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Amnesty Campaign Begins

By VVAW

On May 26, 27 and 28, an international conference on amnesty was held in Toronto, Canada for the purpose of developing strategic and tactical plans to implement a campaign calling for total, unconditional amnesty. The conference was sponsored by AMEX-Canada and was attended by groups from Germany, Sweden, England, Canada, and the United States. VVAW/WSO had the largest delegation with approximately thirty members from California, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Maryland, New York and Massachusetts.

The conference was held in Canada so that representatives of exile groups, barred from entering the United States, could attend. Representatives of those categories of people needing amnesty were present. There were GIs, veterans, families of resisters, draft and military resisters and the family of a GI killed in Vietnam.

The purpose of the conference was to being to develop plans to bring the question of amnesty to the American people. It was felt that the 'amnesty constituency', representatives of those to be amnestied, were a crucial group in being able to raise the issue in a way that millions of Americans would see as important to their own lives. These millions of Americans include families, friends and neighbors of those in need of amnesty and the many millions more who throughout the past decade worked in opposition to the war in Southeast Asia and see that the issue of amnesty continues to raise the question of who was responsible for the war and who was not.

The fact that the war in Indochina is not over was a main topic of discussion and it was felt that to work on the issue of amnesty and not continually point out his fact would be to ignore the reasons which caused people to oppose the war. For it was the war in Indochina that caused 500,000 veterans to receive less than honorable discharges; that caused thousands to resist the war by seeking refuge in other countries; that created the climate in which many people correctly expressed their outrage by committing acts of violent protest that led them underground; that caused thousands to be sent to jail by virtue of their protest to the war. It was the United States government that illegally forced the war on the people of America and Indochina. This illegality demanded resistance and then defined that resistance as also 'illegal'.

The Toronto conference felt that the best way to raise these issues with the American people was to engage in grass-roots organizing around the issue of amnesty. The importance of grassroots organizing can be easily understood by looking at the history of the anti-war movement. An incredible amount of emphasis was placed on mounting mass demonstrations in Washington, D.C. in order to pressure the Congress and the Executive branch to put an end to the war. These demonstrations created much public interest but fell upon the deaf ears of our elected officials. The most effective anti-war organizing took place in the cities and towns. It was the thoughts and actions of the Indochinese and American people, and not the Congress, that forced Nixon to sign the January 27th Peace Agreement. And it will be the thoughts and actions of the American people that will bring about universal, unconditional amnesty.

Because the Toronto conference placed such stress on grassroots organizing by the amnesty constituency, the role of VVAW/WSO was seen as crucial. In this light, the representatives of VVAW/WSO who attended the conference committed themselves to working towards organizing and educating the people of their chapters and communities to the issue of amnesty.

First we must educate ourselves about the politics of amnesty, who is affected by it, and how it is of major concern to America. Next we must develop plans for both national and local organizing in order to share this information. This entails community meetings, rallies, marches, door-to-door leafleting, distributing pamphlets and making ourselves visible at community functions and events. In doing this we would expose the interests of the government, the corporations, and the military. In talking with the American people we would focus on the criminality of the ruling class in creating the war, and the justified resistance of the people to it.

AMNESTY FOR ALL RESISTERS!

UNITY-STRUGGLE-VICTORY!!