The Ghosts of Protests Past...

EASTER 1963. Seven thousand pacifists gather at the United Nations Plaza in New York for the annual Faster Peace Walk, Speeches and signs focus on the rest ban treaty and the recent papal encyclical Pacem in Terris. Scattered through the crowd are signs denouncing American military involvement in Vietnam, but the issue is deemed unworthy of protest. Rally organizers demand that the signs be removed.

Faster, 1965, Twenty thousand activists tally of the Mall for the Match on Washington to End the War in Vietnam. "The problems of America cry out for attention, and our entanglement in South Vietnam postpones the confrontation of these issues while prolonging the misery of the people of that war torn land," reads a petition to Congress presented by the crowd to a Capitol policeman, the only in dividual on hand to receive it.

How did an undeclared war in a far-off tiny country capture the attention of America's Left in just two short years? What pushed Vietnam protests from the fringe of the fringe to the center of the fringe, and later to the center of the center' Who Spoke Up? doesn't have the answers to these questions, but what it does have is a lovingly detailed, encyclopedic, narrative account of American protest against the Vietnam War.

On the night before [Robert F.] Kennedy's funeral mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, a young man appeared to keep vigil with the Kennedy family and friends; later, during the mass, he sat alone in a back pew, weeping. His name was Tom Hayden.

The mock heroic tone continues throughout the book, part and parcel of the authors' admitted bias against the forces of evil that pursued the war in Vietnam. The good guys and the bad guys are labeled by name on every page. And for clarity's sake, there is no one in between (though a few people, like Robert MacNamara, are able in switch sides).

This partisanship, because it is so blatant and continuous, is acceptable and almost entertaining. "Congress proved to be as obtuse about the nation's ghettos and their attendant problems as it was about the mess in Vietnam," they write (page 120). "Never before in time of war (declared or not) had so many citizens freely stood up to say to their government. "No, Stop!'" (page 81).

HOWEVER, THE BIAS precludes any serious discussion of the merits of the issues that were so hotly debated in the Vietnam era. It's not altogether clear whether immediate withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam in 1965 would have been the best policy, as the authors glibly assume (page 46), pooh poohing anything short of immediate withdrawal as pandering to the non radical American public.

This lack of explanation, and of insight, hampers the book's attempts to serve as a bona fide history. It is generally agreed among historians that the facts alone do not a history make. Analysis remains a needed ingredient, a fact flippantly ignored in Who Spoke Up'

Instead of using the data to make some coherent argument about the motivation, politics, and success of the antiwar movement the authors content themselves with short and sweet explanations thrown in anyone the laundry list of details

For instance, "liberal white guiltiness" is supposed to explain the sympathy of white radicals for Black militants "The ghost of Senator for McCarthy" is palmed for the moderate distrust of radicals. And in a remarkable passage, a few scattered antiwar demonstrations are credited with the "quarantine" of President Johnson:

And so, that his presence would cause disturbances on worse the old campaigner was left to pace the Oval Office in restless quantantined as if the White House door were plavarded, as by local health authorities in the days of lusworth to announce to all in seavlet letter a communist disease within AD. In trult, Vaccumm Disease had touched the whose body politics White House.

When all is said and done Who Spoke Up? remains more of an encyclopedia than a history. But even as an encyclopedia the book has problems, particularly with the lack of accurate documentation. It possesses fewer than one footnote per page--a shocking statistic for a book that tries to sell itself on its Intimately detailed accounts-an it is even sometimes unclear just who is being quoted. The rationale for this easy-read approach is obvious. The book is intended for a mass audience, and footnotes don't sell.

ONE OF THE best aspects of this work, which the authors claim is the first serious historical study of the antiwar movement, is its account of many little known element of the anti war movement.

For instance, the authors show convincingly that the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), commonly perceived to have been one of the driving forces in the antiwar movement lost the leadership of this movement as early as 1965.

Enbcknownst to the non-radical world. SDS was for a long time paralyzed between the antiwar faction and the revolutionaries who wanted to restructure American society so as to prevent "the seventh wal from now." And complimenting the situation was SDS's extreme democratic governance every decision had to be approved by all members.

Despite the impotence of the SDS within the antiwar movement. I received most of the press coverage. In 1967, SDS National Secretary Greg Calvert talked with The New York Times: his widely-read "fire-eating rhetoric," write Zaroulis and Sullivan, made "more difficult the task of all the many groups working to end the war in Vietnam."

It's snippers like this which make the book worthwhile. The internal dynamics of the disparate groups that comprised the antiwar movement are an important and micy subject. And it's sort of fun knowing that skimming through this very readable book puts you at the forefront of anti-Vietnam War scholarship.

And so, that his presence would cause disturbances on worse the old campaigner was left to pace the Oval Office in restless quantantined as if the White House door were plavarded, as by local health authorities in the days of lusworth to announce to all in seavlet letter a communist disease within AD. In trult, Vaccumm Disease had touched the whose body politics White House.

When all is said and done Who Spoke Up? remains more of an encyclopedia than a history. But even as an encyclopedia the book has problems, particularly with the lack of accurate documentation. It possesses fewer than one footnote per page--a shocking statistic for a book that tries to sell itself on its Intimately detailed accounts-an it is even sometimes unclear just who is being quoted. The rationale for this easy-read approach is obvious. The book is intended for a mass audience, and footnotes don't sell.

ONE OF THE best aspects of this work, which the authors claim is the first serious historical study of the antiwar movement, is its account of many little known element of the anti war movement.

For instance, the authors show convincingly that the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), commonly perceived to have been one of the driving forces in the antiwar movement lost the leadership of this movement as early as 1965.

Enbcknownst to the non-radical world. SDS was for a long time paralyzed between the antiwar faction and the revolutionaries who wanted to restructure American society so as to prevent "the seventh wal from now." And complimenting the situation was SDS's extreme democratic governance every decision had to be approved by all members.

Despite the impotence of the SDS within the antiwar movement. I received most of the press coverage. In 1967, SDS National Secretary Greg Calvert talked with The New York Times: his widely-read "fire-eating rhetoric," write Zaroulis and Sullivan, made "more difficult the task of all the many groups working to end the war in Vietnam."

It's snippers like this which make the book worthwhile. The internal dynamics of the disparate groups that comprised the antiwar movement are an important and micy subject. And it's sort of fun knowing that skimming through this very readable book puts you at the forefront of anti-Vietnam War scholarship.

When all is said and done Who Spoke Up? remains more of an encyclopedia than a history. But even as an encyclopedia the book has problems, particularly with the lack of accurate documentation. It possesses fewer than one footnote per page--a shocking statistic for a book that tries to sell itself on its Intimately detailed accounts-an it is even sometimes unclear just who is being quoted. The rationale for this easy-read approach is obvious. The book is intended for a mass audience, and footnotes don't sell.

ONE OF THE best aspects of this work, which the authors claim is the first serious historical study of the antiwar movement, is its account of many little known element of the anti war movement.

For instance, the authors show convincingly that the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), commonly perceived to have been one of the driving forces in the antiwar movement lost the leadership of this movement as early as 1965.

Enbcknownst to the non-radical world. SDS was for a long time paralyzed between the antiwar faction and the revolutionaries who wanted to restructure American society so as to prevent "the seventh wal from now." And complimenting the situation was SDS's extreme democratic governance every decision had to be approved by all members.

Despite the impotence of the SDS within the antiwar movement. I received most of the press coverage. In 1967, SDS National Secretary Greg Calvert talked with The New York Times: his widely-read "fire-eating rhetoric," write Zaroulis and Sullivan, made "more difficult the task of all the many groups working to end the war in Vietnam."

It's snippers like this which make the book worthwhile. The internal dynamics of the disparate groups that comprised the antiwar movement are an important and micy subject. And it's sort of fun knowing that skimming through this very readable book puts you at the forefront of anti-Vietnam War scholarship.