Veterans and the Future of the Peace Movement

[Today, I attended a day-long Conference on the Veterans Peace Movement. Activist from vets groups, military families and other sections of the anti-war/peace movement gathered as part of an ongoing process of  brainstorming directions for the movement in the coming period. The excellent short speech posted here concisely lays out the magnitude of the challenges facing that movement.]

Ben Chitty (left) with Dayl Wise

Veterans & the Politics of Peace

by Ben Chitty

What do you think "veterans against war" or "veterans for peace" really mean? Seems like it should be simple, but it’s not. When David Cline, Clarence Fitch, and Mike Gold revived the NYC metro area chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in the 1980s, people used to ask, "What war?" or "Why not just 'Vietnam Veterans Against War'?"

You can slice and dice the concepts "veteran against war" or "veteran for peace" in many ways. Here’s one approach. You start by asking where you want to go and what that will take – what would it take to stop this war, whatever war that happens to be; what would it take to stop our own wars, the wars our country fights; what would it take to stop all war, to make war obsolete. You can say it in positive terms: make peace with our enemy; make war our last national policy option; make over our society to eliminate the causes of war -- end oppression and exploitation, so that war can be abolished. That’s a tall order. But look around you -- you can spot someone at almost every point on this spectrum. And every one you see -- every one of us -- is against war and for peace.

I do not have to tell you how many ways you can become sick of war. Brutality, hypocrisy, impunity. Misogyny and homophobia. Bad medicine, environmental degradation. Killing poor people to protect the rich, or people of color to preserve white skin privilege. The military industrial complex, which must be the most wasteful economic engine ever built. Add up the cost of the military, calculate how many schools could be built, or bridges repaired, or superfund sites cleaned up, for the price of one aircraft carrier -- about $13.6 billion dollars for the USS Gerald Ford, now scheduled to float out of dry dock next November -- that’s almost a full year’s budget for the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation combined.

So, what about stopping one particular war? Actually, we have no idea.

To begin with, it's hard even to imagine stopping a war before it starts. Many, maybe even most, Americans opposed the Spanish-American War and the annexation of the Philippines, the first World War, the first Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq. All these wars started anyway. So much for democracy.

Some wars don’t stop until someone wins. As long as you believe you’re winning, you won’t be much interested in stopping the war. Stalemates are different. There are two key questions. Can one side

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NJ's People's Organization for Progress says "Afghan War Must End!"

UPDATED, Dec. 3—

Thanks to FotM reader, "Nat" who alerts us that POP's Plainfield Branch also held a demonstration against expanding the war in Afghanistan this past Saturday during their regular monthly picket of the so-called Army Career Center on Front Street. Tip o' the hat to Steve and the whole Plainfield Branch. Oh, and apologies for not including the Plainfield demonstration in this report (also included in this update is the link to December 3rd's Amsterdam News article about the POP demonstration…

Throughout its more than 25 years of defending our right to education, quality healthcare, peace in the streets and against police brutality, racism, sexual oppression and many other scourges on our community, the People's Organization for Progress has not been the kind of organization that waits to react to these attacks. When it became clear this past week that the federal government would use the goodwill of the Thanksgiving Holiday to launch the military's expanded attack on the Afghan people, it was imperative to call an emergency demonstration before these new deprecations become a fact.

"Money for Education, Not for War! Money for Healthcare, Not for War!" and "Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan… No More War!" POP members and supporters chanted as they picketed at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets in downtown Newark. "The US ambassador in Kabul reported that this war isn't winnable, that the government the Bush Administration put in place is corrupt. That Hamid Karzai's government is spending US tax dollars defending his brother's heroin business. We need that money in this country for schools and hospitals, for education and healthcare, not Ahmed Wali Karzai's poppy crop," Larry Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress told the crowd.

While the POP picket began with the usual 10-30 dedicated members who arrived earlier than the scheduled 12-noon starting time, the crowd quickly expanded as Broad Street shoppers picked up U.S. Out Of Afghanistan or Bring The Troops Home NOW! picket-cards and joined in, before going on with their Saturday activities.

Thanks to the creative influence of people who joined the picket, POP's signature rhythmic chants expanded to include references to Pakistan as well. In a brief address to those assembled, Larry Hamm had elucidated how a secret war was already sending robot drone-bombers across the border in Pakistan. To "older-heads" in the crowd this brought back memories of bombing raids on Cambodia and Laos, thirty years earlier. One Korean War veteran commented that "military plans don't get changed by the President's good intentions. The best guy may be in the White House, but the brass is supposed to take orders from their Commander-in-Chief, not the other way round…"

The New York Amsterdam News was unique among the print media in reporting on anti-war sentiment in the Black community. See Americans protest Afghanistan troop buildup for their report coverage, including POP's picketline this past Saturday.

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Remembering Gideon Rosenbluth

I spent a good chunk of yesterday at a memorial celebration for a great comrade, Gideon Rosenbluth, who died last fall. 80 people--family, neighbors, fellow union members and veterans, and, in large numbers, those who had been his comrades in the '70s and '80s--gathered to remember him.

Rather than starting this post at the obvious place, by reprinting the short review of Gideon's life from the memorial flier everyone present was given, I want to reprint the moving message Michael McPhearson, the executive director of Veterans For Peace, sent from St. Louis. His message cites the connection between Gideon and another comrade who died last year, Dave Cline, whose life Fire on the Mountain has posted about extensively, starting here.

Michael's words also contain a profound and sorrowful insight, which I have taken the liberty of highlighting in boldface, because they resonate so strongly with me:

I last spoke to Gideon Rosenbluth sometime ago after he left NYC. He was in good spirits and wanted to know what was happening nationally. He asked me about VFP vets in Kentucky and if they were active. We talked for a while. Before I hung up I promised to call him back and said I hoped to see him in the near future. Unfortunately, we never talked again.

Gideon was one of the first veterans I met when I joined Veterans For Peace. He, with a handful of others, was the first WWII vet outside of my uncle with whom I really had a chance to sit and talk. I met him during one of the NYC veteran meetings. I was impressed with his sharpness and fierce resistance to the hypocritical and immoral actions of our government. At the time he was also on the VFP board. I was recently reading past VFP board minutes and guess who nominated David Cline for VFP Board of Directors President on January 13, 2002 in Saint Louis ? That’s right, Gideon.

Gideon’s death is very sad for me because I wanted to know this great man better, but the demands of the struggle against this war have taken over all of our lives, and at the time his as well. Ironically the war has brought people together who would have never know each other, like me and Gideon. Then it steals our time and emotions from us so that we cannot fully enjoy life with each other. Gideon is a comrade VFP will sorely miss and one we are all happy and lucky to have known.

Thank you Gideon from everyone in VFP and especially from those who had the honor to serve with you.

Michael T. McPhearson
Veterans For Peace
Executive Director

What follows is a brief outline of Gideon's life, in the form it was given out at the celebration. A slideshow by his nephew and testimony from many who knew him put flesh on these bare bones and conjured up the Gideon we know and loved. Some of us want to try and set up a permanent website where all of this material and more can be available to those who knew him and to the many more who might benefit from the lessons his life story holds.

Gideon
1919-2007

Gideon Irving Rosenbluth

Born to a working class family in 1919, Gideon grew up poor in a Jewish neighborhood in New York, as it was rocked by the Great Depression. His family, his community and the broader world became a school where he learned that survival required struggle and class solidarity.

Gideon enlisted in the Army right after Pearl Harbor in 1941. He served in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany, and was demobilized as T-5 (sergeant) in 1945.

After the war, Gideon became a garment worker. He worked in the needle trades for 35 years, and was an active rank and filer in his union, District 65. When he felt the union leadership was wrong, Gideon was not one to bite his tongue. Even after he retired in the 1980’s and District 65 was merged into the United Auto Workers, Gideon served for years as President of UAW Local 2179 Retirees.

Gideon also became active around veteran's issues at the war's end, joining the battle in NYC for housing for married vets. (He and his wife Phyllis needed it, for themselves and their daughter Karen Eve Pass.) This was another struggle he stuck with for the rest of his life. He was active in supporting Veterans from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, protested the Vietnam War as a veteran, and became a core member of Chapter 34 of Veterans For Peace, becoming especially active after the invasion of Iraq.

Gideon Rosenbluth was, and remained to his death, a revolutionary, convinced that a better world is possible and determined to help bring that world into being. Those who came to know him over the last two or three decades of his life were always surprised to hear how old he really was. His verve, his sense of humor, his appetite for living and for struggling, kept him in the thick of things until close to the end.

He is missed...

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Dave Cline Is Dead

Dave Cline died last night at his home in Jersey City, NJ.

In one sense it comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked closely with Dave in recent years. He had lived for two decades with a severely compromised immune system and had recently been battling both Hepatitis C and the Veterans Administration health care system, which did a shitty job of treating it.

Stan Goff reached me first with the news, crying at the loss. I have been surrounded by death recently--Stans's call came while I was sitting in a memorial service for an old friend, longtime fighter for socialism and Black liberation Vicki Garvin.

The news hasn't really sunk in yet, and I have no idea how it will hit when it does, or how hard.

But I do want to say a few things right now to set some context for what will surely be a great outpouring of sorrow and memory in weeks to come.

Dave Cline will someday, in a better world, stand recognized as one of the great figures in the history of the United States since the Second World War. After a tour in Vietnam as a grunt, where he was shot and shot at others, he returned to become an early member and leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Through tireless organizing and dramatic events like Operation Dewey Canyon III, where hundreds of vets threw their medals on the Capitol steps, and the Winter Soldier Hearings into war crimes committed during the occupation of Vietnam, VVAW did much to finally doom the U.S. government's murderous assault on the heroic people of Vietnam.

I have here on my desk a 1969 flier from SDS (the original one, not version 2.0) on the GI Revolt. It's an interview with Dave and another vet, fresh out of uniform and into the anti-war struggle. I am reminded by it to recommend that everyone reading this check out the recent documentary "Sir, No Sir!" Dave is featured in it as a young vet and as a present-day fighter against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

And this last role is where Dave truly became great. He stayed active in VVAW right up to the present day, but also joined another organization called Veterans For Peace, which united vets from all eras in an essentially pacifist oppostion to war, military recruitng, US aggression abroad and the neglect of those who had served in the armed forces.

Dave Cline was in his first term as president of Vets For Peace when the attack on the World Trade Center took place. He helped guide the small group through a period of war fever and jingoism in this country and growing concern as the Bush/Cheney regime prepared to attack Iraq--and did. Dave presided over the rapid, severalfold growth of VFP and its conversion into a dynamic and leading force against the war. He helped forge a tight alliance with Military Families Speak Out and birth the Bring Them Home Now! campaign. The handful of young men and women just back from Iraq who initiated Iraq Veterans Against the War consulted with Dave on a near-daily basis and grew to become the most dynamic element in the alliance.

This alliance has played the role of spearhead in the movement to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home now. Without a sharp point, capable of cutting through defenses, a spear is just a fat stick, but without the weight of the spear, the whole anti-war movement, behind it, the spearhead lacks real momentum. Just weeks ago I was discussing with him the role this force could play in the Iraq Moratorium project.

Dave was the leader of this informal but vital alliance of forces with roots in the "military community" or, it would be more accurate to say, he gave it leadership. He could play this role because of his long experience, and because of how he had summed up and internalized that esxperience. That was in no small part a matter of style. Dave could be contentious but he had also become genuinely humble and thoughtful, always trying to avoid repeating mistakes he had made earlier in the struggle and also to help others avoid those mistakes or sum them up quickly and move on.

One instance where the breadth of his contribution can be seen most clearly is in the historic "Walkin' To New Orleans" march of veterans and survivors of Hurricane Katrina from Mobile to New Orleans last year on the fourth anniversary of the invasion. The conception of the march, linking the horrors of the war with the horrors of Katrina and concretely working to bring the struggle of Black people in the South closer to heart of the anti-war movement--that was Dave's. And, with Stan Goff and a handful of others, he saw to the planning and execution of the march as well.

Hell, there's so much more I could say about Dave, now the floodgates are open, about his revolutionary stance until the day he died, of the arrogance of the young Dave and the kindness of the older one, concerning the drinking and the clay feet, about the music.

But I will close by underlining my basic point: Dave Cline made a substantial difference in the world. He did it by struggling against oppression and militarism; he did it by drawing lessons from earlier battles and by living those lessons, so he, and all who worked with him, could fight better in the new struggles history presented us with.

Call it wisdom. Call it leadership. We have suffered a great loss, and those who feel that loss are just going to have to step up and try to fill the hole.

 
[UPDATE: More Dave Cline memories:

Remembering Dave Cline, Part 2 (a moving tribute by Nancy and Charlie Richardson of Military Families Speak Out)

Dave Cline, Part 3: The First Memorial

Dave Cline, Part 4: Goodbye, Bro... ( a short talk by Dave in NOLA, more memories and some links)

Fire on the Mountain also carried a series of four articles on Dave's activism as a militant labor rank and filer, especially in the major wildcat strike in The NJ Bulk Mail Center of the US Postal Service in 1978. The first, Dave Cline: Rank & File Rebel, Introduction, contains links to the other three parts.]

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Bill Davis, ¡Presente! [Updated]

Memorial Day, Chicago, 2006

Too much death. I just yesterday posted an announcement of Vicki Garvin's memorial service in NYC, Saturday week. Now comes the bad news about Bill Davis, a guy I've known since the '70s. My bud Sully from Chicago had hipped me the day he was suddenly rushed to the hospital last week, with a weird lung infection--he was slapped on a ventilator and they tried to stabilize him for an emergency lung transplant. Yesterday he died.

I saw Bill just two months ago as he escorted a delegation of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange, on a tour sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans For Peace, to the UFPJ national assembly in Chicago. We barely got to speak.

As in the cases of Vicki and Gideon Rosenbluth, I can't get myself focused to assemble the tribute Bill deserves, but I am certain others who knew him better and and are better writers will, and I will link to them here.

In some ways, Bill's death hits hardest, because unlike Gideon and Vicki he was my age, pushing 60. When Vicki and Gideon died, some of us who had known them since we were in our 20s shared the grim jest that now we are becoming, by attrition, what they had been for us--elders. That's a hard enough prospect to come to grips with, without Bill's reminding us that one of the things that elders do is die.

Still, it is not his death that I will be thinking on in coming days, but his life. A Vietnam vet, he became part of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the spearhead of the anti-war movement that did so much to end the US occupation of the South of Vietnam. He spent his life thereafter building and supporting a whole range of struggles. He was a union activist and eventually local president of Auto Mechanics Union Local 701 in Chicago, and never ceased to play a central role in VVAW and veterans organizing. When the rulers of this country chose to use 9/11 as an excuse for unjustifiable, criminal--and doomed--acts of imperial aggression, he spoke out loud and clear, drawing on his own life experience to mobilize protest.

As with Bill, so with his wife Joan, who I hope will derive some comfort from the outpouring of love and respect for Bill I expect in coming days. Last year, when the new SDS held its inaugural convention in Chicago, and some impoverished student types I know wanted to go but couldn't afford accommodations, I called Bill and Joan with little notice. No problem.

All of those who came forward and fought for another world in the upsurges of the '60s and '70s and still hold the values of those days I count as my sisters and brothers, but there should be a special place in all of our hearts for people, like Bill Davis, who never ceased to build resistance and struggle.

Veterans Day, Chicago, 1977

UPDATE:

Vietnam Veterans Against the War has put up a memorial guestbook at the VVAW website. Those who knew Bill, in particular, should go and put down a word or two in his memory.

UPDATE 2:

The Chicago Sun-Times today, Sunday, September 9, carried a very positive and moving obituary for Bill.

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