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Ashby Leach Tour Goes Coast To Coast

By VVAW

A big boost for the Campaign to Free Ashby Leach is coming from a nationwide speaking tour; at the time this paper is being written, Leach is speaking on the East Coast, to be followed by a quick trip to California and a tour through the Midwest, all building the campaign and pointing toward the demonstration in Cleveland on the 12th through the 14th of March.

In schools, in workers' centers, in halls, even in living rooms around the country, Ashby Leach is talking about why he seized the Chessie System headquarters office and held 13 hostages. And he is meeting with enthusiastic responses, with a number of questions, and finally with a lot of wholehearted support for the campaign to Free Ashby Leach.

At Kent State university (in Kent Ohio, near Cleveland) an invitation and offer of a fee for Ashby to speak was attacked by the Kent Stater, the local college paper which compared Leach with Charles Manson. The controversy brewed up by this ridiculous attack helped to bring out some 200 students to hear Leach in person; and, though many of these students came prepared to be hostile, the program changed many minds. Of those students that members of VVAW talked to after the program, all said they were glad that Leach had come to the school..

The East Coast part of the tour began in Boston. There, 175 workers, vets, and students came to a dinner and program in Cambridge in order to hear Ashby Leach and watch the film "Only the Beginning," a movie which shows the growing resistance to the war in Vietnam and follow VVAW through Operation Devey Canyon II when, in 1971, 1100 veterans went to Washington and threw away the medals they had been "awarded" for fighting a rich man's war. The enthusiasm which greeted Ashby Leach in Boston will translate into people coming to the Cleveland demonstration.

Many Boston vets caught the spark of the action which Ashby Leach took in resisting the way in which vets are treated. During the Boston program, which included a chance for bets to speak out, a World War II veteran spoke of how he was cut off his VA benefits after 25 years, and spoke of how he would take his leg brace--which he's worn ever since the end of the World War II--back to the VA to throw it in the face of the VA administrators. A Vietnam veteran, shot in the back during the war, and now walking on two canes, referred to the fact that Ashby was a medic in Vietnam and said, "When I got shot in Vietnam, people like Leach saved me. I'll be in Cleveland."

While talking to people in person is a vital part of the tour, the case of Ashby leach is also being taken out through the media. In Boston, a half-hour interview with Ashby on station WILD so interested the man doing the interview that he is planning to go to Cleveland to cover the demonstration. In New York City, a columnist for the Daily News did his entire column on Ashby Leach. In every possible way the work about Ashby and his struggle--which is also the struggle of all vets--is getting out.

Wherever Ashby speaks he talks about his battle against Chessie which finally led to his takeover of the office, and about how that battle is continuing. During a December talk in Milwaukee Leach said:

"When I took over the 36th floor offices of the Chessie System I wanted to bring to the public attention the way Vietnam vets are being treated. I didn't kill anybody up there in the Terminal Tower, I didn't even hurt anybody. I was just willing to risk my life. Some people say that's weird, but when you risk your life a thousand times in Vietnam why can't you one more time when you're fighting the real enemy?

"So while I was sitting in jail under $450,000 bail I started getting messages of support. People from Washington State sent me a letter supporting me; Vietnam Veterans Against the War sent a telegram, "Right on, brother! We're behind you 100%." The mother and widow of a Marine veteran in West Virginia sent me $35 that he had left behind...

"In the rail industry they have altered the work rules to the point where different unions are crossing craft lines. They are combining jobs. They have laid off 25% of the work force since 1970. They think this is irrelevant because it involves people. They have increased their stock dividends by 20%. The other day in Congress they passed a tax law that was 1500 pages, that would take 10,000 lawyers to figure out. The essence of that law was that the rail industry got the biggest tax break in the history of the country, and the outcome is that Con Rail, Penn Central, and Chessie get our tax money in the form of subsidies. And then Chessie says they don't have to give GI Bill benefits..."

As more and more people around the country are able to hear Ashby Leach and come to see how vets are used once and then tossed aside, the support for the campaign to Free Ashby Leach is growing, and will come together in Cleveland on the 12th through the 14th of March, 1977.