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Veterans, Close Ranks! Extend & Expand The GI Bill!By VVAWVETS! TODAY WE ARE FAVING A DAMN SERIOUS SITUATION. WE HAVE TWO CHOICES: EITHER WE STAND UP AND FIGHT, OR WE'LL BE CRUSED. Most of us never thought it would be this bad as we marked our days off on the short timers calendar. But after getting discharged we found ourselves on another operation--Operation Hard Times. While we were in the military, we looked forward to the day we got out because we thought it would be an improvement over the day-to-day hassles of military life. No one argues that it's not good without having NCO's and Officers on our backs day and night, but the way we have to live and the conditions we face sure aren't what we expected. When the rich sent us off to right in their war in Vietnam, when they needed us to keep their business interests nice and safe for them, they promised us the sky; they delivered little. The truth is that they didn't care for us one bit--they used us and then they threw us away. Sure we got some benefits, and we fought for them too, but it's a nightmare trying to get them and keep what little scraps they throw at us. EXTEND AND EXPAND THE GI BILL The latest and biggest attack on vets is the cuts that keep coming down on the GI Bill. On Memorial Day, 1976, the day that the VFW and American Legion were parading up and down the streets saying how great it is to fight for the rich man, 3.7 million of us vets, discharged from 1954-1966 were bounced off the GI Bill. Nearly half a million of these vets were in school at the time. Many of these vets, members of VVAW or vets we go to school with, held VA certificates of eligibility for many more months of school, but they received no warning until the letter came in the mail with the bad new--no more GI Bill for you! That cut was just the beginning of what they have in store for us. Current legislation floating around Congress tells a grim tale of things to come. These bills include: plans to cut off the GI Bill for those entering the service after January 1976; cutting the present eligibility for the Bill from 10 to 8 years; and many other cuts. That's one side of the attack on us; the other side is sneakier. The VA is now auditing and checking our attendance in many schools. Much like the roll call in the military, if they don't like the results, you're off the GI Bill. In some schools if the VA doesn't like your grade average (taken in spot checks), they decide what courses you should take, or you're off the Bill. If these cuts haven't hit us yet, it's only a matter of time until they get around to us all. For 1900 vets at Northern Virginia Community College, it hit already. The VA cut them all of saying that they wont get any more checks until they pay back what the VA claims is overpaid from last year! These people must think we get rich on $270 a month. At Harry S. Truman College in Chicago, vets have been told they shouldn't expect any checks for a long time since the school (formerly Mayfair College) neglected to tell the VA they were changing the name of the school. To the VA a list of names and numbers on a computer printout sheet; to us, no money to pay for tuition, books, food, etc., etc. They could give a good damn too, because the more of us they force out of school the less work they have to do. More important, the more money the government and the class of people who run it have to channel into more profitable ventures. If the GI Bill cuts aren't enough to swallow, the rest of the benefits we heard so much about are being slashed too. The VA hospitals have the lowest doctor-patient ratio in the country, the staffs are being cut, which is pretty dangerous if you're lying in one of their beds. The out-patient clinics are getting slower than chow lines in mess halls. Vets with disabilities are feeling the ax too. One blinded vet on the East coast got his disability cut from 100% to 80% because he was adjusting to his disability. An avalanche of red tape makes the ability to get a home loan or disability hearing nearly impossible under any fair conditions. The cuts aren't just affecting vets either. The whole rich man's system is falling apart and the ruling class cuts anything that doesn't turn over a profit for them. That's why the VA is going downhill fast. It's exactly the same reason why our cities are falling apart, the schools are being shut, the hospitals and firehouses are being closed. The capitalist system we live under threw us on the street in the same way they're throwing millions out of work and into the poorhouse. The corporations are making billions in profits and it's coming from our pockets. We sweat in their factories and mills when they start losing their bucks, we get laid off. Or they turn the machines up so they get more work out of us with the same pay. The unemployment offices are crammed with 10 million workers. For vets, we get a higher national unemployment average than our fellow workers. Younger vets hot over 20% and Black vets got 32% out of jobs. The newspaper and some of the bums in Congress say we're shiftless and lazy but that's a lot of crap. Unlike the rich parasites who sit in plush office buildings, working people aren't afraid to go work and get their hands dirty. Working people want jobs and we vets are no exception. That's why we join with the working class demanding Jobs or Income Now. We don't mean jobs like the ones they go advertised all over the billboards or even in the unemployment centers--military jobs. For sure we've had enough of that. We know that the US military is for--we've had enough experience with it to tell us that it's no picnic and it's no glory. Any Vietnam vet could testify to the fact that we weren't over their protecting "freedom and democracy" like they told us. We saw too much. Search and destroy missions and B-52 saturation bombings aren't the kind of things you do protecting your "allies." We saw our buddies die, we got wounded and maimed so that a handful of rich could try to make the world safe for their stinking system. WE WON'T FIGHT ANOTHER RICH MANS WAR So now the newspapers and the politicians are banging the war drums again, passing huge military budgets and talking about being the Number One Superpower. We know that they don't use B-1 bombers for Memorial Day parades. They use them for war. And this time it's going to be with the ruling class's chief rival, the ruling class of the USSR> all their talk about "detente" and "peace through strength" is nothing but lies. We know from experience in Vietnam that the only thing the rich are interested in is profits, not peace, and they'll do anything to protect them and expand them. When you got two superpowers with the same ideas, they're going to hit each other head on. Look around. The Us and USSR are at each others' throats--in Angola, the Middle Easy, warships in the Mediterranean, and Europe an armed camp. Well, the Duponts and the Rockefellers are not going to convince that the USSR is our common enemy. We say to hell with the Duponts and Rockefellers. Their class has been riding our backs for 200 years and we have to interest in joining with them to fight working people in the Soviet Union or any other country. And we're not going to join their flunkies, the leaders of the VFW or the American Legion in supporting their wars. We won't fight another rich man's war. Our right is against the rule of the rich. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the working class in this battle. And we've learned from the countless struggles of workers that you don't get nothing by sitting back. You get something by standing up together and fighting it. VETS CLOSE RANKS Vets have a proud history of struggle, The Bonus Marchers, 25,000 strong, demanded and finally won their promised bonus and they also demanded work or wages for all. VVAW has a proud history too. In 1971 over a thousand of us vets threw away out war medals in disgust at the Capitol steps demanding an end to the Vietnam War. A hundred vets marched in Los Angeles to demand an end to the cutoffs in the GI Bill. In June of this year, VVAW members seized the Statue of Liberty to protest the cutoff of 3.7 millions vets from the GI bill. And most recently, in Philadelphia on July 4th, hundreds of vets joined with thousands of workers from across the country from the coal mines to the steel mills--to loudly proclaim; "We've Carried the Rich for 200 Years, Let's Get Them Off Our Backs!" To win what we need we must build this national campaign to focus the anger of vets everywhere around our demands. This will build that unity we need in order to win this fight. The petition to "Extend and Expand the GI Bill" is one way to get the word out. The specific demands on the petition are: *Payment of All School Expenses plus Decent Living Allowance! The demands are clear; they're on the minds of vets everywhere but mean little if they aren't out in public. We take every opportunity for vets to be heard, take advantage of every speaking opportunity we have. We leaflet, poster, demonstrate, hold picket lines. Veterans Day the American Legion and the VFW peddle their trash about war, patriotism, and dead vets. We're there saying "What about living vets?" We refuse to live like this." Actions on Vets Day in every local area, actions at schools--these and other militant actions help to build a national campaign. We in VVAW want what every vet wants--a decent life without screwing over the guy next door, or the guy across the ocean either. Vets, we have no choice. Either we fight, or we keep getting ground down into the dirt. Building this national campaign and our unity, we have to depend on ourselves to do it. VETS, CLOSE RANKS
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