Peoples Peace Treaty with US Participating Schools

The People’s Peace Treaty: A History The US Government had begun negotiations to end the Vietnam War with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (the liberation forces in South Vietnam) in Paris in 1968. The State Department claimed that the Vietnamese didn’t really want to negotiate, and that there was really no negotiated route to end this war which the US had inherited from the French after their military defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. By the summer of 1970, the negotiations in Paris had gotten only as far as deciding the parties to the negotiation and the size and shape of the negotiating table. The Nixon administration expanded the war with the invasion of Cambodia in late April, which precipitated, a National Student Strike in May that shut down 450 campuses across the US while the militarized response to those campus actions resulted in the killings students at Kent State and Jackson State. That August, when the US National Student Association Congress was meeting at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota committed itself to massive non-violent actions in the fall to end the War. The NSA Congress also authorized a delegation of US students to travel to meet with students in the Republic of Vietnam (the US backed government in the South) and with students in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), for a student peace treaty to show our government the way to end the war. A diverse delegation of 15 students from college and university campuses from Puerto Rico to Hawaii was assembled for the trip [full disclosure, I was one of the students]. When the NSA Congress announced that they would be sending a student delegation to negotiate a peace treaty with students in Saigon and Hanoi, government officials assured the organizers that the State Department would facilitate visas for the delegation to travel to South Vietnam. That offer was quickly rescinded when the government learned that the North Vietnamese had agreed to grant visas to the NSA delegation. What the State Department did not realize was the US peace activist had for some years been developing a relationship and sharing ideas with peace activists and diplomats from North Vietnamese and PRG at conferences or informal meetings in Paris, Stockholm and Saigon. The decision to pursue a student peace treaty was a decision which had been made in full consultation with Vietnamese peace activists from both the South and the North. I am not certain on which side of the Pacific the concept of the People’s Peace Treaty was first broached, but after the NSA Congress in August, the NSA leadership and other peace movement leaders shared and further developed the concept of the treaty with Saigon Student Union leaders in Saigon, and with North Vietnamese and Provisional Revolutionary Government diplomats in Paris. Despite obstruction by the US government, one member of the delegation [full disclosure, it was me] was able to enter South Vietnam and meet with the Saigon Student Union to prepare the first draft of what was to become the People’s Peace Treaty.

Doug Hostetter (right) meeting with Huynh Tan Mam (5th from left) and other leaders of the Saigon Student Union.

After meetings with the Saigon Student Union, and a confidential press conference about the People’s Peace Treaty with the two most trusted journalist in Saigon, both who had agreed to hold the story until I had left South Vietnam. I then flew to Bangkok and Vientiane, Laos, where I caught a flight to Hanoi to join the rest of the People’s Peace Treaty delegation. The NSA delegation was able to meet with representatives from the Vietnam National Student Union (North Vietnamese) and the South Vietnam Liberation Student Union (student from National Liberation Front held areas of the South). After all of the student unions had agreed and signed the People’s Peace Treaty, the Vietnamese Prime Minister, Pham Van Dong met with the American and Vietnamese student leaders to thanks us for our work and wish us well in our effort to show the world the way to peace.

A Joint Treaty of Peace

 BETWEEN THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES,

 SOUTH VIETNAM AND NORTH VIETNAM

Be it known that the American and Vietnamese people are not enemies. The war is carried out in the names of the people of the United States and South Vietnam but without our consent. It destroys the land and people of Vietnam. It drains America of its resources, its youth and its honor.

We hereby agree to end the war on the following terms, so that both peoples can live under the joy of independence and can devote themselves to building a society based on human equality and respect for the earth. In rejecting the war we also reject all forms of racism and discrimination against people based on color, class, sex, national origin and ethnic grouping which forms the basis of the war policies, present and past, of the United States.

1. The Americans agree to immediate and total withdrawal from Vietnam, and publicly to set the date by which all U.S. military forces will be removed.

2. The Vietnamese pledge that as soon as the U.S. government publicly sets a date for total withdrawal, they will enter discussions to secure the release of all American prisoners, including pilots captured while bombing North Vietnam.

 3. There will be an immediate case-fire between U.S. forces and those led by the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam.

4. They will enter discussions on the procedures to guarantee the safety of all withdrawing troops.

5. The Americans pledge to end the imposition of Thieu, Ky and Khiem on the people of South Vietnam in order to insure their right to self-determination, and so that all political prisoners can be released.

 6. The Vietnamese pledge to form a provisional coalition government to organize democratic elections. All parties agree to respect the results of elections in which all South Vietnamese can participate freely without the presence of any foreign troops.

7. The South Vietnamese pledge to enter discussion of procedures to guarantee the safety and political freedom of those South Vietnamese who have collaborated with the U.S. or with the U.S.-supported regime.

8. The Americans and Vietnamese agree to respect the independence, peace and neutrality of Laos and Cambodia in accord with the 1954 and 1962 Geneva conventions, and not to interfere in the internal affairs of these two countries.

9. Upon these points of agreement, we pledge to end the war and resolve all other questions in the spirit of self-determination and mutual respect for the independence and political freedom of the people of Vietnam and the United States.

By ratifying this agreement, we pledge to take whatever actions are appropriate to implement the terms of this Joint Treaty of Peace, and to insure its acceptance by the government of the United States.

Saigon Student Union

South Vietnam Liberation Student Union

North Vietnam Student Union

National Student Association

Saigon, Hanoi and Paris, December 1970

The People’s Peace Treaty was officially announced to the public in a press conference in Paris, on the way back to the US. Back in the US, the People’s Peace Treaty became one of the major organizing tools in colleges and universities in the spring of 1971. The timing was perfect, as US colleges and universities were teaming with students who were worried that they would soon be drafted into a war that they did not believe in, and a cause for which they certainly did not wish to give their lives. By March there were People’s Peace Treaty offices in 12 cities, student body presidents in 300 US colleges and Universities has signed the treaty, and in the 10 schools where there had been a campus-wide referendum, it had passed in every one. By April 21, the national office of the People’s Peace Treaty had received word from 188 US colleges or universities that before the end of the academic year, each planned to have the People’s Peace Treaty voted on in either a campus wide referendum or approved by the student government. The treaty also quickly moved beyond the National Student Association and US campuses with major antiwar organizations across the country endorsing the treaty and using it with their own constituency. Among the organizations which endorsed and used the treaty were: American Friends Service Committee, Chicago Peace Council, Clergy and Layman Concerned about Vietnam, Los Ageneles Peace Action Council, National Lawyers Guild, New University Conference, People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Women Strike for Peace. Prominent members of the US cultural, academic and religious community endorsed the People’s Peace Treaty and allowed their names to be used to further publicize the treaty.

African American leaders as diverse as Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Congressman Herman Badillo. Julian Bond, Congressman John Conyers, Ericka Higgins and Bobbie Seale.

Religious leaders like Rabbi Belfour Brickner, Rev. Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, Malcolm Boyd, William Sloane Coffin, Robert MacAfee Brown, Bishop Robert DeWitt, Bishop William Davidson, Bishop Paul Moore, Bishop Tomas Gunbleton, Richard McSoreley, Sister Elizabeth McAlister, Father James Groppi, Sister Margaret Traxler and Sister Joques Egan.

Cultural figures like Judy Collins, Jules Feiffer, Jane Fonda, Betty Friedan, Mitchell Goodman, Cleve Gray, Francine du Plessix Gray, Dick Gregory, Julie Harris, Rock Hudson, Jennifer Jones, Denise Levertov, Robert Jay Lifton, Senator Eugene McCarthy, Kate Millett, Grace Paley, Gloria Steinem, I.F. Stone, Paul Sweezy, Bert Schneider, Benjamin Spock, Studs Terkel and Dalton Trumbo.

Prominent academics like Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Kenneth Kenniston, Salvatore Luria, Ashley Montagu, Eric Segal and George Wald.

And of course, there were the leaders of the antiwar movement including Timothy Butz, Kay Camp, Rennie Davis, Dave Dellinger, Daniel Ellsberg, Richard Fernandez, David Hawk, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Al Hubbard, William Kunstler, Stewart Meacham, Sidney Peck, Amy Swerdlow, Cora Weiss and George Wiley.

There were also the union activists including Abe Feinglass, Henry Foner, Mo Foner and Patrick Gorman.

By the end of April, US Representatives Abzug, Badillo, Chishom, Clay, Conyers, Dellums, Mitchell and Scheuer had introduced into the US Congress a Concurrent Resolution: The brilliance of the People’s Peace Treaty was that at a time when the US Government was stating that there was no way to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War, the People’s Peace Treaty clearly laid out the route for peace in a way that anyone could easily understand, and Vietnamese students, North and South, and US students and many others signed our personal peace with the people of Vietnam. Unfortunately, the Nixon Administration was not yet ready for peace, and there would be hundreds of thousands more casualties, both Vietnamese and American, before Henry Kissinger was willing to sign the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, which closely mirrored the People’s Peace treaty that Vietnamese and American students had negotiated two years earlier. --Doug Hostetter

Posted in the New York Review of Books MARCH 25, 1971

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1971/03/25/peoples-peace-treaty/

The Peoples Peace Treaty

In late November of 1970 the US National Student Association sponsored a delegation of students from 15 US Colleges and Universities to meet with student representatives in South Vietnam and North Vietnam to negotiate a Peace Treaty between students. Members of the delegation met first in South Vietnam with the Saigon Student Union and later In Hanoi the Vietnam National Union of Students and the South Vietnam Liberation Student Union which had representation in Hanoi. The treaty, which became known as The Peoples Peace Treaty, was formally signed in Hanoi on December 17, 1970. The US delegation then returned via Paris where the People’s Peace Treaty was publicly unveiled. A few days later the delegation returned to the US where it was used as a major organizing tool on US campuses during the Spring Semester of 1971, culminating in the May Day demonstrations in Washington, DC. A list of 167 participating schools as of April 27, 1971 follows.

This was at a time in which the official US governmental peace negotiations in Paris were at a standstill. The People’s Peace Treaty was able to demonstrate that there was clear path to ending the US War in Vietnam, which was agreeable to students in South Vietnam, North Viet as well as the US. The People’s Peace Treaty was introduced as a Sense of the Congress by Bella Abzug et. al., on April 29, 1971, indicating that “the People’s Peace Treaty embodies the legitimate aspirations of the American and Vietnamese peoples for and enduring and just peace in Indochina.” It took Kissinger another two years before the US Government was able to agree to essentially the same conditions to which hundreds of US colleges and universities student governments had already agreed.

Doug Hostetter

Historical footnote

Latest Developments
[These are some comments from a letter from Doug dated March 28, 1971, regarding some plans for implementing the People's Peace Treaty.] I just came back from a national board meeting of the PPT so will fill you in on some of the latest developments. There are now Peace Treaty offices in at least 12 American cities. Three hundred student body presidents have endorsed the treaty, we know of at least 10 schools where there has been a campus wide referendum and the Peace Treaty has passed in every one. Over twenty-five student senates have passed the treaty. Other organizations which have passed the treaty as an organization are National Lawyers Guild, the New Party, The New England World Federalist,. Goddard College has passed the treaty anu has offered scholarships of X(?) number of South Vietnamese students for next year and X (?) number of North Vietnamese students after the hostilities have stopped.

A new group has been formed in Hollywood to work around the treaty called Entertainment Industry for Peace--they are over l ,000 already and have offered their services to help in fund-raising events. They are also planning a big splash for the Hollywood Bowl on May 2 with Doris Day, Julie Andrews, and Aretha Franklin speaking out for peace!

The Committee of Returned Volunteers has printed the treaty and background literature in Spanish. Scientist groups who have ratified the treaty are working on antidotes for defoliation and U.S. gases. Among the thousands who have signed, we now have a West Point Cadet, the Mayor of Des Moines Iowa, an IRS auditor and a horse breeder! The U. of Wisc.has started a blood drive for North Vietnam as a part of its ratification. Boston area churches are fasting for peace the week before Easter and taking the treaty to churches on Easter. I must close; keep us informed.

If you were active with the People's Peace Treaty, please contact Doug at doughostetter@gmail.com