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Editorial: Vets Unite To Fight

By VVAW

Veterans are uniting and fighting back against our oppression. Everywhere we look across the country we can see the struggles veterans are waging. Vets in New York City have been fighting against the VA methadone program. In Detroit vets have united around demanding decent health care in the VA hospital. In Chicago, the case of Joe Blanco's disability cutback has won the support of hundreds of veterans. In Milwaukee the VA has threatened to cut the disability of Ted Streit and vets are uniting to fight the cutback. In Long Beach, California and in St. Louis vets are fighting for decent benefits. There are other cases of how vets are getting sick and tired of the runaround we get trying to collect the meager benefits promised by the VA and the ruling class of this country.

The Veterans Administration, created in 1930 after much struggle by veterans, was set up to keep vets in line rather than to serve the interests of the vets. How many of us have had experiences with the VA where we had our head spin in confusion trying to figure out what they were saying or doing? Just about every vet has some personal horror story about VA treatment, whether it's waiting for that long overdue check or waiting for medication in a VA hospital.

So what do we do about it and how do we get together to fight back? VVAW/WSO has been working to answer these questions for several years now. We began as an organization because Vietnam vets saw the war in Indochina as wrong due to our personal experiences there. VVAW was formed to try to do our part in ending the war. Gradually it became clear to us that there was more to being a basically vets organization than just protesting against the way in Indochina, even though that was our main thrust. It grew clear that veterans were joining VVAW (or looked to the organization as one in which they could join), to fight back against attacks coming down on us.

In the process of understanding the struggle of vets, a debate began in the organization: should we build a fighting veterans group or should we be some up-in-the-sky organization that would take every struggle in some half-assed way and not work around veteran's issues. In December of 1974, VVAW/WSO made a great leap forward when it decided to build the vets movement. We adopted some ideas around a national program based on what we had learned from working with other vets at VA facilities around the country.

In July of this year the organization took another leap forward in coming up with a more developed program of uniting with other veterans in the fight against the VA. Our national program attacks the specific ways the system--which sent us to fight in Vietnam, which causes unemployment at home, which mishandles the VA facilities, and which is preparing for another war--is dealing with vets.

What problems do vets face? Well, for starts vets have a really high unemployment rate. Vets with jobs are saddled with speed-up and the threat of being laid-off. We demand decent jobs at decent wages. And if we can't find jobs we want a decent income. That's why Jobs or Income for All is a major demand of ours.

Without a job, many of us turned to the VA to get some of the benefits we were promised and found instead disability cutbacks, late school checks, bureaucratic red tape and military-type harassment in applying for loans and other so-called benefits. VVAW/WSO's program speaks to the need for veterans to unite and fight back against these cutbacks and harassment.

Even if we have a job or collect from the GI Bill, in most cases the payments are inadequate. We must demand a GI Bill at least equal to that received by WWII vets. And finally we must fight against the rotten conditions in VA hospitals. Good health care means adequately staffed hospitals and decent medical attention. We aren't going to take any more deaths like the ones at the Ann Arbor VA Hospital.

There are lots of things we were promised when we went into the military. When we got out we found a lot of these promises were nothing but hot air. It's right and necessary for us to fight for what we got coming to us, because our benefits will never be "given" to us. And we don't want decent benefits at the expense of other working people. The whole system is run by the rich even though working people have created everything. The struggle of veterans is part of the overall worker's struggle we join with other working people in the fight against attacks on our living standards.

Because this system is in a dire economic crisis, the ruling class tries to put the crisis on our backs, while at the same time it is locked into a life and death struggle with the other world superpower, the Soviet Union, in a battle for who controls markets abroad. While fighting against attacks here on us in this country, we fight against the threat of another war. As vets we have seen firsthand what these wars are for; for the rich.

All these problems that face vets will be tackled. The program adopted at our National Steering Committee Meeting held in July speaks to them, and the overwhelming majority of people in our organization united behind that program. Several chapters did not. These people are no longer in the organization as they chose instead to turn their backs on the struggles of veterans. VVAW/WSO has now gotten rid of these people and can more fully unite with veterans who are getting screwed by the system.

And that is the key to our program and the key to the fight that we must wage for ourselves. Only through unity and militant mass action will we win our demands. When one veteran goes to the VA he could get lost in the red-tape shuffle. But when 100 or 1,000 vets go to the VA we get results! And as attacks on vets get worse there is more of a need for us to get together to fight against them. VVAW/WSO has become the kind of organization capable of uniting veterans to fight back; not to beg for crumbs and settle for half victories, but to really fight in the interests of all veterans by fighting to win!

JOIN US!

BUILD THE FIGHTING VETS MOVEMENT!

(Copies of our national program will be available soon. Contact your local chapter for more information.)