RESERVISTS COMMITTEE TO STOP THE WAR
P.O. Box 4398, Berkeley, California 94704
Brother Reservist or National Guardsman:
The enclosed petition speaks for itself.
We are the lucky ones.    The military takes our weekends, not our lives.    Commanders
order us to trim sideburns,  not to massacre civilians.    Somebody got us into Reserve
or Guards units just in time:  the bodies coming back across the Pacific in black plastic bags each week are not ours.    And so now we polish our brass and go    to drills,
but we assure our friends we*re against the war too«
We need to speak.    More than    700 soldiers have now signed this petition.    With it we
can show the American people that our wearing a uniform several times a month does
not mean we support Nixon's brutal and unending war.    We've been silent too long.
We have a special right to speak out:    in our own units we've seen the militarism behind our country's moral disaster in Vietnam.    The gung-ho colonel with red white and
blue bumper stickers has a counterpart who burns down Vietnamese villages to save them
from Communism.    The lifer sergeant who flaunts his war ribbons and cares only about
following orders is the sort of person who shifts the blame for an atrocity to the
next man up the line.    The racism that lets so few black men into the Reserves is the
same that lets helicopter gunners shoot down yellow women and children.
You may have already heard about the Reservists Committee in the news.    Our petition
has been signed by Air and Army National Guardsmen,    by Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force
and Coast Guard Reservists, by Vietnam veterans,    by officers and men from all parts
of the United States.    We expect to soon have several thousand signatures, maybe more.
Nobody needs to tell you Guardsmen and Reservists hate this appalling war as much as
everyone else.    We need to tell this to the American people*    Please help:
♦Sign today. Even if you get no other signatures, we  still need your own.
♦Take the petition to friends from your unit and get them to sign.    It
should be easy: in several San Francisco area Marine Reserve units, nearly
half the enlisted men signed.    To avoid any excuse for possible harassment,
we  suggest you get permission before  soliciting signatures at drills.
♦Return the signed petition in the attached envelope as soon as possible.
All signers of the petition will receive subscriptions to REDUNE,  a newsletter the
Reservists Committee publishes for anti-war Reservists and Guardsmen.    It has news
about peace organizing in units, discharges, legal rights,  and anti-war actions of
all kinds that Reservists and National Guardsmen    can legally take.
If you are not on active duty, you have the full Constitutional right to sign this
petition.    To be absolutely sure, we have gone over it carefully with both military
and civilian lawyers.    The military only controls you on-post and during drills; it
cannot stop you from freely expressing your opinions the rest of the time.    The law
protects you.    Even the Pentagon can't repeal the First Amendment.
You risk nothing by signing this.    The courageous soldiers who spoke out about the My
Lai massacre risked a great deal.    This petition is our way of keeping faith with men
in Vietnam like them.    If they protest, they can be sent out on a combat infantry patrol*    We still have our right to free speech. The least we can do is use it.