The 1971 May Day protests brought tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators to Washington D.C., the culmination of weeks of anti-war activity in the city that spring. The announced goal of the protests was to disrupt the basic functioning of the federal government through nonviolent action.
Some political observers believe the events of that day in northeast Ohio tilted public opinion against the war and may have contributed to the downfall of President Nixon
In 1948, with Cold War tensions growing between the US and Soviet Union, the Congress passed a new Selective Service Act that required all men living in the US, between the ages of 18 and 26, to register for a possible draft. Unless a man received an exemption for physical reasons or education reasons or other forms of service, a man could be called into the military for 21 months of active service followed by 5 further years in the US Reserves.
There emerged in the early 1970s a group of protesters who were decidedly more violent and aggressive in their protest tactics. In one incident, protesters apparently detonated a bomb at the University of Wisconsin in 1970, leading to one death and several injuries.
In this cartoon, President Richard Nixon and his Vice President Spiro Agnew observe a group of demonstrators and Agnew suggests that threatening the protesters with work would be an effective way to scare them off. This suggestion plays upon the stereotype of anti-war protesters as hippie, job-less drop-outs with no goals or education. Protesters actually came from all levels of society and all manner of backgrounds, but they were easily dismissed by mainstream society for their alliances with fringe groups and people.