DID THE GI MOVEMENT END THE VIETNAM WAR? AND WHAT IS THE REAL LEGACY OF GI COFFEEHOUSES?
Over the past three years, there has
been a significant growth of opposition
to the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations
among active duty soldiers, and
several organizations have been doing
tremendous work with soldiers and
veterans. From those supporting soldiers
who have refused deployment
and been court-martialed, to the work
of Iraq Veterans Against the War,
Veterans For Peace, the Military
Project and Different Drummer Café,
determined work is being done to turn
the deepening disaffection and anger
with the occupations inside the military
into a real political movement and
force.
The GI Movement of the ‘60s is
loaded with lessons for today. But
those lessons have to be seen realistically
to be truly learned. Memory can
be a tricky thing, and it is no more
helpful to exaggerate the events of that time
than it is to deny them. Mythologizing or inaccurately
portraying the GI Movement can, in
my mind, do far more harm than good as people
struggle to find ways to build a new movement
in the military today.
So I was very interested to read about the
effort to open a new GI Coffeehouse in
Killeen, Texas, outside of Fort Hood. The coffeehouse
movement has been one of the few
“forms” of organization from the 60s that seem
to me to make a lot of sense today. But as I
read Tom Cleaver’s depiction of the Oleo Strut
Coffeehouse and its relevance for today
[Under the Hood: An Anti-War GI
Coffeehouse in Texas], I found myself growing
increasingly concerned that real understanding
may be being replaced by nostalgia.
Tom’s interpretation of the GI Movement in
the 60s raised many issues that I want to discuss
here, in the spirit of making history serve
the present.
Let me emphatically state first that I am no
longer an organizer, but a filmmaker. I do not
intend to criticize or direct anyone. I don’t consider
myself an “expert” on the GI Movement.
But I do hope that my two years working at the
Oleo Strut, and the work that I and others have
done to tell the GI Movement story today can
be helpful. For the record, I am not a veteran.
I went to Killeen in June of 1970 as a 20-yearold
drop-out– and scared to death, I might add.
I found Tom’s statement that “GIs stopped
the war in Vietnam and they can stop the war
in Iraq” to be misleading and potentially
harmful. It takes what is true, the fact that the
GI Movement cut at the heart of the war, and
uses it as a kind of club over everyone else.
But most significantly, it rips the GI Movement
out of the political and social context that gave
birth to it and nurtured its growth.
GIs did not stop the war in Vietnam. The
Vietnam War was ended by a combination of
forces–first and foremost the Vietnamese people,
whose struggle for self-determination
became an inspiration for millions around the
world. And beyond that the anti-war, counterculture,
Black liberation and revolutionary
movements were all key to creating the context
for soldiers in their thousands to revolt and
certainly play a major role in bringing the war
to a grinding halt. Perhaps the GI Resistance
was the straw that broke the camel’s back–but
that wouldn’t have happened without all those
other straws!
Tom’s main example comes from the summer
of ‘68–the urban rebellions and demonstrations
at the Chicago Democratic
Convention, and the GI’s response to being
ordered into riot control duty. Tom’s
description of the Fort Hood 43, the Black GIs
who were tried for resisting deployment to
Chicago, is inaccurate. Tom describes them as
a highly organized group, who had chosen
which soldiers would refuse to go based on
their service in Vietnam. That isn’t what happened.
As vividly described in Sir! No Sir! by
Elder Halim Gullabehmi, one of the participants,
several hundred soldiers met all night in
an open field to protest their deployment and
discuss their grievances and make plans. No
decision had been made. In the morning, when
the Black GIs were still in the field waiting for
a response from the base Commanding
General, they were ambushed by MPs, beaten,
and thrown in the stockade.
Yes, the GI Movement had become a force
in the military that seriously challenged its
authority and ability to fight; and yes, thousands
of GIs were actively organizing and
demonstrating, but that can’t be ripped out of
the context it grew in and declared to be the
sole force that ended the war. Doing so, it
seems to me, could lead to a distorted view of
the situation today and very unrealistic expectations.
It certainly doesn’t help point the road
forward.
Part of the importance of understanding the
context for the GI Movement is recognizing
that it faced tremendous repression. The whole
nature of the military is based on isolation
from the world outside, and the more that
world intruded, the more they fought back.
The coffeehouses were an essential link
between soldiers who faced tremendous repercussions
for their actions and the broader
movement in society. That link was political,
and just as importantly cultural, and without it
much of what flourished would have been
quickly crushed.
In 1968, the Oleo Strut was for the most part
the only way that GIs could be in contact with
that movement. Most GIs didn’t have cars
then, and at night and on weekends the only
place you could go was the downtown strip
since bus service ended there. Life was very
constricted. The Strut was literally a haven,
one you couldn’t find anywhere else, and a
place to listen to music and read literature that
was only available there. Especially in the
early years, that made up a lot of what sustained
it.
It’s a different situation today. Mobility
and communication are worlds apart from
1968. While we were filming IVAW in their
efforts to bring Winter Soldier to the soldiers at
Fort Hood this year, much of their outreach
was done at bars in Austin–60 miles away!
There isn’t the kind of central place today that
GIs are locked into, making something like the
Strut unique. That seems to me to be a significant
change.
Our 60s coffeehouses faced huge obstacles
to staying open. They were physically
attacked, hit with bizarre legal charges, and
often burned down. But those weren’t the most
difficult challenges. Even the most successful
coffeehouses were never self-sustaining financially.
We barely survived, even with the
Herculean efforts of the United States
Serviceman’s Fund, a group whose sole purpose
was raising money for the GI Movement.
But even with that and the day jobs many of us
had, we came close to shutting down many
times. In addition the constant legal battles and
harassment arrests (I spent nights in jail for
such things as hitch-hiking, driving with a
dirty license plate, and swearing in front of a
police officer), were a huge financial drain.
It was also a constant struggle to keep staff.
Burn-out was a big problem in places like
Killeen (and I don’t imagine that’s much different
today). Keeping a place like the Strut
alive wasn’t a weekend or summer gig. The
reality is that there were many long periods
when it was successfully isolated from the soldiers,
and it took tremendous endurance to survive
those times. Life in the GI Movement,
like life in the military, was characterized by
many months of intense tedium punctuated by
moments of intense action.
The GI Coffeehouses of the 60’s were a
major force that filled a very specific need, one
that grew out of the times we were living in.
They were also a major commitment of time
and resources–extremely difficult to sustain
but well worth it for the role they were playing
at that time.
I am not offering these observations to pour
cold water on the current effort. But I believe
that to be kept alive, history has to be seen in
all its parameters. And I do think it’s important
to not view the coffeehouses of the 60s
through rose-colored glasses, especially when
you’re contemplating diving into the fire. I’m
not drawing conclusions, just raising questions
in the spirit of welcoming all of the work being
done today in the military, and wanting to use
our history to enrich it.
David Zeiger is an award-winning film producer
and director whose highly acclaimed
film Sir! No Sir! documented the little-known
GI resistance to the Vietnam War. He was a
staff member at the Oleo Strut, a GI coffee
house in Killeen, Texas near Ft. Hood that was
a major center of anti-war activities from
1968 to 1972.