May & June 1968 Student Protests rocked France and labor strikes brought the French Government to verge of collapse.
New student groups were formed. In part in solidarity with the growing anti-war movement in the United States, in Support of the insurgents in South Vietnam, and in the memory of the assassinated revolutionary Che Guevarra. Along with ordinary student complaints of overcrowded classrooms and the lack of moral relevance between what was taught in the classroom. There were concerns of the ethical legitimacy of education in the face of growing anxiety and over the worldwide problems of global exploitation, of the powerful nations and increasing human misery created by the people who actually produced the wealth. May 3 1968 a few students at Sorbonne formed a protest committee because of these and other issues. At this meeting French Nationalists attacked supporters of the American Anti-War movement. This meeting at first was attended only by a very small group of students who were opposed to the US war in Vietnam. This meeting was broke up by the Nationalists and a pitched street battle followed and soon the ranks of the American Anti-War movement grew rapidly and overwhelmed the Nationalist. The battle soon became too large for the police to contain. The next day students took over the University fearing a war between left wing and right wing students the administration called out the police. Negotiations ended with the students agreeing to leave peacefully and a meeting with the administration would follow in a few days afterward. The women students left first without incident. Then when the men students tried to leave the police arrested the male students. The administration tried to come in support of the students but was ignored by the police.
Before the police vans could leave other students and young citizens in the local neighborhood began attacking the police with stones and loose bricks, The French Riot Police was called out armed with tear gas, and the pitched battle only increased in size and seriousness. The battle was still going on the next morning. The press was there with full coverage. Soon protests and open riots soon spread to other campuses. By Monday May 6, one of the largest demonstration to date was being carried out in the vicinity of the Sorbonne. The Police tried to block the advance of the protesters. The crowd was very large and the people behind kept moving forward and the people in front were being pushed into police lines. Tempers flared police clubbed the marchers and the marchers began to rip up metal grilles, loose bricks and paving stones and attack the police. French factory workers walked off the job and joined the fight on the side of the students attacking the police with the tools they brought with them from the work place like hammers. The combination of students and workers forced the police to retreat.
The next day the university students and workers were joined by teachers and students from the public schools all attacking the police. By Friday local residence of the Left Bank joined the fight on the side of the students.
By night the students occupied the campus and local residence brought the protesters food and blankets. The administration was ready to talk. It was all too quick. Then a little after 2:00 am the police moved in and the violence was more intense than anything seen since the end of World War II. By dawn the devastation looked like a war zone. Unions then called a general strike in support of the students. Strike and demonstrations were now nationwide and the nation was totally polarized between the left and the right. At the Sorbonne the students were running the college as they saw it was just like the 1871 Paris Commune when the workers back then over through the government and took over Paris. This time however the government was only resting. Now the workers were taking over the factories and firing the owners. Soon strikes and occupations spread with lightning speed to from factories like Renault, to the shipyards, the hospitals and the public sectors. The management was told not to show up for work, or workers committees would arrest them.
By now worker committees were in charge of the work place and worker committees on the job were replacing the Unions and the powerful Communist Party as leaders. By May 23 over two million workers that included both private and public sector were either on strike or had taken over their job sites and running them through worker committees without the assistance of owners or managers. Then on May 24 de Gaulle defeated pleaded for calm. Crowds burnt the Paris stock Exchange building to the ground. Strike committees took over the function of civil administration claiming to be replacing the official government. By the 29th things were coming to a head daily demonstration were the largest in memory combining a festive atmosphere with an aura of desperation. Union leaders and the Party leaders were no longer in control of the situation and would have taken a proactive role in order to regain command. Communist Party and Union leaders began to negotiate with the government. Because many on the left thought the government was already defeated that any negotiations was not only not needed these same discussions would breathe life into a beaten enemy. The left was coming apart along generational lines. Any deals that the leaders of the left worked out with the government was openly rejected by most of the young people who were the majority of the insurgents. De Gaulle left the country to arrange an invasion of NATO forces to reestablish end of the conflict.
Now the right wing found courage to fight the left. The Communist Party supported a plea for peace losing the last trace of credibility it had with the youth of the country. The Communists continued to be the Party revered by those workers who lived through the NAZI occupation, and the Resistance. Now the Nation was divided as never before the left against the right, the revolutionaries against the government, on the left Father against the radical Son and Mother against Daughter. With the Communist Party and Trade Union leaders cooperating with the government it now was the left that was at war with the left. The older workers returned the work, happy with the concessions that they won. Most of the younger workers stayed out, why settle for crumbs when you could have the whole pie. The big winner was the Communists who regained control of the official left. The real losers was also the Communists who would be seen as gutless old men and toothless old women by the recently radicalized youth. Students now had to fight the University, the government and the Communists. Many of the more radical students now would advocate the arrest of the University Administration, fire all the Professors and burn the Universities to the ground, turning them into cow pastures. Of course nothing ever came of those slogans, it was only the final cry of a dying revolution.
By June 12 the Government was able to ban student organizations.
Elections at the month the two largest left parties the Communist and the Socialist did worst than any time in recent memory. Many young people boycotted the elections, many more instead of voting wrote obscenities on their ballots. The result was obvious the right won and the recently radicalized youth accepted no responsibility for the defeat of what saw tired old warhorses better suited for the glue factory than as leaders of a nation.
Back in the USA
The Catonsville Nine
It was May 17, 1968 that nine people acting on their deep ethical convictions walked into the Selective Service Offices in Catonsville, Maryland, confiscated hundreds of draft records from their files and then outside of the building proceeded to burn everyone of those files with homemade napalm. The argument they made it was better to burn records than living human beings. They made speeches about what they seen as the immoral action of the United States Government against the citizens of Vietnam.
These nine citizens were arrested and, in a trial that was front-page news they were finally sent to prison.
I believe the following expresses some of the historical attitudes of the late Sixties.
From their side of the story they believed in what they were doing.
This they claimed was act of civil disobedience carefully designed to intensify the protest against the draft across America. The protestors wanted to promote discussions of the morality of both US foreign policy and the supporting American national identity. In Maryland and across the nation, these individuals did stir up irate responses on the part of many Americans on both sides. It also focused the nine Catholic participants attention on making faith relevant to real human concerns.
Now especially priest brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan would dedicate the rest of their lives fighting what they saw as US imperialism attempt to destroy democracy globally. Catholic Priests Daniel Berrigan and Phillip Berrigan used the trial and subsequent conviction as form to educate the public on the horrors of "imperialist wars" and "colonial domination".
No attempt was made to defend themselves instead they used the form as a way to put the US Government, the economic system and American Nationalism on trial. South East Asia was only one tentacle of this evil octopus. Us policy in the Middle East was being defined as immoral. The historical relations between the US and Latin America was not only violating the most basic moral principles but one of a bullying coward.
They made their cause as a cause of empowering the powerless and ending the joke that the American Government cares about democracy anywhere in the world.
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