Re: [sixties-l] GI coffee houses & anti war publications

From: jo grant (jgrant@bookzen.com)
Date: 10/07/00

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    >Don wrote
    >  >>One strong point would be to examine the GI movement. At first 
    >we >>degrade the GIs but that quickly changed as we turned to 
    >supporting them >>with a Bring the Troops Home focus. I recall 
    >talking to many GIs at Fort >>Hood Texas back then and feeling that 
    >we had much in common, and they >>displayed no hostility to us and 
    >what we were about. We were all in the >>same boat.
    
    roz wrote
    
    >  >Newsreel has a film named Summer 68.  The film has a section on 
    >GI >organizing and focuses on Fort Hood.  It is a look into GI 
    >coffee houses near >bases.  While Im at it, let me say that to 
    >complain that there was a small >crowd in Berkeley around the recent 
    >Palestinian/Israeli fighting  , at least >you had an event.  I have 
    >not heard of other events happening anywhere >else.   roz
    
    
    roz,
    In the Anthology "Voices from the Underground: Volume 1--Insider 
    Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press" there are two bios of 
    anti war newspapers published and distributed by military personnel.
    
    In the Table of Contents:
    
    "Soldiers Against the War in Vietnam: The Story of Aboveground"
    by Harry W. Haines   (Pages 181 to 198)
    "Tell us about the plan to burn down barracks buildings at Fort 
    Carson." The army intelligence officer wasn't keeping notes during 
    the interrogation, so I figured the gray room had a microphone hidden 
    somewhere, recording my answers. My cover was blown, and here I sat 
    in my dress uniform, summoned to explain my role in the publication 
    of Aboveground, an antiwar paper directed at soldiers stationed at 
    Fort Carson, Colorado. Harry Haines looks back at the widespread GI 
    antiwar movement, that largely hidden, secret part of the war's 
    history that embarrasses and threatens the regime that rules America 
    today. An appendix identifies 227 underground, antiwar newspapers 
    aimed at members of the U.S. armed forces during the Vietnam War.
    
    and
    
    Freedom of the Press-or Subversion and Sabotage?
    by Nancy Strohl    (Pages 259 to 268)
    In the late 1960s and early 1970s young Americans, disproportionately 
    poor and of color, were shipped off to Southeast Asia ostensibly to 
    fight for freedom for the Vietnamese people. They soon became angry 
    about racism, brutal conditions, and their own lack of freedom inside 
    the U.S. military, as well as the insane policies they were supposed 
    to defend with their lives. Meanwhile, antiwar activists at home 
    often mistakenly attacked these same military personnel for their 
    role in the Vietnam War. In the early seventies, however, some of us 
    began to understand that they were themselves victimized by the war. 
    One product of the natural coalition between antiwar GIs and the 
    antiwar movement at home, writes Nancy Strohl, was Freedom of the 
    Press, an alternative newspaper she produced and distributed with her 
    husband at the naval Air Station in Yokosuka, Japan, port for the USS 
    Midway when it was not serving as the base for bombing raids on north 
    Vietnam.
    
    To see the complete Table of Contents: 
    http://www.bookzen.com/books/0000095.html
    
    
    
    -- 
    "I see how peoples are set against one another and in silence, 
    unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I 
    see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to 
    make it yet more refined and enduring."
    
    --Paul Baumer,
    the protagonist in Erich Maria Remarque's
      "All Quiet on the Western Front"
    



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