Читать книгу Hurricane Street - Ron Kovic - Страница 8

Revolution was in the air. The cities were burning as National Guardsmen patrolled the streets with fixed bayonets, taking sniper fire from rooftops. It was an extraordinary time, an agonizing time, a time of great conflict, a time of great sorrow, and a time that would forever change the way we saw our country and the world. America seemed to be tearing itself apart; never before had the nation been so polarized; not since the Civil War had we as a people been so divided. Everything was being questioned, nothing was sacred, even the existence of God was now suspect. The very earth beneath my feet seemed to be shifting, and there no longer seemed to be any guarantees, or anything that could be trusted or believed in anymore.

As the last American troops were being withdrawn from Vietnam in the spring of 1974, a small group of disabled veterans staged a two-week hunger strike at the West Los Angeles office of then–US Senator Alan Cranston.

—Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1999

This is the story of that strike.