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Angry Vets Protest New Attacks On GI Bill

By VVAW

On March 24, in Buffalo, New York, 200 veterans picketed the offices of the Regional Director of the VA. Called by the Western New York Concerned Veterans Coalition, the demonstration was aimed at stopping government plans to cut off the GI Bill on May 31st for all vets discharged before 1966. The vets were also protesting a massive review of all vets receiving the GI Bill in Western New York which threatens to cut thousands off the rolls. When a delegation of vets went to see Hooker, the VA Director, he passed the buck to Congress, saying it was none of his business because Congress makes the laws. He suggested that Buffalo is no place to live at this time and that vets should look for greener pastures. But, as a result of the action, the review was postponed.

Just what vets need--VA Directors telling us to find "greener pastures." Which city with over 20% unemployment does that turkey consider "greener." For that kind of advice the VA pays him with taxpayers' money.

Of course all he's doing is trying to get rid of his immediate problem--a group of angry vets. He's simply mouthing the words of the government and that class the government serves. Their point, which they will never come out and make straight up, is pretty clear. When vets won the GI Bill back at the end of World War II, the US was sitting on top of the world. Corporations were expanding; competition was nowhere to be found since Europe was in ruins and Japan was an occupied country. Not only could the US ruling class afford to give vets the GI Bill but they needed more and more people who were educated to do the white collar work in their expanding factories and plants and offices. And, of course, they were scared of what 11 million vets (the number returning at the end of the Second World War) might do if they were not pacified in some way or other.

The situation for the bosses is a hell of a lot different today. Their economy is faltering despite whatever temporary and minor recoveries it might make. They have to put their supplies of capital where it will make them the biggest profits, and that is not in social services such as welfare of food stamps or the VA or the GI Bill. Or education in general for that matter. And because their economy is no longer expanding, there isn't the same need for more and more educated people.

Their solution is the one we see all around us--cut back to throw vets off the GI Bill, or hike tuitions to force students out of school, or make the school conditions so repressive that people will just drop out. All of this is coming down right now across the country.

To take potshots at vets, they have a number of weapons in their arsenal. Their big gun is the ending of the GI Bill on the 31st of May for all veterans who were in the military between 1954 and 1966. This is so-called "Cold War Education Bill" was passed in 1966 giving all these vets the ability to go to school at government expense. Of course, by 1966, millions of the 3.7 million vets affected had jobs, were brining up families, and could not possibly use the GI Bill. Since then, however, many of these same vets have been laid off or have reached a point where they can no longer afford to spend time in school; that's why there are 300,000 of them in school at present. But come May 31, Memorial Day, their benefits are gone, including GI Bill benefits for millions of vets who don't even know that they had the GI Bill (since the VA tells nobody anything unless pushed).

But that's just one weapon in their collection. The VA and the class which stands behind it have all kinds of weapons to aim at the Vietnam-era veteran. First there's Ford's proposal to cut back the many people in Congress don't want to have anything to do with that proposal, fearing the anger of veterans. So they told the VA to start chopping anyway it could--but no to get vets too riled up in the process.

At Queens College in New York, teams of VA auditors go around demanding attendance records for vets.

In Chicago, the city college system working hand in hand with the VA, has arrived at a way to insure that vets meet "satisfactory educational progress levels." What that means is that the VA will be monitoring vets grades each month; if vets don't have a "C" average (that's satisfactory level according to the city colleges) they will be called in for counseling--and that will lead to being tossed off the Bill. Have a bad month, fight with the instructor, get sick of a couple of weeks, and a vet may well find himself off the Bill. (This is a nationwide program, with the VA setting general guidelines and the individual schools deciding what grades are satisfactory).

At Citrus State College in California, all vets were cut off the Bill simultaneously until they fought back; vets there built a large protest movement and got a court injunction against the VA.

At an extension school of UCLA vets were all cut off because the VA suddenly discovered that the school did not offer a degree.

And checks are late, forcing some vets out of school. Red tapes creeps higher causing other vets not even to apply out of disgust with the military-like VA system and bureaucracy.

The VA and the people who the VA front for aren't stupid. They know better than to try one single national program to get vets off the Bill, because they know vets won't take that. Instead, they hope to try out one program here, another there, each time getting a few more vets and saving themselves a few more nickels.

But vets have a real history of resisting. For many of us, the resistance began in Vietnam when GIs told their officers where they could stick their orders. Vets fought against the continuation of the war in Indochina. And vets are fighting these latest attacks too.

At a meeting to protest the "C-Average or Out" attacks at Kennedy-King College in Chicago (one of the city colleges) a VA representative told vets that Congress is the answer, write letters, there's nothing we can do. The same thing came from the VA director in Buffalo. These representatives of the rich man's system will do whatever possible to squirm and twist their way out of any responsibility and try to divert the fight of veterans. Congress has already given its answer; a spokesperson for the Senate Veterans Committee went through the same sort of buck-passing routine by saying that the Senate Committee wanted to extend the Bill for "Cold-War" vets, but the House committee chairman was against it and the President was against it and because of cuts in the VA budget, the Senate Committee didn't have the money to spend. In other words: "Vets, learn to live with it, there's isn't anything that can be done." Well, we've learned a whole lot better than that.

Along with VA officials and Congressional representatives, the growing vets movement has also had to deal with the inevitable presence of misleaders in our own ranks. Shuffling papers and sitting behind desks of a variety of veterans offices, these individuals appear at almost any gathering of vets, putting forward the ideas of Congress and the VA, assuring us that "working through the system is our only hope, that we ourselves have no real power. Their sole purpose is to defuse or divert the struggle while making a career for themselves; they will agree with VA reps and Congressional lackies and, if all else fails, begin to systematically attack VVAW and other progressive vets by redbaiting, accusations of being outsiders, or even the low life tactic of trying to divide people racially.

Many of us have seen these tactics before from bosses on the job, to the brass in the military or the dozens of government infiltrators in a variety of organizations. Tried and true, these tactics, whether overt or covert, serve the system that oppresses us all, and no other.

We don't believe we are helpless or powerless. If there was nothing to be done, we'd still be working 12 hour days and the war in Vietnam would still be going on today.

In Philadelphia, where VVAW is building around the GI Bill cutoffs, over 60% of vets in school in that area will be driven out if the cutoff isn't fought and beaten. One Philly vet who saw a VVAW leaflet and could not contact the organization duplicated the leaflet himself and put it up wherever he thought bets might see it. This kind of activity and enthusiasm represents the growing vets movement.

Vets in Buffalo got the audit of school records postponed because they united and would not be diverted from the aim of their struggle. Citrus state vets are getting their checks. In chapters from Boston to Los Angeles, VVAW is building a campaign not just to fight the attacks coming down on vets, but to Expand and Extend the GI Bill. Vets are signing the petition and getting involved in building the struggle. On Memorial Day vets will be confronting the pious politicians and spokesmen for the ruling class with the fact that on this very day the Bill is ending of millions of vets. As vets are learning around the country, the answer to attacks on the GI Bill and the way to extend and expand the Bill lies in building the unity of a fighting veterans' movement.