The Movement and the Madman

"The People United Will Never Be Defeated!" That's what we used to chant in the streets when we protested the U.S. war in Vietnam and other government assaults on humanity. Tonight at 9 pm on PBS my brother, filmmaker Stephen Talbot, will celebrate that people power in his American Experience documentary The Movement and the “The Madman," which shows how well-organized mass protest prevented President Nixon and his foreign policy advisor Henry Kissinger from going nuclear in Vietnam.

Steve, who I've shown here at a Vietnam War march with his girlfriend at the time Susan Heldfond, sat for an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, in which he discusses his documentary, the Movement -- and, yes, his childhood acting career on Leave It to Beaver and other 1960s TV shows.

The message of The Movement and “The Madman" is as current as the mass protest in Israel, which just forced autocratic Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to indefinitely delay his plan to hijack his nation's independent judicial system. The popular uprising of democracy in Israel has created havoc in the country -- even its military -- and forced President Biden to put pressure on Netanyahu's far-right, extremist government.

Here's the key graf from an article in today's NYT:

"Mr. Biden's team also had a more immediate concern. There was an acute awareness, one official said, that Mr. Netanyahu is expected to participate in Mr. Biden's second Summit for Democracy this week. One senior official said the consensus was that it would nave been DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE (my caps added) to have Mr. Netanyahu speak while hundreds of thousands of Israelis were protesting that he was dismantling checks on his government's power." Right.

So people power sometimes works. Watch The Movement and “The Madman" this evening and celebrate it.

Susan Heldfond and Stephen Talbot (foreground) protest the war in Vietnam.