wayne smith who served as a combat medic during vietnam. >> we wanted to get home. we just wanted to survive. and yet there is an enormous guilt that stays with me and many my brothers and sisters today that we should have known better. we should have been sitting where you are. that we should have been more active, more informed, and more in opposition to that war. amy: all of that and more coming up. this is democracy now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. as the nation celebrates memorial day, we look back at the vietnam war. fifty years ago, on march 7, 1965, 3500 u.s. marines landed in south vietnam, marking the start of the u.s. ground war in vietnam. that same day, in alabama, state troopers beat back civil rights protesters in selma trying to walk over the edmund pettus bridge. weeks later, the first teach-in against the vietnam war was held at the university of michigan. by 1968, the u.s. had half a million troops in vietnam. the war continued until april 1975. some scholars estimate as many as 3.8 million vietnamese died during the war, up to 800,000 perished in cambodia, another one million in laos. the u.s. death toll was 58,000. today we spend the hour airing highlights from a recent conference titled "vietnam: the power of protest." it was held at the new york avenue presbyterian church in washington, d.c. speakers included former oakland congressmember ron dellums, who chaired the armed services committee. colorado's pat schroeder, one of the youngest women ever elected to congress. tom hayden, who helped to found sds, students for a democratic society and wayne smith, who served as a combat medic during vietnam. democracy now! co-host juan gonzález moderated the event. juan: good morning. i was here last night, as i know many of you were. it was really an inspiring evening to see so many of these elders, who really paved the way to build one of the great mass movements in american history. but a mass movement is not simply built by leaders. it is built by tens of thousands of people who make individual decisions at a certain point in their lives to risk the disapproval of their family, the possibility of derailing their education, the possibility of losing jobs, some even of losing their lives. they make individual decisions that something has to change. so the rest of this conference will be dedicated to looking at those individual decisions that were made by so many people, and the repercussions not only in the vietnam -- in the movement against the vietnam war, but also in the movement -- in the social movements and justice movements that emerged subsequent to the war. i was a young college student at columbia university, privileged to be a member of the strike coordinating committee of the columbia student strike of 1968, where i met many people -- [applause] a strike against the vietnam war and racism of columbia university -- and met many of the people who became so influential in my own life, and then, subsequently, after leaving sds and columbia, went on to participate in another great movement, the movement for the liberation of puerto rico and the puerto rican communities in this country -- [applause] and where we were one of the first organizations to stand up and oppose the vietnam war in the latino community. so many of our members ended up being arrested for selective service violations. pablo "yoruba" guzmán, the cbs reporter, spent two years in tallahassee federal prison. i was arrested in 1972 by 13 fbi agents, who surrounded our offices with shotguns and hauled me out for selective service violation, and eventually was convicted. and so many others of our members ended up sacrificing their careers at that point to be able to stand up. so -- and we're going to discuss now, with an incredibly tremendous panel, what they were doing, how they got involved in the movement against the vietnam war and the impact it had on their lives. tom hayden, co-author of the port huron statement, one of the founding leaders of the students for a democratic society, part of the chicago 8 after the demonstrations in chicago, state senator and just a general voice of conscience for the american progressive movement for so long. >> i want to start off by saying how many of you i love very much and known for such a long time and i only hope that there's enough minutes and occasions here for us to get to know each other again, because we have really been through a lifetime. today, we'll have plenty of time for discussion, for panels, for observations. and at 4:00, we'll gather to march to the king memorial. and i want to just say a word about that. i know that ron dellums is going to speak to this. but why was that -- why was that chosen? it's because, in keeping with trying to make sure our history is told accurately, we have to tell it ourselves. and we have to recognize that dr. king became a martyr because of his stand on vietnam, not only because of his stand on race, justice, economic poverty. and there's been a tendency over the many decades to make dr. king a monument to nonviolence alone, and we need to remember that he was attacked by "the new york times" and by "the wall street journal" and by "the washington post" for being out of place. they wanted to put him back in his place and say nothing about vietnam, take no stand on vietnam. there were threats that he would lose funding. there were threats of all sorts. and to distort that, to forget that, to ignore that, his monument would be shaped in a certain way to serve certain interests, but not others, is a disservice to truth. and we have to march there and vigil there and commemorate him as a leader and a martyr for all of us, for peace, justice and civil rights, not only in the united states, but around the world, and persist in making sure that his whole story, including the campaign to end poverty in the united states, is told each and every year and in all of our schools and curriculum. so that's the purpose. this is a way of saying that the struggle for memory and for history is a living thing. it's ongoing. it does not end. yet even today, people are debating and reassessing the history of abolition of slavery, the role of slave resistance the role of the underground railroad, the role of the abolitionist direct action movement, the role of the radical republican politicians the role of international politics in what came about, and the role -- role-how it was derailed by the assassination of president lincoln, the ending of the possibilities of reconstruction, which were not taken up again until 1960, and the coming of jim crow. each generation has to wrestle with the history of what came before, and ask -- whose interest does this history serve? how does it advance a legacy of social movements? how does it deny that legacy? we don't know. but we do know that we are here for the very first time as such a broad gathering of the movement against the vietnam war. it's been 50 years since selma, 50 years since the first sds march. so it was a time that changed our lives, nearing a second reconstruction before the murders of dr. king and bobby kennedy. then came the budget cuts, the end of the war on poverty. then came the watergate repression. and we became a generation of might-have-beens. like sisyphus, our rock lay at the bottom of the hill. we gather here to remember the power that we had at one point the power of the peace movement, and to challenge the pentagon now on the battlefield of memory. we have to resist their military occupation of our minds and the minds of future generations. [applause] memory is very much like rock climbing, the recovery of memory. each niche towards the summit is graphed inch by bleeding inch and has to be carefully carved with tools that are precise in order to take the next step. falling back is always possible. but as dr. king himself said on his last night, there is something in humans that makes us aspire to climb mountains, to reach that majesty, if only for a moment. we are mountain climbers. president obama has reminded us to remember. he said, selma, seneca falls and stonewall. but not saigon, not chicago, not vietnam. we have to ask ourselves collectively why that omission exists and realize that only we can restore a place in the proper history of those times. we suspect that there was a reason, that it has to do with the programming of amnesia, that there are very powerful forces in our country who stand for denial, not just climate denial, but generational denial, vietnam denial. there are forces that stand for ethnic cleansing, but not just ethnic c historic cleansing. and that is what has happened. it serves their purpose because they have no interest in the true history of a war in which they sent thousands to their deaths and, almost before the blood had dried, were moving up the national security ladder and showing up for television interviews to advertise what they called the next cakewalks. only the blood was caked. there came a generation of career politicians who were afraid of association with the peace movement, who were afraid of being seen as soft, who saw that the inside track was the track of war. our national forgetting is basically pathological. our systems-politics, media, culture, our totally out of balance today because of our collective refusal to admit that the vietnam war was wrong and that the peace movement was right. [applause] in the absence of an established voice for peace in all the institutions, the neoconservatives will fill the foreign policy vacuum. am i right? will it not? will it not advise both parties? i think, though, that american public opinion has shifted to a much more skeptical state of mind than earlier generations, but the spectrum of american politics and media has not. so we can never forget that, of course, it was the vietnamese resistance and their sacrifice that led to our awakening, along with the civil rights movement at home. it began with handfuls of young people, black students who led freedom rides, sit-ins. the student nonviolent coordinating committee was the first to resist the war. julian bond, who's sitting here was rejected after being elected to the georgia legislature. muhammad ali was stripped of his boxing titles. it also began with the vietnam day committee in berkeley, growing out of teach-ins, out of sds, that called the first march, the draft resistance. there had never been a peace movement like the one in 1965 that arose out of the civil rights movement and came just weeks after selma. at least 29 would die at the hands of police while demonstrating for peace. i'd like here to introduce luis rodriguez and rosalio muñoz and jorge mariscal from the chicano moratorium, where four died, including gustav montes lyn ward, josé diaz and rubén salazar. rubén salazar was an early juan gonzález. rubén salazar was a great reporter for the "los angeles times" who served as a journalist in vietnam before he started critical reporting on the streets of los angeles. and he was shot by the sheriff's deputies. i don't know if he's here, but is alan canfora here? alan, please stand. alan was wounded at kent state. four died at kent state, two at jackson state two weeks later. and every year, these two groups of people have observed memorials, have fought for their place in history, are coming up on their 50th anniversary commemorations and are here today to learn from us, as we've learned from them, the importance of organizing organizing, organizing around the politics of memory. so thank you for being here, and we will remember. we will not forget. we will not forget the eight who sacrificed their lives by self-immolation. we will not forget the students who helped end the war by shutting down so many campuses. we will not forget the veterans who took the risk of standing up to their commanding officers and resisted from within the military. [applause] we will not forget this because this was something like a du bois characterization of the general strike by slaves who through noncooperation, walked off plantations across the south when they saw the futility of any other alternative and chose to simply walk away and join the union army. what happened at the end of the vietnam war is that people walked away. the campuses shut down. four million students walked away. the military was described by marine colonels in military histories as being on the verge of collapse. they walked away. the counterculture walked away. we all walked away. it might have been otherwise, if king and robert kennedy had not been assassinated. we might have been united, at least for a moment, at least for a moment. we might have elected a president. we might have ended a war. but instead, we were relegated to wondering what might have been. we lost any basis for our unity, and thus we have not come together since that time. the question for us is whether today we can unify, when we never could unify before. [applause] can we do that for the memory of our movement and for the meaning that it holds for future generations? i hope so. i pray so. thank you. [applause] amy: tom hayden was a leader of students for a democratic society, sds, speaking at "vietnam: the power of protest," a conference that was recently held in washington, d.c. when we come back, we'll hear from a combat medic, wayne smith, who served in vietnam and former congressmembers pat schroeder and ron dellums, who chaired the house armed services committee. stay with us. ♪ [music break] amy: peter, paul and mary, singing "500 miles." this is democracy now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. "vietnam: the power of protest." that was the name of a conference that was recently held in washington, d.c., at the new york avenue presbyterian church. democracy now! co-host juan gonzález moderated the event. juan: no one knows the horror of war more than those who fight it. and i remember when we started the young lords, we opened an office on 111th and madison. and one of our first recruits -- we were all in our twenties -- was a 40-year-old superintendent of a building across the street, named yaya. yaya had been in the korean war. he had been badly wounded, captured by the north koreans and ended up in a pow camp. he was badly injured in his head. the north korean doctors put a new steel plate in his head. they educated him. they treated him, he told us differently than the other pow's because he was african-american. and he came back a changed person. and as soon as we opened up our offices in east harlem, he was the first one to join our organization. and he taught us much about the horrors of war. we had other members who came back from vietnam. julio cotto, straight out of vietnam, the 82nd -- out of puerto rico into the 82nd airborne, came back a changed person. nelson merced came out of the navy, destroyer, and ended up becoming the first elected hispanic in the state legislature of massachusetts later on. all of these veterans returned with a completely different view of the country, their nation and imperialist war. and we're going to hear from one veteran, wayne smith. >> i'd like to start by thanking david and the entire planning committee, john and chuck searcy especially, for inviting me to join you and inviting other veterans to join you today. it is truly an extraordinary honor and probably one of the proudest moments of my life. but i must admit that when i saw the panel i was on, i thought, "clearly, they must think i'm wayne smith, the cuba expert you know? the ambassador." [laughter] i mean, are you kidding me? ron dellums, pat schroeder, tom hayden. i truly am humbled, and i hope in some way some of what i say can make a difference. i was just a soul brother from providence, rhode island. my parents fled the paralyzing racism of alabama and virginia and fled to rhode island, to the genteel racism in rhode island. [laughter] there, in new england, people say, "please screw," you know? [laughter] but my family was very strong, deeply rooted in faith and values of hard work and education, and in fact, a belief in this country, despite the racism, that we could in fact find equality, that we could in fact achieve progress and make a difference. unlike my parents, my brothers and sisters and i grew up in integrated neighborhoods. we went to integrated schools our whole life. it wasn't a ghetto. some of my best friends were irish and italian, armenian, chinese and jewish. it was a very different world for us as opposed to our parents. but when i was 10 years old in 1961, father died. we had a house fire. and in his attempts to put it out, he was burned. and that totally changed our lives. i was the eldest son of 11 children. and as a man child, i felt certain responsibilities that remain with me to this day. in our living room, we had photos of three people who were non-members of our family. it was jesus, dr. king and jfk. and they had the profound influence on our lives. when i was 14, i managed to bring a photo of malcolm x into my bedroom, and my mother found it, and -- but nevertheless, we were a very different family. we had different points of view and different values, and those influences always affected us. my uncles served in the army and navy and like other african americans before them, saw and believed that by military service, which in their minds was the most equal environment , the most equal institution that was available to african americans -- and so they encouraged military service. they saw it as something that was proud. and in fact, i remember one discussion where my uncles were saying how african americans serving in the military in the early days of the vietnam even helped to support the legislative arguments for civil rights act and voting rights act. and so it was quite traumatic, as you can imagine, when i chose to join the army. i chose to join. i wanted to be a medic. i thought i could save lives. i thought i could make a difference. how incredibly naïve i was. but i also had a belief that through the efforts of not only soldiers and through people that i served with -- and there was in fact an incredible bond among veterans, i must say. i cannot explain it, other than what we have read about. there is the sense of brotherhood, that somehow the barriers break down. in fact, in war, even some of us, we loved one another. it was also interesting for me as a medic who joined -- and i never wanted to kill anyone never wanted to hurt any vietnamese. i resisted all of the attempts by the military sergeants and trainers to dehumanize the vietnamese. they trained us to call them "gooks" and other horrible names. obviously, i knew immediately that had it been a war in africa, we'd be calling them "niggers." so it was -- we resisted, and i resisted. but nevertheless, i participated. and throughout my 17 months in vietnam -- and i served in combat. i replaced a young man from montana, richard best. he was killed two weeks shy of his 21st birthday. and when i got into combat, i was amazed with how the military truly had broken down. there were people much like me who really didn't want to be there, who thought they were joining for one reason, and it turned out to be quite different. we did everything we could to avoid combat. as a medic, i often signed sick notes and other kinds of medical excuses, trying to help soldiers to avoid serving in combat or serving going out on operations. we talked. we shared. it was much like the bonding that i have come to learn about the antiwar movement. but we spent hours talking amongst one another about what was really happening in the world and how, if we survived, we would make a difference. and the world was a place. we wanted to get home. we just wanted to survive. and yet there is an enormous guilt, that stays with me and many of my brothers and sisters today, that we should have known better. we should have been sitting where you are, that we should have been more active, more informed and more in opposition to that war. but that wasn't the case. having come home, having survived from the war, i've tried to keep a commitment that i made. in part, it was to god, that if i was able to survive, if i was able to save lives, if i was able to make a difference -- and the one small shred that -- that even today gives me chills, was i had the chance to assist, in a very remote way, with the bringing of a vietnamese child's life into the world. midwives were working and i assisted. and it was truly like a redemptive, almost baptismal moment. so i have overcome some of those horrors of war like so many veterans -- my dear friend bobby muller, michael leaveck, david addlestone, david evans, all of us, gary may -- the list goes on -- to those of us who didn't want to be in war. and when we came home, we kept the commitment to serve in peace movement, to work for human rights and social justice. we were amongst the group of veterans who led the effort to help senator kerry and mccain normalize relations with vietnam. [applause] indeed. our dear friend bobby muller created the vietnam veterans of america foundation. we created prosthetic clinics in cambodia and vietnam, angola and numerous other countries, and participated in efforts to ban landmines. so we have -- [applause] thank you, yes. the work goes on, that we stand in solidarity with you. it is truly an honor for me to in a small way, represent those veterans of conscience, like yourself, working for peace. thank you very much. [applause] juan: in 1972, a young woman was elected to congress, the second-youngest woman ever elected to the house of representatives. and she became a stalwart example of what a statesperson is supposed to be like, what a government servant, a servant of the people, is supposed to be in government, pat schroeder. [applause] >> oh, i can't tell you how happy i was to hear my voice. i was sitting there quaking, thinking i'm going to have to go after ron dellums again. i mean, that's only the worst place in the world to be although it's pretty tough to follow you two guys, too. but anyway, what happened to "ladies first"? no, i'm kidding. i'm kidding. [laughter] anyway, anyway, what a delight to be here. and i just want to say it's hard for me to stay within the time limit. i'm a recovering politician in a 12-step program. and my husband says i go to the refrigerator, open the door, the light goes on, and i talk for 10 minutes and then realize i'm talking to celery. [laughter] but i'm going to try very, very hard. so here i am, and i am so happy we had all the young people last night because otherwise, was afraid -- yes, it would look like 50 shades of grey. [laughter] we've got to keep the young people coming so we leaven up -- live it up this color line here. so my whole area with the war movement was, one, when i was first in college. then i was in law school, where everybody was terrified about the draft. and i remember several times waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, dreaming i had been drafted. my husband kept saying, "if we get up and the toilet seat's up that's it. you're getting out of this law school." [laughter] when we went to colorado, we were very involved in the antiwar movement again. and then we were trying in denver -- boulder was doing so much, obviously -- we were trying in denver to do a different type of thing. we were showing up, mothers with strollers and grandmothers. and we were trying to do all sorts of things. we got oil men out there. we were really trying. and i kept trying to get an appointment with my congressman to talk about the war. he was supposedly the most popular man in colorado, and i could never get in. and i ran a little ad with his picture, saying, "has anyone seen this man?" [laughter] he sent me -- every time i would send him a letter, he'd send me something. i got an agricultural yearbook. i got a calendar. when the baby was born, i got, you know, how to raise my baby. and i was so angry about it that in 1972, when someone said "well, the democrats already have a candidate. he's the minority leader. but why don't you at least run for those of us who are angry?" and i thought, "sure, why not?" right? and of course, i was the plaintiff on the bussing suit, i was on the fair housing committee, i was on planned parenthood -- i was the lawyer for planned parenthood of the rocky mountains -- and very, very involved in the war antiwar things. so i remember phil burton, the congressman from california, coming out and saying, "don't worry about all of that. people will stand up and will say, 'and then she's for this. and then she's for that.' and folks will say, 'no, she couldn't be for all of that.'" anyway, whatever they did, somehow i got elected, which was the shock of colorado and everybody else. we ran with posters, and our posters were a picture of the military cemetery in colorado with a bird flying over it and a quote from nixon's speech -- "many of our troops have already been withdrawn." and it was heavy, but it really, really said to people, oh, my goodness. think about this. our average campaign contribution was $7.50. can you believe that in today's world that we're living in? it's just shocking. so anyway, it was very, very exciting, and off i go in 1973 to be sworn in, and unfortunately it was with nixon. again, one of the interesting things is nixon carried my district by 20 points. how people voted for nixon and schroeder, i have no idea. but it says something to me about how so many people get so tired of the same old yap, yap yap in politics. you can't tell who's for what. you know, they're all -- in colorado, the politicians used to run these incredible things. you couldn't tell whether they were republican or democrat until you got to the last page because they were always there with their family, and then they were outdoors, and then they were in a grocery store, and then they were with a cop. and on the last page, the republican would be on a horse and the democrat would be on a bike. and that would be it. [laughter] you know, you couldn't tell. so i think to have somebody out there taking stands on all of these things, people thought "well, what the heck? you know, let's try this." anyway, it was wonderful. i had a -- i had a pilot's license, so i wanted to be on the armed services committee, as did my wonderful friend, ron dellums. and our wonderful chairman vetoed both of us. for the first time, they overruled a chairman's veto, and ron and i both got on the armed services committee. [applause] so we walked in in 1973 to take our seats, and there happens to only be one seat for the two of us. he went off on something about he didn't want these security leaks on the committee and how terrible it was he had been overruled and, you know it was , not even worth being chairman anymore. i mean, it was like a bull elephant, just "moooo-oooh," and he was really upset. so ron kind of said, "with great dignity, we are going to walk in, and we are going to sit, cheek to cheek." and we did. [laughter] luckily, ron has always had snake hips, because otherwise we probably wouldn't have made it. [laughter] and barney frank always said that was last half-ass thing that either of us did. [laughter] [applause] but we continued to make our chairman absolutely miserable with -- by doing things like wanting to write alternative views to the armed services committee reports and stuff like that, just made him crazy. i remember he called me into his office. he gave me a copy of his book that he had written, and he had autographed it, "the lord giveth, the lord taketh away. i am the lord and your chairman, f. eddie hébert." and it was, i mean, you know, so it was really a pretty miserable couple years. [laughter] but ron and i and bella abzug -- [applause] were out there, and we were working very hard in the democratic caucus to try and get the funding cut back, so that there could be no funding for democrat -- four use of combat in vietnam. and i will never forget. the three of us had been working hard, and ron was giving one of his wonderful speeches, and he got up there, and he said, "there are only three of us in this room that have the balls" and we pulled on his sleeve and said, "i don't think that's describing our coalition right." [laughter] do you remember that, ron? but as you know, that finally happened. it finally happened that we cut off the money. and thank goodness. [applause] and then we went on and we got the war powers act. and yet nobody seems to want to comply with it, do they? it's just absolutely amazing to me what has happened to that congress when i think about where we've been and where we haven't been of late. so we also had impeachment going on. we had the 1973 war in israel going on. when people say to me, "oh, but things are different now because the issues are so hard," i keep saying, "are you kidding me? we had vietnam, the 1973 war impeachment. i mean, how many more things can you juggle at one time?" and yet we were treating each other, even if we disagreed, with respect and decency, and debating on the facts. [applause] and what worries me so much today is that i don't see that at all. i see name calling, and it really reminds me of the junior high lunch room. it's just one food fight after another. and it's very sad. i went on to serve on many, many things that went on. we worked very hard on getting recognition, finally, by the government that agent orange was indeed a terrible thing. [applause] and one of the people i want all of you to know -- charles, you don't get away without standing up. anybody know charles bailey? he's wonderful. [applause] he has continued to work on the agent orange issue. i went with him three years ago in the ford foundation, and he's worked even more on that. we've gotten congress to get some funds. but talk to charles. he's just -- it's such a tragedy. i thought the vietnamese would be chasing me down the street with pitchforks. and they were so wonderful and so -- the healing was just incredible. they really reached out to all of us, and you really wonder why when you know the history. but anyway, that was such a terrific thing. i don't know what to say about all of this. i always think it was so interesting that in 1969, when all of us were so involved nixon said, "that peace movement, that doesn't have anything to do with me. i'm president, and i'm doing what's right." remember all that stuff he was saying. but if you remember, nine years later, in his book, he said the peace movement kept him from escalating the war. now, none of us want to say anything, but it really did make a big difference. it made a huge difference. and i just think it is so wonderful that all of you are here to celebrate that. and let's go out and get young people thinking about it in the environment that we're in today, too. i worry so much about iran and how many people seem to want to go to war with them. i worry so much about what we've done in iraq and afghanistan and those places. we really, really, really need to spread what we have learned. thank you. it is really an honor. amy: former colorado congressmember pat schroeder one of the youngest women ever elected to congress. she was speaking recently in washington, d.c., at a conference called "vietnam: the power of protest." after this break, we'll hear from former congressmember ron dellums of california. he is former chair of the house armed services committee. if you'd like to get a copy of today's show, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. we'll be back in a minute. ♪ [music break] amy: buelah palmer with 3rd avenue's, "my man in vietnam." this is democracy now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. this is memorial day, "vietnam: the power of protest." we go back to the conference recently held in washington, d.c., at the new york avenue presbyterian church. democracy now! co-host juan gonzález moderated the panel. juan: ron dellums is a legend in this country in the progressive movement. i just want to remind you of one thing you may have forgotten. one of his first acts when he was sworn in as a u.s. representative was to take a small annex room to his office in the house of -- in his office in the house of representatives and mount an exhibition of the atrocities committed by the united states in vietnam. [applause] as a freshman congressman. and he has continued to stand for social justice, labor rights, environmental rights. he is a true champion of our movement. ron dellums. [applause] >> sisters and brothers, i come from the bay area -- oakland berkeley. unlike many other places in the country, virtually every movement of the 1960's emerged in close proximity and great simultaneity. so unlike many other places, we were forced to sense each other's anger, to feel each other's rage, to listen to each other's analysis, to feel each other's passion, to listen to each other's music. and i maintain that out of that incredible cauldron of activism, a unique group of people emerged. so we heard -- we had to hear each other -- other-the civil rights movement, the nationalist movement, the brown berets, the black panthers, the gray panthers, all of the various movements. i remember in 1966 a young guy by the name of bob scheer, a journalist who ran against the person that i ultimately defeated four years later. i remember we used to come back from meetings where we would hear this young guy lay out an extraordinary analysis of why we should oppose the vietnam war. we used to come back and say "man, that's a bad dude!" white guy, too, you know, wow. [laughter] but in 1967, something magical happened. this brilliant, prophetic, articulate, eloquent minister mounted the podium, 1967 riverside church in new york and laid out his reason for opposing the vietnam war. it was courageous and historic. he laid out his moral opposition. he saw it as unjust, illegal and immoral. when he stepped away from the pulpit, he was attacked by people in the civil rights movement by saying, "martin, stay in your lane, brother. you're a civil rights activist. don't water down the movement. you're going to invite new enemies. you're going to detract from what we're doing. stay in your lane." whites attacked him essentially the same way, by saying, "reverend martin luther king stay in your lane. you're a civil rights leader. what do you know about foreign policy and national security and war and peace? stay in your lane." criss-cross the country to answer his critics. he comes to berkeley california, sproul hall steps, university of california at berkeley, crowded literally with thousands of people. a young black guy, ron dellums standing way in the back of the several thousand people, hanging on every word, didn't realize at that moment that my life would be changed forever. and i would comment on four points that he made in that speech and speeches going forward challenging the war in vietnam. first, he said, "why did i stand up?" his response was, "i cannot segregate my moral concerns." [applause] that said to me that we must challenge all forms of injustice, because martin luther king said we cannot segregate our moral concerns. secondly, he said there are two kinds of leaders, one who waits until the consensus is formed and then run swiftly to the front of the group and declare leadership. but then he said there's a second kind of leader, who has the audacity and the courage to risk attempting to shape a new consensus. i interpreted that to mean we had carried the burden of racial, cultural and economic oppression, but we did not have to carry the burden of ignorance, that we had the obligation, the right and the responsibility to enter the arena and be educative, to educate our people, to help them to understand the interrelatedness, the interconnectedness, the relationships between and among all issues of oppression and injustice. [applause] one of his lessons of education was a statement that was so vivid, so powerful -- "we are dropping bombs in north vietnam that are exploding in the ghettos and the barrios of america." how incredibly poetic. how incredibly powerful, the vision. he was saying to people, understand the relationship between the billions of dollars that are being spent to wage war and the inability to address the injustice that is taking place in the ghettos and the barrios of america, the issue of priorities. very powerful. but to me, the most powerful statement that shaped my life forever was this comment -- "peace is more than simply the absence of war; it is the presence of justice." [applause] i interpreted that to mean, wow the peace movement is the ultimate movement. peace is the superior idea, that the umbrella movement for -- of all movements, the peace movement. because to come together under the banner of he's, forces us to challenge all forms of injustice. i want you to consider this point. i don't make it in criticism. i make it simply as a matter that we must reflect upon, because i have come to this moment many times. suppose everyone -- because i believe that the movement to end the war in vietnam ultimately became the largest and most powerful movement in the country. but when the war in vietnam ended, many of the people went home and left us to fight racism, poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness, helplessness -- and went home. and my great lament in my life has been, what would have happened in this country and in this world if people had heard martin luther king and said, "now that we've ended the war in vietnam, let's get on with dealing with other forms of injustice"? what would the world look like? [applause] pat schroeder will recall, i tried to on the floor of congress, to tweak that comment just a little so my colleagues could understand it. [laughter] i didn't mean it quite that way. i'm sorry about that. peace is more than simply the absence of war. it is the absence of conditions that give rise to war. [applause] so that if we stayed together, what would the international community look like? what would the world look like globally? what would america look like? would we still be seeing the baltimores if we had challenged on these issues? but it's not too late. in my final remarks -- i have one minute. i may go slightly a few seconds over. but young people have asked me "what is the difference between your generation when you were our age and our generation?" i won't give you my total answer, because i think it's a good question. but i'll deal with two. martin luther king told us to raise our voices in the name of peace and justice and equality and peace, because it was the right thing, the moral thing the ethical thing, the principled thing to do. this generation must do it because it's now the only thing to do. it has now become the imperative. [applause] so what was principle for our generation now is the imperative for this generation, because we know that the price of war is too high. we know that the price of neglect of the issues that affect the human condition, we do it at our peril, so that we have a responsibility now to address the imperative. a second difference is, martin luther king never told us we couldn't do it. he said, go out and change the world. remember he said "i may not be , with you at the end, but i have reached the mountaintop and i can tell you this: we will achieve." so we felt that we could change the world, and we went out to change the world. but this generation is being told 24 hours a day the system is broken, you can't fix it. the system is bought and paid for, you can't get it back. so how can people move to change the world when they are constantly being f a diet of cynicism, of superficial political analysis rooted solely in partisan politics or the shaping of personalities as if this individual or that individual can change the world all by themselves without dealing with the substance of the problems of policies that have to be addressed, but we narrow it down to very parochial, shallow analysis? so what we have to say to this generation of young people, out of a sense of urgency, out of a sense of the imperative -- you now must emerge. i've been doing some lecturing at howard university with young people, and i'll tell you what i found out. last point. is not that this generation does not get it, it's that they don't always hear it. but when they do hear it, they get it because they listen carefully. and if i had to bet my last dollar, i would bet it on this generation of young people because they're not carrying the me baggage we carry, and if they ever stand up, they will change america and change the world for their children and their children's children. [applause] amy: former oakland congressmember and chair of the armed services committee, ron dellums, speaking at a conference recently in washington, d.c. it was called "vietnam: the power of protest." and that does it for today show. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. 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