By SABIR HASKO, LUCA GOLDMANSOUR, WHYTNI KERNODLE and OWEN RACER
During the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this year, thousands of protesters amassed outside the convention center to express their anger and grief over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
But that wasn’t the first time a DNC set in Chicago attracted anti-war protesters: In 1968, thousands of people opposed to the war in Vietnam descended upon that year’s Chicago convention, prompting a violent police response and, later, an infamous court case featuring a group of defendants known as the “Chicago Seven.”
Though the anti-war protests at the 2024 DNC were smaller and drew less police repression, historians and activists have noted other parallels between the 1968 and 2024 presidential elections. Like Kamala Harris, Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee in 1968, was also a sitting vice president who assumed the top of the ticket after then-president Lyndon B. Johnson dropped his reelection bid.
Then, as now, anti-war protesters expressed disillusionment with the two choices for president. With neither candidate promising a speedy end to the Vietnam War in 1968, some voters cast protest votes or opted to abstain.
When all ballots had been counted, the Republican candidate Richard Nixon won, securing a narrow popular vote victory but a decisive win in the Electoral College. Historians attribute his success to a range of factors, including his promise that he would handle the war better; backlash against the successes of the civil rights movement; and the strong third party candidacy of Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who siphoned away working class voters.
During his campaign, Nixon said that he would achieve “peace with honor” in Vietnam. Instead, he would go on to escalate the war, also bombing Cambodia.
Amid that historic backdrop, the NYCity News Service spoke to four activists from the anti-Vietnam War movement and asked how they thought people opposed to US support for Israel’s war on Gaza should approach the current presidential election.
Mark Naison, 79
Dr. Mark Naison, a professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University, was active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements in the 60s and 70s. In 1968, Naison participated in the takeover of Hamilton Hall on Columbia University’s campus. The protesters wanted the university to stop conducting research for the US Department of Defense and halt construction on a new gymnasium that was encroaching on the surrounding Harlem neighborhood. Naison, who turned 22 in 1968 and doesn’t remember voting, believes the historical similarities between then and now are mostly superficial.
He described the national temperature at the time and why he thinks this moment calls for a different approach than the one he took in 1968.
“In January of 1968, was the Tet Offensive,” Naison said, referring to a significant counter-offensive waged by the North Vietnamese army. “It became very clear that the US was not going to win this war. At the time you had over 500,000 ground troops committed to Vietnam and there were over 10,000 people killed in 1967.”
Naison said the other major event that year was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. “I cannot tell you how profound the impact this was on just about everyone. There were riots in over 60 cities. It was so utterly traumatic and devastating.”
Then, Robert Kennedy was assassinated and something snapped inside of Naison. “I said, ‘There’s no hope.’ That’s when I went through my ‘revolutionary phase,’ which lasted until my friends created the Weather Underground and started blowing shit up. You can see why I don’t remember voting. I was in a spot where I didn’t think it mattered,” he said.
“In terms of the Vietnam War, between Nixon and Humphrey, it did not make a rat’s ass of a difference. I don’t think the choice then was anywhere near as stark as it is now,” he said.
Mark Naison was active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movement throughout the 1960s and 1970s. (Photo courtesy of Mark Naison)
While Naison acknowledges that neither Harris nor Trump is promising a drastic shift in policy towards Israel, Naison believes repression of activism would be far greater under a return of the former president. “It will make a big difference if you are put in detention or deported” for advocating for Palestinian rights, he said.
Today “could not be more different,” he said. Student protesters “can’t occupy a building. They can’t even have an encampment. They couldn’t do that to us. There were too many of us.” That’s because the American public had “skin in the game,” he said, referring to the fact that Americans were dying in large numbers.
Naison understands why anti-war protesters might be frustrated and disaffected, since neither the Democrat nor Republican presidential nominee has offered to end the war on Gaza, which the medical journal Lancet estimated in June could have a death toll exceeding 180,000. “Every day I am in a total state of rage,” he said. “I have to cry by myself when I am alone.”
“But when you’re talking about Trump, you’re talking about someone who will want (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu to ‘finish the job’ and turn the ‘river to the sea’ into the Israeli reality, not the Palestinian aspiration.”
Naison advocates for creative ways to register outrage with Democrats while ensuring Trump stays out of office. “My Palestinian solidarity friends are doing vote exchanges,” he said. “They’re calling their friends in Michigan and Pennsylvania and saying, ‘If you vote for Harris in your state, I’ll vote for Stein in New York or California,” referring to the Green Party candidate.
“This is more like the anti-apartheid movement than the war in Vietnam,” Naison said, referring to the international movement to economically and diplomatically isolate apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. “We’re talking about a 15-to-25-year battle, not one or two.
“Protestors will have a big job to get people to change to the point where identification with Palestinians is truly a dominant force in American politics,” he said. “I think it will happen, but it’s not happening this month.”
Joseph Borrajo, 83
Joseph Borrajo enlisted in the Army and shipped to Europe in fatigues at the age of 20, in 1961. In 1964, he returned to his hometown of Dearborn, Michigan, and grew out his hair. After he came back, he found himself writing about the Vietnam War. “It was catharsis for me,” he said.
Borrajo mailed his letters to editors across the country and said they were published in outlets like The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. After his service on European bases, his stance has always been clear to him: “I don’t stand with anybody responsible for initiating wars. I don’t. I’m a veteran. I know what wars do to people.”
He went to anti-war demonstrations, but stayed on the periphery. “I’m not one for loud screaming,” he explained. “I’m a person trying to employ reason, rationale, and trying to change minds in that sense.”
Writing gave Borrajo comfort, he said, but at one point he told himself, “I can’t be satisfied with me being comfortable. I’ve got to become more involved.”
Joseph Borrajo served in the Army in the early 1960s. (Photo courtesy of Joseph Borrajo)
Borrajo, who is Yemeni- and Serbian-American, became active in a neighborhood group that eventually became the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, which still serves metro Detroit from Dearborn.
Dearborn has long been a home to many Arab Americans – immigrants and native born – for generations. In 2023, it would become the first city in the United States to have an Arab-American majority.
The community, just in the year before the Nixon-Humphrey race, was reeling from the impact of the 1967 Middle East war when Israel expelled roughly 300,000 Palestinians and took control of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and other territories.
Yet when Borrajo’s neighbors tried to speak about Middle Eastern issues with their elected representatives, he remembered the politicians saying they didn’t want to get involved. So, in 1984, he founded the Arab-American Voter Registration and Education Committee.
The Committee marked an early effort to engage Arab Americans in the democratic process. Now, Borrajo takes pride that ballots and explanatory materials are available in Arabic. He sees change as coming from the grassroots level. He hopes by addressing needs where he lives, progress will eventually reach Washington.
“Let’s not look at this big picture because it would consume us, it would smother, drown us,” he said, referring to how difficult it can seem to make national transformations. “Let’s take on those nuanced, smaller issues and try to gain improvements and progress on those. And ultimately, it will rise up.”
Borrajo’s vision of change is long, but he takes heart in the election of progressive lawmakers like members of “The Squad.” He also takes pride in shaping the next generation of community leaders.
This year, Borrajo voted for Cornel West. To him, abstaining from the process – which some of today’s anti-war activists advocate – is not an option.
Borrajo doesn’t remember with fondness similar calls to skip voting in 1968. “Some of these people represent nihilists, anarchists, you know, that kind of mindset — ‘Drop out of the whole system, because the whole system is corrupt,’ basically,” he said. “I take issue with what’s going on and decisions made, but I think the worst possible thing you could do is not be involved in it to seek change.”
Angel Ortiz, 83
In late 1967, Angel Ortiz, aged 26, a pale and skinny Puerto Rican raised on the Lower East Side, received another letter from the draft board. When he presented the letter at the draft office, he was informed that he was nearing his fifth and final deferment. Without a compelling reason beyond enrollment in a Ph.D. program at NYU, he would head to Vietnam within a couple of months.
“I’m moving,” Ortiz told his mother then. “I’m going to Canada, or I’m going to Cuba. I’m not going to Vietnam.”
But he didn’t need to leave the country. Instead, through an unexpected turn of events, he secured a position as a high school Spanish teacher, despite his poor mastery of the language.
The job allowed him to avoid serving in the war he deeply opposed. A year later, in 1968, Ortiz felt justified crossing a picket line during a teachers’ strike, because he believed the walkout prioritized union power over community needs. The experience taught him to focus on grassroots mobilization.
By the time Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968, Ortiz was a 27-year-old sociologist. He believed more than ever that voting was a critical avenue for change. He saw it as one part of a broader struggle to transform — and not merely integrate into — the system. A spirit of rebellion coursed through the Black and Puerto Rican communities he belonged to, with many inspired by global liberation movements and the radical energy of the time.
“If (Robert) Kennedy doesn’t get assassinated, I think the whole arc of history changes,” Ortiz reflected, recalling the 1968 killing of the presidential hopeful. He saw Kennedy as the most transformative presidential candidate in the race. “It just changed and we (got) Nixon and (now) we get what we have today.”
Angel Ortiz, pictured here in 2017 advocating for Puerto Rican independence, has fought for global liberation for marginalized communities since the mid-1960s. (Photo courtesy of Angel Ortiz).
Ortiz voted for Kennedy in the primary and later reluctantly supported Hubert Humphrey in the general election. Now, as he watches the Harris and Trump campaigns of 2024 unfold, he is alarmed by the emergence of anti-war protest votes that he feels hold little weight.
“People talk about not supporting Harris as a protest, but in swing states that’s a dangerous game,” he said. His concern stems from what he calls “historical misogyny,” a resistance that he fears may still affect Black and Puerto Rican people, particularly men.
“It worries me. It could impact our communities.” he added. For Ortiz, supporting Harris is not just about political alignment but also confronting these ingrained biases.
Despite sharing anti-war sentiments, Ortiz hopes today’s organizers can get Harris elected and then work to push her policies in a progressive direction. In his view, protest voting today lacks the disruptive power it once had. “Abstaining or casting a protest vote means little without widespread, coordinated action,” he said.
A protest vote only means something “if hundreds of thousands of people are doing it at once,” Ortiz said. “Without that kind of scale, it’s just wasted.”
Karen Robinson, 71
Karen Robinson, a Black queer activist, has dedicated her life to navigating and challenging the intersections of race, gender, and class in American activism. Just 15 years old in 1968, she came of age during a transformative period. These experiences profoundly influenced her approach to protest and political engagement.
Growing up in predominantly white South Orange, New Jersey, Robinson’s activism was sparked by her involvement in youth government programs and her politically engaged family. Today, she reflects on the lessons from that era and how they inform her views on the strategies needed for modern movements.
“My first exposure to politics was Eugene McCarthy coming to New York Symphony Hall in 1968,” Robinson said, referring to the anti-Vietnam War senator who inspired many young activists with his presidential campaign.
The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. later that year marked a devastating turning point for her and many others. “We were back at ground zero, dealing with an overwhelming sense of loss,” she recalled, noting how King’s death shattered hopes for nonviolent change and intensified the urgency of the civil rights struggle.
In the late 1960s, Robinson recalled, activism among many young people wasn’t just aimed at incremental change within existing institutions. They wanted to fundamentally reshape society. ‘We didn’t want to integrate into a broken system; we wanted to transform it,’ she said. “People weren’t interested in peaceful protests; they were ready to fight.”
For many activists, this meant more radical approaches, such as direct action and civil disobedience, to force urgent social and political transformation. “This wasn’t ‘We Shall Overcome’ — this was about taking action,” she said.
Karen Robinson, pictured here in 1984, has dedicated her life to political activism, shaped by the tumultuous events of 1968. (Photo courtesy of Karen Robinson)
However, Robinson has seen a shift in focus for Black liberation over the years, one that she believes has complicated the fight for equality. “Today, we have the wealthiest generation of Black Americans, and yet, many of them are more concerned about tax breaks than challenging systemic oppression,” she said. “We created our own caste system around money, and it’s holding us back.”
Robinson is deeply worried about a second Trump presidency, warning of unprecedented repression and stressing the dangers of protest votes. “I hear young people say they’re voting for Jill Stein or not voting at all, and I want to shake them,” she said. “Do you know what this country will look like if we repeat 2016? You think you’re making a statement, but you’re setting us back.”
“If Trump wins again, it will be catastrophic,” she added. “People don’t realize the rights we’re risking or the protections we’ll lose. This isn’t a game; it’s about survival, and we’re already on a knife’s edge.”
Robinson understands the younger generation’s frustration and disenchantment. “I have a 17-year-old daughter, and I fear for her future,” she said. “We’ve handed them a broken world, and they’re trying to fix it without a basic understanding of civics, leaving them vulnerable and ineffective.”
Robinson is hopeful about the emergence of movements focusing on human rights beyond national borders. “The solidarity for Gaza is the first time we’re seeing American youth fighting not for their own rights, but for global justice” in these numbers,” she said.
However, she cautions that this fight will require patience and resilience: “These kids are passionate, but they don’t comprehend the system’s tools and structures. Real change comes from organized, sustained efforts, not just emotional outbursts.”
For Robinson, the solution lies in grassroots engagement. “You have to start with school boards, library boards, county commissions — that’s where real change begins,” she said. “Republicans have always played the long game, and we must do the same.”
Voting, she said, is a crucial first step in a long journey: “If we want to see real change, we have to engage in every election, from local to national, because that’s how we begin to rebuild the system.”