It might be hard for today’s young people to really understand just what a big deal the war protests were in the late 60s and early 70s to push for Richard Nixon to end the war in Vietnam. They were willing to die for it and some of them did. While the public did not approve of their actions and condemned them, siding instead with the Nixon administration’s “law and order” clampdown (including the shooting at Kent State which left four dead students and a public that sided with law enforcement), their protests eventually ended the war.
They were a motley crew of radicals, no doubt about it, at a time not all that different from now. There is opposition to authority everywhere in America, on every side – eventually the whole thing blew up and handed power to the conservatives for the foreseeable future (many of the hippies grew up and wanted to live in houses and pensions and families so some abandoned their activism). Writer/Director Aaron Sorkin makes this point emphatically in the film, that the ultimate goal has to always be in mind – and that violence can sometimes work against the cause at hand.
Some will argue that the protesters scared the public and only made Nixon double down on winning an unwinnable war, but there is no doubt that the ongoing, sustained pressure shifted public opinion and finally the war did end. Who knows how long it would have gone, who knows how many more left dead if they hadn’t used everything in their power to stop it.
Now, Aaron Sorkin joins activists to discuss how to use one’s voice for change. While this isn’t news to Gen-Z after this past year – they need no one to tell them the power they have – but they should always remember the lessons from history. History has a way of repeating itself and if you watch The Trial of the Chicago 7 you will hear those lessons.
Watch the Town Hall below with Baratunde Thurston, Dolores Huerta, Jill Wine-Banks & Olivia Munn join Aaron Sorkin, Sacha Baron Cohen and Lee Weiner, moderated by the BBC’s Katty Kay.
Daniel Ellsberg showing how they lied and that they said it was not winnable in 1966. Walter Cronkite’s pessimistic coverage of the Tet offensive in 1968.Mutinies by the troops another factor. Troops coming home and telling us don’t go if you don’t have to. In addition to the demonstrations.
Democrats begin the war, Republicans end them…
I didn’t know the endless Afghanistan war and the offensive war against Iraq, a country that didn’t attack the USA, were started by democrats. But keep being wrong, I guess.
I don’t think Chicago 68 handed the election to Nixon. Nixon cleverly impeding the Hanoi peace talks via back channels (btw this action is part of one of the most interesting Watergate theories I’ve ever heard) is what won him the election.
Chicago 7 COULD have been a masterpiece, and to my eternal frustration Sorkin couldn’t resist being Sorkin.
What you say has merit. This divisive trial, a revealing social event of its time, cries out for a TV miniseries, a form Sorkin knows well but, I’m guessing, even he couldn’t successfully pitch to a network.
To gather the full scope of what the trial meant and how it fits into American politics, culture and law, I recommend two lively sources:
1) The vivid, engrossing Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer (necessarily adjusting for some of Mailer’s — especially these days — laughable macho posturing and occasional shockingly insensitive racial remarks.)
2) Most vitally, The Great Conspiracy Trial by Jason Epstein, an impeccably researched, smoothly written 433-page account of the trial and the social and legal forces underlying it. It’s a cool, sophisticated book by a Random House Editor in Chief who knows how to structure a complex true story and make the facts pierce and sting. Masterful.
Starting with these two sources, there’s a potentially great miniseries here, but I fear the chance for that is now lost.
The democrats were in complete disarray because of how Lyndon B. Johnson handled the war. The fact his vice president won the nomination was a pretty bad look and the protests gave the impression to people on the fence that the democrats were just incompetent and divided.
What you mention is probably a factor, but what happened at the convention was an important part of why they lost too.
You’re making good points. The entire thrust of Nixon’s campaign was his secret plan to end the war, and as we know now Nixon cut a side deal with North Vietnam NOT to agree to anything with Johnson’s team.
There’s tape of LBJ in the WH ranting to an associate about what Nixon did with a threat to expose it. Some have speculated that LBJ’s threat to bring Nixon’s crime to light was actually the reason for the Watergate break in to begin with. Nixon would have fair warning about LBJ resurfacing. It’s a hell of an explanation even though the flaw is LBJ was so radioactive at that point would he have been believed?