What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

- Buffalo Springfield (For What It's Worth, 1967)


Tick-tick-tick.

Luan glanced at the clock next to her, its seconds hand sweeping around the dial in a slow, inexorable motion, time...fleeting. She watched it slipping away because if she didn't she would have to look at the paper in front of her, a single lined sheet filled with cramped script that she didn't want to read...didn't want to write. She slipped the end of the pencil into her mouth and absently chewed it, yellow splinters filling her mouth. 7:05pm. She looked at the flyer next to her essay. JOIN THE RESISTANCE. STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY MEETING TONIGHT 7:30. BASEMENT HAVEMAN HALL. A woman in a pair of jeans and a blue and white striped shirt shoved it into her hands as she crossed the commons on her way to class that afternoon. She wore a white button on her chest boasting a red clenched fist. A few others stood by a folding table decorated with signs. NO WAR, U.S. OUT NOW, BLACK POWER. Luan took it with a smile and read it as she hurried away, her thoughts turning to Lincoln.

When she first arrived at UC Berkeley, she didn't pay much attention to the burgeoning protest movement. She was intrigued, yes, because she didn't like what was happening in Southeast Asia any more than anyone else, but it wasn't an issue that moved her to action. For her, that was Civil Rights. Dr. King spoke at Berkeley, and she was there, clapping right along with everyone else. The war? She didn't know about the war, not like she knew about racism. Plus, she needed to focus on becoming a social worker so that she could help people and make the world a better place.

Then came the day she called home from the phone in the dormitory hall...the day her mother told her Lincoln's number came up and he was being drafted. When she hung up, she was cold, and no matter how tightly she hugged herself, she found no warmth, no respite. Her sweet, kind, gentle, sensitive little brother was being taken away and sent to a goddamn war zone...and for what? She didn't know the hows and whys of the war in Vietnam, but she saw the nightly news, saw men – boys, really – being dragged out of firefights missing limbs. She knew Lincoln was going there...and he was going to die. He wouldn't last five minutes.

She wept into her pillow that night. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that anyone had to go, but especially not Lincoln.

Over the coming days, her grief turned to anger. How in the name of God can they just come along, shove a rifle into your hands, and ship you off? What kind of country is this? What kind of 'freedom' is this?

On June 29th, she attended her first protest rally: A hundred kids crowded into People's Park with hand-drawn signs while a man shouted through a bullhorn; Luan was up all night making hers. It was red and blue on a white background: U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM. Short, sweet, and to the point. She stood nervously to the side and held her sign in the air as a series of speakers addressed the crowd. It wasn't much, she knew, but it was something; she couldn't take Lincoln's place, which she would in a minute, but she could add her voice to the chorus of 'no's" and hopefully they would listen.

They didn't. The war escalated. Bombs rained down, boys barely old enough to shave came home broken or not at all, children lost their fathers, sisters lost their brothers, wives lost their husbands. She went to every protest she could, fighting for an end to the killing...for an end to Lincoln's imprisonment. She spoke to him on the phone twice, once before he left then again after he got there. She worried about him night and day, sometimes so much that she threw up. She lost weight, she couldn't sleep, she expected the hammer to drop at any moment, waited to hear that he had died in some goddamn rice paddy half a world away, bled out...and she wasn't there...she wasn't there to so much as say goodbye.

Then it came...the news that he was 'missing in action.' The army wouldn't tell them much, only that his squad came under fire and he wasn't found. Maybe he was alive and prisoner...or maybe he was dead. The not knowing was the worst part: She wept for a week straight, the grief so strong that she felt like she was going to die. Then...one day...it turned to rage. No more, she vowed, no more dead husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers, no more fucking bombs and bullets and goddamn napalm.

Through the summer of 1967, the protests became more desperate. Luan was there, her fist in the air, her teeth clenched, her sign held aloft. When the chants started, her voice was the loudest: "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" "1-2-3-4, we don't want your fucking war!" Nothing ever changed, though. The eastern world kept exploding and she felt hopeless, frustrated.

It was in this frame of mind that she took the flyer, and was in this frame of mind that she considered its promise: A resistance...something more than chants and signs...an actual fight, vengeance for Lincoln.

Tick-tick-tick.

She glanced at the paper in front of her. It was headed: WHY I OPPOSE THE WAR IN VIETNAM BY LUAN LOUD. The original title was: WHY I FUCKING HATE LYNDON JOHNSON AND THE US GOVERNMENT, TOO, but she didn't think the professor would like that, so she changed it. She scanned the opening paragraph, and her eyes filled with tears.

My brother is the kindest, most caring, most beautiful person I have ever met in my life...I love him more than words can express...and because of Lyndon Johnson he's probably dead.

Every time she thought of Lincoln, she got mad, and sad, and felt sick and wanted to walk up to the president and shoot him between his beady weasel eyes.

She looked at the flyer. JOIN THE RESISTANCE.

She looked at the clock. 7:11.

Decided, she got up, grabbed her coat, and threw it on, shoving the flyer into a pocket and going out into the hall. A group of girls were clustered around the phone talking in excited tones. Luan hated how happy they sounded, how unaffected. Her brother was most likely dead and this country was falling apart, how could they giggle on the party line? How could they fucking laugh?

She didn't know, but it made her mad.

Outside, dusk had settled over the campus. It was chilly but not cold, a breeze slipping over the commons and rustling the treetops. Archaic brick buildings loomed over the square like mausoleums. When she first got to Berkley, she thought they were pretty, charming...now they were ugly and sinister.

Haveman Hall sat along a narrow footpath near a one way street. It was used primarily for functions, dances, and conventions. She had been inside once or twice, and thought that there was a set of stairs on one side leading into the basement. She walked around, and there it was. She paused at the top, one hand resting on the icy metal handrail: Light spilled through a half open door. A sign had been plastered to it featuring the same red clenched fist from the flyer.

For Lincoln, she thought, and went down the stairs. Inside, a small room decorated with posters opened before her. Several dozen metal folding chairs and been set up in front of a stage on which sat a podium. Behind it was a big black flag bearing the fist logo. People were sitting in some of the chairs, while a man and a woman stood by a folding table. The woman looked up, saw her, and motioned her over. Luan went, feeling self-conscious.

"Hi," the woman said, "are you a member?"

"N-No," Luan said, then, with a determined nod, "but I want to join."

The woman smiled. "Great. If I could just take down your information..."

Luan filled out a form, bending over the table and using a pen the woman provided. It struck her as kind of funny that an underground protest group would have her fill out a form like they were the Elks or something, but she figured every organization needed to know who was a member.

When she was done, she turned to the rapidly filling hall and looked for a place to sit, her brow furrowing when she heard someone call her name. She glanced over, and saw Shirley Berkman, whom she knew from English class. A tall woman with shoulder length blonde hair, she wrote strange beat poetry and smoked smelly clove cigarettes. She always struck Luan as weird, but as the amount of people increased as long with her nerves, she was happy to see someone she at least kind of knew.

Shirley waved her over, and Luan went, sitting in an empty chair next to her. "I thought that was you," Shirley said, crossing her arms over her chest. She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and black pants. "I didn't know you were interested in this."

"I am," Luan said definitively, "my brother's missing in Vietnam and I...I want this shit to stop."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Shirley said genuinely and touched Luan's arm. "I had no idea."

"I don't really like to talk about it," Luan said. "It-It hurts too much."

For a moment, an awkward silence hung between them. "So...what is this group, anyway?" Luan asked.

"Oh, it's a lot of things," Shirley smiled. "It's mainly student organizing, but we're involved in Civil Rights, the protest movement. We're sticking it to those fascist bastards in Washington. Tonight, the chapter president's going to talk about Vietnam. You're going to like it."

Sticking it to those fascist bastards in Washington.

Luan liked the sound of that. Those fascist bastards were responsible for Lincoln being MIA...they were responsible for every flag draped coffin that came back from Vietnam. She wanted to stick it to them very much...in the form of a knife.

Shortly, the lights dimmed, and the chatter quieted. A man came up onto the stage, and the moment Luan saw him, she felt...a pull, a sort of animal magnetism that told her she was in the right place and among the right people. "That's Ted Harris," Shirley said, "he's the president."

Harris was a tall, thin man with lank black hair and a neat black beard. He wore black-rimmed glasses and an olive drab military shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his hairy forearms. He looked out over the crowd, then down at a sheaf of papers. "First of all," he said, a slight tremble in his voice that struck Luan as genuine – he was a real, honest to God man and not a polished politician – "I see a lot of new faces here tonight, which is encouraging." He flashed a smile. "The resistance grows." He shuffled his papers. "I'm going to keep this short and simple, because every moment we spend talking is a moment we don't spend doing. I'm sure you've seen the flyers and the posters on the wall. If you're one of those new faces, you might be asking yourself just exactly what we're supposed to be resisting here."

He glanced nervously down at his papers, then back up. "Look around you. Tell me what you see...what you really see, and not what your parents and your congressmen and your teachers what you to see. It's the same thing I see, isn't it? People are waking up to the lie of the American Dream...and Lyndon Johnson's goons smack us over the heads with billy clubs for our troubles."

Luan listened, rapt, as his words hung heavy in the air. No one spoke, no one moved...not a single garment rustled, not a single muscle twitched.

"And the American Dream is a lie. It's a lie our parents fell for, it's a lie their parents fell for – it's a lie that we're not going to fall for, because we've seen it with our own eyes. We've seen blacks being hanged from trees in Mississippi for sitting in the wrong place, we've seen young people being beaten in the streets for speaking out against a pointless war, for having the audacity to complain when they're ripped away from their homes and their families and marched off to die. That's America. We, the people, are not in control, and we never have been. That changes now. Each and every one of you is here tonight because you care about the future of this nation, you care about what is being perpetrated by those heartless cowards in Washington."

Luan found herself nodding. She did care.

"We are resisting war, imperialism, racism, sexism, classism...all of the things so pervasive in American society that it constitutes American society. We are fighting for a more just nation, a nation that places value on people over money, on freedom over conformism, a socialist society. What stands in our way is an entrenched and elitist class of capitalist pigs and their puppets – Marx's lumpenproletariats...the brainwashed many who are not interested in societal advancement, the middle American housewives and workaday stooges who watch what they're told, buy what they're told, and live how they're told."

His voice rose and his face flushed with righteous fury. "We are fighting the bankers, the businessmen, the politicians. We are fighting for a just and new society – a democratic society, a society that makes good on the promises our founders made in 1776 – liberty and justice for all...even if they're black, or poor, or gay, or from the wrong side of town. Do we have that now? Watch the television. We don't. Why? Because they don't want us to. Divide and conquer. Set the poor whites against the poor blacks, set the young against the old, set the man against the woman...and while the country tears itself apart, it's not looking at you."

He went on in this vein for a long time, his words nesting deep in the center of Luan's head and liberating parts of her she didn't even know existed, setting free thoughts she wasn't aware she had. It was all clear to her now: Her brother was a pawn of soulless monsters who cared only for profit, soulless monsters who were even now quaking in fear at the rising tempest among the people...the people were finally waking. She felt a swirl of emotions: Anger, fear, betrayal...and determination...determination to make them pay for their crimes against humanity.

The meeting broke up shortly after 8:30. Luan remained in her seat as everyone else filed out, her body tense and her heart beating with renewed resolve. Harris jumped down from the stage and crossed to the folding table in the back, where he spoke to the man and woman. Luan followed him with her eyes, his voice still ringing through her head. She had to talk to him, had to learn more, to achieve the level of consciousness that her parents never would. She got up on shaky knees, grabbed her coat, and folded it over her arm, blushing furiously as she went to him, feeling like she were a beggar approaching Christ himself.

She stood by as he chatted with the man, laughing easily and shrugging with a carefree grace that did little to betray the titanic mind within. He sensed her, and turned. Luan opened her mouth, but found words hard to form. "Hi, I-I really enjoyed your speech. I just joined."

He smiled. "Hey, that's far out. We need all the help we can get. I'm Ted." He offered his hand, and she took it.

"I'm Luan."

"It's nice to meet you, Luan," he said, "this must all be new to you...the things I said."

She nodded. "Very new...but I feel it. It's all true."

"Look," he said, "why don't we sit down and talk for a minute?" He looked at the man. "Give me a minute." He glanced around. "I kind of hoped some of the others would stick around," he said, and motioned her to a chair, where she sat. He sank into the one next to her and rested his forearms on his knees, his head bowed. "So," he said, and looked at her, "what do you want to know? Actually, tell me what brought you here."

Luan took a deep breath and told him about Lincoln, the words coming hard at first. He nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry about your brother," he said, "I really am." He sat up and sighed. "I lost my father in Korea. A mortar shell or something." He shook his head. "He gave his life for this country, and they sent him back –" here he teared up and shook his head, an angry scowl crossing his face. "They sent him back in pieces. In a fucking trash bag like garbage."

He wiped his eyes, and Luan felt tears of her own. "I'm sorry," she muttered.

"That's just the way it is here," he said bitterly, "for now."

He painstakingly explained the SDS's goals and positions. He spoke of social justice, racial inequality, women's liberation, gay rights, and socialism. He told her of a world where men could live in harmony, and where everyone could have enough...no one would hoard wealth, no one would hurt you for being different, a world that was achingly close, but blocked by fascists and their agents.

At some point, they left Haveman Hall and walked through the night-shrouded commons, him speaking and her listening, her mind processing the glut of information, her eyes opening even more to the innate injustice she had always sensed, but had never been able to rightly name.

"The hippies are dead," he told her, "and that's a good thing. They were all wrong. Their hearts were in the right place, but all that "tune in and drop out" bullshit...how can you drop out when your world's on fucking fire? How can you sit there and talk about peace and love and then do nothing to achieve it?"

He was the teacher and she was the student, and she took all he had to give.

"How can we win?"

"Numbers," he said. "There are more of us than them. People are waking up all the time, and one day – one day soon – the scales are going to tip. It's our job to facilitate that, it's our job to get people organized, to get them fired up, to get them marching in the streets and demanding a revolution...then starting a revolution."

In his dorm, she sat on his bed and he handed her a thin red book with black writing across the front: The Communist Manifesto – Karl Marx. "At the base of everything is class struggle," he said, tapping the cover with his finger. "Everything. Racism, sexism, imperialism...the rich have been manipulating and using the poor since the very first camel trader pocketed the very first coin. Marx says it himself 'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.' And he's right. All it takes it a cursory glance to see that. It's always been the nobles and the slaveholders against the surfs and the slaves and the sharecroppers. It's a war that's been going on since the dawn of time...it's a war that we're finally starting to win." He smiled brightly. "We just had a revolution in Cuba...a beautiful democratic revolution. And it's happening in Vietnam too. That's why we're there: Our fascist overloads are scared shitless of more communist states, and they want to stop it...kill it in the cradle. They'd be doing the same thing in Russia or China but Russia and China can defend themselves. They have nukes. Vietnam doesn't. America the bully picking on the little guy. Home of the brave, huh? Home of the brave my ass."

Luan considered his words. "You mean my brother...?"

He nodded. "He was sent to Vietnam for the same reason my father was sent to Korea: To protect the interest of capitalist swine. They're scared, Luan. They're scared shitless because they know communism is the future, and they have no place in that future."

Hot anger filled her. Her brother was probably dead because greedy fascists were afraid that one day they wouldn't be able to hoard wealth and push people around anymore. Tears of rage filled her eyes, and she fisted her hands in her lap. She fought hard not to break down and cry at the unfairness of it all.

Ted put his hand on her knee and she looked at him. "That's what we're resisting." His eyes burned with the same righteous fury that Luan felt in her breast. "And that's why we have to organize."

When he kissed her, she kissed him back, and when he mounted her, she gave himself entirely to him – and to his cause.