Street roots
Oct. 24, 2014
Workers
against war
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BY MIKE WOLD
.
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
ith the decline of the labor
movement and the turn of the
Democratic Party to neoliberalism,
working class people by and large have
lacked a progressive voice of their own.
In an effort to control the masses from
protesting for a just society, generations of
manipulation distort the image of civil
disobedience.
-For more than a generation, whenever
there was a protest in the streets, the media
could be counted on to make some
comparison to the ’60s. The general
implication was that protesters were a breed
ap a rt unrooted in their communities with
their own agendas, while everybody else
was busy having a life. After all, weren’t the
’60s protesters a bunch of long-haired
students living off their parents’ money,
while ordinary working people fought and
died for their country in Vietnam?
Not so, says Penny Lewis, a professor at
the City University of New York. It turns out
that the image of a movement composed of
elite protesters alienated from a
conservative working class was largely
inaccurate. Contrary, to accepted memory,
the Vietnam War found its strongest support
in the upper class and upper middle class;
the lower someone’s income, the more
likely: h e w as to oppose,the w ar .and w ant
W
Hardhats, Hippies
and Hawks: The
Vietnam Anti-War
Movement as
Myth and Memory
by Penny Lewis
the U.S. out of Vietnam. It was tru e th at a
significant minority of elite students were
very vocal against the war. In addition,
these students organized the initial protests,
led many of the organizations and became
the most visible opposition.
The most effective resistance to the war,
Lewis argues, was the covert resistance of
troops in Vietnam. Such resistance actually
involved as many people, mostly working
class men, as the visible protests that were .
taking place in the United States. Jn 1970
and 1971, for example, 37 percent of
soldiers in an Army survey had engaged in
either “dissent” or “disobedience” — the
workers in New York City beat up protesters
latter including “physically resistant acts of
at a demonstration. But interviews with the
sabotage, refusing orders, and general
construction workers showed that they were
insubordination.”
not so much pro-war as anti-protester,
As the war dragged on, Lewis points out,
reacting against a counterculture that
the student anti-war movement spread to
rejected the work ethic in a way that
community colleges and state universities „
seemed to demean the lives of working
where low tuitions had brought in a large
people.
number of students from working class
Most narratives about the ’60s in school
families. In addition, African-Americans and
textbooks focus on the organizations that
Chicanos, mostly working class, opposed the
led the anti-war movement, especially
war in large numbers, though mainly as
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS),
members of those ethnic groups rather than
which fell apart in 1969. But by then SDS
as members of a particular class.
was pulling back from anti-war organizing.
Some of the myth of the working class
The anti-war movement continued to grow
support for the war happened because the
until after the invasion of Cambodia in 1971
media talks about working people, it usually
and became so large that most of the people
means white working people. In the 1960s
in
the movement didn’t belong to any
and 1970s, the images of a conservative
organization. A majority of Americans
white working class were reinforced by TV
turned against the war, leading to what
shows like “All in the Family” and movies
conservative commentators would call the
like “Joe,” starring Peter Boyle.
“Vietnam syndrome:” the unwillingness of
Even the white working class, however,
U.S. voters to support intervention and
was divided about the war. There were a
invasions abroad, at least until the 1990s.
number of unions, including ones that were
Lewis says one of the problems the
majority white, which came out against the
organized anti-war movement has faced from
Vietnam War as the casualty rate mounted
Vietnam is that it largely accepted the myth
and it became clear that paying for the war
of working class conservatism. As a
was cutting into social programs.
movement mainly organized by professional
There was a conservative backlash
people and students, it was easiest to
against the anti-war movement, climaxing in
expand among the people they knew.
the iconic incident when white construction
Reprinted from Street Roots sister paper,
Real Change News in Seattle, Wash.
»
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Attempts to “reach out” to working people
have often been tinged with condescension
or clueléssness. With the decline o? the
labor movement and the turn of the
Democratic Party to neoliberalism, working
class people by and large have lacked a
progressive voice of their own. “People vote
on social issues when other meaningful
things that people care about — such as
policies that address economic opportunity,
insecurity, and inequality - are effectively
off the table.... The width, depth, and
importance of working-class social
conservatism therefore rests on shifting
sands.”
While the language is sometimes overly
academic, Lewis’ book is a useful corrective
to the legacy of the ’60s that has tended to
target movement organizing toward middle
class and upper middle class liberals. Lewis
sees the recent Occupy protests and the
way that they formed ties with unions and
ordinary people as a good sign: “Movements
of today appear poised to ... shake off the
legacy of the real and imagined polarization
that has characterized our politics since
Vietnam.” One can only hope she’s right
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P H O TO CO URTESY OF
W IK IC O M M O N S
Vietnam War
protesters amass in
Washington D.C.,
1967