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Give Peace a Chance  

In their new documentary series The Vietnam War, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick offer a sharp indictment of an atrocious war. But when it comes to portraying the antiwar movement, they lapse into troubling stereotypes.







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An Occupier’s Trial  

Cecily McMillan has had trouble concentrating on the master’s thesis she is supposed to be writing this spring under my direction at the New School in New York City, a study of the political beliefs and career of the late, …





Starting Out in the Fifties  

The purpose of this new magazine is suggested by its name. . . . The accent of Dissent will be radical. Its tradition will be the tradition of democratic socialism. We shall try to reassert the libertarian values of the …











Hardhats and Longhairs  

In May 1970, as a college student in Portland, Oregon, I took part in the national campus strike protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the killing of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard. Every …





Spin Control  

“Buddy once said something reasonably sensible to me a couple of years ago,” he said. “If I can remember what it was.” He hesitated. And Franny, though still busy with her Kleenex, looked over at him. When Zooey appeared to …



Black Protest Movements  

The Montgomery bus boycott began in December 1955 when Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. For a full year after her arrest blacks in …