March

Yesterday was March 4, a good day to wander down memory lane to twenty-three years ago. The Gulf War started in January 1991, and as February came through it was clear there was going to be a need for Protest! Complete! Youthful! Peaceful! And such a protest was duly planned: The March 4 Peace.

Strauss & Howe make the point early in their book - released later that same year - that Generation X was simply not the same as the slightly older Boomers when it comes to protesting war. Frequent mention was made of Alex P. Keaton, the conservative counter to the hippie parents on Family Ties. Words like “conservative” and “cynical” show up instead of “liberal” and “idealist.”  

(Actually, in their first book, the label “13th Generation” is used for those born after the Boomers. Generation X by Douglas Coupland came out a few months earlier, but that name wasn’t in common use until a few years later.)

And it’s not like that describes everyone. Sean Lennon recorded a version of “Give Peace A Chance," that was in heavy rotation ahead of the January 15 deadline that, everyone knew, was going to be the starting point for the war to start in earnest. Which it did, just over twenty-four hours later.

And so, on a commuter college campus, with a student body having demographics almost exactly centered on cynical Generation X, the March 4 Peace was promoted with posters everywhere, starting in mid-February. Unfortunately, the ground war started soon after, Iraqi troops left Kuwait quickly, and a ceasefire was declared on February 28, 1991, making the March 4 Peace moot.