Hot Damn contains unique footage of the 1965 Bay Area anti-war protests at a time when the Vietnam War was escalating rapidly. Harvey Richards filmed the 1965 protest marches at a time when mainstream media downplayed and ignored the protests. The student peace movement grew out of the militant civil rights demonstrations and mass arrests that occurred in 1963 and 1964 in the Bay Area (see Decision in the Streets for more about these events.).
Free Speech Movement Arises
Campus fund raising in support of the Freedom Movement against segregation in the southern US gave rise to the Free Speech Movement on the Berkeley campus in the fall of 1964, resulting in more militant sit-ins and mass arrests. As the Vietnam war escalated and the draft threatened students with induction into a dirty war in Asia, radical student attention shifted to the protesting the Vietnam War. The 1965 protests blew the lid off the media silence and announced to the country and the world that many in the U.S. opposed the war policies of the Lyndon Johnson administration.
Hot Damn Shows Troop Train Demonstrations
Segments include the Berkeley, California troop train demonstrations; the Committee for Non Violent Action (CNVA) peace protest at the Oakland Army Base; the October 15-16, 1965 International Days of Protest peace marches from Berkeley to Oakland by the Vietnam Day Committee, and the massive confrontation with local police at the Oakland/Berkeley border; and the subsequent march one month later to Defermery Park in Oakland.
Topics: anti-war protests, war resistance, civil disobedience, draft resistance, sit-ins, Oakland Army base, UC Berkeley, student movement, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Defemery Park, troop trains, wall of police, 1960s.
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