Organizers acknowledge that their “Re-create ’68” moniker has been met with skepticism as they’ve toured the country to gin up support among fellow activists. “A lot of people of course associate it with the DNC of ’68 and react negatively,” said organizer Mark Cohen. But the point, Cohen said, isn’t to reproduce the violence associated with the 1968 convention, just the strong sense of countercultural protest that coalesced against the Vietnam War. “We don’t call ourselves ‘Re-create Chicago ’68,’” Cohen offered.

In other words,

"We're politically tone deaf nitwits, who didn't really think this thing through clearly, but have mindlessly settled on the idea that it would better to divide and discredit the flawed, but significantly less bad, party rather than the truly rotten and murderous party that actually started the Iraq war and does the most every day to sustain it."

"And we do this because we have some half-baked and childishly romantic images rattling around in our heads about the "spirit of '68", and we would rather have John McCain elected president that forego the opportunity for some self-indulgent sixties-infused retro-fun. You know, 'Hey, hey, LBJ' and all that cool stuff."

"Since most of us are too busy with impotent street carnivals to read books, we didn't realize that it made sense to protest the Democratic convention in 1968 because Democratic presidents had been responsible for starting, escalating and continuing the Vietnam war; and we didn't stop to think that this war was actually started and run by a Republican, and so that perhaps their freaking convention would be a more appropriate spot for our outing. Whatever."

Well, I will be extremely surprised if the leadership does anything much differently than they have since 2003, i.e., cave in to the right on the war.

Let's see now. We don't want a true anti-war candidate to run because that would weaken the Dems, and we don't want to protest the Dem Convention for the same reason -- what CAN we do?

R-68 is just in its formative stages. Basically they want to re-create the feeling of "power to the people" that existed in 1968. The need for this, as in 1968, is the mis-representation of Democratic constituents by their party leaders.

What is more important, the success of the Democratic Party or the welfare of Americans? As R-68 states: "The parties were devised as a means to represent the people. Today they represent nobody, not even party members, but only party bureaucracy. The people have been left without appropriate institutions for their representation. We intend to create those institutes!"

Even though Todd Gitlin, the self-proclaimed "big tent" Democrat, is against the idea, I think it might be a good thing. Give them a chance.

http://recreate68.org/

On the other hand, antiwar protestors at the Democratic convention might make the Democrat's position on the war seem more moderate to those who don't like the Iraq War but who are loathe to be seen as anti-military. (i.e., hey, we're against the war for pragmatic reasons, we're not like those idealistic hippies at the protests).

In any case, as an antiwar conservative, I am going to do all I can to get people to vote for an antiwar conservative third part candidate (probably in the Constitution Party).

Perhaps the Democrats should spend some time not just trying to unite the Democratic vote but trying to split the conservative vote. With Nukem McAmnesty as the nominee, it should not be too hard.

I don't see the leading Democrats as being strongly anti-war. The talk is of removing "combat troops" which would leave many troops in Iraq. I don't hear enough about those permanent bases we're building. I don't hear enough about our use of air power and the destruction it's causing. I'll take the Dems over the Republicans but I don't expect any major breakthrough in the area of reigning in the influence of the military-industrial complex.

"Here..."

Where's "here"? What specific quote are you talking about?

Who the hell would want to re-create 1968? The Democratic party split three ways. Racist white Dems followed George Wallace, pro-war advocates followed
the not so pro-war Humphrey and the anti-war contingent went into the McCarthy and then RFK camps. All the Abbie Hoffmans and Tom Haydens managed to accomplish was inadvertently getting Nixon elected.

Here's Malcolm on the march (qtd. by Zinn, 458): "This is what they [the Kennedy administration] did with the march on Washington. They joined it . . . became part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all. . . . No, it was a sellout. A takeover. They controlled it so tight, they told those Negroes what time to hit town, where to stop, what signs to carry, what song to sing, what speeches they could make, and what speech they couldn't make, and then told them to get out of town by sundown."

This is, begging your pardon, horseshit -- some really unfortunate and opportunistic sniping on Malcolm's part. And Zinn follows it with: "The accuracy of Malcolm X's caustic description of the march on Washington is corroborated in the description from the other side." But then the "corroboration" turns out to be a brief discussion of how Arthur Schlesinger and JFK tried to "incorporate the Negro revolution into the democratic coalition." Not a discussion of how Massa told the marchers what to do and when to do it.

And this speaks to a much larger problem with Zinn's account of recent history. Every time the Democratic Party made a move to respond to and "incorporate" mass revolt, Zinn construes it not as success of a mass movement but as its failure, as "selling out" and getting "taken over." So it's a little weird to hear him today talking about how the Democrats responded sympathetically to the mass movements of the Sixties.