"NOTES FROM AN AMERICAN ANTIWARRIOR: REFLECTIONS OF AN UNAPOLOGETIC VIETNAM WAR PROTEST ORGANIZER"
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Review of "Notes From An American Antiwarrior"
David A. Horowitz
History Professor
Portland State University
This is an engaging, fast-moving chronicle of Doug Weiskopf’s personal
experiences as an antiwar activist during the Vietnam War and beyond. Several emotional highpoints speak to the heart of this narrative. They chronicle the significant early impact of a visit to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964, the reunion with a former high school friend who suffered life-long injuries after the North Vietnamese shot down his B-52 bomber, the patient organizing to ensure that protest on the PSU campus remained non-violent, the minute-by-minute account of the “police riot” against the student-faculty peace vigil on May 11, 1970, the courageous effort to defy authorities at Oregon State and deliver an antiwar speech that inspired a student campout at the conservative university, the clever publicity campaign to use the underground press to inspire national coverage of Portland’s People Army Jamboree in August 1970, the heartfelt references to his father’s experiences and escape from the Third Reich, and the touching moment when he gets to shake the hand of former Vietnam War opponent Muhammed Ali. Another powerful moment includes the expression by Weiskopf’s daughter following the ceremony commemorating the May 11th protest of her pride in her dad’s student activism. Another involves the author’s realization that the Dean of Students he had once harangued as a protester had been a World War II conscientious objector who had submitted to food deprivation experiments for military research on the potential effects of starvation on US prisoners of war.
Weiskopf’s honesty in these segments reveals both his strengths and vulnerabilities as an activist and his effectiveness as a writer. They provide an element of context to the narrative that makes the book something more than a triumphalist celebration of the antiwar tradition. These elements of surprise make it a valuable read for students of the period, one that contemporary activists could well benefit from.
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Political Activist Book Review Website
Doug Weiskopf's book, "Notes From An American Antiwarrior: Reflections Of An Unapologetic Vietnam War Protest Organizer", is a tonic in an era amnesiac about grassroots power. Too often, activists assume their efforts vanish into the void or get written off as empty ceremony—this story punches through that cynicism with lived proof. The threatened rail blockade wielded a form of double leverage: material (the prospect of bodies on tracks, creating not just PR risk but an uncontainable operational hazard for the state) and narrative (publicly framing the cargo as a threat to everyone, not just antiwar radicals). Weiskopf writes of converted righteous rage over state violence into a campaign with clear stakes and a credible escalation route.
This is a precise instance of protest as both ritual and real pressure: Weiskopf describes synchronized public epiphany (the shock of May 11 police brutality) with a structural threat (train blockade), creating momentum that compelled even a cold administration to blink. Too many modern movements limit themselves to spectacle, forgetting that power lives in fear of chain reactions triggered by popular resolve.
Why has this style of escalatory, credible nonviolent threat has grown so rare in our era? Have social movements forgotten how to build that mixture of moral narrative and material risk, or is the system just better at diffusing it?
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About the Author
Doug Weiskopf is the author of the book, "Notes From An American Antiwarrior: Reflections of an Unapologetic Vietnam War Protest Organizer".
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