This is a 90 minute event. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the book launch for the people make the piece, lessons from the vietnam Antiwar Movement. Hi, my name is doug hofstetter. I am the director of the Mennonite Central Committee. United nations office. I actually got my start during the Antiwar Movement here with the United Methodists office, which is donating this room today. The methodists actually hired me right after i came back from vietnam doing my alternative service there with the Mennonite Central Committee in the middle of the war, in the middle of a war zone, helping children learn to read and write their own language. I wanted to also announced to everyone that we have a number of cameras here in the room. Cspan is covering it. So, when we get to questions and answers i will ask you to wait until the microphone comes to you so that you can be heard by the audience that will be watching on Television Later on. Thank you very much and welcome to todays launch. [applause] make this fit my height. Here we are, for the people make the piece. This is a really exciting moment for me and frank. Frank is in detroit, i believe, right now. We are splitting up events. Some go to the east coast, some to the west coast. Im very lucky to be here. I want first tell a little bit about the series of fortuitous events that produced of this book. In 2006 i went on a tour of the vietnam. I met franklin and marion. We became friends. On the way home he mentioned that he lived in detroit and so we had a connection, as i had also spent time in detroit, had students there. I think that detroit is an interesting example of rebuilding a city that has been abandoned. Frank mentioned that he had a lot of friends in the Antiwar Movement. I said if you have all of these friends, why dont you collect them and i will help you make a about it. Make a book about it. I was not necessarily thinking that he would follow up. But it was another Great Fortune that happened in the next few years, when frank met up with john. I believe it was 2010. Frank and john had had a background in the Civil Rights Movement and establish one of those friendship or when you see each other years later, you are still connected. He thought i want to bring john into this. Between frank and john they remember many of the people that went to vietnam during the war. We would now call them peoples diplomats. Noncombatants or witness to the war. Because they did not trust what was being told to them by the pentagon and they wanted to see in a firsthand way what was happening. So, in 2011 and 2012 we started our weekly series of phone calls that seemed to go forever. Seems like we were phone calling each other for decades. Every week we would calling each other. I mostly took notes. They excavated from their personal memories the people that they knew on these trips. There were 200, and all. According to some sources more than 200. We recuperated the names of about 50 people still living who were accessible by phone, email, or facebook. With a little help from the key wiki site, with set which has a very accurate list of names that they call the hanoi lobby they presume that people are spies. But we know we propose the other idea, that people went as independent observers. So, we collected these names and invited people to go on a trip that while not being in january of 2013. John was helpful in facilitating the trip to be timed with the vietnamese official commemoration of the paris peace accord, the 40th anniversary of the signing of the paris peace treaty. That was an important an important way for these activist they call them veterans of the Peace Movement, actually. Veterans of the Antiwar Movement to connect again to their friends in vietnam. That is the core of the book. We also invited Myra Macpherson to include her chapter, interviewing five x combatant veterans who returned to vietnam to live there as a form of reparations, to give back to the country that they were originally fighting. I also made a fortuitous connection to professor judy will, the author of radicals on the road. An important history of the people of color who went to vietnam at this time. Of those 200, there was a core group of people of color who traveled not only to vietnam but also china and north korea. Professor wu interviewed alex and lucky for us alex wanted to join our trip in january of 2013. Doug hofstetter joined us in a slightly different category. He did not go as an independent observer, but instead he went as a Conscientious Objector and spent time in South Vietnam, a very different experience. He then played a key role in the creation of the peoples peace treaty, a very unique contribution in this book. So far as we know there is no firsthand account of this student oriented initiative. As we pulled the proposal together for the book it was doug who connected us to helena. We are so lucky to be connected to the books they consider themselves or aspired to be vehicles for International Understanding and peace. That is the exact spirit that we hope that this book is read in. Those commitments have been tremendous. As anyone who has published a book, you know that there is all sorts of drama that happens at the last minute. Were very thankful to the work that you have done for us. We recognize what the Antiwar Movement did, what it was trying to do. It was aspirational. The idea of this book is to make concrete to very intricate and subtle decision and perspectives that people who saw themselves as part of this movement made. A number of folks talked a little bit about. I mentioned radicals on the road. Mary hershberger the book in which she did a closer study of the travelers. Penny lewis did a book called hardhats, hops, entities in which she explained why it is that we think of the Antiwar Movement now as a middle class elite activity when in fact it was a very broadbased movement, working festival of all colors. That is an Important Message that he wants you to pick up from this book. The diversity of the move is a diversity that you will here today as you get these perspectives. We have so much to learn from hearing from alex, john, doug, and their contemporaries. To learn about their choices, about how they reconciled the choices they had delayed, the tradeoffs that there were. Especially how they fought now about what they did then. Let your bit about how to orient themselves for the the annan today. The annan vietnam today. We will pretend that is a company you. Many in the movement could not afford to treat the vietnam war as the single issue that they would work on. Many communities solve the war as connected to poverty, racism, and other issues going on here. In the civil rights it was very difficult for people to just isolate the war as their only issue. You will see that there are connections the need to be made today to connect all people to the movement for peace and justice. The other view that is not here for for reasons that you will understand but i think we can include in the conversation by the refugee perspective. As people we dont choose the size of the war that we are in often. As i told helena, now that the book is out, it teaches the lessons and legacy of the flow Antiwar Movement. With this i will hand it over to john. [applause] john you want about 10 minutes, right . Ok. Well, thank you all for coming this morning. Thank you for cspan. I go through periods of addiction with cspan. I ought not to get caught up, but in any case it plays an Important Role maybe not so much a in the lives of media inundated by the east coast northeast, but folks in the rest of the country who get an insight into all the conversations that we are constantly involved in. So, thank you to cspan for his role. Its role. Thank you to the publisher for taking the sometimes inchoate presentation and thanks, especially, the person i dont with most was frank joyce, who first of all wouldnt let me avoid it, but then kept pushing for focus and tightening of what i was writing about. It had started out with an interview that was done by one of the other members of the group. Turning it into something more coherent. I am not going to try to recapitulate whats in my chapter. What i want to do is focus on something that links for me the past of the present, not just for vietnam, laos, and cambodia, but also where my work has largely been focused for the last 15 years or so, which is cuba. You will see a wonderful picture here on page 175. I took it in hanoi in 1975. On april 30. By pure accident we arrived in hanoi literally within hours of the time the u. S. Ambassador was leaving saigon. The result heightened the we had missed the plane and bangladesh so the result heightened the dramatic moment. It was me and another quaker staff person and others from the indochina peace campaign, which we worked very closely with. We were in this culminating moment of what had been, for many of us, hourly teens or all of our late teens or early 20ss or 30s. What had probably helped to define us in the Civil Rights Movement had already had that. I added the peace corps on that. But then it was the vietnam experience, learning what it meant about what our country was in its ability to not understand history and what it was doing in the world, but also to learn about what motivated folks who had sees history and were determined that that history was theirs. We think of vietnam is a small country. It is of course 90 billion people 9 million people. It has never been a tiny country. Laos is tiny. Cambodia is tiny. Vietnam always was and will be a key focal point that tom hayden introduced us to in the course of our work. The key focal point for the politics of the region. Internationally and regionally. To understand vietnam and our relationship to it, i think we go back to a phrase that ho chi minh used that we used a quote and maybe we understood and maybe we didnt, it is that nothing is more more precious than independence and freedom. Americans see that phrase and think civil rights, liberties. When the vietnamese had much of the world freeing itself from colonialism, they use that concept and were talking about National Independence and freedom. Something that we once held strongly. A wellestablished, dominant world power, we lost track of why other people had, even until today it encouraged in the middle east. There were several contradictions. I would say that the experience of being in vietnam, at that particular moment id like to think that we set the hook that determined the rest of my life. It was hard not to be there and realize that the story was not over. That i in particular had entered into a particular moment the determined what i could contribute professionally and spiritually with my life. It put me in contact with a lot of people who are still alive, though many have passed as time goes on. People who were very important in my understanding of myself in my world. In this process i remember 1975. The u. S. Was the top of the pile. We have the conflict with the soviet union. We were the world power. We had never lost the war. Well, we lost the war and we had to rationalize how we had lost it. And of course blame the people who had beaten us. We started out, it was interesting there, if you look at the polls at the time may be 65 of americans who have been against the war wanted to do something to help the people. In vietnam especially but when they thought about it laos and , cambodia. If that had been the initial impulse, the process was actually achieved by the Carter Administration. Remember, early on in the Carter Administration a delegation was sent by leonard woodcock, at that point the president of the united auto workers. They have the capacity to reach an agreement and normalize relations. Think about it, it was 1970, 77. I forget the year. They could have walked away with normal relations for vietnam. Do itetnamese would not did because vietnamthey believed holy, politically, that the u. S. Owed assistance for reconstruction. They made a political calculation for which i think to this day they regret. They felt they could hold back and that there was enough pressure coming from the u. S. , the former antiwar sentiment, that they would be able to get reconstruction aid. By the time that they changed their position they had become much more interested in building a relationship with china, against the soviet union. So, the minister vietnam was here in new york. Negotiating the normalization of relations. It never happened. The u. S. Walked away from it. So, from the late 1970s until 1995 we lived in this time when i remember early conversations in washington where it was not just the military. A lot of civilians in the state department who had been in u. S. Aid programs for their lives were also shaped to war, they had personal relationships with people who were terribly damaged by the end of the war. Some of whom were the refugee population. Some of whom were incarcerated in workstudy programs. Some of whom died trying to leave the country. They have not just anger at the vietnamese for having won the war and having done it in nasty ways, but they had this personal link to folks whom it negatively affected. My goal was to bring about normal relations, but how do you work in that will you . Remember, the religious community had been marvelously important in the Antiwar Movement. Whether by intentional by accident, we resettled hundreds of thousands of refugees and cambodia in cambodia and they were put exactly into the religious community that had been against the war. Everyone was hearing about the countries from who have been most embittered. It was one of the factors that wound up unwinding this very strong sentiment in favor of normalization. So, we had to deal with contradictions. One of contradictions was justice versus reconciliation. Justice was that we had devastated. Not just the number of death, the amount lost 2 million to 3 million. Cambodia lost laos, a tiny 2,000,0003,000,000. Country, probably lost half a million. We put that behind landmines, agent orange. The effect of the war was still going on. A lot of people on the left as they approach the issue wanted justice. Wonder the u. S. To a knowledge its wrongness, its evil, its horribleness historically and pay compensation. Clearly that was not the time for reconciliation. The second was the difference in ideologies. Again, the left had elevated the vietnamese into a super people. Its very hard to walk and even line. One of the things that happened was in this country the vietnamese were superheroes. Well, the vietnamese fought because they wanted their independence and freedom. They fought for their national interests. They did not fight for a textbook ideology. The adopted ideology was because they needed to get material assistance from russia and china. If you read the political stuff, it was pretty routine. It just wasnt very interesting or ideologically creative. The other final contradiction into today, our viewpoint from the left in the Progressive Community emphasized equity. That was in fact one of the reasons the vietnamese won the revolution, they were able to combine National Independence with social equity within the country. But look at vietnam today. A very important factor, im guessing in 20 years it will be one of the most important in south asia, both economically and politically. They have the same problems that everyone else has with rapid development. The difference between the people at the top, driving expensive cars, and are now involved in a tremendous amount of personal advance, family advance, and rural areas. Its a choice they made. Its a choice they are conscious about. The last thing i would say is that the irony of it all we wanted to stop the chinese expansion into Southeast Asia. Well, bob mcnamara acknowledged later that if anyone had read the least bit of history they would have known that the one country that could have been depended upon to stop chinese spansion in Southeast Asia was vietnam. Thats where we are today. The u. S. And vietnam could not be closer. The Party General secretary from vietnam visits the white house. President s office doesnt usually see party leaders. He visits with an hour, he comes up talking about the key thing about why the relationship is so strong is that the u. S. Accepted the difference, respected, that vietnam was not going to be the United States terms of democracy, civil rights and human rights. It would have its own path and we would not insist on internal change in vietnam with larger issues between us. We have not gotten to puberty yet. We have notas but theo cuba yet administration has taken important steps, but there is a contradictory psychology on whether those steps are a smarter way team change to do regime change or if it is like vietnam, and acceptance of new jewelry spectrum we dont agree with what they are doing, but nothing is more precious than freedom. [applause] thank you. That was john mcauliffe. His chapters called the making of a peoples diplomat. I want to in introduce alex, whose chapter is entitled journey to the east. [applause] hi. Im excited to be here. Im just a worker. Im a chef at a hotel. If the restaurant is open, you know what we can do, ok . I never written anything that got into a book. I written pamphlets. Im an organizer. Ive written articles. To see my work in a book, everyone should get a copy and shoot it to their friends. Hopefully what i say can be of use. I dont know what you do what of book launching a was supposed to read from it. At a book launching a was supposed to read from it. My chapter, basically, reflects on how vietnam affected me as a person, as a human being. I want to talk a little bit about that. When i was 16 years old i made a decision to dedicate my life to world peace and ending war. At that time i was in what we call now the pipeline to prison. I thought that to give my life of purpose i would choose that and work on that for the rest of my life. I always understood that working for world peace also means that we have to address oppression in, like, my community and communities of color in the United States. Also in the third world. It is the same power that causes war that causes racial and economic oppression. With that, i will say, i will be disputed in 1970, when i first visited vietnam, i was a 24yearold revolutionary nationalist. Vietnam shaped my identity. Chineseamerican, i was part of a small nationality in the United States. 1 , often listed as others, along with asians with other countries. Pacific islanders, and american indians. I lived in a ghetto. We have the highest suicide and tuberculosis rates in the nation. Were very few Public Places to hang out whose chinatown at the secondhighest into the population in the nation, and my generation was the baby boomers. Racist tourists would travel to the community looking at us as something exotic. Women as sex objects, men as boys. Those who strayed from the stereotypical norm, mainly those of us who hung out in pool halls in milltown, kept track of the Civil Rights Movement. We felt more a blacks than to whites. Were and depression in the community will link them what is capitalism. U. S. Financed capitalism. That generates imperialism. Withoutsm cannot exist any quality. With that comes explication, oppression, missouri, death. Nmisery, death. We address these issues, i came to understand that to have war,ld where there is no we also have to have a world where there is no money. You think like that, you are revolutionary, because who thinks like that. I decided that i would become a revolutionary. I proceeded to do different activities in my community. And working in that vein, i became close to the black Panther Party. Has anyone seen the movie that is out now . If not, go see it. I was fortunate enough to go on a black Panther Party delegation went to vietnam. We also went to china and algiers. We were known as the peoples antiimperialist delegation. We went to vietnam, and in the midst of the war, we saw what the criminal u. S. Government was doing. We were welcomed as diplomats wherever we went. The thing that we learned, and the people need to understand, from my chapter, the vietnamese used in International Strategy to win support for the demands at the paris peace negotiations and isolated the United States. The u. S. Antiwar movement was a key part of that strategy. If the Antiwar Movement continued to grow, eventually the government would have to consider Public Opinion and order for the politicians to stay in power. One of the problems was that very Little Information was available to the u. S. Public about what was going on in paris, or what the demands of the prt were. Returning war veterans brought information about the u. S. Conduct of the war. Support for the prg demands for an immediate u. S. Ceasefire and total withdrawal of u. S. Troops had to be intentionally mobilized, while battlefield losses and casualties were the main reasons for ending the war. The justness of the vietnamese cause, and hence, the correctness of their demands had to be presented to the u. S. Public. Those of us who went to vietnam and had contact with the vietnamese, we felt it was our obligation to support the demands that were being put forward in paris by the vietnamese. For those of us from our stripe of the Antiwar Movement, we supported what we call victory to the vietnamese. Our chant was, ho chi minh, vietnam is gonna win. We were very clear where we stood. When we came back, we did some work. In this book, my chapter im the only person of color to contribute to this book. I think that is important because i bring a perspective to it from my experience in the Antiwar Movement. We had a legal apparatus to deal with the criminal justice system. Some of us formed the asian Legal Services in a storefront in the international hotel. Besides criminal services, we did immigration service, income tax, and draft counseling. Our draft counseling was well known. Anyone who did not want to go into the military would not be drafted. We had approximately 1000 cases, even obtaining Conscientious Objector status for 4 active Asian American serviceman. Through the draft counseling, we formed the bay area Asian Coalition against the war, in close relationship with the union of vietnamese. Our call was a Grassroots Organization representing asianpacific communities throughout Northern California to support the prgs demand at the paris peace conference. In antiwar marches, would be chanted one struggle, many chance. Bringing the troops home was racist. At one antiwar demonstration in san francisco, a group of asian women took over the stage to promote the prgs seven point peace proposal to the applause of many in the audience. We are saying the Antiwar Movement was fast. It encompasses many sectors of the American People. The contributions of people of color have not been recognized, and also, from our point of view, there was an element of racism within the Antiwar Movement itself. These are things we have to come to grips with if we want to understand and rebuild a movement that is stronger and more solid today. So, we the other thing that is important is that we built this antiwar support for the vietnamese in our communities among workingclass, middleclass people. The Japaneseamerican Citizens League the ladies there had a Bowling Group, and so this Bowling Group they all joined, which meant they support the prgs demands, and they had a Bowling Tournament to raise funds to sent to the hospital. These are little old japanese ladies bowling, raising money. Every pin drop was money that would be sent to rebuild the hospital. That was the kind of movement that we built. Read the book, ok . What i want to say is that we do have a long way to go, and in the course of my life, whenever i faced any difficulty, ive always looked to the vietnamese and to the spirit of the vietnamese to encourage me to keep going. Because we have a long way to go in our struggle for world peace, and i think a big piece of that now is to end Global Warming by keeping fossil fuels underground and we need to build a movement as broad and steep as the Antiwar Movement to do that. Thank you. [applause] this chapter is called journey to the east. Now i want to introduce you to our host for this space. His chapter is called a pacifist in the war zone. He also contributes to another cowritten chapter on the peoples peace treaty. [applause] my experience in vietnam was very much shaped by going there to do my alternative service for the military, working with the Mennonite Central Committee in vietnam, and meeting the vietnamese up close in a different way than any american g. I. Was able to meet them. My work was doing literacy with vietnamese children who schools had been destroyed by the American Air Force and whose teachers who i organized were vietnamese high school students. The Mennonite Central Committee is a pacifist organization. It was very interesting, at the end of the war there were 130 nongovernment organizations working in vietnam, all of which said they were there to serve the vietnamese people. When the american troops left, 128 of the nongovernment organizations left. Only the quakers and the mennonites peace churches stayed and continued the work. The Mennonite Central Committee is continuing to work in vietnam even today, dealing with some of the legacy issues of agent orange and helping the people who several generations later are still dealing with deformities and cancers caused by the dropping of agent orange in vietnam. This morning i wanted to talk primarily about the other chapter i contributed towards, which was the peoples peace treaty. It was one of the most unique aspects of the Antiwar Movement, which is not well understood or written about. I was privileged to be a part of the peoples peace treaty. I knew a quaker who is involved on the edge of this and she called me up and said there has to be a vietnamese speaker that is involved in the delegation that displayed to go to South Vietnam and North Vietnam to negotiate. None of them speak vietnamese. It would be critical to have a vietnamese speaker on the delegation. She said, if youre willing, i can help to get you on. I was added to the delegation of student body president s, and the campus newspaper editors from across the country that decided that in the summer of 1970, at the National Student association convention, decided that they would send a delegation to negotiate a peace treaty between the students in the south, the students in the north, and american students. Just to give you a bit of the framework of that era, this was right after the expansion of the war into cambodia, the killings of the students at kent state and jackson state, the american war, the american negotiations in paris had been going on for two years, and the only thing they had been able to agree on is the [indiscernible] of the two sides and the shape of the table. We as students decided we would try to do what our political leaders were unable to do. This was possible partly because of some really unique aspects of the vietnamese people. They truly are amazing people. At the beginning of the vietnam war, the vietnamese government in the north established a committee of friendship with the American People at the beginning of the war. During the war, at least 300 people from the United States traveled to vietnam to meet with vietnamese people, members of the Peace Community in the u. S. Were welcomed in hanoi, were helped to see what the situation was like there, developed authentic friendships. I am one of the few americans who can say i know what its like to be under the American Air Force when they are bombing, and when your hosts immediately tell you that a plane has been spotted and you need to all quickly run for the bomb shelter. This was an amazing experience, at the beginning when the National Student association told the state department that we hoped to do this delegation to negotiate peace with students, the u. S. State Department Said of course we will be glad to facilitate things, we would obviously work with the saigon regime to get visas for everybody to come to South Vietnam for part of these negotiations, but then they discovered that North Vietnam had agreed that they would also give us visas. Suddenly everything changed at the state department. They came to us and said, we are sorry, we are not certain that these this will be granted visas will not be granted anymore and anybody who traveled to South Vietnam in the autumn of 1970 and listed student as their profession was denied a visa to get into South Vietnam. Because i had been identified late with the delegation, it was decided that my name would be left off the official list of the delegates who were going to go to South Vietnam, and i would travel several days before the official delegation was supposed to go. As i was a graduate student in sociology, i traveled as a sociologist on vacation, got my visa, and three days later, when the official nsa delegation arrived at saigon, all of them were denied. I spent about a week and South Vietnam. Let me read one quick quote. This will give you a better idea of who the vietnamese people were then probably anything else i could read. This was my first night in saigon with a vietnamese cabdriver in vietnamese. I wrote this in my journal. He responded to me, you americans can do what you want. Eventually you will have to withdraw, just like the french after 80 years. You can bomb all you want. We will fill up the holes and continue as before. You can bring in all the troops you want. Eventually you will have to leave. We will stay here. You can bring all the money you want. You can buy some vietnamese. But you cant buy their hearts. You might be able to buy a vietnamese woman for a night. You might even be able to ask her to marry you. But when you get on the plane, she will stay here. Whatever you do, eventually you are going to have to leave and we will stay here. Vietnam is ours in the end. We went on after several days a meeting with the Saigon Student Union, and they were very eager to negotiate a treaty of peace with the students in the south and the students to the north. It was a simple treaty. It essentially said, the americans need to leave and the vietnamese will resolve the problems amongst themselves. It was quite straightforward. An easy to understand, and actually, the students in the south, the students in the north, and the students in the u. S. All agreed. After being in South Vietnam for a week, i was to travel to bangkok and onto hanoi to join with the rest of the delegation. The Saigon Student Union said, we need to do a press conference before you leave. If you do not do a press conference, we know the media. The media will say, this was on the go she did in hanoi, nobody actually came. I said, we do a press conference, it will be all right during the press conference but the next day when i go through the saigon immigration, i will probably disappear and never be heard from again. We struggled for a while and finally it was decided we would do a secret press conference. I said, what is a secret press conference . They said, we know who the trusted reporters are. We invite one or two of the vietnamese trusted reporters and one or two of the american trusted reporters. I remember the Christian Science monitor reporter Dan Sutherland was the only american that passed the Saigon Student Union criteria to come to a secret press conference. What we had not accounted for was and they agreed to come to the press conference and hold their stories until after i was out of the country on my way to hanoi. When we had not figured out was that they would pick it up off the wire before i actually got the whole way to hanoi. I flew to bangkok, spent the night in bangkok and then was to meet some journalist friends of mine. I walked into the hotel constellation where the journalists all hung out, and immediately my friend from dispatch News Services came running up to me and said, have they found you yet . I said, what you mean . He said, the laotian police are looking for you. They came up to a guy who had a mustache who looked like you a few minutes ago. When he said he was not doug, they asked him to produce his passport to prove that he wasnt. He said, if you are carrying anything you would not want them to get, you might want to get rid of it quickly. I quickly gave a copy of the peoples peace treaty to my journalist friend, went back to my hotel, and three minutes later, there were four laotian police that came in and wanted to go through everything, inspect all of my luggage. They went through everything. I remember taking apart my ballpoint pen to look for secret messages inside. They were and a real this is vintage, they did not know what they were looking for, they did not speak vietnamese, they spoke only broken english, but they knew they were supposed to get something and i had lots of papers. They took lots of papers and in the end, the Lieutenant Colonel in charge said, we search just like they do in the United States. I was trained in fort knox. We came back to the United States. We first did our press conference in paris to announce it because we were concerned about trying to announce it in the u. S. First. We wanted to make sure we were able to actually announce the peoples peace treaty. Then we brought it back for climbing and endorsing by student body president s, by student bodies themselves, or by student councils. The timing was actually perfect for this. It was right after all of the outrage of kent state in jackson state. It was right at the time of the Winter Soldier hearings and the demonstrations in washington of the veterans. It had an amazing impact in schools during that period when we first came back. I will try to look at just a couple of ok, we ended up having 188 different colleges and universities processing it on their campuses and discussing it. We had endorsements from all of the major peace organizations, everything from City Councils including Cambridge City council, massachusetts, berkeley, detroit, ann arbor, 300 colleges and universities signed the treaty, 10 schools had offered schoolwide referendums, and by april 21, 1971, the National Peoples peace Treaty Office had received word that 188 were colleges and universities would vote on the treaty before the end of the school year. Finally he was introduced into the u. S. Congress in april of 1970 as a congressional sense, be it resolved that the house of representatives, the senate concurring, it is the sense of congress that the peoples peace treaty embodies the legitimate aspirations of the american and vietnamese people for an enduring and just peace. That was introduced by the congressional representatives. Bill clay, john conyers, and james schnorr. We worked at the grassroots, we worked at the top. We showed our government that peace was actually possible. The u. S. Government waited for two more years, tens of thousands of americans died, hundreds of thousands of indochinese died during those two years. In the end, the paris peace accords essentially said the same thing. The americans will leave and the vietnamese will solve their problems among themselves. Thank you. [applause] we are here to celebrate the launching of the people who make the piece, a new book. You would like to hear your questions and comments. Once you please direct them to either john mcauliffe, doug, or alex . I believe theres a microphone so we can actually hear and record your thoughts. Please share something. Hi. We are high school seniors. Last year we learned about the vietnam war, been a big part of the narrative was capitalism versus communism in getting this new perspective from you three, i was that issue in your experience in the vietnam war and Antiwar Movement how was that issue in your experience in the vietnam war and Antiwar Movement . Having spent three years living in a small village in central vietnam, i can tell you that most of the people who fought the americans were not they had not read marx, lenin, mao, or any of the great marxist writers. They really did not know about communism. What they did know was that americans were dropping bombs on their communities, that american planes were [indiscernible] that foreigners that looked a lot like the french that had been the colonial power before were back again in the country, trying to dominate. In the longer we stayed in the more we bombed, the more people we created who wanted to fight against us. It was not ideological. It was their country, and they hated anybody. French, american, chinese anybody who wanted to come in and dominate them. When i was active i was a revolutionary. Still am a revolutionary. If you believe in world peace you are a revolutionary. Thats not how everyone thinks. There was this ideological divide in the world between marxism, leninism, and capitalism. But as we see what actually happened in vietnam and what happened in china, what happened in silver union, you have to ask yourself, what is it, anyway . All those three countries are capitalists now. So whats the problem . Its not communism, its capitalism, right . I think that was the way the war was framed in the media and the way the world powers looked at it. But in essence, the struggle in vietnam heres the thing. I was very close to the black Panther Party. We were fighting to end the murder and killings of people in our communities. What we saw in the world happening was that socialism, marxism, leninism was able to beat back and defeat the u. S. Capitalists. So we gravitated towards that ideology because we thought that was the ideology that helped us gain freedom. As time goes on, we understood now, we cannot answer that question about what is socialism. Is there an example we can look at it . Still, what kind of society that we need to build post capitalism is up for grabs. I think that the main thing on the agenda is we have to get rid of capitalism. For every day that exists, more and more people are being put through suffering and misery. I think its important to understand how you motivate the country to fight, to get involved in a. It can be done only at least in this country, when people feel threatened. For the period from the end of the Second World War until the collapse of the soviet union, the danger was communism, it was partially ideological, theoretical, and quasireligious, and its contradictions are its dangers. Mostly that was the simple way of talking about us being under threat, that somehow our system was on the target line, it seems almost ludicrous, but the issue with vietnam was not just vietnam, it was somehow all of Southeast Asia and then all of asia and in the whole rest of the world then the whole rest of the world would someday come to threaten us. You dont have to go deeply into the rhetoric now about the middle east to see the same dynamic, just watching the horrors of what is happening now with the refugee flow t of the region, the reaction among the talking heads is that the solution is that the u. S. Has to be more involved, has to somehow solve the problem of syria. And not permit the russians to be part of solving the problem of syria, although obviously, to solve the problem of syria will be a lot easier if the russians are a factor in it. Regardless of the time period, what motivates us to engage in a war outside of our territory has to be a sense of danger to ourselves, and whenever the moment of history is, the ideological justification will be provided. I dont think that is an inherent characteristic of the United States or even an inherent characteristic of capitalism. It is an inherent characteristic of societies which have power and enjoy that power and the benefits of that power. You can see in chinese behavior towards vietnam today, and i think in russian behavior towards ukraine, exactly the same kind of selfsatisfaction of our motives or their motives, and how the actions of intervention in another country are always for defense of reasons, for protecting yourself. Nobody ever acknowledges, since the 19th century, that you are really doing all of this for your own self benefit. Take you so much for the presentation and for this book thank you so much for the presentation and for this book. Our home in westchester was the Central Place for the Peace Movement in those days. Last year i had a chance to go to vietnam. I think nothing has ever moved me so much as to have somebody say, welcome to hanoi. I was so overwhelmed by the unbelievable friendliness of the vietnamese people when i was there. I also visited some projects that the american bets had started. I just want to say that those of us from those days and now that we are looking at whats happening in the world today are so frustrated. We tend to say, where is the Peace Movement, where are our people now . It is such a different world. I wonder if any of you have any ideas about that. There are so many of us who are so frustrated by seeing the situation at this country is in yet again. Went on to Say Something optimistic about what you see today. We did a conference in washington on the 40th anniversary at the of the end of the war, may 1, 2nd. Its going to be a wild, but at some point all of the speeches will be on available on the internet. People were wrestling with what the lessons were from the experience for today. There are no easy solutions. Obviously its much easier when you have a single geopolitical enemy and you can sort of its like baseball or football games, you can measure each others strengths and you know how to counteract it. I think to a certain extent you can say we are reaping the whirlwind. I cannot believe how many discussions there are of libya and syria that dont bother to go back to the fact that we contributed to the overthrow of an imperfect but stable regime in libya and wound up with what . Our allies, our good friends from the gulf states. Assad or his familys role but what turned one terrible moment in syria and history into a calamity to the population was that the saudis and the gulf states were sending money, helping people turn a civil conflict into a military conflict and an international conflict. The consequence is that you have to that does not mean to me that the solution is somehow we send in our forces and take it over. A, it aint ever gonna work, but b, the president is right, it is a political problem. Kerry cant say, we are glad the russians are going in, but he must be glad the russians are going in because all of a sudden there will be the possibility of negotiating, something that is not what we would want or the russians would want or certainly not something that the people who have seen this as a real testing point, not just the problems of 50 years but the problems, the legacy of western colonialism in the middle east, that this is the chance to overthrow that, to overturn that history. Its not going to be an easy thing to solve but you sure dont solve it by sending in u. S. Marines and airborne and drones. You have to be smart, and that is the hard part. No history. You have to Pay Attention to your own intelligence people, and theres all kinds of things that have to happen differently in a lot of countries. The only note of optimism is that we have gone in in a partial way and somehow if we drop bombs its ok, but the russians cant go in and line up their bombs. Somehow you have to be able to step back and its very hard to step back and see solutions. I have a different take on this. Its very optimistic. The solution ive always been a seeker. I want to understand how we manufacture peace on earth as a real thing. Ive given up on worldwide systems and one ideology. It doesnt work. Im a tai chi master. That is a spiritual practice if you do it properly. I believe the one thing we need to do is we need to have transformation. It does not come from any political thing. You have to transform yourself into being a peaceful, loving person. I can have differences of views on what happened in vietnam. What the vietnamese themselves did was nonviolent, it was selfdefense. But i think that what makes me optimistic is set at the same time, people went to washington, d. C. For this peace conference, there was an event i went to in the bay area where it was a group primarily of young people. A lot of them were firstgeneration vietnamese whose parents were anticommunist but who have been in the u. S. For a while and are progressive. Some of them have set up a commune where they grow organic crops, vietnamese crops so they can feed the Vietnamese Community off the commune being run by alternate renewable energy. At the same week or two weeks before, a group of people filipino americans chain themselves to the Oakland Police headquarters and shut it down for one day in support of black lives matter. What im seeing is that the 30 year hiatus or the power structure had pretty much shut down the famed Antiwar Movement and use that to regroup and make war again, but that cannot stop the people. This new generation that is coming now have lots of ideas and they mostly are engaging in spiritual practices. Im not talking about doing yoga to fix your back pain. Im talking that they are doing very serious meditation to try to understand energy, and my hope is that the energy that can be manifested when you do practices like tai chi that we learn how to craft that onto social movements. What we need is to have a social movement generate a major Spiritual Force of love to stop this madness that is going on. And i see it happening. When you get the microphone, please identify yourself. Good morning. My name is bernadette. I want to thank the panelists for sharing. I want to thank alex for pointing out the experiences of being a person of color in the Antiwar Movement. That is my experience. I want to bring it more to contemporary times with what is happening right now in the asiapacific region. While there is no more fighting war, there are still a lot of u. S. Military intervention in the region. The vietnam war did not just happen in vietnam. It happen in korea. The bases in those regions were part of the vietnam war and those bases never left. A few years ago obama announced the socalled rebalancing of military forces in the asiapacific region, which led to an increasing of geopolitical strategy. What are your thoughts on what is happening right now, and what is the capacity of the Antiwar Movement to do something about this right now in this present day and time . Im going to take a position which will not be very very satisfactory to you. You have to recognize we have someone here from the Vietnamese Mission to the u. N. Who has joined us they are very preoccupied with the dangers posed by china. The philippines is very preoccupied by the dangers posed by china. At a certain level, our agenda is not to have the u. S. Withdraw but to have the u. S. To play a respectful and supportive role of the population populations of the region to maintain their independence, not that they should take dependence on us, but they should be able to have the space to negotiate a reasonable relationship with china, which means the space to have a strong relationship among each other, and that may things never happen all in the same direction positively. That may mean that the inequities within the philippines, for example, do not get addressed as much as they ought to. I dont understand enough about philippine history and politics to separate out the different factors in it. Clearly the philippines did achieve the withdrawal of the americans from subic they. From the bay, and now once some greater american presence. It is too simple to say that is just clients of the u. S. Coming to power again. I dont know that the u. S. Will ever have access to cameron bay, where my brother served for a year in the u. S. Army. He happened to be in a position which was not a heavy combat position, but the need for the u. S. To play a role is important for people in the region, whether it fits within our political assumptions or not, and i think you have to listen to what they are saying now as well as think about the history of 40 years ago, 50 years ago. I will just add one thing briefly. In northeast asia, the u. S. Has continued to demonize north korea. One of the things the Mennonite Central Committee is doing is to continue the dialogue and continue program work in north korea to refuse to allow our nation or anyone else to demonize another people, to realize that communication is always better in a war and when in situations where you can give hope, where you can help people to get an education, where you can help people to get a better life, you will make friends. If you are in a situation where someone is bombing you and destroying your community and your homes and your fields, you will make enemies. That basic understanding from the vietnam situation carries over into many parts of the world. Amen, doug. I disagree with john. This is very concerning to me as a chinese because if we go into anywhere near a conflict, im in jail. Theres no question about it. I oppose chinese aggression in asia. From an environmental activist, what is china doing putting an oil rig anywhere . We want to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This pivot towards the east is based on a nuclear strategy. Also, this Transpacific Partnership the u. S. Is toting around the world encompasses everything that surrounds china. China is not a part of this thing that corporations are going to determine how we conduct business in the u. S. In other words, Governor Cuomo put forward a bill to ban fracking in new york. Under the Transpacific Partnership, a corporation that feels this is threatening their profit can have that ban overturned. This is all aimed at china. I do not think the solution is for countries to run to the u. S. I do not think vietnam will ever do that, to have support visavis china. When we had this meeting in the bay area with a lot of young vietnamese and a bunch of people who were active in the movement, there was a lot of talk about resuscitating the idea of the movement for countries to not align themselves and to build up an alternative to the two new superpowers. My name is merle. Im from the agent orange relief and responsibility campaign. One response to dougs presentation. You mentioned agent orange. What we are talking about is not just agent history. The chemical weapons that the u. S. Used on vietnam, on leos, cambodia that impacted the other countries in the region as well as veterans who were forced to fight in vietnam is still killing people, both he veterans, their children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren. We have a campaign and there is a bill in congress sponsored by congresswoman barbara lee. I will give out the orange cards to say you support giving assistance to the agent orange fund, and to the children here who get almost nothing. The veterans themselves get nothing. It is important to represent what the Antiwar Movement was and is. The talked about the Important Role of people of color in the Antiwar Movement. That needs to be more fully represented, both in the book and more generally. What you find the racism that existed in the Antiwar Movement still exists now. Its not gone, as someone who is active then and now. We have to break the idea that the Antiwar Movement was a White Movement and the movements of color were other movements. Thats not true. One of the first groups in the Antiwar Movement was sncc. Without Martin Luther king jr. There would have been no majority antiwar ceiling. The veterans need to be represented, the working class and veterans of color. Veterans and vietnamese americans played a key role in when we talk about the Antiwar Movement, if were not talking about those folks, we are not actively portraying and we are not modeling the Antiwar Movement that really reflects both a reality and also the growing demographics of this country. If we are thinking about things to be hopeful for, the new Antiwar Movement is developing as part of a broader movement. Among that, one of the most hopeful is black lives matter, which is a movement against u. S. Militarization. With that kind of a movement and the leadership of that movement, i think we do have a lot of hope. I will pass these out and please sign them. Thank you. I think this book is about making all those connections. We cant legislate how people make those connections in their own lives or even how they see the connections happening in the world. But i appreciate merles comments. This book is here to help make a conversation that has already started in this room in which people can see the violence on the streets that is instigating and inciting people to join things like black lives matter, that is connected to policies abroad. They are not two separate things. In part because of our specialties, the number of hours in a day, but also how we frame those issues makes a big difference in who can join and who can relate to the struggles that you described. Its very true that when sncc was making its statements around violence in the streets and racism and then when dr. King made the connection to the United States as the greatest perpetrator of violence, that was a big nono for some people. Right away he was in a sense punished. People said, you made a big mistake. We mentioned this in our essay, as the editors and i have the leeway to say our own point of view on the war and we encapsulate under the editors perspective, because i think it is important to have these dialogues and disagreements. In our view, these movements are connected, and its important in which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, this current day to allow the space for young people who field of violence personally on their body to know the connection exists to the violence that we perpetrate abroad. Not only the u. S. As Asian Americans, we know in asia there are countries fighting each other too. Make no mistake, we are not try to put ourselves above anyone else. But in the role as americans in joining a peace and justice movement, we want those issues to be connected and we want people to have the space to find those connection for themselves. Connections for themselves. Is there something burning you would like to say or reinforce . All right. With that, we will close and perhaps we can have some informal conversation together. I think the authors will be happy to sign books. We are talking about the people make the piece. With voices from the travelers who went to vietnam during the war as well as five combat veterans who are interviewed by meyer macpherson. Thank you to just world books. Thank you to our hosts of the methodist women Mennonite Central Committee. It is in the room of United Methodist women. Thank you so much for being here and taking time in your day and we hope to talk to you in person. Thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] and i think every first lady should do something in this position to help the things she cares about. I just think that everything the white house should be the best, the entertainment that is given here. I think it is good, in a world where there is quite enough to divide people, that we should cherish the emotions that unite us all. Rex jaclyn kennedys first days definedirst wife were by television appearances. She ultimately came to be defined by her images at the funeral of president john fits joe kennedy. John f. Kennedy. Seriesgate her on the first ladies from Martha Washington to michelle obama. This sunday night, gary hart on his new book, comparing our current government to the republic he says our founders intended. The founders used the language of the inkjet republic, greece and rome ancient republic, greece and rome, and warned against corruption. Their definition of corruption was not bribery or money under the table. It was putting special interests ahead of the common good. By that definition, washington today is a massively corrupt place. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern and pacific. Each week, american artifacts visits museums and historic places. Located on the National Mall in washington, d. C. , the National Gallery of art was a gift to the American People from andrew mellon, who served as treasury secretary from 1921 to 1932. We visit the museum to learn about early american portrait painting. In this program we feature the , work of gilbert stuart
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