What Will Happen to the Antiwar Movement?

ALL THE FAMILIAR and correct ingredients marked the counter-inaugural antiwar march last month. Banners and buttons, leaflets and posters, slogans and speakers--all reiterated themes initiated almost a decade ago. "Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today" had metamorphosed into "Nixon, You Liar, Sign The Cease-fire," but the tone of voice was identical.

The cease-fire is now signed, and that demonstration was probably the last--the final performance directed by the antiwar movement.

A vast number of those who participated in the various forms of protest--from civil disobedience to congressional lobbying--were students. Rallies were held periodically on college campuses, and radical student groups grew up around the issue of the war. The students' sense of outrage was channeled into university strikes and university trashing, while major demonstrations were largely marshaled by and composed of members of the college community.

Why did so many students become a part of the antiwar movement? Just as the movement itself was a conglomeration of many diversified elements and purposes, the reasons for joining it cannot be answered simply, and will never be all-inclusive.

For some, curiosity and a sense of adventure preceded any political understanding or commitment to the cause. For others, sincere radical beliefs were the catalyst for involvement. Still others searched for ultimate personal values in a movement which was political, and not salvational.

As the primary medium used by the movement, the demonstration itself is a phenomenon worthy of investigation. Marching in a rally has a symbolic significance which marks dissent, but does not entail an excess of commitment. One gains a sense of solidarity and unified power while protesting among ranks of thousands of other protestors. It is dissidence, but a safe dissidence.

The demonstration provided an easy organizational vehicle for the committed and for the curious. So the people continued to gather, and the students continued to march, even as the war dragged on and it became increasingly clear that even thousands of collective voices yelling in unison could not capture official Washington's ear. Frustration and the sense that "maybe this time it will work" explains to a certain extent the unending periodic demonstrations. But in another sense they were almost necessary for the demonstrators themselves, to constantly re-establish their hazy beliefs with a mass-identity. One never really listened to the speakers. One never really read the leaflets. But the speakers, the leaflets, the marching itself, all formed a phenomenon that was familiar and comforting in its familiarity. And behind it lay our symbolic hand cleansing a bloody and merciless war.

MORAL OUTRAGE at foreign policy was only one of the causes of mass antiwar student protest. This protest must also be understood within the greater context of the general rebelliousness of the '60s. Antiwar protest was thus most important as the major outlet for expressing disaffection.

For students participating in the movement, the initial involvement was an easy step which did not entail dramatic sacrifices. For some, the step out of the movement has been just as easy now that the war has officially ended. For others, it has not been that simple. Participation in this protest revealed deeper contradictions--both in government and in self--than originally appeared on the surface. What began as an act of protest against a war, developed into a fundamental question of personal and ideological principle.

Lofty radical ideals--such as a worker-student alliance--were frequently shattered in Seattle and New York, where demonstrators were clubbed by construction workers. Movement tactics often seemed absurdly ineffective as when a day of civil disobedience at the Kennedy Center was greeted by a presidential statement announcing the bombing of the dikes. Not only were movement participants faced with a choice between absolute commitment or a return to the societal mainstream, but the goal to which they were committed was losing credibility as an effective force. Many of the "veteran" student protestors who marched in the last demonstration did so with a nagging sense of responsibility and of nostalgia; they must now explore other means of change. Both the antiwar movement and the youth movement are in a state of limbo, looking for more productive areas of commitment.

WHILE THE antiwar movement is now becoming a part of the past, it has not been without effect on its participants. Those who marched or organized or campaigned were at least partially responsible for the end of American involvement in Vietnam, and more importantly had engaged in enough thought about the war to decide that its continuation demanded protest as long as it lasted.

There were moments both inspirational and horrifying which will not be forgotten. One remembers the immense human carpet covering the grounds of the Capitol after Cambodia, collectively pleading for the termination of that outrage. One's memory then telescopes into the personal expression of grief on the face of a girl weeping over a friend's body at Kent State.

The cathartic act of throwing a brick or yelling obscenities becomes, in retrospect, strange and irrational. Yet the action remains a part of us as another means of expressing frustration. One remembers the growing sense of resignation, while marching down streets, block after block in the pouring rain of New York City calling to the curious officeworkers "Join us, join us, it's your fight too;" and one remembers the sense of pride when one of the onlookers says "God bless you, I will." One remembers people sharing food and belongings, as well as beliefs, so that one elderly woman participating in a protest for the first time last month could say, "I am proud to be an American for the first time in years."

All this, too, is part of the antiwar movement, and part of student demonstrations. The movement has left much to be desired, many questions unanswered. The marches were sometimes frustrating, repetitive, and often absurd. But they were nonetheless a source of pride, and while their presence in history may seem at times unproductive, their absence would have been a matter for shame.

The movement has left much to be desired, many questions unanswered.