As the Vietnam War continued to escalate, public disenchantment grew, and a variety of different groups were formed or became involved in the movement.
African Americans speaking to an anti–Vietnam War rally at the
University of Minnesota on April 27, 1967 African-American leaders of earlier decades, like
W. E. B. Du Bois, were often
anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist.
Paul Robeson weighed in on the Vietnamese struggle in 1954, calling
Ho Chi Minh "the modern day
Toussaint Louverture, leading his people to freedom." These figures were driven from public life by McCarthyism, however, and black leaders were more cautious about criticizing US foreign policy as the 1960s began. By the middle of the decade, open condemnation of the war became more common, with figures like
Malcolm X and
Bob Moses speaking out. Champion boxer
Muhammad Ali risked his career and a prison sentence to resist the draft in 1966. Soon,
Martin Luther King Jr.,
Coretta Scott King, and
James Bevel of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) became prominent opponents of the Vietnam War, and Bevel became the director of the
National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. The
Black Panther Party vehemently opposed US involvement in Vietnam. At the beginning of the war, some African Americans did not want to join the war opposition movement because of their loyalty to President Johnson for pushing the Civil Rights legislation, but soon the escalating violence of the war and the perceived social injustice of the draft propelled involvement in antiwar groups. In 1965, the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) became the first major civil rights group to issue a formal statement against the war. When SNCC-backed Georgia Representative
Julian Bond acknowledged his agreement with the anti-war statement, he was refused his seat by the State of Georgia, an injustice which he
successfully appealed up to the Supreme Court. SNCC had special significance as a nexus between the student movement and the black movement. At an SDS-organized conference at
UC Berkeley in October 1966, SNCC Chair
Stokely Carmichael challenged the white left to escalate their resistance to the military draft in a manner similar to the black movement. Some participants in
ghetto rebellions of the era had already associated their actions with opposition to the Vietnam War, and SNCC first disrupted an Atlanta draft board in August 1966. According to historians Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin, SDS's first Stop the Draft Week of October 1967 was "inspired by
Black Power [and] emboldened by the ghetto rebellions." SNCC appears to have originated the popular anti-draft slogan: "Hell no! We won't go!" On April 4, 1967, King gave a much-publicized speech entitled "
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" at the Riverside Church in New York, attacking President Johnson for "deadly Western arrogance," declaring that "we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor". The "Beyond Vietnam" speech involved King in a debate with the diplomat
Ralph Bunche who argued that it was folly to associate the civil rights movement with the anti–Vietnam war movement, maintaining that this would set back civil rights for African Americans. In 1966 King publicly declared that it was hypocritical for Black Americans to be fighting in Vietnam since they were being treated as second-class citizens back home. To combat these issues, King rallied the poor working class in hopes that the federal government would redirect resources toward fighting the War on Poverty. To emphasize his point, King would use the statistic that the US government had underestimated the cost of the 1967 war budget by $10 billion, which was five times the poverty budget. Black anti-war groups opposed the war for similar reasons as white groups but often protested in separate events and sometimes did not cooperate with the ideas of white anti-war leadership. In 1965 and 1966, African Americans accounted for 25 percent of combat deaths, more than twice their proportion of the population. As a result, black enlisted men protested and began the
resistance movement among veterans. After taking measures to reduce the fatalities, apparently in response to widespread protest, the military brought the proportion of blacks down to 12.6 percent of casualties. African Americans involved in the anti-war movement often formed their own groups, such as Black Women Enraged, National Black Anti-War Anti-Draft Union, and National Black Draft Counselors. Some differences in these groups included how Black Americans rallied behind the banner of "Self-determination for Black America and Vietnam," while whites marched under banners that said, "Support Our GIs, Bring Them Home Now!". Within these groups, however, many African American women were seen as subordinate members by black male leaders. Many African American women viewed the war in Vietnam as racially motivated and sympathized strongly with Vietnamese women. Such concerns often propelled their participation in the anti-war movement and their creation of new opposition groups.
Artists Many artists during the 1960s and 1970s opposed the war and used their creativity and careers to oppose the war visibly. Writers and poets who were opposed to involvement in the war included
Allen Ginsberg,
Denise Levertov,
Robert Duncan, and
Robert Bly. Artists often incorporated imagery based on the tragic events of the war, as well as on the disparity between life in Vietnam and life in the United States. Visual artists such as
Ronald Haeberle,
Peter Saul,
Leon Golub,
Nancy Spero, among many others, created anti-war works. Radical art collectives, such as the
Bread and Puppet Theater, were similarly active. According to art historian Matthew Israel's book
Kill for Peace: American Artists Against the Vietnam War, "significant examples of this politically engaged production...encompassed painting, sculpture, performance, installation, posters, short films, and comicsand... ranged from the most 'representational' to the most 'abstract' forms of expression." Filmmakers such as
Lenny Lipton, Jerry Abrams, Peter Gessner, and David Ringo created documentary-style movies featuring footage from the anti-war marches to raise awareness about the war and the diverse opposition movement. Playwrights like
Frank O'Hara,
Sam Shepard,
Robert Lowell,
Megan Terry, Grant Duay, and
Kenneth Bernard used theater as a vehicle for portraying their thoughts about the Vietnam War, often satirizing the role of America in the world and juxtaposing the horrific effects of war with normal scenes of life. Regardless of medium, anti-war artists ranged from pacifists to violent radicals, and caused Americans to think more critically about the war. Art as war opposition was quite popular in the early years of the war, but soon faded as political activism became the more common and most visible way of opposing the war.
Asian-Americans Many Asian Americans were strongly opposed to the Vietnam War. They saw the war as being a significant action of US imperialism and "connected the oppression of the Asians in the United States to the prosecution of the war in Vietnam." Unlike many Americans in the anti-war movement, they viewed the war "not just as imperialist but specifically as anti-Asian." Groups like the
Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), the Bay Area Coalition Against the War (BAACAW), and the
Asian Americans for Action (AAA) made opposition to the war their main focus. Of these organizations, the Bay Area Coalition Against the War was the biggest and most significant. BAACAW was "highly organized, holding biweekly ninety-minute meetings of the Coordinating Committee at which each regional would submit detailed reports and action plans." The BAACAW members consisted of many Asian Americans, and they were involved in anti-war efforts like marches, study groups, fundraisers,
teach-ins, and demonstrations. During marches, Asian American activists carried banners that read "Stop the Bombing of Asian People and Stop Killing Our Asian Brothers and Sisters." Its newsletter stated, "our goal is to build a solid, broad-based anti-imperialist movement of Asian people against the war in Vietnam." The anti-war sentiment of Asian Americans was fueled by the
racial inequality that they faced in the United States. As historian Daryl Maeda notes, "the anti-war movement articulated Asian Americans' racial commonality with Vietnamese people in two distinctly gendered ways: identification based on the experiences of male soldiers and identification by women." Asian American soldiers in the US military were many times classified as being like the enemy. They were referred to as
gooks and their identity was racialized in comparison to their non-Asian counterparts. There was also the
hyper sexualization of Vietnamese women, which in turn affected how Asian American women in the military were treated. "In a
Gidra article, [a prominent influential newspaper of the Asian American movement], Evelyn Yoshimura noted that the US military systematically portrayed Vietnamese women as
prostitutes as a way of dehumanizing them." Asian American groups realized that to extinguish
racism, they also had to address sexism as well. This, in turn, led to women's leadership in the Asian American antiwar movement. Patsy Chan, a "Third World" activist, said at an antiwar rally in
San Francisco, "We, as
Third World women [express] our militant solidarity with our brothers and sisters from Indochina. We, as Third World people know of the struggle the
Indochinese are waging against imperialism, because we share that common enemy in the United States." Some other notable figures were
Grace Lee Boggs and
Yuri Kochiyama. Both Boggs and Kochiyama were inspired by the civil rights movement of the 1960s and "a growing number of Asian Americans began to push forward a new era in radical Asian American politics." Many Asian Americans spoke against the war because of the way that the Vietnamese were referred to within the US military by the disparaging term "gook", and more generally because they encountered bigotry, because they looked like "the enemy". One Japanese-American veteran, Norman Nakamura, wrote in an article in the June/July issue of
Gidra, that during his tour of duty in Vietnam of 1969–70 that there was an atmosphere of systematic racism towards all Vietnamese people, who were seen as less than human, being merely "gooks".
Clergy The clergy, often a forgotten group during the opposition to the Vietnam War, played a large role as well. The clergy covered any of the religious leaders and members, including individuals such as
Martin Luther King Jr. In his speech "
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", King stated, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent." King was not looking for racial equality through this speech but tried to voice an end to the war instead. The involvement of the clergy did not stop at King. The analysis entitled "Social Movement Participation: Clergy and the Anti–Vietnam War Movement" expands upon the anti-war movement by taking King, a single religious figurehead, and explaining the movement from the entire clergy's perspective. The clergy were often forgotten though throughout this opposition. The analysis refers to that fact by saying, "The research concerning clergy anti-war participation is even more barren than the literature on student activism." There is a relationship and correlation between
theology and political opinions, and during the Vietnam War, the same relationship occurred between feelings about the war and theology.
Draft evasion , Australia, in 1966 The first
draft lottery since
World War II in the United States was held on December 1, 1969, and was met with large protests and a great deal of controversy; statistical analysis indicated that the methodology of the lotteries unintentionally disadvantaged men with late-year birthdays. Various anti-war groups, such as Another Mother for Peace, WILPF, and
WSP, had free draft counseling centers, where they gave young American men advice for legally and illegally evading the draft. Over 30,000 people left the country and went to Canada, Sweden, and Mexico to avoid the draft. To gain an exemption or deferment, many men attended college, though they had to remain in college until their 26th birthday to be certain of avoiding the draft. Some men were rejected by the military as
4-F unfit for service failing to meet physical, mental, or moral standards. Still others joined the
National Guard or entered the
Peace Corps as a way of avoiding Vietnam. All of these issues raised concerns about the fairness of who was selected for involuntary service, since it was often the poor or those without connections who were drafted. Ironically, in light of modern political issues, a certain exemption was a convincing claim of
homosexuality, but very few men attempted this because of the
stigma involved. Also, a conviction for certain crimes earned an exclusion, the topic of the anti-war song "
Alice's Restaurant" by
Arlo Guthrie. Even many of those who never received a deferment or exemption never served, simply because the pool of eligible men was so large compared to the number required for service, that the draft boards never got around to drafting them, when a new crop of men became available (until 1969), or because they had high lottery numbers (1970 and later). Of those soldiers who served during the war, there was increasing opposition to the conflict amongst GIs, which resulted in
fragging and many other activities which hampered the US's ability to wage war effectively. Most of those subjected to the draft were too young to vote or drink in most states, and the image of young people being forced to risk their lives in the military without the right of enfranchisement or the ability to drink alcohol legally also successfully pressured legislators to lower the
voting age nationally and the
drinking age in many states. Student opposition groups on many college and university campuses seized campus administration offices and in several instances forced the expulsion of
ROTC programs from the campus. Some Americans who were not subject to the draft protested the conscription of their tax dollars for the war effort.
War tax resistance, once mostly isolated to solitary anarchists like
Henry David Thoreau and religious
pacifists like the
Quakers, became a more mainstream protest tactic. As of 1972, an estimated 200,000–500,000 people were refusing to pay the excise taxes on their telephone bills, and another 20,000 were resisting part or all of their
income tax bills. Among the
tax resisters were
Joan Baez and
Noam Chomsky.
Environmentalists Momentum from the protest organizations and the impact of the war on the environment became the focal point of issues to an overwhelmingly main force for the growth of an
environmental movement in the United States. Many of the environment-oriented demonstrations were inspired by
Rachel Carson's 1962 book
Silent Spring, which warned of the harmful effects of pesticide use on the Earth. For demonstrators, Carson's warnings coincided with the United States' use of chemicals in Vietnam such as
Agent Orange, a chemical compound that was used to clear forestry used as cover by the Viet Cong, initially conducted by the
United States Air Force in
Operation Ranch Hand in 1962.
Mexican-Americans Along with Asian and African Americans,
Mexican-Americans also made significant contributions to the anti-war effort in the United States. The
Chicano Moratorium march where 20–30 thousand activists took to the streets of eastern Los Angeles to protest the Vietnam War. The main cause of their opposition and disapproval of the war stemmed from the fact that there was a disproportionate amount of Mexican-American troops killed or injured in the war compared to the amount living in the United States. Moreover, Mexican-Americans had disparities in public education, were excluded from higher education, and had abnormally high unemployment rates, and as a result many joined the war effort seeing no other option, contributing to the fact that Mexican-Americans died at twice the rate of any other group in Vietnam. The musicians included
Joni Mitchell,
Joan Baez,
Phil Ochs,
Lou Harrison,
Gail Kubik,
William Mayer,
Elie Siegmeister,
Robert Fink,
David Noon,
Richard Wernick, and
John W. Downey. To date, over 5,000 Vietnam War-related songs have been recorded, and many took a patriotic, pro-government, or pro-soldier perspective. The two most notable genres involved in this protest were rock and roll and folk music. While composers created pieces confronting the pro-war political camp, they were not limited to their music. Protesters were being arrested and were participating in peace marches, and popular musicians were among their ranks. This concept of intimate involvement reached new heights in May 1968 when the "Composers and Musicians for Peace" concert was staged in New York. As the war continued, along with the new media coverage, the movement snowballed, and popular music reflected this. As early as the summer of 1965, music-based protests against the American involvement in Southeast Asia began with works like
P. F. Sloan's
folk rock song
Eve of Destruction, recorded by
Barry McGuire as one of the earliest musical protests against the Vietnam War. A key figure in the
rock music community of the anti-war spectrum was
Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970). Hendrix had a huge following among the youth culture exploring itself through drugs and experiencing itself through rock music. He was not an official protester of the war; one of Hendrix's biographers contends that Hendrix, being a former soldier, sympathized with the anticommunist view. He did, however, protest the violence that took place in the Vietnam War. With the song "
Machine Gun", dedicated to those fighting in Vietnam, this protest of violence is manifest. David Henderson, author of
Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky, describes the song as "scary funk ... his sound over the drone shifts from a woman's scream, to a siren, to a fighter plane diving, all amid
Buddy Miles' Gatling-gun snare shots. ... he says 'evil man make me kill you ... make you kill me although we're only families apart. This song was often accompanied by pleas from Hendrix to bring the soldiers back home and cease the bloodshed. While Hendrix's views may not have been analogous to the protesters, his songs became anthems to the antiwar movement. Songs such as "Star Spangled Banner" showed individuals that "you can love your country, but hate the government." Hendrix's anti-violence efforts are summed up in his words: "when the power of love overcomes the love of power ... the world will know peace." Thus, Hendrix's personal views did not coincide perfectly with those of the anti-war protesters; however, his anti-violence outlook was a driving force during the years of the Vietnam War even after his death (1970). The song known to many as the anthem of the protest movement was "
The "Fish" Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag"first released on an
EP in the October 1965 issue of
Rag Babyby
Country Joe and the Fish, one of the most successful protest bands. Although this song was not on music charts probably because it was too radical, it was performed at many public events including the famous
Woodstock music festival (1969). "Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" was a song that used sarcasm to communicate the problems with not only the war but also the public's naïve attitudes towards it. It was said that "the happy beat and insouciance of the vocalist are in odd juxtaposition to the lyrics that reinforce the sad fact that the American public was being forced into realizing that Vietnam was no longer a remote place on the other side of the world, and the damage it was doing to the country could no longer be considered collateral, involving someone else." Along with singer-songwriter
Phil Ochs, who attended and organized anti-war events and wrote such songs as "
I Ain't Marching Any More" and "
The War Is Over", another key historical figure of the antiwar movement was
Bob Dylan. Folk and Rock were critical aspects of the
counterculture during the Vietnam War both were genres that Dylan would dabble in. His success in writing protest songs came from his pre-existing popularity, as he did not initially intend on doing so.
Todd Gitlin, a leader of a student movement at the time, was quoted in saying "Whether he liked it or not, Dylan sang for us. ... We followed his career as if he were singing our songs." The anthem "
Blowin' in the Wind" embodied Dylan's anti-war, pro-civil rights sentiment. To complement "Blowin' in the Wind" Dylan's song "
The Times they are A-Changin'" alludes to a new method of governing that is necessary and warns those who currently participate in government that the change is imminent. Dylan tells the "senators and congressmen [to] please heed the call." Dylan's songs were designed to awaken the public and to cause a reaction. The protesters of the Vietnam War identified their cause so closely with the artistic compositions of Dylan that Joan Baez and Judy Collins performed "The Times they are A-Changin'" at a march protesting the Vietnam War (1965) and also for President Johnson.
John Lennon, former member of
the Beatles, did most of his activism in his solo career with wife,
Yoko Ono. Given his immense fame due to the success of the Beatles, he was a very prominent movement figure with the constant media and press attention. Still being proactive on their honeymoon, the newlyweds controversially held a
sit-in, where they sat in bed for a week answering press questions. They held numerous sit-ins, one where they first introduced their song "
Give Peace a Chance." Lennon and Ono's song overshadowed many previous held anthems, as it became known as the ultimate anthem of peace in the 1970s, with their words "all we are saying ... is give peace a chance" being sung globally.
Military members and veterans in
Philadelphia during the
United States Bicentennial Within the United States military, various service members would organize to avoid military duties, and individual actors would also carry out their own acts of resistance. The movement consisted of the self-organizing of active duty members and veterans in collaboration with civilian peace activists. By 1971 the United States military would become so demoralized that the military would have severe difficulties properly waging war.
Students students protest against the
Vietnam War in 1968 There was a great deal of civic unrest on college campuses throughout the 1960s as students became increasingly involved in the
Civil Rights Movement,
Second Wave Feminism, and
anti-war movement. Doug McAdam explains the success of the mass mobilization of volunteers for
Freedom Summer in terms of "Biographical Availability", where individuals must have a certain degree of social, economic, and psychological freedom to be able to participate in large scale social movements. This explanation can also be applied to the Anti-War Movement because it occurred around the same time and the same biographical factors applied to the college-aged anti-war protesters. David Meyers (2007) also explains how the concept of
personal efficacy affects mass movement mobilization. For example, according to Meyers' thesis, consider that American wealth increased drastically after World War II. At this time, America was a superpower and enjoyed great affluence after thirty years of depression, war, and sacrifice. Benjamin T. Harrison (2000) argues that the post World War II affluence set the stage for the protest generation in the 1960s. His central thesis is that the World Wars and Great Depression spawned a '
beat generation' refusing to conform to mainstream American values which lead to the emergence of the
Hippies and the
counterculture. The Anti-war movement became part of a larger protest movement against the traditional American Values and attitudes. Meyers (2007) builds off this claim in his argument that the "relatively privileged enjoy the education and affirmation that afford them the belief that they might make a difference." As a result of the present factors in terms of affluence, biographical availability (defined in the sociological areas of activism as the lack of restrictions on social relationships of which most likely increases the consequences of participating in a social movement), and increasing political atmosphere across the county, political activity increased drastically on college campuses. In one instance,
John William Ward, then president of
Amherst College, sat down in front of Westover Air Force Base near Chicopee, Massachusetts, along with 1000 students, some faculty, and his wife Barbara to protest against Richard Nixon's escalation of offensive bombing in Southeast Asia. College enrollment reached 9 million by the end of the 1960s. Colleges and universities in America had more students than ever before, and these institutions often tried to restrict student behavior to maintain order on the campuses. To combat this, many college students became active in causes that promoted free speech, student input in the curriculum, and an end to archaic social restrictions. Students joined the anti-war movement because they did not want to fight in a foreign civil war that they believed did not concern them or because they were morally opposed to all war. Others disliked the war because it diverted funds and attention away from problems in the US Intellectual growth and gaining a liberal perspective at college caused many students to become active in the anti-war movement. Another attractive feature of the opposition movement was the fact that it was a popular social event. Most student anti-war organisations were locally or campus-based, including chapters of the very loosely coordinated
Students for a Democratic Society, because they were easier to organize and participate in than national groups. Common anti-war demonstrations for college students featured attempts to sever ties between the war machine and universities through
burning draft cards, protesting universities furnishing grades to draft boards, and protesting military and Dow Chemical job fairs on campus. From 1969 to 1970, student protesters attacked 197 ROTC buildings on college campuses. Protests grew after the
Kent State shootings, radicalizing more and more students nationally. Although the media often portrayed the student antiwar movement as aggressive and widespread, only 10% of the 2500 colleges in the United States had violent protests throughout the Vietnam War years. By the early 1970s, most student protest movements died down due to President Nixon's de-escalation of the war, the economic downturn, and disillusionment with the powerlessness of the anti-war movement. Some leaders of anti-war groups viewed women as sex objects or secretaries, not actual thinkers who could contribute positively and tangibly to the group's goals, or believed that women could not truly understand and join the anti-war movement because they were unaffected by the draft. Women involved in opposition groups disliked the romanticism of the violence of both the war and the anti-war movement that was common amongst male war protesters. Despite the inequalities, participation in various antiwar groups allowed women to gain experience with organizing protests and crafting effective anti-war rhetoric. These newfound skills combined with their dislike of sexism within the opposition movement caused many women to break away from the mainstream anti-war movement and create or join women's anti-war groups, such as
Another Mother for Peace,
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and
Women Strike for Peace (WSP), also known as Women For Peace. Female soldiers serving in Vietnam joined the movement to battle the war and sexism, racism, and the established military bureaucracy by writing articles for anti-war and anti-military newspapers. Mothers and older generations of women joined the opposition movement, as advocates for peace and people opposed to the effects of the war and the draft on the generation of young men. These women saw the draft as one of the most disliked parts of the war machine and sought to undermine the war itself through undermining the draft. Another Mother for Peace and WSP often held free draft counseling centers to give young men legal and illegal methods to oppose the draft. Such female antiwar groups often relied on maternalism, the image of women as peaceful caretakers of the world, to express and accomplish their goals. The government often saw middle-aged women involved in such organizations as the most dangerous members of the opposition movement because they were ordinary citizens who quickly and efficiently mobilized. Many black mothers also joined and headed organizations such as the
National Welfare Rights Organisation (NWRO). The NWRO, set up in 1967, critiqued the government spending budget for the Vietnam War instead of providing families domestically, decried the sending of poor men and their sons to fight in the Vietnam War, linked capitalism and the prioritization of corporations and military spending over human needs, invoked the image of the mother, and highlighted the impact of poverty and military participation on women, particularly black mothers. As well as this, they criticized the conflict for harming impoverished women, forcing them to supply labor and troops while raising children without proper pay. In 1971, the
Third World Women's Alliance (TWWA) expanded the NWRO's reach by including black, Puerto Rican, Chicana, Asian, and Indigenous women. The TWWA, organized against the Vietnam War from an internationalist and anti-imperialist perspective, linked the cost of
US wars abroad to the exploitation of poor communities of color domestically, highlighted how the draft disproportionately impacted families of minorities by taking sons and leaving women behind, supported oppressed peoples rising up against their oppressors, and took inspiration from Vietnamese women fighters. Faced with the sexism sometimes found in the antiwar movement, New Left, and Civil Rights Movement, some women created their own organizations to establish true equality of the sexes. Some of frustrations of younger women became apparent during the anti-war movement: they desired more radical change and decreased acceptance of societal gender roles than older women activists. Female activists' disillusion with the anti-war movement led to the formation of the
Women's Liberation Movement to establish true equality for American women in all facets of life.
Trade Unionists By the time the United States entered Vietnam union leadership in the
AFL-CIO publicly supported the war. This was because the
Taft–Hartley Act of 1947 forbade radicals, such as communists, from being elected to central positions in the union. However, many smaller unions protested the war heavily. Local 1199 of the Drug and Hospital Workers Union, located in New York, actively protested the war. They signed a proclamation in a convention held in 1964 denouncing US involvement in Vietnam. Other unions, such as the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union signed similar proclamations in 1965. Antiwar activism was not limited to independent unions. AFL-CIO affiliated unions like the
United Auto Workers and the
Teamsters broke with AFL-CIO leadership in 1969 to form an antiwar alliance of unions. International leadership of the Teamsters participated in antiwar protests into the 1970s, including a large one, numbering over 250,000 protesters, held on April 25, 1971, in
Washington, D.C. Antiwar union leadership worked heavily with student organizations like the
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the National Committee for Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE). Trade Unionists for Peace was an antiwar organization formed in
Detroit, Michigan, on March 6, 1966. It was soon after reorganized into the Trade Union Division (TUD) of SANE. It organized protests in conjunction with the SDS and local unions in several different cities including
New York City,
Los Angeles, and
San Francisco. In 1967 the TUD held a convention at the
University of Chicago with the AFL-CIO. The result of the convention produced a new organization, the Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace. This organization largely took the role that the TUD had previously played, making it obsolete. However one year later in 1968 the coalition between the AFL-CIO and TUD disintegrated over disagreements on US involvement in Vietnam. ==Political responses==