Library - Reading Room
Supporting Materials for Sir! No Sir!
Dare To Struggle
Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win. The war in Vietnam has dragged on now for over seven years. Countless numbers of American youth have died there and still die there today. The armed service is but an arm of the Executive office. The President is at the head. We in the service are supposed to follow his every command. We are supposed to follow the orders of everyone up the chain of command. And we did. We went to that war as advisors under President Kennedy. We went there as Backup soldiers and later as frontline soldiers under Johnson.
Now we go into Cambodia as frontline soldiers under Nixon. Each President has told us we would leave that country; each of them told us that we were fighting to free the South Vietnamese. We have not left that country. We have only bombed, tortured, gassed, the people. We are making their land barren and worthless.
In this country every attempt to exist as an individual in the military is met with stiff resistance. Vietnam Veterans are hassled by boot officers. Vets are shot down by police for suspicion of having a squirt gun in their possession. You and I as GI’s are ignored and put-down by the people of the community. GI’s come back from Nam after a year or so of smoking grass. (Almost everyone there is a head, why? To keep their sanity to keep fighting when they don’t believe in the war and the killing because they were forced to go and forced to fight and forced to kill or be killed.) Then they come back to the states only to get caught by a fucking nark and put in jail.
Last summer M.D.M. had its beginnings in Duck Power and Attitude Check. In the fall M.D.M. became official. What was it? It was a group of these GI’s who were tired of all the shit they were getting, tired of all the killing and seeing their friends dying, tired of getting hassled every day, tired of getting spit on in the streets of America. So they met and drew up twelve demands, and set out to gain those demands. They dared to struggle, they dared to win control of their own destiny. We are still struggling and still winning. M.D.M. now has eight chapters and is still growing.
M.D.M. realized in the beginning that just changing Presidents would not change the situation. They would have to change the whole system. They would have to put the power of control into the hands of those directly affected: the GI. So M.D.M. joined with other oppressed peoples: Indians, Blacks, Chicanos, Orientals, Puerto Ricans, Poor whites, Wonen and young people in general to gain this control.
As M.D.M. grows so does its need for more information about what is going on and a need for better ways to get this information to the people. Several bases in the San Diego area are now putting out or planning to put out their own base papers. This will allow more people to get directly involved with their own base activities. It will also allow DARE TO STRUGGLE (the San Diego area paper) to expand and encompass a larger area of information. We will get into the movement in San Diego and around the country. We will get into the GI movement more deeply. We will be better able to explain what is really happening in South East Asia. We hope also to make contacts in San Diego with people who could dig on supplying a crash pad or a free concert or a right on place to spend your time or a little friendship. So think about it and see if you want to Dare to Struggle.
Dare To Struggle, no. 1