Vets march against war
This year, for the first time since the Vietnam War,
anti-war contingents marched in at least two of the Veterans'
Day parades on Nov. 11. In New York a group of about 50 men and
women from Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans for
Peace marched up Fifth Avenue with banners and signs against
Bush's planned war on Iraq. In San Francisco a "No war for oil"
contingent marched in the parade. The media there commented on
how small the Veterans' Day parade was in comparison to the
huge anti-war march on Oct. 26 that drew nearly 100,000
people.
Unlike parades in the 1970s that turned into angry
confrontations between supporters and opponents of the war, no
incidents were reported this time. There was scattered applause
for the anti-war contingent in New York.
Veterans' Day in the United States has long been used by
politicians and the military not just to commemorate the dead
but also to beat the drums for war, and this year was no
exception. President George W. Bush used the occasion to rally
support for his expansionist designs.
But elsewhere, the anti-war movement marked the day with
meetings and protests.
Rev. James Bevel, director of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s
historic 1963 March on Washington, told a Veterans' Day
anti-war protest at the University of Illinois in Urbana: "We
have to be honest when someone is out to murder someone to
steal oil, as opposed to when there is a threat against our
security as a sovereign nation. It is obvious that Bush is
carrying out the hate policy of his father against the Iraqi
people, based upon some oil deal that went sour."
--Deirdre Griswold
Reprinted from the Nov. 21, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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