Member-only story
The work I have been doing the last two months helping to organize a massive March to End Fossil Fuels September 17 in NYC has brought back memories of something that happened from April 19–24, 1971 in Washington, DC.
Over the course of that week, while the war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos raged, the then-newly-formed organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, camped out on the DC Mall and each day engaged in anti-war actions that received a ton of press coverage. The culmination was an action at the US Capitol on the 23rd where 700 or more veterans threw away medals they had received for their Vietnam actions over a high fence and onto the steps of the Capitol.
Then, the next day, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took part in permitted demonstrations in Washington, DC and San Francisco. Four years later, on April 30, 1975, the US military was completely out of Vietnam. There’s little doubt in my mind that this week of creative, determined and massive action was a turning point in the decade-long effort to end that war.
Will the actions planned for the week leading up to, after and including the September 17th mass demonstration, and the September 20th United Nations “Climate Ambition Summit” which is the reason for all of this mobilizing, be ultimately seen as a key turning point in humanity’s efforts to end the era of fossil fuels and shift rapidly to wind, solar and other truly clean renewable energy sources? Only history will answer that question, but I think it is…
