The UAW Speaks Out Against Cambodia
A few days before his tragic death, Walter Reuther presided over a session of the board of the United Automobile Workers. A major point on its agenda was the Nixon policy regarding Cambodia, and...
...The bitter fruits of this growing alienation and frustration among America's youth have been harvested on the campus of Kent State University where the lives of four students involved only in an emotional protest against the war were ended by the needless and inexcusable use of military force...
...Yet by your action you have driven the wedge of division deeper and you have dangerously alienated millions of young Americans...
...Your decision to invade the territory of Cambodia can only increase the enormity of the tragedy in which our nation is already deeply and unfortunately involved in that region...
...However this dangerous adventure turns out militarily, America has already su$ered a moral defeat beyond measure among the people of the world...
...Your action taken without the consultation or authorization by the Congress has created a serious Constitutional crisis at a time when there is growing division in our nation...
...With the exception of a small minority, the American people, including our young people, reject violence in all its forms as morally repugnant and counterproductive...
...You pledged to bring America together...
...We must mobilize for peace rather than for wider theaters of war in order to turn our resources and the hearts, hands and minds of our people to the fulfillment of America's unfinished agenda at home...
...Many Senators are understandably aroused...
...Widening the war at this point in time once again merely reenforces the bankruptcy of our policy of force and violence in Vietnam...
...Your action must stand as a repudiation of your oftrepeated pledge to bring this tragic war to an end and not to escalate it...
...The problem, Mr...
...Senator Cooper has clearly pointed out that your action represents a turnabout in your policy and Senator Aiken has warned that your escalation of the war means the end of the Vietnamization policy...
...At no time in the history of our free society have so many troops been sent to so many campuses to suppress the voice of protest by so many young Americans...
...A major point on its agenda was the Nixon policy regarding Cambodia, and as a result of its discussion, the following telegram was sent by Reuther to the President: ON BEHALF OF THE UAW I wish to convey to you our deep concern and distress over your action authorizing the use of United States forces and material in a broadening of the war in Indochina...
...President, is that we cannot successfully preach nonviolence at home while we escalate mass violence abroad...
...A few days before his tragic death, Walter Reuther presided over a session of the board of the United Automobile Workers...
...It is your responsibility to lead us out of the Southeast Asian War—to peace at home and abroad...
Vol. 17 • July 1970 • No. 4
