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      The Peace Exchange Bulletin

      Published by Tom Hayden, The Peace Exchange Bulletin is a reader-supported journal, critically following the Pentagon's Long War in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, as well as the failed U.S. wars on drugs and gangs, and U.S. military responses to nationalism and poverty around the world.

      Wednesday
      Oct262016

      On the Passing of Tom Hayden

      Tom Hayden speaking on Dec. 3, 2015, at a rally by environmentalists at Pershing Square in Los Angeles. On Sunday, October 23rd, 2016, Tom Hayden, former California politician and lifelong activist, passed away in Santa Monica, California surrounded by family. Hayden, beloved husband, father, and brother was 76 years old. 

      A private family ceremony will take place this weekend.  A public memorial will take place on February 19th at 4pm at Royce Hall at UCLA. In lieu of flowers the family suggests donations be made to the Peace and Justice Resource Center, which will aide in the continued promotion and preservation of Tom's good works.

      His family asks for privacy at this time and thanks all those who have reached out with condolences.

      Thank you,

      The Family of Tom Hayden

      Monday
      Jul252016

      Trump's Only Path Forward

      Donald Trump's campaign depends on whether there are more terrorist attacks and police shootings in America. Such dire scenarios still may not be enough to win over a nervous electorate in November, but could push some swing voters toward his program of law and order at home and abroad. The reaction to Trump's speech from most commentators was that it was too "dark and gloomy" but if the next two months are like the previous two, the Trump policy might drive more people in the same direction evoked by Richard Nixon or the "dark side" conjured up by Vice President Cheney during the run-up to Iraq.

      Click to read more ...

      Monday
      Jul252016

      By Dawn's Early Light, A New Democratic Party Stirs

      First, some credit is due to Wikileaks. Few in the mainstream dare to thank them, but Wikileaks has obviously played a critical role in triggering the official resignation of DNC chair Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. These maverick conspirators, who have brought down many at the upper levels of power, and are disavowed by both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, were able to make public the vilest secrets of power. In a more democratic society there would be less justification for Wikileaks, but there's no sign the surveillance state is diminishing. There may be questions in the days ahead about the role of Edward Snowden, the whistleblower being harbored by Russia, as implicated in the disclosures, but that could upset further by revelations against Paul Manafort about his relationships with the former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by the Kremlin.  This in turn carries toxic implications about Trump's "friends" in Moscow and if they are responsible for the not only the hacks, but also the leaks.

      Click to read more ...

      Wednesday
      Jun222016

      Celebrating the Defeat of Diablo Canyon!

      With the Diablo Canyon's permits expiring by 2024, the threat of nuclear power in California is lifting. Few recall the tens of thousands of protesters rallying against the plant at the height of the fervent "No Nukes" movement of the times. Tragically, the nuclear lobby is gaining ground by apologists who claim that it's clean if radioactive energy needed as a "renewable" resource.

      Click to read more ...

      Wednesday
      Jun222016

      AS AMERICANS WE CANNOT ENDORSE SEN. KERREY'S LEADERSHIP OF A U.S. SPONSORED UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM 

      Americans from the Vietnam Era should join the many Vietnamese today in questioning the appointment of former Senator Bob Kerrey to chair the board of the Fulbright University of Vietnam, which was announced during President Obama's recent visit.

      Sen. Kerrey's appointment is more a gesture of forgetting rather than of reconciliation, as some believe. Consider his record as an American Navy SEAL, based on New York Times coverage April 25, 2001, and June 2, 2016:

      On the night of Feb. 25, 1969, Kerrey's Navy Seals unit killed 20 Vietnamese villagers, mainly women and children, in the village of Thanh Phong, populated by only 150 people. The weapons used included guns, knives and bare hands. 

      Click to read more ...

      Monday
      May162016

      On President Obama's Trip to Hiroshima

      Vincent Intondi is a Associate Professor of History at Montgomery College and Director of Research for American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute, which organizes annual delegations to Hiroshima. He also is author of the very important book from Stanford University Press, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement.

      His research reveals the deep, decades-long opposition by African American leaders against the development and final use of the U.S. bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the first targets were people of color. It's no accident that Barack Obama was studying ways to end the threat and writing articles for his campus newspaper on this subject while he studied at Columbia University. Now as the first African-American President faces bitter, racist, and hysterical opposition to his planned visit to the Hiroshima shrine and peace park from those Americans who think he will offer an apology to the Japanese. An apology of any kind would be politically awkward to say the least, and is opposed by the Japanese government itself. But the simple presence of Obama in Hiroshima will reverberate around the world as a silent vigil. I urge you to read Vincent Intondi's moving statement below. - Tom Hayden

      Click to read more ...

      Friday
      May062016

      What's the Democratic Peace Platform?

      This year’s Democratic primary debate has been dominated by criticism of Hillary Clinton for her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war, and her general support of regime change. It’s forgotten that Bernie Sanders was for regime change as well. This week Jeremy Scahill, author of Dirty Wars and his new The Assassination Complex, sets the record straight on Democracy Now on Bernie’s earlier involvement in promoting sanctions and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. 

      Click to read more ...

      Monday
      May022016

      Tom Hayden for Democratic National Committee Endorsements

      Dolores Huerta, Labor Movement & Civil Rights Leader

      Hilda Solis, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for District 1, Secretary of Labor for President Barack Obama

      Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor for President Bill Clinton

      State Controller Betty Yee

      State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones

      Eric Bauman, Chair of the LA County Democratic Party & Vice Chair of the California Democratic Party

      Assemblyman Jose Medina (AD61)

      Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg (ret.), East Area Progressive Democrats

      Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (ret.)

      State Senator Loni Hancock (SD9)

      State Senator Fran Pavley (SD27)

      State Senator Ricardo Lara (SD33)

      State Senator Holly Mitchell (SD30)

      State Senator Martha Escutia (Ret.)

      State Senator Mark Leno

      U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (CA13)

      U.S. Representative Janice Hahn (CA44)

      U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (CA43)

      U.S. Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA33)

      Councilmember Gilbert Cedillo, 1st CD of Los Angeles

      LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl

      Los Angeles County Assessor Jeffrey Prang

      LA Mayor Eric Garcetti

      CDP Progressive Caucus

      Jamie Beutler, Chair of the CDP Rural Caucus

      Barry Broad, Lead Chair of CDP Legislation Committee

      John Hanna, Lead Chair CDP Resolutions Committee

      Rachel Binah, Chair Emeritus Environmental Caucus, CDP Resolutions Committee, DNC member

      Carlos Alcala, CDP Chicano Latino Caucus Chair

      Michael Thaller, CDP Progressive Caucus Chair

      Karen Bernal, Former Chair of the CDP Progressive Caucus 

      Darren Parker, CDP African American Caucus Chair 

      Tim Paulson, CDP Labor Caucus Chair, Executive Director, San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO

      Karen Weinstein, Chair Emeritus of the CDP Women's Caucus, Co-Chair of CDP Affirmative Action Committee

      Thomas Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Chair of CDP Irish American Caucus

      Bob Mulholland, DNC Member

      Alice Huffman, President of the California NAACP, DNC Member

      Susie Shannon, CDP Regional Director

      Eric Sunderland, CDP Regional Director

      Martha Gamez, CDP Regional Director

      Tom Camarella, Representing AD54 on the CDP Executive Board

      Russell Greene, Representing AD45 on the CDP Executive Board

      Richard Blackston, CDP Executive Board Member

      Jim Wisely, CDP Executive Board Member

      Jeff Daar, CDP Executive Board Member, Board of Airport Commissioners for the Los Angeles World Airports

      Daniel Tamm, Representing AD46 on the CDP Executive Board

      Paul Ahrens, Representing AD51 on the CDP Executive Board

      Patti Skinner Sulpizio, Representing AD38 on the CDP Executive Board

      Sheila Mickelson, Representing AD62 on the CDP Executive Board

      Lowell Young, CDP Executive Board Member

      Bernice A. Bonillas, CDP Executive Board Member

      Ashleigh Evans, California DNC Delegate

      Cara Robin, CDP Executive Board, President of the WLA Democratic Club

      Laurie Gallian, Mayor of Sonoma

      Ray Gallian, Sonoma County Central Committee member

      Robbie Hunter, President, State Building & Construction Trades of California

      Mimi Kennedy, Activist and Actor

      Andy Spahn, Co-founder & President of Gonring, Spahn & Associates, Inc.

      Ed Begley Jr., Activist & Actor

      Steve Soboroff, Vice President of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners

      Alfre Woodard, Activist and Actor

      Junius Williams, Activist and Author

      Ken Seaton-Msemaji, Founder & former President, United Domestic Workers of America AFL-CIO, Political Director, Sheet Metal Workers Local 206 San Diego

      Kent Wong, Director of the UCLA Labor Center

      Pacific Palisades Democratic Club

      Robert Garcia, The City Project, Environmental Justice Attorney

      V. John White, Executive Director of Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies

      Lisa Hoyos, Director and the Co-Founder of Climate Parents

      Vanessa Tyson, Ph.D., Professor of Black Politics, UCLA

      Dan Jacobson, State Director for Environment California

      Joel Reynolds, Western Director, Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council

      Margaret Prescod, Host of Sojourner Truth on KPFK

      James Fugate, Esowan Books

      Dr. Gerald Horne, John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston

      Jim B. Clarke, Council Member Culver City and Former Party Secretary of CDP

      Hart Bochner, Actor & Environmental activist

      Herbert Siguenza, Richard Montoya & Ric Salinas of Culture Clash

      Peniel E Joseph, Barbara Jordan Chair Designate in Ethics & Political Values and Founding Director Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, LBJ School of Public Affairs

      Linda Escalante, Policy Advocate, NRDC

      Angela Sanbrano, Co-Founder & President Emeritis of NALACC

      Robert Turcotte, Chair of the Plumas County California Democratic Central Committee (former)

      Margie Bernard, Emeritus Vice-Chair of Democrats Abroad, Ireland

      Devra Weber, Associate Professor of History, Ph.D., UCLA

      Alfredo Hernandez, Friends of the Hollywood Central Park

      Larry D. Halstead, Delegate to the CDP

      *All Titles Used for Identification Purposes Only

      To Endorse Tom Hayden for DNC please email contacthayden@gmail.com

      Saturday
      Apr302016

      Democrats Need Power-sharing Agreement to Defeat Trump

      As a California Democrat, I’ve fretted all year about the ominous threat of domestic fascism in our country revealed in the rhetoric and extremism of Donald Trump and his hard-core followers.

      The dangerous undercurrents of the election suggest that the country needs a united front against Trump, combining the best, or at least salvageable, elements from the feuding campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who, along with independents, can build a majority to win the presidency and possibly take back the U.S. Senate.

      Click to read more ...

      Tuesday
      Apr262016

      Remarks by Tom Hayden to the Vietnam War Summit, LBJ Presidential Library, Austin, Texas, April 26, 2016

      THE POWER OF PROTEST, RESTORING THE MEMORY OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT

      Thank you Mark Updegrove, Director of the LBJ Library

      Thank you Colonel Mark Franklin, Chief of History and Legacy at the Pentagon's Vietnam Commemoration Office

      Thank you Jim Knotts & Reema Ghazi, from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund

      Thank you Jim Popkin for reaching out at the beginning of this process 

      Thank you for your gracious invitation to this significant opportunity for introspection into the Vietnam War and its peace movement opposition. The reconstructions of our legacies live on. I myself have just finished my third book on Vietnam, to be published next year by Yale University Press, tentatively titled "Vietnam and the Power of Protest." My earlier books appeared decades ago: "The Other Side", with Staughton Lynd [1966, New American Library, 1966], and "The Love of Possession Is a Disease with Them" [Holt Rinehart Winston, 1972.] I also have taught Vietnam classes at Immaculate Heart College, Pitzer and Scripps colleges in Claremont, and a seminar with Democratic staff in the US House of Representatives. Currently, I am excited by the works of Viet Thanh Nguyen, on memory and forgetting, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize this month for his novel, The Sympathizer.

      The debate over the War and anti-war movement is still alive. Last year 1000 peace activists gathered at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church and the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington D.C. to challenge and engage with the Pentagon's narrative of the war, which we considered to be unbalanced. Those discussions, held at Fort Myer, have been fruitful, unresolved, and ongoing. I note the presence here today of Joe Galloway, who took part in that first Fort Myer's dialogue.

      Today I am distributing a new House of Representatives Resolution by Rep. Barbara Lee, a peace and justice leader over many years, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War and the movement to end it. The resolution reads in part that, "The movement to end the Vietnam War was one of the largest and most prolonged efforts to achieve peace and justice in many generations and war critical to bringing and end to the war."

      There is no question of our impact. We helped turn two presidents out of office. We ended military conscription. Year after year, our numbers in the streets grew until it reached millions and became the largest peace movement in our country's history. The peace movement was not unlike the "general strike" described by W.E.B. Dubois in his history of Reconstruction. It included resistance and walkouts among our troops from military bases to battleships. It spread through communities of color, African-American, Puerto Rican, Latino, Native American, and Asian-American, and from there to campus communities in unprecedented student strikes and moratoriums. While hippies were being demonized, they too were withdrawing from what they considered a repressive and militarized culture.  The movement led as well to the opposition of many Democrats and not a few Republicans. The military, the universitie,s and the political order were shaken by the withdrawal of millions from their first attachment to the status quo. American women withdrew from militarism and helped lead the anti-war movement too, as did so many then-closeted LGBT people.  The whole phenomenon deserves greater respect and serious research at future conferences like this.

      Though many Americans will agree with this assessment, many others hold firm to the belief expressed by President George H.W. Bush after the first Gulf War in 1991 that "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all." Thousands of Americans and millions of Iraqis later died in this war to stamp out a syndrome, which President Bush likened to a mental disorder.

      The fundamental reason for these persistent efforts to reclaim victory in Vietnam is a fear in many politicians and their national security advisers of accepting our defeat in 1975. Many of us would argue that the Vietnam war was doomed to failure as early as 1946 when our government armed the French for their march to folly at Dienbienphu, then blocked the nationwide elections promised by the Geneva Accords of 1954.

      An official acceptance of defeat in battle, a kind of Custer Syndrome, would lead to a reputational loss as well a painful acknowledgement to military families that their sons fought honorably but under misguided policies imposed by a bipartisan caste of politicians. The political corollary at home was a frightening threat to our own democracy, from McCarthyism to Watergate to COINTELPRO.

      This backlash continues today. I felt it was astonishing that our Secretary of State, John Kerry, who was a founding member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW] was viciously ‘swift-boated’ out of the presidential race in 2004. He suffered wounds in actually fighting communist forces while so many others in office sat home and enjoyed their immunity. An exception that fought and suffered was Senatir John McCain, who went on with Kerry to a historic diplomatic breakthrough when the US-Vietnam relationship was normalized.

      The irony is that our two countries are in a de facto partnership to promote trade and limit China's expansionism in the Pacific.  I myself pray that the partnership fulfills our obligation to do everything possible to treat Agent Orange victims and remove the unexploded ordinance that continues to wound or kill this generation of Vietnamese civilians.

      Here is another painful contradiction we must confront. Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese troops were paid for, trained and sent to their deaths under our command, but their honor has never been recognized. One reason that our own government does not recognize their fate is that such a change in policy would entitle their families to benefits. The Boat People are honored, but not the Saigon troops who sacrificed for us. Reconciliation requires respect for their side, from Hanoi to Washington DC.

      The people of Laos and Cambodia are receding from our memory as well.

      I ask you, are we not all Vietnam veterans in our own way? Were we not all lied to and divided by our government? Isn't the shared experience of our generation that we were mutually manipulated into that cauldron? And who was responsible, those of us in our twenties or those who were in power? Judge for yourselves. 

      Dr. Henry Kissinger, who operated from the very pinnacle of power during those Indochina Wars, and who defended the establishment throughout, must especially reflect on the responsibilities he carries. I personally would welcome a real dialogue with Dr. Kissinger, which requires a frank admission of the part one played. I personally regret my own part in many decisions the peace movement made, and await an acknowledgement and apology from Dr. Kissinger as well. This conference offers a great opportunity for inner reconciliation. In the absence of that opportunity, I must decline your invitation to the dinner with Dr. Kissinger on April 26.

       

      In gratitude,

      TOM HAYDEN