A Chorus of Defiance
When news of the end of the Vietnam War arrived fifty years ago, immortalized in images of U.S. helicopters lifting off from the roofs of Saigon, many who had worked for years to end the carnage gathered spontaneously in public places. I had joined the movement in 1968 as an active-duty soldier, and spent my time in the army organizing protests and circulating petitions and underground newspapers among fellow GIs. In Washington, D.C., that day, hundreds of us—veterans, draft resisters, students, community activists—streamed into Lafayette Square in front of the White House, the park where the first protest against the war had occurred a decade earlier. There was no program or speech making. People just wandered about, in small groups or alone, speaking softly, averting eyes, holding back tears, in a collective mood of grief over the millions who had died but also relief that the slaughter, at last, was over. We hoped that our collective struggles had made a difference in ending a war that never should have been fought.
Fifty years later, the consensus is firm: we had. Over the years, scholars have documented the many influences of peace protest in altering U.S. policy. As Carolyn Eisenberg affirms in her recent history, Fire and Rain, “Waves of mass demonstrations, accompanied by growing resistance inside the military, ongoing electoral activity, and lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill imposed significant constraints on presidential decision making.” Over the course of the war, as the pressure intensified, White House decisions were increasingly based on concerns about public opinion and antiwar action, writes historian Melvin Small.
Today, amid the political devastation in Washington, examining how peace protesters confronted the U.S. war machine holds vital lessons. What can we learn from the movement of fifty years ago for the present challenge: building a national movement to counter Trump and save American democracy?
Building Mass Support
“The single most important influence on a civil resistance campaign’s success,” argues political scientist Erica Chenoweth, “is the scale and range of popular participation.” This includes not only organizing large national demonstrations but building grassroots networks in local communities. By that standard, the struggle against the war in Indochina—the largest, most sustained and intensive antiwar campaign in American history—was a success.
1967 was the year that the movement started to demonstrate the full extent of its power. In April Martin Luther King Jr. issued his famous “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam” before thousands of listeners at New York’s Riverside Church. Ten days later he led hundreds of thousands of peace protesters on a march to the United Nations headquarters in New York. King was excoriated for breaking with President Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam and thereby costing the civil rights movement White House support, but his firm moral indictment of the war had a powerful impact in deepening antiwar opposition, especially within religious communities. Six months later, in October, was the March on the Pentagon, one of the earliest large-scale demonstrations in Washington.
After seeing the massive press attention the March had garnered, the White House launched a media blitz of its own, claiming military success in the war. Commanding General William Westmoreland and U.S. Ambassador to Saigon Ellsworth Bunker were summoned to Washington to declare, on NBC’s Meet the Press, that victory was within sight. Events on the battlefield would soon prove them wrong. Within two months of Westmoreland and Bunker’s interview came the cataclysmic Tet Offensive, in which Vietnamese liberation forces launched a series of coordinated attacks across South Vietnam. Televised scenes of the bloodbath burst the bubble of raised expectations, and public confidence in Johnson’s conduct of the war plummeted.
Liberal opponents of the war were already setting plans in motion. Americans for Democratic Action, a group previously supportive of Johnson’s Vietnam policy, launched an audacious electoral campaign to unseat the warmaking president, working with thousands of student volunteers to support the antiwar senator Eugene McCarthy as a candidate in the Democratic Party primary in New Hampshire, the first contest to be held. The little-known challenger polled a remarkable 42 percent of the vote—an “astonishing psychological victory,” writes historian Charles DeBenedetti, that stunned Johnson and the Washington political establishment.
Like Nixon, Trump is not immune to the mounting political opposition he claims to ignore.
In March, still reeling from McCarthy’s primary performance, Johnson made two shocking announcements: one, he would not run for re-election, and two, he was ordering a partial bombing halt in Vietnam and the start of peace negotiations. Weeks later, the White House also rejected a request made by Westmoreland for 206,000 additional troops, fearful that continued escalation would cause further civil unrest and an increase in already widespread draft resistance. Though it would take several agonizing years—and two more presidents—for the United States to fully withdraw and negotiate an agreement, these events marked the beginning of the end.
No one expected then that antiwar protest and electoral action would have such dramatic results. What we know now is that each tactic could not have succeeded without the other—that it was the combination of bodies in the streets and votes in ballot boxes that delivered the one-two punch that forced Washington’s hand.
The nascent anti-Trump resistance appears to be taking the first steps toward this strategy. The enormous Hands Off protests of April 5, which saw millions of people march and rally at more than 1,300 individual events, were a dramatic display of the power of mass mobilization. Four days prior, anti-Trump organizers scored an important electoral success when the progressive Judge Susan Crawford won a Wisconsin Supreme Court election in which the White House, hoping to control the state’s future electoral outcomes, actively backed her Republican opponent (and Elon Musk attempted to literally buy the election). As activists at the national level and in local districts explore similar targeted challenges in the months and years ahead, they will need to continue to harness the energy in the streets.
“The single most important influence on a civil resistance campaign’s success,” argues political scientist Erica Chenoweth, “is the scale and range of popular participation.” This includes not only organizing large national demonstrations but building grassroots networks in local communities. By that standard, the struggle against the war in Indochina—the largest, most sustained and intensive antiwar campaign in American history—was a success.
1967 was the year that the movement started to demonstrate the full extent of its power. In April Martin Luther King Jr. issued his famous “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam” before thousands of listeners at New York’s Riverside Church. Ten days later he led hundreds of thousands of peace protesters on a march to the United Nations headquarters in New York. King was excoriated for breaking with President Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam and thereby costing the civil rights movement White House support, but his firm moral indictment of the war had a powerful impact in deepening antiwar opposition, especially within religious communities. Six months later, in October, was the March on the Pentagon, one of the earliest large-scale demonstrations in Washington.
After seeing the massive press attention the March had garnered, the White House launched a media blitz of its own, claiming military success in the war. Commanding General William Westmoreland and U.S. Ambassador to Saigon Ellsworth Bunker were summoned to Washington to declare, on NBC’s Meet the Press, that victory was within sight. Events on the battlefield would soon prove them wrong. Within two months of Westmoreland and Bunker’s interview came the cataclysmic Tet Offensive, in which Vietnamese liberation forces launched a series of coordinated attacks across South Vietnam. Televised scenes of the bloodbath burst the bubble of raised expectations, and public confidence in Johnson’s conduct of the war plummeted.
Liberal opponents of the war were already setting plans in motion. Americans for Democratic Action, a group previously supportive of Johnson’s Vietnam policy, launched an audacious electoral campaign to unseat the warmaking president, working with thousands of student volunteers to support the antiwar senator Eugene McCarthy as a candidate in the Democratic Party primary in New Hampshire, the first contest to be held. The little-known challenger polled a remarkable 42 percent of the vote—an “astonishing psychological victory,” writes historian Charles DeBenedetti, that stunned Johnson and the Washington political establishment.
In March, still reeling from McCarthy’s primary performance, Johnson made two shocking announcements: one, he would not run for re-election, and two, he was ordering a partial bombing halt in Vietnam and the start of peace negotiations. Weeks later, the White House also rejected a request made by Westmoreland for 206,000 additional troops, fearful that continued escalation would cause further civil unrest and an increase in already widespread draft resistance. Though it would take several agonizing years—and two more presidents—for the United States to fully withdraw and negotiate an agreement, these events marked the beginning of the end.
No one expected then that antiwar protest and electoral action would have such dramatic results. What we know now is that each tactic could not have succeeded without the other—that it was the combination of bodies in the streets and votes in ballot boxes that delivered the one-two punch that forced Washington’s hand.
The nascent anti-Trump resistance appears to be taking the first steps toward this strategy. The enormous Hands Off protests of April 5, which saw millions of people march and rally at more than 1,300 individual events, were a dramatic display of the power of mass mobilization. Four days prior, anti-Trump organizers scored an important electoral success when the progressive Judge Susan Crawford won a Wisconsin Supreme Court election in which the White House, hoping to control the state’s future electoral outcomes, actively backed her Republican opponent (and Elon Musk attempted to literally buy the election). As activists at the national level and in local districts explore similar targeted challenges in the months and years ahead, they will need to continue to harness the energy in the streets.
Challenging the Madman
President Richard Nixon came into office with a promise to end the war, but once taking power he instead chose to continue the fighting—and in many ways, ratcheted it up. Nixon planned to threaten massive military escalation if Hanoi did not accept U.S. terms in the negotiations, a concept he described to his senior aide H. R. Haldeman as the “madman theory” of diplomacy. To impress the Vietnamese and their Soviet supporters of his seriousness, Nixon increased the operational readiness of U.S. nuclear forces and placed nuclear-armed B-52 bombers on alert status.
The peace movement responded to Nixon with a massive wave of protest, culminating in the historic Vietnam Moratorium of October 1969, which called for people to pause business as usual and engage in local action for peace—a concept both innovative and extremely popular. As soon as it was created, the idea caught on like wildfire, winning the endorsement of trade unions and professional associations, prominent intellectuals and artists, and former officials and members of Congress. On the day of the Moratorium, an estimated two million Americans participated in local activities, ranging from a gathering of 100,000 people on the Boston Common to rallies and prayer vigils in hundreds of cities and towns. A month later, the organizers of the Moratorium joined with the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam to bring hundreds of thousands of marchers to the capital.
Nixon was shaken. Previously, he had declared that “under no circumstances will I be affected whatever” by protest. But now, just months into his presidency, the antiwar movement had applied so much pressure he was forced to change policy. As he later admitted in his memoir, “Although publicly I continued to ignore the raging antiwar controversy, I had to face the fact that it had probably destroyed the credibility of my ultimatum to Hanoi.”
Like Nixon, Trump is not immune to mounting political opposition from the “radical left lunatics” he claims to ignore. In the first months of his presidency, after facing protests and court challenges, the White House backed off on some of its initial measures, halting its freeze on federal grant and loan programs and cuts to the federal health program for 9/11 survivors. If confronted with persistent mass protest and political pressure, the administration will be forced to abandon still more of its agenda.
President Richard Nixon came into office with a promise to end the war, but once taking power he instead chose to continue the fighting—and in many ways, ratcheted it up. Nixon planned to threaten massive military escalation if Hanoi did not accept U.S. terms in the negotiations, a concept he described to his senior aide H. R. Haldeman as the “madman theory” of diplomacy. To impress the Vietnamese and their Soviet supporters of his seriousness, Nixon increased the operational readiness of U.S. nuclear forces and placed nuclear-armed B-52 bombers on alert status.
The peace movement responded to Nixon with a massive wave of protest, culminating in the historic Vietnam Moratorium of October 1969, which called for people to pause business as usual and engage in local action for peace—a concept both innovative and extremely popular. As soon as it was created, the idea caught on like wildfire, winning the endorsement of trade unions and professional associations, prominent intellectuals and artists, and former officials and members of Congress. On the day of the Moratorium, an estimated two million Americans participated in local activities, ranging from a gathering of 100,000 people on the Boston Common to rallies and prayer vigils in hundreds of cities and towns. A month later, the organizers of the Moratorium joined with the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam to bring hundreds of thousands of marchers to the capital.
Nixon was shaken. Previously, he had declared that “under no circumstances will I be affected whatever” by protest. But now, just months into his presidency, the antiwar movement had applied so much pressure he was forced to change policy. As he later admitted in his memoir, “Although publicly I continued to ignore the raging antiwar controversy, I had to face the fact that it had probably destroyed the credibility of my ultimatum to Hanoi.”
Like Nixon, Trump is not immune to mounting political opposition from the “radical left lunatics” he claims to ignore. In the first months of his presidency, after facing protests and court challenges, the White House backed off on some of its initial measures, halting its freeze on federal grant and loan programs and cuts to the federal health program for 9/11 survivors. If confronted with persistent mass protest and political pressure, the administration will be forced to abandon still more of its agenda.
Under Siege
When Nixon sent troops to Cambodia in April 1970, campuses and communities exploded with protest. At Kent State University, Ohio National Guard troops fired into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators and killed four students, sparking an even larger convulsion of protest. Five days after the killings, more than a hundred thousand people gathered in D.C., and the national student strike soon spread to at least 883 campuses.
The furious upheaval in response to Cambodia and Kent State prompted Congress to act. In late 1970, the Senate approved the Cooper-Church Amendment, which cut off funds for further ground operations in Cambodia. The stirring of Congressional opposition was a significant factor in persuading the administration to accelerate the withdrawal of troops.
Washington, inundated with protests, had become a “besieged city,” wrote Henry Kissinger. He and other unhappy and panicked executive officials moved into the basement bomb shelter of the White House. Nixon, for his part, faced “unbearable pressures,” wrote Haldeman, “which caused him to order wiretaps and activate the plumbers [a secret break-in and dirty tricks squad] in response to antiwar moves”—events that marked the “beginning of his downward slide toward Watergate.” In the moment, few activists could have imagined their resistance was having such dramatic effects. But time showed that their actions had set the stage for Nixon’s eventual political downfall.
Strategic Allies
As mass demonstrations continued in 1971, an authoritative and influential voice joined the movement in force: the soldiers who had served. In April of that year, members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) descended on Washington, D.C., for several days of action, culminating in a gripping ceremony in which hundreds of fatigue-uniformed combat veterans, many in wheelchairs or on crutches, tossed their war medals and ribbons onto the steps of the Capitol Building.
Their dramatic performance received front-page national newspaper coverage and was a lead story on network news broadcasts, further turning public opinion against the war. Haldeman complained that media coverage of the veterans was “killing us,” and that the White House was “getting pretty well chopped up” by the press. The protests drove Nixon crazy, driving him further toward the lawless actions that led to Watergate.
VVAW’s efforts, which lasted until the war’s end, turned out to be crucial. But organizing the veterans into an effective political force did not come about overnight. For years, civilian antiwar activists had worked patiently with already-politicized veterans to create coffeehouses outside major domestic military bases, which became centers for antiwar action and culture. Civilian legal aid groups provided support for veterans who were falsely accused of planning violent acts and GI resisters like myself who were punished for speaking out against the war. None of this could have come about without the realization that widespread veterans’ support was going to be necessary to end the war.
Given the current administration’s disdain for people in the military and the deep cuts imposed on the Department of Veteran Affairs and other federal agencies, opportunities may exist for engaging the military community today. If the administration attempts to use the military for illegal purposes, we may find that veterans, once again, will need to stand beside us.
Defunding the War
As the last U.S. troops were leaving Vietnam, the Nixon administration tried to stave off defeat by providing more weapons and money to its beleaguered client regimes in Saigon and Phnom Penh. Peace activists responded with a major lobbying campaign, and mobilized pressure in the home districts of Congress members with a steady stream of telegrams, letters, and protests outside congressional offices. Bolstered by a growing number of members elected on an antiwar platform, Congress listened. In 1973, it approved landmark legislation terminating all U.S. military activity “in or over or from off the shores” of Indochina, marking the definitive end of all U.S. military operations in Southeast Asia.
The movement’s next step was to challenge White House requests for billions of dollars of additional military aid for the two faltering regimes. The lobbying campaign culminated in 1975 when President Gerald Ford requested urgent military assistance for the states to continue fighting. Graham Martin, the U.S. ambassador in Saigon, cabled Congress to urge support for the funding request, but after thousands of activists gathered in Washington for an antiwar assembly to block the aid, Congress rejected it, sealing the fate of the South Vietnamese and Cambodian governments.
The rejection of military funding, Martin later admitted in a testimony to Congress, was due to a “beautifully orchestrated” lobbying effort by the Indochina Resource Center and related peace groups. “Those individuals deserve enormous credit for a very effective performance,” he said. It was “the constancy of the drumming in day after day” and “the building of the pressure from the constituencies” that ended U.S. involvement in the war.
Coming Together
The Vietnam peace movement kept up its drumbeat for a decade before it won its final demand. Can the anti-Trump resistance muster the same kind of energy? 2025 is no 1967. Back then, the draft put the war front and center in all of our lives, affecting millions of young men forced to serve—and their families and friends—throughout the country. And even as the draft was ending, the protests continued, driven by a unifying motivation: to save lives, both American and Vietnamese, and stop the seemingly endless slaughter our government was unleashing.
Today, the breadth of the Trump administration’s depredations—and the dizzying speed at which they have come—have flung many issues onto the table all at once: cuts to essential services, the shuttering of entire government agencies, unlawful deportations of migrants and Palestinian rights activists, open defiance of the Constitution and federal courts—the list goes on.
The resistance movement that has emerged is broad, but it is also multisectoral and individualized, addressing many specific issues among many particular groups and constituencies. Black leaders spoke at the April 5 events, but the crowds were mostly white. Labor leaders took the podium, but connecting unions’ focus on workplace issues with emerging threats to their very existence remains a work in progress.
Still, there are signs that a unified opposition could bloom from out of this ground. It’s worth remembering that the massive Hands Off rallies took place just months after Trump took office. That a national protest featuring an array of groups—many of which are far from natural allies—could be organized at all is a sign that there is already real, widespread resistance. If sustained and enlarged, it could alter the current political landscape as profoundly as did its predecessors in 1967, but this will require channeling the energy the masses have unleashed into organized political action.
How to do so? First, by taking another cue from the Vietnam protesters: figuring out where best to apply the pressure. With Washington controlled by a Republican regime actively dismantling the government in front of a mostly feckless Democratic opposition, the near-term prospects for conventional lobbying at the national level are limited. The focus should instead be to build the capacity for political mobilization at the local level. Activists will be more effective if they concentrate on building grassroots networks and campaigns in local districts, which will lay the foundation for electoral and legislative action in the months and years ahead.
Their primary challenge will be harmonizing the many voices of protest into a mighty chorus of defiance. The movement has a common slogan—“Hands Off!”—but to date, no unifying agenda and strategic vision to accompany it.
As the scale of the crisis deepens, those stakes might snap into focus. Already, the White House and Republican leaders in Congress are moving to implement massive budget cuts targeting essential healthcare programs like Medicaid and Obamacare. Reduced funding for these programs would greatly impact tens of millions of people. Brought together, they would represent the largest, most diverse, political opposition in the country. If organizations focus on preserving Medicaid, VA benefits, and other health programs, they could create a true big-tent coalition—one large enough to hold the likes of working-class people, seniors, veterans, and perhaps even moderate Republicans.
The Vietnam movement had a simple set of demands: Stop the Bombing. Out Now. It succeeded because it paired the relentless drumming of antiwar protest with the savvy use of institutional politics. Today we need to employ similar tactics: constant protest nationally and locally, political engagement to influence electoral and legislative outcomes, and, to tie the two together, unifying demands that attract broad popular support. Already, a couple have emerged: Stop the Cuts. Hands Off. Can they bring together a coalition strong enough to take on the White House? Only time will tell.
[David Cortright is a Vietnam-era veteran, peace activist, and professor emeritus at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. His many books include Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War.]
Re-posted with permission of the publisher, Boston Review.
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