The Student Peace Movement

This should prove an interesting essay. Bear with me here. Trying to summarize an entire social movement in just a few paragraphs is like trying to seal an Indian elephant into a manila envelope.

The Student Peace Movement was brought about primarily because of the war in Vietnam and the events of the civil rights movement. Initially, independent groups of students banded together to support civil rights. As the conflict in Vietnam began to escalate and more and more information came out about the war, these groups rallied to end the war as well. The Student Peace Movement was about peace on all fronts, both foreign and domestic (Albert).

The Women's Movement is a bit harder to condense. In it women of all sizes, ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and races came together to fight against such injustices as job inequalities, lack of access into public office, the lack of government or corporate funded childcare, the illegality of abortion, the economic system which worked against females, lack of independence, the media's portrayal of women, gender stereotypes, and sexist oppression. It spawned such diverse groups as NOW (the National Organization for Women) and WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) (Albert). This movement in currently in its third incarnation (Albert).

There are some significant rhetorical strategies shared by these movements. One of which was guerilla theatre. The women's movements most famous example was the Miss America Protest in Atlantic City, 1968. They staged a full day of theatre on the boardwalk complete with throwing instruments of male torture into a freedom trashcan and skits showing an educated woman with a baby on her hip and a broom in her hand (Albert).

The peace movement's most famous guerrilla act was its attempt to excise evil from the Pentagon. Even Allen Ginsberg believed in that one. He composed the mantra they were to chant until the Pentagon levitated and changed colors (Albert). Of course, that was not the only one. There are marvelous pictures of students placing flowers into the barrels of guns held by infantry men. This sparked the "flower power" craze from the term that Ginsberg coined (Albert).

Of course, there were many differences in what strategies these movements used as well. One of the most vital was that the peace movement had clearly defined leaders, even superstars, among its ranks. The women's movement on the other hand fought against having any one person stand out from the group. They believed it was crucial that they represent the movement as a unified whole and not have any one person whom the press could say embodied women's liberation. That would give the press the power to compare the movement to only one person's ideas, and that would have severely limited them in their efforts to change the social and political power structure that trapped women in a wife/mother/nurturer role (Albert).

If rhetoric is an action humans perform that involves the use of symbols to communicate a persuasive message, then they were certainly using methods to attain that end. The above strategies show a clear agenda for the movements' messages. In order to gain attention that might bring more people into the movements (the ultimate act of persuasion was to gain new recruits through a successful strategy) they chose to do what some might consider "outrageous" acts. They also used specific names like NOW or WITCH to gain attention. They used "superstars" or darlings of the media to garner interest in their principles and ideology (Albert).

These strategies for the most part worked quite well. The women's protest in Atlantic City was considered a huge success. It brought an entirely new group of American's into the movement by being seen for the first time on national television. The superstar strategy of the peace movement began to sour after a while because the so-called "superstars" began to abuse their status (Albert).

However, these movements were resounding success stories overall. Thanks in large part to the peace movement, troops were pulled out of Vietnam and the war was ended in the late 1970's. Thanks to the women's movement, women began to emancipate themselves. They began to question the power structure of our society and what their place in it was. Thanks to the women's movement, if they decided that their place in society was unsatisfactory, they now had more options to change that status. Women in much larger numbers began to attend college than they had in the 1940's or 1950's.

The benefits of these movements have been numerous. And they aren't over. Students on college campuses worldwide continue to question authority and protest against injustice. The women's movement is now in its third wave. This time the personal is political and the political is personal. Anatomy need not be destiny anymore. The continued working toward peaceful negotiations between nations and even between the sexes is encouraging, and I've enjoyed seeing a brief part of these movements through the texts and documentaries we were exposed to this semester.