Class War in America—How Elites Divide the Nation by Asking: Are You A Worker or Are You White?

By Jon Jeter

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

Most people in this country have become disenchanted with what we call the mainstream news media. My coworkers have expressed one consistent complaint concerning the various sources of news we are exposed to. This has to do with the everyday issues that workers experience on a regular basis. While we see and read stories about issues around the world, rarely do we see a story about what workers need to go through just to make a living.

Jon Jeter is a journalist who worked for the Washington Post and was nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. The contents of his book Class War in America give us an idea of what real journalism can be when we look at the world objectively. 

In the book 1619 edited by Nikole Hannah Jones, she gave the following summary. “The effort of Black Americans to seek freedom through resistance and rebellion against violations of their rights have always been one of this nation’s defining traditions.”

Jon Jeter's book is a history of this country that focuses on successful and unsuccessful attempts to break through the racial barriers that divided movements for social change. He summarizes this history with the question, "Are you a worker, or are you white?" I agree with Jeter's argument that the labor movement will need to break through those divisions if the working class will ever be liberated. 

Karl Marx, in essence, asked the British working class Jeter's question during the Civil War in this country. The industrialization of the world started with the connection of the enslaved workers that produced cotton, to the British textile mills. So, the British mill owners had a real stake in supporting the interests of the slave owners. 

Jeter quoted Marx when spoke to a meeting of 3,000 British trade unionists where he argued that,

"The English working class has won immortal historical honor for itself by thwarting the repeated attempts of the ruling classes to intervene on the behalf of the slaveholders."     

Jeter started his book by reporting on a Civil War battle historians routinely ignore. This was the Battle of Crater. The Union forces dug an underground trench and mined it with explosives. When those bombs exploded, they created a massive crater. This surprised the confederate forces and there was the potential of an easy victory. 

However, due to horrible military decisions the almost certain victory turned into an all-out defeat. There were deaths of 1,500 confederate forces and 4,000 union fatalities. 

The confederate commanders had a routine policy of murdering all captured soldiers who were Black. Fearing death, many of the white union soldiers chose to commit treason and murder the Black soldiers rather than risking death at the hands of the confederates. The estimate is that about 200 Black soldiers were murdered by their former union comrades. 

So, here we see a profound contradiction in the history of the United States. On the one hand, the Civil War would, for the most part, end the institution of chattel slavery in this country. While this was happening, racist attitudes continued to be prevalent among the soldiers who risked their lives to bring an end to slavery.

Jon Jeter then went on to outline the history of this country from the viewpoint of this fundamental contradiction. The reconstruction governments established after the Civil War brought about real progressive change for white and Black workers and farmers. Yet racist mobs organized by the Ku Klux Klan worked to overthrow those governments by force. 

The federal government merely acquiesced to the terrorism of the KKK. They did this by flagrantly violating the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and supported Jim Crow segregation.  

Jeter gave inspiring examples of how white and Black workers joined to support each other in struggles of class solidarity. This happened in the longshore strike in the 1930s, the strike against RJ Reynolds, the cigarette manufacturer, and in defense of the framed up Scottsboro Boys. 

Then after the Second World War, employers were flush with the record profits they gouged out during the war. There was another strike wave where entire industries were shut down. The following passage reflects the mood of the workers at that time.

"Everyone was having a good time...it was a holiday mood, it was a feeling of comradeship, it was the feeling that, well, we're all together in this thing, you know and it was a good, warm, healthy feeling, it was more like this country should be." 

During these same years the government worked diligently to frame up Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of treason. Jeter gave a compelling biography of Ethel Rosenberg where he introduced readers to the inspiring life she lived. 

Jeter went on to write about the financial meltdown of the New York City government in the 1970s. Bankers headed by Felix Rohatyn were determined not to lose any money they invested on municipal bonds. 

Victor Gotbaum was the President of District Council 37 municipal workers union. Rohatyn had a series of discussions with Gotbaum where there was agreement to impose massive cutbacks in social services used by working people. Largely because of this relationship, those cutbacks were instituted with little opposition. After those cutbacks went into effect, the federal government came up with the money to cover the city's massive debts.

Jeter contrasted the politics of the former Mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, to the politics of Kamala Harris. A coalition of forces united to elect Washington and oust the former political machine headed by Mayor Richard Daley. Even in his first day in office, Washington brought about several progressive reforms making it clear that a new kind of mayor was in office. 

On the other hand, when Kamala Harris was the Attorney General of California, she allowed the One West bank, headed by Steven Mnuchin, to illegally evict thousands of residents from their homes. Mnuchin would become Treasury Secretary.

Thinking about this contrast, we might consider the politics of Malcolm X. Malcolm argued that Black people needed to have their own organization that would be dedicated to the needs of the Black community. 

A different conclusion to this history  

Jon Jeter clearly gave a unique and needed history of the United States. A question I have is what conclusions can we draw from this history?

Donald Trump has just been elected President of the United States. Over the past year, the United States government allowed the Israeli Defense Force to commit an unimaginable genocide against the Palestinian people. 

Thinking about that, we might ask another question. Has there been any progress in the history of this country? Looking at the reality of who Trump is, and the reality of the Israeli organized genocide, we might answer that question in the negative. I have a different opinion.

Even with all of its many and vicious limitations, my opinion is that this country is a better place to live because the system of chattel slavery was, for the most part, abolished. For all its limitations, my opinion is that the end of Jim Crow segregation was another advance. 

For all its limitations, the fact that unions organized and went on numerous strikes in this country also advanced the standard of living here. We might consider that before those strikes, most workers had difficulty in finding enough food to eat. With all its limitations, the fact that most workers have access to some form of education and health care are also advances.

Women made real advances where today they work at many jobs they were kept out of in the past. Even the right for women to wear pants was a gain made through struggle.

So, the struggle to liberate humanity today can build on all those advances. As usual, capitalists will work to reverse all those gains. 

While Donald Trump with return to the White House, massive numbers of people have been demonstrating to end murders by police, for women's rights, and in solidarity with Palestinians. We might also consider that the revolutionaries of the past faced significantly more difficult conditions than we face today. Frederick Douglas was born into slavery. Ida Wells spent her life protesting the legalized murders known as lynchings. Malcolm X lived most of his entire life when Jim Crow segregation was the law. 

Yet Douglas, Wells, and Malcolm found ways to persevere and overcome the horrendous environments they lived in. The young and young thinking people who are marching on demonstrations today remind us of the revolutionary heritage of this country. 

Clearly we have immense challenges. However, history has given us a legacy that we can draw on. Jon Jeter's book gives us a glimmer of that history and confronts us with many of the obstacles we will need to overcome. If humanity will be liberated from a system where the drive for profits are a priority over human life, I believe that the working class has the potential to overcome those obstacles. 

The health care system and the war against the working class

 

By Steve Halpern

The other day I had a doctor's appointment. This was at the recently constructed Honickman Center of Jefferson University Hospital located at 1101 Chestnut Street in downtown Philadelphia. The parking lot was under the 19 story Honickman building. 

The elevator in the parking lot brought me to the first floor of the building. There, I was met with a security guard and a metal detector. The security guard told me to register at one of a line of screens that took my information. Then, I was transported to the eleventh floor on what appeared to be a state of the art elevator. 

In the room where the doctor examined me, there was a widescreen television with my name welcoming me to the to the facility. This screen enabled me to choose music and art while I waited to see the doctor. 

After my examination, I spoke to someone who scheduled me for my next appointment. This was via the widescreen television. The person who scheduled me for the appointment was at her home in New Jersey. I needed to wait an extra month before she could find a time when the doctor would be available. Other that the delay in scheduling for my appointment, I found the doctor to be helpful and competent in treating my condition.   

The construction cost of the Honickman Center exceeded one billion dollars. From what I could see, there are few, if any hospital beds in this building. I also did not see offices for primary care, mental health, maternity, or pediatric care. These specializations might be among the least profitable.    

On the other side of the Schuykill River in West Philadelphia, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania erected their Pavilion building. The construction cost of this medical facility was about $1.7 billion. The Pavilion is only one of several relatively new buildings constructed for the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. 

Hospital Closures  

A few years ago, I attended a demonstration protesting the closure of Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia. A few years before that I attended another demonstration protesting the closure of Women's Hospital of Philadelphia. At that demonstration, the President of the Hospital Workers Union 1199, Henry Nicholas, reported that this was one of about 700 hospital closures throughout the country.

Before Women's Hospital closed, the owner, Tenet Healthcare, effectively forced the nurses to go on strike. The strike lasted about one month. A day after the strike was settled Tenet announced the closing of the hospital. During the monthlong strike, Tenet recruited scab nurses from across the country and bussed them to the hospital every day. This was the thank-you that Tenet gave to their employees.

We might also ask a question: If so much money is being spent on health care, why was there an acute shortage of hospital beds and face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic? 

What is going on?

So, these facts beg another basic question. Why are hospitals investing astronomical amounts of money in health care, while at the same time they are closing hundreds of hospitals? 

Dan Cooney was a friend of mine who passed away a few years ago. He was a nurse in the mental health department at Jefferson University Hospital. Jefferson eliminated this department and laid off Dan to make way for a more lucrative orthopedic practice. 

Dan and others spoke to me about how he managed to talk patients through the reasons for their drug addiction and saved their lives. The Center for Disease Control estimated that there were 107,543 overdose deaths in the United States in 2023.

Saying all of that, we need to understand the economics of hospitals. There are many corporations that profit from hospitals. There are the hospital equipment manufacturers. There are the drug companies. Banks receive interest on loans from all those corporations. Insurance companies profit from minimizing payments for health care. Yet the people who work for banks and insurance companies never actually treat patients.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote their Communist Manifesto in 1848. In that document they argued that the capitalist system has a disease that was never experienced before in human history. This is the disease of overproduction.

In other words, banks need to continually find investments where they can grow the assets they have. However, since banks never actually produce useful commodities there is only one way they can get the capital needed to grow their assets. This is to be obsessed with cutting costs. 

We saw how this system blew up in 2008. Banks floated all kinds of real estate loans, but large numbers of borrowers weren't able to pay back their loans. As a result, the investment companies of Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns closed. The news media is determined to never report on the real causes for this banking collapse. When the economy continually grows, while there is an obsession to cut costs, a financial collapse is inevitable.

The effects of capitalist economic growth

Today, about six percent of the population has medical debt of about $220 billion. Student loan debt is about $1.7 trillion.

All the astronomically expensive medical facilities I mentioned in this blog are located in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is also the home of the Comcast Towers that had construction costs of $2.6 billion. So, with all these expensive buildings in the city, we might think that the public educational system would be adequately funded. 

Today per student funding for education in Philadelphia is about $10,000. When we walk across the street on City Line Avenue, we enter the Lower Merion School District. There per student funding is about $26,000. Lower Merion is a suburban community and lacks the billion dollar buildings housed in Philadelphia. 

If you think this disparity in funding for education isn't fair, you aren't alone. Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer wrote a 780 page decision arguing that the gross disparity in funding for education in Pennsylvania is illegal. However, since the Pennsylvania state government says that this decision is non-binding, it hasn't been enforced.

However, in New Jersey the courts of that state ruled in their Abbott v. Burke decision that the inequality in educational funding in the state was also illegal. However, that decision was binding.

Instead of taking the money from the most affluent New Jersey residents to correct this problem, the state had other ideas. They increased property taxes making New Jersey the state with some of the highest property taxes in the nation.

Conclusion  

In order to put all this information in perspective, I believe we need to look at the nation of Cuba. Today Cuba is having a difficult time largely because of the economic embargo enforced by the United States government.

However, Cuban citizens have no debts for education or health care. In fact, both education and health care are lifetime rights to citizens on the island. In fact, Cuba has twice the number of doctors as the United States per capita. Cuba has trained doctors from around the world free of charge. Cuban doctors have also gone all over the world to treat patients in need.

All of this is possible when there is a government that makes human needs the priority over profits. As the capitalist system continues to demand that workers give up more and more just to sustain ourselves, we need to understand that there is another way.    

   

We have always lived under a ruthless dictatorship

Art by Kathe Kollwitz

By Steve Halpern

Donald Trump will be the President of the United States again. Trump says he wants to deport 12 million immigrants who live in this country. He says that they are "illegal." 

These are the words of a convicted felon. We might also consider that President Joe Biden didn't hesitate to flagrantly violate the law when he gave Israel arms to murder civilians. In order to put our current reality in perspective, I believe we need to look at the founding of the nation known as the United States of America.

The revolution of the thirteen colonies

The Declaration of Independence consists of a list of grievances the settlers of the thirteen colonies had against the British royal government. They argued that the British instituted a "long train of abuses" that resulted in "despotism." They felt they had a "right and a duty" to throw off that power and establish new "guards for their security."

Unlike the democrats and republicans today, these colonists opposed the British measures aimed at limiting immigration. They also used the racist word "savages" to describe the first nations who lived on this land for thousands of years.

So, the Declaration of Independence begins to give us an outline of the contradictory character of the government that was established in this country. On the one hand, people began to have rights of free speech, separation of church and state, as well as some voting rights.

There was another aspect to the revolution of the thirteen colonies that few people talk about. In the late 1700s most people were farmers who usually worked outdoors. They could not have imagined the world we are living in today with cars, cell phones, educational and health care systems, as well as refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, and dryers. These monumental changes happened because the revolution began to unleash the productive forces of capitalism. One of the laws of capitalism is that the economy needs to continuously grow.

However, we can also say that from the beginning the United States government has been a ruthless, diabolical, and tenacious dictatorship. After the revolution, veterans were starving and they engaged in an armed uprising led by Daniel Shays. The new revolutionary government dealt with the starving veterans by repressing them with armed force. The government also continued the genocidal wars against Native Americans. 

The new revolutionary government supported the unimaginable horrors of chattel slavery. Then capitalists, workers, and farmers formed a coalition to destroy chattel slavery in the Civil War. 

The government continued the war against the working class

After a brief period of reconstruction, the government used its dictatorial powers to violate the Constitution and strip African Americans of their rights with the Jim Crow laws. Today there is a memorial museum in Montgomery, Alabama of over 4,000 human beings who were illegally lynched. The government adamantly refused to prosecute the murderers.

The revolution of the thirteen colonies as well as the Civil War did expand the rights of people living in this country. However, those rights were extremely limited and needed to be defended through struggle.

Workers were brutalized and murdered when they went on strike. Civil rights activists were also brutalized and murdered in the struggle to give Black people the rights they were supposed to have in the Constitution.

The government arrested Alice Paul and the suffragettes for demanding that women have the right to vote. In prison the suffragettes went on a hunger strike protesting their incarceration. Prison guards then inserted a tube into the throat of Alice Paul to force-feed her.

The genocidal wars against Native Americans lasted for over a century. These wars spanned over the entire area of this country. Why was the government so tenacious in their attempt to steal Native American land and strip them of their culture?

Clearly Native Americans had many problems before their contact with Europeans. The First Nations needed to migrate to find the means to live. At times they came into conflict with other native nations. However, they lived in an environment where everyone worked together to share what they had. During these years Native Americans made outstanding advances with respect to the sciences of agronomy, medicine, and astronomy. 

The United States government advanced their hundred years genocidal war to strip Native Americans of their homeland. They also replaced the Native American communal environment with the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism always requires a gross inequality between the super rich and those who can barely afford to live

However, Presidents place their hands on the bible and take an oath to defend the Constitution. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution says that everyone is supposed to have "equal protection under the law." 

President Franklyn Delano Roosevelt didn't hesitate to violate his oath of office when he ordered 125,000 Japanese to be placed in concentration camps. For decades Presidents didn't hesitate to violate their oath of office when they allowed states to strip African Americans of their rights with the Jim Crow laws. 

President Joe Biden didn't hesitate to violate his oath of office when he gave massive amounts of arms to Israel. They used those arms to murder thousands of civilians. Members of Biden's Administration have resigned because of the President's support of genocide. President Elect Donald Trump promises to continue to violate his oath of office by supplying arms to Israel that will be used to murder babies.

The politics of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are essentially the same   

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris had basically the same message in their Presidential campaigns. Trump says he wants to make America great again. Harris said she wants to strengthen the middle class. What are they talking about? 

About 80 million people died in World Wars One and Two. After those international slaughters the United States became the world’s superpower. Then the U.S. economy dominated the world until the 1970s. 

During those years the economy in this country grew by leaps and bounds. The labor, civil rights, and women’s movements also erupted. For all those reasons the standard of living improved for most workers and corporations grew astronomically. 

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris imagine that their policies can bring us back to the time when the U.S. economy dominated the world. Because of the reality of capitalism, this is a truly impossible dream. Since the dreams of Trump and Harris are impossible, I believe it is worth thinking about what is possible.

The so-called news media will not report these facts

First, there are about eight things we need and want. These include food, clothing, a place to live, transportation, communication, health care, education, and exposure to cultural activities that include music, art, dancing, theater, film etc. 

When we purchase any of these commodities we are, in effect, required to contribute to enterprises that add little or no value. These include, profits for manufacture, transport, and sales. Then there is interest to banks, insurance, advertising, corporate law, landlords, and let's not forget maintenance for thousands of atomic bombs.

When we look at all those expensive skyscrapers in the cities, most are office buildings. Few of the enterprises housed in those skyscrapers add value to the commodities we need and want.

So, when we look at this reality, we see how much of the work done in the capitalist world is not necessary to provide for the things we need. This means that if we had a different political economic system, there would be a lot less work to do in order to provide for the things we need and want.

Understanding these possibilities, we might ask a few questions. Why are there about 44 million people in this country who do not have adequate access to food? This, while the shelves of supermarkets are overflowing. Why are there huge numbers of empty office buildings, while hundreds of thousands of people are homeless? 

The answers to these questions are clear. Under the capitalist system the top priority is the drive to maximize profits. This explains why corporations gave over two billion dollars to the Presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

However, the problem is much deeper than the inequities of campaign financing. All the mainstream news outlets routinely give next to no coverage of third party candidates. The educational system routinely ignores the Marxist analysis of politics, economics, and history.

Then we can think about what happens when we go to work every day. Employers control the work environment. When we leave work corporations control the prices we pay. Then they advertise how wonderful overpriced commodities are. So, someone please explain to me how this is a democracy. 

Now I have another question. How can this system ever change?

First, we can say that the economy of the United States has been deteriorating for the past fifty years. There are economic downturns every four to seven years. There were downturns in the years 2000, 2008, and 2020. in each of these downturns the government literally gave away huge amounts of money to prevent an all out depression. The Chinese economy experienced huge growth and this also kept international capitalism relatively stable.

However, it is extremely likely that during the next four years, there will be another economic downturn. We don't know how deep this will be. One possibility is that banks will close and the cash machines we use to get money won't be working. If this happens, we can rest assured that working people from around the world will demand fundamental change. This would be in spite of the fact that Donald Trump just won the Presidential so-called election. 

A new vision for the future

There is no law in this country that makes it illegal to imagine a world where human needs and not profits are the fundamental priority. I believe that most people would like it if everyone in the world had the means to live. Yet, very few people talk about how it is possible to achieve these goals. 

We have all been raised to think that politics is about the elections and who holds positions of power in the government. The reality that I pointed to in this blog is how working people won the rights we have because of sustained struggle and not because of elections.

I believe that as the economy continues to fall apart rank and file working people will be open for arguments calling for fundamental change. Many of these people voted for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. What would that change look like?

We might look at the numbers of people in the working class in the world. We might also look at the amount of work that is, in effect, wasted in enterprises that add no value to the goods and services we all want and need. 

Thinking about all of that, if the government and the economy made human needs and not profits the priority, there would be a fundamental change. Workers would only need to work for a few years before retiring. We would all have lifetime rights to all the things we need and many of the things we want. There could be more teachers so class sizes would never exceed ten students to one teacher. The number of doctors could grow astronomically. This would mean that we could all actually talk to a doctor when we need to. There could be an efficient mass transit system that would take us to anywhere we want to go in the world.

While capitalist stability is becoming an impossible dream. a socialist future world is indeed possible. I encourage everyone to take part in the national demonstration on January 20 to coincide with the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

The Governments of the United States and Israel have a history of kidnapping children

 

By Steven Halpern

Recently, President Joe Biden issued a formal apology to Native Americans for what he called "a sin on our soul." What is the "sin" Biden was talking about?

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found that "at least 18,000 Native American children—some as young as 4—were taken from their parents and forced to attend schools that sought to assimilate them into white society while federal and state authorities sought to dispossess tribal nations of their land." These kidnappings ultimately caused the deaths of 973 Native American children. (Philadelphia Inquirer 10-25-2024)

In his apology to Native Americans, President Biden said that the removal of Native American children from their community to boarding schools "will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history. For too long this all happened with virtually no public attention, not written about in our history books, not taught in our schools."

A protester at Biden's apology ceremony asked the question: "How can you apologize for a genocide while committing a genocide in Palestine?"  

Thinking about President Biden's words of apology to Native Americans, we might consider an October 9, 2024 opinion piece in the New York Times by Feroze Sidhwa titled, "65 Doctors, Nurses, and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza?"

In this column Sidhwa quoted from 44 medical professionals who testified to treating pre-teen Palestinian children for bullet wounds in the head or chest. The 65 also testified to treating children who were starving due to the Israeli government policy of denying Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip access to food and clean water.

So, while President Biden apologizes to Native Americans for what he calls a "mark of shame," his Administration has been making the mass murder of Palestinians by the Israeli government possible with about $18 billion worth of so-called "aid." We can also speculate that of the tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered by the IDF, half of that number were children

There is another question that I believe needs to be asked. Were these isolated events, or is there a history of kidnapping of children by both the United States and Israeli governments?

Operation Peter (Pedro) Pan

After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the Catholic Welfare Bureau collaborated with representatives of the United States government to kidnap about 14,000 Cuban children. They were transported unaccompanied to be raised in the United States in what became known as Operation Peter (Pedro) Pan. Under the direction of Father Bryan O. Walsh, Cuban parents were indoctrinated with the absurd idea that their parental rights would be terminated by the Cuban revolutionary government headed by Fidel Castro. 

As in the case of the kidnapping of Native American children, these Cuban children were separated from their parents. However, in the case of most of these Cuban children, they would never see their parents again. 

Operation Babylift

In the year 1975 the United States government was coming to grips with the fact that their armed forces had been decisively defeated by the Vietnamese people. However, the U.S. government ordered the military to murder over one million people in the course of that undeclared war. 

In the last year of the war, President Richard Nixon ordered bombing raids of Vietnam in what he called Linebacker One and Linebacker Two. These came after the bombing raids ordered by President Lyndon Johnson named Rolling Thunder.

Apparently this mass destruction wasn't enough for Washington. So, President Gerald Ford initiated Operation Babylift. This was an effort to transport about 2,500 Vietnamese children, many of whom were orphans, to the United States. One of the planes used to transport these children crashed. As a result, 78 of the children died.

Yemenite Children Affair

In the year 1994 Rabbi Uzi Meshulam led a group of his followers to barricade themselves in a compound in the Israeli town of Yehud for 45 days. The Israeli police murdered one of his followers. Meshulam and several of the protesters served time in prison. What was this all about?

According to a Feb 20, 2019 New York Times article by Malin Fezahai, between 1,000 and 4,500 Mizrahi Jewish children were abducted in the 1950s. Mizrahi Jews left Arabic speaking nations where their families lived for many years before the establishment of Israel in 1948. 

These Jews came from a different culture than the Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to Palestine-Israel from Europe. There has been a persistent policy of discrimination against Mizrahi Jews since the establishment of the state of Israel. According to Israeli investigations, the Yemeni children were given to affluent childless Ashkenazi families.

Yet according to the Israeli Constitution, amended in 2018, the nation of Israel is supposed to be a homeland for Jewish people. A basic flaw in this constitution is that about half of the people living in Israel and the occupied territories are Palestinians who do not have equal rights.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following statement about the abducted Jewish children. Most of their families came to Israel from Yemen. Netanyahu issued this statement after the Israeli government made several investigations as to what happened to these kidnapped Jewish children. 

"The issue of the Yemenite children is an open wound that continues to bleed in many families who do not know what happened to the babies, to children that disappeared, and they are looking for the truth." (Ofer Aderet, Haaretz July 31, 2016)

Thinking about this statement by Netanyahu, we might consider the article by Feroze Sidhwa titled "65 Doctors, Nurses, and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza?" The excuse Netanyahu used for organizing the genocide against Palestinians was about his response to the October 7 raid organized by Hamas. Netanyahu consistently argued that his goal in the genocide is the release of Israeli hostages. The facts are that Netanyahu acknowledged that there are over 1,000 Jewish children who were abducted by Israeli authorities in the 1950s. To this day the fate of many of those children is unknown. 

Conclusion

So, President Biden says that the kidnapping of Native American children was "a mark of shame, a blot on American history." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that the kidnapping of Jewish Yemenite children for him "is an open wound." Yet both Biden and Netanyahu have carried out a genocidal campaign to murder tens of thousands of Palestinian children.

This leaves working people living in the world only one option. This is to join with all those who are marching in the streets and demand Ceasefire Now!!!

Out Now! — A participant’s account of the movement in the U.S. against the Vietnam war

 

By Fred Halstead

1978, Pathfinder Press

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

For the past several months the Israeli government has been carrying out an unimaginably horrendous genocidal campaign against Palestinians. That campaign has been met with unprecedented demonstrations of protest from around the world. 

Yet the Israeli government, as well as the government in this country have been essentially indifferent to those demonstrations. As a result, the genocide continues.  So, a legitimate question to be asked is: What is the most effective way for activists around the world to build a movement that will put an end to this horror?

Fred Halstead’s book Out Now!—A participant’s account of the movement in the U.S. against the Vietnam war gives a much needed background to the kind of movement we need today. Halstead and I were members of the Socialist Workers Party. 

In his analysis of the anti-war movement, he supported the politics of the SWP at that time. Halstead gave considerable evidence of how the SWP’s perspective in the anti-war movement was essential to mobilizing masses of people in demonstrating against the war.

Today the Socialist Workers Party has an entirely different political orientation. They view the Israeli organized genocide against the Palestinian people as a legitimate war against the Palestinian organization Hamas. This was the SWP perspective expressed in the February 5 issue of their newspaper The Militant:

“The Israeli government and people have little choice but to fight to eliminate Hamas.”

Because Fred Halstead felt that the politics of the SWP were essential to his perspective, I believe it is first necessary to outline the profound change that took place with respect to the politics of the Socialist Workers Party.

Part 1

The complete change in the politics of the Socialist Workers Party

Leon Trotsky was one of the central leaders of the Russian Revolution. He was also the commander of the Red Army that defeated an invasion of the Soviet Union by 14 nations.

For various reasons Joseph Stalin organized for the betrayal of the revolution. He presided over the murder of most of the Bolshevik leaders of the Revolution, including the assassination of Trotsky. He went on to support the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, the Chinese ruthless government of Chiang Kai-shek, as well as the terrorist gangs that forced 750,000 Palestinians out of their homes and created the state of Israel in 1948.

James Cannon, who had been a leading member of the Communist Party in this country came across a document written by Trotsky while attending a conference in Moscow. This was the beginning of the formation of the Socialist Workers Party.

Then in 1934 SWP members became leaders of the Teamsters Strike in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That strike was one of several that led to the formation of the trade union federation known as the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.). 

However, with the United States entry into the Second World War, the Presidential Administration of Franklyn D. Roosevelt organized to charge and convict leading SWP members of violating the Smith Act. This law in fact violated the right of citizens of this country from opposing the Second World War. Those leaders served about 18 months in prison.

Then, in the year 1954 Farrell Dobbs, a leader of the teamsters strike, organized to give support to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I believe that Fred Halstead was also a part of that effort.

In the last year his life, Malcolm X he spoke at Militant Labor Forums three times. The SWP helped to publish many of the speeches of Malcolm X in Pathfinder Press. The SWP also organized to publish speeches of the revolutionary leaders Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Nelson Mandela, Thomas Sakhara, W.E.B. DuBois, Fidel Castro, and Ernesto Che Guevara.

The SWP has also been a consistent supporter of the Cuban revolutionary government ever since the Revolution in 1959.

This was the background to Fred Halstead’s participation in the movement that protested the war against Vietnam. He documented that period of his life in the book Out Now! 

We can begin to see how the politics of the SWP has completely changed with the South African government’s charge that the Israeli government is carrying out a genocidal campaign against Palestinians. South Africa brought this convincing case to the International Court of Justice. That court found the charge of genocide “plausible.”

This is how the SWP’s newspaper The Militant responded to that charge in its June 3 edition.

“Claiming that Israel is carrying out ‘genocide’ is a complete falsification.”

This same edition of The Militant argued against the idea that Israel is an apartheid-like state in the following quotation. 

“It is preposterous to say that’s (apartheid) what exists in capitalist Israel today, a country of 9.9 million people where 21% of the Israeli population are Arabs, mostly Muslims, almost all of whom are citizens with the right to vote and the right to travel anywhere they want.”        

This statement deliberately ignores the fact that at least 4.5 million Palestinians live in the occupied territories of the East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. 

Although these Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, they do not have the right to vote in Israeli elections. Their right to travel is severely restricted. Before October 7, most Palestinians who lived in the Gaza Strip, even university graduates, were unemployed. They barely had sufficient amounts of food or clean water. Most residents of Gaza had relatives, friends, or neighbors who were murdered, injured, or sent to prison because of wars carried out by Israel.

The primary reason for this shift in the politics of the of the SWP has to do with their idea that the state of Israel, as it is, should have the right to exist. They also argue that Hamas is an anti-Semitic organization that is determined to murder all Jews in Israel. The Israeli government has a similar perspective with respect to Palestinians. 

There are a few persistent problems to this argument. The Israeli government has been supporting Hamas since its inception in 1987. They had good reason for this support. The Israeli government understands that the people who live in Gaza have legitimate grievances. Clearly Israel doesn’t want to give those Palestinians equal rights in Israel. Clearly the Israeli government doesn’t want to give Palestinians the right to a sovereign nation. 

So, they need to have an organization that polices the people of Gaza and works to suppress resistance to Israeli occupation. Israel has relied on Hamas to do that job. While Hamas has been a repressive force in Gaza, they also advocated for Palestinian liberation. This is their fundamental contradiction and explains why there is opposition to Hamas in the Palestinian community today. 

This also explains why the October 7 Hamas organized raid was not supported by the masses of Palestinians. Because Hamas has been the police force for the Gaza Strip, their Palestinian support has been compromised. So, while I condemn the October 7 raid, I also believe that the Israeli government needs to share responsibility for that raid.

Ilan Pappe wrote his meticulously researched book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. This book documents the systematic efforts of terrorist gangs to murder thousands of Palestinians and coerce 750,000 to leave their homes. These were the Stern Gang, the Irgun, and the Hagenah.

We might also look at the unimaginable horror inflicted on Black people 

by the Ku Klux Klan in this country. The purpose of that systematic violence was to force Black people to do the worst jobs and live in the poorest neighborhoods.

As horrendous as that terror was, the Palestinian people have been subjected to an even more vicious persecution. The Israeli government isn’t satisfied with forcing Palestinians to do the worst jobs. The current genocide in Gaza and the West Bank represents clear evidence that the Israeli government wants to remove all Palestinians from their homeland. 

David Ben Gurion organized a systematic study of about 500 Palestinian cities and towns in 1947. This was in preparation for the subjugation and removal of Palestinians in their homeland. So, when we look at the unimaginable horror Palestinians are experiencing today, we can say clearly that this started with Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.

When Fred Halstead and I were members of the Socialist Workers Party the SWP supported the idea of a democratic secular Palestine. Astonishingly, today this same party makes the following argument.

“defense of Israel as a refuge for Jews is a key battle for working people everywhere.”

Clearly there was a holocaust where the Nazis murdered six million Jews. Clearly systemic anti-Semitism has existed in the world for a long time.

However, there were many other holocausts in the world before and after the establishment of the state of Israel. We can mention the genocide against Native Americans. There was the kidnapping and enslavement of millions of people born in Africa and forcibly transported to the Americas. We can look at the British forced starvation of tens of millions of people in China, India, and Brazil. The Nazis used the same genocidal methods against the Jews as Germany used in the holocaust they organized in Namibia.

The challenge isn’t to give one people a homeland by organizing a genocide or ethnic cleansing of another people. The challenge is to fight against all forms in discrimination in the world. The Israeli government happens to be an arms supplier to some of the most vicious governments in the world. 

Finally, we need to say that the formation and continued existence of the state of Israel has been totally dependent on support from Britain, the United States, France, and Germany. These nations have given massive support to Israel because it is located in the middle of the region that produces oil for the world. All corporations are totally dependent on a continuous flow of oil.  

So, when we read Fred Halstead’s book Out Now, his references to the Socialist Workers Party and their youth group the Young Socialist Alliance represented an entirely different political orientation than the SWP is about today.

Part 2—Out Now!

When we look at the Vietnamese resistance to the armed forces of the United States, as well as the anti-war movement around the world, this was a truly inspiring chapter in human history. 

Towards the end of Fred Halstead’s 974-page book he gave a summary of the costs of the war. While we don’t know the exact numbers, millions of Vietnamese lost their lives during those years. Close to 60,000 soldiers in the armed forces of the United States also lost their lives, many because of the so-called “friendly fire.” In the following passage Halstead contrasted the money the United States spent on the war versus the annual per capita income of the Vietnamese.

“The direct dollar cost to the U.S. in South Vietnam alone was $141 billion. This was more than $7,000 for each of the area’s 20 million inhabitants, whose per capita income was only $157 per year.”

We might also consider that the United States government began their support of French colonization of Vietnam with the Presidential Administration of Harry S. Truman. It ended with the Presidential Administration of Gerald Ford.

During the election campaign of Lyndon Bains Johnson, he promised to keep U.S. soldiers out of Vietnam. A few months after he won the election, he greatly increased the number of U.S. soldiers in the war. He did this by drafting soldiers into the military. 

During President Nixon’s election campaign, he promised to wind down the war. After he won the election, Nixon escalated the bombing campaign against Southeast Asia. While Johnson labelled his bombing campaign Rolling Thunder, Nixon called his mass murdering bombing campaign Linebacker I and Linebacker II.  

The Vietnamese National Liberation Front only had a tiny percentage of the military resources the U.S. armed forces had at their disposal. That support came from the Soviet Union and China. Their strength consisted of the massive support they had with the Vietnamese people.

The anti-war movement in the United States emerged in the years after the anti-communist repression of McCarthyism. At one time the Communist Party in this country might have had 100,000 members and many more supporters. A common misconception is that the CP lost its influence because of the repressive actions of Joseph McCarthy’s in the 1950s. Fred Halstead disagreed with that perspective.

At that time the Communist Party had been following the political orientation of Joseph Stalin who headed the government of the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev took power after Stalin’s death. Khrushchev spent four hours and 40,000 words where he documented many of the crimes of Stalin in what was called the Khrushchev Revelations. That, along with the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, caused most members to abandon the Communist Party.   

As a result, most people who were active in the peace movement at that time had a conservative perspective. They centered their activities around the Ban the (atomic) Bomb campaign. Initially many people who were apart of this movement supported the war against Vietnam.

Then, there was a new organization called the Students for A Democratic Society or SDS. SDS opposed U.S. participation in the war against Vietnam. They called for a demonstration protesting the war on April 17, 1965. SDS organizers only expected about 2,000 people to participate in the action. 

However, President Johnson reversed his campaign pledge to keep the United States out of the war. He also drafted young men into the armed forces to support his war drive. As people began to see the unimaginable horrors of this war, 20,000 people participated in the 1965 SDS organized demonstration. 

At this point in the history, divisions developed that argued for contrasting strategies on how to advance the goals of the movement. One strategy called for spectacular actions where relatively small groups of people would violate the law, get arrested, and win publicity for the movement. This strategy also argued for a multi-issue campaign that would protest against many of the injustices we continue to face. 

Fred Halstead argued for the orientation of the Socialist Workers Party. This perspective advanced the idea of a single-issue anti-war movement centered on the demand of total, immediate, and unconditional U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia. This was summarized in the demand Out Now! That strategy also called for a perspective that worked to organize the largest possible legal demonstrations. Supporters of these two perspectives would debate their contrasting points of view throughout the history of the anti-war movement.

A.J. Muste

A.J. Muste was born in the Netherlands in 1885. He immigrated to the United States as a young child. His family attended church regularly. He studied religion and became an ordained minister. However, he felt the need to participate in the movement protesting the grinding inequality that surrounded him.

In the year 1919, when he was 34 years old, Muste gave his full support to the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Workers on strike regularly toiled for 54 hours per week for twenty cents per hour. They demanded a 48-hour work week with no cut in pay.

The police responded to Muste’s actions by mercilessly clubbing him. They kept Muste behind bars for one week. The charge against him of disturbing the peace was later dismissed.

Muste went on to lead a 1934 strike of auto workers in Toledo, Ohio. In that strike, the workers deliberately violated a court ordered injunction and won union recognition. This strike also led to the formation of the union federation called the C.I.O.

Eventually Muste developed pacifist views. He worked with Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, and James Lawson to develop a strategy of non-violent civil disobedience. That strategy was effective in forcing the government to do away with its Jim Crow laws that denied Black people citizenship rights.

Muste also worked with David McReynolds, who was also a pacifist and served time in prison for opposing U.S. participation in the Second World War. 

Teach-ins at Madison and Berkley

Every time the United States goes to war, the government and the press become obsessed with promoting a war drive. There is a reason for this obsession with promoting war. Workers are normally averse to sending young people around the world to murder poor people. 

So, those who have power argue persistently that young people need to risk their lives to prevent poor people from having their own government. While this argument appears to be totally absurd and nonsensical, in the early years of the war most people went along with the U.S. government’s war drive.

So, the anti-war movement challenged the government to a debate where arguments would be presented for and against the war. The government was so confident in their absurd argument that they agreed to the debate.

Halstead quoted Barry Sheppard’s reaction to the teams the government sent to university campuses arguing for support of the war.

“there apparently is nothing like these direct confrontations with the administration’s spokesmen to further expose the lies and hypocrisy of the government and build up the university opposition to the Vietnam war.”

In Madison, Wisconsin and Berkley, California the movement organized teach-ins where people learned the facts about the war. These events were crucial in demystifying the reality of the horrors of the war against Vietnam.

Isaac Deutscher, who was a Marxist biographer of Leon Trotsky spoke at a Vietnam Day event in Berkley in 1965. Deutscher had impeccable credentials and spoke for eighty minutes at the event. The fact that people listened to this Marxist for that length of time in 1965 was significant. This is quotation is from his speech.

“I still believe that class struggle is the motive force in history, but in this last period, class struggle has all too often sunk into a bloody morass of power politics. On both sides of this great divide, a few ruthless and half-witted oligarchies—capitalist oligarchies here, bureaucratic oligarchies there—hold all the power and make all the decisions, obfuscate the minds and throttle the wills of nations.”

Deutscher was raised in a Jewish religious family in Poland but became an atheist. Deutscher escaped the Holocaust shortly before the campaign of mass murder by the Nazis. However, the Nazis murdered his entire family. That didn’t stop Deutscher from being critical of the repressive policies of the state of Israel. This is how he explained his position. 

“We should not allow even invocations of Auschwitz to blackmail us into supporting the wrong cause.”

He went on to criticize Israel’s apparent military victory in the 1967 war. In that war Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and West Bank.  In this quotation he predicted the unmitigated disastrous crime Israel is inflicting on Palestinians today. 

“Israel’s security, let me repeat, was not enhanced by the wars of 1956 and 1967; it was undermined and compromised by them. The ‘friends of Israel’ have in fact abetted Israel in a ruinous course.”

We see this ruinous course unfolding today.

Contrasting strategies of the anti-war movement

James Bevel, who was a central leader of the civil rights movement, also became a leader of the anti-war movement. At a demonstration in 1967, Bevel called for a national demonstration later that year. In that same year there were about 470,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. General William C. Westmoreland, who was in charge of the forces in Vietnam requested an additional 200,000 troops.

An antiwar conference was held in the University of Chicago organized by the Student Mobilization Committee. 600 people representing 90 colleges and 24 high schools attended.

Howard Petrick had been drafted into the military and was a member of the Young Socialist Alliance. He expressed his antiwar views as a soldier in the military. The military confiscated his antiwar literature and threatened him with court-martial. Petrick sent this message to the antiwar conference. 

“I appeal for support from all Americans who agree that GIs are citizens, who are entitled to the right of free speech guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Although I have never disobeyed an order and have fulfilled my duty as a soldier, my constitutional rights are now being threatened.” 

One of the reasons why the government didn’t court martial Petrick was because of the growing antiwar movement. The Chicago conference called for a national anti-war demonstration for October 21.

Eventually one of the reasons for the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was because of the mass opposition to the war by rank-and-file soldiers. Towards the end of the war U.S. military officers were afraid to give soldiers commands that few were willing to carry out.

At this point, there was a division with respect to the tactics used for the October 21 action. Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and David Dellinger all favored a march on the Pentagon. This is how they viewed their vision for this action at a press conference.

Abbie Hoffman argued that “We’re going to raise the Pentagon three hundred feet in the air.”

Jerry Rubin argued, “We’re now in the business of wholesale disruption and widespread resistance and dislocation of the American society.”

David Dellinger continued in that vein arguing, “There will be no government building left unattacked,”. 

Brad Little was working on logistics for the October 21 action. Back in 1965 he was concerned that given the inflammatory language of some of the organizers that the demonstration would be attacked by the police or right-wing groups. 

Fred Halstead responded in the following quotation. “I told him I couldn’t make any promises about the police and ultra-right groups who might attack the march, but that I and everyone else organizing the October 1965 event agreed on a nonviolent tactic for the occasion and we were doing everything we could to make it go that way.” This attitude continued in 1967.

Dr. Benjamin Spock was a pediatrician who wrote a widely popular book titled The common sense book of baby and child care. Spock was a consistent supporter of the anti-war movement. 

Before the October 21 demonstration he called Fred Halstead and said he would only endorse the action is there was a clear separation between the legal action and the civil disobedience. Spock wanted mothers to feel safe bringing their children to the demonstration. He understood that this would be an important aspect to the demonstration. Halstead assured him that there would be a separation between the two actions and Spock was satisfied by this.

At the time Dr. Spock always wore a Brooks Brothers suit with a tie. His wife Mary only convinced him to wear blue jeans when he was 75 years old. This is what Dr. Spock had to say at the October 21 demonstration. 

“We do not consider the Vietnamese north or south the enemy… They have only defended their country. Against the unjust onslaught of the United States… The enemy, we believe in all sincerity, is Lyndon Johnson.”

100,000 people attended the demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial. Thousands marched to the Pentagon. A few hundred attempted to break the line of soldiers and enter the Pentagon. 

In all, about 675 demonstrators were arrested. Another 200 were arrested but not booked.  Some of the demonstrators stayed close to the Pentagon all evening but were chased away by the police in the morning.

Then in 1968 the National Mobilization Committee organized to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The mobilization was aimed at support of a nomination of Eugene McCarthy for President. About 15,000 people showed up for that demonstration. However, a minority of those who came to Chicago were determined to break the law. This is how Jerry Rubin explained his point of view.

“Repression turns demonstration protests into wars. Actors into heroes. Masses of individuals into community. Repression eliminates the bystander, the neutral observer, the theorist. It forces everyone to pick a side. A movement can not grow without repression.”

So, when a minority of protesters challenged the National Guard and the police 660 people were arrested, 1,000 injured, and there was one fatality. 

Protesting this repression anti-war organizations called for another legal demonstration in Chicago. Twenty-five thousand people attended the action. While the press gave considerable coverage to the repression by the police, there was little press coverage given to this larger legal demonstration. 

Black liberation

During the same years as the U.S. government was at war against Vietnam, they also carried out a hot war against the African American community. In the mid 1960s the government buckled to pressure from the Civil Rights movement and did away with the Jim Crow laws that denied Black people citizenship rights.

However, institutionalized racist discrimination continued to be a fact of life. The issue that pushed the Black community into action was routine and systematic police brutality. Elizabeth Hinton wrote a powerful book titled America on Fire that documented all the rebellions in this country that continued until the 1980s.

The government responded to rebellions in Watts, Detroit, and Newark by murdering 180 people. Responding to the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 cities across the country erupted in rebellion.

One year to the day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King gave a speech where he opposed the war against Vietnam. In that speech King argued that the United States was the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” He went on to argue that the United States armed forces might appear to be “strange liberators” to the Vietnamese.

Malcolm X didn’t just oppose the U.S. war against Vietnam. He was inspired by the Vietnamese resistance to imperialism. Speaking about the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, this is what Malcolm had to say. 

“The French were deeply entrenched in Vietnam for a hundred years or so. They had the best weapons of warfare, a highly mechanized army, everything that you would need. And the guerrillas come out of the rice paddies, with nothing more than sneakers on, and a rifle, and a bowl of rice. And you know what they did in Dien Bien Phu. They ran the French out of there. And if the French were deeply entrenched and couldn’t stay there, then how do you think someone else is going to stay there, who isn’t even there yet?”

  

Mohammed Ali was influenced by Malcolm X and refused to be inducted into the military. He argued that “No Vietnamese ever called me n—word.” Although Ali faced a possible prison sentence for his refusal to be inducted, the Supreme Court looked at his case and needed to take a few things under consideration. 

They understood that Ali might have been the most popular person in the country at that time.  They understood that the Black community and the anti-war movement would erupt if he went to jail. So, in 1971 the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and respected Ali’s right not to serve because of his religious convictions.

In that same year, there was a revolt at the Attica prison in New York. The prisoners demanded that they be treated as human beings. Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the armed forces to crush that rebellion. This resulted in the murder of several inmates.   

Women’s liberation

Nancy Rosenstock wrote an important book titled Inside the second wave of feminism—Boston female liberation, 1968-1972, An account by participants. We might consider that before this movement, women were routinely prohibited from wearing pants at work. They were not allowed to have a credit card. Doctors routinely refused to give single women prescriptions for birth control. Most women worked jobs as secretaries or housekeepers. Only a tiny percentage of doctors were women. Abortion was illegal.

The combined movements of women’s liberation, civil rights, and anti-war all created a political climate where women began to gain rights they never had before. One of those rights was the right to decide if and when women become mothers. Today the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision has compromised that right. As a result of the political atmosphere of those days, many of the leaders of the anti-war movement were women.

The invasion of Cambodia and the war against anti-war protesters

Richard Nixon became President in 1969. On April 15, 1969, massive anti-war demonstrations erupted in cities across the country. President Nixon saw the massive anti-war sentiment and started withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam. However, he also escalated the bombing of Vietnam in his Linebacker I and Linebacker II bombing campaigns. 

Then Nixon ordered the military to escalate the war by invading Cambodia. The Student Mobilization Committee responded by calling for immediate demonstrations to protest this escalation of the war.

One of the places where demonstrations took place was at Kent State University. National Guardsmen responded to a May 4 antiwar demonstration by informing the protesters that the gathering was illegal. The Guard ordered them to leave. When this didn’t happen, the Guard fired tear gas into the crowd. When that didn’t fully disburse the demonstration, the National Guard fired live ammunition murdering four students and injuring many more.

Universities throughout the country began to go on strike protesting the murder of the Kent State students as well as the war. The student Mobilization Committee issued a statement saying:

“On a growing number of campuses, the strike has advanced from ‘shut it down’ to ‘open it up’ as an antiwar university.”

On May 9, in Augusta Georgia a sixteen-year-old Black youth was beaten to death in a country jail. The police fired on about 1,000 people who protested the police murder. 

Governor Lester Maddox labelled the demonstration “a Communist plot” and ordered in the National Guard. The guard proceeded in murdering six people in the Black community. No police or guardsmen were wounded.

Then on May 13, at Jackson State College in Mississippi 300 students held an antiwar demonstration. The mayor called out the National Guard. The Guard fired live ammunition at students who were merely congregating on campus. They murdered two students. The Guard fired on a women’s dormitory and several of the women who lived there were injured.

The Chicano community of the Southwest organized their own antiwar group called The National Chicano Moratorium. On August 29, 25,000 mostly Chicano people demonstrated against the war in Los Angeles, California. One of the reasons for this action was because of the disproportionate number of Chicanos who were dying in the war.

The sheriff’s deputies mobilized and attacked the demonstration. When the protesters disbursed, the deputies chased them.

One of the protesters was Ruben Salazar, who was a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and was the news director of the Spanish-language television station KMEX. Salazar was a leader of the Chicano community and documented the systematic racist discrimination in Los Angeles. 

Retreating from the sheriff’s attack, Salazar went to a bar to have a drink. A Sheriff’s deputy fired a teargas projectile into the bar that took Salazar’s life. The Sheriff’s deputies took the lives of two other Chicanos on that day. 

When we think of the loss of all those lives, we also might think of the fact that the United States was forced to take the military out of Vietnam. We also might consider how the U.S. government used lethal force against peaceful antiwar actions. We also might think of how the movement that protested the war against Vietnam also continued the struggle for the right of people in this country to engage in peaceful protest. These were real conquests of the antiwar movement.      

Conclusion

Today we can only speculate as to how Fred Halstead would view the current movement protesting the Israeli organized genocide against Palestinians. Clearly there are several differences in the antiwar movements of yesterday and today.

For the most part, U.S. soldiers are not directly involved in this genocide. However, the IDF would not have been able to murder 37,000 Palestinians without abundant U.S. financial and military support.

There are about seven million Jews who live in this country. Many have the mistaken idea that Israel needs to engage in this genocide to defend itself. The idea that Palestinians living in the occupied territories need to have equal rights with Jewish Israelis is not even mentioned in the so-called news media.

Some of the most ardent supporters of Israel understand that criticism of Israel is not analogous to anti-Semitism. Saying that, statements critical of all Jewish people are anti-Semitic. The antiwar movement needs to distance itself from those statements. Today the primary cause of anti-Semitism is the Israeli organized genocide against Palestinians. 

The National Liberation Front of Vietnam had considerably less resources than the United States invading forces. However, it is clear that the NLF decisively defeated the U.S. invaders. The antiwar movement in this country and around the world aided in that effort. Today the world is a better place because of those actions.

In my opinion, the only way to bring peace to the Middle East is to give all Palestinians equal rights with Jewish Israeli citizens. Clearly the current genocide isn’t moving to achieve that goal. However, the Israeli government has never been more isolated in the world.

Mass actions didn’t just aid in the defeat of the U.S. armed forces in Vietnam. Mass actions forced the government to do away with Jim Crow segregation. Mass actions forced the South African government to do away with apartheid. This history is clearly relevant to the antiwar movement today.

The book Out Now! by Fred Halstead offers many lessons as well as a rich perspective that is relevant to antiwar activists today. Halstead never ruled out the use of nonviolent civil disobedience. 

However, he believed that the most effective strategy was to attract the largest number of people in mass actions. This perspective required teach ins and educationals aimed at cutting through the nonsense promoted by the so-called news media every day.

Clearly there have been huge demonstrations protesting the Israeli organized genocide all over the world. My opinion is that the book Out Now! argues that this movement needs to grow even larger. 

Today the majority of the population of this country supports the demand of Ceasefire Now. The challenge is to get large numbers of people who already support that demand to join protests in the streets. This is a challenge for the antiwar movement today. Fred Halstead’s book Out Now! gives us invaluable lessons as to how this was done in the past.