I remember feeling very ambilavent about the relationship of Woodstock
and the counter-cultural movement to the anti-war movement. It was
not always without strain. In the anti-war movement we recognized that
the first step of young people towards understanding the nature of
US Imperialism in Southeast Asia and elsewhere often was a step into
the counter-culture. So we definitely viewed the counter culture in
a positive way.
Yet we knew there were traps. The counter culture sometimes became
a dead-end. Some folks got so caught up in it, the music, the drugs,
the experiments in human relations, that they didn't want to deal with
the real world of the daily toll of a thousand deaths in Viet Nam.
We had a slogan in the anti-war soldier's movement that went like this:
"Too much dope blurs the sight. For freedom and hope, Unite
and Fight! FTA!"
I recall consciously choosing not to go to Woodstock, because I felt
it would be closed to serious anti-war recruiting. I may have been a
bit doctrinaire in that, but the initial commercial thrust of Woodstock
was a terrible turnoff to us hard-ass politicos as well as anti-commercial
counter-culturalists....
Peace,
Andy Berman, age 48 3/4