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A CHORUS OF DEFIANCE  
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David Cortright
April 24, 2025
Boston Review
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_ Today marks the 80th anniversary of the of World War II on the
European continent. This week is also fifty years after the Vietnam
War’s end. What are the lessons for today from the peace movement on
mobilizing resistance _

The November 1969 Mobilization to End the War rally in Washington,
D.C. was the the largest antiwar protest ever held in the United
States at the time, drawing hundreds of thousands on Nov. 15, 1969.
(Associated Press photo),

 

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.

A combination of tactics—bodies in the streets and votes in ballot
boxes—forced Washington’s hand.

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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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 [[link removed]],
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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]] 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
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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
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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
[[link removed]] 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.

Today’s movement could alter the political landscape as profoundly
as did its predecessors in 1967.

The resistance movement that has emerged is broad
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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
[[link removed]] 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
[[link removed]].]_

_Re-posted with permission of the publisher, Boston Review
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