ATRIOS IS RUNNING THIS QUOTE from an article in the Knoxville alt-weekly Metro Pulse:

In late 1969, a group of about 25 demonstrators marched from campus down Alcoa Highway to the airport. The intent was to symbolically greet the soldiers who weren’t coming home. “The only thing that really hurt,” recalls organizer Charlie Reynolds, “is that one of the students insisted on carrying a North Vietnamese flag.”

Reynolds was UT’s ranking expert on demonstrating. An ordained Methodist minister and still a professor of religious studies at UT, he was new to campus. Born in Alabama, Reynolds had been involved in civil rights demonstrations there as early as ’61. Since then, he’d been pelted with eggs in Boston and faced firehoses in Heidelberg. When Nixon came to town in 1970, Reynolds, finishing his first year at UT, would lead the opposition.

Yeah, that’s my dad. I’ve linked to this piece a couple of times myself (here’s one mention, from last June), as a matter of fact. There’s also an article from 1971, I think, that Garry Wills wrote for Esquire, though it’s not online as far as I can tell.

To Atrios, it’s funny that my father protested a different war. To me, of course, the most important line is this one:

“The only thing that really hurt,” recalls organizer Charlie Reynolds, “is that one of the students insisted on carrying a North Vietnamese flag.”

My father and I disagree on the current (projected) war, but we don’t disagree about how unfortunate it is that that peace movement — and this one — have been ruined by jackholes who are really just posturing, or actively rooting for the other side.

And I actually marched with my Dad in Boston, but that was protesting Louise Day Hicks.