Rare Reunion of Vietnam Protesters Revives Antiwar Message

Surviving members of the 1960s protest movement against the Vietnam War convened this weekend for what moderator Phil Donahue described as an “unprecedented” gathering of leaders seeking to share lessons learned applicable to today’s civic problems.

“There has never been a gathering like this,” said Donahue, a longtime top-rated television talk show host in helping open Vietnam: The Power of Protest at a church two short blocks from the White House in downtown Washington, DC. “We were going in too many different directions,” he continued, referencing the volatile era of protests nearly 50 years ago during the war and civil rights era. So, he continued, the group of several hundred was “together again, for the first time.”

As a bridge to current civic issues, Donahue introduced California Congresswoman Barbara Lee, a Democrat from Oakland, was the only member of Congress who voted against the Iraq War in 2003 in the spirit of the late U.S. Senators Wayne Morse (D-Oregon) and Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska), who provided the sole votes in 1964 against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that paved the way for more than 500,000 U.S. troops to fight in Vietnam on the basis of what many historians now regard as a trumped-up claim that north Vietnamese had attacked U.S. fighters in the gulf.

rage Prize

    Prizes
    Courage Prize
    Book Prize
    Prize for Truth-Telling
    Documentary Film Prize

http://www.ridenhour.org/prizes_courage.html

    Prizes
    Courage Prize
    Book Prize
    Prize for Truth-Telling
    Documentary Film Prize
    Prize for Reportorial Distinction

The annual Ridenhour Prizes recognize acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society. These prizes memorialize the spirit of fearless truth-telling that whistleblower and investigative journalist Ron Ridenhour reflected throughout his extraordinary life and career. Each prize carries a $10,000 stipend. For more information, call Taya Kitman at 212-822-0252.

2015 The Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize

Citizenfour (Directed by Laura Poitras, right)

Citizenfour provides a first-hand account of Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the NSA’s mass surveillance program. The film documents the initial contact the former NSA contractor had with Poitras via anonymous, encrypted email messages, and the whistleblower’s history-making disclosures that revealed chilling evidence of a worldwide web of mass surveillance. Poitras’s film unfolds to show the headline-making events that followed as Snowden went public with his leaks and eventually settled into a life in exile in Moscow. Read

2015 The Ridenhour Prize for Books

Anand Gopal

Anand Gopal, author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, is the winner of the 2015 Ridenhour Book Prize. Challenging predominant narratives, Gopal writes about America’s longest war with intimate accounts of life in war-torn Afghanistan. Read more
2014

2015 The Ridenhour Courage Prize