On this Day in History: November 15, 1969. The Moratorium March on Washington. A Million Reasons to End the War. . . Or So We Thought.

The First Time the Size of the Crowd on the DC Mall Really Mattered

On this day fifty years ago, the second phase of the hopeful Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam took place. Unlike the previous month’s event, it wasn’t a quiet series of strikes by students or others. It was to be a million marchers in Washington, D.C., right outside President Richard Nixon’s White House window. The portion of the divided country convinced it was time to stop this seemingly endless and pointless conflict was ebullient. We were confident that with numbers like these showing up, it would be impossible for the president to dismiss the will of the majority: the war had lost its objective; it was unwinnable; it was time to Bring the Troops Home NOW!

Like the first Moratorium that October, the march was to be inclusive of as many subsections of the country as possible—an unprecedentedly huge aggregate of voices all asking for the same thing. And, it was to be peaceful, to make a point without becoming who we were not, and without alienating those who’d like to join, but feared to in the shadow of the violence that began with the Democratic Convention in 1968. The Chicago Conspiracy Trial had just begun that September and was still going on. We were changing the image: There are so many of us; lots of us look like you; it’s safe to join us. You know we’re right.

We Had to Be There. And to Be Counted.

Young people were particularly activated and ended up comprising the majority of the marching crowd. The war affected them most, after all—they were the fuel for the new draft lottery, coming in just three weeks, that was to determine who would go to Vietnam at a time when that meant a death sentence.

College campuses, representing the largest concentration of draft-age men, mobilized. Across the country, buses and other transportation were arranged to bring flocks of students to the event. Preparations covered the scope of the guerilla marketing options of the day: posters were painted, banners made for display by marchers, armbands and pins created for every message out there, from the remaining vestiges of flower power, “War is hazardous for children and other living things,” to the clenched-fist yelp of the day, “Hell No, We Won’t Go.” 

We had to be there, somehow, we told ourselves. The numbers were important. A million marchers!  We had to be counted. That was the galvanizing cry—and so close to the December 1 lottery date that it was worth risking all. Like the main character in The Fourteenth of September, I was on a military scholarship, the only way I could afford to go to college. I was deep into plotting how to get out of it by this time, but I couldn’t risk losing it, which I surely would if I got caught traveling to Washington, thereby going AWOL (which I’d technically be, away from my “duty station” at school). But I felt certain this was a pivotal moment in history, and I had to be a part of it, or I’d never forgive myself.

And it was the most exciting thing to be happening so far in my teenage life: Genuine action, people from all over the country, a city I’d never been to. Above all, I was going to make a difference. It’s hard to describe how certain we were that we would be heard at last and that this would work. A million marchers!  We’d stop the war that was eating up our generation. It was easy, Kool-Aid, and I drank it down like so many others in the guilelessness of late adolescence. After all, we were right: people were dying without purpose; the war was bad; it had to end. Who could quibble with that?

Even my mid-size school, Northern Illinois University, was going to send three buses to Washington. It would cost $40 a head, which was stiff for students in those days. I got such a secret kick out of using my army pay to finance my rebellion. I couldn’t tell anyone, but I’d know. I made my plans. I left my army ID in the only locked drawer in my dorm desk, joined in making dozens of PB&J sandwiches for the bus ride, and set out to change the world.

Off on a Fateful Adventure with a Million Marchers

It was a long night’s drive, and we arrived late, after the famous “March Against Death” that took place the night before Saturday’s big event. Thousands of people had walked in single file down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, each carrying a placard with the name of a dead American soldier, presaging the eventual form of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. The placards were placed in coffins, and we saw them lying in front of the Capitol Building as our bus pulled into the city and dropped us off.

We hastily joined the other marchers, lined up for the main event. We jumped around to stay warm in the bone-chilling November cold, none of us dressed for the weather. We’d been more concerned about the message of the imitation fatigues we were wearing under our protest buttons—olive drab and khaki jackets we’d picked up at the army surplus store in our campus hometown. We wanted to look the part. We waited. . . and waited, only to be ultimately frustrated when city officials stopped the march on the stroke of the three-hour parade permit time limit, despite the thousands of us who had not yet put one foot in front of the other to make our involvement official.

We swallowed our disappointment and followed the crowd down the Mall, amazed at the sheer numbers of people, a moving swarm of protestors filling up every space between the white buildings we’d heretofore only seen in pictures or on television: the Capitol, the National Gallery of Art, and ahead of us the grand obelisk of The National Monument. We met people from all over, from pacifists to anarchists, but mostly just kids like us, totally psyched that we’d choked the streets and shut down the capital of the United States. Rumor was we’d pulled off the biggest protest ever. Of course, this would end the war. How could it not?

We were tired, hungry, and on the hunt for bathrooms but also riding high, eagerly joining in singing along with those ahead of us, who in turn were singing along with performers we knew were ahead of them but we couldn’t possibly see or hear ourselves—Peter, Paul and Mary, Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe and the Fish.

When we filed onto the buses after only six hours in the city and headed back to campus, we were exhausted but elated. We’d been counted, we were sure. The war would end. We gave them a million reasons why. This is what it was to be a responsible citizen. This is what it was to join the long tradition of activism in our country. This is what it was to be an American.

Read the excerpt about the day from The Fourteenth of September.

“Young Marchers Ask Rapid Withdrawal from Vietnam,” The New York Times

Media coverage and access to information was so slow back then. There were many “no-news” hours between boarding the buses and arriving back on campus, leaving us blind and deaf to the national reaction to the March.

By the time we returned, the newspapers were out, but the number was wrong— they were saying only 250,000 people had been in Washington. That number didn’t make sense if you’d been there. No one could imagine how they’d arrived at it. Someone suggested it was possible they’d only counted the ones who actually marched before the permit ended. It was the only reasonable explanation. Or was it an intentional plot—purposeful misinformation to show that though we boasted of having a majority we could only deliver a fraction of it?

And then there was the devastating caption that told us Nixon hadn’t been looking at a million marchers from his window. . . he had been watching a football game.

Dreams dashed.

“It Remains the Largest Political Rally in the Nation’s History,” Time Magazine

The numbers were revised with time to 500,000, but the damage had been done. We’d been so excited; I’d personally risked so much, and we were dismissed. To Nixon, we were a few thousand kids versus his great silent majority. His contempt for the concerns of our entire generation oozed over us. There were tens of thousands of faces who’d traveled from across the country over which he presided, beckoning for his attention in the freezing cold and he hadn’t even looked up from the television screen, or so he boasted.

We learned much later that this march had been historic, that it had had an impact, that it had been significant in the sequence of resistance that eventually led to the end of the war. In retrospect, we’d been an important part of the story of our country. Today, we smile and feel proud to read the fifty-year-old news accounts. 

But it sure didn’t feel like it at the time.

The war went on for another six years. Thousands more died. We felt the power we thought we had heading into the march begin to dissipate, sifting through our fingers. We were too young to know change was that hard, and would take that long. We thought we’d failed.

A few years later, that president, who finagled crowd numbers on the Mall, would become so cocky he’d push it to the point of breaking the law. He got his comeuppance with Watergate. 

We didn’t think it could ever happen again. We didn’t imagine we were in the first cycle of the hamster wheel of history.

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When Integrity Trumps Consequences

“Consideration will change the world, and I’m ready for it. It’s time for change, and it’s the time to start being brave.”

— Coming of Conscience Scholarship Applicant

Each person coming forward in the impeachment process has made a Coming of Conscience decision.

BOOMERS ARE OK

Two authors were pitted against each other at the Louisiana Book Festival on November 2nd—a military wife and an anti-war activist. Fireworks were assumed as Bev Marshall and I recounted our stories in Back Home: A Vietnam Veteran’s Wife’s Short Memoir about a Long War and The Fourteenth of September. But this “Yankee” and this southerner found common ground and became fast friends.

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Marching In Solidarity, But Not “In Fashion”— Why Didn’t Vogue Call Me?

On January 27 I wrote a blog titled “A 48-Year Déjà Vu” about the similarities between the post-election Women’s March and the march to end the war in Vietnam in Washington DC on November 15, 1969. I’d been at both and have just finished a novel about the latter.

I commented on the longtime gap between issues that were compelling enough to get me back on my feet, and the “wake up” from my “radical sleep.” To illustrate my argument, I’d carefully combed through a circa ’69 photo of me in a protest march and lined up a corresponding shot from today.

The post was heartfelt. I received many comments (yes, a few about my hair) and reestablished connections from long ago. We were still all in it together.

Out Of Fashion, But Not Out Of the Question

Recently, in the May issue of Vogue magazine, of all things, I turn to a page labeled “Nostalgia” and see an article titled “March With Me,” comparing the author’s dual experiences of marching in DC long ago against the war, and this January against the potential loss of women’s rights. Great minds, yes?  

Photo credit: Vogue

However, next to the article was a photo of what can only be called a Yardley girl from the ‘60’s. She’s what we all wanted to look like—doe-eyed, with long, stick-straight hair and hip clothes of the moment. Though the caption indicated she thought her “protesting outfit” was the essence of cool—bell bottoms and turtleneck—I was incredulous. This shot had all the benefits of professional hair, makeup and lighting, as well as a stylist who hung those sunglasses so insouciantly low on that skinny circumference of a hip. And the arch of her wrist as if she’d just flipped that glossy hair—seriously? She wouldn’t have lasted a mile marching in that getup.

But I read the article anyway and was surprised at how much our experiences had in common. The author, Pilar Crespi, had participated in the anti-Vietnam War March on Washington of 1967. That was two years before the one I attended and prior to the outrage of the Tet Offensive, The Democratic Convention and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy that jolted my class out of high school at the end of 1968 into a truly frightening world.

As I read her story, and as I’ve recounted in previous blogs, I kept thinking about how so little changes, so few lessons are learned and the hamster wheel of history just keeps going around. Pilar’s (I’ve now forgiven her photogenic self) experiences were spot on with my own. Despite the photo caption, her actual ’67 march outfit consisted of “genuine” bells and a blue work shirt—I had one of those, but marched in ‘69 in a fatigue jacket found in a Salvation Army resale shop in the small town where my University was located.

Like Pilar’s mother, mine had also been appalled by my evolving radical appearance, pointing how much more flattering my previous stretch pants and mohair sweaters had been versus these clunky jeans. My mother just didn’t get how much clothes credentialed you in those times. I also didn’t tell my mother I’d gone to Washington—well, not until after the fact, when the phase I was in required appropriate mom-baiting.

The tone of our ‘60’s marches was also the same—male—and the focus, early feminist “lady-like.” We never would have worn pink (that was for out-of-touch sorority girls), made anything solely a women’s issue (we were equal in the struggle), or discussed body parts of any kind.  In this year’s Women’s March, the tone was welcoming and friendly, the colors politically pastel, the men supportive, and the anatomy right up there in all the made-for-TV posters and on our pussy-hatted heads.

We had even both been spurred by the Women’s March to call our congress representatives about the same issues—the Muslim travel ban and the Affordable Health Care Act. We were SO aligned.

We Still Have the Power To Galvanize

My in-the-day fashion moment
Photo credit: Karen Thompson

What struck me above all, was how Pilar noted that our focus back then had been singular—to end the war, a generation-galvanizing stance that ultimately touched us all.  Today, we’re both concerned about the multiplicity of the urgent issues—from the environment and women’s rights to immigration—and question how we’ll focus to make the proper impact on each. I wonder, is there a thread we can work through and pull these concerns together like we did over the Vietnam War?

That observation is similar to my additional concern about diversity.  At the Women’s March in Chicago each speaker welcomed in turn every potential subsection represented by the women’s faces in front of her--transgender, queer, Hispanic, immigrant, previously incarcerated, single mothers, African Americans, victims of abuse, etc.—versus our overarching, and all encompassing female umbrella. And yet, SISTERS, it’s our commonalities that will provide the strength for change, not all these differences, right?

Finally, though both Pilar and I had been warmed by seeing the daughters and granddaughters who marched alongside us in January, we are objective about the difficulties for the quest ahead. Can we galvanize to the same degree as in the ‘60’s and fit all our issues, however diverse, under one powerful effort? 

We can figure this out, Pilar. We have this in common—with our generation, with our gender.

So, I’ll bury the hatchet over your radical-chic and admit you were/are Vogue worthy. My look, back in the day I’d say was March worthy, save a few sporadic fashion moments.

Do you think there’s a photo shoot in it?

Any chance you hung on to that cute little tunic? I’m afraid my hat bit the dust long ago.

A Tale Of Two Writer's Conferences

I just returned from two back-to-back conferences and am reeling a bit from what I’ve seen as I begin to peddle my novel after quietly writing it for the past 12 years.

Association of Writers and Writing Programs—I Am Not Throwing Away My Shot

I’ve been to the formidable AWP Conference several times in the past, but always hung to the sides, picking up what craft or marketing information I could, but not feeling quite “legitimate” without a finished manuscript. I’d found my first AWP pretty frosty. Twice, someone I’d sat next to at a lecture responded to my “hello” with a quick look at my name tag and, apparently seeing nothing useful, turned full-body to the evidently more credentialed person on their other side. I’d been taken aback at such a PR faux pas. How do they know I won’t be the next Donna Tartt? So, this is the world we’re in, I thought, as I was repeatedly mowed down again and again until I figured out a system—leave the current session before the Q&A and you’d have a prayer at being able to get into the next, even though you’d probably still end up sitting on the floor.

It was at bit warmer this time. I knew a few people: the poet Parneshia Jones, who I’d met at Ragdale and author Paul Lisicky, who’d led a workshop I’d taken at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute a few years back.  I felt like a celebrity at Four Way Books when they recognized my name as the host of a salon this fall for Christina Pugh to introduce her new book, Perception. When I somehow qualified for a free copy of Elizabeth Strout’s new book I thought I was in like Flynn.

Still, there were 550 events. And, 12,000 writers vying for attention, queuing up like mad for every agent/publisher, asking multi-part “questions” of speakers hoping they’d register as so brilliant that surely they’d be begged for their manuscripts.  It was an ambitious and aggressive space, and everyone seemed to take that for granted.   The attendees were fashion funky, pretty evenly gender split, and primarily in, or on the cusp of either end of their third decade. Many were lost the first day, but more sure footed by the second as they sprinted around the massive Washington DC Convention Center in the ten minutes between crowded sessions, hoping to score a quick granola bar in one of the long concession lines. A choice for sustenance did inevitably mean you’d end up sitting on the floor.

Speakers were universally provocative and political—the daunting reality of the Trump-drenched atmosphere. We all wanted to throw our arms around Jennifer Egan who confessed she’d been right at the end of the final draft of her current novel on Inauguration Day, then stymied with depression. I mean, we actually all wanted to BE her, with her Pulitzer-winning Goon Squad talent, but would settle for offering comfort. Maybe she’d be grateful and recommend our manuscript?

The pace was insane and it was easy to feel out of it. So many events were happening that sounded off book—even a massive protest march, they said. You apparently had to be in the “know” to be aware of all that was going on. Just before a panel on Susan Sontag which featured incredible speakers but no overall “point,” I dipped into a “Over 50” session filled with festive grey hair, tipped with what Katherine Hepburn would have called “colors not found in nature”—purple, green and teal. They were earnest and eager, desperate for reassurance. I backed out early, sympathetic but unable--or unwilling--to self identify.

I left with a raging cold, a legacy of freezing conference rooms and a missed turn back to my hotel where I circled the block three times, teary from the wind, too cold to take off my gloves to work Google maps.

San Miguel Writer’s Conference—I’m Not Going to Give Up My Seat

After a quick strep test I was off to the Writer’s Conference in beautiful San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, which was warmer in every sense of the word. Here, age-wise I was firmly in the middle of the primarily female and very friendly and curious audience--a mix of readers and writers, most working on memoir. It moved slower. No one would think of sitting on the floor, but some were enjoying lolling about on blankets and pillows in the sun on the beautiful grounds of the Hotel Real de Minas. The wardrobe was Mexican fiesta with bright colors, beach hats and the essential San Miguel sandals so you wouldn’t break an ankle on the cobblestones. Food was important—and everywhere--and I may never eat guacamole and taco chips again (something I never thought I’d say). 

Mary Karr with Rita Dragonette

The speakers were there to be entertaining, with only occasional smart-ass remarks about Trump. Memoirist Mary Karr was side splitting. Her definition of narcissism was her mother staggering out of a bar in her stiletto’s looking up at the moon and saying “I have an earring like that.” Karr told a story about the Chanel-clad agent who’d encouraged her first memoir, The Liar’s Club, and I realized I’d seen the agent on an AWP panel earlier in the week. She’d shared a funny story about, as a cub, having to cut 100 pages out of a Simone De Beauvoir book. Her client roster is platinum but I wondered, fleetingly, if she’d give my debut novel a chance if I let her know it includes a running gag about Simone. Too much?

I held my coughing and nose blowing to after each of Billy Collins’ very funny and deceptively simple poems. By David Ebershoff’s lecture I was able to hear the fascinating 20-year journey from idea to book to movie of The Danish Girl on a single cough drop. The editor I pitched (despite what was on her web site) was not interested in fiction.  Had I considered my story as a memoir? she asked, bringing up a dilemma I’d settled long ago.

There was a curious insistence on etiquette. There were “rules” about noise (frequent shouts of “Sound” or “Volume”), timing ( rhythmic clapping would begin on the stroke of the start time and accelerate until the speaker began), and the avoidance of cardinal sins (standing or sitting in another person’s sight line, attempting to save a seat too long or, god forbid, cutting in line). Again, hard to self identify, particularly after the athletic techniques I’d just employed to get into AWP sessions.

In all, I was motivated but sick, and longed to settle in to a blanket in the back of the lecture hall, and listen with my eyes closed. I was pretty sure at the AWP I’d have been walked over, if not on. At San Miguel they would have covered me, but gone on to turn out the lights and lock the door.

What I learned

Despite challenging "cultures," there was information galore at both conferences. I learned I need a great idea (check—at least in my own mind), excellent craft (which is “assumed” by an MFA--is my Certificate from the University of Chicago close enough for a check?), to be a good literary citizen (those salons I hold, yeah!..check), and an ability to market (multiple checks).  How does it add up? Do my 30 years in marketing trump (sorry, there’s just no other word) the fact that I have the wrong degree?

Above all I wonder about velocity. The pace to succeed is thunderous, the need to capture attention instantaneous. Marketing and profile-wise I'm pretty certain I can pull this off. But I worry if there will be patience for the slow-build development of my novel’s teenage protagonist into her political dilemma. Should I change it now or wait until the inevitable rewrites? In other words, do I pull it off the market to remodel the kitchen, or trust that a buyer will either love it as is or see its potential? My inner perfectionist gnaws. Maybe I’ll decide by the time this cough is absolutely gone…

Getting my shot is going to be tough indeed. However, these conference experiences have convinced me more than ever that I do want my seat at the table. At this stage of the game, I’ll be happy to sit anywhere, even on the floor—as long as there are pillows.

A 48-Year Déjà Vu

The last time I was part of a massive protest march was November 15, 1969, in Washington DC to end the War in Vietnam. It was major. I wrote a novel about it. This past Saturday, I was in Chicago, part of the Worldwide Women’s March to maintain our hard-won rights.  It was bigger. It will be mentioned in inevitable books to be written four years from now. In both cases, I immediately knew I just had to be there, if for nothing else than to be counted.

The first song at Saturday’s rally was Let it Be and 48 years dropped away

Back in ’69 I’d arrived in DC sleepless, after an all-night trip on one of three school buses taking 200 of us from Northern Illinois University to what we were certain  would be the end of the war. I froze in a threadbare pea coat left over from high school and gym shoes that got so muddy I had to pitch them the minute I returned. I had three PB&J sandwiches in my paisley bag along with a knit hat to hide my red hair so my military mother wouldn’t see me on TV and realize that I’d gone even though she’d pitched that fit. “What do you mean you have to be there?”

We were full of purpose and joy –everyone was so friendly, eager to know where you were from, what protests were going on at our campus, to show off their homemade signs and share buttons. “I’ll trade you my green Texas SMC (Student Mobilization Against the War) for your blue SDS. We were walking posters of cross-country solidarity. The only tension was over how to greet new friends.  But soon, even if you got it wrong and they answered your peace sign with a clenched fist or vice versa, embarrassment turned to giggles and it didn’t matter. So much was going on. Though we were there to demand that Nixon end the war, there were lots of ‘isms” about other issues that blurred in the background—communism, Marxism-- debates about peace vs violence. I warmed my hands by a fire while listening to an anarchist. He was cute so I listened.  It didn’t matter. I was there and would be counted in the million plus number we were certain we’d hit and Nixon wouldn’t be able to ignore.

Pink Hats

The New Yorker called  Saturday’s pink sea “radiant with love and dissent.” It was equally full of purpose and joy. We snapped selfies instead of traded buttons, showed each other our witty—sometimes smutty--signs, marveled at how far people had travelled, asked each other what activism we had planned, and obeyed orders by staying off the grass. I was in a perfectly warm Cole Haan jacket and Mephisto walking shoes. The only tension was wondering how long my lower back would put up with standing on pavement. I was not nineteen any more. The message was equally messy. We were there to demand Trump not roll back our rights, but the speakers spilled over into calling for Rahm’s ouster… union rights. Someone was trying to give away a free pair of Ivanka Trump sandals. I laughed, having fun while knowing I’d be counted among the numbers that were escalating from 50,000 to 75,000 to 250,000. Who’d ever seen so many people in one place? I mean…not since ‘69. After, we stopped for lunch in a cozy spot over hip health food and reflected.

Had to be there

I was motivated in ‘69 to do whatever I could, including putting myself in jeopardy, to be counted as against a policy that simply could not stand. After that I moved on from activism. Nearly 50 years later I feel equally threatened.

My late mother often told my sister and I that she’d been certain we’d have so much more freedom than she’d experienced in career, marriage, family—all of it. She’d gone as far as she could in her day and wanted us to go farther and we did. But she was disappointed it hadn’t been more.  Yesterday, there was a post from my second cousin who is a diplomat in the foreign  service awaiting the birth of her second child, with no paid maternity leave. She has to decide to take either a financial or a professional hit over her “choice” to have a baby. She hopes her two-year old daughter won’t face the same decision.

The past is not past, it isn’t even dead. What I object to is the hamster wheel of things. I reject the way a new administration is coming into completely repeal the work of the previous one, and how that will tee up the next to do the same.  Massive programs like Medicare and the Affordable Care Act don’t arrive perfectly operable. There are a lot of moving parts. We start with what makes sense based upon what we know and then we need to work to make it better. Sure it’s messy. If we repeal instead of refine, they’ll be another plan with its own messes that will either be rejected or refined and we’ll keep going in the wheel of negative progress so my cousin’s daughter will still be fighting and being threatened by the repeal of Roe vs Wade. Just Let It Be.

That’s why, after so many years, the Women’s March has helped me come out of my radical sleep. The voice of my own novel reminds me. This time, my mother would have agreed it was worth it. She may never have understood the antiwar part, but the woman’s rights part, she’d SO get that. She would have come to the march. She looked great in pink.

She would have known it was important just to be there.