Everything has been turned upside down by the Covid-19 corona virus.
The most immediate preoccupation is how it affects our own and our family's lives. Close behind is concern for the impact on the US and the world, particularly for populations already distressed and marginalized.
Needless to say, plans for events honoring the fiftieth anniversaries of the killings of four students at Kent State and two at Jackson State have been shelved. Statements from the two universities can be seen
here. Both are planning virtual commemorations but details are not yet announced.
The programs VPCC was organizing with Jackson State have also been canceled. One panel on April 3 was to look at the influence of the civil rights movement on anti-war activism in conjunction with the 53d anniversary of Martin Luther King's Riverside Church sermon. The other on May 14th was to discuss events at Jackson State in the context of the National Student Strike, anti-war sentiment among African-American GIs and three deaths at the Chicano Moratorium in August. (More details in our February newsletter
here.)
We are considering a VPCC Zoom webinar on May 9 or 11, between the two anniversaries, that honors the National Student Strike, Kent State and Jackson State as well as the Chicano Moratorium. It would help our planning about format to get an idea of how many people would like to participate. The Zoom system allows for a panel of speakers, with questions and comments.
If you are potentially interested, please e-mail a note to
this address
.
The National Student Strike itself remains a great potential resource for local education because roughly 1000 actions reached virtually every corner of the country as illustrated by the University of Washington's interactive map
here
. An illustration of how events fifty years ago can be linked to today is
this story
from Williams College.
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If they serve you lemons,
make limoncello
Forced confinement, a.k.a. physical distancing or self-quarantine, is at best inconvenient and uncomfortable. But it also offers the chance of a lifetime, figuratively and, possibly for some of us, literally.
Everyone's story is worth recording. The Vietnam generation made choices that changed our own histories, our country's and the world's.
If you have not done so already, consider using this found time as a special opportunity to finally compile, document and write about your own experience and that of your community during the anti-war movement.
Preserving personal histories
Whether 5 or 50 pages, create a mini-memoir. They are the source of enduring family and community memory as well as building blocks for historians and social analysts. Our lives are their raw material. A mini-memoir can contain any and all of the following with you as an actor in the drama, not just a statistic. No one's account is unimportant. Foot soldiers for peace played as vital a role as captains, colonels and generals who led local, state and national organizations.
- A narrative--what did you do, when and where did you do it, what organizations did you work with, how did it change over the years of your engagement (be as specific as you can on dates and places)
- Reflections and evaluation--in retrospect what was good and effective, what was bad and counterproductive; what errors were made, what did you learn
- Lessons for the present--what does your experience and your hard won insights offer for current national and international issues and the people and movements addressing them
Your own pictures and audio can and ought to be incorporated.
What should be done with your mini-memoir in digital and hard-copy formats?
- Share with your children and grandchildren
- Present to city, county and state historical societies and the archivists of involved colleges and universities
- Send copies to colleges and universities that house national collections about the peace movement and the 1960s and 1970s (The next newsletter will provide specific contacts at Swarthmore, Michigan, Washington, Illinois, Kent State, Wisconsin Historical Society, Tamiment Library/NYU, UC Berkeley/Pacifica and any others we can identify.)
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"The 1965-75 peace movement reached a scale that threatened the foundations of the American social order, making it both an inspirational model for future social movements and a nightmarish narrative that our governing elites have tried to wipe from collective memory ever since...
...those who opposed the war are needed now more than ever, now and tomorrow, to prevent the dimming of memory and to keep history from repeating."
--Tom Hayden, from "Hell No, The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement"
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Catch up with the video record
One way to make use of time at home (and to inspire your mini-memoir) is to dip into the videos that have come out of conferences since 2015 as well as feature films about My Lai, the journal of a doctor from Hanoi and the anti-war movement in Madison, WI. They are in the resource list below.
As part of the year long recognition of the 50th anniversary of student killings, the Kent State University History Department organized a one day symposium on February 29, 2020. The full agenda is
here. Session topics:
- Re-assessing the Legacy of American Intervention in Vietnam (video here)
- People, Power, and Politics: Revolution and the State in Vietnam (video here)
- The Ohio National Guard at Kent State (video here)
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Join us in Viet Nam to Celebrate
the 25th anniversary of normal relations (June 24 - July 10)
Because of the Covid-19 virus, our trip has been postponed from honoring the 45th anniversary of the end of the war to celebrating the 25th anniversary of normal relations between the US and Viet Nam, with an optional extension to Cambodia and Laos. If the virus still interferes, the trip will be postponed with adjusted content until October for the 75th anniversary of formation of the Viet Nam - USA Society. It occurred with assistance of OSS personnel who had provided support to Ho Chi Minh at Tan Trao. The current draft itinerary is
here
. If you may want to join us in June, please send a note
here
.
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Relief from
Covid-19
Keepin' On, Keepin' On
Peter Yarrow welcomes you
to his home for informal personal concerts and meditations on folk music, the peace movement and our times
For the full list of youtube links, look
here
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Corona Coverage
The
New America Foundation is publishing a daily update edited by Peter Bergen. It contains short summaries with links, covering domestic and international news plus analytical articles. Full list of posts and free subscription sign up
here.
"An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans"
is a thoughtful poem by Kristin Flyntz
that can be read
here
. We will post on the same page additional special insights that readers share with
us
.
Chuck Searcy writes that as of April 4th in
Viet Nam
, confirmed positive Covid-19 cases total 239, suspected cases are 4,557, there have been 90 recoveries and no deaths. The number of cases that have tested negative is 75,219. People are encouraged to stay at home and foreign tourists are not welcome. An earlier account of how Viet Nam is dealing with the problem is
here. Scroll down to or click on the first two
videos to see creative public education campaigns.
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The People’s Peace Treaty
November 1970 - May Day 1971
In late November of 1970 the US National Student Association sponsored a delegation of students from fifteen US Colleges and Universities to meet with student representatives in South Vietnam and North Vietnam to negotiate a peace treaty. Members of the delegation met first in South Vietnam with the Saigon Student Union and later In Hanoi with the Vietnam National Union of Students and the South Vietnam Liberation Student Union. The treaty, which became known as the Peoples Peace Treaty, was formally signed in Hanoi on December 17, 1970. The US delegation then came home via Paris where the treaty was publicly unveiled. A few days later the delegation returned to the US where it was used as a major organizing tool on campuses during the spring semester of 1971, culminating in the May Day demonstrations in Washington, DC. More information and a list of 167 participating colleges and universities issued on April 27, 1971 is
here. See also Doug Hostetter's chapter in "The People Make the Peace", listed below in Resources.
Please contact VPCC member Doug Hostetter
here
if you were active with the Peoples Peace Treaty. Let him know if you want to honor work on the Treaty in your community or state.
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Resources
Documentaries
Don't Burn is the only available film that portrays the war from a Vietnamese perspective; made by Dang Nhat Minh about the journal of a young woman doctor serving in the south that was found by an American soldier and returned to her family in Hanoi decades later; English subtitled DVD for public showings is available in appreciation of donations of at least $20, contact us
here.
New option The film can be previewed on nonpublic youtube by clicking
here.
"The Whistleblower of My Lai"
directed by Connie Fields is available on-line
here
for a rental of $4.99 for 24 hours.
"The film follows the Kronos Quartet’s production of Jonathan Berger and Harriet Chessman’s opera which takes at its heart the actions and life of Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot who revealed the 1968 massacre by U.S. troops and rescued some of the victims."
"Four Hours in My Lai, Anatomy of a Massacre" Yorkshire Television on youtube
here
"A World Beneath the War" Janet Gardner's portrayal of
Vinh Moc village that survived U.S. bombing north of the DMZ by relocating into tunnels, available
here
for on-line rental or purchase
"The Last Ghost of War" Janet Gardner's account of Agent Orange and its victims in Vietnam,
available
here
for on-line rental or purchase
The War at Home by Glenn Silber is the best documentary to convey to a younger generation how the anti-war movement evolved from silent vigils to militant confrontation in the microcosm of Madison, Wisconsin from 1967 to 1972. It has become available in a restored 40th anniversary DVD with supplemental material. Order from the
filmmaker.
Review in Isthmus
Videos
"Vietnam: The Power of Protest"
The 2015 VPCC conference in Washington is the only first person broad assessment of the anti-war movement undertaken to date. Videos can be see
here: The site also includes videos from the October 2017 conference in Washington,
"From Protest to Resistance" on the 50th anniversary of the March on the Pentagon except for the first half which is on C-SPAN for session one
here and session two
here.
A 50 minute video based on
interviews
conducted at the 2015 conference was produced by Activist Video Archive. It and the complete interviews of 43 participants can be seen
here
"Overcoming War Legacies: The Road to Reconciliation and Future Cooperation Between the United States and Vietnam",
a remarkable March 26, 2019, conference at the US Institute of Peace featuring high level representatives of both countries' foreign and defense ministries and of the US Senate and NGOs; sessions available
on-line. Especially notable is the eloquent luncheon speech
here by
Vietnam's Ambassador to the U.S. Ha Kim Ngoc about the path that took him from fleeing US bombs in Ha Noi as a child to Washington. (He was introduced by William Taylor, then Executive Vice President of USIP, before returning to Ukraine as ambassador and more recently providing historic testimony at the impeachment hearing.)
Voices of Conscience conference at Notre Dame University
in
May 2018 examined the history and moral and political implications of opposition to war within the military during both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. This is the
link to its YouTube channel. It contains full video of the opening day plenaries, the last day plenary and the film and literary events. This is the
link to the Voices of Conscience Google Drive. It contains a Panel Audio folder with full recordings of all the May 23 workshops. The sessions are labeled according to time and the names of workshop moderators. Also on the Google Drive are other videos from the conference, a large collection of photos and documents with the conference schedule.
Conference panels available on C-SPAN are described and linked
here VPCC panel
"The Vietnam War Comes Home" with
Clara Bingham, Dr. Mary (Munchen) Posner, Rev. Richard Fernandez, Robert Levering, Anne Gallivan, Martha Norman and John McAuliff can be seen
here
Books
"The People Make the Peace". edited by Karin Aguilar-San Juan and Frank Joyce, reflections by activists who traveled to Hanoi during the war and returned in 2013 (includes VPPC members Frank Joyce, Doug Hostetter and John McAuliff) More information and order
here
Tom Hayden on Social Movements, consisting of four unpublished talks and an interview by
Rolling Stone from 1972 – 1977. Available through Amazon on Kindle and paperback
Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems by W.D.
Ehrhart
order directly from the publisher
McFarland & Company
"Witness to the Revolution" by Clara Bingham
An oral history of 1969-1970 includes interviews about the Moratorium and Mobilization with Sam Brown, David Hawk, David Mixner, Daniel Ellsberg, Seymour Hersh, Oliver Stone, Barry Romo, Wayne Smith and Bobby Muller. (Clara spoke on the VPCC panel in Washington November 13th.)
"Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans who Opposed the War" Co-editors: Ron Carver, David Cortright and Barbara Doherty, New Village Press, distributed by NYU Press;
Review in The Progressive
"The United States, Southeast Asia, and Historical Memory" Edited by Caroline Luft and Mark Pavlick, essays by antiwar activists and scholars. Fred Branfman describes the tragic lives of Laotian peasants under US bombing. Cambodia scholar Ben Kiernan and colleague Owen Taylor illuminate the course of Cambodia history after unprecedented US bombing. The book also includes classic works by Noam Chomsky, Nick Turse, and Edward Herman. Full description and order information
here.
"Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, the Times, and Why They Matter", a new book by
John Ketwig, author of "…and a hard rain fell" (now in its 27th printing over 34 years)
"Safe Return: A Vietnam Veteran’s Involvement in the 1970s Amnesty Movement"
by Michael Uhl, available as an
Amazon e-book
Articles
"The MLK Speech We Need Today Is Not the One We Remember Most"
,
an essay by Viet Thanh Nguyen in
Time Magazine on the relevance of the Riverside Church sermon to the present. "King’s prophecy connects the war in Vietnam with our forever wars today, spread across multiple countries and continents, waged without end from global military bases numbering around 800. Some of the strategy for our forever war comes directly from lessons that the American military learned in Vietnam: drone strikes instead of mass bombing; volunteer soldiers instead of draftees; censorship of gruesome images from the battlefronts; and encouraging the reverence of soldiers.”
"Exceptional Victims" an essay by Christian Appy in the
Boston Review linked to King's speech "The resistance to the Vietnam War was the most diverse and dynamic antiwar movement in U.S. history. We have all but forgotten it today."
The “Research Arm” of the Peace Movement
: How Power Researchers Helped the Vietnam Antiwar Movement, an
interview with Diana Roose about the NARMIC project of the American Friends Service Committee
On the web
Swarthmore College Peace Collection
Sound Recordings
, over 160 from the Vietnam war era available
here
WIN Magazine
issues on line, sound and visual recordings on line (about 250 items)
Exhibit of photographs from Dorothy Marder of
Women Strike for Peace,
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and
Dispatch News Service
"Soldiers for Peace"
is an audio documentary produced by American Public Media (APM) featuring first-person interviews and oral histories with Vietnam veterans transformed by the war. • Documents their decisions to organize and participate in their own antiwar movement • Highlights the numerous ways GIs and veterans protested the war, both in collaboration with the civilian antiwar movement and separately. To hear it, click
here. For information, contact tyangchen@americanpublicmedia.org
The best
web site on Agent Orange, land mines, unexploded ordnance is
here
"Reclaiming the Community One Bomb at a Time: The View From Indochina", text and photos by Ted Lieverman;
The Asia-Pacific Journal
Letter from Vietnam War Correspondents to Rory Kennedy about her misleading film, "Last Days in Vietnam"; published in
The Shipler Report
Previous
VPCC Newsletter links
here
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The Problem of China
a personal perspective
Some press reports suggest that the Covid-19 crisis may offer an opportunity for US escalation of its
regime change campaign against Venezuela and of China's effort to dominate and exploit the South China, a.k.a. East, Sea.
If this threat to Viet Nam's sovereignty concerns you, set a google alert for "South China Sea" to receive daily links about the festering danger of military conflict.
In the meantime, here are sample articles from the past week.
"The new US-China superpower rivalry" by Øystein Tunsjø, Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies,
East Asia Forum
"China's traditional fishing rights claim in North Natuna Sea baseless" by Aristyo Rizka Darmawan,
Jakarta Post
"Natural Gas Discoveries Could Add to Chinese Claims in South China Sea"
Voice of America
"China Chases Indonesia's Fishing Fleets, Staking Claim to Sea's Riches"
The New York Times
Testimony by Fiona Hill
during the
impeachment hearings that illustrated the transactional character of superpower support, an indication that the Russians would accept US application of the Monroe Doctrine to Venezuela if the US gave them similar authority over Ukraine.
-- John McAuliff
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Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee
* Sally Benson * David Cortright * Ann Gallivan * Susan Hammond * Rick Hind * Doug Hostetter
* Susanne Jackson * Frank Joyce * Steven Ladd * Paul Lauter * Jack Malinowski * John McAuliff * Terry Provance * Brewster Rhoads * Nancy Jane Woodside *
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