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Extend and Expand the GI Bill: Fight, Don't Starve

By VVAW

The GI Bill, axed for 3.7 million vets, disability payments cut, VA hospitals threatening not to treat "non-service connected" injuries and sickness at outpatient clinics, unemployment up and rising. All around us we can see the lies about upturn and recovery. Services and benefits won by veterans are being slashed. All this isn't the result of some evil force or person. It doesn't stem from the fact that there has been some "mistake," and it certainly isn't the fault of vets for being lazy or stupid. The rich S.O.B.s who run this system for their own profits, the Rockefellers, Duponts, Mellons, or their front men, the Carters, the Fords, the Reagans know what they are doing. Their system is in crisis and some one has to pay.

They have to cut their losses and recoup their profits. And since this system is run for their profits, for their good and not ours, they figure they can throw their crisis on our backs. It's a fine solution for them. They don't have to worry about medical care at some rotten VA, getting an education and surviving on the GI Bill or anything like that. The capitalists have an answer to all our questions--an answer that will solve their problems for them, too. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Make do! Keep quiet and be happy that you're an American. Crawl off in a corner! If you must make a fuss, blame it on someone else, the foreigners, on non-vets, on welfare--just fight for the crumbs against someone else.

Well, that isn't our solution. Working people across the land have been sending out a battle cry: "FIGHT, DON'T STARVE!" And that is what we vets intend to do--FIGHT!

Many of us went into the service looking ahead to the day when we could use the GI Bill. It is a way to get an education we couldn't otherwise afford and better training for a skilled job. More and more, the ill's becoming the only way for veterans to feed our families. For many vets it's a matter of survival if a check is late or, even worse, it it's cut altogether. Of course this isn't a question for a Rockerfeller, but to us late checks mean we may have to quit school, not pay the rent, not buy our kids a new pair of shoes. To them it means fewer people collecting the bill, or opportunity for them to pile up the interest on the back checks that we get late or not at all.

One vet fro New Jersey, a new VVAW member, told the story for many vets around the country: "When I got out of the service I tried going to school, but when I didn't get a check for 6 months, I had to quit school to get a job in order to feed my wife and son. Just try getting away with paying tax late--not only will they get their back taxes but they'll get interest. When our checks don't come all we get's the boot."

This year the Bill has come under increasing attack. First, on Memorial Day, 3.7 million vets lost the chance to even use the Bill, while almost 400,000 of us in school got a letter stating, "This is your last check, sorry about that!" On top of this President Ford wants to cut eligibility for using the Bill back from 10 years to 8 years.

Then they put the restrictions on the Bill. According to them, all these petty rules are to make sure we're good boys and don't abuse their gift to us. They tell us what schools and what courses to take. They tell us to keep up our grades to their standards, how many times we can be tardy, how often we can be absent, regardless of the grade we happen to be carrying in the class. If we don't measure up to their standards, we're out in the street. About the only thing they cant tell us is why our check are late and when they'll come in.

Fighting to get our checks on time and to save the Bill we've got is not enough. Even we get our checks, they are not enough to cover school expenses, such as books, tuition, etc, and live on. We must fight for a Bill that pays for school expenses and provides a decent living allowance. There has to be an end to restrictions including the one that says that a vet has to use the Bill by a certain time after discharge. Veterans have a right to use it any time. And that means if a person works for 40 years after getting out of the service, retires, and then wants to go to school, that's his business. That's his right. And we are going to fight for that as well as for expanded GI Bill.

VVAW is taking up this struggle across the country now. We will be getting petitions signed, holding pickets, actions, demonstrations, and organizing. Organizing vets around this country to stand up and fight means that we aren't relying on Congress, on politicians with mile-wide grins, or on petty bureaucrats furthering their own careers.

The rich think we're pretty stupid. They act like we don't learn anything form our experiences, that their lies and broken promises, their excuses and parades will get over forever. Well, they might have gotten over once; many of us went off to their wars, fought for them, bled for them. But we were younger then and a lot more naíve. We've learned about them and their system in the midst of their wars, or sweating out profits for them on the assembly lines, or waiting in lines at unemployment offices or going hungry because of late checks. We've learned from all these things and more. We are marching new to a different cadence.

We are taking our experience and uniting with other vets in this fight. The question is not whether any of us were personally cut off the Bill or are on it now. The question is vets getting together and standing up, standing shoulder to shoulder with other vets and saying enough. It's a question of putting the bloodsucking capitalists on the line and saying, "You used us once to fight your wars, you try to use us now to promote future wars, and on top of all this you are telling a whole lot of us to crawl off and die." Well, we're not about to do that. Loud and clear we are saying No Cuts, No Way. We're saying Extend and Expand the GI Bill. We are going to take this struggle and fight for what we need and, in the process build VVAW, our organization, into a powerful voice against this rotten system.