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Indochina Peace Campaign from
Womankind (November 1972.)
(Editor's note: The Indochina Peace Campaign was a traveling anti-war
show that included Jane Fonda, Don Sutherland, Tom Hayden, Holly Near,
Scott Camil(a leader of the Viet Nam Veterans against the War), and
George Smith( a former POW.)
" Four years ago, I was floating around as Barbarella while
there were women facing soldiers with bayonets at the Pentagon.
"
Three
years ago Jane Fonda took time out from Hollywood and traveled to
Army bases around the U. S., talking to GIs. Last year, she was
in North Vietnam reporting as an eyewitness on U. S. bombing of
the dikes. Her most recent film is called FTA (“Free”
the Army) and probably won’t be shown at your neighborhood
theater. For the past few months, she has been touring the Midwest
with the INDOCHINA PEACE CAMPAIGN. By now Barbarella must be in
the very distant past.
The
INDOCHINA PEACE CAMPAIGN is an intensive campaign to end the war
in Indochina, now, while the American people have the power to
do so either by electing a candidate (George McGovern) who is committed
to ending the war, or by forcing Nixon to do so first because public
sentiment against the war makes continuing it impossible.
Traveling
and speaking with the Campaign Troupe are Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland,
George Smith (a former P. 0. W.), Scott Camil (a leader of Vietnam
Veterans Against the War), Tom Hayden, Holly Near (singer) and
others. During the last two weeks of October, they’ve appeared many
places in Illinois and in the Chicago area.
Jane
Fonda is an impressive woman; she knows a great deal about Vietnam;
she is a fine actress. To most of us she appears to be a very exceptional
person. Maybe we barely think of her as a woman like ourselves.
Yet the story of how she went from Barbarella to being accused
of treason by a U. S. Congressional Committee has a beginning which
sounds familiar to most American women.
“For
years, I went around with falsies and a blond wig, convinced that
no one would care about me if they saw my real body.”
Imagine,
even famous actresses are conditioned to feel ugly! Jane Fonda
grew up in Hollywood with a famous actor for a father. Her background
enables her to see connections between American movie screen images;
racism and sexism; and Vietnam.
“I
was terrified seeing those Indians in the movies chase my father,
and shoot arrows into the bedrooms of his lily-white wives.
“Those
roles my father played didn’t stop at the movie set. Every
weekend when I was a child, John Wayne, John Ford, Ward Bond, and
my father would come to our house wearing Stetson hats and six-guns.
They would sit around a big table, lay their six-shooters down,
and play a macho card game. They were the real men.”
Weren’t
these images of racism and male arrogance the cultural background
against which Lyndon Johnson could say, referring to the Vietnamese,
“The U. S. won’t be bullied by a bunch of yellow dwarfs
with pocket knives”.
Jane
Fonda went to high school and college in the 1950’s. She recalls
the witch-hunting accusations of communism and how Hollywood was
affected.
“The
only nice thing I remember about the 1950’s was that John Wayne
didn’t come to our house anymore. He and my father discovered
that they had political differences.”
Henry
Fonda was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee
to tell which of his Hollywood colleagues he thought were communists
or Russian agents. Fonda thought it was bunk and refused to talk;
John Wayne found things to tell the Committee. The main result
of the witch-hunts was that people feared each other and were afraid
to criticize the government.
Jane
Fonda and others traveling with the Indochina Peace Campaign tell
many stories about present U. S. government harassment and intimidation.
Jane is accused of treason. Scott Camil, a leader of the Vietnam
Veterans Against the War, is charged with conspiracy to commit
various and sundry crimes against the Republican Convention at
Miami Beach. George Smith, former P. 0. W., captured and held by
the National Liberation Front for two years said, “The U. S. government
would have tried me for treason except they couldn’t subpoena
any Vietcong to testify against me.”
All
the speakers with the INDOCHINA PEACE CAMPAIGN describe the effects
of U. S. Government propaganda. George Smith feels he was brainwashed
when he joined the Green Berets in 1963 - not when he was captured
by the N.L.F.
“I
knew why I was going to Vietnam; I was going to save the Vietnamese
people from the communist hordes. Of course, they were also offering
me $700 a month which was high pay for a soldier. The first thing
I did was make a down payment on a Corvette... Being captured came
as a shock. After all, the people were supposed to be on our side..
When Agnew talks about the P. 0. W. ‘s of this war being the
worst treated in history, he must mean the ones captured by the
Americans and turned over to the South Vietnamese Government. I
wasn’t badly treated. The worst of it was I lived no better
than my captors. We were constantly dodging U. S. bombs.”
The
INDOCHINA PEACE CAMPAIGN will continue until the election. Hopefully,
it will make a difference and many more people will think about
the war when they vote, and they will therefore vote for McGovern.
Jane Fonda summed up our responsibility to stop our government
when she said, “The U.S. isn’t must fighting on the wrong side
in Vietnam. the U. S. IS the wrong side in Vietnam.”
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