Eugene weekly., December 02, 2004, Page 13, Image 13

OREGON DAILY EMERALD
how many Vietnamese people I knew dur-
ing the Vietnam War,” Malcolm says.
“Now, if we want to know what the people
of the Middle East are feeling and thinking,
there are ways to find out.”
In the ’60s, local peace worker Carol
Van Houten, 67, copied anti-war leaflets on
a ditto machine. Now she is able to distrib-
ute information instantly and easily across
cyber-space. “In a way, the Internet takes
the place of the big demonstrations,” Van
Houten says. “The biggest benefit is how
quickly an action can be organized and
communicated. You can reach people who
would never come to a rally. But the biggest
disadvantage is that there isn’t that sense of
community, of coming together.”
Ironically, the Internet has expanded
while mainstream news has narrowed.
During the Vietnam War, reporters wan-
dered around Southeast Asia unrestricted.
As a result, the gruesome details of the
war were beamed into living rooms all
over America.
But media have been carefully con-
trolled during the Iraq War. Only “embed-
ded,” or military-controlled, journalists
are allowed into war zones, and the
Pentagon has imposed a media blackout
on images of the coffins of slain
American soldiers.
Duff says that media consolidation and
military censorship have caused main-
stream news sources to present a skewed
view of the Iraq War. “All the information
is out there,” he says, “but a majority of
people only get their news from a few out-
lets.”
A Way of Life
Malcolm, Goldrich, Van Houten and
Weaver share the view that activism doesn’t
stop with the end of a war; it is a way of life.
While they recognize the Iraq War as a unique
event, veteran activists are able to view it as a
patch in the quilt of our nation’s history.
That perspective is encouraging for stu-
dent activists who are trying to mobilize
their peers against the Iraq War. “We’ve
received a lot of support from people from
the Vietnam era who are helping launch the
anti-war movement and have been working
closely with the students in doing so,”
Howard says. “They definitely made the
administration stop and think about how
powerful the people are when they do
decide to mobilize. The tenacity of protest-
ew
ing is really important.”
UO students resisted the draft in 1969.
Congressmen to oppose the Gulf of Tonkin res-
olution. Eugene peace worker Dan Goldrich,
71, remembers the sense of reverence that stu-
dents held for Senator Morse. “Morse was one
of the few politicians who could instantly walk
onto any campus in this country and be accord-
ed enormous honor for his honesty and guts.
That was scarce,” he says.
Jim Weaver, 77, a World War II veteran
and a U.S. Representative from 1975-1987,
won the support of anti-war liberals when
he took a stand against the Vietnam War.
“There was a deep-seated feeling that it was
immoral, if not evil, what we were doing in
Vietnam,” he says. “It caused people to do
things, like burning down buildings, that
you don’t see today.”
Weaver remembers the public’s initial
hesitance to oppose the Vietnam War, and
he isn’t surprised that the movement
against the Iraq War stalled after troops
entered Baghdad. “You can oppose war
before it starts, but a nation at war rallies
around its leader,” he says. “When I was
campaigning for Congress in the late ’60s
and early ’70s, it was not easy to be
against the war. I was beaten up several
times. People who were against the war
were traitors.”
Despite that stigma, Weaver says, it’s
important for anti-war activists to reach
out to local politicians. For example,
Senator Ron Wyden may have voted
against the Iraq War in response to feed-
back from anti-war groups across Oregon.
And Weaver suggests that John Kerry may
have fared better in the Nov. 2 election if
he had taken a solid anti-war stance.
“Kerry wouldn’t have been as vulnerable
to charges of flip-flopping if he had just
said, ‘I wouldn’t have voted for the war if
I knew then what I know now,’” he says.
The Role of Media
While some things — like the motives
for war and the power of politicians — have
remained relatively consistent from one
war to the next, American media has
changed dramatically since the Vietnam
War era. With the Internet at our fingertips,
it’s easier than ever before to access per-
spectives from across the globe.
“I can tell you on the fingers of my hand
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