Vietnam War Statistics

U.S. hostile deaths by military service
ARMY	30,950	65%
MARINES	13,091	28%
AIR FORCE	1,744	4%
NAVY	1,628*	3%
Total	47,413	-
*The 5 Coast Guardsmen are included in the Navy total.

Longest war in US history (11 years)

"War" was never officially declared by the United States

A Cornell University study placed the over-all total U.S. cost
of the Vietnam war at $200 Billion

Total U.S. bomb tonnage dropped during:
World War II = 2,057,244 tons
Vietnam War = 7,078,032 tons (3-1/2 times WWII
tonnage)

Bomb tonnage dropped during the Vietnam War amounted to
1,000 lbs. for every man, woman and child in Vietnam.

An estimated 70,000 draft evaders and "dodgers" were living
in Canada by 1972.

An estimated 3 million people were killed by the war,
and over 1 million were wounded.

http://www.landscaper.net/timelin.htm

Kent State University. May 4th, 1970

Ohio

lyrics by Neil Young

--------

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Link to comprehensive on the May 4th, 1970 shootings at Kent State University

Protest Flyer

Article on the Vietnam War Dividing American Society

"I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong"

- Muhammad Ali

Boxer Muhammad Ali was one prominent American who resisted being drafted into service during the Vietnam War. Ali, then heavyweight champion of the world, declared himself a "conscientious objector," earning a prison sentence (later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court) and a three-year ban from boxing.

Link to History.com Coverage of the Vietnam War Protests. Includes videos and articles.

Kent State University. Monday May 4th, 1970. The Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others. The students were protesting the American invasion of Cambodia which President Richard Nixon had announced in a television address on April 30th.

1964

• March. A conference at Yale plans demonstrations on May 2.
• April 25. The National Guardian published a pledge of draft resistance by some of these organizers.
• May 2. Hundreds of students demonstrate on New York's Times Square and from there went to the United Nations. 700 marched in San Francisco. Smaller demonstrations take place in Boston, Madison, Wisconsin and Seattle. These protests were organized by the Progressive Labor Party, with help from the Young Socialist Alliance. The May 2nd Movement was the PLP's youth affiliate.
• May 12. Twelve young men in New York publicly burn their draft cards to protest the war—the first such act of war resistance.^[1][2]
• Fall. Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley defends the right of students to carry out political organizing on campus. Founder: Mario Savio.

[edit]1965

• February–March. Protests at Kansas University, organized by the Student Peace Union.^[3]
• February 12–16. Anti-U.S. demonstrations in various cities in the world, "including a break-in at the U.S. embassy in Budapest, Hungary, by some 200 Asian and African students."^[4]
• March 24. First SDS organized teach-in, at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. 3,000 students attend and the idea spreads fast.
• March 15. A debate organized by the Inter-University Committee for a Public Hearing on Vietnam is held in Washington, D.C. . Radio and television coverage.
• March. Berkeley, California: Jerry Rubin and Stephen Smale's Vietnam Day Committee (VOC) organize a huge protest of 100,000.
• April 17. The SDS-organized March Against the Vietnam War onto Washington, D.C. was the largest anti-war demonstration in the USA to date with 15-20,000 people attending. Paul Potter demands a radical change of society.
• May 5. Several hundred people carrying a black coffin marched to the Berkeley, California, draft board, and 40 men burned their draft cards.^[5]
• May 21–23. Vietnam Day Committee organized large teach-in at UC Berkeley. 10-30,000 attend.
• May 22. The Berkeley draft board was visited again, with 19 men burning their cards. President Lyndon B. Johnson was hung in effigy.^[5]
• June 27. End Your Silence, an open letter in the New York Times by the group Artists and Writers Protest against the War in Vietnam.^[6]
• July. The Vietnam Day Committee organized militant protest in Oakland, California ends in inglorious debacle, when the organizers end the march from Oakland to Berkeley to avoid a confrontation with police.
• July. A Women Strike for Peace- delegation led by Cora Weiss meets its North Vietnamese and Vietcong counterpart in Jakarta, Indonesia.
• July 30. A man from the Catholic Worker Movement is photographed burning his draft card on Whitehall Street in Manhattan in front of the Armed Forces Induction Center. His photograph appears in Life magazine in August.^[7]
• October 15. David J. Miller burned his draft card at a rally held near the Armed Forces Induction Center on Whitehall Street in Manhattan. The 24-year-old pacifist, member of theCatholic Worker Movement, became the first man arrested and convicted under the 1965 amendment to the 1948 Selective Service Act.^[8]
• October 15–16.
• Europe, October 15–16. First 'International Days of Prostest. Anti-U.S. demonstrations in London, Rome, Brussels, Copenhagen and Stockholm.
• October 20. Stephen Lynn Smith, a student at the University of Iowa, spoke to a rally at the Memorial Union in Iowa City, Iowa, and burned his draft card. He was arrested, found guilty and put on three years of probation.^[9]
• October 30. Pro-Vietnam War march in New York City with 25,000.
• November 6. Thomas C. Cornell, Marc Paul Edelman and Roy Lisker burned their draft cards at a public rally organized by the Committee for Non-Violent Action in Union Square, New York City.^[10]
• November 27. SANE-sponsored March on Washington in 1965. 15- 20,000 demonstrators.

[edit]1966

• From September 1965 to January 1966, 170,000 men had been drafted and another 180,000 enlisted. By January, 2,000,000 men had secured college deferments.
• March 25–26. Second Days of International Protest. Organized by the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, led by SANE, Women Strike for Peace, theCommittee for Nonviolent Action and the SDS: 20,000 to 25,000 in New York alone, demonstrations also in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Oklahoma City. Abroad, in Ottawa, London, Oslo, Stockholm, Lyon, and Tokyo.
• March 31. David Paul O'Brien and three companions burned their draft cards on the steps of the South Boston Courthouse. The case was tried by the Supreme Court as United States v. O'Brien.
• Spring. Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam founded.
• May 15. March Against the Vietnam War, led by SANE and Women Strike for Peace, with 8-10,000 taking part.
• Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) refused to go to war, famously stating that he had "got nothing against no Viet Cong" and that "no Viet Cong ever called me nigger." According to a writer for Sports Illustrated, the governor of Illinois called Ali "disgusting" and the governor of Maine said that Ali "should be held in utter contempt by every patriotic American." [2]In 1967 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was released on appeal.
• July. First national antiwar Mobilization Committee established.
• November 7. Protests against Robert McNamara at Harvard University.
• Late December. Student Mobilization Committee formed.

[edit]1967

• January 29-February 5. Angry Arts Week, by the Artists Protest group.
• April 15. At Sheep Meadow, Central Park, New York City, some 60 young men including a few students from Cornell University came together to burn their draft cards in a Maxwell House coffee can.^[11] More join them, including uniformed Green Beret Army Reservist Gary Rader. As many as 158 cards are burned.^[12]
• April 15. Spring Mobe protests in New York City (300,000) and in San Francisco. Founded in November 1966 as the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Its National director was Reverend James L. Bevel.
• May 20–21. 700 activists at the Spring Mobilization Conference, Washington, D.C. . A National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the Mobe) is created.
• Sweden. May and November. International War Crimes Tribunal.
• June 1. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War formed. Veteran Jan Barry Crumb participated in a protest on April 7 called the "Fifth Avenue Peace Parade" in New York City. On May 30 Crumb and ten like-minded men attended a peace demonstration in Washington, D.C.
• June 23. The Bond, the first G.I. underground paper established.^[13]
• In the summer of 1967, Neil Armstrong and various other NASA officials began a tour of South America to raise awareness for space travel. According to First Man, a biography of Armstrong's life, during the tour, several South American college students protested the astronaut, and shouted such phrases as "Murderers get out of Vietnam!" and other anti-Vietnam War messages.
• October 16. A day of widespread war protest organized by The Mobe in 30 cities across the U.S., with some 1,400 draft cards burned.^[14]
• October 20. Resist leaders present draft cards to the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. .
• October 21–23. National Mobe organized The March on the Pentagon to Confront the War Makers. 100,000 are at the Lincoln Memorial on the D.C. Mall, 35,000 (or up to 50,000?) go on to the Pentagon, some to engage in acts of civil disobedience. Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night describes the event.
• December 4. National draft-card turn-in. At San Francisco's Federal Building, some 500 protesters witnessed 88 draft cards collected and burned.^[5]
• December 4–8. Stop the Draft Week demonstrations in New York. 585 arrested, amongst them Benjamin Spock.
• Sweden, December 20. Seventh Year of the Viet Cong (the Front National de Libération du Vietnam du Sud, or FNL) celebrated with violent clashes in Stockholm. Demonstrations in forty Swedish towns.

[edit]1968

• January 15. Jeannette Rankin leads a demonstration of thousands of women in Washington, D.C. .
• London, Sunday, March 17. Violent protest in London (street occupation), not supported by the Old Left. Over 300 arrests.
• Frankfurt, Germany, April 2. Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and two comrades try to firebomb a major department store.
• April 3. National draft-card turn-in. About 1,000 draft cards were turned in. In Boston, 15,000 protesters watched 235 men turn in their draft cards.^[14]
• April 4. Reverent Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated.
• Late April. Student Mobe sponsored national student strike, demonstrations in New York and San Francisco.
• April–May. Occupation of five buildings at Columbia University. Future leading Weather Underground member Mark Rudd gaines prominence.
• Berlin, Germany, April 11. Rudi Dutschke shot and wounded. Massive riots against Axel Springer publishers.
• May. FBI's COINTELPRO campaign launched against the New Left.
• May. Agricultural Building at Southern Illinois University (SIU) bombed.
• June 4–5. The hope of the antiwar movement, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy assassinated after celebrating victory in the California primary. He dies the next morning, June 6.
• Late June. Student Mobe ruptures.
• August 28. Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Violent clashes.
• November 14. National draft-card turn-in.

[edit]1969

• The whole year major campus protests take place across the country.
• January 19–20. Protests against Richard Nixon's inauguration.
• April 5–6. Antiwar demonstrations and parades in several cities, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and others.
• March 29. Conspiracy charges against eight suspected organizers of the Chicago Convention protests.
• June. The Old Main building at SIU burns to the ground.
• June. Chicago. SDS national convention. The SDS disintegrates into SDS-WSA and SDS. The Worker Student Alliance of the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) has the majority of delegates (900) on its side. The smaller Revolutionary Youth Movement fraction (500) divide into RYM-I/Weatherman, who retained control of the SDS National Office, and maoistRYM-II. This fraction will further divide into the various groups of New Communist Movement.
• July 4–5. Cleveland: national antiwar conference established New Mobe.
• October 8–11. Weatherman's desastrous Days of Rage in Chicago. Only 300 militants show up, not the expected 10,000. 287 will be arrrested.
• October 15. National Moratorium against the War demonstrations. Huge crowds in Washington and in Boston (100,000).
• November 15. The Mobe's National Moratorium against the War mobilizes 500,000. March against Death, Washington, D.C. .
• November 15. San Francisco.
• November 26. Draft-lottery bill signed.

[edit]1970

• April 4. A right-wing Victory March. organized by Reverend Carl McIntire calls for victory in the Vietnam War. 50,000 attend.
• February, March. Wave of bombings across the USA.
• March. Antidraft protests across the USA.
• March 6. Weatherman bombmaking attempt ends in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, New York City.
• April. New Mobe, Moratorium and SMC protests across the country.
• April 19: Moratorium announces disbanding.
• May 2: violent anti-war rallies at many universities.
• Kent State University, Ohio, May 4: Kent State Shootings: U.S. National Guard kill four young people during a demonstration. As a result four million students go on strike at more than 450 universities and colleges.
• May 9. Mobe sponsored Kent State/Cambodia Incursion Protest, Washington, D.C. 75 to 100,000 demonstrators converged on Washington, D.C. to protest the Kent State shootings and the Nixon administration's incursion into Cambodia. Even though the demonstration was quickly put together, protestors were still able to bring out thousands to march in the Capital. It was an almost spontaneous response to the events of the previous week. Police ringed the White House with buses to block the demonstrators from getting too close to the executive mansion. Early in the morning before the march, Nixon met with protesters briefly at the Lincoln Memorial.
• May 8, New York. Hard Hat Riot: after a student anti-war demonstration, workers attack them and riot for two hours.
• May 14, Jackson State College. Jackson State killings: Two dead and twelve injured during violent protests.
• May 20, New York. An estimated 60,000 to 150,000 are at a pro-war demonstration on Wallstreet.
• June.
• University of Wisconsin-Madison, August 24. Sterling Hall bombing: aimed at the Army Math Research Center on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors of the building, in missing its target, a Ford van packed with explosives hit the physics laboratory on the first floor and killed young researcher Robert Fassnacht and seriously injured another person.
• August 29, Chicano Moratorium. 20,000 Mexican-Americans participated in the largest antiwar demonstration in Los Angeles. Police are attacked with clubs and guns and kill three people, including Rubén Salazar, a TV news director and LA Times reporter.

[edit]1971

• March 1. Weatherman plants a bomb in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., causing $ 300,000 in damage, but no casualties..
• April 19–23. Vietnam Veterans against the War stages operation Dewey Canyon III. 2,000 camping on the Mall.
• April 22–28. Veterans against the War (and also John Kerry) testify before various congressional panels.
• April 24. Peaceful Vietnam War Out Now rally on the Mall, Washington, D.C., with 200,000 calling for an end to the Vietnam War, 150,000 participate in the largest demonstration sofar on the Westcoast in San Francisco.
• April 26. More militant attempts in Washington, D. C. to shut down the government are futile against 5,000 police and 12,000 troops.
• May 3–5, May Day Protests. Planned by Rennie Davis and Jerry Coffin of the War Resisters League, later joined by Michael Lerner, militant mass-action tries to shut down the government in Washington, D.C. . 12,614 arrested, a record in American history.
• December. VVAW protests across the USA.

[edit]1972

• April 15–20. May. New waves of protests across the country.
• April 17. Militant anti-ROTC demonstration at the University of Maryland. 800 National Guarsmaen are ordered onto the campus.
• Frankfurt am Main, Germany, May 11. Headquarters of the V Corps at the IG Farben Building: The Commando Petra Schelm of the Rote Armee Fraktion killed U.S. Officer Paul Bloomquist and wounded thirteen in a bombing-attack.
• May 21. Emergency March on Washington, D.C., organized by the National Peace Action Coalition and the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice. 8 to 15,000 protest in Washington, D.C. against the increased bombing of North Vietnam and the mining of its harbors.
• June 22. Ring around Congress demonstration, Washington, D.C. .
• In July Jane Fonda visits North Vietnam and speaks on Hanoi Radio, earning her the nickname Hanoi Jane.
• August 22. 3,000 protest against the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach.
• November 7. Nixon defeats George McGovern in a landslide election victory..
• December. Protests against Hanoi and Haiphong bombings.

"Hey, Hey LBJ. Put Those Damn Guns Away!"

"One, two, three, four! We don't want your fucking war!"