40 years later, strike spirit alive in Durham
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20100505-NEWS-5050395
By Alexis Macarchuk
[email protected]
May 05, 2010
DURHAM A room full of University of New Hampshire alumni who
remember events that unfolded in the spring of 1970 gathered on
Tuesday night and urged a new generation of activists to "talk about
the elephant in the room" and "go forward and infiltrate" during a
forum held to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the UNH "strike
rally" against the Vietnam War.
A panel of former student leaders who stood on stage while Abbie
Hoffman smoked a joint, confronted administrators and politicians who
tried to silence them, and grew their hair long and "never made it to
class" are a little different now than they were 40 years ago,
although many of their opinions haven't changed much.
In the spring of 1970, Mark Wefers, the UNH student body president,
invited three anti-war activists who had been arrested at the 1968
Democratic National Convention to speak on campus. On May 5, a day
after four students were killed at Kent State during a protest, the
members of the so-called "Chicago 8" defied a court order by speaking
at UNH at night instead of in the afternoon.
"Mayflowers," a documentary shown Tuesday, which captured the strike
rally on film, profiles the key players and their lives after they
graduated, the war ended and the media frenzy surrounding the
incident died down.
Wefers traveled to North Vietnam in the fall of 1970 with the
National Student Association, a confederation of American college and
university student governments. He was a criminal investigator for
the state of New Hampshire for 32 years.
"Don't make the mistake that the movement begins and ends with UNH,"
he told students looking for advice about how to make a difference.
Peter Rivierre, who in 1970 was the editor of The New Hampshire,
UNH's student newspaper, became a journalist and started a social
services program for the elderly. He is now married with two children
and is the executive director of Coos Economic Development Corp.
"I remember something that was posted outside the library. It read
'seek the truth and the truth will set you free,'" he recalled.
"Don't be afraid of the truth. That's what we're here to learn;
that's what a liberal arts education is all about."
Gary Anderson, a UNH Class of 1969 graduate and the producer of
"Mayflowers," is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker and the founding
member of the New Hampshire Film Commission.
At the end of the 30-minute film he re-mastered for the 40th
anniversary event, Anderson said while standing in front of Thompson
Hall, "As I re-visited 'Mayflowers' it reminded me what ordinary
people in ordinary places like this are capable of."
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