50th Anniversaries

February 22, 2020

We were impressed by the week of activity at George Washington University in November on the fiftieth anniversary of the Mobilization demonstration as reported below. This spring gives us a chance to remind ourselves and the public about the largest most intense public rebellion against the war. President Nixon's invasion of Cambodia provoked an unprecedented and never replicated national student strike that exceeded even the Moratorium six months earlier. The killing of students at Kent State and Jackson State poured gas on the peace movement fire, both figuratively and literally. With at least 883 protests reported nationwide, can 100 local commemorations be held this spring? National and local media largely ignored the anniversaries of the Moratorium and Mobilization. Let's help them do better this May. A phenomenal interactive map with thumbnail descriptions of strike actions produced by the University of Washington can be seen here. Another seminal anniversary is of the Chicano Moratorium march of 30,000 in East Los Angeles on August 29, 1970 where four persons were killed, including LA Times reporter Ruben Salazar. We should also not forgot the need to memorialize Dr. Martin Luther King's contribution to the anti-war movement with readings of his "Breaking Silence" Riverside Church sermon on April 4th. Also worth recognizing annually is the civilian massacre at My Lai on March 16th, a symbol for out of control killings at Ben Tre and other villages, as well as of the still daunting humanitarian legacies of the war. We value greatly members of this unique list who gave much for the cause of peace half a century ago. Hopefully you will find personal resonance in one or more of the anniversaries described below to launch a commemorative project that fits your own experience and current situation, be it small or large. We must reclaim our history piece by piece while we are still able to do so. And needless to say, financial support is essential for this work to go forward. Tax deductible contributions can be made by clicking here.

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50th Anniversaries

The National Student Strike May 1 - .... 1970 “The national student strike [of May 1970] was unprecedented in its scale and is an inspirational testament to the power of young people to disrupt politics at a national level and force their concerns to be acknowledged.“         Mapping American Social Movements Project, University of Washington An interactive map here identifies 883 protest sites nationwide and provides an excellent overview by Amanda Miller. We offer some ideas of how you can foster recognition of your community's own experience here. The only substantial account we have found was "On Strike...Shut It Down!" a 133 page "Report on the First National Student Strike in US History" published in May 1970 by the Urban Research Corporation in Chicago. It contains greater detail than the map about each school. Copies can be found on Amazon. We can share on request here a 16 page PDF of the introduction and the information about particular schools. Kent State University May 4, 1970 Kent State University is organizing more than 80 educational programs, special events, speakers, conferences, exhibits and performances during the year. The program peaks May 1 - 4. A published summary is here. For additional details, monitor the university website here. Panels on Friday, May 1, will address the anti-war movement. VPCC member Frank Joyce will talk about his experience while visiting a North Vietnamese village when they learned of the deaths. Jane Fonda will speak at the largest public event on May 3d. On February 20th Kent State held a symposium on "Rebuilding State and Society After Civil War". On February 29th, the Department of History will host a research symposium entitled, “The May 4th Event and New Directions in Scholarship on the Vietnam War”, free and open to the public, program here.  Jackson State University May 15, 1970 A good account of what took place fifty years ago can be found on this 22 minute video. The commemoration program is being organized by the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. Events for Gibbs/Green 50 can be followed here April 3-4 As part of the 14th Annual Creative Arts and Scholarly Engagement Festival, VPCC is assisting with a panel that will inform current students of the influence of the civil rights struggle on the anti-war movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King's Breaking Silence sermon at Riverside Church 53 years before. Speakers on April 3 will include Martha Noonan, Mandy Carter, Rev. Richard Fernandez and VPCC Washington representative Terry Provance. May 13-15 50th Commemoration of the Gibbs Green Tragedy. VPCC friend Peter Yarrow is expected to sing. A panel is being organized for the 15th on the relationship of Jackson State with the anti-war movement that will include John McAuliff, VPCC Coordinator. Jackson State's connection to Kent State and the anti-war movement is not direct, although they are linked in the politics of the time and in many Kent State remembrances. The coincidence of timing and the long relationship of the civil rights and anti-war movements led to the events being linked in the later stages of the student strike that had incorporated concern about racism in its initial call. A perceptive essay by Patrick Chura who will speak on the May 15 panel appeared in the journal Peace & Change, “'Mississippi Phenomenon': Reinterpreting the 1970 Jackson State Shootings in the Era of Black Lives Matter". He summarizes the view of Alan “Tre” Dufner, then a Kent State junior and president of the May 4 Task Force, that 'the most currently meaningful connections between Kent State and Jackson State stem not from a common cause of antiwar protest that never existed anyway, but from their joint reflection of truths about police brutality and abuse of government power." Chura, a professor at the University of Akron who teaches a course on American Literature of the Vietnam War, also integrates into his analysis the perspective of Viet Thanh Nguyen in the book "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War" Chicano Moratorium August 29, 1970  Thirty thousand Chicanos and Mexican-Americans took to the streets in East Los Angeles to protest discrimination and lack of civil rights, and in particular, the high rates of the draft of Chicanos for the Vietnam war. An attack by the Los Angeles Police Department led to four deaths, including LA Times reporter Ruben Salazar. (summary here, 4 minute video here) KCET Television's Artbound series included moving interviews about the event in a one hour documentary about young activists who used creative tools like writing and photography as a means for community organizing, providing a platform for the Chicano Movement in the form of the bilingual newspaper/magazine La Raza. View it here. The web site for 50th Chicano Moratorium Organizing Committee is here. The People’s Peace Treaty November 1970 - May Day 1971 In late November of 1970 the US National Student Association sponsored a delegation of students from fifteen US Colleges and Universities to meet with student representatives in South Vietnam and North Vietnam to negotiate a peace treaty. Members of the delegation met first in South Vietnam with the Saigon Student Union and later In Hanoi with the Vietnam National Union of Students and the South Vietnam Liberation Student Union. The treaty, which became known as the Peoples Peace Treaty, was formally signed in Hanoi on December 17, 1970. The US delegation then came home via Paris where the treaty was publicly unveiled. A few days later the delegation returned to the US where it was used as a major organizing tool on campuses during the spring semester of 1971, culminating in the May Day demonstrations in Washington, DC. More information and a list of 167 participating colleges and universities issued on April 27, 1971 is here. See also Doug Hostetter's chapter in "The People Make the Peace", listed below in Resources. Please contact VPCC member Doug Hostetter here if you were active with the Peoples Peace Treaty. To Recognize Annually My Lai March 16, 1968 (52d anniversary) An easy way to honor the memory of the 16th anniversary of My Lai is to arrange a showing in your living room for friends, or at a school, library or religious institution, of "The Whistleblower of My Lai" directed by Connie Fields. It is available on-line here for a rental of $4.99 for 24 hours. "The film follows the Kronos Quartet’s production of Jonathan Berger and Harriet Chessman’s opera which takes at its heart the actions and life of Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot who revealed the 1968 massacre by U.S. troops and rescued some of the victims. Tackling the concept of heroism, the definition of morality in wartime, and guilt both personal and national, The Whistleblower of My Lai is not only a film on opera and the process of creativity, but a work on the nature of humanity itself." A larger agenda could include discussion of the ongoing legacies of war, including the victims of land-mines, unexploded ordnance, Agent Orange, as well as the frequency of additional civilian massacres like in Ben Tre.. For greater depth about what happened, show before, after or with Whistleblower, "Four Hours in My Lai, Anatomy of a Massacre" Yorkshire Television on youtube here Beyond Vietnam A Time to Break Silence, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. April 4, 1967 (53d Anniversary) One year before his assassination, Dr. King spoke out against the war at a meeting organized by Clergy and Laymen Concerned at Riverside Church in New York. His words inspired the anti-war movement, but he was criticized harshly by other civil rights leaders and the media. The full sermon can be heard here and read here. Tavis Smiley's perceptive documentary about the sermon and its consequences is available here. A follow-up interview by Merv Griffin can be seen here. Additional background and analysis can be found in the first two articles listed below in Resources under Previously Posted. Dr. King's memory should be honored on the anniversary of his death every year or during the national holiday in his name by bringing together friends, classes or organizations. They can watch the Smiley video, listen to King give the sermon or share a group reading. United for Peace and Justice prepared a full sample program based on an annual event in Oakland, California. The sermon as divided for up to sixteen readers and supportive materials are available here.

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Join us in Viet Nam to Celebrate 45th anniversary of peace and reunification or 25th anniversary of normal relations The trip is currently scheduled from April 19 - May 3 with an optional extension to Cambodia and Laos. The itinerary is Hoi An, My Lai, Da Nang, Hue, Quang Tri, Vinh Moc, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Bien Hoa, Ben Tre, including official observances of the anniversary of the end of the war. If required by concern about risk from the corona virus, the trip will be postponed with adjusted content until late June - early July for the anniversary of diplomatic relations between Viet Nam and the U.S. More information is here. If interested, contact us here by March 1st. Vietnam Legacies Symposium University of Dayton, May 21-22, 2020 Organized by the university's Human Rights Center, the Symposium will bring together scholars and practitioners to explore the enduring social, political, and human rights legacies stemming from America's involvement in the Vietnam War. The principal aim of the Symposium is to assess the extent to which U.S. society has come to terms and changed as a result of the conflict. A second aim is to foster understanding of the legacy of the War in contemporary Vietnam. The Symposium will be organized into a series of speakers and panels addressing specific themes including reconstruction aid, reconciliation, and memorialization. Confirmed participants include Chuck Searcy of Project RENEW (working on unexploded ordnance in Viet Nam), Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Hung of the Hanoi University of Business and Technology, David Cortright from Notre Dame and Terry Provance of the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee. For more information, contact Paul Morrow here.

Peter Yarrow and Rev. Richard Fernandez launch the walk to the White House after the conference (photo by Rick Hind) Waging Peace in Vietnam George Washington University November 11 - 15, 2019 The 50th anniversary of the Mobilization / Moratorium demonstration in Washington was the occasion of a week of programs at the Elliott School of George Washington University, culminating in a vigil at the White House. VPCC organized a panel, The Vietnam War Comes Home, with Clara Bingham, author "Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul"; Dr. Mary (Munchen) Posner, organizer of the Moratorium demonstration on October 15, 1969, at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, and of a contingent in the November 15th Mobilization in Washington; Rev. Richard Fernandez, founder of Clergy & Laity Concerned about Vietnam, organizer of the March Against Death; Robert Levering, staff of New Mobilization Committee, responsible for training 5,000 marshals; Anne Gallivan, Lessons of the 60's (Washington oral history project), Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee; Martha Norman, Baltimore civil rights and peace activist, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, co-editor Hands on the "Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC"; Moderator: John McAuliff, Fund for Reconciliation and Development, VPCC, It can be seen here Conference panels available on C-SPAN are described and linked here Book launch of Waging Peace in Vietnam Vietnam War Diplomatic and Peace Initiatives Teaching the Vietnam War Vietnam War Soldier and Civilian Peace Initiatives Legacy of Agent Orange on Vietnamese and American Citizens

Resources  Recent Additions Photos like the one above taken at the San Francisco Moratorium by Stephen Shames can be seen here. He has compiled a book of photos from the 60s and is seeking a publisher. Contact him 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; English subtitled DVD for public showings is available in appreciation of donations of at least $20, contact us here. New option The film can be previewed on nonpublic youtube by clicking here. Landon Carter Schmitt Memorial Fund, created by Dabney and Dick Schmitt to honor their son who died in Viet Nam after studying and working there for five years. They have assisted a school for visually impaired children in Dong Ha and other projects, details here. The “Research Arm” of the Peace Movement: How Power Researchers Helped the Vietnam Antiwar Movement, an interview with Diana Roose about the NARMIC project of the American Friends Service Committee "Vietnam: The Power of Protest" The 2015 VPCC conference in Washington is only first person broad assessment of the anti-war movement undertaken to date. Videos can be see here: The site also includes videos from the October 2017 conference in Washington, "From Protest to Resistance" on the 50th anniversary of the March on the Pentagon except for the first half which is on C-SPAN for session one here and session two here. A 50 minute video based on interviews conducted at the 2015 conference was produced by Activist Video Archive. It and the complete interviews of 43 participants can be seen here "The People Make the Peace". edited by Karin Aguilar-San Juan and Frank Joyce, reflections by activists who traveled to Hanoi during the war and returned in 2013 (includes VPPC members Frank Joyce, Doug Hostetter and John McAuliff) More information and order here The best web site on Agent Orange, land mines, unexploded ordnance is here   Previously posted "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 the present. "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." "Overcoming War Legacies: The Road to Reconciliation and Future Cooperation Between the United States and Vietnam", a remarkable March 26, 2019, 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 Especially notable is the eloquent luncheon speech here by Vietnam's Ambassador to the US Ha Kim Ngoc about the path that took him from fleeing US bombs in Ha Noi as a child to Washington. (He was introduced by William Taylor, then Executive Vice President of USIP, before returning as ambassador to Ukraine and most recently giving historic testimony at the impeachment hearing.) "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 spoke 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 "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 through Amazon on Kindle and paperback Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems by W.D. Ehrhart order directly from the publisher McFarland & Company Swarthmore College Peace Collection Sound Recordings over 160 recordings from the Vietnam war era available here  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 become available in a restored 40th anniversary DVD with supplemental material. Order from the filmmaker. Review in Isthmus "Soldiers for Peace" is an audio documentary produced by American Public Media (APM) featuring 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. For information, contact tyangchen@americanpublicmedia.org "Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, the Times, and Why They Matter", a new book by John Ketwig, author of "…and a hard rain fell" (now in its 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 Veterans for Peace website Full Disclosure "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

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The Problem of China a personal perspective  A motivating force for the anti-war movement was the right of the Vietnamese people to independence and freedom. For a century the problem was France. For two decades, it was the US. For centuries before, and again now, it was China. Just as Russia helps Cuba and Venezuela resist US hegemony, the US helps Viet Nam and the rest of South East Asia resist China's dominance. The big powers provide support because it serves their strategic and economic interests. Nevertheless, the support is essential to the recipient, no matter the contradictions and compromises. The situation in the South China Sea merits our attention, not just for the benefit of Viet Nam and its neighbors, but because if could become the provocation of superpower military conflict with tragic costs for all. If this concerns you, set a google alert for "South China Sea" to receive daily links about the festering danger of conflict. In the meantime, some sample articles from the past few weeks follow. "South China Sea of brewing troubles and its implications for India", Mona Thakkarin ModernDiplomacy. "Vietnam To Counter China With Asean Backing On Mekong River Region", Thitinan Pongsudhirak in Forbes Asia "China threatens stability in the Pacific: U.S. commander", Colin Packham reports from Australia for Reuters 'In challenging China’s claims in the South China Sea, the US Navy is getting more assertive', David Larter in Defense News , "Understanding Total Competition and China’s Challenge in the South China Sea" an interview in The Diplomat, by Prashanth Parameswaran of Patrick Cronin and Ryan Neuhard of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. "In The South China Sea Do As We Say Not As We Do",Analysis by Mark J. Valencia sympathetic to China in the Eurasia Review Testimony by Fiona Hill during the impeachment hearings that illustrated the transactional character of superpower support, an indication that the Russians would accept US application of the Monroe Doctrine to Venezuela if the US gave them similar authority over Ukraine. -- John McAuliff

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 *

Keep the Power of Protest alive  Donate on line by clicking  here or by mail to "Fund for Reconciliation and Development", 64 Jean Court, Riverhead, NY  11901 (memo line "VPCC")  Fund for Reconciliation & Development   Email: reachout.ffrd@gmail.com