Why March?

They’re throwing a peace march April 15. Why come to another demonstration? Because it helps pressure Nixon to bring the troops home. Bringing the troops home will do two things: it will save a lot of American and Vietnamese lives and it will mean the success of the Vietnamese struggle for national self-determination.

It will not mean the solution to the fundamental problems here at home. The ruling class will continue to put itself through fantastic contortions in the Establishment media in order to explain the continuation of high taxes and inflation once the war ends.

The march will go from Wayne State to Kennedy Square. Of course, once you get to Kennedy Square you may have to do amphetamines just to stay awake. Yes, it’s another Detroit Coalition Extravaganza, complete with such electrifying stars as labor bureaucrat Tom Turner, President of the Detroit AFL-CIO. Why do they do this to us?

They actually asked sell-out Walter Reuther and pig ex-mayor Jerry Cavanaugh to speak at this thing. Fortunately, Walter and Jerry declined. The same leadership sponsored a rally at Wayne State four years ago in which Orville Hubbard, racist mayor of Dearborn, laid out why he was against the war—probably because all those little yellow people aren’t worth defending against Communism anyhow.

The reason for this “lowest common denominator” speakers policy is that the Coalition wants to appeal to a broad base of support and build the anti-war movement in the working class. Right on.

But how excited is the average white or black worker in this city going to get over the proposed bill of speakers (mostly from out of town) when we could be hearing brothers and sisters from Detroit talking about the war and how it relates to the struggles we’re engaged in right here. The Coalition has gotten into producing a spectacle instead.

The thing about the “lowest common denominator” approach is that it’s coming from a weird sort of contempt for the people. To continue talking about us as so many bodies in the street rather than talking to us about the reasons for the war—about the fact that the ruling class is going to use us to fight more “limited wars” to defend their investments against the liberation struggles in any of half a dozen other Third World countries once they withdraw from Vietnam—this shows a low opinion of our ability to understand and begin to move to control the political conditions that affect our lives.

Similarly, to advertise the march as a “massive non-violent protest” is an incredible concession to the sickness of pacifism that hangs around the peace movement. We’re not into indiscriminate trashing, but we’re not into that shit-eating suburban peace-freak thing of flashing the V-sign while the cops wail on us, either. We will defend ourselves if attacked.

So come to the march. Last time Americans were in Cuba they talked with Vietnamese liberation fighters. The Vietnamese said to tell the American movement to continue building anti-war demonstrations in the U.S. That’s why we’ll be there.

Related

See Fifth Estate’s Vietnam Resource Page.

In this issue: April 15 March