Gerald Eisman was a senior in college at Caltech University in Pasadena, Calif. when he and his classmates tensely watched the news as birth dates were drawn out like lottery numbers.

“We cheered when they missed our number, and had a beer and consoled our contemporaries when their number came up,” remembered Eisman of the lottery draft that was instituted in 1969 during the Vietnam War.

By then, 543,000 U.S. troops had already been deployed to Vietnam, according to The Oxford Companion to American Military History. And as the number of troops increased, so did the anti-war sentiment. In October of 1969, over 2 million people took part in the Vietnam Moratorium protests all around the country and was followed by countless other protests that spanned up until the early 70s when President Richard Nixon announced the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Today, the U.S. finds itself in ongoing conflict with Iraq and as of September 2007 at least 3,803 U.S. soldiers have died since the start of the war in 2003, according to the Associated Press. And a recent CNN poll showed that the support for the Iraq war is now at an all time low of 30 percent among Americans. Yet to some experts, what is notably absent this time is another prevailing anti-war movement.

The anti-war movement back then had a huge consciousness around it because [the war] was personally affecting you and your family and friends,” said Eisman, the director of the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at SF State. Eisman, whose lottery number was never called, recalls his less fortunate classmates coming back home from the war with missing arms and legs. “It was very real.”

“Now here we have the Iraq war and who’s serving in [this] war? Volunteers,” Eisman said. “And with a volunteer army, where are the protests going to come from?”
Others like Eisman cite the lack of a draft as being the utmost reason why students today have not organized themselves the way the youth of the ‘60s did.

“Because there’s no draft [today], there’s no passion,” said 20-year-old Greg Doty, communications director for the college democrats at SF State. “And that’s why you don’t see students flooding the streets.”

Political Science Professor Matthew Freeman also agreed that the draft was a major component in the up-rise of the ‘60s anti-war movement, but said that there are many other factors involved, the difference in cultural outlooks being one of them.

People these days are intolerant of policies and their politicians and perhaps this attitude is stronger than ever, he said. Young children are taught that you’re supposed to do good, not bad. And if they’re given the idea that politics are a bad thing then these kids grow up thinking they don’t want to be a part of that. And according to Freeman, the result is a lack of political involvement.

Richard Deleon, a professor emeritus in the Political Science department, matched such sentiment.

“Looking back, when I was involved in the Free Speech Movement and early anti-war movements circa 1964 to 1967, I and most of the students I knew really did believe our high school civics textbooks and had a highly idealistic conception of how American democracy was suppose to work,” Deleon said. “I think that students today are more realistic and cynical about politics.”

Business major Alejandro Hernandez expressed his own realism.

“No matter how important they are, people don’t want to hear about these issues anymore,” said the 23-year-old. “Yeah, there are a lot of international issues going on, but I need to deal with the shit that’s happening on my own block.”

Along with the idealistic views of the past, Ethnic Studies Professor Larry Salomon, who has taught his students about the history of SF State’s involvement in the 60s protests, recounted the support of other major movements such as the Free Speech Movement and the Civil Rights Movement that were going on at the same time as the anti-war protests.

“Young students had already been cutting their teeth with things like the Civil Rights movement and Free Speech before the anti-war movement came along,” he said. “And young people in the 60s believed that what they were doing on this campus would actually lead to change.”

Now decades later, [X]press asked a group of 50 students on campus if they personally knew someone who had served or was serving in the Iraq war and 66 percent answered yes. Of those 50, 82 percent said they did not support the war. Still, a sense of apathy and disheartenment towards activism was present amongst them.

“I haven’t found a way to get involved. But I don’t feel like I even have a say or a chance to make some sort of change anyway,” said 21-year-old senior Deanna Madanat. “It’s depressing, really. And because I feel hopeless about the situation, I just block out all the news so I don’t have to think about it.”

Twenty-two-year-old senior Faten Madanat added to her cousin’s case. “We can protest all we want but in the end, Bush is gonna do what he wants to do,” she said. “And I think all we can do at this point is try and clean up the mess.”

Mechanical engineering major Mike Arce brought up Salomon’s second point, distraction.

“I’m no sociologist, but [the lack of activism] has a lot to do with today’s culture. We’re distracted by video games and the Internet,” said the 20-year-old junior.

Not everyone has been distracted during the current war, however.

According to James Martel, the department chair of the Political Science department, student activism is still around though it is definitely not at the same level as it was during Vietnam.

“Back then activism included the average person or student,” Martel said. “The activism that is happening today is coming more from the radical groups.”

SF State’s own Students Against War is a politically active campus group whose sole purpose is to end the war in Iraq, according to S.A.W. member Kristen Lubbert, 22.
Though it isn’t what it was before, Lubbert still holds hope for the future of student activism.

“Large movements don’t just happen,” Lubbert said. “It’s the small groups in colleges doing little things and learning activism; that’s what makes it happen.”

Though Eisman doesn’t consider the rebirth of ‘60s politics and its movements as likely without a draft, Lubbert still deems the possibility of a movement, reminiscent of the one against the Vietnam War, today but only if there comes a change of interests amongst her peers.

“If we expect to see change we have to do it ourselves,” she said.

Professor Freeman agreed that change will only happen if we ourselves participate like those who did in generations past.

“You know the John Mayer song, Waiting on the World to Change,” said Freeman. “Well, the biggest difference between the ‘60s and now is that the ‘60s didn’t wait on the world to change. They fucking changed the world.”