Customer Reviews

Campus Wars: The Peace Movement At American State Universities in the Vietnam Era

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thought the book presented my role at SUNY Buffalo fairly accurately. I especially enjoyed the ethnic and class analysis of the participants. Like the war scenes in "Saving Private Ryan", when you are in the midst of battle it is sometimes hard to see all the events happening around you. The reconstruction of the SUNYAB events from archives must have been quite an undertaking.

Actually, although there may have been a "Youth Against War and Fascism" associated with Ed Wolkenstein and the CP, the one I was involved in was associated with the old and new left of the Marcyite faction called Workers World Party (WWP) that was a break off from the Socialist Workers Party (Trotskyist). In Buffalo it was associated with old leftists Ed and Jeanette Merrill not Ed Wolkenstein. The rest is accurate, including my expulsion from YAWF as mentioned in the last chapter.

More time should have been devoted to the case of Martin Sostre which was of great interest to the Buffalo Nine. The section about the Black riots in Buffalo would be improved with more research and coverage of this important firgure, a bookstore owner, who was championed by Amnesty International.

Jerry Gross

May we never forget the result of the 1972 presidential election. Nixon, who had been in charge of the Vietnam war for 4 years, defeated a candidate (McGovern, whose ONLY stance was one of anti-war), with the most lopsided victory in the history of our country. With 49 out of 50 states going to Nixon, the true mood of the country was shown to be something quite different from what the media projected by concentrating on the children on campus and the anti-war faction.