May 4, 1970

 

 

Comments

[Jeff]

50 year anniversary of two dead at Jackson State on May 15th as well. Unfortunately they did not get a song but they are well remembered. On Northwestern University's "Deering Meadow" there is a plague remembering 6 dead and honoring all those who stood in protest.It is always reassuring to think that 6 are remembered rather than merely the 4. Having said this, the CSN & Y song was both written and released before May 15th.

[anon]

Does it ever occur to any of you baby boomer revolutionaries that what is happening now in terms of depriving civil rights and totalitarian control is beyond belief? Nixon's coming, indeed.

WHat a bunch of phonies. It was all about the selfish desire to avoid service in Vietnam. I don't defend the war; I condemn the self interested generation that has brought us to the present: massive failures.

That they are so self satisfied and so unwilling to examine themselves critically is stunning.

[Anon]

Helping shut down Sheridan Road that week was an important moment in the effort to bring a senseless war to an end. Thousands of students from all over, NU and elsewhere, including us high schoolers. I am now married to a woman of Vietnamese descent whose family had fighters on both sides. Neither wing of the family still has any idea why the US got involved the way they did. Thanks for the memorial post, Steve.

[anon]

What hubris! The baby boomers think that their student demonstrations ("We occupied the Admin Building, man") had the determinative effect of ending the war.

Nothing could be further from the truth. These demonstrations, including the debacle in Chicago, resulted in Nixon winning one of the biggest landslide elections in history.

Then, as now, the radical left baby boomers were legends only in their own minds.

Now, that isn't to say that shooting demonstrators was justified. It wasn't.

And, that isn't to say that everyone who went to a demonstration was "radical left" like Abbie Hoffman, et al. THen, as now, most were sheep who just followed what they thought was the prevailing popular opinion.