>
> WW News Service Digest #84
>
> 1) Vietnam, April 30, 1975: The day the movement cried for joy
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 2) 30 years after invasion: What the U.S. did to Cambodia
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 3) Los Angeles janitors win landmark victory
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 4) Supreme Court hears abortion rights challenge
> by "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 4, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>VIETNAM, APRIL 30, 1975:
>THE DAY THE MOVEMENT CRIED FOR JOY
>
>By Jack A. Smith
>
>[Smith visited Vietnam as editor of the Guardian late 1974-
>early 1975, just before liberation]
>
>For most people in the United States over age 40 today,
>the Vietnam War was the defining political experience of
>their lives--whether they were in the majority who opposed
>the war or remained with the diminishing camp of advocates
>for it. For millions it was the formative experience of
>life, as unforgettable today as on April 30 just 25 years
>ago when U.S. imperialism suffered its most outstanding
>defeat in history from a poor agricultural country in
>Southeast Asia.
>
>The struggle against the war, combined with the
>simultaneous fight for civil rights and Black liberation,
>became the biggest protest movement the United States ever
>experienced. It constituted a crucial second front of the
>war inside the imperial camp and gave heart not just to
>Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos--the countries of former French
>Indochina Washington sought to dominate--but to movements
>throughout the world.
>
>The anti-war movement enjoyed the support of tens of
>millions, raised mass political consciousness and helped
>build the left opposition to capitalism. Demonstrations of
>hundreds of thousands, even a million, shook the bourgeois
>political system to its foundations.
>
>By the late 1960s, pro-war politicians were ducking for
>cover. President Lyndon Johnson, who inherited the war from
>President John F. Kennedy, wouldn't run for a second term
>because he feared it would lead to rebellion. During the
>years of anti-war growth, many participants metamorphosed
>from pacifism and liberalism to anti-imperialism and
>support for the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front.
>
>RESISTANCE AMONG STUDENTS
>
>The war gave rise to the biggest, most assertive left
>student movement the country has known.
>
>In one day, after the bombing of Cambodia, students
>occupied more than 700 college administration buildings--no
>small achievement for a movement that had started a few
>years earlier campaigning for longer dormitory hours.
>Before it imploded in the early 1970s, Students for a
>Democratic Society grew in several years from a relative
>handful of social democrats into a combative movement with
>100,000 members.
>
>The war and the anti-war movement had their roots in the
>mid-1950s, a period of domestic political reaction
>orchestrated from Washington to accompany the Cold War
>against the USSR. At that time a small movement focused on
>the danger of nuclear war. It was composed of pacifists and
>liberals but included anti-Cold War progressives and
>communists who generally concealed their affiliations in
>those witch-hunting times. Left political organizations
>were not welcome.
>
>As the Cold War developed, radical pacifist groups began
>engaging in nonviolent direct action against the war
>machine and conscientious objection to military service.
>People in boats illegally and bravely entered bomb-testing
>areas of the Pacific. A campaign was waged to stop Polaris
>missile submarines.
>
>Civil disobedience on a small scale took place against
>annual civil-defense drills in some cities. Groups such as
>the Committee for Nonviolent Action, the War Resisters
>League, Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), Women
>Strike for Peace, Fellowship of Reconciliation and Quakers
>led this movement.
>
>By the early 1960s this movement was growing measurably,
>in numbers and creative tactics, inspired in part by the
>campaign to end Jim Crow segregation in the South. But few
>in it were paying attention to what was happening in
>Vietnam.
>
>Vietnam had been a French colony for a century. The French
>were pushed out by the Japanese, who were pushed out by the
>Vietminh, the anti-French/anti-Japanese liberation army led
>by Ho Chi Minh and the Indochinese communist movement.
>France returned in 1945 and the anti-colonial war resumed,
>resulting in the historic French defeat at the battle of
>Dienbienphu in 1954. An armistice divided the country at
>the 17th parallel until nationwide elections scheduled for
>1956.
>
>With support from Paris and Washington, the south declared
>"independence" and canceled national elections. This was to
>avoid a victory by Ho Chi Minh, who everyone, including
>President Dwight Eisenhower, knew would win.
>
>U.S. TAKES OVER FRANCE'S WAR
>
>The French pulled out and the United States--which had
>been financing the war for a decade--entered, first with
>money and civilian advisors, then with arms and military
>advisors. The "advisors" ran the show. By the end of 1959,
>the north, by now the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and
>governed by the Vietnamese Communist Party, called for
>reunification of the country. The United States responded
>by enlarging its presence.
>
>Few people in the United States knew what was happening in
>Vietnam. The corporate media manipulated facts then as now.
>Eventually, the U.S. military buildup became too big to
>ignore.
>
>The first U.S. demonstration against Pentagon involvement
>in Vietnam was organized by the youth arm of Workers World
>Party in August 1962. The party supported the socialist
>revolutions that had swept Asia at the end of World War II,
>and saw that reconquering Asia was a major objective of
>U.S. government strategy. WWP had no hesitation in
>declaring U.S. intervention in Vietnam imperialist.
>
>By 1963, when the body bags started coming home, groups
>like SANE and the pacifists began to embrace the Vietnam
>issue. But they called only for negotiations--not for U.S.
>troops to withdraw. Massive bombing of Vietnam started in
>1964.
>
>U.S. ground troops arrived in force the next year. Their
>number eventually totaled over 500,000.
>
>The socialist countries, led by the USSR and China, had by
>now taken up the fight against U.S. intervention--both
>politically and by sending anti-aircraft guns and abundant
>military and civilian supplies.
>
>By 1965, the outlines of a mass movement could be
>discerned. That April, SDS organized the biggest anti-war
>demonstration to date in Washington. It drew 25,000 people.
>
>Just as important, the action was "non-exclusionary."
>Until then, left and anti-imperialist groups had been
>excluded from formal participation in the anti-war
>movement. Many, but not all, leaders of the pacifist and
>liberal anti-war organizations applied heavy pressure on
>SDS not to include socialist and communist groups as co-
>sponsors; some even wanted to exclude left banners or
>signs. They went public with their anti-left complaints.
>
>SDS held its ground. Some of the peace groups openly
>criticized the upcoming rally and refused to participate.
>
>In this struggle a new type of anti-war movement was born.
>Before long, it moved from criticizing the war as merely a
>"failed policy" to "a manifestation of imperialism" to--in
>many cases--identifying capitalism as responsible for
>dragging the people into a war whose goal was not "freedom
>and democracy" but to expand U.S. corporate control and
>profits.
>
>Many left groups were directly involved in the mass
>movement. Workers World and its youth group, Youth Against
>War and Fascism, were constantly in the streets with their
>unforgettable bright banners and chanted slogans: "End the
>war in Vietnam--Bring the troops home!"
>
>The Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party each
>played big roles in respective coalitions, sometimes in a
>bloc with the liberals against the more anti-imperialist
>elements. Progressive Labor Party was active as a faction
>within SDS, which was developing several strong anti-
>imperialist and communist currents of its own. Other left
>groups, from small parties to direct-action anarchists to
>anti-fascist Lincoln Brigade veterans from the Spanish
>Civil War, were marching in common cause.
>
>TET OFFENSIVE WAS TURNING POINT
>
>The NLF's Lunar New Year (Tet) offensive in early 1968 was
>the turning point of the war.
>
>The Pentagon termed the offensive a failure, saying it
>cost many Vietnamese lives for the temporary acquisition of
>U.S. bases and sectors of South Vietnam's capital, Saigon.
>But what the U.S. people saw was that the mighty U.S.
>military could be overrun by a poor but motivated peasant
>army prepared to fight for another 100 years to gain
>national liberation and political sovereignty.
>
>No activist of the time will ever forget 1968. It began
>with Tet. Then Johnson announced he wouldn't seek re-
>election.
>
>Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with his powerful voice
>opposing the war, was murdered. Cities were in flames.
>
>Robert Kennedy was shot. The Democratic convention was a
>debacle as cops fought protesters who took over the
>streets. Richard Nixon was elected on the promise that he
>would find a way to end the war.
>
>The mass anti-war movement was reaching its peak and anti-
>war opinion had become the majority.
>
>GIs were turning against the war in large numbers. Workers
>World and YAWF helped GIs form the American Servicemen's
>Union, which soon had 30,000 active-duty members on bases
>and ships around the world. GI anti-war coffeehouses were
>opening outside scores of military bases in the United
>States. Veterans demonstrated by tossing away their medals
>at mass demonstrations.
>
>On the frontlines, many anti-war GIs stopped aiming at the
>"enemy." Some aimed at their own junior officers. The term
>"fragging" entered the vocabulary to describe the act of
>tossing a fragmentation grenade into an officer's tent.
>
>>From the point of view of the ruling class, the country
>was falling apart. The United States had to win fast or get
>out.
>
>Cambodia was bombed. Laos was bombed. The draft was ended-
>-to neutralize the student movement. Bombing was suspended
>to dampen the anti-war movement, resumed and suspended
>again. Peace talks began in Paris, and dragged on for years
>as Washington procrastinated.
>
>Finally the White House declared that South Vietnam was
>now "strong enough to defend itself"--the rationale for
>reducing the number of U.S. troops substantially.
>
>This writer, as editor of the weekly newspaper The
>Guardian, was in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in late
>1974 and early 1975. The country was in ruins from terror
>bombings. The United States had killed and wounded millions
>of people. But morale was high and everyone was confident
>of victory. It was safe now to bring foreign journalists
>south of the 17th parallel. The roar of guns could still be
>heard, but far, far off to the south.
>
>By April, the remaining U.S. soldiers and CIA agents began
>to flee. The last of them made it aboard helicopters as the
>liberation army penetrated central Saigon.
>
>What a day that was: April 30, 1975. Few in the movement
>since the 1960s could refrain from shedding tears of joy.
>
>Many veterans of the 1960s youth movement have remained
>with the struggle. They can be found on the front lines
>with older veterans and with the youth of today--opposing
>the U.S./NATO war against Yugoslavia, demanding an end to
>sanctions against Iraq, supporting Cuba against the
>blockade and subversion, fighting the good fight against
>racism, police brutality, the prison-industrial complex,
>women's oppression, lesbian/gay/bi/trans oppression, the
>World Trade Organization, World Bank, International
>Monetary Fund, imperialism and capitalism.
>
>The anti-war movement of the 1960s was then, and this is
>now. The struggle, obviously, continues.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <003001bfb16b$2a902510$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] 30 years after invasion: What the U.S. did to Cambodia
>Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 19:40:42 -0400
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the May 4, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>30 YEARS AFTER INVASION: WHAT THE U.S. DID TO CAMBODIA
>
>By Deirdre Griswold
>
>It is truly amazing. Search U.S. news sources and archives
>for information about Cambodia's history between March 1970
>and April 1975 and you will find almost nothing. Those five
>years have been virtually obliterated in our sanitized
>culture.
>
>You will, of course, find reams about the later period of
>the Pol Pot regime. The U.S. propaganda machine has made
>the term "killing fields" synonymous with the Khmer Rouge,
>or Cambodian communist army.
>
>But why is there such an absence of information about the
>years that preceded the victory of the Khmer Rouge?
>
>Because they were five years in which bloody U.S.
>intervention plunged Cambodia into war and disaster.
>
>They started with a CIA-sponsored coup on March 18, 1970.
>Cambodia until then had remained neutral in the U.S. war
>against Vietnam, unlike its neighbor Thailand, which had
>become a base for daily B-52 raids against Vietnamese
>villages and rice paddies.
>
>Cambodia's leader, Prince Sihanouk, had maintained good
>relations with People's China, the Democratic Republic of
>Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam.
>The CIA tried several times to have him assassinated, with
>no luck. But finally, while Sihanouk was out of the country
>visiting Moscow, he was deposed in a coup led by Lon Nol,
>the chief of staff of the Cambodian Army.
>
>CIA OVERTHREW SIHANOUK
>
>According to an article in the Australian journal The Age
>by Milton Osborne on Jan. 12, 1971, Lon Nol had been
>recruited into the CIA in the fall of 1969 while receiving
>"medical treatments" in the American Hospital at Neuilly
>sur-Seine outside Paris. He then secretly began to bring
>into the country Cambodian mercenaries trained at a CIA
>
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