Tag: Anti-Vietnam War Movement

‘Out Now!’ – Lessons from the Movement Against the U.S. War in Vietnam

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‘Out Now!’ – A Participant’s Account of the Movement in the U.S. Against the Vietnam War by Fred Halstead should be in the library of everyone seeking social justice. It is a handbook for political organizing. It is a vivid and accurate narrative by one of the central leaders of the debates, street protests, and skirmishes of a movement that changed the U.S. political landscape in ways that reverberate today, a movement that helped the Vietnamese people hand U.S. imperialism its first major military defeat. The book was published in 1978. But the lessons of that era clearly outlined in its pages are invaluable in the current struggles to oppose Washington’s escalating wars and the march toward authoritarianism and one-man rule.

Strategies & Tactics for Social Change

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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. As a contribution to the discussion of strategy and tactics in today’s struggles, World-Outlook is publishing the 1971 column “Some Comments on the Mayday Actions” by Fred Halstead, a central leader of the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States.

An Antiwar GI’s Story: An Interview with Howard Petrick

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“We would go into the barracks — big bays with 50 people in a bay — and we’d stand up on a footlocker and start talking about the war. We would try to get someone who was for the war to debate with us. We found that was the easiest way to bring up all the discrepancies of why we were fighting in Vietnam. There weren’t a lot of guys who would get up and speak for the war. But when there were, we wouldn’t try to destroy them; we would just try to reason. Having this open debate was how we could get many people to listen. It worked really well.”