Berkeley Demonstration May Lead To?

Michelle Malkin, as common, has the roundup about the furor created by the Berkeley city council siding against Marine recruiters, and the planned demonstration on February 12 to protest this travesty.

A generation of such public insults to America’s most sacred symbols has inured most Americans to such absurdities.

It wasn’t always so. And, consequently, at least in part, ordinary Americans altered the course of history. Let’s revisit 1967.

Parade Poster for “Support Our Men In Vietnam Parade”, May 13, 1967

In 1967, I worked with Charlie Wiley in his organization of the longest parade in New York City since World War II, the Support Our Men in Vietnam Parade held May 13. The New York Daily News' WPIX-TV live televised the whole day of contingents from all over the tri-state area marching down 5th Avenue. The parade caused quite a stir at the time, for example when everyone in America watched the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights and he announced his support. I checked online, and at the archives of the Daily News and the New York Times, finding only a visual clip reference and nothing else from that pre-Internet time. (There may be more, but I don't have Lexus-Nexis to search further into the cyberbowls of memory.) Yet, the various anti-Vietnam War marches of the era are immortalized in paeans from their participants and wannabes…

Coincidentally, 4-years after the May 13, 1967 Support Our Men in Vietnam Parade, on May 13, 1971, I had an op-ed in the New York Times (needs Lexus-Nexis to locate a copy) contradicting John Kerry and few friends' mass media spectacle of lies and slanders of my fellow Vietnam veterans. This launched the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, in which John O'Neill joined up to expose Kerry, a job we finished in 2004.

You won’t recognize any of the names on this roster of the participants who organized the 1967 parade.

At Google, you’ll only find one source of the 1967 TV footage (here), and except for me no writings about this event from this pre-Internet era.

For those old enough to remember: Where were you in 1967? For those now: Where will you be February 12, 2008?