It was the summer of 1968. My friend Scott Pryor and I had decided to drive my Corvair from our little hometown of Brewster, Washington State, to San Francisco. We had graduated from high school that June, Scott was starting college in the fall, and I was shipping out for Navy boot camp in October.
Things had gone from bad to worse in the Viet Nam War. A couple of my friends had lost their lives in the conflict and it had really hit home. All over America, resistance to the war was reaching a fevered pitch, and nowhere was it more focused that summer than in San Francisco. We'd been watching the demonstrations on TV and decided to add our energy to the movement even if only for a couple of weeks.
We drove all day and night and arrived in the Haight in the afternoon. We walked up and down the streets, marveling at the hippies, yippies and freaks. It was an exciting time for we farm boys, but it wasn't until we stopped at a café near the Berkeley campus that we truly found ourselves in the belly of the beast. The first hint that something was afoot came when we saw a group of students run past. Soon the street was jammed with protesters, most were running; they seemed to be in full retreat.
Then the cops arrived. They were in riot gear, swinging billy clubs and tossing tear gas. The whole front of the coffee shop was glass and we could see everything that was happening. As the cops marched past, one stopped and looked toward Scott and I. We were 18 years old, wore our hair fairly long and could easily be mistaken for protestors. The cop fixed his gaze on us, and the look in his eye sent a chill down my spine. We stood frozen to the spot. Were we about to be arrested, or worse, gassed or beaten? I slowly raised my hands and Scott did the same. The cop looked us up and down, then did a left face and hustled off in pursuit of bigger game.
I had come to stand up to The Man, yet when my chance arrived, I surrendered without a fight. The protesters I'd seen had been on the run, too. It was a demoralizing moment for me. But what I didn't realize at the time was that what looked like retreat was simply part of the process by which a movement builds. Sure, we had lost that particular battle, but the war was far from over and we'd never lost our hope. In the end, our people's movement would reach critical mass, bring down two Presidents, end the war in Southeast Asia, and usher in a decades-long period of social and economic progress and justice that would -- a few stutters aside -- continue up to the election of Donald Trump.
Now there's a new threat -- one perhaps even more serious and damaging than the Viet Nam War. We are experiencing an unprecedented reversal of had-won progressive advances, and things look grim. Yet, for me at least, there's a familiar feeling in the air: a mood of hope and optimism and the sense that we are on the right side of history. People are striking sparks wherever and whenever they can. More than three million showed up to protest Trump just one day after his inauguration, and many more demonstrations are in the works. The people are mad as hell, and I have no doubt that, just like way back in the summer of '68, we're seeing the start of something big.
Darby Roach is a writer and world traveler. His latest book, Over The Hill And Around The World is an Amazon best seller.