The Vietnam Protest Movement

...from the authorities...

...Parts of the statement have become dated: e. g., a section dealing with attitudes toward the draft...

...We believe that the present U.S...

...d) We urge that the U.S...

...The Vietnam pro-impatience, is certain to produce a test movement—inchoate and without great deal of publicity but not much structure, but drawing upon deep public support or political impact...

...b) We urge the U.S...

...Such a movement would require agreement upon a reasonable program of "demands" appropriate to the present situation...

...recognize the right of the South Vietnamese freely to determine their own future, whatever it may be, without interference from foreign troops, and possibly under United Nations supervision...

...c) We urge the U.S...

...Civil disobedience by its very nature, must in a democratic society be an exceptional measure...

...It allows people of widely varying opinions to work together for a common objective, even while maintaining their separate valuations of what has been happening in Asia...

...It sentiments of moral idealism—faces would "prove," in the eyes of its supsome serious decisions...

...The signers of this statement were Michael Harrington, Bayard Rustin, Lewis Coser, Penn Kimble and Irving Howe...

...Analogies sometimes advanced with the Civil Rights struggle in the South are largely misleading...

...And they acted in behalf of the legal norms and moral values to which the nation as a whole had given its approval...

...This is both a tactical necessity and a moral obligation, since any ambiguity on this score makes impossible, as well as undeserved, the support of large numbers of the American people...

...Civil Rights demonstrators violated on occasion local ordinances which denied them their constitutional privileges, or deprived them of their right to public protest...

...We wish to see a movement of increasing scope appear in the United States which will press for a change in this policy...

...The advantage of this program, we believe, is that it points toward a line of action, somewhat like that advocated by Senator Fulbright, which could satisfy the central need of the movement: an end to the blood-letting...

...We would therefore suggest the following proposals as a basis for common action: a) We urge the U.S...

...it would require an appeal to large numbers of people not yet involved in any protest actions, including some in the labor, Negro, church, and academic communities who lend formal assent to the Johnson policy but might be persuaded to support specific proposals leading to a peaceful settlement in Vietnam...

...Thus far, it has by and large been able to express its dissent openly and publicly, through the usual channels open to members of a democratic society— and this fact would seriously call into question any effort to employ civil disobedience as a political tactic by an organized movement...

...Such a policy, We believe there is a possibility of appealing to sectarian ultimatism and building a significant protest move ment against the current policy in Vietnam...

...Tactically, it might be added, such attempts at "symbolic" interference with the war effort are self-defeating, since they merely result in a display of impotence and alienate people who might be persuaded to join in political protest against the Johnson policy...

...immediately to cease bombing North Vietnam...

...e) We urge Hanoi and the Vietcong to accept a proposal for a ceasefire and to declare themselves ready for immediate and unconditional negotiations...

...The situation of the Vietnam protest movement is somewhat different...

...policy in Vietnam is morally and politically disastrous...

...The protest movement cannot be organized around a full-scale analysis of the Vietnam situation...

...has taken in foreign policy, the sors and non-academic ideological ad-fascistic mentality of the "power elite," visors, to transform the protest into etc., etc...

...each participant, each group or individual who joins to protest the current policy of the Johnson Administration can provide such analyses independently, apart from the immediate joint action...

...And we are convinced that toward this end it is necessary to employ every channel of democratic pressure and persuasion...

...if employed as a routine tactic, it becomes self-defeating and destructive...

...In behalf of their legal rights as American citizens, they took what the Iocal authorities declared to be "extra-legal" measures but which were frequently upheld by the higher federal courts...

...And it may enable the protest movement to win support for these objectives from people who have given reluctant or partial or merely token support to the Johnson policy...

...Late in November a group of socialists, several of them editors of DISSENT, issued a statement concerning problems faced by the Vietnam protest movement...

...One prerequisite for such a movement is that it clearly indicate that its purpose is to end a cruel and futile war, not to give explicit or covert political support to the Vietcong...

...There is a ten-porters, various theses about the irredency, composed mainly of students vocability of the reactionary course the but also drawing upon a few profes-U.S...

...Such an analysis, bound to evoke many disagreements, cannot be the basis for common action...

...While we believe that civil dis obedience is a legitimate, if ultimate, means of registering dissent and statements of conscience in a democratic society, we would urge that it be employed only after intense reflection and a full resort to other, more "normal" methods...

...to declare its readiness to negotiate with the NLF, the political arm of the Vietcong...

...its task is not to assign historical responsibility for the present disaster to one or another side, nor to undertake study in depth of the Asian crisis...

...At the same time, it seems to us somewhat sterile and perhaps a little disingenuous to demonstrate under a slogan so vague and unfocussed—e.g., the one employed in the recent New York parade, "Stop the War in Vietnam"—that it provides no guidelines for action and could even, for that matter, be formally accepted by those who approve of the current Administration policy...

...to propose to Hanoi and the Vietcong an immediate cease-fire as a preliminary to negotiations...

...But the central section of the statement, dealing with the Vietnam movement, remains pertinent and appears below...

...A "revolutionary" tactic in a decidedly non-revolutionary situation is likely to do little more than increase the isola tion of those who undertake it...

...We question the rightness, for example, of recent efforts to stop troop trains in California: they involve an action by a small minority to revoke through its own decision the policy of a democratically elected government—which is something very different indeed from public protest against that government's decision or efforts to pressure it into changes of policy...

...Such questionable theoretical an apocalypse, a "final conflict," in satisfactions would not, however, comwhich extreme gestures of opposition pensate for a failure to affect the will bring forth punitive retaliation actual course of events...