Nov. 18, 2011 at 4:23pm with 13 notes
Reblogged from halphillips

halphillips:

I just looked up old New York Times articles from 1967-1970 about student protestors, to see how they were covered at the time.

What stood out the most was how similar everything was to today— even more than I expected. We all know about major incidents like Kent State or the 1968 Democratic convention, but there were all these articles about smaller, everyday protests. And so many of them were sit-ins, or even sleep-ins— stuff you could easily write off as hippies hanging out if you wanted to. And there were so many vague declarations about how society has wronged us; if anything, their demands were less clear than Occupy’s demands are today. And it was mostly college students. And there were cops and school administrators shutting it down and being criticized for using violence— which, sadly, was not captured on YouTube.

People generally think of the 1960s protests as a good thing, right? That’s the accepted narrative? That while the counterculture eventually fell apart and did too many drugs and got old and became yuppies, that brief period when everybody seemed awakened was a moment of glory and a significant cultural touchstone?

This is really the same thing. The good and the bad.

Said it before and I’ll say it again: if you criticize Occupy Wall Street, you are the Big Lebowski screaming at the Dude about how the bums lost.

Once again, Hal is right.

  1. melaniehamlett reblogged this from benzado and added:
    I totally agree with this. However, I would just like to add that even though most of it got lost in drugs and...
  2. heyjb reblogged this from halphillips and added:
    At the same time, there’s such a palpable desire...1960’s among the modern left it’s...
  3. benzado reblogged this from halphillips
  4. halphillips posted this