There's a great collection of 60s protest photos over at Slate, and they're definitely worth taking a few minutes to peruse. My particular favorite is a picture of some guys burning their draft cards who look more like they got lost on their way to the math club than they do crazy radicals. And that's one of the more powerful things that one is reminded of looking at the pictures -- as much as that decade and its political movements have been caricatured since then, it's important to remember these were real people, often suffering real consequences for putting their reputations, bodies, and sometimes even lives on the line to fight for political change they believed in. And as much as they've been stereotyped as long-haired white burnouts and afro'd Black revolutionaries, most of the people in these various movements were just regular ol' people, indistinguishable from you, me and all the rest of upstanding society.
But what really strikes me about these photos is how very, very little has changed amongst those who oppose political progress. Check out the sweet sign the stoic citizen in the photo on the left has there -- virtually indistinguishable from the things I've had shouted at me at various demonstrations against my generation's pointless war of imperialism. I guess the weapons, tactics, and locations of our wars of folly can change, but our catastrophic failures will always be the fault of pinkos, queers, and cowards...
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