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Supporting Materials for Sir! No Sir!
This Is Not A Communist newspaper
This is not a Communist newspaper. It is not a Communist controlled paper. We are not Communist influenced, nor are we Communist-inspired, and we receive no fianacial backing from any Communist regime. So don’t listen to the officers and Pig lifers when they say this feeble minded shit to you.
We are not secret or underground. It will seem like it though, because the MAN is going to try his darnest [sic] to keep us from you.
We invite the OWI, FBI, CIA, CID and any other Gestapo organization to investigate us all they want. We are a free and independent newspaper, we are clean, and we are legal.
The editorial staff here at The Retaliation has four purposes in mind. We want to let everyone know that there are organizations like the American Servicemen’s Union (ASU) and GI’s United which do exist, and that it is time that we start to organize instead of sitting on our asses bitching about how the rank and file serviceman is always getting shit-on. We intend to organize you into one solid, invincible union, which we will use in order to fight for a new Bill of Rights for servicemen and for many other things that it will take to put uis on the same level as the rest of humanity.
We call for eight basic demands which will have to be met before we can feel part of the human race again. They are:
1) An end to saluting and sirring of officers--subservience is for slaves and lifers.
2) Election of officers by vote--a deterrent against harassment and intimidation.
3) Racial equality--we don’t dig brand names (like nigger, wop, spic, gook or chief)
4) Rank and filers’ control of court-martial boards--lets take the court to court!
5) federal; minimum wages--everyone else has them--why not us?
6) The right of free political association--a right guaranteed by the constitution.
7) The right to disobey illegal orders (like orders to go and fight in an illegal war in Vietnam--six years, 40,000 dead, and the beat goes on).
8) The right of collective bargaining--193 years of tradition unhampeered by progress--only through UNION will there be change, new direction and purpose.
In short this is your newspaper. We are fighting for the rights that were given to us in the Constitution. Rights that have been hidden, bent around, denied and flagrantly misused by those fascist pigs who are in charge of us.
The Retaliation , no. 1