Ball State University created independently the kind of event we hoped would take place all over the country to recognize the October Moratorium. It took the initiative of one former Vietnam activist and of a supportive emeritus professor plus a year of hard work. It succeeded substantively and in outreach, see below.
For folks near enough to travel to Washington next month, George Washington University's programs November 11 to 15 merit your participation, including
VPCC's panel on Wednesday and a Friday night vigil at the White House commemorating the March Against Death
.
Our good friend and inspiration Peter Yarrow will join us at GW on Friday and at the White House.
Next up is the 50th anniversary of Kent State, Jackson State and the national student strike. The last lends itself to activities lifting up local events and history. US campuses and communities never before and never since have responded as powerfully and spontaneously as they did to the US invasion of Cambodia and the killings of protesting students. What happened then where you live now?
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Ball State University Successfully Honored Its Moratorium
The Ball State program brought together alumni of their Moratorium action in Muncie, Indiana, current students and diverse faculty and community members.
The full day can be seen on line
here
The keynote address by leading draft resistor David Harris
here.
The tone setting talk by the initiator of the program, Mary (Munchel) Posner, is at 20:07
here
To put her remarks in context, look at the substantial NBC Nightly News segment on February 25,1970 portraying anti-war sentiment in the heartland in which she is featured, seen
here.
A particularly creative idea is visible on the day's page, three VMC Scrapbooks of chronologically arranged clippings that capture the full range of opinion about the lead up, day of, and fall out from their demonstration.
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Other Moratorium Events
October 13
The Orpheum Theater, 216 State St., Madison, WIsconsin,
40th Anniversary Benefit Screening of
The War at Home
, followed
by panel discussion with Glenn Silber “The War at Home: Then & Now: Lessons of the Antiwar Movement”; Wisconsin Alumni Association
podcast
with Silber;
October 15
Swords into Plowshares Peace Center & Gallery, 33 E. Adams, Detroit "Fifty years later: The antiwar movement then and now"
Frank Joyce co-editor of the book, People Make the Peace—Lessons from the Antiwar Movement, recently translated and published in Vietnam; member of VPCC
October 18
Columbia University School of International Affairs, Room 1512,
420 W. 118 Street, NY
Waging Peace book launch with activist veterans; TV report
here
Please send reports of events in which you participated, including links to coverage director@ffrd.org
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George Washington University
Builds on the November Mobilization
Waging Peace in Vietnam, November 11-15
Peter Yarrow Joins Friday Program
An imaginative multi-dimensional program begins on Veterans Day at the Elliott School of International Affairs. The full program is
here.
Registration required
here
.
(No fee; donations on site welcome.)
* November 11 Opening of the
Waging Peace exhibit, launching of the companion book on U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War.
* November 12
"Sir! No Sir!" documentary screening with filmmaker David Zeiger
* November 13
The War Comes Home: Moratorium and Mobilization, 1969, a VPCC panel (speakers
here); peace poetry workshop and open mic
* November 14 Screening of fine cut of "
The Boys Who Said No" with filmmaker Bill Prince, Re-
enactment of the Cortright v Resor court court case,Screening of "
The Whistleblower of My Lai" with
filmmaker Connie Field
* November 15 Full day symposium
"The American War in Vietnam: Then and Now" with panels on The History of Diplomatic and Peace Movement Initiative to Bring About Peace in Vietnam, Teaching the American War in Vietnam, Mitigating the Legacies of War (Agent Orange, Unexploded Ordnance); Keynote addresses by Christian Appy and Cora Weiss; Songs with Peter Yarrow; Candlelight vigil with re-enactment of March Against Death from GWU to the White House with remarks by Rep. Jamie Raskin, (For information about the week and the walk to the White House, contact Terry Provance
here.)
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Kent State / Jackson State / National Student Strike
Kent State University has a year long
program of events culminating with the fiftieth commemoration on Monday, May 4, 2020 at 12:00 noon. They will present a variety of nationally-known speakers, musicians and poets. Their plan is to look back at 50 years of commemorations and honor the four students who were killed and those wounded in 1970. They will also seek to look forward to inspire future generations to carry on the legacy of May 4, 1970. We understand the public will be welcome but details have not been announced. History.com recounts the terrible events
here.
At
Jackson State University two students were killed by police on May 15th. NPR
reported on the 40th anniversary that "all Jackson State students learn about the shooting in a mandatory orientation class, and professors evoke the event as a teaching tool." CNN posted a
good report linking together the shootings of students at Kent State, Jackson State, and the earlier much less known South Carolina State, site of the Orangeburg Massacre on February 8, 1968 where three students died. So far we are not aware of plans for a commemoration at Jackson State.
The
National Student Strike began after the US invaded Cambodia on April 30, 1970. After the Kent State shootings, it exploded. According to
Wikipedia, "More than 450 university, college and high school campuses across the country were shut down by student strikes and both violent and non-violent protests that involved more than 4 million students...Nationwide, students turned their anger on what was often the nearest military facility—college and university Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) offices. All told, 30 ROTC buildings went up in flames or were bombed. There were violent clashes between students and police at 26 schools and National Guard units were mobilized on 21 campuses in 16 states. Walkouts and protests were reported by the National Strike Information Center at over 700 campuses across the country". Large demonstrations were quickly organized in San Francisco (150,000) and Washington (175,000) -- including occupation of Peace Corps headquarters by the Committee of Returned Volunteers.
The diversity of protests in May of 1970 were not limited to students and were largely peaceful--but angry that the war had expanded and had been brought home. Their nationwide size, scope and power, twice the Moratorium, has been largely forgotten. Does May's 50th anniversary offer a new and different kind of opportunity for engaging with your community's memory of peace movement history similar to Ball State's program?
Local history is a well established profession. By making inquiry at nearby universities and state and county historical societies, you could find allies with professional skills and resources. They may be affiliated with the
American Association for State & Local History
that collaborates with H-Net to run the
H-Local
list serve, or with the
National Council on Public History
.
If you would like more information about how to develop a local history project, send a note to director@ffrd.org
It is literally up to us to reinsert the struggle for peace in Vietnam into the national discourse of progressive change. If not us, who? If not now, when?
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FFRD Vietnam trip
Our next program for former activists and their families will be April 18 - 30, 2020 to participate in events honoring the 45th anniversary of the end of the war. The itinerary will include Hanoi, Quang Tri, Hue, Danang, Hoi An, Ho Chi Minh City and Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta. Attention is given to the history and enduring consequences of the war and the role of the anti-war movement, Vietnam's current social and economic development and challenges, as well as the growing danger of conflict in the East Sea (South China Sea). Pre and post trip personal sightseeing options to Ha Long Bay, etc.; potential pre-trip program in Cambodia and Laos. April 12-17 Send a note to jmcauliff@ffrd.org to receive updates
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Resources
Additions:
American Public Media (APM). will release an audio documentary called
"Soldiers for Peace" on November 7 produced by Kate Ellis and Stephen Smith. First-person interviews and oral histories, with Vietnam veterans transformed by the war. • Documents their decisions to organize and participate in their own antiwar movement • Highlights the numerous ways GIs and veterans protested the war, both in collaboration with the civilian antiwar movement and separately. To hear it, click
here on or after November 7th. For information, contact tyangchen@americanpublicmedia.org10
"Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, the Times, and Why They Matter", a book by
John Ketwig, author of "…and a hard rain fell" (Now in 27th printing over 34 years)
"Safe Return: A Vietnam Veteran’s Involvement in the 1970s Amnesty Movement"
by Michael Uhl available as an
Amazon e-book
"Reclaiming the Community One Bomb at a Time: The View From Indochina", text and photos by Ted Lieverman;
The Asia-Pacific Journal
Letter from Vietnam War Correspondents to Rory Kennedy about her misleading film, "Last Days in Vietnam"; published in
The Shipler Report
“1970: Nixon and Discord during the Vietnam War”
Conference Call for Papers and Panels April 9-11, 2020, Lubbock, Texas; The Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive (VNCA) and the Institute for Peace & Conflict (IPAC) at Texas Tech University
Three videos made in 1967-68 in Paris by the GIs who called themselves
RITA, Resistance Inside the Army. One includes the participation of Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) who loaned his fame/notoriety to attract media to cover the GIs
Previously posted:
"Witness to the Revolution" by Clara Bingham
An oral history of 1969-1970 includes interviews about the Moratorium and Mobilization with Sam Brown, David Hawk, David Mixner, Daniel Ellsberg, Seymour Hersh, Oliver Stone, Barry Romo, Wayne Smith and Bobby Muller. (Clara is on the VPCC panel in Washington November 13th.)
"Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans who Opposed the War" Co-editors: Ron Carver David Cortright and Barbara Doherty, New Village Press, Distributed by NYU Press;
Review in The Progressive
"Nixonland" by Rick Perlstein includes an good description of the Moratorium that can also be read
here.
"The United States, Southeast Asia, and Historical Memory" Edited by Caroline Luft and Mark Pavlick Essays by antiwar activists and scholars. Fred Branfman describes the tragic lives of Laotian peasants under US bombing. Cambodia scholar Ben Kiernan and colleague Owen Taylor illuminate the course of Cambodia history after unprecedented US bombing. The book also includes classic works by Noam Chomsky, Nick Turse, and Edward Herman. Full description and order information
here.
Tom Hayden on Social Movements, consisting of four unpublished talks and an interview by
Rolling Stone from 1972 – 1977.Available on Amazon on Kindle and paperback
Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems by W.D.
Ehrhart
order directly from the publisher
McFarland & Company
"The MLK Speech We Need Today Is Not the One We Remember Most",
an essay by Viet Thanh Nguyen in
Time Magazine on the relevance of the Riverside Church sermon to today "King’s prophecy connects the war in Vietnam with our forever wars today, spread across multiple countries and continents, waged without end from global military bases numbering around 800. Some of the strategy for our forever war comes directly from lessons that the American military learned in Vietnam: drone strikes instead of mass bombing; volunteer soldiers instead of draftees; censorship of gruesome images from the battlefronts; and encouraging the reverence of soldiers.”
"Exceptional Victims"
an essay by Christian Appy in the
Boston Review
linked to King's speech "The resistance to the Vietnam War was the most diverse and dynamic antiwar movement in U.S. history. We have all but forgotten it today." (Keynote speaker November 15th at George Washington University.)
"Overcoming War Legacies: The Road to Reconciliation and Future Cooperation Between the United States and Vietnam",
a remarkable March 26 conference at the US Institute of Peace featuring high level representatives of both countries' foreign and defense ministries and of the US Senate and NGOs; sessions available
on-line
Swarthmore College Peace Collection Sound Recordings over 160 recordings from the Vietnam war era available
here
Don't Burn
is the only available film that portrays the war from a Vietnamese perspective; made by Dang Nhat Minh about the journal of a young woman doctor serving in the south that was found by an American soldier and returned to her family in Hanoi decades later; in Vietnamese on
youtube
; English subtitled DVD available in appreciation of donations of at least $15,
contact director@ffrd.org
The War at Home by Glenn Silber is the best documentary to convey to a younger generation how the anti-war movement evolved from silent vigils to militant confrontation in the microcosm of Madison, Wisconsin from 1967 to 1972. It has just become available in a restored 40th anniversary DVD with supplemental material. The cost is $19.99 until January 1st if ordered from the
filmmaker.
Review in Isthmus
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The Problem of China
a personal perspective
Big power hegemony may be the defining problem of the 21st Century. Just as Cuba must deal with the US and Ukraine with Russia, South East Asia has to contend with the growing power and arrogance of China. Vietnam faces the biggest risk with contested maritime claims and a long land border, most recently invaded four decades ago. China has sent oil equipment into Vietnamese waters, blocked Vietnamese sponsored international oil exploration and damaged Vietnamese and Philippine fishing boats. It has turned uninhabited islets into military outposts and threatened other countries' naval passage. Just as Russia for its interests provides support to Cuba, the US allies with Vietnam and Ukraine, upping the strategic ante for all concerned and affecting domestic policies. The potential of unintended escalation to armed conflict over navigation rights and natural resources should not be ignored.
Most recently the US Coast Guard has been deployed in reaction to the assertiveness of the Chinese coast guard as reported in
Asia Times
.
The Times of India sounded a
regional alarm
"Crossing a red line: Chinese transgressions in South China Sea need strong pushback"
The Eurasia Review
editorialized
that "ASEAN Leaders Must Condemn Illegal Acts In South China Sea"
-- John McAuliff
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Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee
* Sally Benson * David Cortright * Ann Gallivan * Susan Hammond * Rick Hind * Doug Hostetter
* Susanne Jackson * Frank Joyce * Steven Ladd * Paul Lauter * Jack Malinowski * John McAuliff * Terry Provance * Brewster Rhoads * Nancy Jane Woodside *
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