AMERICAN STUDENT YOUTH SCHEDULE SPRING ANTIWAR MOBILIZATION
{On December 28-30, an important gathering of representatives of some 37 different student groups and 17 local independent committees to end the war was held in Chicago. The 257 delegates included representatives from Canada and Puerto Rico. After an intensive discussion, it was decided that a’nationwide strike against the war in Vietnam is not feasible at this time but that a nationwide mobilization of*students could be carried out. Agreement was reached on organizing "Vietnam Week" April 8-15. This will be a week of intensive campus antiwar activity, culminating in massive demonstrations in New York and San Francisco on April 15. Student youth from all over the country will converge on the two centers to voice their feelings against the role of the U.S. in Vietnam. The following is the text of the call issued by the Chicago conference. ]
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"They have made a desert and called it peace." -- Tacitus.
It is two years since the U.S. government began bombing North Vietnam. For two years the U.S. government has continued to escalate the war and spent ever increasing sums of money. In Vietnam the war is being paid for by the increased shedding of the blood of American and Vietnamese soldiers, and the ever increasing killing of Vietnamese civilians. At home the war is being paid for by increased food prices, increased tuition, and the ever increasing disruption of the lives of American youth. This poses a challenge to those Americans who for the past two years have been striving to bring the horror of the war to the attention of their fellow Americans: for now large segments of America can be reached with the message that the war is a barrier both to their own individual happiness and to the fulfillment of the American dream of a nation with liberty and justice for ail.
We must respond to this challenge by confronting our fellow students and our professors with the truth about the war and its perverse effects upon our society:
We must face the true nature of the war. It is first of all a war of aggression against the people of Vietnam, who seek only to exercise that right of self-determination for which Americans fought in 1776. It is a racist war, a murderous war against a colored people. It is an illegal war fought in our name but without our consent. It is but one symptom of a diseased society, a symptom that must be ended if it is to be possible to begin treating the disease itself.
We must face the true nature of the draft system. It is that system by which the war machine is nourished by the blood of young men. It is that system which makes the war possible. It further perpetuates a system of racism in the United States. It calcu-
latedly penalizes the’ poor. It.is used by the government to crush the aspirations of American racial minorities. It ’converts the classroom into an arena in which the losers are: sent out to kill and be killed and the winners must live with the knowledge that their "success" in school may mean another's death on the battlefield.
The war in Vietnam makes it clear that the administration of this country with the complicity of the colleges and universities prefers to train Americans to become instruments of war instead of enlightened human beings.
We, the Student Mobilization Committee, urge all those. students who wish to oppose the criminal war in Vietnam to dedicate themselves anew to the task of ending the war. Specifically we propose that April 8-15 be designated as Vietnam Week. We urge national student action during Vietnam Week which will.culminate in the transportation of as many students as possible to New York and San Francisco as part of the general Spring Mobilization of the antiwar movement on April 15. Finally, we propose that the focus of End the War in Vietnam Week be on: (1) Bringing the GI's home now; (2) Opposing the draft, and supporting the right of individuals to refuse to cooperate with the military system; and (3) Ending campus complicity with the war effort.
It is especially appropriate that we American students, fighting for the right to determine our own future, support the right of self-determination throughout the world and call for international opposition to the war in Vietnam, which denies the right of self-determination to the people of Vietnam. %
"TRISH MILITANT"