SNCC Position Paper on Vietnam
After 1965, as the Johnson administration moved toward escalating the war
in Vietnam, the activists in SNCC became increasingly critical of the war on a
variety of grounds. The relation
between domestic struggles to end racism and the struggle of the Vietnamese
people against the American army, as well as the struggles by people of color
around the world, merged into a unified position as the war progressed. SNCC
argues that the freedom struggle in the United States is an alternative to
fighting in Vietnam.
“THE U.S. GOVERNMENT HAS DECEIVED US”
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee has a right and a
responsibility to dissent with United States foreign policy on any issue when
it sees fit. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee now states its
opposition to United States' involvement in Vietnam on these grounds:
We believe the United States government has
been deceptive in its claims of concern for the freedom of the Vietnamese
people, just as the government has been deceptive in claiming concern for the
freedom of colored people in such other countries as the Dominican Republic,
the Congo, South Africa, Rhodesia, and in the United States itself.
We, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, have been involved in the black people's struggle for liberation and
self-determination in this country for the past five years. Our work,
particularly in the South, has taught us that the United States government has
never guaranteed the freedom of oppressed citizens, and is not yet truly
determined to end the rule of terror and oppression within its own borders.
We ourselves have often been victims of violence and confinement executed by United States governmental officials. We recall the numerous persons who have been murdered in the South because of their efforts to secure their civil and human rights, and whose murderers have been allowed to escape penalty for their crimes.
The murder of Samuel Young in Tuskegee, Alabama, is no different than the murder of peasants in Vietnam, for both Young and the Vietnamese sought, and are seeking, to secure the rights guaranteed them by law. In each case, the United States government bears a great part of the responsibility for these deaths.
Samuel Young was murdered because United States law is not being enforced. Vietnamese are murdered because the United States is pursuing an aggressive policy in violation of international law. The United States is no respecter of persons or law when such persons or laws run counter to its needs or desires.
We recall the indifference, suspicion and
outright hostility with which our reports of violence have been met in the past
by government officials.
We know that for the most part, elections in
this country, in the North as well as the South, are not free. We have seen
that the 1965 Voting Rights Act and
the 196[4] Civil Rights Act have not
yet been implemented with full federal power and sincerity.
We question, then, the ability and even the
desire of the United States government to guarantee free elections abroad. We
maintain that our country's cry of ‘preserve freedom in the world’ is a
hypocritical mask behind which it squashes liberation movements which are not
bound, and refuse to be bound, by the expediencies of United States cold war
policies.
We are in sympathy with, and support, the men
in this country who are unwilling to respond to a military draft which would
compel them to contribute their lives to United States aggression in Vietnam in
the name of the "freedom" we find so false in this country.
We recoil with horror at the inconsistency of
a supposedly "free" society where responsibility to freedom is
equated with the responsibility to lend oneself to military aggression. We
take note of the fact that 16% of
the draftees from this country are Negroes called on to stifle the liberation
of Vietnam, to preserve a "democracy" which does not exist for them
at home.
We ask, where is the draft for the freedom fight
in the United States?
We therefore encourage those Americans who prefer to use their energy in building democratic forms within this country. We believe that work in the civil rights movement and with other human relations organizations is a valid alternative to the draft. We urge all Americans to seek this alternative, knowing full well that it may cost them their lives--as painfully as in Vietnam.”