Protest Works; Resistance Works Better: a review of Tom Hayden’s book Hell No
Protest Works; Resistance Works Better
review of Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement (2017) by Tom Hayden
by John M Repp
Tom Hayden was the primary author of the Port Huron Statement, the 1962 political manifesto of Students for a Democratic Society – SDS. He was one of the defendants in the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial of 1970 where anti-war activists were arrested and charged for what later was determined to be a “police riot” at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Sadly, Hayden died in October 2016. We could use his wisdom now.
He wrote Hell No out of concern that the role Vietnam peace movement played in the history of our country was being forgotten, after having seen the timeline put up by the Pentagon on a website “commemorating” the Vietnam war. Considering the role played by Tom Hayden in the movement, the book should be considered almost like a primary source. Unfortunately, there are some factual errors. Why didn’t Yale University Press do fact-checking? The book rambles and is not chronological, but Hayden reveals facts about the Vietnam era not widely known.
For example: “At least 29 young Americans were killed while protesting the war.” (p.19) Eight Americans self-immolated. (pp. 37-38) “The FBI assigned 20,000 full-time agents to monitor the activities of protestors and….at least an equal number of informers” and “twenty federal agencies, including the U.S. army, gathered political dossiers on 18 million civilians.” (p. 38) “…more than half the American soldiers killed in Vietnam were African American, Puerto Rica, Mexican American, Native American, or Asian American.” (p.45) “…in August 1968, mostly black troops from the First Armored Division called an all-night protest against orders to move into Chicago with live ammunition to quell the demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention. Forty-three of them were court-martialed at Fort Hood.” (p.48)
Hayden wants us to know that the movement made difference. Protest works. The fear of politicians and the Pentagon of using large numbers of ground troops in foreign intervention remains. Maybe the exception was George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But the dreaded by conservatives “Vietnam syndrome” has now morphed , post-Obama into a preference for air power, drones, and Special Forces, even with the all-volunteer force.
Unlike the civil rights movement or the feminist movement, today the Vietnam peace movement is not honored. Many of its activists and participants thought for years afterward that the movement was not successful. It was so split between factions, encouraged by infiltrators, it never was able to unify. I was active in the student phase which seemed to peter out in Seattle after May 1970. I thought “we lost”. I did not know at the time what was happening inside the army (see below).
For years, the Vietnam War seemed to be a stalemate. As American troop numbers increased, Vietnamese resistance increased. Hayden compares the effect of the Vietnam peace movement to the effect of the black slaves during the U.S. Civil War. In refusing to cooperate with the slave masters and many running away to join the Federal troops, the blacks turned the tide in the U.S. civil war.
The mainstream view is the war was stopped because Nixon and Kissinger decided to withdraw troops. But several official policy papers said the army and eventually the United States would “collapse” if the war continued. That forced the hand of the political elites. Hayden uses the idea of a “general strike” to explain what happened. It is not the usual idea of a general strike, when thousands of organized workers stop work at the same time. Hayden defines it as “rather a widespread refusal on the part of vast numbers of people to any longer take part in the usual habits of daily life, instead withdrawing their participation in the regnant political culture” (pp.23-24) manifested in many creative ways.
The movement started as a student movement with teach-ins in 1964. The movement asserted that the Vietnamese were “revolutionary nationalists” who wanted to be free first of French domination and later American domination. The movement broke with the idea that the war was about “a global communist threat” and “falling dominoes.”
In April 1965, SDS organized the largest peace march ever up to that time in Washington D.C. By today standards it was small, only about 25,000. But each spring and fall, ever larger marches were organized. In November 1969, 500,000 marched in D. C. Draft resistance started early. Thousands burned their draft cards. The total number of American citizens who moved to Canada due to their opposition to the war was estimated to range from 50,000 to 125,000. The government eventually imprisoned 3,250 draft resisters
The movement was mostly but not completely nonviolent. Before the Weather Underground was even formed, there were 84 antiwar bombings or arson attacks in just the first six months of 1969. That sabotage slowed down the momentum of the movement.
“Every time they burn another building,” said one Nixon administration official in 1970, “Republican registration goes up.” And many years later, the Weatherman leader Mark Rudd said about his organization’s role in destroying SDS “If I had been an FBI agent, I couldn’t have done it any better.” (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/12/hell-no-review-tom-hayden-vietnam-protests-trump-resistance )
In May 1970, after Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, 4 million high school and college students went on strike, shutting down 800 educational institutions, some for the rest of the year. In May 1971, 12,614 people were arrested in D.C. after thousands shut down the government by clogging the streets of Washington.
The movement had two “fronts”, the civilian/student front and the army/military front. By 1970, the power of the movement was manifest in the breakdown of the army. During the whole era, 40,000 enlisted military personnel deserted. 500 officers were killed by fragmentation grenades thrown by one of their own soldiers. In Vietnam, the troops were not following orders, no longer wanted to engage the enemy, would rather go out into the bush, hide from their officers, and smoke weed. John Pilger reported in 1970 on the breakdown of army discipline in Vietnam in a 27 minute video called “The Quiet Mutiny”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-eVbJbgUpE
“Truth, it is said, is war’s first casualty. Memory is its second.” Hayden wrote on page 17. As we search for ways to resist the illegitimate* election of Trump and the Republican Congress, we can draw ideas and inspiration from the Vietnam peace movement. For that reason, at least the activists who are not of the “Vietnam generation, might consider reading Hell No .
*I consider the election of Trump and the Republican Congress illegitimate because of the gerrymandering in Republican controlled states in 2010 as well as the various voter suppression efforts carried out in the Republican controlled states.
On the gerrymandering of 2010 and the Republican Congress: http://billmoyers.com/story/real-way-2016-election-rigged/
On the effect of voter suppression on the 2016 election: https://thinkprogress.org/2016-a-case-study-in-voter-suppression-258b5f90ddcd#.l65y8hreh