November 1969

Last Wednesday was the 54^th anniversary of the largest political demonstration in American history. Organized by the National Mobilization against the War in Vietnam, commonly known as the MOBE, the protest drew half a million people to the nation’s capital. They marched from the White House (Nixon’s “secret plan to end the war” having turned out not to exist) to the Washington Monument. Peter Seeger led the marchers in John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” Leftie celebrities from Peter, Paul and Mary to Leonard Bernstein joined in. The tone was serious, following as it did on the single-file March Against Death that had taken place just days earlier, each silent participant holding a votive light and a small sign naming a lost soldier.

Among the dead was a disproportionate number of second-class citizens: Black, brown and poor, the ones who couldn’t use college enrollment to defer their eligibility for the draft. These days we might have actually heard the outcry against this privilege. But back then it was fine where I came from. Black comedian Nipsy Russell had a routine he did on the college circuit: “Cram, cram, cram for the exam and stay out of Vietnam!!!!”

We lived in Washington at that time, but we didn’t march in the demonstration. Though my legs were strong, I no longer had a brain. Everywhere in DC there were young protestors wearing black arm bands. When I first noticed them, the thought flitted through my mind that maybe they had joined us in mourning our baby daughter. She had died at the end of October, ten days after heart surgery. I asked her father why these young people were horsing around in the grocery store aisle while they picked out potato chips. They were wearing black arm bands. They were mourning. How could they be laughing, I wanted to know.

Emmon told me about the demonstration. I hadn’t paid attention to war protests since the pediatric cardiologist told me that we shouldn’t put off the surgery any longer, and I had laughed at him loudly before I started crying. I can imagine the thousands of mothers and fathers who lost a son or daughter in that war blasting a raging guffaw or spitting curses at the neatly dressed soldiers who arrived with the news, though most, I would guess, only stared at the sky. The Vietnam War Memorial lists over 58,300 U.S. dead.

 And now with children being trampled in the Middle East, families blown apart in Sudan, and young soldiers dying in Ukraine, what will become of their ravaged parents? How will they steady themselves? Who will help them?

#parental grief #race #racism #war