular antiwar demonstration, or series of them. It is these factors that are left out of consideration by those who decry the mass demonstrations as repetitious or a waste of time or money, or who demand an action that is more “real” and less “symbolic.” It is these effects that are not considered by those who ask: “What good did it do, the war is still going on, isn’t it?”

The war is still going on, but the country is not the same

The war is still going on, to be sure, but the country is not the same as before an effective mass demonstration, and neither is the war itself nor the ability of the warmakers to exercise their will.

The serious questions to be asked are such as these:

How many new forces were involved in antiwar activity as a result? How many minds were opened? How many minds were changed? How many young men facing the draft attended this demonstration, or know someone who did, and what effect will this have on the armed forces? How many Gls participated, or saw the demonstration, or heard about it, and what effect will that have on them, and even on battles in Vietnam?

How many workers participated, or watched, or heard about the demonstration and what effect did it have on their attitude toward the administration’s attempts to get them to sacrifice for the war? Will they be more or less inclined to accept a wage freeze, for example? More or less inclined to strike in their own interests? More or less inclined to back up Gls who oppose the war?

It is true that we have no way to obtain precise quantitative answers to these questions, but certain things should be obvious. To mention only two: When the mass antiwar movement was begun in 1965 the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam was being steadily increased. The government tried very hard to convince the American people that opposition to this escalation was either ineffectual or limited to a small section of the population. If it had succeeded, there is no reason to believe that the troop levels if decided from a purely military point of view would have been limited to 500,000. Why not 1,000,000 or 2,000,000, if the draftees and the civilian population were incapable of making their opposition known and felt?

Despite the fact that Nixon^[1] and his predecessor never abandoned the hope of defeating the Vietnamese, more American troops have been leaving Vietnam than going the other way. That is one measure of the molecular process going on in this country.

A second measurement is the fact that the union movement, despite its conservative and in part pro-war leadership, neither invokes nor accepts from others the argument that the war is a sufficient reason to call off strike actions.

Mass demonstrations touch the sinews of real power

These are indications how mass antiwar demonstrations touch the sinews of real power, whether they stop traffic or not.

From this point of view the huge demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco April 24 — and the unique Vietnam Veterans demonstrations^[2] in Washington immediately preceding April 24 — were tremendously effective. From the same point of view the effectiveness of the actions sponsored by the Mayday Tribe May 3-5 in Washington is questionable.

Nevertheless, the Mayday actions were quite large and cannot be dismissed as isolated actions of a handful of ultralefts. Those of us who represented the view of revolutionary socialists in the antiwar movement did not endorse the Mayday actions chiefly for two reasons: First, the stated political demands of the Mayday actions were confused and equivocal on the question of immediate withdrawal from Vietnam. Second, the announced tactic — to shut down the city of Washington — was doomed to failure on the face of it.

As advertised, the demonstrations were supposed to be an attempt to enforce the “People’s Peace Treaty” which calls for setting a future date for withdrawal of U. S. forces from Vietnam.

To be sure the treaty contains essentially the same position as that offered by the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam in the Paris negotiations. But slogans pegged to particular conjunctural phases of the Paris talks^[3] are not necessarily more effective as demands for the American peace movement than “out now.” Indeed, they are less so, as far as appealing to the broad mass of the American people is concerned. The Paris talks, after all, also involve demands made by Nixon on the Vietnamese — some of which are conceded to in the “Peace Treaty.” One of the great lessons the American people are now learning is that they don’t have the right to determine other people’s governments.

It is one thing for the PRG [Provisional Revolutionary Government],^[4] which is under the gun, and which may feel it necessary to make certain compromises, to try to get Nixon to agree to leave their country even at some date many months in the future. It is a very different thing for Americans opposed to the war to put their stamp of approval on continued violation by the U.S. of Vietnamese sovereignty.

The American antiwar movement can do no less than demand that the U.S. get out of Vietnam immediately. It need do no more to completely satisfy any desire of the Vietnamese regarding the U. S. role in this war.

The People’s Peace Treaty has a quality, however, which made it particularly attractive to the organizers of the Mayday actions. Mayday leader Rennie Davis explained this point repeatedly when the actions were called. He pointed out that the stated position of many congressional Doves — as reflected in such documents as the McGovern-Hatfield amendment^[5] — is very close to the Peace Treaty proposal. The liberal politicians who have endorsed the “treaty” have explained this by saying that it promises concessions by the Vietnamese as well as by Washington and thus doesn’t commit Washington to unilateral withdrawal.

Appeal to the ruling class? Or the mass of American people?

It seems clear that the political demands of the Mayday action were designed to appeal to a wing of the ruling class rather than the mass of the American people who just want the war to end as soon as possible. [For a further discussion of this question see “What’s Wrong With the People’s Peace Treaty” in the June International Socialist Review — ISR Editor.]

Strange as it may seem, the tactics chosen for the Mayday actions were aimed at the same audience, at least as advertised by the organizers of the Mayday Tribe. The call to action was a threat: if the government doesn’t stop the war, the demonstrators will stop the government by tying up Washington. Behind all the escalated rhetoric and left-sounding verbiage lies a clear attempt to get the attention of the ruling class, not to mobilize the mass of the American people.

Of course, this position is not without its logic. The ruling class is one force that could stop the war if it decided to do so. But neither the threat, nor the unsuccessful attempt to “tie up Washington” has succeeded in making the ruling class change its mind.

From the practical point of view, the more profound effects of the demonstrations of a week earlier, are the more powerful.

The Mayday actions did, however, involve significant numbers, especially considering that they were civil disobedience demonstrations. Twelve thousand were arrested. The authorities were reduced to an attitude characteristic of the U.S. role in Vietnam: at some intersections — especially around George Washington University — they considered the whole population as enemies and rounded up everyone in sight.

Three factors explain the unprecedentedly large turnout for this kind of action. First is the depth of feeling — indeed, moral outrage — against the war, which is still increasing. Second is the influence of the organized pacifists — such as the Nonviolent Action Group and the Quaker Project. They threw themselves into training thousands of demonstrators for the actions and succeeded in setting a tone of disciplined nonviolence. This allowed many people to participate who would not have stayed for a free-for-all. Third is the carry-over from the April 24 demonstration. The People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice provided a series of activities to fill in between April 24 and the Mayday events.

It should also be noted that there was an agreement in Washington between the organizers of the Mayday actions and the National Peace Action Coalition which organized the April 24 demonstration. The agreement, which also involved the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, was as follows: On the one hand, there would be no civil disobedience or confrontation demonstrations called or encouraged on April 24. On the other hand, the NPAC marshals would not discourage people from staying over in Washington to participate in civil disobedience actions on the following days.

This agreement was kept all around. There can be no doubt that it contributed to the effectiveness of April 24, for it meant that all significant organized sections of the movement were agreed on allowing the character of the action to remain as called and disruptions were discouraged effectively.

One interesting sidelight of the Mayday demonstrations is that in many cases the troops who were called out to patrol the compounds where those arrested were detained fraternized with the arrested demonstrators. In some cases, they even assisted detainees to escape.

NOTES

[1] Richard Nixon was president of the United States from 1969 until his resignation in 1974.

[2] This is a reference to Operation Dewey Canyon III — a name that mimicked the military code for the U.S. invasion of Laos, Operation Dewey Canyon II — which was organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). In the five days before the April 24, 1971, march, veterans set up an encampment on the mall, just a few hundred yards from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Some 1,200 veterans, in combat fatigues, reenacted “search and destroy” missions in the streets and on the capitol grounds and held a silent march, led by legless veterans, past the White House. They appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and some attempted to turn themselves in as war criminals.

On April 23, dressed in combat fatigues and well-worn uniforms, about 600 veterans filed by the Capitol and, one by one, they called out the names of buddies who had been killed, hurled their military medals, ribbons, discharge papers, and even a cane, onto the steps. According to eyewitness Fred Halstead, “Some broke down and wept. Some hurled the decorations shouting curses at the government, their faces distorted with rage.”

[3] Talks between the United States, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), and Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam began in 1968 in Paris. They were ongoing until an accord was reached in 1973.

[4] The Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) of the Republic of South Vietnam was the underground government during the war carried out by Washington in alliance with its puppet regime in South Vietnam. The PRG became the official government with the defeat of the South Vietnamese regime and the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1975. In 1976, it merged with the government of North Vietnam, marking the reunification of the country.

[5] The McGovern–Hatfield amendment was a proposed amendment to an appropriations bill in 1970 that would have required the end of U.S. military operations in Vietnam by December 31 of that year, and a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces the following year. Introduced by senators George McGovern of South Dakota and Mark Hatfield of Oregon, it ultimately failed in a 55-42 vote.

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