Latest news with #anti-Vietnam
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
LA unrest marks latest clash of US presidents, states over National Guard
Donald Trump's deployment of California's National Guard marks the first time in decades that a US president openly defied a state governor and sent troops to an emergency zone. The National Guard is a reserve military rooted in the 17th century local militias created in the American colonies before the country's founding. Since then the guard has had multiple responsibilities: domestic disaster relief and security, homeland defense and prevention of civil unrest; and acting as reserve forces for US military deployments overseas. Presidential orders to deploy guardsmen domestically are not uncommon. But clashes between a president and governor over deployments or the lack thereof, such as during the US Capitol riot by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021 while he was still in office have been rare. The White House said Trump relied on a seldom used law, known as Title 10, that permits National Guard federalization in times of "a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States." California Governor Gavin Newsom called the decision "purposefully inflammatory." But Trump's order proceeded, and the guard troops were on LA streets Sunday. "This is the first time since 1965 that a president has deployed the National Guard without a request by a state governor," Kenneth Roth, a longtime former Human Rights Watch executive director, posted on X. "Then it was Johnson protecting civil rights protesters. Now it's Trump creating a spectacle so he can continue his immigration raids." Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice warned of a "shocking abuse of power" by Trump, whose memorandum authorizes federalization of National Guard troops "at locations where protests against functions are occurring or are likely to occur." "Trump has authorized the deployment of troops anywhere in the country where protests against ICE activity might occur," Goitein posted on X. "That is a huge red flag." A landmark civil rights moment led to a National Guard clash between a president and a segregationist governor. With demonstrators led by Martin Luther King Jr on a five-day march from Selma to Alabama's capital Montgomery, governor George Wallace pledged National Guard security but then reneged. The U-turn incensed Johnson who, in defiance of Wallace, called up the guard. The march was protected by thousands of Army soldiers and federalized guard members. When the Little Rock school system was ordered desegregated, Arkansas' pro-segregationist governor Orval Faubus deployed the National Guard to surround a high school and prevent nine Black students from entering. President Dwight Eisenhower bristled at the standoff and told Faubus the guard must maintain order so the Black students could attend. Instead, Faubus pulled the guardsmen, leaving security to local forces. Eisenhower issued an executive order federalizing the Arkansas National Guard, and ordered 1,000 US Army troops to join them. Perhaps no anti-Vietnam war protest was more pivotal than at Ohio's Kent State University, where students slammed Richard Nixon's war expansion. As unrest swelled, the National Guard opened fire, killing four students and wounding nine others. The shootings sparked outrage, but also led to reforms regarding how the guard handles civil unrest and use of force. The massive hurricane left much of New Orleans underwater, leading to the largest-ever peacetime deployment of the National Guard. But critics accused then-president George W Bush of favoring a militaristic response over humanitarian relief. Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, warned that many among the thousands of National Guard and federal troops were battle-tested Iraq war veterans. "These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will," she reportedly said. June 1, 2020 saw a brutal crackdown on demonstrators following the police murder of African-American George Floyd. With people aggressively protesting near the White House, the National Guard joined police to maintain order. Flash grenades and tear gas were deployed. Unlike in the nation's 50 states, the DC National Guard is under direct command of the US president, who at the time was Trump. mlm/st
Boston Globe
7 days ago
- General
- Boston Globe
Protesting against Trump is good. Organizing against him is better.
Advertisement Protest in the 1960s and early '70s was essential to countering McCarthyism, advancing civil rights, and ending the Vietnam War — just as it is critical today to opposing Trump's anti-democratic agenda. And Americans are protesting: the Hands Off marches, the protests at Tesla dealerships, demonstrations by fired federal workers, raucous town hall meetings with congressional representatives. One scholar of social movements, Erica Chenowith at Harvard University, estimates that in the first three months of 2025, there were Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up But we need to do more. To bring about the kind of civic uprising needed to counter the Trump administration, we need to expand the protests to inspire more people to disobey our would-be dictator. And for this, we need organizers. Advertisement Organize like it's 1965 Today we remember the massive protest movements — the civil rights marches, the sit-ins, the student protests against the Vietnam War — but we pay less attention to the tireless organizing that made those public demonstrations possible. I was a young leader with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a I, along with countless other student activists, spent hours every day having long conversations about the war, our lives, and the future. Over time, those discussions convinced more and more students to wear a peace button, sign a petition, hand out leaflets, join a picket line, get on a bus to Washington, and, eventually, participate in massive protests. Our endless outreach to people who were undecided about the war, supportive of it, or even politically or ideologically uncomfortable with the New Left and SDS allowed us to build a large movement over time. It is just this sort of sustained engagement across ideological and political boundaries that is needed today. All too often we are reluctant to reach out to those we think might disagree with us. In 1967, I and a small group of SDS leaders and Harvard teaching fellows developed a project designed to take the anti-Vietnam war movement off university campuses and into communities around the country. We named the effort 'Vietnam Summer,' after the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, a campaign by civil rights activists to register as many Black Americans to vote as possible. Advertisement Today, Vietnam Summer is largely forgotten, but it remains a good example of how to scale up a movement. King returned to Boston that summer to join Dr. Benjamin Spock, the American child care expert and political activist, in launching the effort, and 700 paid staff went to work all over the country to mobilize 20,000 volunteers who knocked on doors, circulated petitions, held community meetings, and sponsored local anti-Vietnam War referenda. The Vietnam Summer paved the way for the huge Many of the same students who had knocked on doors during Vietnam Summer and volunteered for anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign went on to organize the Build the coalition Now as then, today's protesters must mobilize those who are not yet protesting. The only path to stopping Trump is a massive popular opposition composed of tens of millions of Americans protesting, boycotting, and working to defeat Trump Republicans in local and national elections. For those already attending protests but who have not yet taken on an organizing role, the next step is to join a group. Become a member of your Advertisement In a recent column, David Brooks An effective anti-Trump movement needs to reach out to and welcome: farmers hurt by tariffs; veterans hurt by cuts to Veteran Administration resources; parents losing access to Head Start programs; women denied reproductive health care; faith leaders appalled at the immorality of this administration on immigration; and young people worried about the climate, gun violence, debt, and so much more. The opposition must include business and labor leaders joining together, university presidents and students, representatives of small businesses and corporations, environmentalists and construction workers. The fact is, the opposition to Trump is already a majority movement that has yet to organize, whereas the anti-war movements of the 1960s were always in the minority. Even so, they were successful. We have the opportunity to be even more so. The movement must sweep across the country and, in the process, transform the Democratic Party into a creative and forceful opposition party, paving the way for a new generation of leaders. We need to consistently fill the streets and community halls, and each time with more people. We need to drive Trump's unpopularity to historic highs and make every elected Republican more afraid of the general election than of their primary. Advertisement That will only happen if the opposition organizes in red districts, especially those where Republicans won narrow victories. This year and next, Republicans must be defeated on school boards, on town councils, at state houses, and in Congress and the Senate. There is simply no way to know how far Trump will go in his effort to dismantle democracy. We all must put aside our many differences and work together to save it.
The Guardian
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Eccentric musician Swamp Dogg at 82: ‘There's no sympathy for octogenarians'
Swamp Dogg has only just stopped seeing monsters. Since being spiked with LSD back in the 1960s, which also influenced his distinct take on left-field soul music, the 82-year-old says he could still feel the impacts of it up until just a few years ago. 'I was paranoid of crowds and paranoid of being alone,' he says. 'I had high anxiety and could be sitting in a room with you and if I looked at you long enough, you'd start looking like some kind of monster.' For a long period of time it was only through the help and support of his late wife that he was able to hold it together. 'I didn't trust but one person in life, and that was Yvonne,' he says. 'I wouldn't do anything without her. She's why I'm still alive. Yvonne was my god.' There are similarly touching sentiments expressed about her in the offbeat, funny and strangely poignant new documentary about the cult artist and his curious world: Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted. Swamp Dogg is a musician like few others. Part golden-voiced crooner, part experimental satirist, part flat-out oddball, he has made music that spans soul, rock, country, disco, R&B and Auto-Tune boogie. Growing up in Virginia, he cut his first record when he was just 12 as Little Jerry Williams. He did A&R and production work for major labels and went on to write songs for Gene Pitney, Doris Duke and Johnny Paycheck. Feeling burned out, unfairly treated and frustrated by the industry, as well as chemically altered from his LSD experiences, he rebranded as Swamp Dogg in 1970. From then on he embarked on a much more singular musical trajectory that fused the madcap peculiarities of Frank Zappa with a deep love of old school soul and country. Since then he has worked with Bon Iver, been a manager and mentor to the World Class Wreckin' Cru, which featured a young Dr Dre, and he's sold novelty records of dogs singing – well, barking – Beatles songs to pet shops in Spain. His record covers – such as him stuffing himself naked inside a giant hot dog – regularly feature on lists of worst ever album sleeves. The album cover to 1971's Rat On!, of him riding a giant white rat, is also painted on the bottom of his swimming pool (hence the name of the film). And there is also a recent cookbook he's written that he describes as 'an idea 50 years in the making'. If You Can Kill It I Can Cook It features soul food recipes such as Baked Beans Bo Diddley. 'I guess I do feel like I am eccentric,' he says with a chuckle when asked if he agrees with the description that often follows him around. 'Although I pull back on a lot of things that I know are crazier than a motherfucker.' Pulling back is something that doesn't always come easily to Swamp Dogg. Back in the 1970s he joined Jane Fonda's anti-Vietnam Free the Army tour and he feels it set him back years in the industry. 'I'm trying not to be as political,' he says. 'I'm still a little political but not as much because it backfired. It got me thrown off of Elektra records and that's what stopped people from wanting to do live interviews with me on radio and television.' Does he have any regrets about how he approached that? 'I would do it the same again but I would do it harder,' he says. 'But with more backup this time. Because before it was like I called a meeting and nobody showed up for it.' Despite a turbulent career that, for the most part, has seen him confined to the fringes, he feels like he's landed in a sweet spot when it comes to carving out a space from autonomy and idiosyncrasy. He remains prolific too, having released three albums in the last five years. 'More people seem to know me now than ever before and I still feel like I'm cooking,' he says. 'Some concerts I play and I see all these people coming in and [there's that many] it's like they must be thinking Snoop Dogg is going to be here. I love the audience so much. I'm so happy to play for them. It makes me want to work like a motherfucker.' So what keeps him so motivated and hard-working at an age when many, after 70 years in the industry, would gladly be thinking about retirement? 'Poverty,' he says, bluntly. 'I think about poverty and I get dizzy. Laying in bed watching television, and all of a sudden, you realise I ain't had no money coming in for a couple of months. That drives me. The thought of being poor makes me want to work because being poor will get your ass no matter what age you are. There's no sympathy for octogenarians.' One of the really moving elements about the documentary is the domestic situation that he has at home. In a neighbourhood in Los Angeles where they joke that all the porn films are shot, he has neighbours such as Johnny Knoxville and Mike Judge who swing by, and he lives with his friends and musical collaborators Guitar Shorty and MoogStar. 'Guitar Shorty came here for a couple of months and it turned into 18 years,' he says. Swamp Dogg never charged him a penny in rent. 'Because I've been there,' he says. 'I've slept on people's couches and on their front porch and all that kind of shit. I've been all the way down to the bottom. But I would always find a way out because I don't like not having nice things, even when you can't afford them.' One such example of this tendency is illustrated in the film when he was at the peak of success and owned nine cars. 'I thought the world would become mine,' he reflects of that period. You get a sense that the company and camaraderie of his pals, bandmates and housemates have replaced the deep loss felt over his wife. He concurs with this, before joking: 'and they also never looked like monsters to me'. Sadly, Guitar Shorty has since died, along with another friend and collaborator, John Prine, who also appears in the film. 'I guess I'm next,' he says. 'But I'm trying to walk a straight line and do the things that keep me healthy and my mind, and my whole being, happy. I try to eat right, don't drink, don't do drugs …' he stops himself. 'Damn, you might say I'm boring as a motherfucker.' In reality, Swamp Dogg is anything but. And you get the sense that he is starting to realise that embracing eccentricity, and making music purely on his own terms, while forging a truly unique career path, has perhaps paid dividends. 'I'm happy that I've stayed true to myself,' he says. 'And I've got a lot of faith in what I do and I want to leave a hell of a legacy. That's why I cut so many albums. I'll take a shot and hope it works out. It seems to be working.' Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted is out in Los Angeles cinemas on 2 May and in New York City on 9 May with a UK date to be announced
Middle East Eye
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
The Encampments: A portrait of a protest for Palestine that moved America
In the early hours of 17 April 2024, hundreds of students quietly set up an encampment in the main quad of Columbia University in Morningside, New York City. Inspired by the actions of the anti-Vietnam war protests of the late 1960s, the students dubbed the lined tents on the lawns of the campus "The Liberated Zone." Student demands were clear. They called for the disclosure of university investments in companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and called for divestment from these companies. Given its place as an incubator of American leadership, the student actions at Columbia incensed the political elite, wheeling Columbia University to the forefront in a war over public opinion on Palestine. University condemnation of the action was swift. Within hours, administrators threatened to shut down what they saw as a carbuncle on the famous campus. On the evening of 18 April, police in riot gear were ushered in.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Yahoo
Long-sought Red Army Faction militant goes on trial in Germany
CELLE, Germany (Reuters) - One of the last surviving members of the Red Army Faction group that carried out murders and kidnappings in Germany from the 1970s went on trial on Tuesday after she hid from authorities for three decades. Daniela Klette, who was arrested in Berlin in February 2024, is being tried for attempted murder, robbery and illegal possession of firearms, potentially facing life in prison, a spokesperson for the court in the northern city of Celle told Reuters. Prosecutors in November brought charges against Klette, accusing her of going on a robbery spree with two accomplices to sustain themselves financially after the RAF group formally wound itself up in 1998. Police are still searching for the two other members of the so-called third generation of the militant group, Ernst-Volker Staub and Burkhard Garweg. Both men are wanted for the same charges as Klette. Klette is standing trial for her role in the trio's raids on money transport vehicles and supermarkets between 1999 and 2016, robbing about 2.7 million euros ($2.9 million) in cash. The left-wing militant group, known in Germany for short as RAF, sprang out of Germany's anti-Vietnam war protests and killed some 30 people - German politicians and businessmen and U.S. soldiers - during the 1970s and 1980s. ($1 = 0.9242 euros) (Writing by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Matthias Williams)
