November Mobilization

To the Editors:

All Americans interested in helping to put an end to the most tragic war in our history are urged to come to Washington D.C. to attend the legal, non-violent protests sponsored by the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam on November 13th, 14th and 15th.

The first event, a March Against Death, will be a solemn, single file march from Arlington Cemetary, past the White House to the Capitol. Marchers will congregate at Arlington Cemetary at 6 p.m. on November 13th. Each of the more than 46,000 participants will carry a placard with the name of an American soldier killed in the war or a destroyed Vietnamese village. This memorial, tribute to the dead, and protest against further killing, will conclude in mid-morning of Saturday, November 15th. The placards, deposited in coffins, will be later taken to the White House by parents of dead Americans, anti-war veterans and G.I. groups, clergymen, laymen and Congressmen protesting the continuing Vietnam war.

At ten a.m. on Saturday November 15th, there will be a memorial service at the West side of the Capitol, followed by a Mass March proceeding down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the White House and to the Ellipse. The March will be followed by a five hour rally featuring prominent speakers and a cultural festival.

Among the numerous Americans who have endorsed the New Mobilization Committee’s November 13-15th activities are Mrs. Coretta Scott King; Dr. Benjamin Spock; Rev. William Sloane Coffin; Mr. Paul O’Dwyer, of the New York Democratic Coalition; Senator Charles Goodell of New York; Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm of New York; Mr. Sanford Gottlieb, National Director of SANE; writer Jimmy Breslin; Mr. Harold Gibbons, International Vice President of the Brotherhood of Teamsters; Mr. Patrick Gorman, Secretary-Treasurer of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butchers Workermen, AFL-CIO; Mr. Frank Rosenblum of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers; and Mr. Charles Palmer of the National Student Association.

The Vietnam Moratorium Committee has also endorsed the peaceful and solemn protest planned by the Mobilization, and will provide support for Moratorium groups from various parts of the nation who wish to join the March on Washington.

The position paper of the New Mobilization Committee issued in Washington D.C. on October 21st states that President Nixon’s present war strategy includes three distinct elements: 1) U.S. military and economic support of the corrupt Thieu-Ky government. 2) U.S. bombing of Vietnam. 3) American ground action. The Nixon strategy, as stated thus far, proposes to reduce only the last activity, the ground combai troops supplied by the United States, and to continue the two other elements of the strategy unchanged. The position of the New Mobilization is that there can be no real end to this war until 1) All support is withdrawn from the Thieu-Ky government and the people of Vietnam are permitted to decide their own fate; 2) All military action against the Vietnamese on the ground and in the air is stopped; 3) All US troops, equipment, planes and helicopters are withdrawn, and United States bases are dismantled. These three decisions can not be negotiated at the Paris peace talks. They must be announced there by the United States as its unilateral decision for withdrawal. The purpose of the November 13th-15th Mobilization in Washington is to state that there are to be no more deaths; that “vietnamization” is no solution because there has to be total disengagement, and a total withdrawal of all support to a corrupt regime.

Further queries about details and logistics of the November Mobilization can be obtained from the New Mobilization Committee’s headquarters at 1029 Vermont Avenue, Washington D.C. Telephone: (202) 737-8600.

David Dellinger

Editor, Liberation

Douglas Dowd

Professor of Economics, Cornell University

Donald Kalish

Chairman of the Philosophy Department,

U.C.L.A.

Terry Hallinan

Lawyer for the Presidio 27

Sidney Lens

Trade-Unionist and Writer

Stewart Meacham

American Friends Service Committee

Sidney Peck

Professor of Sociology, Case-Western Reserve University

Cora Weiss

Women’s Strike for Peace