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For the Aspen Times Weekly Aspen High School students and other protesters picketing the underground nuclear blast in Rulison in the spring of 1970. Courtesy Jay Cowan
This past Mayday marked the 50th anniversary of what was one of the last effective mass protests in Washington D.C. before the Black Lives Matter rally nearly half a century later. Demonstrators from all over the country convened for large-scale civil disobedience actions aimed at interfering with business as usual in the nation’s capitol. I was 18 in 1971, a year out of Aspen High School and imminently draftable. People had been marching in America and Aspen for years to encourage our leaders to get us out of Vietnam, but instead the war was escalating. And those protesting it were being shot at Kent and Jackson State universities – 26 of them in one eleven-day period in 1970. Six died. The message seemed pretty clear: you should be prepared to sacrifice your life if you wanted to keep taking ....