War, Riot, and Priorities
Congressmen, Ten
Our nation is in crisis. We fight a stalemated war 10,000 miles from our shores; there is no immediate prospect for peace. We lace despair and disruption in our cities; there is no immediate...
...We lace despair and disruption in our cities...
...JOHN CONYERS, JR...
...Thus, even in desperate violence, the oppressed are ignored...
...And so their violent rebellion is attributed to external conspiracy, to scapegoats...
...America, then, is threatened not only by overwhelming problems, but by the dangerous consequences of our response, a cycle of vigilantism and repression, in domestic and foreign policy alike, which may ultimately tear apart the soul of this nation...
...JOHN G. Dow (N.Y...
...August 1, 1967...
...DON EDWARD (Calif...
...To bring real and lasting peace to our cities, we must end the war in Asia...
...HENRY HELSTOSKI (N.J...
...ROBERT W. KASTENMEIER (Wis...
...Mich...
...Our public resources must be stretched to their limits, and supplemented by funds currently spent for War...
...Such a project must acknowledge the great lesson of summer 1967...
...WILLIAM F. RYAN (N.Y...
...We seek, therefore, a national movement for social reconstruction to help reverse the dangerous drift to reaction currently threatening our public life...
...This country, then, must turn about...
...It must limit its unwarranted preoccupation with other continents—and face itself...
...Second, we must begin, in effect, a Marshall Plan for the cities, a redistribution of American affluence and a new plan for the full participation of this nation's deprived in reconstructing every ghetto in every city of this country...
...And from the affluent and the comfortable of this nation—an enormous and unprecedented majority—we must require personal commitment and material sacrifice...
...At stake is our self-preservation...
...AUGUSTUS F. HAWKINS (Calif...
...We fight a stalemated war 10,000 miles from our shores...
...First, then, the war must end . . . now...
...the crisis of our ghettos is more urgent than the war in Vietnam...
...This historic task is no longer a matter of simple choice...
...EDWARD R. ROYBAL (Calif...
...America must reject the present course of escalation and instead offer our adversaries a compromise peace, which accepts a coalition government for South Vietnam, and the eventual withdrawal of American troops...
...but their call is not understood...
...The deprived, whether in Vietnam or the ghetto, cry out for redress and independence...
...there is no immediate prospect for solution...
...PHILLIP BURTON (Calif...
...BENJAMIN S. ROSENTHAL (N.Y...
Vol. 14 • September 1967 • No. 5
