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Letters to VVAW

By VVAW

Dear Pete,

I got your letter of August 10 and want to thank you and everyone for all the support. It is good to know that men who were there stand with me (covering my ass). I need all the cover I can get. I am counting on all of you to help me any which way you can. I stand along with you in your fight and hope to be heard.

My fight with the Klan is now nine years old. I owe my life to a black Marine who had been with me since boot camp. We came back to the states where he could not go places with me and finally said to hell with it and went back to fight for his country. He did not have to go. He was a sole-surviving son of his family. He went anyway for his country. He was killed on that trip and I swore I would do all I could do to fight racism and give freedom to his people. That is where my hate comes from, he is free now but it is now up to us to free the rest of the Black Americans against the terrorist actions of the Klan. I have studied the Klan and their actions and have 200 years of scum to fight. I can not do it alone and need all the help I can get. The people in Georgia are 50-50, but I am only one who risks his life and the lives of my family.

Pete what ever you can do will add firepower to my cause and help protect my family. The paper I have not gotten for some reason or the other, but would like to see a copy. Send it to (my lawyer) in Atlanta, and he will get it to me. The bond is now $50,000 and the Defense Fund is doing all they can. My wife deserves a medal for her action and she is holding out like a true hero. We have two children and she has her hands full. She stands behind me all the way. She is exposed to more flack out there now and needs all the cover she can get.

Thanks Pete for all you are doing and hope to meet you. I got the best lawyers on my side I have ever seen. Everyone is doing all they can. My wife will type this for me and sign it because I am unable to get a typewriter and they screen my mail anyway. Will write again in answer to the paper after I read it.

A Veteran who needs cover,
Buddy Cochran

Dear Peter,

I was glad to hear from you all. Thank you for supporting my husband. We have a defense fund where if anyone would like to donate any money to help out, we would appreciate it very much. Please let me and my husband hear from you. You probably know by now Buddy is still locked up and I have not got any money coming in so if you can send anything it would help.

You can send it to my address on the envelope or to this address: Buddy Cochran Defense Fund, PO box 90064, East Point, GA 30364

Thank you again,
Mrs. Buddy Cochran
(Mary Sue)

Friends,

Enclosed please find payment for the July VETERANS. Thanks, the issue was real good. We enjoyed and found very useful the article on the Arms Race...it would be good for all of us to stay on top of the rapid changes in the international situation.

Congratulations on then years of struggle. We have always been impressed at the good work you do and hope that work continues to grow as fast as it has in the past ten years. With the growing slide towards war it would seem that veterans have a special job ahead of them explaining why these wars "they" cook up for us just aren't for us. In any case, our best wishes and solidarity.

Could you send a complete listing of VVAW chapters and contacts. We have many GIs who by natural course become vets...we would like to be able to steer them to you folks.

Thanks,
GIs United
Waipahu, Hawaii

FREE BUDDY COCHRAN

Buddy Cochran is the Vietnam veterans who drove his car into the middle of a Ku Klux Klan rally in Plains, Georgia on July 2nd. The letter above is in response to one written by VVAW offering to do what we could to support the campaign to FREE BUDDY COCHRAN and to continue his campaign against scum like the KKK.

Since the time the letter was written, the Buddy Cochran Defense Committee and the Atlanta Georgia chapter of the NUWO have been battling to get his case in front of the people. Already the first judge assigned to the case has been removed because of blatant partiality; bond has been reduced and contributions raised so that Buddy could speak in his own defense.

As this is being written, work is in progress to get rid of a second racist judge before the trial, now scheduled to begin on October 17, gets started.

Dear Brothers,

I am another veteran which spent two years in Vietnam out of a four year "sentence" in the Marine Corps. I spent this time in the bush with the First Recon outside of DaNang in 1967-68. I finally discharged and came back to the States in 1970. I have heard quite a bit about VVAW and now I feel I should definitely become a part of it.

After several years in prison for a drug charge, I have met some brothers that feel the same way about society out there. It is screwed! I am a prisoner in the Texas Dept. of Corrections and we have access to a college program. It took me almost a year, and my parents had to make several nasty phone calls to the VA Regional Office in Houston before they would finally get up off my educational benefits. Even though I got only a partial payment thus far, I feel I owe it to an organization like VVAW, so that the money my help other veterans as myself fight these bureaucratic bastards.

I want to be put on your rolls as a member of VVAW. My $ belongs to you because I believe in what you are doing. I will help fight now and also upon my release.

Sincerely,
Name Withheld

Dear VVAW,

Thank you very much for the copies of the VETERAN. I am certainly taking them along with me to Africa for our forces to read and also to see for themselves your commitment to the struggle in Azania ( South Africaed) as well as in Southern Africa as a whole.

I received the parcel from the Brothers in Oakland, California and I am taking them (fatigues-ed.) along with me. Thank them for us please. We will appreciate any material help from you, including boots as they are definitely durable for the climate in Africa. Keep up your good fight against the Krugerrand. Your struggle is one with that of the Azanian people.

Greet all the comrades,
Yours for a Free Azania
E.Sibeko
Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania