An article about the Golden Rule’s famous history and current efforts to rebuild this vessel. A complete story of the 25 foot ketch and its crew of anti-nuclear weapons activists and their inspiring journey into the Pacific to stop nuclear testing. This effort was headed by former US Naval Commander Albert Bigelow to draw attention to issues surrounding nuclear bomb test being conducted in US territory. Their example helped to ignite a storm of worldwide public outrage against nuclear weapons that resulted in a Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

Veterans For Peace, Chapter 22, Garberville, California has been helping in the restoration this 30 foot Angelman-Davies gaff ketch. There are plans to launch the boat sometime this year and begin a ten-year voyage in opposition to war and militarism. Find out more about the Golden Rule Project.

You can download the March Issue of Latitude 38 for eBooks, iPans, Issuu version and just plain pdfs. The Golden Rule article begins on page 100.

March 1-3, 2013, Ukiah California

Photos: Judith Sandoval

Join in the celebration and march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade with Veterans For Peace, San Francisco, Chapter 69.

• Assemble: 10:30am 2nd & Howard
• March or ride: one or two decorated trucks
• Route: 2nd Street & Market to Civic Center

SF Veterans For Peace Chapter 69
Contact: Nadya Williams
415 845-9492
email: nadyanomad@gmail.com

Sunday, February 10, 2013, Noon-7pm

Join us and celebrate our rich, fascinating, and empowering Black History.

We’ll have an array of information booths, video stories, distinguished guest speakers, a screening of the acclaimed WWII film “Red Tails,” a dinner, and awards/recognition ceremony.

For event updates & RSVP visit www.SFBAVeterans.wordpress.com
A $25 donation is suggested to benefit Veterans community sponsored events.

Contacts:
Latonia M. Dixon, oshun45@gmail.com
Eve Purvis-Allen, qbeve67@gmail.com

Event Sponsors: American Legion Bob Basker Post 315, Veterans Artist Guild, Veterans For Peace, Chapter 69, Veterans Media Center of San Francisco.

I did not look out the window of the Freedom Bird as it lifted off from the Da Nang airport in 1970. I had been there 18 months mostly as a grunt in the Corps. I never wanted to see the place again. Didn’t want to think about it. Had come to despise the war. Was lucky to be leaving in one piece, and wanted to get on with life.

Turns out it wasn’t that easy. The war ground on, and back in the States it was omnipresent—in the news, the music, and my nightmares. Even though I knew too much in my gut about war, I soon learned just how little really I knew about the War. Two weeks before shipping out to Vietnam, I located it for the first time on a globe at the Oceanside USO. And, other than passing a few abandoned French forts during my tour, I hadn’t learned much else about its history or our involvement. So after returning home I read, then read some more. The Pentagon Papers was a revelation; Bernard Fall’s books were insightful and intense; GI Guinea Pigs was infuriating; etc. I learned from that last one that many people, many of them scientists, had believed even during the war that Agent Orange (AO) and other herbicides sprayed over large areas of the war zones weren’t, as we had been told, harmless to humans.

Within a few years of my getting out of the Corps, some of my Vietnam Veteran friends began getting sick in strange and scary ways. Prostate cancer at the age of 29, heart attack at 34, brain tumor at 35, disabled children, and so on. Some died. Others live, but with crushed health. However, it was only after the success of Paul Reutershan’s 1978-1984 suit (which he did not live to see) against the chemical companies that I really began to understand what had been inflicted upon those of us who served in Vietnam. And that lousy settlement—spent and gone within ten years—did nothing for those veterans who got sick later. But it did set the stage for passage of Public Law 102-4 in 1991, which mandates that the VA provide care and compensation to veterans with illnesses related to our exposures to herbicides and dioxin. The law also required that the National Academy of Sciences conduct studies of available scientific literature and recommend which diseases in veterans are reasonably associated with AO exposure. The list of recognized disease has gradually grown from two in 1994 to fifteen currently, and continues to grow.

Over the years several of my friends returned to Vietnam, either as tourists or in efforts to reconcile with our former enemies. Many told me that going back was a healing experience, but I did not want to revisit those ghosts and did not consider it.

In 2004, a group of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange sued the chemical companies for the damage herbicides spraying inflicted on three million of their citizens, and due to remaining contamination, continues to sicken even 40 years after the spraying stopped. The photos of deformed children that Phillip Jones Griffith put in his 2003 book, Agent Orange: “Collateral Damage” in Vietnam ripped at my heart. When I was asked if I would help with the suit, I could not refuse. Not only are my fellow Vietnam veterans suffering from their exposure, but also the Vietnamese; not only are the children of veterans born with physical deformities and developmental problems, but also the Vietnamese born many years after the end of the war.

Duan Ton Tat

Finally overcoming my hesitancy, I have made three trips to Vietnam since 2008, each time to investigate the extent of damage AO has inflicted on the Vietnamese. I have visited dozens of communities, large and small, spread over much of the country from north of Hanoi to Vung Tau, and have met with many victims of Agent Orange afflicted with a host of health problems. I have been to the A Luoi (A Shau) Valley and the Da Nang hotspots to see the effects these poisoned lands still have on the surrounding community. It ain’t pretty; nor were these trips fun and games. But they were purposeful and therefore healing for me. The ghosts are still there, but they don’t chase around in my nightmares the way they used to. During my first trip back to Vietnam, we drove two hours east from Hanoi. We turned off the main road and drove down narrow lanes and rice paddy paths as far as we could; then we walked about a click to a concrete house sited between a paddy and a pond to visit a young woman, Duan Thi Dan, disabled from her father’s exposure. Our hosts were surprised that the gate was locked. A neighbor came by and told us that farmer Duan Ton Tat was out in his fields, and went to fetch him. While Tat unlocked the gate, he informed us that his daughter Dan had died the week before. She had been born with physical deformities and mental retardation. Among her birth defects, her skin constantly peeled and cracked. After 27 years of pain and confusion, she had died of a skin infection. As an 18 year old in 1968 who had never been out of his village, Tat was sent to the south where he survived seven years of war—a patriot doing what was required of him by his government. He returned home to the north in 1975 to twenty hard post-war years, but he got married and they had Dan in 1981. Her difficulties scared them away from having additional children, and her requirements for constant care meant that they remained poor. Now he is sick from his exposure and his only child is dead. What a tragedy. What a high price to pay for patriotism—on either side of the Pacific.

This is an emergency. Agent Orange continues to destroy. So, what do we do? Do we sit around until we get old(er) and die? Do we educate ourselves so we can complain more eloquently? Do we take action? Is this a problem that will yield to action? Do we take action individually or band together?
Click to view slideshow.

For my part, I continue to work on the Agent Orange issue, and have had a small role in creation of H.R. 2634, Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2011. This bill addresses the unmet needs of the children of Vietnam veterans, as well as Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans and their children. You can access it at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.2634:. The bill will retire without passing at the end of this Congressional session, but it will be reintroduced in both the House and Senate next year. I vote we take action. You?

Paul Cox served as a Marine in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 and is a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He is on the national board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign.

Friday November 9
Syria: The Assads’ Twilight / France (2010), 6pm

Saturday, November 10
The Mexican Suitcase / Mexico, Spain (2011), 4:45pm
Granito: How to Nail A Dictator / USA, Guatemala, Spain (2011) 7pm
$10 donation
San Francisco Veterans Buildng, Room 223
401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco

The festival is co-sponsored by The Puffin Foundation, The Center for Constitutional Rights, San Francisco Veterans for Peace and Icarus Films.  With the support of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) and Courage to Resist.

The Films
Syria: The Assads’ Twilight / France (2010)
Friday, 6pm
Directors: Vincent De Cointet & Christophe Ayad
Running time: 52 minutes

A lively documentary history of Syria’s Assad regime, tracing its origin and influence, even as it clings to power in the face of the Arab Spring.
Discussion with Suzan Boulad, activist and blogger from Mideast Youth; Tareq Samman, member of Building the Syrian State movement; and Professor Fred Lawson, Lynn T. White, Jr. Professor of Government at Mills College. Reception will follow.

The Mexican Suitcase / Mexico, Spain (2011)
Saturday, 4:45pm
Director: Trisha Ziff
Running time: 90 minutes
Screening includes Q&A with Alex Donado, participant in the film
The story of the recovery of the 4,500 negative taken by photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War.  The film follow the journey of these negatives to Mexico – recovered seventy years later.  The Mexican Suitcase brings together three narratives: the suitcase, the exile story, and looks at how people in Spain today address their own past.

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator / USA, Guatemala, Spain (2011)
Saturday, 7pm
Directors: Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís and Peter Kinoy
Running time: 90 minutes
Question & Answer session will follow the film, led by Naomi Roht-Arriaza, Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

As a young filmmaker in 1982, director Pamela Yates went to Guatemala to make a documentary about a hidden war.  In 2004 lawyers prosecuting an international genocide case asked Yates to comb through that historic film and its outtakes for possible evidence to be used against the same dictator, Ríos Montt, who spoke with her on camera three decades before.  Suddenly the old footage took on a second life.

Codepink in Pakistan

Pakistan Peace Delegation Report
Monday, November 12, 2012, 6pm
War Memorial Veterans Building
401 Van Ness Ave, 2nd Floor

Medea Benjamin, Codepink co-director and founder, and Pakistan trip delegates Toby Blome and Dianne Budd discuss their trip to Pakistan and the struggle to stop the proliferation of drones. Delegates will, also, provide tools and resources to take action! Presented by Codepink, in partnership with Veterans for Peace. Please join us! Facebook event