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Trial Date Set For Ashby Leach: Vets Plan Cleveland Action

By VVAW

On January 27th, in a Cleveland Courtroom, Ashby Leach was declared"Competent" to stand Trial; the judge then set March 14th as the date for the trial to begin.

Moving on from this victory, VVAW and the ALDC called for Veterans and others supporting, the campaign to free Ashby Leach to come to Cleveland on the 12th, 13th and 14th of March to show the bosses of the chessie system and their whole class the support that has been built around the country.'

Across the country support for the campaign for Free Ashby Leach is mounting. VVAW Chapters are holding demonstration, picket lines, handing out leaflets, putting up posters, all designed to get out the word about the attempts of the Chessie System to crush the resistance of Ashby Leach and about how we will not stand for it but will fight until he is free. Petitions demanding Asbhy's freedom, that Chessie Honor the GI Bill for All its Veterans, and the GI Bill be extended and expanded are being signed from coast to coast. VVAW members are taking the struggle into schools, and the Revolutionary Student Brigade, a national student organization, has taken up the campaign in many of the schools where they have chapters. All of this work is now pointing toward the 12th through the 14th of March when we will come together in Cleveland.

Ashby Leach, who served in Vietnam as a medic, spent five years battling the Chessie System (a corporate conglomerate which merged the Chesapeake & Ohio, and the Baltimore & Ohio railroads among its many financial ventures) to get the company to pay apprenticeship benefits under the GI Bill for all its Vietnam veterans (the company paid similar benefits to vets of earlier wars). During this long period, Leach went through all the "channels" that vets are always told to use--he wrote letters, he talked to Chessie officials as well as bureaucrats from the Veterans Administration, he wrote to Congressmen and Senators and even, along with his wife, picketed outside a Huntington, West Virginia hotel where Hays T. Watkins, Chessie President, was staying.

All this activity got him nowhere; the corporation--which was quite ready to use Ashby and other vets to fight wars of profit overseas when they were in the military--had not more use for him after he got out, and refused even to hire a clerk to process the necessary forms for GI Bill payments. So, on August 26th, armed with a shotgun stuffed with copies of the letters he had written, and a .25 caliber pistol, Ashby went to the Chessie headquarters' offices on the 36th floor of Cleveland' Terminal Tower, took over one of the offices, and held 13 Chessie employees for nine hours. As Ashby put it later, corporations like Chessie "will use their lawyers, lobbyists, political power, and financial power to squash you and beat you legally when you know you're right. Sometimes a person must fight back.

Ashby surrendered peacefully, having hurt no one, after Chessie agreed tohis demands--that Chessie honor the GI Bill for all it Vietnam veterans, and reimburse those past employees who had been cheated out of the Bill. Chessie broke the agreement as soon as Ashby was under arrest, and, through its influence with the police and the courts, tried to crush the resistance of Ashby Leach by charging him with 16 felonies and holding him under $450,000 bond. Three months later, after the court-appointed attorney (with offices in the same Terminal Tower Building as the Chessie Headquarters) was discharged, bond was reduced to $100,000 and Ashby's family raised the money. Ashby Leach is now engaged in a nationwide tour being sponsored by VVAW in order to build support for the campaign to Free Ashby Leach and to raise the funds necessary for the defense.

Not only did Ashby Leach demand benefits for all the Vietnam-era vets in the Chessie System, but in the way he was treated by Chessie, and the way he fought against that corporation, he represents veterans all over the country. Used once by the rich to fight their war and then thrown aside--but refusing to cave in under these abuses.

It's because of what Ashby represents that Chessie first tried to have him declared insane and put away in an asylum (that attempt was defeated when he was found "competent" on January 27th) and is now pressing to have him found guilty and jailed. Chessie and the class of corporate parasites who live off the blood and sweat of working people cannot afford to have resistance to their rule be successful. But they will see that thousands of vets, workers, students all view the campaign to Free Ashby Leach as one front in the overall battle against them and their rotten rule.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

1. Join VVAW or the Ashby Leach Defense Committee and work to free him.

2. Sign and circulate the petition demanding that Chessie honor the GI Bill for all vets.

3. Set up a meeting at your union or community group for Ashby Leach or VVAW or the ALDC to speak on this vital issue.

4. Make a contribution to the Ashby Leach defense fund.

5. Join the letter-writing campaign for these demands. Letters may been sent to Office of the Prosecutor, Cuyahoga County Court, 1200 Ontario, Cleveland, OH 44113, and to Cyrus Eaton, Chairman of the Board Emeritus, Chessie System, Rm 1319 Terminal Tower Bldg, Cleveland 44101. Please send a copy of the letter to the ALDC.

6. Come to the demonstrations being called by the ALDC and VVAW in Cleveland on the 1st day of his trial.

7. Tell your friends about this case, give them leaflets, help spread the word.

FREE ASHBY LEACH

MAKE CHESSIE HONOR THE GI BILL FOR ALL VETS

EXTEND & EXPAND THE GI BILL

For more information or literature about the campaign, get in touch with the ALDC and VVAW:

In Cleveland: ALDC and VVAW, PO Box 09100, Cleveland,OH 44109; phone(216) 741-3796

In Huntington: ALDC, PO Box 2403, Huntington, West Virginia, 25709; phone (304)522-1309.

VVAW National Office:PO Box 20184,Chicago,IL 60620 (312) 651-1583