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Letters to the EditorBy VVAWI went to one of the showings of "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry." I'd recommend everyone go. Figuring it would be a good recruiting venue, I carried my legal pad. I was about 30 cars away from my truck and went back and got a pen. Started weeping during WSI & DCIII, got some stares from folks around me for that. Think I saw me at DCIII, dirty-blond long hair and beard and black frame glasses. The first guy in the shot that pans to the left. But anyway, I stood up at the end of the showing and said, "I'm Tom Baxter. I'm the local contact for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. We'd like former members to re-up and new members to join. We've got some projects going on and we'd like your help. I'll be out in the lobby if you'd like to talk." A couple of folks started clapping; others came over to shake my hand. Got down to the lobby and composed myself. Talked with a dozen friendly folks. Told them about Eyes Wide Open and the Veterans Day Parade. Got their email addresses. Gave away about 30 business cards. There were at least a couple of prime vet prospects, one old VVAW member and maybe some non-vet supporters. I've been to the DAV and VVA meeting, where I didn't feel loved, and it looks like we're in the 11NOV2004 parade. We'll be pulling "rear guard," which I consider the place of honor and we'll be able to stop and talk with folks without holding up the parade. A white-bearded wrinkled white guy with a high noble forehead cuts quite a figure with tears flowing down his face and his voice cracking. Reminds me of when I spoke at a memorial service for a member in 1986. There's his face, but I can't remember his name. He was a professor and all the deans and department heads gave really nice talks. I finally choked my talk out. I remarked to Broedel that I wished I could have given a better talk. He said, "You know why they sounded so good and you didn't? They didn't give a fuck and you did."
Tom Baxter
Eyes Wide Open is an exhibit on the costs of the Iraq War. For more information, visit: On September 14, 2004, George W. Bush addressed the National Guard convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, which just happens to be where my husband and I live. This visit by the commander in chief was not open to the public, but it was also closed to veterans of all forces except the National Guard. George Wrong started out by comparing himself to other presidents who served in the Guard — especially to Theodore Roosevelt — the one and the same Theodore Roosevelt who said, "A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards." Bush used the Guard to avoid Vietnam and in his present office has turned his back on the veterans of not only prior wars but heartlessly on the 7,000 disabled veterans he created with his war. The one good thing that has come out of the Bush administration has been that John and I have broken our 15-year silence (and for those you who remember the Eighties, John and Rena Kopy were anything but quiet and retiring). We have had our share of nightmares and tragedies over the past 15 years, but politically we became "uninvolved" because we stopped believing that this country was free. Although we still do not believe that America is the "Land of the Free," we can no longer be silent about the young men and women being killed and maimed throughout the world in the name of the United States of Bush. It doesn't really matter who the next president is ... except, of course, that this country cannot survive four more years of the Bushmobile rambling through Americans' lives and mowing us down both here and abroad. In coming back to VVAW, a flood of memories sweep through my mind, and the one thing that stands out more than anything else is that no matter how serious and depressing our tasks were back in the early days, we laughed so hard and enjoyed what we were doing so much that it is still amazing to me that we accomplished so much with so few people and even less money. I remember our journey to Washington, D.C. in 1981 when we camped on the Mall and VVAW members were going bookoo dinky dau left and right because we had built a perimeter and set up a base camp. My group (at my insistence: rough, tough activist and spoiled suburban housewife that I was, I did not sleep on the ground) had brought an RV, which helped me to earn the reputation for being the best PTSD psychotherapist in America. As soon as someone flashed back, someone else yelled,"Kopy!" and I came running. Enough time has elapsed that I can tell the secret of my "great power": I grabbed the vet and pushed him into the RV where I showed him the microwave, the TV, the refrigerator and the electric coffeemaker and kept saying, "Washington, D.C., 1981" until he came out of it! I remember the night during the Agent Orange hearings, when we all crashed at Romo's apartment, when I told Annie Bailey that for all the times I had been in Chicago to speak at vets' groups or on the talk shows, I'd never really seen Chicago. It must have been about 2:00 a.m. when Annie decided that she was going to take me sightseeing (don't even try to imagine how stoned we were), and off we went. The only thing that neither of us took into consideration was that Annie came from Milwaukee and didn't have a clue about where she was going either. We had to call Romo's and ask them to send out a search party because we were so lost. I remember, with great love and clarity, when in 1986 things had gone very wrong with some of the members of AOVNJ (Agent Orange Victims of New Jersey) and there was a very humiliating trial, from which we as the leaders were exonerated, but after which I was too embarrassed and insecure to keep fighting and speaking out. One evening, Dave Cline and Clarence Fitch showed up at our home and told me that I had been booked to speak at Rutgers and then at a rally in lower Manhattan and that I'd better show up! They wouldn't listen to any arguments, and so off I went, and to this day, I believe those two bullies saved my life. If anyone were to ask me what VVAW means to me, I think the best way for me to describe all you radicals would be: my friends, no matter what, the most caring people on the face of the Earth. For the fight and the justice, Rena Kopystenski
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