Dangerous Grounds

by Parsons, David L. ;

  RACE AND IDENTITY POLITICS

  The solidarity on display in underground GI newspapers could often obscure some of the bitter divisions within the GI movement, whose trajectory was shaped profoundly by the turbulent internal politics of the New Left in the later years of the Vietnam War. Much of this turbulence concerned the rising tide of Black Power, black nationalism, and Third World solidarity that challenged predominantly white left organizations to reshape their foundational ideologies and organizational strategies. The New Left had found its early inspiration in the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, as young whites had sought to join the cause of racial integration with their own liberal vision of “participatory democracy.” But by 1966, after Stokely Carmichael coined the phrase “Black Power” at a Mississippi civil rights march led by the vanguard Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, white and black radicals increasingly viewed each other from across a racial divide. Less than a week after Carmichael’s Black Power speech, Students for a Democratic Society president Todd Gitlin issued a statement affirming the leading student activist organization’s support for Black Power, which essentially asserted that white radicals, rather than pursue integration, should seek to “organize their own communities” and address racism at its source.26 Though generally sympathetic to surging black radicalism, many of these organizations found themselves increasingly paralyzed by fierce internal battles in the late 1960s, unable to agree on the precise nature of the revolution they hoped to effect.

  The war in Vietnam and the movement against it were similarly influenced by the wider atmosphere of racial struggle. In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an iconic antiwar speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” in which he connected the miserable social and economic situation of blacks in America to the suffering of Vietnamese peasants at the hands of the U.S. military. While he stopped short of urging black soldiers to defect, King nevertheless made it clear that service in Vietnam was especially problematic for young black men. According to King, the war was taking men “who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”27 King’s words pointed out a “cruel irony” that found potent expression among young black GIs in the Vietnam-era armed services.

  Perhaps no other figure more publicly represented the black experience of Vietnam than heavyweight champion boxer and international celebrity Muhammad Ali, whose principled stand against service in the war inspired countless young black men to find their own paths of resistance. His notorious retort “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me Nigger” seemed to cut right to the heart of the matter and strengthened the notion that, for many black men, fighting in the war represented a serious betrayal of racial and class identity. Employing logic similar to King’s and other black leaders’, Ali pointed out, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”28 As this attitude became more prominent among young black GIs, the military itself became one more front in the battle to confront institutionalized racism.29

  The powerful influence of racial ideology was felt at GI coffeehouses around the nation, with several GI projects confronting the same set of complex racial issues that challenged many radical groups during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM), for example, quickly rose to become one of the largest coffeehouse-initiated GI projects in the country, until it was unable to sustain itself in the face of significant racial division. The MDM was founded in 1970 in a popular GI coffeehouse called the Green Machine, located near Camp Pendleton, the major West Coast base of the U.S. Marine Corps, in San Diego, California. The group published an important and widely read GI newspaper, Attitude Check, which spelled out a basic list of revolutionary demands that became common political positions among GI movement activists around the country, even well after the MDM disintegrated. These demands included the recognition of constitutional rights for all soldiers, the right to collective bargaining, freedom for all political prisoners, an end to institutional racism, a complete overhaul of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and, of course, an immediate and total withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam.30 Six different military bases established MDM chapters in the early months of 1970, prompting Marine commandant general Leonard Chapman, in an interview with a military affairs magazine, to label the organization “a serious threat to the defense of this country.”31

  Contrary to Chapman’s fears, a power struggle for control of the MDM in San Diego resulted in its total collapse after little more than a year of activity. The MDM’s disintegration was entirely about race; black editors at Attitude Check split from the MDM to form their own GI paper, Black Unity. In its first issue, the editors delivered a concise statement of the difficulties that plagued the GI movement as factionalism of all sorts increasingly disrupted efforts to create a unified mass movement of soldiers: “The reason why MDM separated and Attitude Check won’t be around anymore is because we weren’t getting the full support of people. Third World people (black, brown, red, yellow) couldn’t relate to it because they thought it was a white organization. White people couldn’t relate to it because they thought it was a black struggle. We are all struggling to reach the same goals, but we each have to organize our own people first. Once we organize among ourselves, then we can unite. Until all of us are free, none will be free.”32 Like many radical organizations during this period, the members of MDM were united in their opposition to the Vietnam War and shared many of the same political objectives but were unable to overcome the bitter racial barriers that divided their movement.

  The Oleo Strut coffeehouse similarly experienced significant racial difficulties in the later years of its existence. Strut staff members were initially elated at the formation of the Fort Hood United Front, an organization of black and white GIs working together on antiwar activities on post and in the surrounding community. However, because of the potent racial hostilities at Fort Hood, and in the spirit of self-determination then permeating the black movement, a group of black soldiers decided that it was necessary to create an all-black GI organization. When in the fall of 1971 this group split off from the United Front to form the People’s Justice Committee, racial tensions at the coffeehouse came bubbling to the surface. The new committee held a few meetings at the Oleo Strut, initially expressing hope of working together with Strut activists, but after several black GIs objected to the Strut for being, among other things, “dominated by whites,” the group stopped frequenting the coffeehouse and began meeting instead at a local USO (United Service Organizations) office.33 Since so much of the antiwar and radical energy at Fort Hood was located within its population of young black soldiers, most of whose political sensibilities were deeply informed by Black Power and similar ideologies, the Oleo Strut’s reputation as a meeting place for primarily white activists directly affected its ability to build solidarity with one of the most active wings of the local GI movement.

  At the November 1971 GI movement conference in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, organizers attempted to chart a course through the political and racial divisions then hindering the development of many GI projects. At a moment when black GIs were becoming the driving force of GI activism, the stereotypical image of coffeehouses as hangouts for white middle-class peace activists presented a distinct challenge for GI organizers. At a workshop on racism and Third World struggles, representatives from several different coffeehouses reported significant racial problems, echoing the experiences of the Oleo Strut and Green Machine projects. There was consensus among the participants that civilian-sponsored GI projects, in military towns around the country, had difficulties sustaining relationships with “non-white” soldiers, despite black soldiers’ particularly strong antiwar and radical sentiments: “It seemed clear
that while there had been working alliances between the projects and the black groups at their bases, . . . there had been no continuous ongoing black participation in the projects.”34

  The activists at the conference were well aware of racial problems at GI coffeehouses but were unsure about how to address them. One glaring issue was the composition of the conference itself; a published summary later admitted that “similar to early conferences . . . the organizers were, again, overwhelmingly white.” At the workshop devoted specifically to racial issues, only one black activist was present in a room that contained more than two dozen white organizers. According to the meeting minutes, the lone black activist “spoke for a long time about the different things that make it difficult for blacks and other minorities to relate to white organizers and organizations. Among these were class and race problems. There was a strong feeling that our relations with black and third world brothers and sisters hadn’t been satisfactory to us or them either on a personal or a political level.”35 Though the racism workshop ended with a series of vague resolutions (“Never tolerate racism” among them) and promises to encourage racial unity, organizers recognized that the coffeehouse network had been unable to escape the infighting and racial division that were fracturing the antiwar movement and the New Left in the later stages of the Vietnam War.

  DRUGS AND COUNTERCULTURE

  GI and civilian activists at GI coffeehouses also frequently clashed over the issue of drugs, reflecting a common thread among radicals of the era. On the one hand, drug culture had been, for many activists, an entry into an alternative mode of thought and behavior that had led them directly to political activism. Marijuana and LSD, prominent in the youth counterculture of the 1960s, were viewed by many young people as useful tools of revolution, liberating minds on the way to developing a new, more humane American society. But the drug counterculture’s vision of how to make social change created significant conflict within the antiwar movement, particularly in New Left organizations like Students for a Democratic Society, whose leaders fretted that the counterculture’s narcotic escapism would siphon energy from important political activities.36

  Coffeehouse organizers were also well aware that their activities were under constant surveillance by law enforcement and other unknown entities and took steps to eliminate the possibility of arrest by running as “clean” an operation as possible. This meant keeping drugs away from the coffeehouses at all costs. USSF newsletters consistently underlined the importance of a strict “no drugs” policy at all coffeehouse projects. It is impossible to know exactly how much these policies were adhered to, but it is clear that most GI coffeehouses went out of their way to warn their staff and patrons, both verbally and in print, that the coffeehouses were deceptively “safe” environments, where possession of drugs (“holding”) came with a significantly elevated risk of getting arrested.

  Before a rock concert at the Oleo Strut in Killeen, Texas, in 1968, for example, coffeehouse manager Josh Gould announced the rules to a packed house, making reference to the assumed presence of undercover agents: “Rule one: We got no holding in the place. If you’re holding, it’s a bad place to be. The sign over there says that the Man is welcome, and always remember, the Man is welcome here. But it’s not so much that he’s welcome, it’s just that he’s here.”37 In newspaper articles announcing the opening of the Fort Knox Coffeehouse in Muldraugh, Kentucky, the organizers similarly discouraged drugs based on the obvious dangers of arrest: “There is only one rule at the Coffee House: No drugs, liquor or fights. The brass would like nothing better than to close us down, declare the place off-limits, or attempt to harass people. These would give them and the local police the opportunity to do so, let’s not give them that chance.”38 And in candid terms, the activists at the Covered Wagon in Mountain Home, Idaho, articulated the coffeehouse’s drug policy by explaining how it related to their larger mission: “There is one firm rule at the Wagon. NO DOPE IS ALLOWED. If you want to get ripped before coming that is your business and your responsibility. But we don’t intend to violate any small laws. A dope bust interferes with our effort to change the entire system and build instead something that is responsive to human needs.”39

  Drugs were a regular topic of discussion among organizers at GI coffeehouses. At the time, heroin addiction was a major problem within the army, another distressing symptom of the toll the Vietnam War was taking on GI morale. While radicals may have quibbled about the positive potential of drugs like marijuana and LSD, there was little disagreement about the toxic physical and psychological effects of heroin and opiate addiction, and coffeehouse organizers struggled (as would the military itself) to address this complicated crisis. At the Haymarket Square Coffeehouse in Fayetteville, North Carolina, outside Fort Bragg, the staff reported in 1971 that “drugs have been a constant hassle” since the coffeehouse became the favorite hangout of a large group of “street people” who were young, homeless, and often addicted to harder drugs like heroin (“skag”). Their presence created serious conflict among the Haymarket’s civilian organizers. Since they were the only group of people in Fayetteville who seemed to identify and sympathize with the coffeehouse’s outsider status and political mission, some staff members were hesitant to alienate them, feeling that their natural antiauthoritarianism could be channeled into serious political action. Others at the coffeehouse disagreed, arguing that the young people hanging out at the Haymarket were hard, manipulative, insincere, isolated individuals who drained resources from the coffeehouse’s mission of organizing GIs.40

  While the activists at the Haymarket Square Coffeehouse could never agree on how to employ the local drug culture within their wider political strategy, their ambivalence points to a common problem within the GI coffeehouse movement: how to capitalize on the popularity of a drug-inspired counterculture, using it to attract antiwar-leaning GIs, while simultaneously discouraging actual drug use. It was a difficult balance to strike, leading to many admittedly comical disagreements, like the one involving the “Spinning Light Committee,” which formed at the Oleo Strut coffeehouse to agitate for the return of a psychedelic display that had been removed by the staff in an effort to discourage drug-induced hypnotic escapism.41 The Strut staff, like the organizers at the Haymarket, recognized the “dual nature” of drug culture and similarly failed to find a clear solution. As David Zeiger later explained, “You could say that a majority of GIs [at Fort Hood] ‘relate’ to dope and the culture, or pseudo-culture, that goes with it. What you could also say, though, is that the reason there is so much dope on Hood is because it is also one of the most oppressive bases in the country, and that dope serves to pacify GIs and prevent them from fighting back. The argument between these two theories has come up time and time again at the Strut, and the rule against dope has been consistently broken.”42

  The struggle over the drug issue brought up a larger question for coffeehouse organizers: did the coffeehouse’s employment of a counterculture aesthetic and lifestyle actually help further their political goals? On this issue, many organizers discovered stark contradictions in their overall approach to GI organizing, finding that an overly enthusiastic embrace of the counterculture’s “lifestyle as politics” could stand in the way of effective political work with soldiers. At the Oleo Strut, for example, the civilian staff, usually a group of ten or more, resided communally in a rented house in Killeen and self-consciously attempted to live out their politics of personal liberation, with mixed results. David Zeiger, reporting to the USSF, observed some of the basic conflicts this lifestyle created: “The staff did not work, day to day, with the people it was organizing—it was set apart from them, living some kind of completely different life, which gave the appearance to a lot of people of a hippie commune—no set hours, no need to face the Man every day, a real easy type life. It’s impossible to live such a unique life from the people you are trying to build a movement with and still work with them on a close basis. . . . A question that has never been reconciled at t
he Strut is the conflict between ‘personal’ life and ‘political’ life.”43 Communal living arrangements, which were often formed as much out of financial necessity as political orientation, nevertheless seemed to cause problems at several coffeehouses, directly affecting the relationship between civilians and GIs. Organizers at the Haymarket Square Coffeehouse reported in 1971 that “collective living does tend to put us off from working people, by being such an oddity.”44

  By 1972, national GI coffeehouse support organizations like the USSF reached a consensus on the issue of “staff collectives.” Based on the negative experiences of several coffeehouses around the nation, civilian activists concluded that their attempts to live out their politics in counterculture communes were actually hindering their larger mission of organizing antiwar soldiers:

  There was general agreement that the living collective is not a good form for several reasons: in most base towns it is so foreign to the local community that local residents tend to freak and respond negatively; GIs seem put off by it, because it is mostly different from their own experience; it creates a cliquish kind of exclusivity; and the appearance of sexual freedom offers a contradiction between the daily life of staff vs. that of GIs which is counterproductive. . . . Although strong economic motives exist for establishing a living collective, there are strong drawbacks for such an arrangement, including the inability of working people to relate to collectives . . . and the tendency for such groups to be isolated from others in the project, especially GIs.45