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Supporting Materials for Sir! No Sir!
GIs Fight For Civil Rights
The National Draft and Military Law Panel is preparing an important suit in the Federal Courts to help protect GIs marching in the Easter Weekend GI-Civilian Anti-War Demonstrations. The Panel is affiliated with the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee and the National Lawyers Guild. The suit will involve GIs from all areas where there will be Easter Weekend demonstrations and is designed to prevent the Brass from illegally interfering with GIs exercising their constitutional rights. A Boston GI has agreed to join with numerous fellow servicemen who are acting as plaintiffs in the case against the brass.
Petty harassment and illegal frame-ups have posed a major obstacle in the paths of GIs who are fed up with the army and the war in Vietnam and have chosen to express their discontent through anti-war organizations and mass demonstrations. The freedom to express political ideas is a constitutional right of all U.S. citizens, GIs as well as civilians. The U.S. Constitution, however, rarely stands in the way of up-tight generals. This fact makes an energetic defense program absolutely necessary.
The Easter weekend demonstrations raise in concrete form the issue of the brass's illegal obstruction of the GIs right to freely express political and moral viewpoints. Legal defense committees for GIs are just beginning to appear on a national scale. Military cases involving anti-war GIs are being defended across the country by experienced lawyers who have volunteered their services.
The Draft and Military Law Panels suit would prevent the military from illegally obstructing the exercise of civil liberties by GIs on April 5th. If won, the case will also provide a useful precedent for the defense of the GIs civil liberties in the future.
The New York Draft and Military Law Panel will provide legal advice and legal counsel for any CI who is harassed for participating in the April 5th demonstration. Contact them at 25 East 26th Street, Room 913, New York City 10010. Or contact the New England CI Civil Liberties Committee, do GI-CAP, Box 513, Cambridge, Mass. 02139, phone: 491-9593.
Top Secret , no. 2