Issues Actions

Issues Newsletter of • CLERGY AND LAYMEN CONCERNED ABOUT VIETNAM Actions October 18, 1968 3 VIETNAM SUNDAY S November 3, 1968 The war in Vietnam continues unabated. Since President Johnson's announced "peace plan" of March 31, 1968, more than 30,000 Americans have been killed or wounded in Vietnam. Paris talks have been unproductive. Negotiations have not begun. V At home the American people have met with a series of frustrations on the political front. CP The three major presidential candidates offer little hope that the next administration will come to terms with the fact that: - the war in Vietnam is immoral - the war in Vietnam is wasteful of our most precious resource people - continuation of the war daily deepens our domestic crisis It is with this background in mind, with this perspective, that we call upon clergy and laymen throughout the country to participate in Vietnam Sunday on November 3. What is Vietnam Sunday? • It is an opportunity for clergymen, preaching on this particular weekend and utilizing the resources of their particular tradition, to open up for their con gregations such subjects as Vietnam, the plight of young men of draft age, the crisis between large and small nations, or the war and domestic priorities. • We would also ask that on Sunday afternoon or evening of November 3 — or both - clergy and laymen meet in communities across the country -- in ecumenical group ings if possible -- and concern themselves with such subjects as: - how the United States can end the war in Vietnam - the responsibility of the religious community vis-a-vis young men who have either refused military service or, once in the armed forces, have taken a stand in opposition to the war - the relevance of the war to our domestic crisis, the question of law and order, and alienated youth (We are sure you can think of other topics!) • Our National Committee has prepared a short statement which is enclosed, called "An Open Letter to the Religious Community." This could be read from pulpits and/or handed out in churches on the weekend of November 3. The statement is short (six minutes reading time) and a clergyman could offer comment on the letter after having read it. • Finally each local group participating in Vietnam Sunday should seek ways to build into their program an action component. People in local communities will be able to arrive at the most appropriate kinds of action components for their own locale. THERE IS A LOT OF WORK TO BE DONE IN A SHORT TIME. HERE IS HOW WE CAN HELP YOU: If you want speakers for Vietnam Sunday, call our office collect. If you want a film for Vietnam Sunday, call our office collect. If you want additional copies of "An Open Letter to the Religious Community" — free -- call our office collect. If you want a special literature packet that we have prepared on Vietnam, the draft, and national priorities @ 15C per packet, including postage, call our office collect. r~ When calling regarding Vietnam Sunday, please use one of these numbers: 212 - 870-2174 or 212 - 870-2032. CATONSVILLE NINE On Friday, October 3, in Baltimore the Catonsville Nine were found guilty of all three counts with which they were charged by the United States government and on November 8 will be sentenced. The maximum sentence that any of the persons involved could receive would be eighteen years in jail and a $22,000 finel Many members of our National Committee partici pated in the three-day celebration and rally held in Baltimore preceding the conviction. Dr. Harvey Cox, Mr. Michael Novak, Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, and Rev. Richard Fernandez were among those who participated in various aspects of the programs that were held in Baltimore. One evening in St. Ignatius Church, while different people were speaking, more than thirty-eight draft cards were burned! Following the final court room session Dr. Cox reported that the leading of all the persons in the court room in the Lord's Prayer by Father Philip Berrigan and the warmth displayed among the convicted and the persons in the court room at the conclusion of the trial were, for him, experiences not unlike "Pentecost" must have been for the early Christians. Our National Committee, through a designated gift, was able to contribute $500 toward the expenses of the Catonsville Nine. MILWAUKEE FOURTEEN Several days before the trial of the Catonsville Nine began in Baltimore, fourteen persons entered the Selective Service offices in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, seized I-A files and burned them outside. The Milwaukee Fourteen, seven of whom are clergymen, included James H. Forest, co-chairman of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and Father Robert Cunnane, active with the local Clergy and Laymen Concerned in Boston and co-director of Packard Manse Ecumenical Center in Stoughton, Mass. In a statement released while awaiting arrest beside the burning files, the Fourteen declared, in part: "Generation after generation religious values have summoned men to undertake the works of mercy and peace. In times of crisis these values have further required men to cry out in protest against institutions and systems destructive of man and his immense potential. "We declare today that we are one with that history of mercy and protest. In destroying with napalm part of our nation's bureaucratic machinery of conscription we declare that the service of life no longer provides any options other than positive, concrete action against what can only be called the American way of death: a way of death which gives property a greater value than life, a way of death sustained not by invitation and hope but by coercion and fear. "We confess we were not easily awakened to the need for such action as we carry out today. In order for communities of resistance to come into being, millions had to die at America's hands, while in the process millions of America's sons were torn from family, friends, health, sanity and often life itself. Victim and executioner have been trapped in the same dragnet of death." * * * "Today we destroy Selective Service System files because men need to be reminded that property is not sacred. Property belongs to the human scene only if man does. If anything tangible is sacred, it is the gift of life and flesh, flesh which is daily burned, made homeless, butchered -- without tears or clamor from most Americans -- in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Colombia, Nigeria, South Africa, Harlem, Delano, Watts, and wherever the poor live and die, forgotten people, the anonymous majority. So property is repeatedly made enemy of life:- gas ovens in Germany, concentration camps in Russia, occupation tanks in Czechoslovakia, pieces of paper in draft offices, slum holdings, factories of death machines, germs and nerve gas. Indeed our nation has seen, with such isolated exceptions as the Boston Tea Party, devotion to property take ever greater prece dence over devotion to life. So we today, in the face of such a history, proclaim that property has sanction only insofar as it serves man's need and the common good." -3- CITY FORUMS Early in 1969 we plan to hold Forums in various cities across the country. These would take the form of two- or three-day conferences. The program would center around the theme of "Your Children, the War, and the Question of Change." The hope with this theme is to get at the issue of the war in Vietnam from a slightly different angle. The national of fice of Clergy and Laymen Concerned will, in a sense, package these Forums. There would be speakers, readings, informational literature, films, etc., put together in a package and then, so to speak, plugged into a particular community. An effort would be made during the Forums to maximize the news media facilities of that particular city. PRISON VISITS In the national office at the moment, a list is being prepared of draft resisters, con scientious objectors, and military resisters who are for one reason or another in jail. Also being prepared are guidelines for visiting these men in the prisons around the country. This is an important pastoral activity with which clergy and laymen who are concerned about the war and its ramifications should be involved. If you should wish information regarding such prison visits, please write to this office for the listing and guidelines. GI COFFEE HOUSES Clergy and Laymen Concerned is at the moment involved in tentative negotiations to take over a number of coffee houses that presently exist near army bases around the country. As with the prison visits mentioned above, this is an important activity with which the re ligious community should be involved. Very often there are virtually no available areas for a man in the armed forces to meet with others to discuss things of great importance to him particularly. The coffee houses where they now exist have helped to meet this need considerably. If Clergy Concerned would take them over, it is likely that the number would be expanded. The responsibility for these coffee houses would be shared with Resist, whose main office is in Cambridge, Mass. Resist is an organization brought into being to support draft resisters. FIELD STAFF There are presently field staff in the following cities: Ann Arbor, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Boston, Massachusetts; Wilmette, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; Indi anapolis, Indiana; Kansas City, Missouri; Los Angeles, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; New Haven, Connecticut; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, Cali fornia; St. Paul, Minnesota; Seattle, Washington; San Jose, California; and Buffalo, New York. It is hoped in the near future to expand this to include five to ten more cities.

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