University of Virginia Library

At ACLU Benefit

Jane Fonda Speaks On Asian War

Speaking before a near-capacity crowd
at Madison College Saturday night, Jane
Fonda called for increased opposition to
the war in Southeast Asia, saying, with
respect to the Laotian operations, this is
one of the most serious periods in our
lifetimes.

Miss Fonda focused her talk almost
entirely on the war, first touching on the
invasion of Cambodia, which she said was
cut short by the popular movement. "Now we
have troops in Laos; the foreign press has been
saying it and now even the establishment press
says so." She said Laotian troops are reluctant
to fight, and sometimes even have to be pushed
onto helicopters.

She claimed the Pathet Lao are the patriots,
saving the culture, aiding people in need — and
we fight them. "I don't know what it takes to
make people in America move. Maybe
confronting all of you with the horrors which
have taken place will do it."

Miss Fonda began to talk about the War
Trials recently held in Detroit. They were
sponsored by 2000 veterans, and people came
from across the nation. The purpose was to
show that My Lais happen all the time, and are
the direct result of our policies formulated in
Washington, D.C.

"America accuses North Vietnam of war
crimes; yet free fire zones, forced removal of
peasants from their homes, and high level
bombing (when the pilots cannot see what they
are bombing) all constitute war crimes," she
said. For three days men testified by unit —
from the moment they set foot in Vietnam
they were greeted with slogans like "The only
good gook is a dead gook." They spoke of
slaughtering, raping, skinning alive — all in front
of officers, Miss Fonda stated.

POW Smokescreen

She continued, Nixon is using the POW
issue; there are prisoners in the South, but they
are not mentioned, She spoke of some prisoners
of the NLF, who did not like Vietnamese food,
so the guards gave them sardines, which they
did not like either. They did not like sleeping
on the straw, so the guards went to trouble to
get them foam rubber, she added.

Miss Fonda contrasted that to the American
treatment of prisoners: tossing examples out of
helicopters, wiring the current from field radios
to genitals, putting them in cages with boa
constrictors. Even in this country, there are
tiger cages at Fort Benning, Georgia, she stated.

She talked of casualty count manipulation,
general racism, sexism and its relation to the
war; "We're in Vietnam because we're in
California." There was no prostitution in
Vietnam before the Western influx. She said, as
the men in Detroit spoke, they dropped their
medals — purple hearts, bronze stars, etc. —
into a basket marked "Waste."

Fragging

Miss Fonda spoke of the changes in the
American army — in regard to fragging, "I've
talked to soldiers who have killed more officers
than Vietnamese." Some soldiers have finally
found a use for their guns — they smoke dope
out of them. The desertion rate has tripled in a
few years; she called it "the Vietnamization of
the American army."

She ended her speech by endorsing and
reading the People's Peace Treaty, and then
answering questions from the audience.

C. Sands

Queen Jane Approximately

Before her talk she held a brief news
conference. Answering questions, she said she
had no plans of making any films with her
brother — "I didn't come here to talk about
films"; "...there is only one problem, and that
is the economic structure of the country."
Since activism, "I've become a better actress";
on Americans. "We are Neanderthal men and
women as far as politics are concerned." Does
she believe in socialism? — "For starters, yeah."
And on the anti-war movement: "If it weren't
for the demonstrations, we would be like Nazi
Germany."

Her first words at the conference were "Is
there anybody from the University of Virginia
here? . . . Hi."