Anti-War Groups Plan Action

Anti-war forces in Detroit are preparing to respond to a call for a national mobilization called at a meeting last month of anti-war groups.

The meeting, held in Cleveland Nov. 26 to evaluate the recent Nov. 5–8 Mobilization for Peace in Vietnam, for Economic Justice and for Human Rights, mapped plans for continuing and enlarging anti-war activities and established a Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

The conference, attended by 180 persons from over 70 local and national groups opposed to the war, was co-chaired by A.J. Muste and Prof. Robert Greenblatt, executive vice-president of the Inter-University Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy.

According to a resolution adopted by the conference, the Committee will seek to widen peace activities and reach out into the professions, labor and military groups. In a major program decision it was decided by the representatives at the meeting that a large mobilization will be held April 15, 1967 centered on New York and San Francisco.

Nick Medvecky, Chairman of the Detroit Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the group that organized the November Mobilization in this city, said his group “will be organizing contingents to go to New York City for the April Mobilization. We want to work with all interested groups and individuals,” he said.

The officers of the newly-formed mobilization committee are Mr. Muste as chairman and as vice chairmen: Mr. Greenblatt; Dave Dellinger, editor of Liberation magazine; Edward Keating, publisher of Ramparts magazine; and Prof. Sidney Peck, coordinator of the Cleveland University Circle Teach-in Committee.

Mr. Dellinger reported on his recent stay in North Vietnam where he met with leaders of the government, including Ho Chi Minh and Premier Pham Van Dong. Mr. Dellinger said he personally witnessed some of the bombing of North Vietnam and saw many civilian buildings, including hospitals, which had been destroyed by the American planes.

“If the purpose of this bombing,” said Dellinger, “is to break the morale of the North Vietnamese population, and as we are told by our government, to force Hanoi to the conference table, it is having just the opposite effect, a lesson the military should have learned from the bombing of London in the 2^nd World War.” Mr. Dellinger said negotiations for a quid pro quo in this matter were not necessary. “If we stop sending our bombers over their country,” he said, “they will stop shooting at them.”

Patricia Griffith, Administrative Secretary of the Nov. 8 Mobilization Committee, is evaluating the Nov. 5–8 activities said, “Reports were received from 86 cities where activities took place. Field representatives reported a great proliferation of peace groups and anti-war activities throughout the country. Every indication is that more and more American people are beginning to voice their objection in one way or another to the war in Vietnam. They want it stopped.”

Related

See Fifth Estate’s Vietnam Resource Page.