Anti-War Voices

 

circa 1970

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind"- John F. Kennedy

    Gen Z is the first generation to have the U.S. involved in a war overseas their entire life. War has become accepted. However, we rarely hear about voices opposing war. In school, we learned about all the anti-war rallies for Vietnam and that Wilson ran his election on the premises of not joining world war 1. The U.S. has and continues to have a history of suppressing voices, mainly criticism. In the 1860s, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, and after Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps.

   When I look at the anti-war website, and I am bombarded with information about U.S. involvement in other countries. Almost all of this information is not shared with the public on news stations or other forms of media. As someone who has never researched U.S. involvement in war, I knew that we were stationed in the Middle East. However, I never knew we are in as many countries as we are. You would think that since the founding fathers did not was foreign involvement, that would still be upheld today; however, that is just not the case. 

   The protection of dissent is a right guaranteed by the first amendment that allows people to express beliefs without government restriction. Other countries like China are more upfront with how they stop criticism. I believe our problem isn't the government stopping opposing voices; it is that there is not enough diversity in mainstream media. The problem isn't the number of people speaking out. It's the media not sharing this news with the public. 

   Media Consolidation has become a huge problem in the U.S.; 90% of all media is owned by six companies. There is no diversity in media, and that is probably why we don't hear about anti-war voices.

This picture was taken in 2018, an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. A lot like the picture on top, the main difference is that it was taken about 50 years apart.