As we sit back and watch the turmoil in Russia, which I believe can be directly attributed to its failed war against Ukraine, it might be useful for us to look back at one of our own failed foreign military misadventures and what it caused for the United States at home.
Those times. Worked at Dell publishing when Abby Hoffman was visiting about Steal This Book. Went to the lobby to take a look at him and remembered thinking he was much smaller than I thought he’d be. And much less charismatic than Studs Terkel, who I frankly worshipped. Never met Kurt Vonnegut but his editor called me pussycat much to the outrage of my neighbor in the cubicle next to mine.
I got to know too many young soldiers living off base with T. who were more wounded than my high school boyfriend who’d been shot up and returned to his parents broken. When they drank and that was all we did they’d talk about fragging new lieutenants who were so hung ho they knew they’d be killed following them. Unrepentant. They wanted to live and come home, where they screamed at night in our trailer camp while they dreamed they were back on helicopters or on patrol.
Funny, I knew both Abby and Studs. (Abby from Brandeis; Studs from Chicago, where I was raised.) Before his politicization, Abby *was* quite charming, ... but I dare say more impactful as the wild man in the service of peace and justice.
Your feelings are entirely understandable -- and not misplaced. Chicago media people had great fondness for Studs, as you did ... and he was devoted to his wife, Ida. He was wicked smart, totally unassuming, and dressed like a handyman. Hoover tried to tag him a Communist and he was blacklisted ... but so many good people were.
Truth. Maybe because my dad had been a union organizer and arrested by Metaxa regime in Greece. A political prisoner who despite achieving wealth later in life asked to be buried in his engineers uniform. Terkel was familiar to me in his behavior and his clothes and I’d read everything he’d written.
Interesting about people who were labor organizers. Walter Reuther's counsel gave up offers to join white shoe law firms to stay with the UAW, and one of the Singer Sewing Machine heirs was an organizer before becoming a family therapist.
Idealists at their core. (As opposed to the unions leaders I met working in NYC at Cornell university in 70s with Betty Goetz Lall.) (no comment on them)
Too early to rely on possibly very slanted accounts. Wait until at least tomorrow, I am absolutely serious! The stakes are so high, wait awhile to see how much truth there is in that.
Putin has relied on a tightly controlled media within his perceived sphere of influence for a bit more that several decades as dictator, and before that, in other roles, so these early accounts may be highly misleading, at least until tomorrow, Sunday, even Monday!
Wow, I have a LOT of other things going on around here this afternoon, did not refer to any other sources with up-to-date coverage, and most of all, did not realize you left out the crucial fact that PRIGOZHIN himself had stated he was ordering a halt "to avoid bloodshed," etc. Makes all the difference.
"Russia rebellion live updates: Mercenary chief halts Moscow advance; Kremlin says criminal case will be dropped Putin had accused mercenary Prigozhin of “treason” and vowed to crush the growing armed rebellion. The Kremlin says Prigozhin will now go to Belarus and Wagner soldiers would not be prosecuted."
So at least FOR NOW, Prigozhin and the Wagner Group is...doing what, exactly? Trusting Putin? OK, maybe, we'll see how that works out. "Charges dropped," that sounds temporary, until the next time Wagner Group/Prigozhin refuses to take orders directly from the Russian military, is that what's happening?
But at least it is clear enough that their is some kind of serious negotiation happening, and no immediate march on the Kremlin or whatever.
I never knew this about Vietnam. I'd love to see some elaboration in a future article. "It was commonplace after the My Lai massacre in 1968 for troops to go out on patrols and simply not engage with enemy forces if they encountered them. "
My late gentleman caller was a veteran of Vietnam -- flew a Medivac -- two tours of duty, two Silver Stars, etc. Later he was an officer and he told me, frankly, that any honest officer in Vietnam knew that the war was unwinnable. I had observed once, after one of his stories (he didn't inflict them on me very often) that it seemed to me that the country belonged to the US Army during the day and to the VietCong at night. "You got it," he replied. "What an impossible situation for the civilians -- who could they trust?" I asked. "Nobody. That's part of what made it impossible."
He decided early on, to make it his job to keep his guys out of trouble or combat, so they could go home in one piece. He was also very realistic about drug use. "They'd have these 'surprise inspections'," he told me. "So I'd go around to the tents and say 'guys, there's going to be a surprise inspection around 3pm -- if you've got anything you don't want the brass to see, hide it now."
I guess that was a lesson learned from previous wars. On November 11th, 1918, with the Armastice due to take effect in hours, General Pershing ordered Anericam troops to attack and got 2000 killed just as the war came to an end. So hell yeah. Disobey.
T.s grandfather, who was with an Ohio regiment, was struck by a shell fragments the day before the official end. Pieces of them were still oozing from the wound in the 1950s. Still he was proud of his service and active in VFW until the end of his life.
Bless you, Lucian! I was a college freshman in the fall of '69. Participated in the October Moratorium march. I was heavily involved in housing and feeding out-of-town demonstrators at my college (Georgetown U. -- now there's a story!) and so couldn't go to the November 13–14 procession by the White House in which each marcher deposited the name of a someone killed in the war into coffins set up for the purpose, but I was a marshal (as peacekeepers were called then) at the Nov. 15 march on Washington. I still remember the visceral thrill of watching all those people pouring down Pennsylvania Ave.
I wonder a lot about how the Russians are reacting now. They don't have the democratic traditions that we had then, and even with those democratic traditions it took a *long* time for USians to realize what was happening. I do remember how important it was to me as a young antiwar activist to hear from returning servicemen (and they were all men) about what they'd been up against in Vietnam (and Laos, and Cambodia). The Russian news media may be tightly controlled, but the voices of those returning from Ukraine cannot be so easily silenced.
I was a sophomore at Mount Holyoke m. I was a Marshall during the November Moratorium on the Potomac Bridge, wearing the name of our neighbor and paperboy, KIA in friendly fire.
I was a senior in high school that fall, a large contingent of us went over from Des Moines Roosevelt to Drake University and participated in the October Moratorium there.
By the next autumn at Macalester ( my first year and on to the looming Nixon resignation in 1974)) the antiwar fervor and connected events were almost constant.
Everything hooked up with local peace activists working against Honeywell's production of "cluster bombs" and other munitions,* as well as the U. of Minnesota and many other local colleges.
He was nationally known for demonstrations against Honeywell, which made cluster bombs used in Vietnam.
By Randy Furst Star Tribune JANUARY 16, 2012 — 11:26PM
In 2004, about 90 Minnesota Immigrant Worker Freedom Riders joined 18 other buses from other states and traveled across America to bring awareness to issues they face. Freedom Rider Marv Davidov told his story in between stops on the Freedom Ride. Davidov died Saturday, January 14, 2012, at age 80.
Marv Davidov, an iconic figure in the Minnesota peace movement who founded and led the Honeywell Project in a decades-long campaign to halt the production of anti-personnel weapons by the Honeywell Corp., died Saturday afternoon at Walker United Health Care Center in Minneapolis.
Davidov, who also was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and beyond, was 80, and had suffered from a number of health problems.
A chain smoker until recent years, he was an immediately recognizable figure at protests, with his large mustache, blue skipper's cap, almost always wearing a T-shirt with a protest slogan on it.
In 1983, nearly 600 protesters were arrested outside Honeywell's Minneapolis headquarters in a civil disobedience action, the type of demonstration that Davidov and his allies had organized so many times that it was honed to a fine art.
For years during the Vietnam War era, Davidov carried around a deactivated cluster bomb, the size of a softball, to show anyone who would listen that Honeywell was creating weapons being used by the U.S. military. He said the weapons indiscriminately killed innocent civilians in Southeast Asia.
Honeywell eventually spun off its defense contract work to Alliant Techsystems.
Davidov estimated that he was arrested 40 or 50 times, mainly in antiwar and civil rights demonstrations.
He was one of the original Freedom Riders, young people who rode on buses through the South in 1961 to desegregate bus transportation and terminals.
He and five other white youths from the Twin Cities were arrested at a blacks-only lunch counter in a Greyhound bus station in Jackson, Miss., when they refused to comply with police orders to move on.
In a hospital room interview Thursday, Davidov, although sedated with pain medication for a worsening circulatory problem, spoke with animation about being locked up for 40 days with other civil rights demonstrators at a Mississippi prison farm. Black and white protesters were incarcerated together, he said.
"We were the first group of integrated prisoners in Mississippi state prison history," Davidov said with a smile.
'An inspiration to many'
In an autobiography he wrote with Carol Masters, he described himself as a "nonviolent revolutionary."
One of Davidov's admirers was Daniel Ellsberg, the White House consultant who leaked the Pentagon Papers about U.S. military decision-making in Vietnam to the media. Ellsberg, who later became a peace activist, helped raise money for the Honeywell Project at Davidov's invitation.
"Thanks to people like him, we're still hanging on as a species," Ellsberg said. "His nonviolence and his indefatigability and energy are an inspiration to many people."He's lived a good life, and I told him so" when he spoke to Davidov by phone on Friday, Ellsberg said.
Last week, as Davidov's medical condition worsened, a number of peace activist friends kept a hospital vigil. "It's one of those great things that happens," Davidov said. "This kind of solidarity and love and support that people give one another."
John LaForge, an antiwar activist friend, had brought a small refrigerator to his room with a bumper sticker on it that read, "No more war."
Bill Tilton, a St. Paul attorney, said he first met Davidov in 1969 at a sit-in at the University of Minnesota in support of the African American Action Committee, which was demanding more scholarships for blacks.
"Marv is one of my heroes," Tilton said. "He never took his eye off the ball of advocating for the rights of the underprivileged and accountability of government."
For years Davidov taught a class on "active nonviolence" at the University of St. Thomas. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, who taught the class with him, said, "There was a warmth that came across when he related to students, a deeply respectful interaction in which Marv would share parts of his life story that awakened within students a possibility that they too could impact society."
Barbara Mishler said she got to know Davidov when she took a class of his at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in south Minneapolis 30 years ago.
"When I first met him, I was so terrified of nuclear war," she recalls. "He said, 'Settle down and read and inform yourself, before you hit the streets.' "
Nothing to say? Hardly
Lying in bed, barely able to sit up on Thursday, Davidov welcomed a reporter.
Asked if he had any thoughts that he'd like to pass on to young people, Davidov thought for a moment, smiled and said, "I've been waiting for this interview my entire life, and now I've got nothing to say."
But as anyone who has ever known Davidov knows, he was never really at a loss for words, including on Thursday.
On the current presidential election campaign: "It reminds me of one of the books that Paul Goodman wrote in the 1950s -- 'Growing Up Absurd.' Once again the needs of the people who have most everything are satisfied first."
On this election year: "Find the people in your community who are probing reality and talking about how to fundamentally change it and work at a local level on these problems, creating peace, freedom and justice."
On the Occupy protests against Wall Street: "I thought it was great. The people were locating what their needs were and going out in the streets without compromise."
On the kind of memorial gathering he'd like: "I want people to remember and tell funny stories about me and the struggle, and try to create a deeper, more profound movement and build the numbers."
We attended Nixon's inauguration and held protests in a carnival atmosphere. That was Abby Hoffman's hallmark, non-violent silliness with hard-core politics. I dressed in a white dress and wore a Lieutenant Callie mask to place blame on the Commander in Chief, Nixon and not on the rank and file. Thousands of us wore those masks to protest blaming one soldier when it was official policy that fueled the War in Vietnam (which the government called a "conflict"), and the massacres.
I was trained as a medic and assisted with tear gas victims, and first aid. In other demonstrations we camped out in tents at the Lincoln Memorial Park. We assisted with tear gas victims, and others administered first aid. We had a mock seance lead by Allan Ginsberg and chanted: "Out demon, Out!" at the Pentagon!
Russia's Pussy Riot has the same flavor, but the level of satire was something that Russians just didn't understand. Since they first began performing their protest performances in a Moscow Church in 2011, members of the group have been arrested and jailed for "offending against religious feelings".
The have recently released a film called "Putin's Ashes" which calls for the violent removal of the leader whose policies are deadly and disrespectful to all, and particularly to women!
I was essentially 'glued to the television' and some print coverage before, during and after the police riot, "Battle of the Hilton" the preamble of demos in Grant Park and Lincoln Park, and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia* days later.
Being too young to vote, only 15 years old in March 1968, I accompanied my mother to the local caucus site near 42nd and University, to support Senator Eugene McCarthy, one snowy Tuesday evening. The private home was packed, electric atmosphere - nothing like the severely botched chaos of the 2020 Iowa caucuses, that's for sure!
My only trips to Chicago had been as part of my father's coverage (he worked as sportswriter for the Des Moines Register, 41 years) of College All-Stars versus NFL champs game in August, in Soldier Field, and an earlier visit where we (three brothers including myself) were greatly impressed by the German U-Boat at the Museum of Science and Industry, etc.
Ended up reading the Walker Report when that came out.
* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being - I positively exhort everyone! including of course, you - that is, anyone who has any inclination at all to read novels - to read this one. I also used a trial subscription to scribd dot com, to download a PDF of the book , along with some others. The film is powerful, this is even better in multiple ways, as the original fiction version for even superb films so often is.
Was introduced to Eugene McCarthy at a cocktail party in 1970. As opposed to Walter Mondale who was, in person, truly magnetic, he seemed more like one of my college professors than a politician.
Thug nation. Russians do thuggery and financial theft very well. I think it was Medicare they ripped off in California and an array of cyberattacks, one in the last few days. Of course, the Chinese are good at that as well. And speaking of the Chinese, wonder what Xi is thinking about his new best friend about now, flying away to his hideout as this all starts to rattle and the earth starts shaking.
What's sobering is that a "little bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur" could rise to such a position of world-shaking power. It's also sobering that a rich grifter with delusions of grandeur and no qualifications to speak of could be elected president of a country with world-shaking power, but there you are. These days I'm not rhapsodizing about the wonders of democracy, but OTOH I've always been somewhat skeptical about the wisdom of "we the people."
Only common sense to be wary of the "mob mentality," exploited with such relentless, shameless skill by the sordid Trump and his cohorts.
Somewhere in the middle ground between direct democracy and its tendency to revert to the local, lowest common denominator, and a privileged elite running everything important, there's plenty of room!
The bigger lesson is that suppressing a population while increasing hardships is a very bad formula. Add to that, outright corruption by those holding power (I won’t call them “leaders”--they’re more like goons) yields the kind of indignation that will incite unrest. Tyranny is a really bad idea. Let the billionaires beware: Money will get you just so far . . .
No lie! My recollections of the years between 1970 and 1972 was that the war was winding down, and nobody wanted to be the last man to die in Vietnam. Likewise, our erstwhile enemies were biding their time while the arm wrestling match was going on at the peace talks in Geneva.
Things got hot and heavy at Christmas time in 1972, when President Nixon acted out his frustration over Vietnamese intransigence sent streams of B-52 bombers over Hanoi, and those airplanes carried a lot of bombs. Nixon made his point, and the last troops left during the following year. By then we had a hollowed out, unmotivated army whose men regarded the war as a tragic waste. Drug-ridden and insubordinate, they required a complete rebuilding. 'Hollowed out' was the expression.
In January 1973, the United States Army became all volunteer, but picking up the pieces of the previous decade took a long time, and at great cost.
Friends I have that fought in Nam were never the same again. They were also mistreated upon returning home...those who did return. War sucks no matter where.
Well, that went from zero to 60 and back to zero pretty quickly. Could this have been a big dog and pony show from the beginning? Putin looking for a convoluted excuse to get out of Ukraine? This whole thing smells bad. You don't threaten to march on Moscow and get forgiven just like that. Reminded me of a bad 70s war movie with Karl Malden and Yul Brenner.
Lucian, of course you aren't exactly in their heads but I can't help thinking when Prigozhin came in and saw the pathetic true state of Russian military and preparedness, this sounds like a good time for a coup. What are your thoughts on that? There was footage around this morning of his troops in -Don and they look like they know very well how to do this.
While I participated in the moratorium in DC, my now husband was fighting in Vietnam. We met 53 years ago and he keeps fighting the PTSD the war left him with. The tragedies of wars is that one trains for combat but actually participating in it, having your buddies shot up, seeing dead bodies of the enemy, does something to the psyche. The soldiers try to move ahead, try to be “normal”. There are glimpses of it but in my husband’s case, he distrusts the government and the VA. Can hardly blame him.
i tell my friends who were protesting back then that they might have saved my life.
We tried very hard
Those times. Worked at Dell publishing when Abby Hoffman was visiting about Steal This Book. Went to the lobby to take a look at him and remembered thinking he was much smaller than I thought he’d be. And much less charismatic than Studs Terkel, who I frankly worshipped. Never met Kurt Vonnegut but his editor called me pussycat much to the outrage of my neighbor in the cubicle next to mine.
I got to know too many young soldiers living off base with T. who were more wounded than my high school boyfriend who’d been shot up and returned to his parents broken. When they drank and that was all we did they’d talk about fragging new lieutenants who were so hung ho they knew they’d be killed following them. Unrepentant. They wanted to live and come home, where they screamed at night in our trailer camp while they dreamed they were back on helicopters or on patrol.
Funny, I knew both Abby and Studs. (Abby from Brandeis; Studs from Chicago, where I was raised.) Before his politicization, Abby *was* quite charming, ... but I dare say more impactful as the wild man in the service of peace and justice.
Will defer to you. A brief impression while feeling intensely about the war. New wife to a drafted soldier. Sister to a conscientious objector.
Mr. Terkel was on another level. He’d sit in an office not 10 feet from me talking with his PR guy and I furiously eavesdropped. One of my hero’s.
Irreplaceable, Studs Terkel. Thanks for the heartfelt, moving account of some of the war back home as you experienced it, as well.
Your feelings are entirely understandable -- and not misplaced. Chicago media people had great fondness for Studs, as you did ... and he was devoted to his wife, Ida. He was wicked smart, totally unassuming, and dressed like a handyman. Hoover tried to tag him a Communist and he was blacklisted ... but so many good people were.
Truth. Maybe because my dad had been a union organizer and arrested by Metaxa regime in Greece. A political prisoner who despite achieving wealth later in life asked to be buried in his engineers uniform. Terkel was familiar to me in his behavior and his clothes and I’d read everything he’d written.
Interesting about people who were labor organizers. Walter Reuther's counsel gave up offers to join white shoe law firms to stay with the UAW, and one of the Singer Sewing Machine heirs was an organizer before becoming a family therapist.
Idealists at their core. (As opposed to the unions leaders I met working in NYC at Cornell university in 70s with Betty Goetz Lall.) (no comment on them)
Weird stuff going on with lukashenko of Belarus negotiating and the Wagner Group turning around.
Too early to rely on possibly very slanted accounts. Wait until at least tomorrow, I am absolutely serious! The stakes are so high, wait awhile to see how much truth there is in that.
Putin has relied on a tightly controlled media within his perceived sphere of influence for a bit more that several decades as dictator, and before that, in other roles, so these early accounts may be highly misleading, at least until tomorrow, Sunday, even Monday!
Wow, I have a LOT of other things going on around here this afternoon, did not refer to any other sources with up-to-date coverage, and most of all, did not realize you left out the crucial fact that PRIGOZHIN himself had stated he was ordering a halt "to avoid bloodshed," etc. Makes all the difference.
"Russia rebellion live updates: Mercenary chief halts Moscow advance; Kremlin says criminal case will be dropped Putin had accused mercenary Prigozhin of “treason” and vowed to crush the growing armed rebellion. The Kremlin says Prigozhin will now go to Belarus and Wagner soldiers would not be prosecuted."
So at least FOR NOW, Prigozhin and the Wagner Group is...doing what, exactly? Trusting Putin? OK, maybe, we'll see how that works out. "Charges dropped," that sounds temporary, until the next time Wagner Group/Prigozhin refuses to take orders directly from the Russian military, is that what's happening?
But at least it is clear enough that their is some kind of serious negotiation happening, and no immediate march on the Kremlin or whatever.
I never knew this about Vietnam. I'd love to see some elaboration in a future article. "It was commonplace after the My Lai massacre in 1968 for troops to go out on patrols and simply not engage with enemy forces if they encountered them. "
My late gentleman caller was a veteran of Vietnam -- flew a Medivac -- two tours of duty, two Silver Stars, etc. Later he was an officer and he told me, frankly, that any honest officer in Vietnam knew that the war was unwinnable. I had observed once, after one of his stories (he didn't inflict them on me very often) that it seemed to me that the country belonged to the US Army during the day and to the VietCong at night. "You got it," he replied. "What an impossible situation for the civilians -- who could they trust?" I asked. "Nobody. That's part of what made it impossible."
He decided early on, to make it his job to keep his guys out of trouble or combat, so they could go home in one piece. He was also very realistic about drug use. "They'd have these 'surprise inspections'," he told me. "So I'd go around to the tents and say 'guys, there's going to be a surprise inspection around 3pm -- if you've got anything you don't want the brass to see, hide it now."
I miss him.
I hope there were many like him
Not nearly enough.
This makes be grateful - and reverent. Leaders took care of their men. Lesser men wasted theirs.
I guess that was a lesson learned from previous wars. On November 11th, 1918, with the Armastice due to take effect in hours, General Pershing ordered Anericam troops to attack and got 2000 killed just as the war came to an end. So hell yeah. Disobey.
T.s grandfather, who was with an Ohio regiment, was struck by a shell fragments the day before the official end. Pieces of them were still oozing from the wound in the 1950s. Still he was proud of his service and active in VFW until the end of his life.
Bless you, Lucian! I was a college freshman in the fall of '69. Participated in the October Moratorium march. I was heavily involved in housing and feeding out-of-town demonstrators at my college (Georgetown U. -- now there's a story!) and so couldn't go to the November 13–14 procession by the White House in which each marcher deposited the name of a someone killed in the war into coffins set up for the purpose, but I was a marshal (as peacekeepers were called then) at the Nov. 15 march on Washington. I still remember the visceral thrill of watching all those people pouring down Pennsylvania Ave.
I wonder a lot about how the Russians are reacting now. They don't have the democratic traditions that we had then, and even with those democratic traditions it took a *long* time for USians to realize what was happening. I do remember how important it was to me as a young antiwar activist to hear from returning servicemen (and they were all men) about what they'd been up against in Vietnam (and Laos, and Cambodia). The Russian news media may be tightly controlled, but the voices of those returning from Ukraine cannot be so easily silenced.
I was a sophomore at Mount Holyoke m. I was a Marshall during the November Moratorium on the Potomac Bridge, wearing the name of our neighbor and paperboy, KIA in friendly fire.
I was a senior in high school that fall, a large contingent of us went over from Des Moines Roosevelt to Drake University and participated in the October Moratorium there.
By the next autumn at Macalester ( my first year and on to the looming Nixon resignation in 1974)) the antiwar fervor and connected events were almost constant.
Everything hooked up with local peace activists working against Honeywell's production of "cluster bombs" and other munitions,* as well as the U. of Minnesota and many other local colleges.
www.startribune.com/peace-activist-marv-davidov-dies/137350833/
He was nationally known for demonstrations against Honeywell, which made cluster bombs used in Vietnam.
By Randy Furst Star Tribune JANUARY 16, 2012 — 11:26PM
In 2004, about 90 Minnesota Immigrant Worker Freedom Riders joined 18 other buses from other states and traveled across America to bring awareness to issues they face. Freedom Rider Marv Davidov told his story in between stops on the Freedom Ride. Davidov died Saturday, January 14, 2012, at age 80.
Marv Davidov, an iconic figure in the Minnesota peace movement who founded and led the Honeywell Project in a decades-long campaign to halt the production of anti-personnel weapons by the Honeywell Corp., died Saturday afternoon at Walker United Health Care Center in Minneapolis.
Davidov, who also was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and beyond, was 80, and had suffered from a number of health problems.
A chain smoker until recent years, he was an immediately recognizable figure at protests, with his large mustache, blue skipper's cap, almost always wearing a T-shirt with a protest slogan on it.
In 1983, nearly 600 protesters were arrested outside Honeywell's Minneapolis headquarters in a civil disobedience action, the type of demonstration that Davidov and his allies had organized so many times that it was honed to a fine art.
For years during the Vietnam War era, Davidov carried around a deactivated cluster bomb, the size of a softball, to show anyone who would listen that Honeywell was creating weapons being used by the U.S. military. He said the weapons indiscriminately killed innocent civilians in Southeast Asia.
Honeywell eventually spun off its defense contract work to Alliant Techsystems.
Davidov estimated that he was arrested 40 or 50 times, mainly in antiwar and civil rights demonstrations.
He was one of the original Freedom Riders, young people who rode on buses through the South in 1961 to desegregate bus transportation and terminals.
He and five other white youths from the Twin Cities were arrested at a blacks-only lunch counter in a Greyhound bus station in Jackson, Miss., when they refused to comply with police orders to move on.
In a hospital room interview Thursday, Davidov, although sedated with pain medication for a worsening circulatory problem, spoke with animation about being locked up for 40 days with other civil rights demonstrators at a Mississippi prison farm. Black and white protesters were incarcerated together, he said.
"We were the first group of integrated prisoners in Mississippi state prison history," Davidov said with a smile.
'An inspiration to many'
In an autobiography he wrote with Carol Masters, he described himself as a "nonviolent revolutionary."
One of Davidov's admirers was Daniel Ellsberg, the White House consultant who leaked the Pentagon Papers about U.S. military decision-making in Vietnam to the media. Ellsberg, who later became a peace activist, helped raise money for the Honeywell Project at Davidov's invitation.
"Thanks to people like him, we're still hanging on as a species," Ellsberg said. "His nonviolence and his indefatigability and energy are an inspiration to many people."He's lived a good life, and I told him so" when he spoke to Davidov by phone on Friday, Ellsberg said.
Last week, as Davidov's medical condition worsened, a number of peace activist friends kept a hospital vigil. "It's one of those great things that happens," Davidov said. "This kind of solidarity and love and support that people give one another."
John LaForge, an antiwar activist friend, had brought a small refrigerator to his room with a bumper sticker on it that read, "No more war."
Bill Tilton, a St. Paul attorney, said he first met Davidov in 1969 at a sit-in at the University of Minnesota in support of the African American Action Committee, which was demanding more scholarships for blacks.
"Marv is one of my heroes," Tilton said. "He never took his eye off the ball of advocating for the rights of the underprivileged and accountability of government."
For years Davidov taught a class on "active nonviolence" at the University of St. Thomas. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, who taught the class with him, said, "There was a warmth that came across when he related to students, a deeply respectful interaction in which Marv would share parts of his life story that awakened within students a possibility that they too could impact society."
Barbara Mishler said she got to know Davidov when she took a class of his at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in south Minneapolis 30 years ago.
"When I first met him, I was so terrified of nuclear war," she recalls. "He said, 'Settle down and read and inform yourself, before you hit the streets.' "
Nothing to say? Hardly
Lying in bed, barely able to sit up on Thursday, Davidov welcomed a reporter.
Asked if he had any thoughts that he'd like to pass on to young people, Davidov thought for a moment, smiled and said, "I've been waiting for this interview my entire life, and now I've got nothing to say."
But as anyone who has ever known Davidov knows, he was never really at a loss for words, including on Thursday.
On the current presidential election campaign: "It reminds me of one of the books that Paul Goodman wrote in the 1950s -- 'Growing Up Absurd.' Once again the needs of the people who have most everything are satisfied first."
On this election year: "Find the people in your community who are probing reality and talking about how to fundamentally change it and work at a local level on these problems, creating peace, freedom and justice."
On the Occupy protests against Wall Street: "I thought it was great. The people were locating what their needs were and going out in the streets without compromise."
On the kind of memorial gathering he'd like: "I want people to remember and tell funny stories about me and the struggle, and try to create a deeper, more profound movement and build the numbers."
We attended Nixon's inauguration and held protests in a carnival atmosphere. That was Abby Hoffman's hallmark, non-violent silliness with hard-core politics. I dressed in a white dress and wore a Lieutenant Callie mask to place blame on the Commander in Chief, Nixon and not on the rank and file. Thousands of us wore those masks to protest blaming one soldier when it was official policy that fueled the War in Vietnam (which the government called a "conflict"), and the massacres.
I was trained as a medic and assisted with tear gas victims, and first aid. In other demonstrations we camped out in tents at the Lincoln Memorial Park. We assisted with tear gas victims, and others administered first aid. We had a mock seance lead by Allan Ginsberg and chanted: "Out demon, Out!" at the Pentagon!
Russia's Pussy Riot has the same flavor, but the level of satire was something that Russians just didn't understand. Since they first began performing their protest performances in a Moscow Church in 2011, members of the group have been arrested and jailed for "offending against religious feelings".
The have recently released a film called "Putin's Ashes" which calls for the violent removal of the leader whose policies are deadly and disrespectful to all, and particularly to women!
I was essentially 'glued to the television' and some print coverage before, during and after the police riot, "Battle of the Hilton" the preamble of demos in Grant Park and Lincoln Park, and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia* days later.
Being too young to vote, only 15 years old in March 1968, I accompanied my mother to the local caucus site near 42nd and University, to support Senator Eugene McCarthy, one snowy Tuesday evening. The private home was packed, electric atmosphere - nothing like the severely botched chaos of the 2020 Iowa caucuses, that's for sure!
My only trips to Chicago had been as part of my father's coverage (he worked as sportswriter for the Des Moines Register, 41 years) of College All-Stars versus NFL champs game in August, in Soldier Field, and an earlier visit where we (three brothers including myself) were greatly impressed by the German U-Boat at the Museum of Science and Industry, etc.
Ended up reading the Walker Report when that came out.
todayinclh.com/?event=walker-report-finds-police-riot-at-democratic-party-convention
* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being - I positively exhort everyone! including of course, you - that is, anyone who has any inclination at all to read novels - to read this one. I also used a trial subscription to scribd dot com, to download a PDF of the book , along with some others. The film is powerful, this is even better in multiple ways, as the original fiction version for even superb films so often is.
Was introduced to Eugene McCarthy at a cocktail party in 1970. As opposed to Walter Mondale who was, in person, truly magnetic, he seemed more like one of my college professors than a politician.
I only met VP Mondale once very briefly, will save that for another post.
Putin the lessor is about to have his lease expire. Peter and Catherine and Stalin he aint.
He is a little bureaucrat with delusions of grander. A malignant small insect soon to be trampled in a kafkaesque nightmare.
He seems to be more suited to one-off retribution hits on enemies and whomever he chooses, not for setting a real take-a-country-over war.
Mobster
Thug nation. Russians do thuggery and financial theft very well. I think it was Medicare they ripped off in California and an array of cyberattacks, one in the last few days. Of course, the Chinese are good at that as well. And speaking of the Chinese, wonder what Xi is thinking about his new best friend about now, flying away to his hideout as this all starts to rattle and the earth starts shaking.
Lots of deep thinking going on. Including the gulf states.
What's sobering is that a "little bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur" could rise to such a position of world-shaking power. It's also sobering that a rich grifter with delusions of grandeur and no qualifications to speak of could be elected president of a country with world-shaking power, but there you are. These days I'm not rhapsodizing about the wonders of democracy, but OTOH I've always been somewhat skeptical about the wisdom of "we the people."
Only common sense to be wary of the "mob mentality," exploited with such relentless, shameless skill by the sordid Trump and his cohorts.
Somewhere in the middle ground between direct democracy and its tendency to revert to the local, lowest common denominator, and a privileged elite running everything important, there's plenty of room!
This story is fast-moving and very Russian. Too early for conclusions.
The bigger lesson is that suppressing a population while increasing hardships is a very bad formula. Add to that, outright corruption by those holding power (I won’t call them “leaders”--they’re more like goons) yields the kind of indignation that will incite unrest. Tyranny is a really bad idea. Let the billionaires beware: Money will get you just so far . . .
No lie! My recollections of the years between 1970 and 1972 was that the war was winding down, and nobody wanted to be the last man to die in Vietnam. Likewise, our erstwhile enemies were biding their time while the arm wrestling match was going on at the peace talks in Geneva.
Things got hot and heavy at Christmas time in 1972, when President Nixon acted out his frustration over Vietnamese intransigence sent streams of B-52 bombers over Hanoi, and those airplanes carried a lot of bombs. Nixon made his point, and the last troops left during the following year. By then we had a hollowed out, unmotivated army whose men regarded the war as a tragic waste. Drug-ridden and insubordinate, they required a complete rebuilding. 'Hollowed out' was the expression.
In January 1973, the United States Army became all volunteer, but picking up the pieces of the previous decade took a long time, and at great cost.
Right. There was no other word for dead but “wasted”. For years.
Friends I have that fought in Nam were never the same again. They were also mistreated upon returning home...those who did return. War sucks no matter where.
My b-i-l, a Vietnam vet, says its 1968 in Moscow.. Humans of a certain kind never seem to learn.
Well, that went from zero to 60 and back to zero pretty quickly. Could this have been a big dog and pony show from the beginning? Putin looking for a convoluted excuse to get out of Ukraine? This whole thing smells bad. You don't threaten to march on Moscow and get forgiven just like that. Reminded me of a bad 70s war movie with Karl Malden and Yul Brenner.
Lucian, of course you aren't exactly in their heads but I can't help thinking when Prigozhin came in and saw the pathetic true state of Russian military and preparedness, this sounds like a good time for a coup. What are your thoughts on that? There was footage around this morning of his troops in -Don and they look like they know very well how to do this.
Thanks. Only assumed that moral waivers existed from (first person) anecdotes. Unsurprised but somehow naively startled to see it was codified.
Fascinating to wonder just how Wagner veterans would be integrated into Russian armed forces - integration of brown shirts into SA as model perhaps
While I participated in the moratorium in DC, my now husband was fighting in Vietnam. We met 53 years ago and he keeps fighting the PTSD the war left him with. The tragedies of wars is that one trains for combat but actually participating in it, having your buddies shot up, seeing dead bodies of the enemy, does something to the psyche. The soldiers try to move ahead, try to be “normal”. There are glimpses of it but in my husband’s case, he distrusts the government and the VA. Can hardly blame him.
I can’t blame him