This is a 90 minute event. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the book launch for the people make the piece, lessons from the vietnam Antiwar Movement. Hi, my name is doug hofstetter. I am the director of the Mennonite Central Committee. United nations office. I actually got my start during the Antiwar Movement here with the United Methodists office, which is donating this room today. The methodists actually hired me right after i came back from vietnam doing my alternative service there with the Mennonite Central Committee in the middle of the war, in the middle of a war zone, helping children learn to read and write their own language. I wanted to also announced to everyone that we have a number of cameras here in the room. Cspan is covering it. So, when we get to questions and answers i will ask you to wait until the microphone comes to you so that you can be heard by the audience that will be watching on Television Later on. Thank you very much and welcome to todays launch. [applause] make this fit my height. Here we are, for the people make the piece. This is a really exciting moment for me and frank. Frank is in detroit, i believe, right now. We are splitting up events. Some go to the east coast, some to the west coast. Im very lucky to be here. I want first tell a little bit about the series of fortuitous events that produced of this book. In 2006 i went on a tour of the vietnam. I met franklin and marion. We became friends. On the way home he mentioned that he lived in detroit and so we had a connection, as i had also spent time in detroit, had students there. I think that detroit is an interesting example of rebuilding a city that has been abandoned. Frank mentioned that he had a lot of friends in the Antiwar Movement. I said if you have all of these friends, why dont you collect them and i will help you make a about it. Make a book about it. I was not necessarily thinking that he would follow up. But it was another Great Fortune that happened in the next few years, when frank met up with john. I believe it was 2010. Frank and john had had a background in the Civil Rights Movement and establish one of those friendship or when you see each other years later, you are still connected. He thought i want to bring john into this. Between frank and john they remember many of the people that went to vietnam during the war. We would now call them peoples diplomats. Noncombatants or witness to the war. Because they did not trust what was being told to them by the pentagon and they wanted to see in a firsthand way what was happening. So, in 2011 and 2012 we started our weekly series of phone calls that seemed to go forever. Seems like we were phone calling each other for decades. Every week we would calling each other. I mostly took notes. They excavated from their personal memories the people that they knew on these trips. There were 200, and all. According to some sources more than 200. We recuperated the names of about 50 people still living who were accessible by phone, email, or facebook. With a little help from the key wiki site, with set which has a very accurate list of names that they call the hanoi lobby they presume that people are spies. But we know we propose the other idea, that people went as independent observers. So, we collected these names and invited people to go on a trip that while not being in january of 2013. John was helpful in facilitating the trip to be timed with the vietnamese official commemoration of the paris peace accord, the 40th anniversary of the signing of the paris peace treaty. That was an important an important way for these activist they call them veterans of the Peace Movement, actually. Veterans of the Antiwar Movement to connect again to their friends in vietnam. That is the core of the book. We also invited Myra Macpherson to include her chapter, interviewing five x combatant veterans who returned to vietnam to live there as a form of reparations, to give back to the country that they were originally fighting. I also made a fortuitous connection to professor judy will, the author of radicals on the road. An important history of the people of color who went to vietnam at this time. Of those 200, there was a core group of people of color who traveled not only to vietnam but also china and north korea. Professor wu interviewed alex and lucky for us alex wanted to join our trip in january of 2013. Doug hofstetter joined us in a slightly different category. He did not go as an independent observer, but instead he went as a Conscientious Objector and spent time in South Vietnam, a very different experience. He then played a key role in the creation of the peoples peace treaty, a very unique contribution in this book. So far as we know there is no firsthand account of this student oriented initiative. As we pulled the proposal together for the book it was doug who connected us to helena. We are so lucky to be connected to the books they consider themselves or aspired to be vehicles for International Understanding and peace. That is the exact spirit that we hope that this book is read in. Those commitments have been tremendous. As anyone who has published a book, you know that there is all sorts of drama that happens at the last minute. Were very thankful to the work that you have done for us. We recognize what the Antiwar Movement did, what it was trying to do. It was aspirational. The idea of this book is to make concrete to very intricate and subtle decision and perspectives that people who saw themselves as part of this movement made. A number of folks talked a little bit about. I mentioned radicals on the road. Mary hershberger the book in which she did a closer study of the travelers. Penny lewis did a book called hardhats, hops, entities in which she explained why it is that we think of the Antiwar Movement now as a middle class elite activity when in fact it was a very broadbased movement, working festival of all colors. That is an Important Message that he wants you to pick up from this book. The diversity of the move is a diversity that you will here today as you get these perspectives. We have so much to learn from hearing from alex, john, doug, and their contemporaries. To learn about their choices, about how they reconciled the choices they had delayed, the tradeoffs that there were. Especially how they fought now about what they did then. Let your bit about how to orient themselves for the the annan today. The annan vietnam today. We will pretend that is a company you. Many in the movement could not afford to treat the vietnam war as the single issue that they would work on. Many communities solve the war as connected to poverty, racism, and other issues going on here. In the civil rights it was very difficult for people to just isolate the war as their only issue. You will see that there are connections the need to be made today to connect all people to the movement for peace and justice. The other view that is not here for for reasons that you will understand but i think we can include in the conversation by the refugee perspective. As people we dont choose the size of the war that we are in often. As i told helena, now that the book is out, it teaches the lessons and legacy of the flow Antiwar Movement. With this i will hand it over to john. [applause] john you want about 10 minutes, right . Ok. Well, thank you all for coming this morning. Thank you for cspan. I go through periods of addiction with cspan. I ought not to get caught up, but in any case it plays an Important Role maybe not so much a in the lives of media inundated by the east coast northeast, but folks in the rest of the country who get an insight into all the conversations that we are constantly involved in. So, thank you to cspan for his role. Its role. Thank you to the publisher for taking the sometimes inchoate presentation and thanks, especially, the person i dont with most was frank joyce, who first of all wouldnt let me avoid it, but then kept pushing for focus and tightening of what i was writing about. It had started out with an interview that was done by one of the other members of the group. Turning it into something more coherent. I am not going to try to recapitulate whats in my chapter. What i want to do is focus on something that links for me the past of the present, not just for vietnam, laos, and cambodia, but also where my work has largely been focused for the last 15 years or so, which is cuba. You will see a wonderful picture here on page 175. I took it in hanoi in 1975. On april 30. By pure accident we arrived in hanoi literally within hours of the time the u. S. Ambassador was leaving saigon. The result heightened the we had missed the plane and bangladesh so the result heightened the dramatic moment. It was me and another quaker staff person and others from the indochina peace campaign, which we worked very closely with. We were in this culminating moment of what had been, for many of us, hourly teens or all of our late teens or early 20ss or 30s. What had probably helped to define us in the Civil Rights Movement had already had that. I added the peace corps on that. But then it was the vietnam experience, learning what it meant about what our country was in its ability to not understand history and what it was doing in the world, but also to learn about what motivated folks who had sees history and were determined that that history was theirs. We think of vietnam is a small country. It is of course 90 billion people 9 million people. It has never been a tiny country. Laos is tiny. Cambodia is tiny. Vietnam always was and will be a key focal point that tom hayden introduced us to in the course of our work. The key focal point for the politics of the region. Internationally and regionally. To understand vietnam and our relationship to it, i think we go back to a phrase that ho chi minh used that we used a quote and maybe we understood and maybe we didnt, it is that nothing is more more precious than independence and freedom. Americans see that phrase and think civil rights, liberties. When the vietnamese had much of the world freeing itself from colonialism, they use that concept and were talking about National Independence and freedom. Something that we once held strongly. A wellestablished, dominant world power, we lost track of why other people had, even until today it encouraged in the middle east. There were several contradictions. I would say that the experience of being in vietnam, at that particular moment id like to think that we set the hook that determined the rest of my life. It was hard not to be there and realize that the story was not over. That i in particular had entered into a particular moment the determined what i could contribute professionally and spiritually with my life. It put me in contact with a lot of people who are still alive, though many have passed as time goes on. People who were very important in my understanding of myself in my world. In this process i remember 1975. The u. S. Was the top of the pile. We have the conflict with the soviet union. We were the world power. We had never lost the war. Well, we lost the war and we had to rationalize how we had lost it. And of course blame the people who had beaten us. We started out, it was interesting there, if you look at the polls at the time may be 65 of americans who have been against the war wanted to do something to help the people. In vietnam especially but when they thought about it laos and , cambodia. If that had been the initial impulse, the process was actually achieved by the Carter Administration. Remember, early on in the Carter Administration a delegation was sent by leonard woodcock, at that point the president of the united auto workers. They have the capacity to reach an agreement and normalize relations. Think about it, it was 1970, 77. I forget the year. They could have walked away with normal relations for vietnam. Do itetnamese would not did because vietnamthey believed holy, politically, that the u. S. Owed assistance for reconstruction. They made a political calculation for which i think to this day they regret. They felt they could hold back and that there was enough pressure coming from the u. S. , the former antiwar sentiment, that they would be able to get reconstruction aid. By the time that they changed their position they had become much more interested in building a relationship with china, against the soviet union. So, the minister vietnam was here in new york. Negotiating the normalization of relations. It never happened. The u. S. Walked away from it. So, from the late 1970s until 1995 we lived in this time when i remember early conversations in washington where it was not just the military. A lot of civilians in the state department who had been in u. S. Aid programs for their lives were also shaped to war, they had personal relationships with people who were terribly damaged by the end of the war. Some of whom were the refugee population. Some of whom were incarcerated in workstudy programs. Some of whom died trying to leave the country. They have not just anger at the vietnamese for having won the war and having done it in nasty ways, but they had this personal link to folks whom it negatively affected. My goal was to bring about normal relations, but how do you work in that will you . Remember, the religious community had been marvelously important in the Antiwar Movement. Whether by intentional by accident, we resettled hundreds of thousands of refugees and cambodia in cambodia and they were put exactly into the religious community that had been against the war. Everyone was hearing about the countries from who have been most embittered. It was one of the factors that wound up unwinding this very strong sentiment in favor of normalization. So, we had to deal with contradictions. One of contradictions was justice versus reconciliation. Justice was that we had devastated. Not just the number of death, the amount lost 2 million to 3 million. Cambodia lost laos, a tiny 2,000,0003,000,000. Country, probably lost half a million. We put that behind landmines, agent orange. The effect of the war was still going on. A lot of people on the left as they approach the issue wanted justice. Wonder the u. S. To a knowledge its wrongness, its evil, its horribleness historically and pay compensation. Clearly that was not the time for reconciliation. The second was the difference in ideologies. Again, the left had elevated the vietnamese into a super people. Its very hard to walk and even line. One of the things that happened was in this country the vietnamese were superheroes. Well, the vietnamese fought because they wanted their independence and freedom. They fought for their national interests. They did not fight for a textbook ideology. The adopted ideology was because they needed to get material assistance from russia and china. If you read the political stuff, it was pretty routine. It just wasnt very interesting or ideologically creative. The other final contradiction into today, our viewpoint from the left in the Progressive Community emphasized equity. That was in fact one of the reasons the vietnamese won the revolution, they were able to combine National Independence with social equity within the country. But look at vietnam today. A very important factor, im guessing in 20 years it will be one of the most important in south asia, both economically and politically. They have the same problems that everyone else has with rapid development. The difference between the people at the top, driving expensive cars, and are now involved in a tremendous amount of personal advance, family advance, and rural areas. Its a choice they made. Its a choice they are conscious about. The last thing i would say is that the irony of it all we wanted to stop the chinese expansion into Southeast Asia. Well, bob mcnamara acknowledged later that if anyone had read the least bit of history they would have known that the one country that could have been depended upon to stop chinese spansion in Southeast Asia was vietnam. Thats where we are today. The u. S. And vietnam could not be closer. The Party General secretary from vietnam visits the white house. President s office doesnt usually see party leaders. He visits with an hour, he comes up talking about the key thing about why the relationship is so strong is that the u. S. Accepted the difference, respected, that vietnam was not going to be the United States terms of democracy, civil rights and human rights. It would have its own path and we would not insist on internal change in vietnam with larger issues between us. We have not gotten to puberty yet. We have notas but theo cuba yet administration has taken important steps, but there is a contradictory psychology on whether those steps are a smarter way team change to do regime change or if it is like vietnam, and acceptance of new jewelry spectrum we dont agree with what they are doing, but nothing is more precious than freedom. [applause] thank you. That was john mcauliffe. His chapters called the making of a peoples diplomat. I want to in introduce alex, whose chapter is entitled journey to the east. [applause] hi. Im excited to be here. Im just a worker. Im a chef at a hotel. If the restaurant is open, you know what we can do, ok . I never written anything that got into a book. I written pamphlets. Im an organizer. Ive written articles. To see my work in a book, everyone should get a copy and shoot it to their friends. Hopefully what i say can be of use. I dont know what you do what of book launching a was supposed to read from it. At a book launching a was supposed to read from it. My chapter, basically, reflects on how vietnam affected me as a person, as a human being. I want to talk a little bit about that. When i was 16 years old i made a decision to dedicate my life to world peace and ending war. At that time i was in what we call now the pipeline to prison. I thought that to give my life of purpose i would choose that and work on that for the rest of my life. I alwa