Friends of Courage to Resist

Paul Cox

Veterans for Peace (Chapter 69-SF Bay Area); American Legion Post 315

Forty years ago, a grass roots movement of men and women within the military rose up to oppose US war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and elsewhere. Thousands of GIs across the globe organized to oppose the war and militarism from within the Beast. They received critical aid from civilians and veterans who provided friendship, encouragement, counsel, legal defense, refuge, and money that helped GIs to sustain more than 200 anti-military underground newspapers, dozens of off-base anti-war coffee houses, hundreds of thousands of deserters, and a variety of other actions that helped finally bring the wars to a close. For GIs desperate to stop the war and find other less destructive ways to approach life, such aid literally saved their lives.

I was one of those GIs. I finished my tour in Vietnam disillusioned, angry, and confused. The friendship of anti-war civilians and veterans while I was still in the Marines helped me develop and overview of the war, and the support they provided helped a group of us GIs launch the first underground newspaper and progressive bookstore at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.

Courage to Resist is the pre-eminent organization today providing support to active duty resisters who have come to understand the magnitude of our crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have loudly said, "NO MORE!"

We all need to support those men and women who refuse to be labeled as 'troops'--those who speak up and stand out and say no to the meatgrinder!

Courage to Resist is already doing that. You should, too.