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Show Whatever happened to the anti-war movement? The occurrence of the spring anti-war march has become as predictable as the flowering of daffodils and tulips in recent yeare. The marches have become so large and well-planned that for a few days in April or May the whole world watches Washington or New York. If judged superficially, this year should be no different. The call has gone out from Student Mobilization Committee for a mass march in New York on April 22. There is a tremendous supporting issue; recent intensification of hostilities and the Administration's vow to use everything short of nuclear weapons to "protect" South Vietnam. However, things are very calm, and whispers of futility seem to float in the air.' The cohesiveness and esprit de corp of the movement have dribbled away in a thousand such marches and a thousand news reports. The combined minor co-options and moral cop-outs of thousands of movement people have cut down their collective idealist footing. One by one, the things the "freaks" pioneered and adopted as their counter-cultural repetoire have been seized and commercially exploited. The topical street music sound of the Reverend Gary Davis, Phil Ochs, and Eric Anderson have given way to the $7 concert, where thousands of boppers have their ears cauterized by some skinny hairball hammering on his high E string. The clothes that were simple and patched of necessity are now sold in the gourmet apparel shops, and sported by middle-class business men on weekends. And the underground press after an early display of tremendous creativity and energy seems to have contracted some social disease and mouldered away. Even in the face of what they regard as culture theft, aren't the dissidents still there? Maybe. But half the students in American universities today were only high-schoolers when Kent State occurred. oc-curred. Half the students at the University of Utah were not students when Jerry Rubin spoke, or when the old Intercultural Center burned down. How many people are left on this campus who participated in the Park Building sit-in? That is what happened to the anti-war movement; it has gotten old, it has gotten tired. The old core is out in the world now, trying to cut out a living and raise kids. They are employed at the Establishment's edges, working at individual rather than collective goals. So the march approaches, not like a moral call, but rather like a bout of nostalgia. It was so American, that meteoric bloom and withering of ideals. Whatever happened to the Movement? Well, what happens to tulips after spring? |