The late war resister and writer David Harris wrote Dreams Die Hard (1982), the nonfiction account of the civil rights leader, politician, and lawyer Allard Lowenstein and his murderer Dennis Sweeney. Lowenstein was also the impetus behind the Dump Johnson movement that helped send Lyndon Johnson into early retirement from the presidency in 1969. A theme in Harris’ book is the frightening repression of the South’s reaction to freedom workers in the 1960s combined with mental health issues in the life of Dennis Sweeney. The death of a dream there is relevant to today.

Peace Action in the Boston area has aired a series of Zoom meetings. The most recent featured the peace activist and former senatorial candidate Matthew Hoh, who presented a discussion of John Kennedy’s famous speech, “A Strategy of Peace”, at American University’s graduation in 1963, just five months before Kennedy was assassinated in Texas. 

That speech was remarkable! Kennedy showed that he had learned an important lesson from the Cuban Missile Crisis and was ready to negotiate with Nikita Khrushchev regarding testing nuclear weapons. John Kennedy was a warrior of the Cold War, but he learned important lessons from the debacle in Cuba and his experiences in World War II as a PT boat commander. Kennedy was ready to do what no so-called leader and politician is ready to do today: communicate with those with whom the US differs. The proxy war in Ukraine and the endless expansion of NATO are examples of the lack of communication in foreign policy. The US is somewhat the only kid left standing in terms of power and everyone and every nation must kowtow to us. The latter is profitable for the weapons industry here. There are nations that will not kowtow to US power. This adds to the missed opportunities for understanding and the explosion of arms sales and use.

While Kennedy and some others learned significant lessons from the experiences and history of the 20th century, those of us who hold peace and justice as high ideals have had the shit kicked out of us. We’re almost invisible. Those ideals of engaging the world are out of sight and in these times of endless wars and the near-total lack of communications between nuclear powers, the presence of a vibrant peace movement is tragically and dangerously missing.

The political left protester and protest leader Abbie Hoffman’s final speech in 1989 is telling in regard to what’s missing from the peace movement today. He said the young must be there in his final public appearance speaking at Vanderbilt University. Sadly or tragically, he may have believed that the generation of young students he spoke with would rise up and meet the challenges, social, political, and economic in their own times and through their own ideals and ideas. 

The rebirth of protest that Hoffman spoke about at Vanderbilt never came. We were left in dwindling numbers at what was left of the barricades. It was a cold world we witnessed. There were sporadic rear-guard battles, but they were always rear guard and our replacements came only in small numbers.

Looking at Peace Action’s enviable gathering on Zoom, we were almost unanimously gray-haired. It’s said that 60 and 70-year-olds don’t make revolutions or can remain students (However, a person can remain intellectually open throughout life.). We needed those replacements and the world turned out so much differently with the twin existential threats of environmental destruction and nuclear war that we fought hard to counter.

Where this will all lead is impossible to predict. History has a way of making unexpected turns, but we are running out of time. It was good to have high ideals and to counter both power and evil. Many left the battle for comfort. Many of us thought it would turn out okay. Some of us were brought to our knees.

We thought we would wake to a newer and better world one day, even if that day was distant, but instead, we awoke to the same battered place.

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