Dangerous Grounds

by Parsons, David L. ;

  Especially in the coffeehouse network’s early stages, civilian organizers tended to come from middle-class backgrounds, most often entering the movement through their college’s Students for a Democratic Society chapter. The class differences between activists and GIs were a constant topic of discussion at coffeehouses. As the movement developed, however, these differences lessened considerably, with working-class activists making up a larger portion of civilian coffeehouse staff. Part of the reason for this shift was the involvement of organizations like the Socialist Workers Party and its youth corollary, the Young Socialist Alliance. These Trotskyist organizations sought to channel widespread antiwar sentiment into a full-scale working-class rebellion in the U.S. Army.13 As part of that effort, the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance played an active role in the funding and leadership of several coffeehouse projects, changing the class composition of the GI movement’s civilian wing in the network’s later years. Their involvement was part of several important trends in the larger antiwar movement—including civil rights and black liberation politics, radical feminism, and youth counterculture—that contributed to the GI coffeehouse network’s overall energy and direction.

  This book focuses on three of the longest lasting and most active coffeehouse projects: the UFO, mentioned above; the Oleo Strut in Killeen, Texas (outside Fort Hood); and the Shelter Half in Tacoma, Washington (outside Fort Lewis). These coffeehouses existed near some of the most important army installations of the Vietnam era; each played a critical part in the operation of the Vietnam War. Over the course of several years, these three coffeehouses evolved into popular local hangouts, centers of political organization, and subjects of significant controversy. The details of their stories provide entry into the complicated intersection of antiwar politics and the U.S. Army during an increasingly unpopular war.

  Framed by the stories of these three flagship coffeehouses, the book considers the coffeehouse movement as a whole, tracking the development of many other projects through the entirety of the network’s history. The book synthesizes a diverse range of sources, including the GI underground press, records of antiwar organizations, editorials and letters in local newspapers, legal documents, trial transcripts, government records, congressional investigations, and interviews conducted with participants in the coffeehouse movement. The story unfolds chronologically and is divided into four major chapters, each focused on a different phase of the coffeehouse network’s history.

  Chapter 1 explains the origins of the coffeehouse concept, its founding ethos and organizing principles, and the practical challenges of opening antiwar businesses in often hostile communities. This chapter follows Fred Gardner and a host of other antiwar activists as they established the first coffeehouse projects, their experiences reflecting the often significant regional differences antiwar activists encountered in military towns in the late 1960s. Since each of these towns maintained deep social, political, and economic ties to the American military establishment, coffeehouse organizers came face-to-face with local cultures deeply invested in preserving a military-friendly status quo. Over time they developed a variety of strategies to overcome some of these challenges, with varying degrees of success, particularly after the antiwar movement’s so-called Summer of Support in 1968 brought an influx of funds and support staff.

  Chapter 2 focuses on the different kinds of political activism organized at GI coffeehouses once they were established in multiple locations through 1968. Coffeehouses became the primary institutional components of a diverse outburst of political activity in the U.S. military, particularly concentrated in the U.S. Army. In Columbia, the UFO coffeehouse provided an instrumental organizational base for GIs involved in the “Fort Jackson Eight” case, which challenged army officials to redefine ideas of free speech for enlisted men. Similarly, at the Oleo Strut in Killeen, Texas, soldiers and civilians initiated a broad-based defense campaign after GI Richard Chase was imprisoned for his refusal to engage in riot control training. In addition, the Oleo Strut supported a GI-led boycott of Tyrrell’s Jewelry, a national chain of stores that, according to many GIs, exploited vulnerable and homesick soldiers in order to sell rings and necklaces. At the Shelter Half coffeehouse, activists staged an “Aquatic Invasion of Fort Lewis,” a piece of guerrilla theater that kick-started larger demonstrations in and around the massive Tacoma army post. In all of these cases, GI coffeehouses were catalysts for a wide range of tactics and strategies, evolving into dynamic political institutions that addressed a number of important concerns, both war-related and otherwise, felt by soldiers in the Vietnam-era army.

  Chapter 3 details what happened when GI coffeehouses caught the attention of post officials, government authorities, local and national politicians, reactionary vigilantes, and others who saw the coffeehouses as a significant threat to a revered national institution. The House Un-American Activities Committee, during its final years of existence, held a series of congressional hearings to investigate alleged communist subversion of the U.S. military. In the first of these hearings, the committee interrogated antiwar movement leaders Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden about their role in the GI coffeehouse network, with several committee members expressing outrage at the very idea of an antiwar coffeehouse designed for military personnel. A later series of congressional hearings in 1971 focused exclusively on the coffeehouse network, collecting data from dozens of coffeehouse projects and publicly accusing coffeehouse organizers of attempting to subvert the American armed forces during a time of war.

  These federal investigations were accompanied by a relentless campaign of harassment and intimidation at the local level, with police departments, angry locals, post authorities, and many others combining to create a hostile, often frightening atmosphere for those involved with GI coffeehouse projects. In Muldraugh, Kentucky, for example, the Fort Knox Coffeehouse was firebombed twice before being run out of town by local police, and in Mountain Home, Idaho, a popular coffeehouse project called the Covered Wagon was burned to the ground in 1971. And in some of the most dramatic developments in the coffeehouse network’s history, both the Shelter Half and UFO coffeehouses faced serious legal actions that closed the projects and subjected their organizers to arrest and imprisonment. Collectively, these attacks crippled the coffeehouse network and bankrupted its limited funds. But perhaps more important, the often severe repression and harassment showed that the coffeehouses had hit a nerve. Government officials and military policy makers, recognizing the seriousness of the crisis that coffeehouses seemed to represent, embarked on a series of efforts to disrupt their operations.

  Coffeehouse organizers quickly learned that military towns took their connections to the armed forces very seriously. In Catherine Lutz’s Homefront: A Military City and the American Twentieth Century, the anthropologist and historian examines Fayetteville, North Carolina (home of the Fort Bragg army post), as a representative military city, showing how mobilization for war can have a totalizing impact on regions that have become virtually dependent on the U.S. military for their economic well-being. According to Lutz, this dependence breeds a kind of ideological homogeneity enforced through local politics, culture, and social relations. Lutz’s history includes the story of Quaker House, a GI movement center created by antiwar organizers in 1970. Months after opening, Quaker House was burned to the ground, with several civilians and GIs injured in the blaze; a police investigation concluded it was arson but no one was ever charged for the crime. On the editorial pages of local newspapers, some Fayetteville citizens expressed virulent hostility to the antiwar movement’s presence in their city. While this hostility was often expressed in cultural terms (“these doped up, whining, dirty, non-working, non-tax-paying, dutiless [sic] non-Americans should be behind bars where they belong,” one letter read), there was an undeniable allegiance to American military values underlying the cultural revulsion.14 To many citizens of Fayetteville and other similar military-centered American communities, GI coffeehouses and oth
er antiwar projects geared toward American GIs felt like a direct attack on local values, and they lashed out in perceived defense of those values.

  Chapter 4 surveys the coffeehouse network’s later years, when major shifts in both the operation of the war and in military policy challenged the GI movement to develop new organizing strategies. Beginning in 1969, the Nixon administration altered course in Vietnam, withdrawing ground troops while accelerating U.S. bombing campaigns in the region. As the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy took on a heavier responsibility for fighting the war, the force and direction of military antiwar activism shifted to these other branches. Organizers at the primarily army-oriented GI coffeehouse networks had to adapt their political work to the concerns of a different constituency of military men and women. Their work was also influenced by the momentous changes in recruiting policy and military culture taking place throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. The federal government was enmeshed in the complicated process of ending the draft system and converting to an “all-volunteer force.” This process included a multipost experimental program called VOLAR (Volunteer Army) that attempted to update the experience of army service for a post-Vietnam generation. The VOLAR program, and the larger changes it signaled, had a major impact on the thinking of GI activists and their allies at GI coffeehouses who worked to find programs and ideas that spoke to soldiers in a rapidly changing army.

  The antiwar movement was also transforming during this later period. The influence of black nationalism and other forms of identity politics expanded the movement’s perspectives and strategies while also leading to serious divisions. These divisions were often visible at GI coffeehouses, where struggles over racial issues came bubbling to the surface throughout the network’s later years. Despite these points of tension, however, the antiwar movement’s more diverse composition and focus also brought an influx of new energy and ideas. Even as GI and civilian activists argued over political ideology, the GI movement itself reached a peak moment of cultural influence and national attention.

  In 1971, antiwar celebrities like Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland toured the network with an antiwar-themed revue called the “FTA Show” (the initials either stood for “Free the Army” or “Fuck the Army,” then common catchphrases in the GI movement). The popular show drew large crowds of GIs, whose numbers and enthusiasm reflected the depth of antiwar sentiment among American service members. The underground GI press also reached a peak of production, publishing thousands of underground newspapers at bases around the world. GI coffeehouses often served as the printing and distribution centers for this extraordinary output of independent media, helping navigate the serious hazards and challenges of producing antiwar literature for active-duty GIs. During this time, the GI press developed an antiauthority aesthetic and ethos that reflected the depth of alienation felt by the soldier rank and file in the Vietnam era.

  In this period, coffeehouse organizers held a series of national GI movement conferences, the largest of which took place in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, in 1971. More than 100 GIs, veterans, and civilians spent five days wrestling with the implications of the changing war, the changing conditions of military service, and the changing direction of left politics. Their discussions reflect the different forces at work in the antiwar movement during the post-1968 era. From Third World liberation and Black Power, to drugs and counterculture, to gender and sexuality, GI organizers took on a range of political trends and ideologies in considering the direction of their activism. These years witnessed a subsequent broadening of political activity at GI coffeehouses, including an increased focus on military counseling services, bringing attention to rising problems like post-traumatic stress disorder and veteran unemployment, among many other issues. In the final days of the GI coffeehouse network, the antiwar movement was simultaneously expanding and collapsing under the weight of internal divisions and a changing political landscape.

  Although the coffeehouse phenomenon faded out along with most other antiwar projects as the Vietnam War came to an end, over the course of its brief lifetime the coffeehouse network played a critical role in the larger GI movement. For the thousands of active-duty soldiers, veterans, and civilians who participated in antiwar activities during the Vietnam era, coffeehouses were a central element of the experience. They became indispensable to the movement’s success, used to organize demonstrations, distribute literature, produce underground newspapers, and hold meetings away from post authorities. The existence of an off-post GI coffeehouse was often a determining factor in the growth and long-term survival of local GI antiwar organizations.

  Coffeehouses were the central physical spaces in which the GI movement planned activities, published political literature, and made contact with civilian antiwar activists and organizations. As such, they conferred a degree of legitimacy to the actions of antiwar soldiers, amplifying their voices to the public and establishing them as important components of a multipronged national effort to end the war. In her work on feminist activism in the early 1970s, anthropologist Anne Enke examines the importance of institutional spaces like coffeehouses, bars, and movement centers in giving political feminism a public face and helping American women locate sites of resistance. In her book Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism, Enke asks, “How does one locate a movement that could reach a woman in her home and at the same time seem utterly inaccessible to her? A movement that was ‘everywhere’ and yet nowhere the same? A movement nearly infinite in its origins as well as its continued and changing expressions?”15 In answering these questions, Enke asserts the vitality of physical spaces developed by feminist activists, arguing that deliberately politicized spaces gave definition to an amorphous movement.

  GI coffeehouses, like the feminist institutions that Enke describes, similarly created a physical reality for a set of political ideals, providing sites for American soldiers to locate a civilian antiwar movement that no doubt seemed inaccessible to GIs stationed at often remote military outposts. As antiwar sentiment increased throughout the army in the later years of the Vietnam War, GI coffeehouses helped give public voice to soldiers with limited opportunities to formulate and articulate political critiques. The GI underground press was particularly important in this regard, with coffeehouses evolving into busy printing presses that sustained a robust stream of antiwar information and opinions delivered directly (often covertly) to active-duty soldiers around the world. In an age of instantly accessible digital information, it is important to recognize that, during the Vietnam War era, access to information was more easily controlled by institutional authorities. Possession of printing technology like mimeograph machines and paper presses played a critical role in allowing alternative political and cultural ideas to find wider audiences.

  In his book Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, historian Christian Appy points out that access to “complete or thoughtful criticism of the war” and “alternative political and cultural perspectives” was a central factor in determining a young man’s attitude toward military service.16 According to Appy, this access was much more available to middle-class men more likely to go to college or to have friends and family members in college. Particularly in the later years of the Vietnam War, though, many places outside of college campuses had developed to provide the kinds of access to alternative perspectives for working-class men that, earlier in the war, had largely been confined to college campuses. Churches, the alternative press, philanthropic organizations, and labor unions were often sites of heated debates about the war and related issues. The GI coffeehouse network was an important part of these efforts, creating institutions that offered alternatives to the onslaught of pro-war, patriotic perspectives in the mainstream media and within the military itself.

  The history of the GI coffeehouse network complicates the widely misunderstood interplay between antiwar soldiers and the civilian peace movement, upending the stereotype of angry protesters spitting on heroic war veteran
s. Beyond challenging popular mythology about the war, though, the story also provides unique insight into the internal politics of the antiwar movement and the wider landscape of American politics and society in the late 1960s and early 1970s. GI coffeehouses, and the GI movement in which they played a vital part, show us how and why antiwar organizations began reaching out to U.S. soldiers in the late 1960s; how army authorities and government officials responded to the interaction of GIs and antiwar civilians; how communities outside military bases maintained and defended their strong economic and cultural ties to the military establishment; how GI antiwar projects faced relentless government surveillance and intimidation; how the era’s racial politics shaped both the possibilities and limits of antiwar organizations; how dissent flowed through different branches of the U.S. military as the operation of the war evolved; how the character and concerns of the Left and antiwar movement expanded after 1968; and, most important, how radical civilians, veterans, and active-duty GIs worked together to organize unprecedented dissent within the U.S. Army during one of the most divisive wars in the nation’s history. As some of the central sites of this extraordinary resistance, GI coffeehouses have vital stories to tell.