Library - Reading Room
Supporting Materials for Sir! No Sir!
On The Need For GI Organization - The ASU
I am a soldier at ft. Carson, Colorado. I was just released from the Ft. Carson Stockade. I was tried for three days AWOL but I can't help but feel that I was actually confined because of my involvement in the movement for peace and GI rights. I feel that almost all prisoners in the stockade are there either because of their political beliefs or because they don't feel obligated to support a slave-labor organization which deals almost entirely in death and destruction, such as the Vietnam war.
While in the Stockade, I learned the importance of an organization of lower-ranking EM. I was made to realize that only through a strong organization can the EM be represented. One oppressed GI expressing his true feelings will almost surely end up in the stockade. If an organization of oppressed GI's express their mutual feelings, they can demand and get changes. I have seen it work in the stockade. By jointly complaining, we ended such unnecessary harassments as PT every morning, undue roughness by some lifer guards, and smoking restrictions in the morning. There is no logical reason why the same can't happen at Fort Carson.
GI's dedicated to peace and freedom have already started the organization for you. All that is needed is members who will stand up and fight for their self-respect and their rights as guaranteed under the constitution of the United States of America. If you are tired of being treated as an unintelligent slave, and if you want to regain some of the rights that have been stripped from you, come to the Home Front, 318 East Pikes Peak and rap to some of the people who are putting themselves on the line for you. If for some reason you cannot come, at least make an attempt to join the American Servicemen's Union. It is your union. The members are working and going to jail for your rights, but without the support of the majority, we cannot have real power.
Aboveground, vol. 1, no. 6