Download PDF of this full issue: v6n6.pdf (8 MB)

Prisoners Put Their Names Down

By VVAW

Around the country, VVAW chapters are getting signatures on petitions demanding that the GI Bill be expanded and extended. Thousands of vets--and other people who support the struggles of vets--have signed petitions, some of which have been used at demonstrations to show that the growing veterans' struggle is much larger and stronger than just the vets who are able to join in a particular action.

Thousands of vets are in prisons throughout the US. Facing not only the attempts of the VA to deny them their vets benefits, these veterans also must live under the repression and brutality which is part of the US prison system. And they, like vets on the outside, are fighting back. When VVAW sent copies of the petition extend and expand the GI Bill to prisoners as part of VVAW's prison newsletter, responses came from around the country.

One brother, from the Iowa State Prison at Fort Madison wrote: "Enclosed is the petition concerning the GI Bill. All those who have signed it are veterans of one branch or another of the armed services. Some from WWII, some from Vietnam, some from peacetime service. Hope this small contribution will help in some way."

Filled in petitions also came from the Federal Prison in Marion, Illinois; the Federal Prison at Atlanta, Georgia; state prisons in Dallas and Huntingdon, Pennsylvania; Lovelady, Texas; Angola, Louisiana (two separate petitions); Michigan City, Indiana; Jefferson City, Missouri; Tamal, California; Starke, Florida; and Jackson, Michigan (with over a hundred signatures).

A veteran from Jackson said it clearly in explaining why he saw the petitions as important: "Although some may feel petitions to be a trivial thing, there are some of us who see them as 'blows against the empire,' and to me, even one signature is victory in the sense of individual awareness and growth in confronting the oppression that is holding us down."