Who would you have sided with in the Hard Hat Riot of 1970?

[Indy Texas]

This fracas occurred in New York City when clashes occurred between college students gathered to protest the Vietnam War and the shootings of student protesters at Kent State University, and construction workers.

The incident's Lower Manhattan location attracted the attention of a number of white collar Wall Street employees, some of whom attempted to intervene on the side of the university students. In the aftermath, Mayor John Lindsay sympathized with the student protestors and criticized the police for failing to protect them. Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO and Richard Nixon stood firmly in defense of the construction workers.

[dead0man]

Union thugs vs dirty hippies and suits?  I guess the union thugs, who are then all arrested.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

My classmates vs. my co-workers.... Tough one.

[TNF]

The students. This incident is notoriously held up as part of the popular myth that the majority of the American working class supported the war in Vietnam, which is actually not true in the slightest.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

And as usual, those who had the highest level of education tended to be those who supported American foreign policy initiatives the most:



This 'workers were reactionary blowhards in the 1960s that opposed all of the social movements in that decade' nonsense needs to end. It is ahistorical, ignores the fact that throughout the 1960s labor activism went hand in hand with the Civil Rights struggle (from the 1962 March on Washington to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in California to equal pay struggles in the early 1970s to Miners for Democracy and Teamsters for a Democratic Union), and serves only to reinforce the kind of anti-worker prejudice evident everywhere among white middle class liberals in this country.

[Mechaman]

The students. This incident is notoriously held up as part of the popular myth that the majority of the American working class supported the war in Vietnam, which is actually not true in the slightest.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

And as usual, those who had the highest level of education tended to be those who supported American foreign policy initiatives the most:



This 'workers were reactionary blowhards in the 1960s that opposed all of the social movements in that decade' nonsense needs to end. It is ahistorical, ignores the fact that throughout the 1960s labor activism went hand in hand with the Civil Rights struggle (from the 1962 March on Washington to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in California to equal pay struggles in the early 1970s to Miners for Democracy and Teamsters for a Democratic Union), and serves only to reinforce the kind of anti-worker prejudice evident everywhere among white middle class liberals in this country.

If there is one thing that the white Brahmin elites are enthusiastic about it's propagating the idea that all working class people are subhuman scum.  This truth should be evident to anybody who has read up on more than fifteen minutes of the Gilded Age.  There isn't any easier way to justify the hundreds of years of oppression, racism, slavery, famine, acts of genocide, and other actions that their ancestors committed against the ancestors of working class people than to convince the masses that those people were/still are uncouth savages who were against every movement of progress in the country's history (no matter how dishonest it is).  Just take a few events, blow them out of proportion to represent the views of every person in that demographic, put it in every History book published by McAtlee-Godwyn (or whoever publishes them now days), and send it to every underfunded high school in the nation (make sure to get the 1928 Election map completely wrong while you're at it and suggest that Al Smith was a libertarian candidate).  It is blatant bigotry wrapped up in a veneer of intellectualism to justify American State Capitalism (which is really the goal of many mainstream white protestant "liberals", whose ancestors were likely Federalists and Know Nothings who made no bones about how they felt about the "lowly people"), frankly.

In a decade's time they might as well start using this as a great teaching tool for American schoolchildren:



Yes, sage again.  But necessary.

[Mechaman]

As for this poll, the university students of course.

The AFL-CIO by that time was a joke and a tool of reactionaries.  George Meany, in particular, was a reactionary who had a hardon about the commies in the organization.

[Cassius]

The construction workers.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

University students.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

The university students, of course!  As much as I support union workers, when they become a bunch of flag-waving blowhards who would step on the freedom of speech of leftists... yea, back the hell off and go to work.  Thing is, if they had dropped what they were doing for the day and took part in the protests I would be all for it as a legitimate excuse to get away from the afternoon's arduous toils. 

[ElectionsGuy]

University students.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What HockeyDude said

[WalterMitty]

both sides=hp.

but i dislike unions more.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

The workers come off as more likeable on the whole, but the Hippies were right about the war, etc.

[H. Ross Peron]

The workers come off as more likeable on the whole, but the Hippies were right about the war, etc.

[Supersonic]

The construction workers.

[Bigby]

This whole incident just confuses me. I think you just -

Bigby.exe has stopped working. Please restart the program.

[RogueBeaver]

The construction workers.

[DemPGH]

The students. I 100% support unions, and this was not about unions, as others have noted.

[New_Conservative]

The construction workers.

[Dr. Cynic]

The students, but these two should've been on the same side.

[Badger]

Ummmm.....regardless of which side's political and foreign policy views one supported here, surely it isn't missed that the pro-war counter-protesters unilaterally beat up peaceful protesters with steel toed boots and even rebar? The persons doing so were committing misdemeanor assault at the minimum, possibly felonious assault/aggravated riot.

"Rioting construction workers also attacked buildings near City Hall. They ripped the Red Cross and Episcopal Church flags down from a flag pole at nearby Trinity Church. One group invaded two nearby Pace University buildings, smashing lobby windows with clubs and crowbars and beating up students."

So criminal damaging/vandalism as well. On a church no less.

This riot had little to do about politics or the Vietnam War; it was an exercise in organized thuggery, and anyone here should be ashamed to say they would've sided with the criminals here.

[The Terminator]

Option C: The Police

Riots are done by irresponsible people with a tendency to attention whore because they got nothing better to do with their lives.  The Police exist to terminate such disturbances.

Also, lol at the commie far left posts on here that whine and complain about how unfairly maligned "working class" people are.  Why don't you read some Thomas Paine and get a job, you sloths?

[GaussLaw]

The construction workers.

This.  Though I have no fondness for Nixon, cutting/running in Vietnam cost a lot of lives in 1975.

[MATTROSE94]

The construction workers.

This.  Though I have no fondness for Nixon, cutting/running in Vietnam cost a lot of lives in 1975.

This is way off topic and might sound kind of stupid, but I was discussing the Vietnam War with one of my co-workers (who is an expert in military tactics and strategies despite only being 18 years old) and he stated that if we had simply invaded North Vietnam to overthrew Ho Chi Minh's government and kept a small, yet well-trained counter-insurgency force stationed in Vietnam, we would have met our main military objectives and won the war. Is there any validity to that theory or no?

[Torie]

Option C: The Police

Riots are done by irresponsible people with a tendency to attention whore because they got nothing better to do with their lives.  The Police exist to terminate such disturbances.

Also, lol at the commie far left posts on here that whine and complain about how unfairly maligned "working class" people are.  Why don't you read some Thomas Paine and get a job, you sloths?

I am going to give you a bit of slack because you're a newbie. Calling other posters "commies" and "sloths" is a dog that won't hunt in "my" hood. Cut it out please. Thank you.