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VVAW National Meeting: Plans For Bicentennial, GI Bill Campaign

By VVAW

Build the Fighting Vets Movement! Build the Bicentennial Demonstration! Build VVAW! These were the overall aims of the 16th National Steering Committee Meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The meeting was held in Chicago on February 14th and 15th and brought together veterans in the organization from Boston to Los Angeles.

Members of VVAW and observers from bets clubs and other organizations discussed in workshops how we will build the bicentennial demonstration in Philadelphia on July 4th and how we can build the fighting veterans movement on the campuses, the VA hospitals, the VA offices and on the unemployment lines. A workshop was also held on the danger of war between the superpowers--the US and the Soviet Union--and how VVAW should use its experience of fighting in an unjust war to oppose and expose any new rich man's war.

At the beginning of the meeting speeches were given by organizations that VVAW has worked with; Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee (UWOC), the Revolutionary Student Brigade (RSB), and the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). UWOC and RSB talked about their work and told how they were going to build for the demonstration in Philadelphia. The speaker from RCP talked about the significance of this demonstration and brought home the point that we've carried the rich for 200 years and let's get them off our backs, which is the overall slogan of the demonstration.

Build the Fighting Vets Movement!

As the meeting began, the VVAW National Office gave a speech putting forward its views on building the fighting vets movement. "All around us we can see the effects of the economic crisis being thrown primarily on the backs of working people and the American people in general...This becomes increasingly clear to us as vets, with the deteriorating care at VA hospitals, the attack on the present GI Bill and the high unemployment among vets.

"VVAW work has been good as we struggle for open hearings at the VA, demand jobs or income, call for a halt in disability cutbacks. But at the same time, our work has been scattered. The National Office has discussed this, and we believe that the development of a national campaign is necessary. We believe that this should center around extending and expanding the GI Bill. This is not a call to drop struggles we are all involved in to become a student/vet organization, but because of the concentration of vets on campus, and their day-to-day relationship to schools allows us the opportunity to develop consistent relationships with vets in struggle."

We are taking up a campaign to extend and expand the GI Bill, not as a gimmick to draw vets together, but because we see the attacks on it as typical of how the ruling class is trying to tighten its grip on the working people of this country. The GI Bill cutbacks, at this time, are a clear example of how this rich man's system is specifically attacking veterans. We need a good GI Bill and we are out to get it.

At the meeting it was decided that we should begin a petition campaign demanding a decent GI Bill. This petition will enable us, along with our other work, to reach thousands of veterans who want and need good educational benefits. It was decided that the petitions would not be given to any politicians, or any government agency who would like to see us grovel at their feet, begging from crumbs. Over the years we have learned that politicians would listen to us with one ear while they bent over sideways dropping everything we say our of their other ear into the nearest trash basket. Our petition is for the thousands of veterans that sign them for the working people of this country who see the attacks on the GI Bill as another attack on all of us.

By relying on veterans across the country and by uniting with anger at getting shafted again and again, we will build a strong vets movement aiming its blows of the rulers of this country. Through this we can not only win a decent GI Bill, but get decent employment and at the same time expose and attack their rotten system that leeches off of all working people in this country.

It is possible that we may not win all of our demands. But that won't keep us from fighting as hard and as long as we can. Only by fighting together do we have the strength to win anything at all. And is the course of this fighting we will lay bare the bankruptcy of this system.

As vets, we aren't in this battle alone. While we build our movement we have go to link it up with the struggles of other people. This was clear to everyone at the NSCM and one way in which this well be done is to join with other organizations in pointing our finger at our common enemy.

Build the Demonstration!

In the last issue of THE VETERAN we put out a call for the bicentennial demonstration and since that time the RSB, UWOC, the RCP and the NY-NJ United Workers Organization have joined with us. Uniting behind the slogan, "We've Carried the Rich for 200 Years; Let's Get Them Off Our Backs!" we will be attacking the system where it is weakest--around jobs and the danger of war. These two great sores affect all people, vets and non-vets alike. We answer these attacks by raising the demands "Jobs or Income Now" and "We Won't Fight Another Rich Man's War."

At the NSCM we took up the demonstration in a big way, and we dealt with the question of how VVAW should build for it. Initially we had a tendency to look at the demo as VVAW's even though we put out a call to other organizations. But because these two demands are demands of the great majority of the American people, we now understand the importance of not viewing it as a "vets demo", but instead, seeing that it is a demonstration that will unite workers, both employed and unemployed, youth, students, and vets together to expose the rulers of this country and their rotten system by facing them head on in Philadelphia while they celebrate this country's bicentennial talking about how great the USA is how 'free' we all are. Yeah, free to suffer from lack of jobs and threats of war.

VVAW will be building for the demonstration, but the whole idea of fighting for decent benefits cannot be viewed as our major rallying cry in building for it. Vets are one group of working people that suffers from these two great sores of the system, and therefore we stand with others to unite our energies to attack the rulers of this country most effectively during this bicentennial year--not just as veterans, but as part of the powerful fist of all working people.

VVAW will be building for the demonstration in coalition with other organizations planning forums, rallies and taking out UWOC's national petition for jobs, and exposing the danger of war. Many vets at the meeting said that around jobs and war, that VVAW has a lot to contribute. For vets, unemployment is very real--for example, younger vets face about 20% unemployment. And around war, many bets have first hand experience of what rich man's war is all about. VVAW will be taking this out to vets across the country, pointing our finger at the rich who exploit us, saying all the time, "We've carried the rich for 200 years; let's get them off our backs!"

Build VVAW!

The 16th NSCM came just about five years to the date after the first NSCM held in 1971. Five years ago we came together as a national organization for the first time to build a vets movement against the war in Indochina. At that meeting we planned for a demonstration in Washington DC and it was this demonstration, Dewey Canyon III, that drew over a thousand veterans who threw their war medals in disgust at the Capitol Building to say we wanted the war to end.

Now, five years later, we met again to unite with others to build a powerful demonstration to tell the whole system and its rulers that we want them off our backs, and to build a veterans movement capable of getting all vets together to fight for decent lives. During those five years we've had successes and setbacks, but we've learned much from our experiences and we continue to move forward.

As the National Office speech stated, "We have developed a better understanding of the struggles of veterans and have developed a program drawn out of our struggle that can help unite vets, build the veterans movement, and involve veterans not just in their hundreds, but in their millions."