'Richie' Richardson an editor & anti-war hero
http://www.workers.org/2010/us/richardson_0422/
By John Catalinotto
Published Apr 17, 2010
F.O. Richardson, who everyone called "Richie," was hardly out of his
teens when he jumped into France on the night of June 5, 1944, the
eve of the allied landing at Normandy. He survived, luckier than the
many young men whose parachutes and bodies were shredded by German
machine-gun fire.
Jump ahead 21 years. He was in many ways the ideal keynote speaker at
a mass rally in Union Square in February 1965 organized by Youth
Against War and Fascism to protest President Lyndon Johnson's sending
of combat troops to Vietnam.
In those days groups like the John Birch Society the spiritual
ancestors of today's Tea Party organizers would hold
counter-demonstrations. They liked to call anti-war forces "cowards."
Richie was right in their face, which got them even madder. They
attacked the demonstration but found to their surprise that the
protesters held the line.
Richie was a Workers World Party member through the 1960s and the
early 1970s. In January 1968 he took on an assignment that became a
vital contribution to the class and anti-imperialist struggle. He
assumed responsibility for editing The Bond, which over the next few
years became the best-read newspaper of protest for the rapidly
growing resistance movement of soldiers, sailors, marines, air troops
and GIs of all types during the Vietnam War.
The Bond became the monthly newspaper of the American Servicemen's
Union. Under Richardson's editorship, tens of thousands of copies
each month were passed hand-to-hand by GIs all over the world,
bringing an anti-war and anti-racist message and mobilizing them
against the dictatorial chain of command.
The Vietnamese finally liberated the south of their country in 1975.
With his editorial and artistic skills, Richie had made a concrete
contribution any working-class activist could be proud of. He was one
of those many heroes who helped defeat U.S. imperialism in Southeast Asia.
Richie died this March. There will be a gathering in his honor on
April 17 at 2 p.m. at the Ethical Culture Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
at Prospect Park West between 1st and 2nd Streets. Surviving family
members and friends will pay their respects to this class fighter.
.
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