Vaccinate Against War Not Smallpox
As health care professionals, some of us are being called upon to receive the
smallpox vaccine. We are being asked to become vaccinated against a viral
disease that we had been told was eradicated. The obliteration of this
disease marks one of the highest points of international cooperation.
Governments with opposing ideologies, governments that were on a daily alert
against each other, governments that were funding armed conflicts against
each other all cooperated in eradicating smallpox. Western scientists
cooperated with tribal healers, communists cooperated with capitalists,
dictators cooperated with democratic leaders, people of all religions
cooperated with each other. Yes, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus,
Buddhists, pantheists and atheists all cooperated to erase the threat of
smallpox from the world.
Now the American people are being told that the scourge of smallpox is near
upon us. We are being told that the international era of cooperation in
combating worldwide diseases is over. We are being told that our health care
system will protect us, that our armed might will protect us.
As health care providers who are likely to be called upon to accept the
smallpox vaccine, we say NO.
We say NO not out of fear for our own health. Every day we face the risk of
infectious diseases at work. We have never shied away. We say NO not out of
fear of side effects to the vaccine. We do not believe ourselves to have any
risk factors for a bad reaction since we were vaccinated as children and had
no problems. We say NO because vaccinating in the face of no known threat is
wrong. It represents the use of health care as an extension of an aggressive
military posture. A posture which our government has put forward prior to
national debate. The posture that we as a nation have not only the right but
also the responsibility to launch preemptive war.
There is no true evidence of anyone preparing a smallpox attack. Those who
are knowledgeable enough to launch a mass smallpox attack via aerosol
distribution are also knowledgeable enough to know that it would not only
backfire politically but that smallpox would spread world wide, affecting
their people as well. Those who are fool enough to use suicidal methods to
spread smallpox would ultimately be defeated, since we were able to defeat
the original smallpox epidemics when the virus was spread by individuals
unwittingly infected
The government is using the fear of smallpox as a political tool to rally
support for a wrong and possibly criminal policy. It reminds one of the
1950s. Those of us who were children then remember the fear of the communist
nuclear attack. In gym classes, in civics classes and in health classes we
were shown films of what would occur if the Russians sent atomic bombs and
missiles at us. We had regular air raid drills to prepare us for this event.
We sat under our desks and in hallways with our heads between our legs. We
were told not to look at the flash of the explosion lest it blind us. Ads for
backyard fallout shelters were in all the media. Fear abounded and bred
hatred and a pro-war politic. A politic which led our democratically elected
government to fund dictators throughout the world. A politic that led our
democratically elected government to support military overthrow of
democratically elected governments. A politic which led government officials,
charged with protecting our own freedoms, to brand the civil rights movement,
the voting rights movement and even some of our unions and environmental
movements as conspiracies run from Moscow. Let us not go there again.
We must use our healthcare abilities to build an international commitment to
peace and human rights. Let the example of smallpox eradication be used to
build further cooperation. There is new work being done on drugs to conquer
malaria, to diminish the effects of HIV. Let us use this and other work to
enhance international unity instead of hate and fear. Let us use our wealth
and knowledge to aid people in developing clean water and safe sewage
systems. Let us use our democracy as an example for others. We can do that by
not supporting dictators, royal families and governments that hoard their
countries' wealth for a few while oppressing the human rights of the
majority. Let us wage a peaceful campaign against all Weapons of Mass
Destruction in all countries and by all governments.
As healthcare professionals we have pledged first to do no harm. We have
pledged to use our skills to help all those in need regardless of their
beliefs or their position in society. We will accept the smallpox vaccination
when it is part of a worldwide effort to eradicate the disease. In that event
the healthcare workers of Iraq would be inoculated as well.
Barry Adams, RN, Boston, Massachusetts
Amelia M. Cabral, RN, Taunton, Massachusetts
Catherine DeLorey, RN, Boston, Massachusetts
Mike D'Intinosanto, RN, Winchendon, Massachusetts
Sandy Eaton, RN, Quincy, Massachusetts
Robert Fine, RN, Arlington, Massachusetts
Susan Flowers, RN, Indiana, Pennsylvania
Teana Gilinson, RN, Stoughton, Massachusetts
Patty Healey, RN, Northampton, Massachusetts
Peggy Lynch, RN, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Jim Moura, RN, Dorchester, Massachusetts
Editorial Comment: This statement, with five signers, was submitted as a
letter to the editor for publication in the January issue of The
Massachusetts Nurse, due out in mid-January. It was sent to the Union Talk
for Nurses listserv with eight signatures attached. There is no copyright
involved here. If you agree with this statement, you may want to forward it
to others, print it, post it, or sign it yourself and send it to your local
newspaper or journal as an op-ed piece. Send us your name and town if you'd
like to be added for future postings. You may be moved to write something in
your own words for publication. There has never been a better time in history
for critical thinking. - Sandy Eaton, RN
We Shall Not Remain Silent
Building the Anti-Vietnam War Movement in the House of Labor
Science & Society, Vol. 66, No. 4, Winter 2002-2003
On June 23, 1972, nearly one thousand delegates from 35 international unions
met at the Teamsters' Hall in St. Louis in a two-day conference to declare
their opposition to the war in Vietnam:
"It is self-evident that the nightmare of killing and destruction has gone on
far too long and that this war is illegal and not in our national interest.
... As men and women of labor, who treasure our country's heritage and
future, we proclaim our responsibility to harness every effort to end the war
NOW." (Labor for Peace, 1972)
The media-hyped image of labor unions as hard-hatted attackers of peace
demonstrators, a myth perpetuated by AFL-CIO President George Meany's vocal
defense of US foreign policy, was finally shattered. This is the story of how
the peace movement took root in the labor movement, told by two who were
present and involved.
In the autumn of 1967 500 unionists from 60 internationals and 38 states met
in Chicago to found the Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace (LLAP). The
public sponsors were Al Hartung, President of the International Woodworkers
of America; Pat Gorman, Secretary-Treasurer of the Amalgamated Meatcutters
and Butcher Workmen; Emil Mazey, Secretary-Treasurer of the United Auto
Workers; and Frank Rosenblum, Secretary-Treasurer of the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers. Moe Foner of Hospital Workers Local 1199 in New York was named
National Coordinator. The new organization soon published a tabloid, Labor
Voice for Peace, mounted an anti-war petition campaign, and held several
marches and rallies. LLAP had evolved from the Trade Union Division of SANE
(Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy) with strong leftist participation
(Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace, 1967).
While the delegates to the founding meeting may have been members of many
unions, few of them could speak for their organizations; while they
individually were for an end to the war, their unions remained part of the
labor-hawk consensus. That was demonstrated by the appeal from New York to
the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) for $6,000
to help pay for the printing of the tabloid, and by the response of the ILWU
in Hawaii to an appeal to set up a local LLAP chapter (Foner, 1968).
Hawaii ILWU Education Director Dave Thompson wrote to LLAP National
Coordinator Moe Foner that his union was unwilling to set up a chapter
because only two unions would officially be involved - his and the United
Public Workers - with possibly a handful of other individuals whose unions
supported the war (Thompson, 1968). Indeed, the Labor Leadership Assembly for
Peace took hold briefly in some local areas, including Chicago, New York, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Portland, demonstrating that
there was peace sentiment in the labor movement, but that it was
marginalized, and could not yet break the Cold Warrior consensus in the
AFL-CIO. LLAP quietly faded away, its members often becoming active in the
broader anti-war movement. Some still treasured the idea that the labor
movement could and would become a catalyst for peace.
Among the labor doves were the co-authors of this communication, who met in
Washington, DC in 1968, as part of a support committee for the Poor Peoples'
Campaign begun by Martin Luther King and continued by the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference after his murder. The Campaign made America's poor of
all races visible in a tent city which was ultimately razed by the government
without the issues of economic inequality being addressed.
Rogoff had been on the staff of the International Ladies Garment Workers
Union for a decade, worked for the International Union of Electrical, Radio
and Machine Workers Public Relations Department from 1963 to 1967, and was a
member of the Newspaper Guild and Workers' Education Local 189. In 1967 he
went to work as the Labor Liaison Officer for the Equal Employment
Opportunities Commission (EEOC), to help secure union compliance with the
Title 7 anti-employment discrimination provision of the Civil Rights Act of
1964. He helped build his EEOC local of the American Federation of Government
Employees (AFGE) and was a delegate to the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council.
Politically, Rogoff came from the tradition of the Young People's Socialist
League and Socialist Party. He soon found socially minded colleagues in AFGE
who talked about opposing the war. Among those were Roy Morgan from the
Health, Education and Welfare AFGE local (later to move to the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees [AFSCME], and to go on
leave from AFSCME to work on the National Moratorium for an end to the war),
Jocelyn Williams from the Library of Congress local, Javier "Mike" Vela from
the State Department local, and George Koch from the Office of Economic
Opportunity local. All of their local unions adopted anti-war resolutions and
AFGE responded by sending a purported "evil history" of the peace emblem to
its locals. The explanation of the peace symbol as "an anti-Christ broken
cross ... mark of the beast" designed by Emperor Nero was sent out from the
AFGE's District 14 office (American Federation of Government Employees
District 14, 1969). (The peace symbol was actually designed for an English
peace walk in 1958 to mark the semaphore signals for N and D, nuclear
disarmament.) Then International President John Griner sent telegrams to the
anti-war locals demanding they revoke their actions or have their charters
lifted (Griner, 1969). Rogoff and his colleagues drafted a response that
said, in effect, that since the international union had no official position,
the locals should be free to take whatever action they wanted; they refused
to rescind their anti-war positions and all except the EEOC local had their
charters lifted (Rogoff and Morgan, 1970). The AFGE was willing to lose
bargaining rights and potentially thousands of members to preserve the public
pro-war labor consensus and avoid ruffling the feathers of Congress.
Officers of the banned local unions approached AFSCME Secretary Treasurer
William Lucy about affiliation and when AFGE offered no objections, the
anti-war locals voted for AFSCME, bringing that union into the federal sector
for the first time.
Rogoff, active in the DC Central Labor Council from 1963 until he left
Washington in 1980, and Morgan raised the possibility of a labor peace ad in
the Washington Post with Tony Mazzocchi, head of the Washington office of the
Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW). Mazzocchi had been on his own
track in hopes of expanding anti-war activity in the labor movement, hosting
a series of breakfast and lunch meetings with potential labor peace
activists. The local Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union had taken
an anti-war position, along with officers of the DC Teachers' Union, and the
Newspaper Guild was debating whether or not reporters could take a position.
On November 13, 1969, Tony Mazzocchi convened peace-oriented union staff and
officials at a labor breakfast attended by some 100 people from a dozen
unions, and from AFL-CIO headquarters itself. California Senator Alan
Cranston spoke, along with Victor Reuther from the Auto Workers, and
Mazzocchi. The meeting set up an ad hoc committee to work on ways to bring
the peace message to rank-and-file union members. On Capitol Hill anti-war
attention was focusing on a Senate "Amendment to End the War" sponsored by
Democrat George McGovern and Republican Mark Hatfield; if passed, funds would
be cut off for the war except for withdrawal of US troops and related
expenses, unless Congress formally declared war as required by the
Constitution.
Among those at the breakfast was Albert Lannon, Washington Representative for
the West Coast International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, one of
the unions expelled from the CIO in 1949 for "Communist domination." Lannon,
in Washington for a year-and-a-half, came from a Communist Party background,
his father having been jailed under the Smith Act in the 1950s. The ILWU had
long been on record in opposition to the war, even while its longshore
members earned overtime loading military supplies for Vietnam, earnings
termed "blood money" by ILWU President Harry Bridges.
While labor was fermenting on the war issue, there were other stirrings as
well. The United Auto Workers (UAW) resigned from the AFL-CIO over policy
differences, including the Vietnam War, and joined with the independent and
far more conservative International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which had been
expelled from the labor federation a decade before for corruption, and the
International Chemical Workers Union, to form the Alliance for Labor Action
(ALA). This unlikely partnership followed the lead of the UAW in endorsing
the National Moratorium against the War in October 1969, taking out an ad in
the Washington Post to state its position. Several other unions were
considering ALA affiliation, including the ILWU.
In December 1969, Marvin Rogoff, Roy Morgan and Tony Mazzocchi met and
decided to place an anti-war ad in the Washington Post. They hoped to raise
$10 each from 500 area unionists to pay for it; anonymous AFL-CIO staff
quietly wrote and assembled the page, and had the ad placed without the
normal fee through their contacts. The trio drafted a fund-raising letter to
all local unions, but received little response. They began personally
rounding up supportive unionists, receiving a $500 donation from Victor
Reuther as well as many much smaller amounts from others. A Texas insurance
company executive and anti-war activist, Bernard Rappaport, made up the
difference at Tony Mazzocchi's urging. AFGE President Griner warned members
that "anyone signing as an AFGE member or under the banner of the AFGE will
be considered to be in violation of this letter and appropriate action will
have to be taken" (Griner, 1970). When the three labor peace workers took the
ad to the newspaper they were told they needed to have the name of a
sponsoring organization. Washington Labor for Peace was born on the spot.
They were told the organization required officers, so they named themselves
co-chairs. Mazzocchi and Morgan faced no immediate possibility of reprisals
for going public, but Rogoff had concerns about his vulnerability from
attacks by union hawks. The Post insisted on printing the addresses of the
126 signers.
On February 25, 1970 the full-page ad, the first of its kind in the nation,
appeared under the title, "A Rich Man's War and a Poor Man's Fight - Hawk or
Dove, We Are All Clay Pigeons," with a striking photograph of a GI with
haunted eyes and the words written on his helmet, "war is hell." The text
spoke to the cost in lives, disfigurement of American society and the
economy, the cost of the military budget to workers, inflation, high interest
rates, lack of support for education and health care. The ad concluded with a
demand for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Southeast Asia,
cessation of all hostilities, and turning of attention and resources to
America' s needs at home. Among the signers were staff and officers from the
AFL-CIO's Industrial Union and Research Departments, DC Teachers' Union and
the American Federation of Teachers, Teamsters, United Auto Workers, Service
Employees International Union, Amalgamated Meatcutters, and others
(Washington Post, 1970). The SEIU's Joseph Chulak was called on the carpet,
but suffered no direct reprisals, while Ray McDonald from the AFL-CIO
Research Department had his assignment changed in retaliation for signing the
ad. One signer, who wishes to remain anonymous, was fired from his union job.
This eruption of labor peace sentiment sparked a series of local actions in
Washington. In May, joining with Business Executives Move for Peace,
Washington Labor for Peace held a 400-strong public "fast" in Lafayette
Square, across from the White House. The action did not get the media
attention that 300 New York construction workers received on May 9 when they
attacked anti-war demonstrators or on May 20 when the New York Building
Trades Council organized a "spontaneous" pro-war labor rally, with workers'
wages paid by their employers for attending.
Labor doves organized for and participated in mass anti-war demonstrations
and began a petition campaign in support of the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment
to End the War. In the summer of 1971 the organization produced a manual on
organizing labor opposition to the war, A Rich Man's War and a Poor Man's
Fight. Underwritten by Tony Mazzocchi's OCAW Washington Office, hundreds of
copies were sold, gratifying those who had put the book together: David Eisen
from the Newspaper Guild, Patricia Strandt and David Elsila from the
Teachers' Union, Tom Gagliardo from AFSCME, Richard Prosten from the
Industrial Union Department, Daniel Schulder and Patricia Schulder from the
Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, Don Spatz from IUE, Katherine Stone
from the OCAW, Frank Wallick from the UAW, labor publicist Andrew Bornstein,
Mazzocchi, Rogoff and Lannon. Washington Labor for Peace used the ILWU's
Washington office address for book orders until Lannon, who left Washington
in September 1971, was replaced by the union. By the time the book was
officially published on Labor Day, anti-war resolutions had been adopted by
the UAW, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, AFSCME, Teamsters, ILWU, United
Electrical Workers, International Chemical Workers, National Union of
Hospital and Nursing Home Employees, Newspaper Guild, Textile Workers Union,
American Federation of Teachers, Central Labor Council of Alameda County,
California, Massachusetts State Labor Council, and 451 San Francisco Bay Area
unionists who signed a newspaper ad in May 1970 headed, "We've Had It!"
Still, there was no national labor organization to unite the peace activists
and their unions.
Washington Labor for Peace brought Rogoff and Lannon into a close working
relationship. Coming from very different left backgrounds, the two initially
distrusted each other, arguing at a 1969 dinner honoring A. Philip Randolph
whether or not Teachers' Union President Al Shanker had the right to call
himself a socialist. Events forced them to move past that distrust.
Early in 1969 a number of legislators called labor lobbyists together at a
Capitol Hill meeting hoping for united union support for a bill that would
close enough corporate tax loopholes to equal the income from the 10% Vietnam
War surtax, which would be repealed. Initially favorable to the idea of tax
reform, the AFL-CIO lobbyists backed off from any suggestion that they were
not in favor of the war, and therefore of the surtax. While the labor
coalition never developed, membership pressures for tax reform forced the
AFL-CIO to reverse its position on the surtax a week before the vote, too
late to attain legislative victory (Washington Labor For Peace, 1971).
One of those pressing to end the war surtax was Senator George McGovern.
McGovern held discussions with the authors early in 1970 on how to get unions
to promote peace. Whether to attempt to convene a meeting of all unions or
only those with anti-war positions was debated, with Lannon and Rogoff
agreeing to be the unofficial "staff " for a national labor peace project.
The first step was to pull together and distribute all the union statements
against the war (Lannon, 1970a). The second step was to call for a labor
peace conference in Washington, inviting all national unions regardless of
their position on the war, and the unofficial staff went to work virtually
full-time for the next several months.
Alliance for Labor Action unions, notably the UAW, Distributive Workers
District 65 (which broke from its international union to join the ALA) and
some elements of the Teamsters, dominated the early organizing meetings,
naming International Chemical Workers' Union President Thomas Boyle as the
Chair of the budding peace organization. It became clear to Rogoff and Lannon
that ALA domination allowed AFL-CIO unions to justify either ignoring or
opposing the proposed national Labor for Peace conference, but Boyle pressed
ahead without regard for broadening the movement. The AFL-CIO, meanwhile,
went to work to prevent union leaders from attending. Antagonistic telegrams
with identical language came from several sources; several state governors
called top union leaders to urge them not to attend, on the basis that it was
going to be a narrow ALA operation. The federation's campaign was successful
in keeping most representatives of anti-war AFL-CIO unions from participating.
Lannon and Rogoff called UAW Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey in Detroit and
asked him to step in to help ground the fledgling organization in trade union
realpolitik. Mazey agreed, and the Washington conference was held on June 17,
1970. The session began at 1 pm, with Chairman Boyle having called a press
conference for 2 pm. Senators Cranston and McGovern spoke briefly, expressing
differences in their approaches. Cranston favored a labor committee to end
the war while McGovern spoke for a labor committee to support the Amendment
to End the War. Among the 30-odd people attending were Charles Hayes from the
Amalgamated Meatcutters; Bob Kirkwood and Millie Hedrick from UE; Jack
Harvey, a Vice-President of the National Association of Broadcast Employees
and Technicians (NABET); Frank DeMaria, Teamster representative to the ALA;
John White from Teamsters Joint Council 43; and assorted staff people from
the UAW, Teamsters and other unions.
Emil Mazey, over the objections of Boyle, stressed the difficulties of
putting together a labor committee without the AFL-CIO unions who have been
outspoken against the war being involved. Echoing Lannon's and Rogoff's
concerns, Mazey said that it would be premature to formalize a Labor for
Peace committee and attempt to go public. Boyle and Charles Hayes were named
temporary co-chairs of an ad hoc Labor Committee to End the War in Vietnam.
Mazey would be the chief spokesperson in handling the press to minimize
negative attention. The job now was to work to broaden the base for a
national Labor for Peace, to provide low-key leadership and not unnecessarily
antagonize the AFL-CIO. Lannon and Rogoff breathed sighs of relief; the UAW's
Mazey had salvaged what could have been a disaster (Lannon, 1970b).
The broad peace coalitions sought labor involvement, but sometimes only on
their own terms. At a National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC) convention, held
in New York in July 1971, 400 people attended a "Rank-and-File Unionists
Workshop." When it became clear that a particular political line was being
imposed, many unionists left; others set up a rump union workshop chaired by
Marvin Rogoff at which 70 people, mostly unionists from 24 internationals,
adopted a series of action proposals. The Socialist Workers Party-influenced
NPAC did not follow through on those proposals, which included asking NPAC to
help convene a national trade union anti-war conference, despite prodding
from Rogoff in the name of Washington Labor for Peace (Rogoff, 1971).
Lannon: 385 South Stone Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85701,