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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, APR 16–22, 2025  
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_ What First Amendment? (2000), “Freedom Now in Vietnam” (1965),
Saying ‘No’ to Colonialism (1955), If They Want War, Let Them Have
It (1775), Impunity for Racist Threats (1965), McCarthyism Flops on
Broadway (1955), Earth Day’s a Smash Hit (1970) _

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_WHAT FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS?_

APRIL 16 IS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY of three days of large demonstrations
in Washington, D.C., by more than 10 thousand protesters who intended
to disrupt or even prevent the annual ministerial meetings of the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. 

The demonstrations in 2000 failed to disrupt the meetings of the
world’s finance ministers, but only because the U.S. government was
willing to spend at least three million dollars to illegally shut the
demonstrations down and then (years later) pay an additional $13.7
million to settle a civil suit for the damage inflicted by brazen,
wholesale violations of the demonstrators’ constitutional rights. 

By running roughshod over the demonstrators’ First Amendment rights,
the police made it possible for the top leadership of international
finance to set its agenda for the next year, but the cost of having
done so would have probably bankrupted any law-enforcement operation
that could not depend on being bailed out by the U.S. Treasury.

The Clinton Administration was willing to pay dearly to prevent a
repeat of the World Trade Organization’s disastrous and failed
attempt to meet in Seattle just four months earlier. 

And pay it did, more than a million dollars for special police
training, equipment, and overtime, millions more to defray the cost of
giving almost the entire Washington, D.C., staffs of the Departments
of State, Commerce, Interior and the Treasury a day’s paid leave so
the police could establish a no-go zone for many blocks around I.M.F.
and W.B. meeting sites. Not to mention the millions to settle the
lawsuit that eventually vindicated the demonstrators’ rights, but
only after nearly ten years of litigation.

Perhaps the most outrageous aspect of the government’s willingness
to violate the demonstrators’ rights occurred the morning before the
first demonstration, when a large contingent of police and fire
marshalls barged into the converted warehouse that was the
demonstrators’ headquarters and evicted everyone on the ground that
the building contained fire hazards. As a result, the demonstrators
lost all access to their supplies and communications equipment.

After the raid, the protest organizers gamely stated, ''The finance
ministers and international bureaucrats who shape the world economy to
make the rich richer and the poor poorer know that Seattle was not
just a bump on their road to global domination.'' But the police
tactics put the demonstrators at a disadvantage from which they could
not recover and the fat-cats’ meetings took place with a minimum of
disruption.
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_“FREEDOM NOW IN VIETNAM”_

APRIL 17 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of the first mass demonstration to
oppose the U.S. war against Vietnam.

In 1965, twenty thousand people or more, organized by Students for a
Democratic Society, marched through the streets of Washington, D.C.,
under slogans that linked the anti-war movement and the civil rights
movement:  “War on Poverty - Not on People,” “Ballots not Bombs
in Vietnam” and “Freedom Now in Vietnam." 

One of the event’s main organizers, Paul Booth, explained the event
this way to the New York Times: “we’re really not just a peace
group. We are working on domestic problems--civil rights, poverty,
university reform. We feel passionately and angrily about things in
America, and we feel that a war in Asia will destroy what we’re
trying to do here.”

The Nation magazine described the demonstrators as “veterans of the
Berkeley Free Speech Movement, freshmen from small Catholic colleges,
clean-shaven intellectuals from Ann Arbor and Cambridge, the fatigued
shock troops of SNCC, Iowa farmers, impoverished urban Negroes
organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), beautiful high
school girls without make-up, and adults, many of them faculty
members, who journeyed to Washington for a demonstration conceived and
organized by students.”

While the protest was going on, President Johnson was spending the
Easter weekend on his ranch in Texas, where he seemed to respond to
the demonstration when he told a press conference: “There is no
human power capable of forcing us from Vietnam. We will remain as long
as necessary, with the might required, whatever the risk, and whatever
the cost.” 

Less than three years later, it became clear that the President had
underestimated the cost; public support for the Vietnam War had so
diminished that Johnson was forced to abandon his re-election
campaign.
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_SAYING ‘NO’ TO COLONIALISM_

APRIL 18 IS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY of the opening session, in Bandung,
Indonesia, of the week-long Asian-African Conference of non-aligned
nations. It was the first such meeting, with the aim of promoting
Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to opposing
colonialism or neocolonialism by any nation.

More than 300 delegates from 30 nations – Afghanistan, Burma,
Cambodia, Ceylon, China, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gold Coast, India,
Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya,
Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Thailand,
Turkey, both North and South Vietnam and Yemen – attended.

Two attendees – Member of Congress Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and
author Richard Wright – were from the U.S. but not as an official
delegation.
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_IF WAR THEY WANT, HERE IT IS_

APRIL 19 IS THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY of the Battles of Lexington and
Concord, the first major military confrontations of the U.S. War for
Independence, which took place about 20 miles west of Boston. 

Before the shooting began, Massachusetts militia captain John Parker
said, “Stand your ground, don’t fire unless fired upon, but if
they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” 

When the shooting stopped, 49 members of the militia were dead, as
were 73 British troops, and the British had been forced to retreat
back to the safety of Boston.
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_IMPUNITY FOR RACIST THREATS_

APRIL 20 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of an all-white jury’s acquittal of
the arch-segregationist and future Alabama Governor Lester Maddox, who
had been charged with illegally threatening two civil rights activists
with a pistol. [link removed]
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_MCCARTHYISM FLOPS ON BROADWAY _

APRIL 21 IS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY of the Broadway opening of “Inherit
the Wind,” a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, which
presents the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial” as an allegory for
McCarthyism.

Starring Paul Muni, Ed Begley and Tony Randall, the 1955 production
was a smash-hit that ran for more than 26 months.
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_MILLIONS TURN OUT FOR EARTH DAY’S PREMIER_

APRIL 22 IS THE 55TH ANNIVERSARY of the first Earth Day, when in 1970
an estimated 20 million people gathered in many U.S. locations to
celebrate and demand action be taken on a host of environmental
issues. [link removed]
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For more People's History, visit
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* International Monetary Fund
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* Anti-Vietnam War movement
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* Non-Aligned Movement
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* U.S. revolution
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* political theater
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* Earthday
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