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Howie Lisnoff
Author, "Against The Wall: Memoir Of A Vietnam-Era War Resister":
October 15, 1969 was one of the most momentous days in my life. It was the last day I would be teaching junior high school in the small town in Rhode Island where I grew up. That night I would head up to Providence to meet the person at Brown University with whom I was in a relationship, and we would march with hundreds of others down from the college green at Brown to the Rhode Island state house where we would join thousands of others protesting the Vietnam War. The next morning I would board a plane at Green Airport in Warwick, Rhode Island and fly off to the reception station at Forth Jackson, South Carolina and then onto basic training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. I was a member of the Rhode Island National Guard.
At Brown (I had graduated from Providence College across town the previous June), the hundreds who were gathered listened to speeches, the most memorable was by Allard Lowenstein, the peace and civil rights activist (and House member from Long Island), who would be murdered several years later by one of his civil rights proteges, Dennis Sweeney. Lowenstein's message was so powerful that it is almost as if I am listening to him nearly 50 years later. He said that if the Nixon administration didn't listen to the voices of peace from that night, then more radical voices would dominate the peace movement. Here was a leader who could predict what would happen with great accuracy.
Many in the procession down College Hill to the state house about a mile away held candles in the march. Arriving at the state house, I was amazed at the masses of people gathered on the lawn below the building. The most prominent voice of the speeches that would follow was delivered by Mitchell Goodman, who had been charged along with Dr. Benjamin Spock, for counseling young men to refuse the military draft.
The woman, with whom I had attended the march, and I headed back up to College Hill where we said our goodbyes. Within a few, short hours after returning home, I would board a jet that would carry me to basic training in Georgia.
The November Moratorium march is only something that was described to me by way of a telephone conversation and letters, as I was in the middle of basic training when it took place. I also followed the march on the news to the extent that that was possible in the military.
<howielisnoff@yahoo.com> Howie lives in western Massachusetts in the southern Berkshires
Howie Lisnoff
Author, "Against The Wall: Memoir Of A Vietnam-Era War Resister":
October 15, 1969 was one of the most momentous days in my life. It was the last day I would be teaching junior high school in the small town in Rhode Island where I grew up. That night I would head up to Providence to meet the person at Brown University with whom I was in a relationship, and we would march with hundreds of others down from the college green at Brown to the Rhode Island state house where we would join thousands of others protesting the Vietnam War. The next morning I would board a plane at Green Airport in Warwick, Rhode Island and fly off to the reception station at Forth Jackson, South Carolina and then onto basic training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. I was a member of the Rhode Island National Guard.
At Brown (I had graduated from Providence College across town the previous June), the hundreds who were gathered listened to speeches, the most memorable was by Allard Lowenstein, the peace and civil rights activist (and House member from Long Island), who would be murdered several years later by one of his civil rights proteges, Dennis Sweeney. Lowenstein's message was so powerful that it is almost as if I am listening to him nearly 50 years later. He said that if the Nixon administration didn't listen to the voices of peace from that night, then more radical voices would dominate the peace movement. Here was a leader who could predict what would happen with great accuracy.
Many in the procession down College Hill to the state house about a mile away held candles in the march. Arriving at the state house, I was amazed at the masses of people gathered on the lawn below the building. The most prominent voice of the speeches that would follow was delivered by Mitchell Goodman, who had been charged along with Dr. Benjamin Spock, for counseling young men to refuse the military draft.
The woman, with whom I had attended the march, and I headed back up to College Hill where we said our goodbyes. Within a few, short hours after returning home, I would board a jet that would carry me to basic training in Georgia.
The November Moratorium march is only something that was described to me by way of a telephone conversation and letters, as I was in the middle of basic training when it took place. I also followed the march on the news to the extent that that was possible in the military.
<howielisnoff@yahoo.com> Howie lives in western Massachusetts in the southern Berkshires
I'm flattered to have find my account here!
ReplyDeleteThank you for including my account of the October 15, 1969 antiwar march(es) and protest. The importance and impact of that day is forever etched in my memory.
ReplyDelete