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A History of Struggle for Veterans

By VVAW

In June of 1967, six Vietnam veterans joined in an anti-war parade in New York City, marching under a banner which described their position on the war: Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The name and the organization continue today.

In 1967 Vietnam veterans were primarily interested in stopping the Vietnam war, in "bringing our brothers home." At the same time, vets could not forget the way in which they were being treated by their government and, in particular, by the Veterans Administration; nor did they forget that, without a loud public voice in opposition, the U.S. government and the people who most profit from a war would both carry on in Vietnam and search around for new military ventures around the globe.

At the very beginning of VVAW there was a clear sense of being different from veterans of earlier wars. VVAW was the first organization of veterans whose purpose was to protest a war in which they had fought and which was, in fact, still going on. But Vietnam veterans had a further sense of difference: we were treated as far from heroes (as had returnees from other wars) which affected how we were received by large portions of the American public, but even more how we were received by the government and the Veterans Administration. The feeling carried over into how we were received (or not received) by traditional veterans organizations such as the American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars which wanted nothing at all to do with our experiences, our politics or our persons.

Not only were the experiences in fighting the war different, and the reception at home unlike that of earlier vets but the symptoms that began to appear among Vietnam vets were also unique to our war. In late 1969 VVAW chapters began holding rap groups for what we described at "Post-Vietnam Syndrome," our name for stress problems among Vietnam vets. Ten years later the same problems would be recognized by the V.A. as "post-traumatic stress disorder." And then there was—and is—Agent Orange, the defoliant used throughout Vietnam, and the devastating results of exposure which began to appear both in veterans and our children.

All of these things go into making up what VVAW is today: a group of active veterans and friends and supporters who fight for a decent life for veterans and against future Vietnams. We've learned that we can't fight the fight alone and expect to win so we've joined together to fight for what we need.

1967, when VVAW first made its appearance, was a period when the Vietnam War was raging, both in Vietnam and on the TV sets of the American people. Debate about the war reached a fever pitch in the U.S. and around the world. In city after city, and in smaller towns around the country, American banded together to protest the war; in many places the local groups welcomed Vietnam veterans who were against the war. These vets had the ability to speak and march against the war, based on their experience, as best they understood it, and added a real credibility to the protest actions.

Groups of veterans around the country took on the name of VVAW and held a series of activities, usually peaceful but occasionally bursting into headlines as vets and police came into conflict. Operation RAW (standing for "Rapid American Withdrawal") was the first national action. Held in the spring of 1970, Operation RAW saw VVAW members from around the country march from Trenton, NJ to Valley Forge, OA in three days worth of Vietnam-type actions which the veterans hoped would bring home to a segment of the American people what it would feel like to be Vietnamese. In towns along the way guerrilla theatre presentations gave the vets the chance to re-enact search-and-destroy missions they had been on during the war. Operation RAW also provided a chance for VVAW members from around the country to draw up plans for a realistic national organization.

Early national meetings drew up plans for the Winter Soldier Investigation, held in Detroit in early 1971. At a time when the My Lai massacre was in the news and when the military and the government were trying to say that My Lai was an aberration, caused by a few misguided men, VVAW members talked about war crimes in which they had been involved while in Vietnam, showing that My Lai was only a small piece in the puzzle of an entire and consistent U.S. policy toward the Vietnamese during the Vietnam war.

Anti-war protests continued to grow around the country; each new escalation of U.S. involvement led to escalations in the protests by the American people. In April of 1971, VVAW planned and carried out "Operation Dewey Canyon III," what we call a "limited incursion into the halls of Congress." The first two Dewey Canyon Operations had been invasions of Laos conducted secretly; this one was open and public, and ended with 1100 Vietnam veterans hurling their medals, won in Vietnam, back at the government which had presented them. The impact of the demonstration was massive and helped to set the stage for May Day 1971, the largest anti-war demonstration which Washington had ever seen.

In the months and years that followed, VVAW was involved in hundreds of well-publicized actions—the takeover of the Statue of Liberty in 1971 (an action that was repeated as preparation for VVAW's part in a counter-bicentennial demonstration in Philadelphia on the 4th of July in 1976.) There was the seizure of the South Vietnamese Embassy in Washington in reaction to the bombing of Haiphon and Hanoi. Well-publicized and emotional meetings took place between VVAW members and our former enemies-members of the National Liberation Front—in places around the world, including several trips by VVAW members to Hanoi. VVAW sandbags were set up around the Memorial Arch in St Louis; VVAW members led an anti-war salute at the halftime of a football game in Ann Arbor. And there were thousands of less publicized actions by VVAW chapters and members from coast to coast. And as the organization made its statements against the war, more and more vets, coming home from that war, saw the organization as saying things they too wanted to say.

As demonstrations mounted, VVAW began to identify more and more clearly the source of what we were fighting—that it was the U.S. government and the corporate system that held it up which needed the war. And the government, growing more and more frantic at the ant-war movement, saw VVAW as one of the forces it had to attack. As VVAW was making preparations for a sizable appearance at the Republican Convention in Miami Beach, the government struck first with indictments of a number of the southern leadership of the organization, a group which became known as the "Gainesville 8." VVAW and others around the country built a movement not only to say that the Gainesville 8 were innocent of the charges against them, but that it was the nervous government that was in fact the guilty party.

Demonstrations during Miami Beach's convention, and during the Nixon inauguration in Washington in 1973 were followed by a campaign to kick Nixon out of office, a project which was completed in the summer of 1975. As U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia lessened, VVAW became more involved in the movement for amnesty for war resisters and for veterans with bad discharges. June of 1974 saw VVAW leading a large demonstration in Washington to raise the cry for universal and unconditional amnesty and to honor the peace agreements.

Throughout most of VVAW's history we have seen the slogan "used once and thrown away" as describing the Vietnam veterans experience. For many of us, once the war was over we knew we were not about to let ourselves be used in the same way again. At the same time we were determined to see that our children or younger brothers and sisters not be used as we were in a war similar to Vietnam. We took our experience out to as many people as possible. And we concentrated not only on how we were used, but also on how vets were thrown away following their tour in the war: the lack of an adequate GI Bill, high vet unemployment, no adequate job training, a VA system so clogged by red tape and bureaucracy that vets could barely get the services that everyone agreed we should have, much less the things that we thought vets should have.

It was 1979 when information about Agent Orange hit the veterans community putting all Vietnam vets on notice that they many have killed us in Vietnam and we didn't even know it. Worse still we found that our exposure to chemicals in Vietnam was having an effect on our children; further, there seemed to be nothing which, at the time, could be done for either testing or treatment. VVAW immediately took up a campaign for testing, treatment and compensation for victims of Agent Orange poisoning; through a series of publications, actions, support of interested scientists, lawyers and others; and working with a number of state agencies to get out the word, VVAW has done what we could to spread the information about the status of vets affected by Agent Orange. The struggle to win testing, treatment and compensation for victims continues, and despite massive foot-dragging by the VA, the first faltering official steps are being taken.

Agent Orange was one of the major issues which brought VVAW and other vets groups together at Operation Dewey Canyon IV in Washington in May of 1982 when vets, many of whom had hoped they had made their last trip to Washington in protest, met once again to talk to Congress, picket the VA, march to Arlington and enjoy the comradeship which comes from common struggle. A decent life for veterans, and no more Vietnams were demands which united veterans from states across the country.