Woke, Fifty Years On

Up to a certain point, I spent most of my college freshman year believing that I'd gone to the wrong place. Last week, fifty years ago (I would have written this last week, but my laptop was in for repairs), that changed abruptly.

I remember it well. My roommate, Scott Langer, came in and said that, just across the way at the Lawrence University Chapel, a politically-charged atmosphere was raging. Speeches were taking place on the chapel steps. Political awareness was reaching a fever pitch.

That was true all over the country as well. It was May 5th, 1970. The day before, four students had been gunned down by National Guardsmen at Kent State, in Ohio. It was a typically cool spring day, partly cloudy.

They, and hundreds of other students, had been protesting President Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, which threatened to expand the Vietnam War even though he had promised to wind it down. He said that Cambodia was a place for "sanctuaries" for Communist North Vietnamese troops, and the invasion had to take place to clean them out. The results were predictable: Cambodia, too, eventually fell to Communist forces.

Little did we know, though we discovered it not much later, that bombing of Cambodia had been happening since the year before. Nixon's deception was deep and abiding.

I remember saying to Scott that at a certain point, citizens had to do what was right and speak out against this rotten war, which had now entered its sixth year and was going nowhere. I had supported President Johnson's gradual escalation from my vantage point of Grafton, Wisconsin, because my world was narrow and nowhere near as informed as others had been. But I had been to college for nearly a full year now, and my perspective had changed with more interaction, more information and more chances to absorb them.

It was time to act, or at least tune into those who were acting. I didn't know what would transpire when I grabbed my jacket and headed to the chapel, next door to my dorm of Plantz Hall. I must say I rather surprised myself that day.

I met my girlfriend, her best friend and her boyfriend, a fellow frat brother (they got married eventually), at the demonstration. Political activists were voicing their objections to Nixon's expansion of the war. Suddenly, they proposed that we march right on down the main street of Appleton, Wisconsin, College Avenue, and let people know how we were feeling.

I never hesitated. It was about two in the afternoon, as I recall. Yes, yes, it was time to act, time to get involved, time to be all-in. Nobody flinched. Off we went.

College Avenue widened into four lanes, and we took up the inside two of them. Traffic slowed down, but could pass us in either direction; we weren't going to halt traffic for our concerns, which I think, looking back, could have gotten us thrown in jail. As it was, I thought we'd be in one for sure eventually.

We plunked ourselves down at the intersection of College and Oneida, as central an intersection as there could be. We changed slogans and sang songs. I don't recall exactly how long we were there, but it had to be half an hour at least. We allowed traffic to turn right and detour itself; again, probably why we weren't immediately thrown in jail.

There was some violence. Some of the students, a small number, decided to break some windows. The vast majority of us had nothing to do with them; that wasn't our goal. We needed to make a statement, though, and that we did.

That began a week of intense activism. Eventually, the faculty voted that classes were optional that week so that students who became politically charged could engage in campus-wide activities to raise awareness about the war and the need to stop it. That took place after a candlelight procession that evening, and a student convocation in the chapel the next day.

Of my three classes (we had trimesters with three classes required for each), only one met that week. It was in English, and I attended; no need to make that professor upset. Besides, I liked him, and I liked the subject: It was an English literature course that I had no trouble getting into. The philosophy professor who taught Logic was a radical, and there was no way we would have his classes. The third course was with a sociology professor who had come in from St. Norbert to teach a mass media-connected course. He was really funny and a great lecturer. He wasn't coming in, though, to this very charged atmosphere.

That freed me up to be politically active and a bit daring. I participated in an effort to hold up the draft office by coming in and asking them questions: I always thought that somewhere in the FBI files, my name is still there.

But probably the part of the week that had the biggest impression upon me was something I would continue to do for decades: Canvass the Appleton community to get people to sign a telegram to send to Nixon to stop the invasion. Of course, it had little effect on anything, in the end; the war would slog on with three more years of active American participation. But that wasn't the point back then. We thought that if we could make any difference, at least we ought to try.

We had heard stories about how conservative Appleton was, so even though we were dressed well--I actually had a sport coat on--I wondered how much of a risk I was taking. I remember being pretty nervous at first. But as I got into the day, I found that people were willingly conversant--my approach was respectful, so that may have had something to do with it--and many signed the telegram. Just one visit was unfriendly; a woman who said she had two sons in Vietnam. She didn't keep the door open long enough for me to tell her that I was trying to get them home so she could see them again. I hope she did.

But it was successful, in that I collected a lot of signatures and involved myself in surprisingly deep conversations. People really were bothered by the invasion, and wanted to know more. I felt proud at the end of the day.

I walked away from that experience owning a new attitude: one in which I was, and would be, politicized permanently. I left nothing on the table that week; I did what I could. So did many others.

It informed my eventual declaration of political science as a major, with American politics as an emphasis. It made me look for later opportunities to get involved. It gave me momentum to be a social studies teacher. And it drove my activism within my teachers' union, all the way to Washington, DC itself for six years.

I was no longer just a jock. I was an activist. I wasn't just a college student anymore; I was a citizen.
This blog is a way of extending it.

Fifty years on, we are now in the grip of another awful president who leverages his power cruelly and with little care for others. I'm going to stay woke and stay involved. I'm not sure what kind of a country we actually have left, but I'm going to help to save it for my nieces and nephews. Onward.

Be well. Be careful. With a little luck, I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark