No, This Is Not 1968, America -- Here's Why

Kent State massacre.

It was bound to happen, I suppose.

And now it's out of control.

I'm talking about the growing tendency on the part of the media and others to compare the current round of uprisings in America's universities with the unrest that occurred on campuses in the late 1960s and early 70s protesting the Vietnam war. What we're hearing is "this is just like 1968" and explanations about "history simply repeating itself." Wrong, and wrong again.

So, I'm here to say this is not like 1968. And I know what I'm talking about because I was there in 1968 and the years that followed. I was part of some of those protests. As a college student I marched against the war and supported those who called for its end. Here's what's different now vs then:

• College age Americans were fighting and dying on foreign soil in 1968 in a war that appeared to have no end. And 1968 was the high point of the bloodshed with 16,592 young American lives lost. 
• The war was real and it was urgent. It was the first war covered on TV while it happened on the nightly network news, live every night. Everyone was touched by the war. Everyone! My sister's friend lost her brother in the war. I lost five of my high school classmates whose names are now on that iconic wall in Washington DC. 
• Authorities were not nearly as tolerant of college uprisings as they are now. Protesting students were often quickly expelled and, since there was a military draft, if they defied the draft they could be legally prosecuted. At Kent State University the National Guard was called in to quell a student protest. Twenty eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds over 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others in what became known as the Kent State massacre.
• Before it was all over, more than 58,000 Americans would die in Vietnam and many of those young Americans who survived the war came home  permanently scarred by the experience -- damaged for the rest of their lives. The anguish was real, the divisions were deep, the scar remains.  

For my part, I protested peacefully. During the lunch hour, at the university that I attended I stood in a silent line with other students -- a vigil for peace and in memory of those who were being sacrificed daily. We joined together, attended peaceful rallies, sang songs, supported one another and worked through the system to back political candidates who were sympathetic to our cause. 

Unlike students today, I was unable to vote in 1968 (the voting age wasn't lowered to 18 until 1971). But I was still determined to make a difference. So, I worked in Pennsylvania, Indiana, New York, New Hampshire and New Jersey for Senator Gene McCarthy the peace candidate for president. He did not succeed and was denied the nomination at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago which sadly, turned bloody during a year that also witnessed the assassinations of peace advocates Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. 

The students who are protesting today don't know what it's like to be drafted, to be uprooted, to be sent to a foreign war to fight and die or watch their friends sent to the same war or fear that they will be next. They don't know what it's like to face all of this while even being denied the right to vote. They have no idea!

No, this is not 1968! Not. Even. Close.