Vets Call Cleveland Demonstration

By VVAW

During the lat half of 1976 the Ku Klux Klan surfaced and began peddling its racist hate propaganda at the 32,000 man Marine Base at Camp Pendleton in Southern California. The Klan put up and passed out its "White Man Awake" posters and leaflets. They burned a Black officer's car, openly wore KKK insignia, threatened Black Marines and openly called for recruits to come to KKK meetings. When the Klan called for a meeting on November 13th, fourteen Black Marines went looking for the meeting. Mistakenly, they went to the room next door where four whites and tow Chicanos were partying. These six were severely beaten, and the Klansmen got away without a scratch on their smelly hides.

The Black marines are sorry that innocent people were hurt. Two of the Blacks have pled guilty and been sentenced, one has had his charges dropped, and the other eleven await courts martial on charges ranging up to attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The Marine Corps brass has taken the position that this action of the Black marines is totally divorced from the Klan activities preceding it. Some of the Klansmen on the base (estimated at a total of 16) have been transferred. None of the Klan have been punished. During pre-trial hearings, a cross was burned at the base, despite the commanding general's assurances that the last of the Klan was gone. David Duke, Grand Dragon of the Klan was allowed free access to the base "to protect the rights of white servicemen."

All of us who have been in the service have heard at least a half dozen lectures on how everyone is equal in the military. It starts out in basic training where your DI tells you, "You're all equal here--you're nothing--less than nothing." (This is closer to the truth than any of the later lectures.) Then somewhere along the way a chaplain will tell you, "In the eyes of god and the Yew-nited States Marine Corps, you are all equal." Then later on the first sergeant or company commander will be telling you that here in the army, "We're all equal. Work hard, keep your nose clean and you can have a successful career and get back to the world as a fine citizen."

Despite all these fine sounding words, the truth is that the US military services discriminate against national minorities. This racial discrimination is a reflection and extension of the racial discrimination in American class society. Its roots lie in and it is maintained for the purpose of enforcing the super exploitation of minority workers by the American capitalist class. This exploitation ranges all the way from keeping them in lower paying jobs and paying jobs and paying them less for equal work, to the higher cost of food in minority neighborhoods.

To further their interests the ruling class promotes racial conflict through their schools, politicians and especially through its media--TV, radio, newspapers. They try to get working people to fight among themselves along race lines for the things we all need--good housing, good schools, jobs. Blame the other race for your problems so people won't get together to fight the real cause: the rich and their system.

In addition to their slick propaganda, the ruling class promotes hate groups like the KKK in order to stir up trouble and keep people divided. The Klan arose after the Civil War. It was formed by property owners and merchants who lost valuable "property" when the slaves were freed. Using terrorism and lynchings they attempted to keep Blacks in their "place." Where once they were slaves on plantations, they became sharecroppers on the same plantation lands. Down through the years, the Klan has continued to exist with the blessings of the rich because they are still trying to keep Blacks in their " place"--in proportionately higher unemployment, in substandard housing, in bad schools. Slick, degenerate Klan organizers like "Redneck" Tom Metzger in the Camp Pendleton area find frustrated, backward whites to build their filthy organization. Playing upon the dissatisfaction these your Marines have with life in general and the military in particular, the KKK found a few Marines to start an organization at the base, and the Marine Corps brass went right along with it.

Allowing the Klan to exist inside the Marine Corps is a brazen example of the racism built into the US Armed Services, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. Discrimination that exists in civilian life is carried over into the military with a few added goodies. Segregated housing, language barriers, a ban on expressions of national culture such as slave bracelets and the dap, lack of promotions, little soul music in the clubs, extra harassment for minorities--and on an on the list goes. All of this is hard to take, but the guts of the fascism in the military comes down in three areas: job placement, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and combat arms.

It all start out when a young kid gets sucked in by the recruiter ( or drafted--the Pentagon is pushing to get the draft reinstated because there isn't enough manpower to fight the coming war). He's got no job, no trade, no future. He's Black. He wants to learn a trade or just get off the streets. After a month he's out of that career as a computer operator (which is what he enlisted for) and now in training to be a cook, or a small arms specialist or 11 Brave (infantryman). What happened? Well, he took the Armed Forces Qualification Test. One of two things happened. Either he did poorly on the test because he was trained in an inferior high school, schools common in the inner city. Or he did well on the test, but failed to get the job anyway because that's how the military operates. Studies show that at the same pay grade and with the same test scores, Blacks will be assigned to combat duties over white servicemen at a ratio of better than 3 to 2. So, right away, our recruit gets off on the wrong foot.

The Defense Department doesn't recognize Latinos as having a separate identity. Therefore statistics aren't available about what happens to them, nor to American Indians, Samoans, Guamese or other US subjects available to the draft. However, you can bet your last buck that the statistics concerning discrimination against Blacks will probably be the same for these minorities or even worse because of language barriers.

The UCMJ has nothing to do with justice. Instead it is a hammer held over the heads of enlisted people to keep them in line--an absolute necessity in a military which uses the sons of the working class to fight unjust wars for the profits of the rich. And, as can be expected, that hammer comes down hardest on minorities. Article 15s--nonjudicial punishment--are handed down to Blacks at a rate about 25% greater than their proportionate numbers in the military. Courts martial come down heavy on Blacks--more than double the proportionate number as whites. Punishment is about the same for all servicepeople, but Blacks are hit the heaviest with pre-trial confinement which is often used as a way for a commanding officer to get someone out of the company for a few days or a few weeks. The result is that military prisons are filled with a about half Blacks when the number of Black enlisted men in the service was only about 12% during the Vietnam-era, and is 20% today. The most devastating part of this "justice" system is the "less than honorable" discharges handed out. Bad paper goes far beyond the punishment needed for the "crime." It affects the veteran throughout his civilian life, cutting him off from VA and GI Bill benefits and from job opportunities. Again this hits Black heavily. Bad paper for Blacks is roughly three times the proportion of Black enlisted men. And the vast majority of these punishments, from Article 15s to the bad discharge, are handed out for crimes that would not even be felonies in civilian life. Most, including the majority of bad discharges are handed out administratively--that is, without a trial and according to the whim of the commanding officer.

In the combat arms--then people who do the actual fighting--the number of minorities is again double that of their proportionate numbers in the military. As in civilian life, minorities are found in large numbers in the lowest jobs. As one Puerto Rican Vietnam vet put it, "When I had two months to go in high school, they came and told me I was drafted. I couldn't even speak English. I learned English by hanging around with American during infantry training." Puerto Ricans had been declared US citizens in 1917 on the eve of the US entry into World War I. Their new "right" didn't include much beyond the right to go off and fight in that war which went a long way towards making the United States the imperialist power it is today. During these wars that benefit only the rich in this county, minorities are made to pay a heavy price in lives and injuries for the benefit of their oppressors.

And so it goes for minorities inside the "Yew-nited States" military. But that is far from the whole story. There has always been resistance to this oppression. Just as in civilian life with the Civil rights movement and the struggles which went on before that. Just as Black, Latino and white workers today are getting together to fight the boss and the daily oppression in this country, there has been a determined struggle going on inside the military. In a thousand ways GIs have resisted, everything from going AWOL to refusing to go out on patrol in Vietnam to fragging gung-ho officers. During the Vietnam War revolts sprang up everywhere. Sometimes they showed the united action of all races; sometimes they were minorities standing alone.

One company refused to fight in Cambodia. One unit at fort Hood refused to fight in Cambodia. One unit at fort hood refused to go put down the demonstrators in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention. In Vietnam and Europe soldiers rebelled. Aboard the Kitty Hawk, the constellation and the Little rock sailors rebelled against the war and against national oppression. In 1973 in the Army's 2nd infantry Division stationed in Korea, following months of harassment of all troops and discrimination and sever judicial punishments of minorities, a protest against the prohibition of the Black liberation flag turned into a pitched battle with Blacks and Puerto Ricans standing up against the MP's. This action resulted in a victory with several commanding officers being removed and only a couple of the militants brought to trial.

And in 1976, 14 Black Marines attempted to attack the Ku Klux Klan and all it stand for at Camp Pendleton, California. The eleven Marines going up for trial have the support of VVAW. Once again the rank and file have risen up against oppressive conditions.

The Pendleton case has seen the sorry spectacle of so-called Black leaders and white liberals copping out of support for this just struggle. The Urban League has deplored the violence. The ACLU is defending the "free speech" of the Klan. Congresswoman Burke of the Congressional Black Caucus has declared that the Klan has a right to exist. VVAW says that garbage belongs in a garbage dump. Groups like the Klan and the American Nazi Party ( another hate outfit which the ruling class has given a lot of free publicity in their media lately) should be smashed.

One event in the history of VVAW of which we are proud occurred during the anti-war demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in 1972. A group of Nazis tried to speak out their rotten ideas and members of VVAW proceeded to shut their mouths and break their bones in the process. That's what scum like these deserve and it's right to smash them. The Marines at Camp Pendleton deserve support as they are one more example of the way people can fight back against their oppression.