Culture of Protest – its origination and growth into the Counterculture Movement

*All rooted in the Civil Right movement and the successes achieved by non-violent, yet confrontational demonstration.

1.  SDS – Students for a Democratic Society (New Left).

a.  Born in 1959, but really took off by 1962, when the Port Huron Statement was adopted by many SDS chapters around the country. The Port Huron Statement showed the vagueness of the early years of SDS when it stated: “We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege or circumstances, with power rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason and creativity”.

i.  They called for a greater “participatory democracy”, but never really enunciated a plan to achieve it.

1.  The Berkeley Free Speech Movement – the campus tried to keep students from having tables set up to hand out pamphlets and have guest speakers

a.  In response to success of SDS and student protest

b.  Jack Weinberg incident forced the university to make changes

2.  When focused the movement did make gains – one movement called for a change to grading systems. was another example of successes by

ii. Gained greater notoriety and significance by organizing and directing many of the Vietnam War protests (became especially strong when Johnson ended college deferments – which while representing equality, would hit college students)

iii.  The same divisions that rocked the Civil Rights movement in the mid to late 60s also rocked SDS as some members were influenced by more radical and militant ideologies of Mao Zedong and Che Guevera (this is evidenced by the Black Panthers using Mao’s “Power flows from the barrel of a gun.”

1.  One radicalized group – the Weathermen wanted to “Bring the War Home”

2.  Yippies were another (from the word, yippie!, or later Youth International Party) – called for protest at Democratic Convention in Chicago (threatened to put acid in the cities water supply) and ran a pig “Pigasus” for president in 1968.

2.  Rise of Counterculture - SDS, its empowerment of youth and its message of participatory democracy led many younger people to embracing the REAL new “counterculture” of the 60s –communes, sexual freedom, drugs.

  1. San Francisco’s “Summer of Love” saw all the highlights and lowpoints that the counterculture brought. Leaders who called for the summer of love actually called for its end as well.
  2. ½ of all college students tried marijuana. LSD was a significant drug because of its hallucinatory characteristics.
  3. Books and bands became almost religious experiences – Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, Timothy Leary, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, the Beatles (Revolution, Why Don’t We Do It in the Road), The Rolling Stones (I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.

3.  Vietnam War Protest Movement and Legacy

  1. How does one account for the growth of the anti-war protest movement during U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War?
  2. Draft
  3. Illegal/immoral war
  4. Inequity in draft – racial and academic
  5. Economic costs – took away from War on Poverty
  6. Walter Cronkite and media began to oppose war
  7. Too many deaths – families and others
  8. War was tearing America apart – America was losing control (hippies and violence – only

viii.  Violence against marchers

ix.  Attack on Cambodia

x.  Kent State ***(this event awakened the Silent Majority to the cause of peace)

xi.  Arrest of 12,000 marchers

xii.  Vietnam Vets threw away medals (relate to My Lai)

4.  The End of the Counterculture

a.  When the hard drug aspect became apparent and crime went up in certain areas (Haight Ashbury and NYC) the luster began to dim.

  1. The lovefest that was Woodstock only served as a very vivid reminder of the drug culture
  2. According to The Enduring Vision, even the Beatles break up helped signal that the more radical fringe was losing its strength.
  3. America grew tired of endless protests that were growing more and more radical and violent – Black Panthers, AIM (Wounded Knee, 1973 and Alcatraz Occupation), UFW and Chicano movement

i.  Add to this Charles Manson’s murders and the Altamont Raceway killings by the Hells Angels.

  1. BACKLASH against all this – Hard Hat Riots, the response to the Attica Prison riots.