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VVAW/WSO Objectives

By VVAW

Vietnam Veterans Against The War/
Winter Soldier Organization
Objectives

1. To struggle for an immediate cessation of fighting and withdrawal of all American troops, advisors, planes, and military and economic aid from Southeast Asia. We support as a basis for the cessation of these hostilities the various peace proposals of the people of Southeast Asia based upon their right of self-determination and actual control of their destinies.

2. To struggle for the immediate termination of all other operations by the United States government, its agencies, and American business interests that are designed to suppress the rightful struggles for liberation and self determination of the people of the world. This includes the creation and maintenance of dictatorial governments, economic domination and the theft of the natural resources of this and other countries.

3. To struggle for the goal that all military people (Active-duty, Reserve and National Guard) be afforded their constitutional rights which are denied by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We condemn the use of the National Guard, Reserves, and Active-duty personnel as strikebreakers, and we support the efforts of service people in the struggle against military repression. We oppose the use of the military as an oppressive and policy-making force domestically and overseas.

4. To struggle for universal unconditional amnesty. This will include a single-type retroactive discharge for all vets, and amnesty for all persons in prison, underground, or in exile as a result of their resistance to the imperialist war machine as well as the clearing of all their resulting civil and criminal records.

5. To struggle for decent benefits, full medical care (including the recognition of Post Vietnam Syndrome as a service-connected disability), and productive employment for all veterans with parity for all war resisters. We demand an end to discriminatory corporate hiring practices based on Vietnam-era service or Special Processing Numbers or descriptions, and the exploitation of veterans as a tool to divide the working class.

6. To struggle against racism which is historically used as a tool of US imperialism to prevent and destroy unity among the people and justify the oppression and exploitation of third world people at home and abroad. We must fight this dehumanizing tactic which divides us, and strive to build unity between all people.

7. Resolved to fight sexism, to show that sexism plays a major part in promoting war. We must show Americans our society is permeated by sexism, which forces an inferior status upon women, reducing them to subservient sexual objects, and which robs both men and women of their natural growth. This institutionalized sexism channels women into unfulfillable, lower paying and profit; and it degrades and dehumanizes them by a double standard of morality wholly dependent on the myth of male supremacy. This sexism is exploited by the military, officially defining servicewomen as subordinate and throughly subjugating them to servile work and the role of a sexual object. We resolve to fight sexism within our society, within our own organization and within ourselves.

8. To struggle for the right of all workers to organize and strike to protect their income and safeguard their employment. We support progressive struggles aimed at improving working conditions.

9. To struggle against the use of the criminal justice system (police, courts, prisons, grand juries) as a tool of political repression, recognizing that this system now serves the interests of the rich and powerful while suppressing the majority of poor and working people. We will fight for the freeing of all political prisoners.

10. To dedicate ourselves to these principles and objectives which directly relate to the imperialist suppression of the People of the World by the United States government. We understand this war is imperialist in origin and affirm that the membership of VVAW/ WSO is not only concerned with ending this war, but with changing the domestic, social, political and economic institutions that have caused and perpetuated its continuance.