In today's Albany Times Union, I found these two articles...

Seven arrested in anti-war sit-in

New era, new battles for McGovern

I'm planning to go and hear McGovern speak... I believe I shall wear my "Wage Peace" button, along with my '72 McGovern campaign button.

It will be interesting to see who else shows up, and what the sentiment of the audience will be... college students USED TO do a lot of protesting. Incidentally, I'm the "first line of defense" for the President's office at UAlbany. Student takeover of the building? ummmm... where was that emergency button? where is the brain cell?

Wyld, I always was of the opinion that "when the revolution comes," we'd have to have some working within the institutions. <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/wink.gif" width=15 height=15>

Wow. I was a sophomore in high school in '72 during that election, and I did have a button that read "I'm for good McGovernment in '72"......remember that one?

I vaguely do remember that one, Larry. Remember Goldwater's slogan "In Your Heart You Know He's Right", back in the 60's? The democrats response to that was "In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts". I actually saw dems wearing buttons with that same latter slogan about this same time 2 years ago!

Funny posting this on this particular date, but when hubby Lance and I were campaigning for McGovern, we wore buttons proclaiming "Remember October 9". That was the date several years before when Nixon said that anyone (meaning Johnson) who couldn't end the war didn't deserve to be re-elected. Funny, Nixon was re-elected.

WOW!

I just got home from hearing George McGovern speak... he is one of my heroes!

His talk was supposed to be about finding a solution to world hunger, and he did devote about half of his time to this worthwhile topic. He has been working with the UN, with pilot programs to start school lunch programs in less developed countries. The goal is to get/keep kids in schools, which by extension will reduce the birth rate and raise the standard of living for these kids. His goal is to get this program going in every country in the world, and reduce the number of people suffering from hunger by half... from 800 million to 400 million ... within 15 years.

The other half of his talk was relating to the current possibility of our taking a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. He, of course, feels that this is unjustifiable. One thing that he said is that if we do take pre-emptive action, the US will lose virtually all its support from other nations. We also will very likely experience many many more terrorist acts by Arabic and Muslim factions.

He clearly opposes any "first strike" by the US, and said that a strike against the US by Iraq is extremely unlikely. (He said that Saddam Hussein would be committing suicide if he were to strike us first... and he's not that stupid.)

When asked about the current and future Democratic Party, he indicated extreme disappointment in the way the Dems voted today, and appears somewhat disillusioned with the Party. He does still hold out hope for a strong candidate in 2004, though.

After the event, I approached Mr. McGovern, and thanked him for taking a clear stand against war... and commented that it's probably time for anti-war protests again... which he concurred with. He said that he still hasn't gotten over Vietnam, and it seems that it will be happening all over again.

Incidentally, I will be participating in an Anti-War Teach-In at UAlbany in a couple of weeks.

Go, Wyldflower! Keep us posted. There was a neat picture in our paper the other day of anti-war protesters at a local university--they staged an event in the parking lot where they formed a human peace sign. If I can find a link online to the picture, I'll post it.

Yesterday morning I tuned in to a documentary on Berkeley in the 60's. I was struck by the similarities to what we are experiencing today as far as the anti-war, anti-violence sentiments. I was inspired to get on-line and email my elected officials to let them know I'm opposed to the attack on Iraq. So many people I know are opposed to this but they feel there's nothing to be done. When did we get so detached?