Issued: n.d. [1968]
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
EROL Note: This was a leaflet distributed by the Cleveland Draft Resistence Union during the Ahmed Evans rebellion in Cleveland in 1968.
The government has been drafting you (or your sons or brothers) to fight in the unjustified, useless War in Vietnam, Now they are beginning to send you into the black communities of this country – 57,000 National Guardsmen and regular troops since King’s death – to put down the riots and rebellions of American black people. (After all, who can blame a people for rioting when their most nonviolent, peaceful leader is assassinated?) Our message to you is that this is a sucker deal just like Vietnam. Here’s why:
1) FACT: THE BLACK PEOPLE, JUST LIKE THE VIETNAMESE, HAVE NEVER ATTACKED US, In the hundreds of riots and rebellions in the ghettoes in the last few years, there has not yet been one case of an organized violent foray by black people out into white neighborhoods. Nearly all the violence by black people has been against property (owned by merchants and slumlords making a fast buck off the people) or against the police, who black people see as an invading army, just as the Vietnamese see American troops as an invading army. (Any worker who’s ever walked a picket line knows that the cops are his enemy.) But there’s no guarantee that black people won’t attack white neighborhoods, if we allow police violence and occupation to continue. White people got a taste of what blacks have faced for years when a patrolman shot an unarmed white boy, Daniel Capp, on the West Side a few weeks ago. The National Guard was also used against (black and white) striking coal miners in Pennsylvania recently, and Army troops fought white antiwar demonstrators at the Pentagon last fall.
2) FACT: THE BLACK PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT IS JUSTIFIED. Black people were brought here as slaves. Their free (no wages) labor created cheap cotton, which was sold to England for the cash that built the industry that provided jobs for the rest of us After the Civil War, black people never got the land then needed to give them economic security enough to vote, They lost the vote and then they lost their jobs on the land They arrived in the North after the main immigration took place and most of the jobs were filled. The corporations then used starving black people to scab on the unions and kept black and white working people from building a unified movement against big business. As for today, any white auto worker knows that his job is threatened by automation. Black people, a “last hired – first fired,” are even more insecure. Black power, and a reaction in defense of their community against the military police state the U.S. is becoming.
3) FACT: WHO PAYS FOR THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF THE GHETTO? The black people pay in blood, and so do the white students and working men who will be drafted to fight there. Black and white working people pay the bulk of the taxes to maintain the police and the troops. More than this, the corporations and the government keep our wages down by keeping us fighting each other and the Vietnamese.
4) FACT: WHO BENEFITS FROM THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF THE GHETTO? Rich people, not you and me. Ordinary white people don’t oppress black people – the corporations do. Just like in Vietnam, they want docile, cheap labor (no unions if possible) and a reserve mass of unemployed, A movement for economic justice threatens them. For example, to get the corporations to do anything, Bobby Kennedy has sponsored a tax dodge “model development corporation” in the black part of Brooklyn, a test project for the rest of the nation. In it car tax dollars, and not a slice of the corporation profits, are used to put black people to work (and make more profits for the corporations).
The corporations have used cheap black labor and black unemployed for years, and have set black and white working people fighting against each other to keep them from getting together to fight for their common needs. After the corporations created the ghettoes, they called in the cops to “pacify” the people. When the cops messed it up, they called in the National Guard. When the National Guard messed it up they called in the Army.
That’s when they come after you and me. Don’t be a sucker. Don’t go.
TO BE USED TO FIGHT FOR THE CORPORATIONS IN VIETNAM, TO BE USED TO INVADE THE BLACK COMMUNITY.
at the Induction Center, New Federal Bldg. E. 9th and Lakeside, at 6:30 am Friday, April 26, where we will march and leaflet the inductees.
We will spend the morning leafletting the general public and will return to the Induction Center at noon for a rally, where several draft cards will be turned in.
JOIN US also in building a long-term movement that will fight for the real needs of white working people and students – in common with black people.
CLEVELAND DRAFT RESISTANCE UNION
Rm 310, 10616 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, Ohio, 721-1869
(labor donated)