I’ve never received so many requests to write about a topic as this: The current “horrifying” campus protests in comparison to our “righteous” protests of the ’60s.  

I did survive Civil Rights protests in the early ‘60s—only once detained by the police and slugged by a baton-wielding cop—and anti-war protests featuring over-enthusiastic police and teargas in Berkeley after “we” bombed Cambodia. I emerged largely unscathed.

Before looking back, it’s important to understand some categories. These boundary lines are not fine but blurry. 

• Protest is protected speech. It’s a right and sometimes a duty. 

• Civil Disobedience is a category of protest. It’s not protected, even when peaceful, but should be tolerated and accepted as a legitimate means of witness up to a disputable point.  

• Then there’s violence, vandalism, and violent resistance. These aren’t in the category of legitimate protest.

I supported sit-ins for civil rights and anti-war protests. When, however, does a sit-in become an occupation or encampment? Is sitting on a university quad made something different when you bring in tents and send them out for pizza or claim that the university is committing a “crime against humanity” for not feeding you? (Yes, that happened at UCLA.) Is the disruption of an institution’s purpose transgressive enough to be criminal? Sometimes, the lines are unclear.

It’s both easy and tempting to look back through the rose-colored granny glasses of nostalgia at our righteous protests of the Vietnam War. However, that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. We started well enough. There were speeches, teach-ins, and marches. I remember them fondly. 

Most of us were committed to nonviolence, following the lead of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. Dr. King was challenged by more militant movements, such as the Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Similarly, the nonviolent Peace movement fell into the hands of more radical and violent factions—the Weather Underground and Students for a Democratic Society.

We initially believed in and tried to practice the teachings of Thoreau, Gandhi, and Dr. King. Our purpose was to witness our values by openly breaking laws and policies that we saw as oppressive, wrong, and even evil. We were not going to use violence or threats. We wanted to be put on trial to put the conscience of the nation on trial.

In our protests of the late 60s, the last thing we wanted was anonymity. Masks would have been antithetical to our aims. Later, a different generation of protestors occupied buildings and made “non-negotiable demands,” including for personal amnesty. It took years for this to happen. 

Civil rights advanced in part because Bull Connors turned on the fire hoses and loosed the dogs on people who were peacefully bearing witness. Civil rights advanced because we depended on “Jury Nullification,” that juries, knowing we had broken immoral laws against segregation or marching without a permit, would still acquit us enough times to change the system. The haters and their violence built our moral high ground. It wouldn’t have worked if we had been peaceful and there had been no Bull Connors or Lester Maddox. 

The moral center of the anti-war movement didn’t hold. Elements of protest turned to violence, vandalism, intimidation, and even domestic terror. Occluded by the foggy haze of time, we tend to forget the bombings—FBI reported over 2,500 hundred in 1970-71. Most were small and at night and left few victims. Some were deadly. 

When we compare that violence to current Pro-Gaza (Hamas) protests, today’s might seem relatively benign. Not benign is the hate speech that seems to advocate replacing one alleged genocide aspirationally with another.   

My fear is that the pro-Palestinian movement devolved rapidly into hate, threats, and bullying. This took only weeks, not years, but some current protestors are idealistic, and some useful idiots, unwitting tools of Russia and Iran. I don’t believe that most of the protestors, presently spreading the virus of hate in the name of peace, understand the issues. Seeing signs such as “Queers for Gaza” is to display an offensive ignorance which is comparable to members of my cohort wearing Che Guevara and Mao Zedong t-shirts and calling the police “Pigs.” I thought that in Berkeley, “Blue Meanies” was sufficient. We criticized their actions, not their essence. Today, a relatively peaceful encampment is too peaceful for radicals who intentionally escalate by fortifying the space. These provocations inevitably cause institutional overreaction.   

In comparing then and now, I see similarities in opposing what one perceives as a moral outrage, e.g., the war in Vietnam and mass casualties in Israel/Gaza. I see a mixture of idealism and cynicism. I see fierce certainties that deny the humanity of those on the “other side.” I also see the current protest moving rapidly towards the kind of violence that eventually crushed peaceful protest. 

The Civil rights struggle was to spread liberty. The antiwar movement was to stop the killing. Some of today’s protests are to stop the killing, but too many of the current voices call for the end of Israel and assume that any Jew who doesn’t denounce Israel is a Zionist agent complicit in a redefined “genocide.” 

When remembering the 1960s and understanding today, we must be mindful not to become exemplars of the causes we protest. 

When we remember the 1960s, we remember the good times. We remember being young, our youthful exuberance, and our fierce certainties. As militant peaceniks and flower children, we nostalgically remember both the stench of teargas and the scent of flowers.