Nixon's Savage Attack on the Greatest Anti-War Movement in U.S. History

By Rick Perlstein, AlterNet
Posted on May 12, 2008, Printed on May 12, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/84683/

The following is excerpted from Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein.

It was the idea of a Boston envelope manufacturer, the kind of figure Richard Nixon was used to approaching for political contributions: a one-day nationwide general strike against the war. Most antiwar leaders were skeptical. One who wasn't, who knew something about quixotic successes, was Sam Brown, the organizer of the McCarthy "Children's Crusade" in 1968. The usual spots where dissidents gathered, he realized -- New York, San Francisco, Washington -- were foreign territory to most Americans. This action would be determinedly local. Get pictures on the AP wire of antiwar butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers in Schenectady, Cincinnati, and Bakersfield, and a new antiwar narrative might emerge. Since "strike" sounded like something bomb-throwers did, they adopted, instead, a Nixon word: moratorium. A moratorium from everyday life, smack dab in the middle of the week.