Excerpted from http://www.steveberen.com/809306.html

LEARNING FROM THE 1960S ANTIWAR MOVEMENT

In the summer of 1968, at the age of 16, I graduated high school and was weeks away from my freshman year at CCNY. Afraid that the Vietnam war would escalate into a World War, I had started attending radical meetings and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.

I attended a particular antiwar demonstration in downtown New York City in August 1968. This demonstration, billed as a "send off" for demonstrators going to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, was particularly confrontational in nature, and ended in a flurry of violence against the police.

At this demonstration, I bought my first copy of "The Militant," an openly communist, pro-Castro newspaper published in New York. The headlines blared: "Seattle Panthers framed by cops" and "Che's Bolivia guerillas continue the struggle" and "Mexican students battle police" and "Free Huey Newton!"

The following week, the world and nation were stunned by the violence in Chicago. But I was not surprised.

A lot of the "shock value" of the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention was that the public never expected it. Yet even as an inexperienced 16-year-old radical leftist antiwar protestor, I knew from my discussions and interactions at the New York "send off" event) that some groups - such as Youth Against War and Fascism and some factions of Students for a Democratic Society - were deliberately planning a confrontation weeks in advance.

With misguided idealism, and caught up in the excitement of confrontation, I joined the communist movement in November 1968. I remained an activist and supporter of the movement until 1990. Eventually, after resigning from the movement, I gradually came to terms with my past, and I became a Christian in 1995. Today I love my country, and today I wouldn't wish upon any young person the same mistakes I made.