Fifty three years ago, on this day, May 1st, 1971, people came to Washington to throw their bodies on the gears of the machine, to stop the Vietnam War.
1971 May Day protests in Washington [Wikipedia]
See also
Mayday: The Case for Civil Disobedience
Noam Chomsky
The New York Review of Books, June 17, 1971
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the war in Vietnam was continuing. And the war in Cambodia, the bombing, there had been years of marches, petitions, protests, and now they were trying civil disobedience, direct action in Washington DC itself. And I wonder what it was like to be there. So desperate, so exhausted, scared, determined, you name it.
What we learn is that this is written out of the official histories that the war in Vietnam stories tend to end with Kent State. And the ongoing resistance to the war, after Kent State, is kind of largely ignored. It doesn’t fit the narrative because you have to then speak of domestic violence by the state against citizens. Well, also the whole “Weather Underground” thing, blowing themselves in that Greenwich Village townhouse, didn’t really help, did it?
What happened next, Nixon won the 1972 election, which tells you a lot of what you need to know. And the war in Vietnam continued. The Americans left in 73. And my first television memory that I can date was the fall of Saigon in April of 1975. The tank crashing through the gates of the Presidential Palace…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
See also
See also Oreskes and Conway, 2010 Page 176
See also this from Jacobin
https://jacobin.com/2021/05/may-day-1971-vietnam-war-nixon
Also on this day:
May 1, 1980 – ABC talks about atmospheric carbon dioxide measurement
May 1, 1996 – US Congressman says climate research money is “money down a rat hole”