Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Resist Newsletters Resist Collection 8-30-2011 Resist Newsletter, July-Aug 2011 Resist Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter Recommended Citation Resist, "Resist Newsletter, July-Aug 2011" (2011). Resist Newsletters. 383. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter/383 ISSN 0897-2613 • Vol. 20 #4 A CALL TO RESIST ILLEGITIMATE AUTHORITY July-August 2011 Charting a Course of Resistance Five decades of an tiwar organ izing from the RESIST N ewsletter By Nick Perricone and Christy Pardew To this day, as evidenced by our overed in dust, we sorted through Newsletter collection, the US government history last week: four decades of has continued to engage in new wars­ Ccarefully-filed issues of the RE­ declared or not-and new lies. Yet the SIST Newsletter in our office storage room. impulse to resist has not let up. Consci­ At once sobering and inspiring, the News­ entious people continue to voice their letter archives paint an intriguing picture objections to war and violence, choosing to of the past 40 years. From Vietnam War stand instead for peace with justice. We of­ draft resistance to the Black Panther Party, fer the following excerpts, in part, to catch from the Freedom of Information Act to a glimpse of this hope and inspiration. vi~lence and US complicity in Central The United States has a long history America, from AIDS activism to struggles with war. According to the historian Wil­ in labor unions: the Newsletter archives liam Blum, since World War II alone, the serve as a chronicle of left organizing for US has dropped bombs on no fewer than the latter part of the twentieth century­ 19 different countries, spanning each cor­ and the first decades of the twenty-first. ner of the globe. In this issue, we plan to With Obama' s recent declaration that look back at RESIST s origin in resistance the "tide of war is receding:' in Afghani­ to the war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambo­ stan, military interventions were on our dia, and to follow the subsequent series of minds as we parsed through old Newslet­ bombings and interventions carried out by ter issues. We followed the thread of war our government to the present day, duti­ and bombings from our very first issue fully covered in these pages along the way. throughout the collection. This is history While mass draft resistance has become we hope we can learn from. a thing of the past, its spirit remains alive When a group of antiwar organizers as conscientious objectors and soldiers started RESIST in 1967, young men all who refuse to deploy remind us that re­ over the country faced prosecution and sistance to unjust wars is always relevant. For now, 44 years after RESIST s found­ possible jail time for their resistance to In the following excerpts, selected from ing, at a time when the president has an­ the Selective Service Act, which insti­ previous issues of the Newsletter, we hope nounced that he needs no congressional tuted the draft and forced them to fight to show the various manifestations of approval to drop bombs on a foreign in Vietnam. These men rejected their American hegemony-from full-scale war country, we hope this backward glance conscription into a war they felt to be in Vietnam and southeast Asia to a more will prove to be both insightful and pro­ unjust. At the same time countless more purely ostentatious display of might such vocative to our readers. men and women across the United States as our war on Grenada; through covert organized and joined these draft resistors episodes and maneuvers in Nicaragua and Nick Perricone is a student at Tufts in solidarity, calling for an end to the war Guatemala, all the way to the present-day University and a RESIST intern. and for true justice for all. RESIST was campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Christy Pardew is the editor of the born out of this sentiment. Libya and elsewhere. RESIST Newsletter. "Already our Next Vietnam.?" Doug McKay, March 1970 ment in the war on such a large scope Republic of Vietnam. But US involvement Not more than a month ago, newspa­ presents a dilemma of major proportions. in Laos is anything but new. It may be pers around the country "discovered" US I knew we were doing a little of this and traced to a foreign policy nearly twenty involvement in Laos. The Senate Foreign a little of that in Laos, but I had no idea years old, a policy which also explains our Relations committee began to demand it was a major operation of this kind .... " involvements in Korea and Vietnam. • information on the extent of our military Forced to concede US involvement in commitment in that country. "What Laos by incidents now too blatant to go ~SOCIAL CHANGE~ strikes me most," Senator J. William Ful­ unnoticed, the State Department is claim­ - :;o C) rri bright commented, "is that an operation ing that our military presence there is a z ~ :::> )> of this size could be carried out without recent development, made necessary by LL.. z LL J;::. members of the Senate knowing it and movements on the Ho Chi Minh trail or O 0 without the public knowing ... US involve- by attacks against Laos by the Democratic (/) -< >~ RESIST (/)i "Saying No" 0 o ~ .,, z ,, Editorial, August-September 1982 attack on Beirut. Also this summer came c:r C ~ z Once upon a time the unthinkable became the first draft indictments. Threatened so w 0 thinkable, and the previously unconceived many times, when they finally occurred a::: - ~ 3~NVH:> 7'11:>0S ~ of began to blind us to the horror of the they seemed vaguely old hat. The anti­ familiar. It was the achievement of books draft movement had been crying wolf for For information and grant guidelines, write to: like Jonathan Schell's Fate of the Earth to two years. When the wolf finally arrived RESIST, 259 Elm Street, Suite 201 fill our heads with precise images for there wasn't much of a movement to Somerville, MA 02144 ultimate destruction: the firestorm, the greet him. 617-623-5110 • [email protected] blast wave, the reduction of ozone. Con­ There has been a fair amount written The RESIST Newsletter is published six times ventional war palled in comparison. In a about the continuum of violence, how a year. Subscriptions are available free to way, June 12 was the culmination of our conventional will become nuclear. The prisoners and to individuals for a suggested education, our recognition, as hundreds Middle East has long been chosen as the donation of $25/year. The views expressed in articles, other than editorials, are those of of thousands marched to to rid the world site of such a war, and Daniel Ellsberg has the authors and do not necessarily represent of our nightmares. explained that conventional forces will be the opinions of the RESIST staff or board. Then the summer came and not much the "tripwire." But right now, faced with RESIST Staff: Robin Carton was happening on the nuclear war front. the relentless shelling of Beirut, the ruth­ Ravi Khanna The Administration and Congress were lessness of that violence, it seems obscene Yafreisy Mejia Christy Pardew to condemn the conventional because it impressed by June 12 in spite of them­ RESIST Board: selves. The nuclear freeze got some serious may lead to worse. Cynthia Bargar Marc Miller consideration. The defense appropriations The reality of conventional war is Jennifer Bonardi Jim O'Brien bill passed with the MX and civil defense terrible enough. The actions of a million Melissa Carino Carol Schachet Miabi Chatterji Ragini Shah provisions intact. The nuclear freeze bill young men in saying no to such horror Warren Goldstein-Gelb Sarath Suong headed for defeat, at least for this year. should not need justifying, not to the Becca Howes-Mischel Camilo Viveiros Meanwhile, Lebanon: the invasion, the government, not to the courts, and finally, Kay Mathew Jen Willsea bombing of Sidon and Tyre, and then the not to the peace movement. • RESIST Interns: Marina Canale-Parola Nick Perricone "The Draft" RESIST Volunteer: Nancy Wechsler Newsletter Editor: Christy Pardew Editorial, April 1982 numbers will be officially estimated at Guest Co-Editor: Nick Perricone About the time that schools and col­ about one million, and will actually be Printing : Red Sun Press leges are getting out for the summer, the much higher. The government will have Banner art: Bonnie Acker Justice Department will begin selected to bring a successful, highly-publicized Printed on recycled paper with vegetable-based ink prosecutions against those who failed to case in each major television market if www.resistinc.org register for the draft. By that time their continued on page 3 0 ---- 2 RESIST Newsletter, July-August 2011 their campaign is to have the desired effect of intimidating large numbers of young men to register. All indications to date are that prosecutions will be brought against those who have refused to register on principle, not those who have forgotten or were waiting to see if they got caught. One would think that the peace move­ ment would even now be preparing and positioning itself to launch a major peace initiative around the defense of non­ registrants. Coming in the politically-sen­ sitive pre-election period, and perhaps during the height of activities around the UN' s Special Session on Disarmament, such a campaign would serve to make our commitment to peace specific, and to empower and encourage young people to stand up to the drift toward war.