Vol. 4,.No. 15 May 13, 1966
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NEW YORK WOMEN MARCH AGAINST WAR IN VIETNAM
By Evelyn Novack
The first Women's Rally and March in New York City to "end the war and bring our men home from Vietnam now" was held May 7, the day before Mother's Day. This project was sparked by the success of a Women's March on the local draft board initiated by the Berkeley California Vietnam Day Committee last February.
More than 500 New York women, supported by as many men, gathered under the forbidding walls of the U.S.Armory at Park Ave. and 33rd Street where a dozen militant women voiced their: ‘revulsion against Johnson's death-and-destruction policies in Vietnam. The speakers represented some sixty groups which organized the march.
The meeting was opened by Chairman Ethel Lobman of the ‘Village View Committee to End the War’in Vietnam, who said, "Despite our different views we are all united on a single | issue today, Get Out of Vietnam Now!"
Barbara Deming, one of six U.S. pacifists expelled from Saigon this month, said the delegation had gone to assure the people there that the majority of Americans wanted an end to the war as much as the Vietnamese. "Only a’ small° “inority in Vietnam benefit from this war," she stated. "They are kept in power by, the U.S. Without U.S. support they wouldn't last a day." :
Betty Dellinger, wife of the editor of Liberation magazine and mother of five, declared: "The best thing I have done as”a_ mother is to raise two Sons who refuse to cooperate with this’ war.
Ruth Gage Colby, vice-president of the Women's: International League for Peace and Freedom, emphasized the terrible danger of provoking a war with China which could escalate bo a nuclear: holocaust.
Dorothy Pitman of the Afro-Americans Against the War in Vietnam said that, as a black mother , she is one of those who have been engaged ina war of survival in the U.S. for the past 400 years.: The Negroes of New York don't want their men in Vietnan, she saia:! They would be needed for the coming "long hot summer" in Harlem. *
Dixie Bayo, chairman of the Movement for Puerto Rican Independence, expressed solidarity with the courageous women of Vietnam who have endured so many years of tortured existence.
Esther Newill of Women's Strike for Peace hit hard at the two-party system that has trapped so many Americans for so long. "We elected the Democrat Johnson on a peace program and he carried out the Republican Goldwater's war program. We are here today to stop turning our men into killers for either of these parties."
The speaking program was concluded by Caroline Jenness, secretary of the Organizing Committee to Bring the Troops Home, who said: "Our demonstration today will encourage women all over the country to. Join antiwar groups and project similar actions."
“Telegrams: of support from the Berkeley Vietnam Day come
were ‘tead atthe: “rally.
After the speeches the singing and chanting women marched across the shopping center of Manhattan to the Port Authority bus terminal where’ many soldiers and Sailors,” accompanied by their relatives, were’ Gebarking.
PHILIPPINE TRADE UNIONS CONDEMN U.S. ROLE IN