Reply #21: NO! - 60s protests helped to CHANGE national sentiments [View All]

[eowyn_of_rohan]

They began at the grassroots level, college campuses picked them up, crowds got larger and larger, cops started showing up, began tear-gassing, beating, and in the case of Kent State Ohio, SHOOTING and killing demonstrators.

These college protests got very intense after people stopped trusting the cops (aka pigs). Protests would sometimes just sort of erupt. As a kid, I got caught up in one while riding the city bus home from a music lesson. Some protestors had turned a Volkswagon over in the street, cops were there teargassing, and my eyes were burning from it inside the bus, which was stuck in the middle of all this. Cool, I thought!

The students and hippies really did think of this as a revolution, and it was. Without much mainstream support, the musicians of our generation were our messengers or bards. Listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's "Four Dead in Ohio", or Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers of America" (which still gives me goosebumps), just for a couple examples. Somewhere in the late 60s, Walter Cronkite was the first MSM newscaster on a national level to speak out against the war, and became sort of a hero of the protestors for it (Kind of like Olbermann is now).

So, are you ready to do it again?! Boy I am getting charged up just writing this!