From Orin Langelle’s five-decade Archive of Resistance
This week: Vietnam Veterans Against the War Protest the Nixon Administration at the 1972 RNC
“There is no anti-war or even anti-establishment group in America with the psychic leverage of the VVAW [Vietnam Veterans Against the War]. Not even those decadent swine on the foredeck of the Wild Rose can ignore the dues Ron Kovic and his buddies have paid. They are golems, come back to haunt us all…” — Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson on the 1972 protests at the Republican National Convention, from his book Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72
In August 1972, I hitchhiked from the outskirts of St. Louis, MO to Miami Beach, FL for my first professional photography assignment: covering the anti-war protests at the Republican National Convention (RNC). I was shooting for a semi-underground newspaper, The St. Louis Outlaw.
Photographs from the 1972 RNC show the resistance to the Nixon Administration’s war in Vietnam, and the gap between a radical youth movement and the Establishment. Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) played a major role in the demonstrations. The sign behind the protesters reads “Solidarity Active Duty Brothers… Join the Revolt!”
These photos from my first assignment reflect a place and time that can feel oddly contemporary, yet unique in American history. Today we again see a country split by war and distrust of the government, and the rise of a radical left youth movement, not just in the US but around the world. In 2026, in Minneapolis, Paris and across Europe, young people and communities have been rising up against injustice in many forms.
The war in Vietnam claimed nearly 60,000 U.S. lives, and more than 150,000 Americans were seriously wounded. An estimated 3 million or more people in Indochina were killed. Between 1979 and 2019, nearly 100,000 Vietnam-era veterans died by suicide, according to the VA. Toxic chemicals used during the war, such as Agent Orange, continue to have tragic health effects on people in Vietnam and on U.S. soldiers who served there. Yet here we are again in the midst of a senseless war on foreign soil.
—Orin Langelle
New Archive Photo of the Week: People fighting for their land. Their sovereignty. Their right to exist.
One photograph. Five decades of struggle, resistance and memory.
Each week, as hundreds of photographs are digitized from Orin Langelle’s five-decade archive, one image is selected, newly edited, and brought back into public view.
Archive Photo of the Week revisits moments of social, ecological and economic struggle that might otherwise disappear from collective memory—along with the people, places and stories behind them.
From the archive, back into history.