See this program Tuesday,
August 20th at 8p only on KRON 4!

It seemed very far away in 1965, a place most of us hadn't even heard of or pointed to on a map.   But soon this little country would be as familiar to us as our own back yard.  

It would be dividing our families, our politics, our entire nation.   In 1965, our first combat troops landed there... Vietnam. 

Within days of that first landing in Vietnam, the anti-war movement mobilized at home,  first with a series of teach-ins on the nation's campuses.  Once again, Berkeley was at the center of it all.

It wasn't long before the anti-war organizers at Berkeley realized that just teaching people didn't make for national headlines.  Conflict and confrontations were stuff of media stories and that's just what they were shooting for starting with a series of events in the summer of '65. 

Even in 1965 there were strong resentments brewing on both sides of the conflict over our involvement in Vietnam.  The situation really heated up starting in 1966 when the students who filled the ranks of the anti-war movement lost their deferments from military service.  Suddenly, theoretical game playing had become playing for keeps with a hand that was stacked with bad cards.   You had your choice of joining up, getting drafted, going to Canada or figuring out some other way to avoid the draft.  And there were lots of ways to do that...

By the fall of '67, the draft had become America's single most divisive issue.   At no time was that more apparent than during stop the draft week when anti-war organizations joined forces and converged on the Oakland induction center.  Even within the movement, there was disagreement about goals and tactics.  Should the demonstration be peaceful or militant.  In the end, it was both.