TWO DAYS IN OCTOBER
Hi everyone,
So sorry not to have been in touch w/ with Bluest Fist posts ranging from the witty to the poignant to the insightful to the scalding. Life's just carried me away for a few months and may do so for a few more. This isn't a good excuse and I feel bad that in these troubling times I haven't been able to find the time for a good political letter to you. Stick with me and at some point I'll be back on the airwaves with a vengence.
Anyway, Sue and I watched a pretty excellent documentary tonight on PBS's American Experience. It was called "Two Days in October" and it told the contemporaneous stories of the 1967 "Dow Protest" at University of Wisconsin-Madison, on the one hand, and on the other, the massacre by ambush of the "Black Lions" regiment of (mostly teenage) soldiers by Viet Cong.
The documentary is remarkable for the range of interviews -- from the Viet Cong colonel who lead the ambush to half a dozen very brave and honest (it seemed to me) U.S. soldiers who were there and are universally haunted by it (though their political responses to it ranged widely); likewise in the Wisconsin story -- where two of the police officers who lead a brutal repression of the protest manage to reveal the deep class resentment at the heart of their own anger towards the "student radicals" (though without tempering their hsotility very much) -- and a very eloquent guy who was a young professor there at the time really steals that part of the show. The wife of Colonel Terry Allen plays a startling role on the other side of the story.
So, look for it on PBS! And if you see it, send an email to your local PBS affiliate and thank them for showing it.
So sorry not to have been in touch w/ with Bluest Fist posts ranging from the witty to the poignant to the insightful to the scalding. Life's just carried me away for a few months and may do so for a few more. This isn't a good excuse and I feel bad that in these troubling times I haven't been able to find the time for a good political letter to you. Stick with me and at some point I'll be back on the airwaves with a vengence.
Anyway, Sue and I watched a pretty excellent documentary tonight on PBS's American Experience. It was called "Two Days in October" and it told the contemporaneous stories of the 1967 "Dow Protest" at University of Wisconsin-Madison, on the one hand, and on the other, the massacre by ambush of the "Black Lions" regiment of (mostly teenage) soldiers by Viet Cong.
The documentary is remarkable for the range of interviews -- from the Viet Cong colonel who lead the ambush to half a dozen very brave and honest (it seemed to me) U.S. soldiers who were there and are universally haunted by it (though their political responses to it ranged widely); likewise in the Wisconsin story -- where two of the police officers who lead a brutal repression of the protest manage to reveal the deep class resentment at the heart of their own anger towards the "student radicals" (though without tempering their hsotility very much) -- and a very eloquent guy who was a young professor there at the time really steals that part of the show. The wife of Colonel Terry Allen plays a startling role on the other side of the story.
So, look for it on PBS! And if you see it, send an email to your local PBS affiliate and thank them for showing it.
posted by Montana at 11:19 PM
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