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Editorial

By VVAW

With the people's victory won with the acquittal of the Gainesville 8, it is fitting that we should try and place the trial in perspective in terms of its relationship to the larger picture of the United States in 1973.

Primary in this picture is the fact that the war in Indochina is still not over. This issue of W.S. interviews one of our members recently returned from Indochina whose observations forcefully speak to this fact. We also see through the trial of the Gainesville 8, and the attempt by the Nixon Administration to destroy VVAW/WSO, how this continuing war is increasingly being fought right here in the U.S.

Political repression, both for resistance to the war and to the racism that was largely responsible for it, has become a way of life in the U.S. as witnessed by the trials of Gary Lawton or the Attica brothers or the attempt at outright Fascism now being proposed in the new Criminal Reform Bill.

The continuing war is demonstrated in terms of economic repression as well as political repression. Examples of this can be found in the struggles of working people to gain a decent standard of living or the problems of Vietnam-era vets have in trying to go to school to get better jobs.

Economic and political repression clearly go hand-in-hand with the continuing war in Indochina. The answer to all these problems lies in the people solving them, through direct action, as has been proven by the Indochinese, the United Farm Workers or the people's campaign to free the Gainesville 8.