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Bay Area VVAW Hits Navy Aniv.

By VVAW

On October 9-11, the US Navy held its 200th Birthday Open House in San Francisco at Pier 23, with 10 warships, drill teams, displays and a lot of free literature about how great it is to join the navy. The Bay Area Chapter of VVAW saw this whole display as a real attack, especially on youth and unemployed workers who are bombarded daily in the high schools of unemployment offices with slick "The Navy--Not Just a Job...An Adventure" pitches from recruiters. VVAW decided to go and tell people exactly what kind of adventure they're talking about--about how a lot of VVAW members went in to get job training or experience or to earn a few bucks since there weren't any jobs in civilian life, and how we ended up in Vietnam fighting a wary for the rich. The chapter wrote up a leaflet and went to Pier 23.

There were busloads of high school students from all over Northern California and a lot of sightseers. The vets got into a lot of good raps with people telling them why we say we won't fight another rich man's war--how the rich use the working class to fight for them and then we come home and find the "national honor" they talk about (which many didn't fall for in the first place) is really unemployment lines and misery for millions of working people under this rich man's system. And during all of this, the rich get richer.

On the following week, once again exposing the recruiter's lies, 12 VVAW members held a small but militant picket line in front of the San Francisco VA, putting them on notice that vets aren't going to stand up for all the jive red tape, cutbacks, cutoffs, attendance rules etc that they're using the get vets off the GI Bill. There was good response from VA workers (many of whom are vets themselves) and vets going in to deal with some kind of VA related hassle.