Michelle Myers' classmates want Kerry to stop fighting Vietnam and start fighting for them
 

Michelle Myers' classmates want Kerry to stop fighting Vietnam and
start fighting for them

(EXCERPT), by Michelle Myers Newsweek

Feb. 2 issue - Though he may call himself "Comeback Kerry," here at
the University of California, Berkeley, the junior senator from
Massachusetts still has an awfully long way to go. After Kerry shot to
the front of the Democratic pack with an impressive victory in Iowa,
many Berkeley students scratched their heads. It wasn't that they
didn't like Kerry. It was that they didn't know who he was.

Older Americans may have a hard time understanding how someone like
Kerry could be so anonymous on the Berkeley campus today. To them,
both the school and the senator (a war hero turned war protester)
bring to mind the volatile Vietnam era and the tradition of political
activism it spawned. When some older professors here make grand
predictions about Kerry's political chances, it's clear that they're
influenced by nostalgia for a protester past—the candidate's and
their own.

But Vietnam doesn't stir up the same emotions in today's Berkeley
students as it did for their parents and professors four decades ago.
Vietnam was the '60s; war for my generation means Iraq. Last spring,
campus antiwar activists failed to organize mass demonstrations
against the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. It was a far cry
from the Berkeley of old, where thousands of students caught the
nation's attention, asking for "love, not war."

Truth be told, it's issues closer to home that get today's Berkeley
students riled up. Among the most popular sources of outrage is
California's new governor—"Terminator" Arnold Schwarzenegger
himself. The governor has raised the possibility of hiking tuition
and...

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Otis Willie
Associate Librarian
The American War Library
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com