Democratic Narrative, History, and Memory

Kent State Comes to Canada

30 democratic narrative, history, and memory Kent State Comes to Canada Internationalizing the Antiwar Movement Christopher Powell TheVietnamWarandthemovementthataroseinoppositiontoithavebeenframed asAmericanphenomena.Americanmendonneduniformsandweaponsandfought America’swarinSoutheastAsia,whilebackhomeanincreasingnumberof Americans protested the war. That the Vietnamese played significant roles on both sides of the war is secondary to the narrative. That troops from Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand fought alongside U.S. troops, thoughinsignificantlysmallernumbers,isalmostforgottenentirely.1 Sotooarethe international aspects of the antiwar movement. With the exception of a growing body of literature concerning the anti–Vietnam War movement in Australia, opposition to the war has been perceived as a purely national phenomenon, confined withinthebordersof theUnitedStates.Infact,however,theantiwarmovementwas internationalinscope,withdemonstrationsagainstthewartakingplacethroughout Europe, Latin America, the Antipodes, and even parts of Asia and Africa. How the movement manifested in Canada in response to the May 1970 shootings at Kent State University stands as a case in point. In the United States, the antiwar movement developed quietly during the early 1960s, and grew steadily over the latter half of the decade, following the introduction of U.S. combat troops in 1965. Development of the movement in Canada not only paralleled that in the United States from early on but was inextricably linked toprotestsinthatcountry.InCanada,antiwarprotestreacheditsclimax—interms of frequency of protests, confrontations with police forces, and regional representation , if not always in terms of numbers of participants—in the demonstrations that followed the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the shootings at Kent State University . Antiwar activism in Canada in May 1970 demonstrates both the existence 30 Internationalizing the Antiwar Movement 31 of a national antiwar movement there and its links to a much larger international movement that has largely been overlooked. A vast body of literature exists concerning the antiwar movement in the United States, but only Fred Halstead’s 1978 Out Now touches on the movement’s international dimensions. Halstead’s primary argument—the most forceful of the positionstakenabouttheantiwarmovement—assertsthatalongwiththeeffortsof the Vietnamese themselves, it was protest at home that ended the war.2 Halstead’s workisuniqueinotherwaysaswell.Unlikemostof thosewritingabouttheantiwar movement, Halstead was not an academic but a participant-observer who was the first to offer a full-length account of the antiwar movement. He earned his credentials in the labor movement and as a leader within the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), and his Marxist ideology undoubtedly informed his internationalist approach to the antiwar movement.3 According to Halstead, the Madison-based National Coordinating Committee toEndtheWarinVietnamandtheBerkeley-basedVietnamDayCommitteecoordinated the first International Days of Protest to End the War in Vietnam in October 1965.InadditiontoprotestsinsixtycitiesacrosstheUnitedStatesinvolving100,000 citizens, demonstrations took place in twelve European cities and in Canada, Australia , Mexico, and Chile.4 The second International Days of Protest in March 1966 drew twice as many people: within the United States it involved fifty thousand in New York, seven thousand in San Francisco, and significant demonstrations in one hundred other cities, while internationally, protests took place in one-third of the world’s countries and on every continent.5 Thus, even before historians in North America began writing of the antiwar movement, Halstead had made clear that it wasaninternationalphenomenon.DespiteHalstead’slackof scholarlycredentials, Out Now is a recognized pillar of the literature concerning the antiwar movement. All North American scholarly works dealing with the antiwar movement before andafterthepublicationof OutNowarelimitedtohowthemovementmanifestedin the United States; moreover, they agree on its impact in shaping U.S. foreign policy, asserting that opposition to the war limited successive administrations in their ability to execute the war effort. Kirkpatrick Sale’s 1973 SDS, a study of the new left organizationStudentsforaDemocraticSociety,isoneof theearliestof theseworks. Sale argues that the SDS—and by extension the antiwar movement—did much to shapepublicopinionagainstthewar,andfurther,thattheSDSrevivedanAmerican left and transformed political possibilities.6 Sale failed to recognize, though, that the new left in the United States was part of a much larger, internationally revived movement.EventsinParis,Prague,MexicoCity,andCanadaindicatethatachanged and resurgent left was a worldwide phenomenon.7 The SDS and its Canadian counterparts , first the Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and 32 democratic narrative, history, and memory then its successor organization, the Student Union for Peace Action (SUPA), went so far as to exchange representatives on each other’s governing bodies.8 In addition, it was not uncommon for members of the SDS to travel to Canada to conduct trainingsessions .OneexampleinvolvedCarlOglesby,onceaKentStatestudent.During the weekend of May 1, 1965, the future SDS president met with SUPA members in Toronto for discussions on Vietnam and the importance of nonviolence. Oglesby...