Our US Veterans

WARHAWKS     in the USA have taken its  citizens  into numerous wars in the  20th and  21st centuries, such as:

• World War I
• World War II
• Korean War
• Vietnam War
• Multiple wars in the Middle East
• Iran
• Iraq
• Afghanistan
• Syria

Our political leaders who will never again see another day of WAR have the unmitigated  gall to send our young men and women into war zones and engage in fire fights where many of them have  either lost their lives or return home CRIPPLED for LIFE...

AND...  instead of our Federal Government spending money on helping them have a quality of life as a THANK YOU FOR THEIR SERVICE, we decide instead to spend money to keep people from going back to work or supporting efforts to encourage radical movements in this country like BLM and defunding the police.

WE SHOULD EITHER TAKE CARE OF OUR VETERANS OR STOP FIGHTING WARS...

The Year Was 1969

William Kunstler

The trial of The Chicago 7 was taking place with their main attorney William Kunstler and the reason why I remember this is the fact that William Kunstler gave at talk at Elon College regarding the rights of students.  The school administration was searching our dorm rooms indiscriminately and without warning and we complained that the school administration did not have the right to do this because they were a Church of Christ College and could do as they pleased.  

At Kunstler's LECTURE, he informed those students present that Elon College actually received more funds from the Federal Government than they did from the Church of Christ and therefore needed to have a SEARCH WARRANT in order to search our rooms since we were paying a rental fee for those rooms.  Elon College stopped the practice after Kunstler's LECTURE.

This type of experience is not easily forgotten.

I just watched the movie THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 and it vividly brought back memories that had all but been forgotten by me and the reason why these memories were more or less forgotten by me was the fact that I did not return to Elon College the second semester was that I had enlisted in the US Navy Reserves and did not have to report to active duty for another year as long as I attended Reserve meetings.

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7

The trial of the Chicago Seven begins before Judge Julius Hoffman. Initially there were eight defendants (and the group was known as the Chicago Eight), but one, Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers, denounced Hoffman as a racist and demanded a separate trial. The seven other defendants, including David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE); Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden of MOBE and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); and Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman of the Youth International Party (Yippies), were accused of conspiring to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

At the height of the antiwar and civil rights movements, these young leftists had organized protest marches and rock concerts at the Democratic National Convention. During the event, clashes broke out between the protesters and the police and eventually turned into full-scale rioting, complete with tear gas and police beatings. The press, already there to cover the Democratic convention, denounced the overreaction by police and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s handling of the situation.

The Chicago Seven were indicted for violating the Rap Brown law, which had been tagged onto the Civil Rights Bill earlier that year by conservative senators. The law made it illegal to cross state lines in order to riot or to conspire to use interstate commerce to incite rioting. President Johnson’s attorney general, Ramsey Clark, refused to prosecute the case.  SOURCE:  History.com

1966: High School Graduation and the Vietnam War

At the beginning of 1966, the number of U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam totaled 184,314. 

South Vietnamese military forces totaled 514,000 including the army (ARVN) and the Regional Force and Popular Force (the "Ruff-Puffs") militias.

The North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) numbered 400,000, most still in North Vietnam. 50,000 PAVN cadre and soldiers infiltrated South Vietnam during 1965. 

The U.S. estimated the number of Viet Cong (VC) and PAVN soldiers in South Vietnam at nearly 280,000 by June 1966, including part-time guerrillas.

A pause in the bombing of North Vietnam by U.S. warplanes had been announced by President Johnson on 24 December...

AND...  where was I?

I had just graduated from high school in MAY and was traveling around throughout Europe on $5/day, drinking wine and sleeping with as many woman as I could find who wanted to spend the night with me... and save themselves some bread (money)...

After spending about 6 weeks in Europe, I ended up in Upper Marlboro, MD where I lived in an unfurnished apartment while working road construction until I had to report to Elon College, NC to begin as a Freshmen in College.

As I recall, I did not care for college that much and decided to get a part-time job in a textile mill when I was not in class...  As it turned out, I began dying socks for Burlington Industries...

For all of 1966 and the better part of 1977, I remained in NC without my parents as my Dad had to complete his tour of duty with the American Embassy in Cairo, Egypt...  but...  for the life of me, I cannot remember where I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1966 or in 1977.

Living in The Sixties

I graduated from high school in 1966 and after traveling through Europe for a couple of weeks because I had been living in Cairo, Egypt, I settled in the State of Maryland working road

construction at Regal Construction Company until entering College as a Freshman in the Fall.  After attending college for two and a half years, I left college because I suddenly realized that I just did not want to be there.

So, without my draft deferment for being as College student, I had to do something or else I was going to be drafted and possibly sent to Vietnam which is the last thing that I wanted to do with my time.  Therefore, after securing a full time job with a local company, I enlisted in the US Navy Reserves which allowed me to work for 12 months before going on active duty for 2 years.

Dealing with the DRAFT and the fact that OUR GOVERNMENT could send young men to WAR was not just a huge FEAR for people like me but caused us to have a SOLID RESENTMENT for our country into which we had been born.  It just did not seem right to us that our Government could force us to do something that we did not want to do...

One of the songs that reflected our feelings during this time was "For What It's Worth," by Buffalo Springfield.  Buffalo Springfield was a Canadian-American rock band active from 1966 to 1968 whose most prominent members were Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay.


For What It's Worth

There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look - what's going down?
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking' their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look - what's going down?
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly saying, "hooray for our side"
It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look - what's going down?
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you way away