Chapter 12: “It Isn’t a Moment, It’s a Commitment”: Teaching About Protest and Civic Engagement

In November 1969, at the height of the Vietnam conflict, U.S. service personnel stationed in Pleiku, South Vietnam, decided to highlight their ambivalence over the American war effort by staging a protest. It was Thanksgiving, and the soldiers—over a hundred in number, serving at a field evacuation hospital—decided to boycott the holiday dinner of turkey, cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. This was followed by a 24-hour fast, and the publication of an open letter to President Richard Nixon—”Sir: So long as American soldiers continue and fight in a senseless war that cannot be won … [we] feel that we have very little for which to be thankful” (Blumenthal, 1969). The hospital’s commanding officer said that no disciplinary action would be taken against the protesting soldiers.