Veterans Peace Offensive. 1(5),
March 1, 1970.
Insert abstract here....
 EXCERPTS
WINNING THE HEARTS AND MINDS ... A NEW BREED OF "NIGGER"
One of the more ballyhooed and probably true statements about Viet Nam is that on the firing line
blacks and whites are truly equal. Little has been said, however, about the new breed of
"nigger" over here. Officially he or she is a Vietnamese National; to the American
servicemen they are "gooks", social status they are "niggers".
I had been in Vietnam six hours before I saw my first civilian. "Here come the gooks,"
shouted a Captain, returning from R and R, as the local women arrived for work. I was impressed
with their oriental beauty and long black hair. I later found out that the composite gook is
lazy, stupid, dirty and can't be trusted. His children can be used to wash trucks and jeeps, his
vehicles are meant to be run off the road, and his women are all dirty whores who will ball with
anybody for a buck.
It seems I heard all that before when the old Chicago neighborhood started changing.
In keeping with their status as "niggers" no job is too low to be done by the
Vietnamese. For every woman working in a PX or Club (where their breasts are considered house
property by day and their bodies are house property by night), there are several more cleaning
latrines, sweeping barracks, burning feces, and hauling garbage.
They are "stupid" for not understanding our directions, and are expected to learn our
language since we are the master race and they are aliens in their own country.
Just today I was doing a pre-employment physical on an elderly papa-san, and I asked what he would
be doing.
"We need him bad doc. All he'll do is burn the shit. Can you imagine? They've had a GI
doing that? Is that any kind of job for an American to be doing?"
The women also make excellent shoeshine and laundry girls for their American masters; it seems all
"niggers" must give a good shoe-shine to survive in our free society. The people do
make excellent "niggers" though.
They never talk back, require little food or sanitation and provide a needed outlet (inlet?) for
our good Christian clap-hungry boys.
They (the "Niggers of Nam" of course) even have their militant equivalent of the Black
Panthers: the ARVN forces. These bullies take our jeeps, run our vehicles off the road at
gunpoint, and naturally they are the most hated of the "Niggers" -- even more so than
Charlie.
I just can't wait until this war is over. Then we will all leave the slant-eyed niggers to frolic
in our garbage dumps and go stateside where our "black brothers" will once again become
sex-crazed, lazy, violence-prone shoe-shine boys with whores for women and whites for masters.
After all, that's how it should be and that is what we're fighting for - isn't it?
Irvin S. Roger, Cpt. M.C.
POLL IS SLATED OF BLACKS ON VIETNAM WAR
from The Militant
NEW YORK - Plans were announced here last week by the National Committee of Black Churchmen (NCBC)
for a nationwide referendum on the Vietnam war this spring in Black communities and at military
bases and stockades across the country. The poll ... to be conducted during Holy Week, March
22-29, could be of unique importance for the antiwar movement.
The referendum asks for a simple yes or no vote for the proposition: "I vote for the total
immediate withdrawal of all American troops and money from Vietnam."
The organizers of the National Black Referendum on Vietnam consider it a means for increasing the
involvement of Black people in the struggle against the Vietnam war. "This is a call to
Black Americans to say that they are not part of that silent majority Nixon talks about,"
says Irving Davis of SNCC, one of the participating groups.
Not only will the referendum offer Blacks the opportunity to voice their opposition to the war,
according to the Rev. J. Metz Rollins, executive director of the NCBC, but it will also help
determine how the Black community feels about the squandering of its tax dollars on the war
"while millions of Blacks in America are dying of starvation and suffering from an unjust
welfare system, continuous rise in unemployment and poor education" which the use of those
dollars could begin to help alleviate.
Besides the National Committee of Black Churchmen, the referendum is being supported by Julian
Bond, the Georgia legislator; LeRoi Jones, the playwright; actor Ossie Davis; Dr. George A.
Wiley, director of the National Welfare Rights Organization; and H. Rap Brown, SNCC, among
others.
This is the first nationally-coordinated referendum on the immediate withdrawal of all-U.S.
troops from Vietnam. It is of obvious significance that it is to take place in the Black
community, where there is almost universal recognition that its war-induced suffering is clearly
related to the high number of Blacks who die in Vietnam and to the diversion of money from the
Black community to help pay for the war.
This and the fact that the referendum is set to occur close to the dates being projected for
massive spring antiwar actions provide an important opportunity for the antiwar movement to
relate to it in every way possible and thereby broaden its mobilization forces in the Black
community.
FOUR MARINES GET TOKEN SENTENCES
from The Southern Patriot
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Four black marines charged with conspiracy and rioting have won a tremendous
court victory. After hearing evidence for two months, a court martial reduced the charges to
breach of peace and assault.
Possible sentences for the original charges could have been 86 years in the brig each. Instead,
a six-month sentence was ordered for Perry Backstrom, 21, Meridian, Miss.; four months for Arthur
McCall, 20, Birmingham, Ala.; two months for Oscar Terry, 19 Paducah, Ky.; and one month for
Charles Nickson, 23, Memphis.
"It was a great victory," the marines' civilian lawyers said. "Of course they
shouldn't have received any sentence at all for defending themselves, but it is a victory when
you consider what they could have gotten." The Navy issued a news release agreeing that it
was a victory for the defendants.
In a similar case now being tried at Ft. Knox, Ky., one man has already been sentenced to 2 ½
years at hard labor. It is likely that the difference between this and the Memphis verdicts was
the result of protests that poured into the air station after the case became known throughout
the U.S.
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