Analysis: Protest Speech by Paul Potter
The "Analysis: Protest Speech by Paul Potter" focuses on a significant address delivered during a 1965 march in Washington, DC, amid the burgeoning antiwar movement against the Vietnam War. Paul Potter, the president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), passionately criticized not only the war but also the broader governmental and social systems that enabled such military conflicts. His speech resonated with a diverse audience, primarily composed of students and activists, uniting them in a call for transformative change beyond simply ending the war. Potter's rhetoric emphasized the need for America to redirect its focus from foreign interventions to pressing domestic issues, such as poverty and racial discrimination.
The speech marked a pivotal moment as American involvement in Vietnam intensified, and the SDS emerged as a crucial voice in the antiwar movement, advocating for justice and equality. Potter's critique included an analysis of the shift in U.S. foreign policy post-World War II, arguing against the interventionist stance that had taken hold. He contended that such interventions compromised both the freedom of foreign nations and that of American citizens. Ultimately, Potter’s address sought to inspire a collective effort toward systemic change, reflecting a growing sentiment among many Americans disillusioned with government actions during the tumultuous 1960s.
Analysis: Protest Speech by Paul Potter
Date: April 17, 1965
Author: Paul Potter
Genre: speech; political tract; address
Summary Overview
This document is a speech given at a 1965 march on Washington, DC, at the dawn of the antiwar movement. The speech protests not only the Vietnam War, but also the entire governmental and social system that allowed or fostered such a military conflict. With an audience made up largely of students and members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Paul Potter, president of the SDS, spoke with passion and enthusiasm, calling for broader changes than just an end to the war. He and his followers wanted to change society and the world to realize peace, justice, and equality. The SDS was just one of the many groups working against the war, but it became one of the most influential, hosting several marches and spreading its message to many and varied groups of people.
Defining Moment
Paul Potter's speech was given at a crucial moment in terms of American participation in the Vietnam War. The United States had been involved in Vietnam for nearly a decade—though only recently had it taken to the battlefield—and the antiwar movement was beginning to gear up. Students for a Democratic Society, led at this time by Potter, was gaining a following and speaking out against the war and the government and its leaders. The SDS and many other Americans believed that the United States had no place to intervene so decisively in another country's affairs. Beyond simply protesting the war, the SDS demanded that the United States turn its attention inward and focus on the major problems in American society, including poverty and racial discrimination.
Delivered at the Washington Monument, following hours of protests outside the White House, the speech inflamed the passions of its listeners and affirmed the reasons why they had gathered there together. The audience of the speech was primarily SDS members and like-minded protesters, but, as Potter himself states, they crossed race, religion, and socioeconomic boundaries in a rare show of mutual interest and support. Collectively, the audience was not simply an antiwar group but one intent on making sweeping changes to government, politics, social organization, and economic realities in the United States and the rest of the world. Although the SDS eventually splintered into smaller factions at the end of the 1960s, their goals were held up by many as ideals throughout the Vietnam era.
Author Biography
Paul Potter was born in 1939 in Illinois and attended Oberlin College. Besides being president of SDS, he was also a founding member and spent many years working within SDS and with other political groups seeking an end to the Vietnam War. In 1971, he wrote a book, A Name for Ourselves, about his experiences and his ideas during the SDS years and after. He was married in 1972 and had two children. He continued his work in politics, albeit through more conventional political campaigns and ballot initiatives. Potter died in 1984 at his home in New Mexico. He is still honored for his work and activism today.
Document Analysis
This address, officially titled “Naming the System,” was an inspiring speech to its audience, designed to specify the ways in which the US government had let down its citizens. No longer was America an isolationist, or non-interventionist country; rather, now it was one that readily got involved in foreign affairs. The idea of “Naming the System” was intended to show how the American system of government and its involvement in international affairs had changed in recent decades and what effect those changes had had in terms of the ideal of freedom, both in the United States and throughout the world.
As Potter notes, “the development of a more aggressive, activist foreign policy” is something that came about after World War II. Prior to that, the United States maintained a largely non-interventionist stance with respect to other countries, except in a few cases, such as the Spanish-American War, when the United States sought to gain control of the Philippines. But after World War II, America became more interested in attempting to improve or alter foreign governments for the benefit of the United States. It is the building of this interventionist ideology that Potter criticizes. He and his audience believed that the United States had no right to involve itself militarily in foreign conflicts, such as the one raging in Vietnam, or to act as a kind of police officer for the world. Interventionism was especially galling since there were so many issues at home that needed attention, including poverty and racially-motivated violence and discrimination.
Additionally, Potter provides a critique of the state of freedom, both inside and outside of America. What does freedom mean in the context of the 1960s? Potter denies flatly that the Vietnam War was “a war to defend the freedom of the Vietnamese people,” nor does he see the war as expanding freedom in the United States. America, in its attempt to promote freedom in another country, had damaged both that country and its own citizens. The Vietnamese had been terribly brutalized by both their enemies and their allies in the guise of fostering freedom. It is true that a fear of communism prevailed in the United States at the time period, but that did not mean, in Potter's view and in the eyes of many others, that the United States could install an anticommunist dictator, hated by his own people.
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Anderson, Terry H. The Movement and the Sixties. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
Dancis, Bruce. Resister: A Story of Protest and Prison during the Vietnam War. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2014. Print.
“Paul Potter.” 50th Anniversary Conference—A New Insurgency: The Port Huron Statement in Its Time and Ours. University of Michigan, n.d. Web. <https://www.lsa.umich.edu/phs>.
Potter, Paul. A Name for Ourselves; Feelings about Authentic Identity, Love, Intuitive Politics, Us. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971. Print.
Rudd, Mark. Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen. New York: William Morrow, 2009. Print.