Hitting Left, Episode# 221. 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken'
My guests are Mark Rudd and Eva Lyon-Sereno
OTD in 1954, in northwest Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces decisively defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. Although the victory brought an end to French colonial efforts in Indochina, the US soon stepped up to fill the vacuum, increasing military aid to South Vietnam and sending the first U.S. military advisers to the country in 1959.
On Hitting Left
Mark Rudd was a leader of the historic ‘68 student strike at Columbia University. He was my guest Friday on Hitting Left, along with current Columbia student activist, Ava Lyon-Sereno.
You can listen to the entire Episode #221, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, here.
A Columbia ’68 student striker on current protests.
James Simon Kunen was a 19-year-old sophomore at Columbia in 1968 and a participant in the student strike. Kunen’s 1969 book, The Strawberry Statement, was made into a movie and became one of the defining documents of that period.
New York Magazine asked him for his views on the current protest at Columbia.
Do you support the protesters at Columbia, and what do you make of the parallels to 1968?
Yes, I do. I feel like when you’re confronted with a situation that is intolerable, then you just should not tolerate it. And in 1968, the situation was that I was a student with a college deferment, and so some young man was in the jungles of Vietnam in my place, either killing people or getting killed, and that was completely intolerable to me, and I just felt compelled to do something about it. And I think today, students see that 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza, thousands of them children, and they just feel like they have to do something.
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Friday’s Music
Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Live) by Mavis Staples & Bonnie Raitt.