In 1962 a group of San Francisco veterans of World War II and Korea – knowing the Viet Nam war was looming – marched unofficially at the end of the annual November 11th Veterans Day Parade under the banner of “Veterans For Peace.” The world had hovered on the brink of nuclear war just one month earlier with the October Cuban Missile Crisis. The principal organizer was world-renowned poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti who died on February 22nd at 101 years old in his home in North Beach, the literary heart of San Francisco.
The turning point in Ferlinghetti’s life came in late September, 1945 as he walked the streets of Nagasaki, Japan six weeks after the atomic bomb was dropped there by his country. He was a 26-year-old lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, having already seen combat in the Invasion of Normandy the year before. Among the 40,000 Japanese that were incinerated on the day of August 9th was one who was drinking a cup of tea. Ferlinghetti picked up that tea cup; it had flesh and bone fused into it. The cup has sat on the mantelpiece of his home for 75 1/2 years.
These stories have been recounted by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in many of the countless newspaper, TV and radio interviews, poems, essays and books by him, plus at least two documentary films. The 1962 group was not formally established, and in 1985 the national organization of Veterans For Peace was created by American veterans of the Viet Nam War. VFP now has over 100 chapters nationally and internationally, Ferlinghetti being an Honorary Member of San Francisco Chapter 69.
A true Renaissance man, he co-established City Lights Bookstore in 1953, which grew to be a major publishing house of so-called “Beat” literature – but so much more. Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a lifelong poet, author, publisher, and activist, who eventually found his love of painting. In all his prodigious creative works, he never missed the opportunity to rail against the absurdity of materialism, the obscenity of war and the soullessness of profit-driven destruction.
Nadya Williams is an active Associate Member and Director of Communications of Veterans For Peace, San Francisco Chapter 69.
Black Watch, the ‘Five Star’ Scottish military play that was touted in expensive ads all over the San Francisco Bay Area as “The #1 Theatrical Event of the Year” – New York Times, delivered a powerful anti-war message, that seemed to stun even liberal/left San Francisco audiences. At $100-each tickets and rave reviews from all major U.S. and British newspapers, it seemed that the mostly older, well-heeled suburbanites in attendance during the play’s recent five-week run expected flaring kilts and lots of bag pipes.
Instead they were hit between the eyes by raw power: bomb-simulating explosions, unbridled swearing (every other word seemed to be ‘fuck’!), Read more…
Del Berg at the 2012 Bay Area ALBA event. Photo Richard Bermack.
Northern California is the fortunate home to two of the remaining Lincoln Brigade veterans: former newspaperman James Benét, now 98, and Delmer Berg, a very lively 96. Two of the four known living Lincolns today, Berg and Benét, each of whom lives a few hours drive from San Francisco, are mentally fit and living independently.
Already a professional journalist in New York City, 23-year-old Stanford graduate Jim Benét arrived in Spain in the spring of 1937 to drive ambulances. Later he volunteered for combat. Before leaving for Europe, he wrote in the New Republic magazine that many in the crowd at a fundraising rally for the Spanish Republic in Madison Square Garden “feel (for they called out during the collection) that the money should be given for arms, instead of supplies.”
Benét arrived in Spain soon after the destruction of the Basque city of Guernica in April 1937 by German incendiary bombers practicing their first “Blitzkrieg.” Read more…
Like a revolutionary manifesto thrown over the transom, a powerful exhibit of the politically inspired paintings of 19th century Anarchist artist Camille Pissarro delivers a very clear message of inspiration and solidarity to today’s Occupy Movement. That the special exhibit Pissarro’s People (through January 22nd) at San Francisco’s prestigious Legion of Honor, is co-sponsored by a major banking villain, Wells Fargo, (and corporate plunderer Bechtel) only adds to the delight of this exceptionally well-researched revelation of the real French Impressionist and his radical life. Read more…
Come and see Pissarro’s People exhibit about the Anarchist French Impressionist painter, Camille Pissarro at the Legion of Honor Museum. Hear the Revolutionary Quartet play selections inspired by the Impressionist Era featuring pieces from: Debussy, Ravel, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Performing for the 99%
Classical Revolution was founded on November 12, 2006, at Revolution Cafe in the Mission district of San Francisco. Over the past five years, it has presented more than 700 chamber music events in 90-plus Bay Area venues, with the goal of bringing live chamber music to our neighborhoods, making it an open, accessible, and fun musical experience for the community. Read more…
Convention on Cluster Munitions in Vientiane, Lao PDR
Cluster bomb and landmine survivors read a declaration at the closing ceremony of the First Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Vientiane, Lao PDR. Photo: Mary Wareham/HRW
We always call it the Vietnam War, but it was really the South East Asia War. This is because most Americans tend to view situations only from their perspective, and with “boots on the ground” of our troops in Viet Nam fighting and dying, we “forget” about the massive air war inflicted on Laos and Cambodia. We “forget” about then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s mass murder of civilians on the Plain of Jars in Laos.
As the most heavily bombed country in the world, Laos recently hosted a November 9th to 12th International Conference on Cluster Munitions. Read more…
PeoplesWorld.org marks this Veterans Day with a question to the Republicans in Congress who are determined to block President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act. Americans demand action on jobs. On this Veterans Day, how can you live with yourselves when you deny women and men who served this country some help in getting a job because you refuse to raise taxes on billionaires? Shameful.
Judging by the results of the 2011 elections, Americans are fed up with right-wing extremist policies and inaction on job creation.
This Veterans Day, call your elected officials and tell them to pass the American Jobs Act.
Here are a few selections from PeoplesWorld.org archives in honor of Veterans Day 2011.
SAN FRANCISCO – Every October the San Francisco Bay Area is “invaded and occupied” for five days by a gargantuan display of U.S. military power called Fleet Week. This October 6 through 10, the Blue Angels precision jets screamed overhead, aircraft carriers and ships docked in the harbor for tours, hundreds of sailors and soldiers fanned out over the city, thousands crowded the Embarcadero waterfront with wall to wall recruiter booths and displays of the hardware of war, and this year’s Columbus Day Parade on Sunday Oct. 9 was dominated by what amounts to an overwhelming advertisement for American armed forces. One Marine’s T-shirt read. “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
A team of nearly two dozen, including members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Civilian-Soldier Alliance, and Veterans For Peace staffed a prominent booth, passing out hundreds of pieces of literature, hanging banners and signs, and most importantly actively engaging families, veterans, and young people, in “civies” and in uniform, about military service. Read more…
Lam Duong founded the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco and published a liberal newspaper that reprinted stories from communist Viet Nam following the Viet Nam War. On July 21, 1981, the 27-year-old was shot dead outside his apartment in broad daylight. Nobody was ever convicted for the killing. But within days of Lam’s murder, news spread that a shadowy, anti-communist group had claimed responsibility, sending a chilling message to Vietnamese refugees everywhere: stay in line with your political views or risk death. Between 1982 and 1990, five more Vietnamese Americans—four of them journalists—were violently killed, many believe for political reasons, but police and federal officials have yet to solve any of the cases, including Lam’s. Read more…
Nadya Connelly Williams 