Hace 50 años, en el 30 de abril, las puertas del Palacio Presidencial en Saigón fueron destrozadas por un tanque—un tanque manejado por un luchador por un Vietnam unificado e independiente. La bandera del régimen títere respaldado por Estados Unidos cayó, y en su lugar se alzó la bandera del Frente de Liberación Nacional.

Saigón, la capital del colonialismo francés y después del imperialismo estadounidense, dejó de existir. Saigón se convirtió en Ciudad Ho Chi Minh—nombrada así en honor al líder comunista que encabezó la lucha por la liberación nacional de Vietnam.

El 17 de julio de 1966, Ho Chi Minh declaró, “La guerra podría durar cinco años, diez años, 20 años o incluso más. Hanói, Hai Phong y algunas ciudades y fábricas podrían quedar devastadas. ¡Pero el pueblo vietnamita nunca tendrá miedo! No hay nada más valioso que la independencia y la libertad. Cuando llegue la victoria, nuestro pueblo reconstruirá nuestro país, más fuerte y hermoso que nunca.”

Entonces, así fue, después de largas décadas de lucha heroica, los muchos derrotaron a los pocos. Un país pequeño derrotó a uno grande, y por fin Vietnam fue liberado. Unas semanas antes, el 18 de abril, el régimen títere camboyano de Lon Nol fue puesto en fuga; en la ciudad capital de Phnom Penh, las calles fueron nombradas en honor a los estudiantes asesinados en una protesta antibélica en Kent State. Laos también se liberaría y tomaría el camino socialista.

Un factor crucial en estas victorias fueron líderes visionarios que aplicaron la ciencia del marxismo-leninismo. Al hablar de cómo se hizo comunista, Ho Chi Minh dijo, “Hay una leyenda, tanto en nuestro país como en China, sobre el milagroso ‘Libro de los Sabios’. Al enfrentar grandes dificultades, uno lo abre y encuentra una salida. El leninismo no es solo un “libro de los sabios” milagroso, una brújula para nosotros, los revolucionarios y el pueblo vietnamita: también es el sol radiante que ilumina nuestro camino hacia la victoria final, hacia el socialismo y comunismo.”

La lucha por liberar Vietnam fue una batalla titánica que sacudió al mundo. Tanto la República Popular China como la Unión de Repúblicas Socialistas Soviéticas brindaron un apoyo crucial que hizo posible la victoria.

Aquí en Estados Unidos, el movimiento en contra de la guerra en Vietnam tendría un impacto profundo. Sacó a millones de personas a las calles. Para cuando terminó la guerra, el movimiento antibélico se había convertido en un movimiento de solidaridad con Vietnam, y la bandera que más ondeaba en las manifestaciones estadounidenses era la del Frente de Liberación Nacional. La lucha en Vietnam también contribuyó al surgimiento de un nuevo movimiento comunista en el país, lo que llevaría a la fundación de la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad.

La victoria en Vietnam demuestra que quienes tienen una causa justa y la historia de su lado triunfarán. Desde principios de la década de 1970, el imperialismo estadounidense ha estado en decadencia, y esa decadencia se está acelerando hoy.

Seguimos inspirándonos en las victorias pasadas y estamos seguros de que habrá muchas más—desde Palestina hasta Filipinas—y sí, aquí mismo en EE. UU. Para citar al destacado revolucionario Mao Zedong, “Aunque el camino por delante es tortuoso, el futuro es brillante.”

#International #Vietnam #Imperialism #AntiWarMovement #FRSO #OSCL #Statement

50 years ago, on April 30, the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon were broken by a tank—a tank driven by a fighter for a unified and independent Vietnam. The flag of the U.S.-backed puppet regime came down, and the flag of the National Liberation Front replaced it.

Saigon, the capital of French colonialism, and then American imperialism, was no more. Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City—named for the communist leader who stood at the forefront of Vietnam’s fight for national liberation.

On July 17, 1966, Ho Chi Minh stated, “The war may last five years, ten years, 20 years, or even longer. Ha Noi, Hai Phong, and some cities and factories may be devastated. But the Vietnamese people will never be afraid! Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom. When victory comes, our people will rebuild our country, stronger and more beautiful than ever before.”

So, it came to be, after long decades of heroic struggle, the many had defeated the few. A small country defeated a big one, and Vietnam at last was liberated. A few weeks earlier, on April 18, the Cambodian puppet regime of Lon Nol was sent packing; in the capital city of Phnom Penh, streets were named after the students killed at an anti-war protest at Kent State. Laos would get free as well and embark on the socialist road.

A crucial factor in these victories was forward-looking leaders who made use of the science of Marxism-Leninism. When talking about how he became a communist, Ho Chi Minh said, “There is a legend, in our country as well as in China, on the miraculous ‘Book of the Wise.’ When facing great difficulties, one opens it and finds a way out. Leninism is not only a miraculous ‘book of the wise,’ a compass for us Vietnamese revolutionaries and people: it is also the radiant sun illuminating our path to final victory, to socialism and communism.”

The struggle to liberate Vietnam was a titanic battle that shook the world. Both the People’s Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics proved important aid that helped make the victory possible.

Here in the United States, the movement against the war on Vietnam would have a profound impact. It brought many millions into the streets. By the war’s end, the anti-war movement was a movement in solidarity with Vietnam, and the predominant flag at U.S. demonstrations was the flag of the National Liberation Front. The struggle in Vietnam also contributed to the emergence of a new communist movement in the country, which in turn would lead to the founding of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

The victory in Vietnam proves that those who have a just cause and history on their side will win. Since the early 1970s, U.S. imperialism has been a state of decline, and that decline is picking up speed today.

We continue to draw inspiration from past victories and are certain that there will be many more—from Palestine to the Philippines—and yes, right here in the U.S. To quote the outstanding revolutionary Mao Zedong, “While the road ahead is tortuous, the future is bright.”

#FRSO #Statement #RevolutionaryTheory #International #Vietnam #MarxismLeninism #HoChiMinh #AntiWarMovement

To mark the birthday of the outstanding Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh, Fight Back News Service is circulating has 1960 article “The Path Which Led Me To Leninism.” The Path Which Led Me To Leninism

After World War I, I made my living in Paris, now as a retoucher at a photographers, now as painter of “Chinese antiquities” (made in France!). I would distribute leaflets denouncing the crimes committed by the French colonialists in Viet Nam.

At that time, I supported the October Revolution only instinctively, not yet grasping all its historic importance. I loved and admired Lenin because he was a great patriot who liberated his compatriots; until then, I had read none of his books.

The reason for my joining the French Socialist Party was that these “ladies and gentlemen” – as I called my comrades at that moment – has shown their sympathy towards me, towards the struggle of the oppressed peoples. But I understood neither what was a party, a trade-union, nor what was socialism nor communism.

Heated discussions were then taking place in the branches of the Socialist Party, about the question whether the Socialist Party should remain in the Second International, should a Second and a half International be founded or should the Socialist Party join Lenin’s Third International? I attended the meetings regularly, twice or thrice a week and attentively listened to the discussion. First, I could not understand thoroughly. Why were the discussions so heated? Either with the Second, Second and a half or Third International, the revolution could be waged. What was the use of arguing then? As for the First International, what had become of it?

What I wanted most to know – and this precisely was not debated in the meetings – was: which International sides with the peoples of colonial countries?

I raised this question – the most important in my opinion – in a meeting. Some comrades answered: It is the Third, not the Second International. And a comrade gave me Lenin’s “Thesis on the national and colonial questions” published by l'Humanite to read.

There were political terms difficult to understand in this thesis. But by dint of reading it again and again, finally I could grasp the main part of it. What emotion, enthusiasm, clear-sightedness and confidence it instilled into me! I was overjoyed to tears. Though sitting alone in my room, I shouted out aloud as if addressing large crowds: “Dear martyrs compatriots! This is what we need, this is the path to our liberation!”

After then, I had entire confidence in Lenin, in the Third International.

Formerly, during the meetings of the Party branch, I only listened to the discussion; I had a vague belief that all were logical, and could not differentiate as to who were right and who were wrong. But from then on, I also plunged into the debates and discussed with fervour. Though I was still lacking French words to express all my thoughts, I smashed the allegations attacking Lenin and the Third International with no less vigor. My only argument was: “If you do not condemn colonialism, if you do not side with the colonial people, what kind of revolution are you waging?”

Not only did I take part in the meetings of my own Party branch, but I also went to other Party branches to lay down “my position”. Now I must tell again that Comrades Marcel Cachin, Vaillant Couturier, Monmousseau and many others helped me to broaden my knowledge. Finally, at the Tours Congress, I voted with them for our joining the Third International.

At first, patriotism, not yet communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin, in the Third International. Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.

There is a legend, in our country as well as in China, on the miraculous “Book of the Wise”. When facing great difficulties, one opens it and finds a way out. Leninism is not only a miraculous “book of the wise”, a compass for us Vietnamese revolutionaries and people: it is also the radiant sun illuminating our path to final victory, to socialism and communism.

#Vietnam #PeoplesStruggles #Socialism #HoChiMinh

To mark the May 19, 1890 birthday of the outstanding revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, Fight Back News Service is circulating his article, “The path which led me to Leninism.”

After World War I, I made my living in Paris, now as a retoucher at a photographer’s, now as painter of “Chinese antiquities” (made in France!). I would distribute leaflets denouncing the crimes committed by the French colonialists in Viet Nam.

At that time, I supported the October Revolution only instinctively, not yet grasping all its historic importance. I loved and admired Lenin because he was a great patriot who liberated his compatriots; until then, I had read none of his books.

The reason for my joining the French Socialist Party was that these “ladies and gentlemen” – as I called my comrades at that moment – has shown their sympathy towards me, towards the struggle of the oppressed peoples. But I understood neither what was a party, a trade-union, nor what was socialism nor communism.

Heated discussions were then taking place in the branches of the Socialist Party, about the question whether the Socialist Party should remain in the Second International, should a Second and a half International be founded or should the Socialist Party join Lenin’s Third International? I attended the meetings regularly, twice, or thrice a week and attentively listened to the discussion. First, I could not understand thoroughly. Why were the discussions so heated? Either with the Second, Second and a half or Third International, the revolution could be waged. What was the use of arguing then? As for the First International, what had become of it?

What I wanted most to know – and this precisely was not debated in the meetings – was: which International sides with the peoples of colonial countries?

I raised this question – the most important in my opinion – in a meeting. Some comrades answered: It is the Third, not the Second International. And a comrade gave me Lenin’s “Thesis on the national and colonial questions” published by l'Humanite to read.

There were political terms difficult to understand in this thesis. But by dint of reading it again and again, finally I could grasp the main part of it. What emotion, enthusiasm, clear-sightedness and confidence it instilled into me! I was overjoyed to tears. Though sitting alone in my room, I shouted out aloud as if addressing large crowds: “Dear martyrs compatriots! This is what we need, this is the path to our liberation!”

After then, I had entire confidence in Lenin, in the Third International.

Formerly, during the meetings of the Party branch, I only listened to the discussion; I had a vague belief that all were logical and could not differentiate as to who were right and who were wrong. But from then on, I also plunged into the debates and discussed with fervor. Though I was still lacking French words to express all my thoughts, I smashed the allegations attacking Lenin and the Third International with no less vigor. My only argument was: “If you do not condemn colonialism, if you do not side with the colonial people, what kind of revolution are you waging?”

Not only did I take part in the meetings of my own Party branch, but I also went to other Party branches to lay down “my position”. Now I must tell again that Comrades Marcel Cachin, Vaillant Couturier, Monmousseau and many others helped me to broaden my knowledge. Finally, at the Tours Congress, I voted with them for our joining the Third International.

At first, patriotism, not yet communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin, in the Third International. Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.

There is a legend, in our country as well as in China, on the miraculous “Book of the Wise”. When facing great difficulties, one opens it and finds a way out. Leninism is not only a miraculous “book of the wise”, a compass for us Vietnamese revolutionaries and people: it is also the radiant sun illuminating our path to final victory, to socialism and communism.

#UnitedStates #Socialism #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #Vietnam #MarxismLeninism #HoChiMinh

To mark the birthday of Ho Chi Minh, May, 19, 1890, Fight Back is circulating his 1960 article The path which led me to Leninism.

After World War I, I made my living in Paris, now as a retoucher at a photographer’s, now as painter of “Chinese antiquities” (made in France!). I would distribute leaflets denouncing the crimes committed by the French colonialists in Viet Nam.

At that time, I supported the October Revolution only instinctively, not yet grasping all its historic importance. I loved and admired Lenin because he was a great patriot who liberated his compatriots; until then, I had read none of his books.

The reason for my joining the French Socialist Party was that these “ladies and gentlemen” – as I called my comrades at that moment – has shown their sympathy towards me, towards the struggle of the oppressed peoples. But I understood neither what was a party, a trade-union, nor what was socialism nor communism.

Heated discussions were then taking place in the branches of the Socialist Party, about the question whether the Socialist Party should remain in the Second International, should a Second and a half International be founded or should the Socialist Party join Lenin’s Third International? I attended the meetings regularly, twice or thrice a week and attentively listened to the discussion. First, I could not understand thoroughly. Why were the discussions so heated? Either with the Second, Second and a half or Third International, the revolution could be waged. What was the use of arguing then? As for the First International, what had become of it?

What I wanted most to know – and this precisely was not debated in the meetings – was: which International sides with the peoples of colonial countries?

I raised this question – the most important in my opinion – in a meeting. Some comrades answered: It is the Third, not the Second International. And a comrade gave me Lenin’s “Thesis on the national and colonial questions” published by l'Humanite to read.

There were political terms difficult to understand in this thesis. But by dint of reading it again and again, finally I could grasp the main part of it. What emotion, enthusiasm, clear-sightedness and confidence it instilled into me! I was overjoyed to tears. Though sitting alone in my room, I shouted out aloud as if addressing large crowds: “Dear martyrs compatriots! This is what we need, this is the path to our liberation!”

After then, I had entire confidence in Lenin, in the Third International.

Formerly, during the meetings of the Party branch, I only listened to the discussion; I had a vague belief that all were logical, and could not differentiate as to who were right and who were wrong. But from then on, I also plunged into the debates and discussed with fervour. Though I was still lacking French words to express all my thoughts, I smashed the allegations attacking Lenin and the Third International with no less vigour. My only argument was: “If you do not condemn colonialism, if you do not side with the colonial people, what kind of revolution are you waging?”

Not only did I take part in the meetings of my own Party branch, but I also went to other Party branches to lay down “my position”. Now I must tell again that Comrades Marcel Cachin, Vaillant Couturier, Monmousseau and many others helped me to broaden my knowledge. Finally, at the Tours Congress, I voted with them for our joining the Third International.

At first, patriotism, not yet communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin, in the Third International. Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.

There is a legend, in our country as well as in China, on the miraculous “Book of the Wise”. When facing great difficulties, one opens it and finds a way out. Leninism is not only a miraculous “book of the wise”, a compass for us Vietnamese revolutionaries and people: it is also the radiant sun illuminating our path to final victory, to socialism and communism.

#Vietnam #International #AntiwarMovement #OppressedNationalities #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #Antiracism #Socialism #MarxismLeninism #HoChiMinh

45 years ago, on April 30, 1975, the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people came to a successful conclusion: a small and determined country defeated the imperialist goliath, the United States. Ho Chi Minh, an outstanding Marxist-Leninist and the architect of Vietnam’s struggle for national liberation, famously stated, “Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence.” On that spring day, Saigon, the capital of the south, was no more. Ho Chi Minh City was born.

Several weeks earlier, on April 18, the liberation forces in Cambodia defeated the U.S. puppet regime of Lon Nol. Later that year, Laos would gain genuine independence. These combined victories, particularly the win in Vietnam, were events of historic proportions. One U.S. president after another – first Kennedy, then Johnson, and finally Nixon, systematically escalated the war so that by 1969 more than half a million U.S. troops were present. U.S. B-52s carried out ‘carpet bombings’ and by 1974 the U.S. had dropped more bombs that in the entirety of World War II. The entire history of U.S. intervention in Vietnam was nothing short of criminal.

In 1967, the great Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong anticipated Vietnam’s success, stating, “Your victory manifests once again that a nation, big or small, can defeat any enemy, however powerful provided only that it fully mobilizes its people, relies firmly on the people, and wages a people’s war. By their war against U.S. aggression and for national salvation under the wise and able leadership of the great leader President Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese people have set a brilliant example for the oppressed peoples and oppressed nations the world over in their struggle for liberation.” And that was exactly what happened.

There are other factors that contributed to Vietnam’s victory. The socialist countries provided real assistance. The weapons and personnel sent by People’s China, the Soviet Union, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and others helped. So did the solidarity expressed by people all over the world.

In the United States, the leading section of the anti-war movement was in fact in solidarity with Vietnam and the valiant National Liberation Front (NLF). Hundreds of thousands of students and youth supported the slogan, “Victory to the NLF,” and NLF flags were everywhere. There are some who want to sanitize history and forget the fact that one of the main chants at anti-war demonstrations was, “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is sure to win.” Among U.S. troops in Vietnam, a wave of resistance grew. While it was not decisive, this mosaic of resistance and solidarity – worldwide – helped the Vietnamese achieve victory.

Revolutionaries in the U.S. owe the peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos a debt of gratitude. Their struggle for national liberation helped to create a new communist movement in U.S. The example of Vietnam, the rising power of national liberation movements, and the example of socialist countries like People’s China had a profound effect on the student, anti-war, Black, Chicano, Asian American and other oppressed nationality movements. There was wave of activists who wanted to bring down U.S. imperialism and who decided to take up Marxism-Leninism. The result was the creation of serious revolutionary organizations like the League of Revolutionary Struggle, the Revolutionary Union, October League, Black Workers Congress and so many others. Today, Freedom Road Socialist Organization is carrying forward the best aspects of the new communist movement. Proudly, and without apologies.

Reflecting on the struggle of the Vietnamese people, there are real lessons for us today. We need to be working class internationalists. We live in a country ruled by a clique of monopoly capitalists that still command an empire. Whatever weakens that empire is good for all working and oppressed people, and that includes people right here at home. The Communist Party of the Philippines is waging a people’s war against the U.S.-backed regime of President Duterte. In the Middle East, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is helping to spearhead the fight to end the Israeli/U.S. occupation. From Syria to Venezuela, efforts are underway to break the chains of imperialism.

45 years ago, Vietnam showed the world what was possible and it is important to remember that today. Trump and his corporate backers are doomed. Capitalism is a failed system.

It is like Mao said about the U.S. in the 1960s, “However, all reactionary forces on the verge of extinction invariably conduct desperate struggles. They are bound to resort to military adventure and political deception in all their forms in order to save themselves from extinction. And the revolutionary peoples are bound to meet with all kinds of difficulties before final victory. Nevertheless, all these difficulties can be surmounted, and no difficulty can ever obstruct the advance of the revolutionary people. Perseverance means victory.”

#Vietnam #AntiwarMovement #Imperialism #PeoplesStruggles #US #HoChiMinh #Asia

Minneapolis, MN – On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon, elected on promises to end the war in Vietnam, instead announced U.S. ground troops would invade neighboring Cambodia to prevent another Tet Offensive.

In a televised speech, Nixon seemed to acknowledge there would be mass opposition. He pronounced, “It is tempting to take the easy political path, to blame this war on previous administrations, and to bring all of our men home immediately – regardless of the consequences, even though that would mean defeat for the United States.” Within hours, the U.S. anti-war movement, enraged, was demanding exactly that: the defeat of U.S. imperialism and victory to the people it targeted.

What followed was an unprecedented, though largely forgotten, revolutionary moment in U.S. history. Over two weeks, millions of people walked out of classrooms, blocked highways, and in dozens of cities set fire to military recruitment centers. Panicking officials deployed National Guard soldiers to college campuses across the country, leading to the events for which the period is most remembered: the shootings of student protesters at the universities of Kent State in Ohio and Mississippi’s Jackson State.

The rapidly deteriorating situation forced Nixon to backpedal. U.S. troops mostly withdrew from Cambodia within 90 days without achieving their main objective. Within U.S. borders, the violent repression of the movement of May 1970 triggered a struggle over the legacy of the movement and the war itself.

Kent State shootings

By May 2, protesters had set fire to the ROTC office at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. At the behest of university and local officials, Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes ordered the National Guard onto campus, declaring on television, “I think that we're up against the strongest well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.”

On May 4, with tear gas failing to quash large daily demonstrations, the National Guard opened fire on a crowd of protesters with live ammunition, killing four students: Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison B. Krause, William Knox Schroeder and Sandra Lee Scheurer. Nine more were injured, with one paralyzed permanently. The dead were all aged 19 or 20 years old.

The National Guard retreated from campus. But the shootings quickly sent a shockwave through the country.

Following Kent State’s lead, repression expanded nationwide in the following days. Police wounded a dozen protesters at the State University of New York at Buffalo with shotgun fire. National Guard troops attached bayonets to their rifles before charging demonstrators in both Albuquerque, New Mexico and Carbondale, Illinois. In Madison, Wisconsin, guardsmen indiscriminately fired tear gas into student housing blocks.

“It was a full-scale uprising against the war,” says Fight Back! editor Mick Kelly, whose participation in the May 1970 movement as a youth started him on the revolutionary path. He explains it wasn’t only students walking out: thousands of faculty effectively went on strike. Many universities closed for the remainder of the year. On May 8, 100,000 protesters descended on Washington, D.C., at one point forcing Nixon to flee to Camp David, with the 82nd Airborne Division reportedly prepared to deploy in the city. In the streets of New York, huge groups of anti-war demonstrators brawled with mobs of bootlicking pro-war strikebreakers.

The movement weakened the U.S. war effort itself. Thousands of drafted soldiers deserted. Many more began to engage in sabotage and covert disobedience, a trend which would continue through the remaining years of the war.

Black liberation alongside anti-imperialism

Previously, the state had reserved deadly force for repressing uprisings in the Black community – repression which many connected to the plight of the Vietnamese.

“There’s a misunderstanding about the character of the core of the anti-war movement. People weren’t pacifists or ‘Let’s get out of Vietnam’ types,” explains Kelly. “You weren’t chanting, ‘Peace now’, you were chanting ‘Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is sure to win.’” The NLF was the National Liberation Front – the so-called ‘Viet Cong.’

“It was a near revolutionary period,” he says. “You had a powerful Black liberation movement in the streets, everywhere. There’d be people selling the Black Panther Party newspaper. The movement clearly understood that to eliminate war, American imperialism had to be eliminated. It was real solidarity with Vietnam.”

The campus protesters and the Black liberation movement converged in Augusta, Georgia, where police recently had murdered Black teenager Charles Oatman. On May 11, thousands of Black residents rose up. Police responded with shoot-to-kill orders, murdering Charlie Mack Murphy, age 39; William Wright, Jr, 18; Sammy McCullough, 20; John Stokes, 19; John Bennett, 28; and Mack Wilson, 45. At least another 60 were wounded.

Just days later, on the night of May 14, another massacre took place, this time at Jackson State University, a historically Black institution in Jackson, Mississippi. Student protesters blocking roads in the city were attacked by dozens of state troopers, who then advanced upon a dormitory. The officers opened fire for nearly a full minute. Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, age 21 and James Earl Green, 17, were killed; 12 others were wounded.

Struggle over the memory

“Almost immediately after the events, there were those of us in the anti-war movement who raised the slogan, ‘Avenge Kent State and Jackson State,’” Kelly recounts.

Colt Hutchinson is a current student at Kent State University, where his Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter has been organizing around the 50th anniversary of the shootings.

“The university issued a ‘letter of regret.’ It was a very formal letter. But they never admitted that they were the cause of it,” he tells Fight Back!.

Hutchinson explains that the Kent State administration hosted watered-down commemorations on the anniversaries of the shootings. Then, in 1975, the university decided five years was enough. It fell on the students to form a May 4 commemoration task force.

The next year, Kent State decided to erase any physical trace of the shootings from the university. Administrators moved forward with plans to build a gymnasium on the commons where the Guardsmen had opened fire.

A May 4th Coalition led a national convergence on the Kent State campus to fight to preserve the memory of the killings. “It was a major battle, and it was an important battle, because it represented an attempt – by us and by the enemy – to sum up the war and the whole period,” explains Kelly, who was active in one of the groups that led the fight, the Revolutionary Student Brigades. “It involved an attempt by the university administration and the government to basically sweep Vietnam and the subsequent uprising under the rug.”

Once again Kent State became a protest battlefield, complete with National Guard deployment and tear gas. “The gym ultimately was built,” Kelly recalls. “But the memory of Kent State and Jackson State was kept alive.”

Kim DeFranco is a Class of 1988 graduate of Kent State. She recounts a similar attitude from the university at that time.

“The administration hated the attention the shootings brought upon the university. After the shootings and as time passed, little by little they put more focus on becoming a business university rather than a ‘liberal’ one.” she explains.

When the university announced that a memorial for the Vietnam War would omit the four slain on campus in 1970, the student task force mobilized. This culminated in a 1990 conference organized by DeFranco’s group, Progressive Student Network, for the 20th anniversary of May 4. Its theme was “Learning from the Past, Building for the Future.” Black Panther Party members and former SDSers spoke at the event.

“It was important because it also highlighted the killings at Jackson State ten days after Kent State. This was a time when that tragedy was mostly ignored by the media and society, because it happened at a predominantly Black college in the South,” she says.

Thirty years later, Kent State students like Hutchinson were prepared to lead the 50th anniversary this year. But after 45 years of near silence, the university administration suddenly announced that it planned to take over the proceedings.

Hutchinson says students were shocked when they saw the administration’s official commemoration program. “It didn’t represent the student’s interests. It didn’t reflect the radical history of Kent State activism,” he says. “So we’ve initiated a campaign to demand the university give May 4th back to the students.”

What do the students demand? Hutchinson explains: “The university was involved in war research. The ROTC program was producing second lieutenants for Vietnam. The university is still doing that. ROTC is still on campus. We still have the Liquid Crystal Institute, which takes in millions in Department of Defense funding. If they actually wanted to commemorate the death of these four students, they could radically change the university. But that’s not what they’re interested in.”

Turning the tide of history

Along with the Chicano Moratorium protests that August, the events of May 1970 were the nail in the coffin for Nixon’s political efforts to continue the war. The U.S embassy was evacuated exactly five years after Nixon announced the war’s escalation. He failed to avoid the defeat he had feared. The U.S. occupation was routed, humiliated.

“The events of 1970 will in a sense live forever as a profoundly inspiring moment in American history. It was a period when millions stood up, indeed rose up, against an imperialist war on Vietnam and oppressed people everywhere. Doing so helped to turn the tide of history,” Kelly concludes. “The combined power of those two movements got the Americans out of Vietnam. Principally it was the Vietnamese, but they maintain that what was happening here helped. It was amazingly successful.”

He says it can teach the movement nowadays a lesson: “The anti-war movement needs anti-imperialists. It needs people who are opposed to the system of empire and can identify with others who are oppressed by it – and support them politically.”

Kent State SDS is holding an online forum to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the events of May 1970. It will be streamable on the group’s Facebook page on May 3, from 3 p.m. Eastern Time.

#MinneapolisMN #International #AntiwarMovement #StudentMovement #SDS #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #Vietnam #ohio #KentState #KentStateMassacre

Fight Back News Service is circulating this important speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was delivered at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church — the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate — leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years — especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, “Aren't you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission — a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.” This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men — for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the “Vietcong” or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators — our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change — especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy — and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us — not their fellow Vietnamese —the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go — primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one “Vietcong”-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them — mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force — the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on — save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front — that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the north” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them — the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.

Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War

Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisers” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept — so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force — has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on...” We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world — a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated: Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth and falsehood, For the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, Off'ring each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet 'tis truth alone is strong; Though her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong: Yet that scaffold sways the future, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

#NewYorkNY #AntiwarMovement #InJusticeSystem #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #DrMartinLutherKingJr #Vietnam #Socialism

Describing General Giap as a “warrior of the twentieth century, architect of the future,” the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) stated, “Japan, France and the United States, three of the strongest powers in human history, fell successively, humiliated before his military and political genius.”

A statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said “Giap was the first military commander to defeat a Western colonial power in Asia, and his legacy is renowned not only by the Vietnamese people but by all peoples around the world and all movements for liberation from colonialism and imperialism.”

The Communist Party of the Philippines, summed up some of the lessons of Giap’s efforts, stating, “Comrade Giap led the Vietnamese People’s Army in the historic Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the center of French military power in Indochina. Here, the Vietnamese people demonstrated how they could defeat a more modern army through the use of guerrilla tactics. They marched in their thousands to build hidden trails, dug hundreds of kilometers of trenches, dismantled their cannons and artillery and manually pulled them up to high mountain ridges in order to quietly encircle the overly confident French troops. They launched a blitzkrieg attack against the French military base and after 55 days of fighting, forced the complete surrender of the French colonialists on May 7, 1954.”

The Communist Party of the Philippines also stated, “The lessons of the Vietnamese people’s war of resistance continue to illumine people’s wars around the world, including that being waged by the Filipino people through the New People’s Army. The military writings of Comrade Giap, especially in waging guerrilla warfare, have been translated into Pilipino and other local languages, enabling Filipino revolutionaries to study the lessons of the people’s war in Vietnam.”

#MinneapolisMN #PopularFrontForTheLiberationOfPalestine #Remembrances #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #RevolutionaryArmedForcesOfColombia #Vietnam #Japan #USImperialism #France #GeneralVoNguyenGiap

We, the International League of Peoples' Struggle, solemnly honor and render our highest respects to the immortal General Vo Nguyen Giap upon his passing away on 4 October. He was a close comrade in arms of the great Ho Chi Minh and outstanding hero, leader and commander of the Vietnamese people's revolutionary struggles for national liberation against Japanese, French and US imperialism.

He was born to a peasant family in 1911 but he was able to go to school. In 1922 he joined the anti-colonial student movement. After graduating with high honors from the university,he became a teacher and journalist noted for his patriotic and progressive views. In 1933 he became a member of the Communist Party of Indochina and soon a member of the leading core under the direction of Ho Chi Minh.

He founded and led the Vietnam People's Army under the leadership of the Communist Party. He adopted and developed the strategic line of people's war against the foreign aggressors and occupiers of his country. He built the people's army as the politico-military weapon of the Vietnamese people in order to achieve brilliant victories against the enemy.

In late 1941, he formed the first guerrilla groups in the mountains of Vietnam. He made an alliance with the armed formation of a national minority in northeastern Vietnam. By mid-1945 he had some 10,000 fighters under his command and carried out an offensive against the Japanese invaders. Thus, the way was made for the Viet Minh to undertake the August Revolution on a nationwide scale, compelling Emperor Bao Dai to abdicate on 25 August and proceeding to the proclamation of Vietnam's independence on 2 September 1945.

He directed the people's war that brought utter defeat to the French colonial army at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. He mustered 100,000 fighters and another 100,000 workers (many of them women) to encircle and gain vantage points against the enemy. The heroic people's army and the people struggling for national and social liberation under the leadership of the Communist Party inflicted heavy losses on the enemy forces and compelled them to surrender.

The brilliance of Vo Nguyen Giap as a strategist of protracted people's war came to the fore by reflecting and availing of the revolutionary determination and courage of the Vietnamese people against the US war of aggression from the 1960s to 1972. He and his people were not cowed by the US which had become the strongest imperialist power in the course of World War II. They fought even harder and more effectively even as US imperialism barbarically used weapons of mass destruction.

The US killed one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians, who constituted a large percentage of the Vietnamese population then. This is reminiscent of the US butchery in the killing of 1.5 million Filipinos from 1899 to 1913, and more than 3 million Koreans from 1951 to 1953. To this day, the Vietnamese people continue to suffer from the chemical warfare waged by the US, which poured millions of liters of Agent Orange on Vietnam.

As the US war of aggression went on, the people of the world, including the American people, were outraged by the barbarism of US military forces and were inspired by the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people. The anti-imperialist and democratic movement expanded and intensified on a global scale. The US started to sue for peace in 1969 and withdrew from Vietnam under the Paris Peace Accord of 1972, after the death of 58,226 US troops and many more wounded.

US imperialism accepted defeat as it was faced with the prospect of losing more troops and financial resources at a faster rate and as the American people and the people of the world condemned the war of aggression on an ever widening scale. The people of an underdevelopedcountry and victims of aggression achieved a resounding victory over US imperialism.

Since then, the defeat of US imperialism in Vietnam has served to show the limits of US economic and military power and has inspired the oppressed peoples and nations of the world to persevere and intensify their struggle for national and social liberation. All peoples of the world emulate the heroic example and indomitable spirit of the immortal General Vo Nguyen Giap in fighting for national independence, democracy, socialism, international solidarity and peace.

#Vietnam #ILPS #USImperialism #GeneralVoNguyenGiap #VoNguyenGiap #InternationalLeagueOfPeoplesStruggle

August 29, 2010, marks the 40th anniversary of the historic Chicano Moratorium protest against the Vietnam War. On Aug. 29, 1970 over 30,000 Chicanos marched down Whittier Boulevard in the heart of East Los Angeles protesting the Vietnam War, the high casualty rate of Chicano soldiers and racist conditions in the barrios. The participants included youth and families of a mainly working class community with delegations from throughout the Southwest. The marchers chanted “¡Raza Si, Guerra No!” inspired by the call for Chicano self-determination and opposition to the imperialist U.S. war in Vietnam. Many Chicano youth had been drafted into the military after being pushed out of high school. The Chicano Movement was on the rise after several years of mass actions like the East Los Angeles high-school walkouts of 1968, land struggles in New Mexico, strikes by the United Farm Workers union, and the growth of new Chicano groups like the Brown Berets and MEChA (Movemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Atzlan, a Chicano Student Movement of the Southwest).

The mass rally held at Laguna Park by the Chicano Moratorium was brutally attacked by the combined forces of the Los Angeles city police and the Los Angeles county sheriffs. Whole families were beaten and tear gassed. Youth responded by defending the rally with their bare hands against the police. A rebellion followed for the entire day, where later Ruben Salazar, a Los Angeles Times journalist and Spanish TV news director, was killed by a sheriff at the Silver Dollar. He was shot in the head with a tear gas missile projectile normally used for barricaded situations.

It is important to commemorate the Chicano Moratorium because it is part of our history of resistance that is not always taught in history classes. This event is also part of the long struggle of Chicanos for self-determination and liberation. Today it is important to continue the fight against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and to protest the military recruitment targeting Chicanos and especially immigrant youth.

Jose Gutierrez was the first U.S. Marine killed in Iraq. He came from Guatemala to Los Angeles and then joined the Marines at age 17 even though he had no papers. Gutierrez is an example of how U.S. intervention and support for Central American militaries trained at the School of the Americas that massacred over 200,000 Guatemalans has driven people to the United States. U.S.-sponsored counter-insurgency and counter-revolutions in El Salvador and Nicaragua are other examples. The U.S. supports U.S. business interests and brutal military regimes that attack popular movements and democratic or socialist governments. This causes war, poverty, displacement and mass migration to the United States.

NAFTA is an example of how U.S. policy has caused mass unemployment and poverty in Mexico, forcing millions to come to work in the U.S. and live in horrible conditions. Today these immigrants are facing growing numbers of deportations, expanded use of local police to track down the undocumented and racist laws such as Arizona’s SB1070. The mass migration of Mexicans and Central Americans to the U.S. has led to the strengthening of the Chicano/Mexican communities and to the growth of a strong mass movement for immigrant rights. Our fight for legalization and is part of our historical struggle for equality and self-determination and liberation of Chicanos/Mexicans.

This is why we continue our struggle today against U.S. wars and interventions like in Colombia, and Plan Merida in Mexico. Also we must support movements and governments that are independent and oppose U.S. power, like those in Bolivia and Venezuela.

We make a call for principled unity to the community and all the organizations organizing for the Chicano Moratorium, to continue the struggle for Chicano self-determination. In addition to the the 1970 slogan of “¡Raza si, guerra no!” we now add “¡Raza si, Migra no!” and “¡Aquí estamos, y no nos vamos!”

This year’s march and rally is organized by several groups and will take place on Saturday, Aug. 28. The march will start at 10:00 am at Belvedere Park (1st Street and Mednick) and go to Salazar Park (3864 Whittier Boulevard) for a rally. For more information call 213-712-0370.

#EastLosAngelesCA #LosAngelesCA #ChicanoLatino #ChicanoMoratorium #Vietnam