Mayday: biggest arrest in US history
Forty years ago today, more than 200,000 protesters and veterans converged on the US capital to demand an end to the war in Vietnam on May 3, 1971. "The idea was to shut the city down because the war wouldn't stop. The only way to stop the war was to stop the government, and that was by putting your bodies on the road and blocking traffic," said Eddie Becker, a cameraman who covered the protests. Then President Nixon called in the military and by the end of the day more than 7,000 people had been arrested, the most arrests in any single day in American history. But protesters say they haven't seen the magnitude of protests—and the pressure brought to bear on government—since Mayday, despite America's decade-long war in Afghanistan and eight year presence in Iraq.
Forty years ago today, more than 200,000 protesters and veterans converged on the US capital to demand an end to the war in Vietnam on May 3, 1971. "The idea was to shut the city down because the war wouldn't stop. The only way to stop the war was to stop the government, and that was by putting your bodies on the road and blocking traffic," said Eddie Becker, a cameraman who covered the protests. Then President Nixon called in the military and by the end of the day more than 7,000 people had been arrested, the most arrests in any single day in American history. But protesters say they haven't seen the magnitude of protests—and the pressure brought to bear on government—since Mayday, despite America's decade-long war in Afghanistan and eight year presence in Iraq.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment