From The Living Archives Of Boston Veterans For Peace-They Ain't
Your Grandfather's Veterans- A Few Notes For The General Meeting On The Poor
Peoples Campaign Of 1968 As Food For Thought As We Prepare From The Second And
Hopefully Final Campaign in 2018
[Ralph Morris who has lived in Troy, New York most of his life,
been raised there and raised his own family there, went to war, the bloody,
horrendous Vietnam War which he has made plain many times he will never live
down, never get over what he did, what he saw others do, and most importantly
for the long haul, what his evil government did with no remorse to people in
that benighted country with whom he had no quarrel never was much for
organizations, joining organizations when he was young until he came up a group
formed in the fire of the Vietnam War protests -Vietnam Veteran Against the War
(VVAW) which he joined after watching a contingent of them pass by in silent
march protesting the war in downtown Albany one fall afternoon. Somebody in
that contingent with a microphone called out to any veterans observing the
march who had had enough of war, had felt like that did to “fall in” (an old
army term well if bitterly remembered). He did and has never looked back
although for the past many years his affiliation has been with a subsequent anti-war
veterans’ group Veterans for Peace.
Sam Eaton, who has lived in Carver, Massachusetts, most of his
life, been raised there and raised his own family there, and did not go to war.
Did not go for the simple reason that due to a severe childhood accident which
left him limping severely thereafter he was declared no fit for military duty,
4-F the term the local draft board used. He too had not been much for
organizations, joining organizations when he was young. That is until his best
friend from high school, Jeff Mullins, died in hell-hole Vietnam and before he
had died asked Sam that if anything happened to him to let the world that he
had done things, had seen others do things, and most importantly for the long
haul, what his evil government did with no remorse to people in that benighted
country with whom he had no quarrel. As part of honoring Jeff’s request after
Sam found out about his death he was like a whirling dervish joining one
anti-war action after another, joining one ad hoc group, each more radical than
the previous one as the war ground away, ground all rational approach vapid,
let nothing left but to go left, until the fateful day when he met Ralph down
in Washington, D.C.
That was when both in their respective collectives, Ralph in VVAW
and Sam in Cambridge Red Front, were collectively attempting one last desperate
effort to end the war by closing down the government if it would not shut down
the war. All they got for their efforts were tear gas, police batons, and
arrest bracelets and a trip to the bastinado which was the floor of Robert F.
Kennedy stadium which is where they would meet after Sam noticed Ralph’s VVAW
pin and told him about Jeff and his request. That experience would form a
lasting friendship including several years ago Sam joining Ralph’s Veterans for
Peace as a supporter, an active supporter still trying to honor his long- gone
friend’s request and memory.
No one least of all either of them would claim they were
organizing geniuses, far from it but over the years they participated, maybe
even helped organize many anti-war events. One day their friend, Josh Breslin,
who writes a by-line at this publication, and who is also a veteran asked them
to send some of events they had participated in here to form a sort of living
archives of the few remaining activist groupings in this country, in America
who are still waging the struggle for peace.
Periodically, since we are something of a clearing house and
historic memory for leftist activities, we will put their archival experiences
into our archives. As mentioned above Sam and Ralph “met” each other down in
Washington, D.C. during the May Day anti-war demonstrations of 1971 when out of
desperation clots of anti-war radicals, veterans and civilians alike, tried
unsuccessfully to shut down the government if it would not shut down the war.
They “met,” their in forever quotation marks not mine, on the floor of Robert F.
Kennedy football stadium after they had been arrested along with members of
their respective collectives, Ralph’s VVAW and Sam’s Red Front Brigade after
getting nothing but tear gas, police batons and a ride in the paddy wagon for
their efforts. What they were doing, what for each of the them, according to
Josh Breslin who met them shortly after they got “sprung,” also then a member
of VVAW and also arrested by had been held in a D.C. city jail, were their
first acts of civil disobedience. The first of a long time of such actions
which is the lead in to the archival material presented in this piece.
Josh, who introduced the pair to me several years ago when I
first came on board to manage the day to day operations of this publication
after Allan Jackson, aging and ready to retire, brought me on board for that
purpose so he could work on where the publication was heading. He mentioned the
Washington action as their calling card although then, in 1971, I was about a
decade too young to have realized what they were doing and how important it was
for their future political trajectories, their political commitments to “fight
the monster,” their term, on the questions of war and peace and other social
issues. Not have realized, not having done any such actions how important civil
disobedience, or the threat of such actions was, is to their political
perspectives.
[By the way, as Josh was at pains under pressure from Ralph and
Sam, to report to me that May Day action was not the first attempt by either
man to “get arrested,” to “put their bodies on the line” as Sam articulated it
to me one night when we were putting this piece together. May Day was just the
first time when the cops, National Guard, Regular Army was willing, with a
vengeance, to take them up on the offer. Both men had tried repeatedly to get
arrested “sitting down” at their respective local draft boards in Carver and
Troy in order to warn off young men on signing up for the draft. Maybe it was
the nature of the times but the local police would not arrest them.]
A Few Notes For The General Meeting On The Poor Peoples Campaign
Of 1968 As Food For Thought As We Prepare From The Second And Hopefully Final
Campaign in 2018
[As many of you know this is the 50th anniversary
of the original Poor Peoples Campaign of 1968. Over the past several months to
a year various individuals and organizations have organized around many of
those original themes of bringing the poor into some kind of equality in this
society. Over the next several weeks there will be weekly actions here locally
and a mass rally in Washington around specific grievances. Smedley is knee-deep
in the local planning so to give some thoughts about the original campaign is
what our May GM discussion period is about. Since we have a big agenda I have
written some notes so that we can go to the discussion part directly and save
some time. These notes will also be in hard copy at the GM. Allan Jackson]
*******
As a long ago philosopher pointed out those who do not remember
history are condemned to relive it. That point is what drives this discussion
about what happened to the first Poor Peoples Campaign in 1968. It does not
pretend to be all-inclusive nor more than one person’s take on those times and
that event.
At the most general level the original PPC was a dramatic defeat
for the struggles of the poor and oppressed of this country. To understand some
of the reasons behind that defeat beyond the murder of the prime mover of the
campaign Doctor King will help us to push forward. In a sense the PPC was
poorly timed since 1968 as many of us older activists know was a hell-bent year
with the Tet offensive finally showing Americans we could not “win” in Vietnam,
the refusal of the sitting president, LBJ, to run again, the two assassinations
of iconic progressive figures in King and Bobby Kennedy who were in their
respective ways driving forces behind the campaign, the turmoil in the streets
here and internationally with the May Days in France and the chaos and horror
of the Democratic Convention in the summer of that year. So the PPC had to
fight for breathe against those more dramatic events and got pushed to the side
rather easily especially after King’s murder and some inner turmoil and
in-fighting among the leadership.
The PPC was ill-timed and ill-starred in another way. Frankly
the heroic black civil rights struggle down South which brought about massive
increases in voting rights and some other positive benefits did not after 1965
put much of a dent in the oppression of black people and other minorities
around housing, jobs, education, healthcare and the like. With the Vietnam War
sucking the life out of Lyndon Johnson’s modern day version of “forty acres and
a mule” the war on poverty at a governmental level fell apart. Liberals,
governmental and private citizens, began the long retreat away from
governmental attempts to alleviate poverty which continues to this day witness
the demise of the social welfare programs started under the Clinton
administration. Moreover a reaction set in around the question of race when the
cities started burning up as a result of the denial of legitimate grievances by
the black community and its allies in other minority communities.
The elephant in the room though and fifty years of myth creation
around the hallowed name of Doctor King cannot cover the fact up that he as a
leader of the black community had lost some authority by pre-Vietnam speech
1967, has been upended by more militant blacks from various vocal
anti-integrationist black nationalists to the upfront romantic if doomed Black
Panthers. Think about the evolution of the previously integrated SNCC once
black power became a widespread slogan, especially among the young non-churched
types. King was the number one symbol of black integration when the moods in
the black community was heading elsewhere. Those of us in the military in those
days got a taste of that in off-hours when there was very little interaction
between the races. King through his belated and now famous anti-Vietnam War
speech and his support of the sanitation workers in Memphis was making
something of a “comeback” and the PPC was to be at least the symbolic way to
get his agenda back on the front pages.
This political, social and personal backdrop does not take away
from what was attempted, and what was necessary given the other factors
particularly the retreat by the liberals from advocacy of many social programs
and the hostility of others to even dealing with the poverty problem any
longer. A look at the PPC program tells us that much. It also highlights not
only the social reality of the times but that like the heroic struggle for
formal civils rights the poor and oppressed were going to have to fight for the
better housing, healthcare, education and the like since few others were
committed to their cause. The need for the poor and oppressed to lead and fight
for what they need which never really happened in 1968 and is the wave of the
future of the current campaigns really is the only long-term way forward in
order to break the cycle of poverty and the pathologies that gut-level struggle
for survival engenders. Something which grouping up in the projects I was
personally painfully aware of as a kid.
A few nuts and bolts facts about the 1968 PPC will show that
many of the same issues still need addressing, some of the same organizing
tactics are in play as well from multiracial, multicultural meetings of poor
people and their advocates which the ruling class in its constant strategy of
“divide and conquer” hates to see to some programmatic demands. In March of
1968 many poverty-centered organizations like the National Welfare Rights
Organization and the Southern Regional Council joined with Doctor King’s
organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in Atlantic to
forge a common program to fight on. To list the three major demands today seems
utopian (and way underestimating the money that would be needed today) but
still necessary to fight around:
- $30 billion annual
appropriation for a real war on poverty
- Congressional passage of
full employment and guaranteed income legislation [a guaranteed annual
wage]
- Construction of 500,000
low-cost housing units per year until slums were eliminated
To highlight these demands the campaign would be divided into
three phases, the first to create a permitted shanty town of several thousand
people which came to be called Resurrection City on the National Mall, the
second to begin protest demonstrations and mass non-violent civil disobedience
actions and third to take actions to generate mass arrests like those which
brought national attention to the plight of blacks in the South around voting
rights. The latter two phases are the touchstone of the 2018 campaign as well.
To bring people to Washington several “caravans” were organized
from all regions of the country to meet in June of 1968 with a big solidarity
rally which brought some 50, 000 people to D.C. to join the estimated 3000 that
were “residing” on the Mall.
Bayard Rustin put forth a proposal for an “Economic Bill of
Rights” for Solidarity Day that called for the federal government to most of
which still are the wave of the future:
Recommit to the Full Employment Act of 1946 and legislate the
immediate creation of at least one million socially useful career jobs in
public service, adopt the pending housing and urban development act of 1968,
repeal the 90th Congress’s punitive welfare restrictions in the 1967 Social
Security Act, extend to all farm workers the right–guaranteed under the
National Labor Relations Act–to organize agricultural labor unions, and restore
budget cuts for bilingual education, Head Start, summer jobs, Economic
Opportunity Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Acts
I have addressed some of the problems and social conditions
which helped undermine that first campaign and others can add more from their
recollections of the times including the question of post-King murder
leadership and in-fighting. Hopefully the latter will not be an issue in the
new movement.
There are some differences in the current campaign from that of
1968 that I think are worth noting as we gear up the campaign. First, if we are
to be successful this time, real poor people and members of oppressed
communities will have to take leadership roles, make their mistakes and learn
from them. Just like we did, do. Our role is one of support to see that such
leadership emerges which I believe was a real short-coming of the
“professional” organizer from Doctor King on down model in 1968. Second we are
“demanding” similar programs to those of 1968 but not “begging” the government
to implement as some criticized the 1968 campaign for doing. Lastly, and
unfortunately, there are several more issues that the 1968 campaign did not
have to address as forcefully like an end to mass black and Latino
incarceration and the war on drugs which has decimated communities of color and
sapped it of a young, mostly male, leadership component.
POOR PEOPLES CAMPAIGN-2018
Our State leader is
Sara Marr, a black woman Veteran. She has asked Dan Lane and
the Smedleys to support her and this movement. The Poor Peoples Campaign is a
continuation of MLK’s 1967 1968 Poor people Campaign 50 years later. The same
issues that were being demanded to change in 1968 are still oppressing the
majority of the people of this country. If you missed participating in the
first one, here is your second chance. The Campaign will involve at least 41
states doing an action each week, at each state’s “State House.” This will
happen each Monday in all 41 states, for 6 weeks and culminate in week 6, when
each state is going to load up the busses and go to Washington DC mall.
v Week One: May 14: Disabled, Homeless, Children, Women,
and Youth. Somebody is hurting our people.
v Week Two: May 21: Immigration Rights and Voting Rights.
Connecting Systemic racism
v Week Three: May 28: Veterans, War and Militarism “War
Economy”, Military Industrial Complex, Homeless Veterans, Stop Privatization of
the VA
v Week Four: June 4: Right to Health Care and Climate
Change
v Week Five: June 11: Right to Live: Fight for $15;
Housing; PCAs (Personal Care Assistants)
v Week Six: June 18: Challenging the Narrative: Moral
Fusion Movement in DC (load up the busses we are coming!)
v Saturday, June 23: Major Actions in DC
Week Three: May 28:
Veterans, War and Militarism “War Economy”, Military Industrial Complex,
Homeless Veterans, Stop Privatization of the VA
This is
us! This our chance to get our mission statement out about the War
Economy and the MIC! Dan Lane has been appointed State Steering
Committee Chair for Week 3 “The War Economy” and asks VFP Boston “The Smedleys”
to take the lead on this with him. Allan Jackson and Jeff Bryer have
volunteered to be part of the War Economy Committee leadership. We will be
working with some of our old allies, Mass Peace Action and Cole, to name one
and many new allies forming a coalition to support us in getting our “War
Economy” message out on a large and hopefully state-wide platform, as part of a
national platform. Can we support and put our efforts into this, Sara says
she has connections to many other Veterans Service
Organizations. This may be a chance to reach out to other vets in
groups like VFW, American Legion, etc. that may have individuals who support
the Poor People’s Campaign.
What do you say……….We
missed the first Poor Peoples Campaign in 68 are we going to be a big part of
this one? If you want to help with putting this together, please sign up on the
Working Committee sheet and be ready to hit the ground running at the end of
April!
