ATLANTA, Ga. (LNS)—Anti-war GIs from around the country got together here over Memorial Day weekend to discuss ways of increasing nationwide cooperation in their struggle against the military machine.
Out of the conference came the GI Alliance, a national clearinghouse which is being set up in Washington, D.C., to provide GI organizations with support services—information, financial and legal assistance, material for political education—and to help coordinate activities and communications among various GI groups.
The GI activists came to the conference elated over their success in-forcing the military to close down its Armed Forces Day celebrations at 23 military installations two weeks earlier. The Armed Forces Day activities marked a new level of national coordination for the GI movement, involving soldiers from most major military installations across the country.
The anti-war GIs also share a bond of heavy repression from the military, and from cooperating civilian law enforcers. Rebellious soldiers—soldiers who refuse to be used to put down Vietnamese, ghetto communities, postal workers, or Kent State students—pose a special threat to a system which rests, when push comes to shove, on military dominance.
So the rebellious soldier receives particularly intensive repression. Soldiers are jailed or sent to Vietnam for passing out literature every day.
In just the past four months, the GI coffee house at Fort Dix has been bombed with a military-type device and four people injured; members of Movement for a Democratic Military in California have been machine-gunned; the Klan has taken potshots at Fort Hood GIs on their way to an anti-war rally; the Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina, used by Ft. Bragg GIs, was bombed; police have threatened and jailed GI organizers in numerous projects across the country; the operators of the UFO coffeehouse in Columbia, South Carolina were given six-year sentences for operating a “common and public nuisance.”
But the repression doesn’t seem to be doing the job. The conference brought together representatives from about 30 bases across the country—from Fort Benning, Georgia, to Fort Lewis, Washington; from Fort Devins, Massachusetts, to Camp Pendleton, California.
The GIs called for a Summer Offensive of GIs against the military in which local GI organizations will plan actions suited to their-particular situation, while working to build cooperation towards a unified GI movement. The alliance called for five regional GI meetings in June to coordinate actions and discuss mutual problems.
The GI Alliance urgently needs funds. You can reach them at P.O. Box 9087, Washington, D.C., 20003. Telephone (202) 544-1654.
Related
See Fifth Estate’s Vietnam Resource Page.