On Protests, Violence and Voting Rights

Violence at recent demonstrations and counter demonstrations reveal the need for cities and states, with support from Congress, to refuse protest permits to groups that threaten violence. The simplest way to do that, while respecting the right of freedom of speech, is to refuse permits for protest rallies or marches in which participants plan to carry guns. It’s one thing to allow “open carry” of firearms in public, it’s quite a dangerous different decision to allow persons to carry firearms in a protest march when political confrontation and violence are very real possibilities. To its credit, apparently, ACLU is considering not defending this form of provocative protest. The NRA’s shameless support for violence-prone, gun-toting protests should cause politicians to think twice before taking money from the gun lobby. 

            These are not new issues, but the Trump Presidency is generating an even more dangerous context. In 1966, I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago, supporting the campaign for implementing fair housing policies. The ACLU controversially defended the right of neo-Nazis to march. When we black and white marched together, we needed the National Guard to protect us from screaming white mobs lining both sides of the street.  History teaches us that when politics are deeply divisive, as they are today, fueled in part by the President, dangers to democracy intensify.

Freedom of speech is a right worth defending, even when the message of an individual or group is morally repugnant. The danger in restricting the right is that political contexts and what majorities might want to prohibit change over time. Refusing the right of persons to spew white supremacist, neo-Nazi hatred today may seem a good and necessary limitation, especially to people who have experienced hate-motivated physical violence. In another time and context, a majority, including some of the same people, might support limiting speech of those who oppose their government’s war or who advocate against unfair taxation or for a single-payer “socialist” solution for achieving universal healthcare.  The risks of freedom of speech are real, the risks of denying this right are even greater. Refusing protest permits for groups in which participants carry guns would protect public safety while preserving freedom of speech.

Our work together for a better America is about much more than denouncing hate groups. We need to work together to build effective political support for overturning two recent Supreme Court decisions that are disastrous for our democracy.  “Citizens United vs the FEC” (2010) granted corporations the same right of free speech and right to contribute money to political campaigns as individual citizens and “Shelby County vs. Holder” (2013) gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We need to challenge all politicians and prospective candidates for office, Democrats or Republicans, to support legislation that would overturn these decisions that deny protections for voting rights and greatly compound the problems of big money in politics. Realistically, overturning these court decisions is a longer term goal.

Nationally, in the meantime, we need to resist Republican voter suppression efforts, including restrictive voter I.D. laws, new limits on voter registration, reduced times and locations for voting, and provisions that make it harder to restore voting rights for people with past criminal convictions – all of which are designed and work in ways that fall heaviest on minorities, the elderly and youth.

Locally, we should support citizenship education, encourage voter registration, and expose hate groups, like anti-Muslim “Act for America” which claims 750,000 members nationwide and recently doubled the number of chapters in Washington. In Everett specifically, we should support the proposed change in how we vote for City Council members to include voting by districts, as well as for at-large members. District voting will attract candidates who have direct personal connections with more multi-cultural, underrepresented and under-served neighborhoods in our city.

Locally and nationally, we’ve got to denounce and protest each new demonstration promoting racist, proto-Fascist, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ hatred. In most cases, I’m sure we can turn out much larger numbers than these hate groups and, if we’re consistent and creative, we can win over a lot more people to side with us against hate and stand-up for justice and peace. Strategically, looking toward the 2018 elections, our goals need to be to strengthen voting rights and increase the numbers of eligible voters who come out to vote. “Si, se puede, yes we can.”

PBS Vietnam War Documentary - Community Responses

.The PBS Vietnam War documentary ten week series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick will be released nationwide on September17. Here is a link to the list of "What Stations Are Doing" in relation to the documentary. I encourage you to find ways that you.and your family and friends in other areas of the country can be involved in community responses. Ideas for how you can participate include writing an Op-Ed or Letter to the Editor, helping to arrange a panel at a church, synagogue, mosque or local Library, distributing the model flyer at your local station or other public venue, and working with Veterans for Peace. While there's a lot in the series that is positive, including visuals and interviews with diverse Americans and Vietnamese with very different views of the war, I fear that the imbalance of voices and the film's distorted historical framing of the war will keep us from learning lessons to help prevent future wars. Here is a Commentary I wrote after my wife and I attended a presentation by Burns and Novick in Seatlle, and a flyer we distributed to 1000 attendees.  Many people who read the flyer expressed agreement or appreciation for the idea that "The American War in Vietnam Didn't Need to Happen," and no one expressed hostility. You're welcome to reproduce (or adapt) the Commentary and/or the Flyer for use in your area. Replies to  "contact: vietnamlessons@gmail.com at the bottom of the flyer come directly to me and I am happy to respond to any replies.

Commentary on Previewing the PBS Vietnam War Documentary

By Ron Young

At a preview of the PBS Vietnam War documentary, while filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick presented visuals and voices of diverse Americans and Vietnamese reflecting complex, different views of the war, I fear the film’s imbalance of voices and distorted historical framing of the war will keep us from learning essential lessons to help prevent future wars.   

In the preview, we hear the voices of Nixon, Agnew and Johnson defending the war but not the voices of Senators Morse and Gruening who voted against the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution. This deceitful resolution effectively authorized the war, just as forty years later the false claim about Iraq having nuclear weapons provided the rationale for the disastrous U.S. invasion. The preview, and my guess is the film itself, doesn’t give us the voice of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Halberstam who got it right in his 1964 book, The Making of a Quaqmire, on why the American war in Vietnam was unwinnable.

In the documentary’s preview we hear agonized, brave voices of young American soldiers who fought the war, more than 58,200 of whom never came home, but not the voices of an estimated million or more who went AWOL or deserted or voices of soldiers who courageously resisted and risked imprisonment.

The worst distortion is Burns’ historically inaccurate statement that at the war’s end, “a country (South Vietnam) disappeared.” While Vietnamese had different political views then and do today, Vietnam was and is one country. This was recognized in the 1954 Geneva Accords that ended French colonial rule, temporarily divided the country into two zones, and mandated Vietnam-wide elections in 1956, elections which the U.S. imposed Diem regime refused. In truth, the war’s end marked Vietnam’s independence. The country was finally free from decades of foreign domination.   

The American war in Vietnam didn’t need to happen. On February 28, 1946 Ho Chi Minh wrote to President Truman informing him how the French were making preparations for returning French troops to Hanoi to make Vietnam a colony again. Ho wrote urgently, “I therefore earnestly appeal to you personally and to the American people.  .  .to support our independence.  .  .in keeping with principles of the Atlantic and San Francisco charters.” 

President Truman, blinded by Cold War ideology which pitted the U.S. against many anti-colonial nationalist movements, never replied. Instead, the U.S. paid 80% of France’s losing war costs. And then we spent $168 billion ($1 trillion in 2017 dollars) for the American War that robbed resources at home from the War on Poverty and Great Society programs.

Burns and Novick view their film as helping to create reconciliation over a war that generated deep divisions among Americans. As South Africans understood in creating their post-Apartheid commission, you can’t have reconciliation without truth-telling. The truth is the American War in Vietnam was wrong. It was a war, like the war in Iraq, that never should have happened.

During the Vietnam War, as National Youth Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Ron resisted the draft, led an interfaith/interracial mission to Saigon focused on repression, carried mail to American POW’s in Hanoi, and coordinated national peace marches on Washington, DC in November 1969 and May 1970.

Ron lives in Everett, WA and can be contacted at ronyoungwa@gmail.com. See FLYER below.

      

WHAT the WAR DOCUMENTARY WON’T SAY!

The American War in Vietnam Didn’t Need to Happen 58,220 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese didn’t need to die. All could be spared suffering from UXOs, Agent Orange, PTSD and suicides.

In 1944, President Roosevelt sent US OSS agents, including Mac Shin from Seattle, to assist Ho Chi Minh’s forces in defeating the Japanese occupation, after which France tried to reimpose its colonial control .

On February 28, 1946 Ho Chi Minh wrote to President Truman.

On behalf of the Vietnam government and people, Ho informed the President that the French were making preparations for returning French troops to Hanoi to make Vietnam a colony again. Ho wrote, “I therefore earnestly appeal to you personally and to the American people.  .  .to support our independence.  .  .in keeping with the principles of the Atlantic and San Francisco charters.” 

President Truman, blinded by Cold War ideology which pitted the U.S. against many anti-colonial nationalist movements, never replied. Instead, the U.S. paid 80% of France’s losing war costs. And then we spent $168 billion ($1 trillion in 2017 dollars) on the American War that robbed resources at home from the War on Poverty and Great Society.

SAY IT! The American War in Vietnam Was Wrong!

This war (and the war in Iraq) Never Should Have Happened!

CONTACT: vietnamlessons@gmail.com