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Vietnam Veterans Day: Used Once, But Never Again

By VVAW

"Fight the Rich, Not Their Wars" echoed through the downtown area of Chicago as 80 veterans and supporters marched behind the banner proclaiming April 22nd as VIETNAM VETERANS DAY.

When Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Chicago first announced plans to build Vietnam Vets Day, it began an uphill battle against city officials who were determined to prevent any public recognition of the demonstration. Vets trying to set up a "History of Veterans" display inside Chicago's Civic Center were told "we don't like you guys." The media contributed by refusing to cover information about the demonstration and actions leading up to it.

While they did their jobs well, they overlooked the most important factor in the entire campaign--the vets themselves. Vets from the factories, the schools, the inner-city projects, the suburbs--vets cut off the GI Bill--vets with "bad paper" discharges--vets disabled in a rich man's war and sick of the lies about the war--vets from the Vietnam War, from Europe before the war and shiny new vets just out of the military into the same unemployment lines.

This is the "year of Vietnam" in the movies, books, magazines, and on the streets. We, the Vietnam vets, lived that war from Kennedy to Nixon, from My Lai to Khe Sanh, the "Light at the end of the tunnel" to secret invasions and bombings, right up to the liberation of Saigon.

Now we are expected to sit by silently as the rich commission film makers and writers to change history, pay former General Westmoreland to tour college campuses saying, "We won the Tet offensive." Garbage! Anybody in Vietnam in 1968 knows the U.S. forces, its allies, and motley collection of Saigon puppet troops took an ass-kicking that helped to turn the tide of the war. It's like some doctor saying "the operation was a success but we lost the patient."

And while they are rewriting history, they're still writing off the vets of that era. Climbing unemployment, declining benefits, poor healthcare, and an inadequate GI Bill on the verge of extinction, that's what we get in the "Year of Vietnam." And vets don't like any part of it.

In Chicago and throughout the Midwest, the word of the demonstration went out to the schools, the V.A. offices and hospitals, the postoffice; everywhere the response was the same: "Right on! We are getting the shaft. Let's do it." More than a dozen trade schools, colleges and G.E.D. classes responded to the initial call for the demonstration.

Vets from Minneapolis/St Paul, Battle Creek, Milwaukee, and Chicago and its suburbs--60 in all--came together on the Plaza at Daley Civic Center to set the record straight. For many it was their first--but not their last--demonstration. The banners read "Decent Healthcare--Treat Agent Orange," "Jobs or Income Now," "Decent Benefits for Vets," and "Fight the Rich, Not Their Wars."

Vet after vet stepped to the open mike to speak bitterly about the war, our treatment after it, to damn preparations building toward another war, and to serve notice that the veterans' fight has just begun.

The rally grew as more and more people passing by stopped to listen to each speaker. The cops, usually snickering and goosing each other, dropped their act and started listening, glancing about nervously.

A vet from Milwaukee spoke about how it feels to suffer from "Agent Orange" exposure which the V.S. won't recognize or treat. Another vet from Gary, Indiana, told how it feels to be used once and thrown away in a rich man's war, then coming home to face death at their hands again in the steel mills. A vet from the University of Chicago, pointing to the corporation offices surrounding Daley Plaza, said, "these same people who sent us off to die and kill the people of Indochina in the name of American imperialism, have another thought coming if they think we'll do it again--in South Africa or anywhere else where people are struggling for liberation."

As the rally ended, the vets formed ranks and marched off in step to the cadences we learned in the military but with the new words of our struggle.

As we marched up and down State Street, a couple of thousand people doing their Saturday shopping saw and heard our message of Vietnam Veterans Day. People smiled and waved, vets leaned on their horns and stuck their fists out the windows and vets downtown shopping joined the march with their wives and children. The demonstrations that the city officials didn't want had won the hearts and minds of the people who saw it.

Across the country in San Francisco, a small group of VVAW members set up a table and banner in front of the Bay Area's main Marine corps Recruiting Station and literally shut it down for the day. All day people passing by stopped to express interest and appreciation for what the vets were doing ( for details on this action, see story on p. 10.)

The demonstrations in Chicago and the Bay area took place the day before the anniversary of thousands of vets throwing away the medals they won in Indochina, 7 years earlier at Dewey Canyon III in Washington, D.C. The rally and demonstration on Vietnam Veterans Day were carried out in the same spirit of militancy and determination as that demonstration back in 1971.

Vietnam Veterans Day was a successful step forward in building a national veterans movement. Literally thousands of vets across the Midwest, from different backgrounds and organizations were made aware that vets across the nation are on the move. Hundreds put their stamp of approval on the demonstration by letter, phone or actual presence. When the rich who run this country put out their trash about how we can't get together--Black and white, old and young--we'll stick a fist in their face and say, "We're doing it, Jack and you ain't seen nothing yet!"

FIGHT THE RICH - NOT THEIR WARS