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Radical Groups Plan
Antiwar Demonstration

News Analysis

By Jeffrey L. Baker
Special to The Cavalier Daily

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After long months of disarray and
confusion, the radical antiwar movement
is making a serious attempt to regroup
and reorganize its forces. Plans for the
Spring are rapidly becoming definite,
while communications and coordination
between antiwar groups have noticeably
improved within the past weeks.

The most significant event thus far
was the announcement on March 2 that
the two leading antiwar coalitions had
agreed to co-sponsor the already
scheduled April 24 mass demonstration in
Washington. That announcement ended
months of divisive fighting between the
two groups.

The People's Coalition for Peace and
Justice (PCPJ), which had been
organizing for a week of disruptive civil
disobedience in Washington beginning with a
militant mass demonstration on May 2,
abandoned its scheduled date after receiving a
request for unity within the American antiwar
movement from Xuan Thuy, head of the North
Vietnamese delegation to the Paris peace talks.

"Facing the serious situation now presented,
I call upon the progressive American people and
all antiwar organizations in the United States to
unite closely, to associate all forces and strata
of the population...thus making a wide and
strong movement so as to curb in time the new
military adventures by the U.S.
administration," Mr. Thuy's message said.

The National Peace Action Coalition
(NPAC), original sponsors of the April 24
demonstrations, are calling for a peaceful, legal,
mass protest in Washington and San Francisco,
and are demanding the immediate withdrawal
of all American forces from Southeast Asia, and
an immediate end to the draft.

PCPJ, while agreeing to the April 24 date
and to the legal and peaceful nature of the
proposed demonstration, has added two of its
own demands to those put forward by NPAC.
PCPJ is calling for a guaranteed annual income
of $5,500 for a family of four and the release
of all political prisoners.

Whereas NPAC has demanded the immediate
withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Southeast
Asia. PCPJ has placed a slightly different
demand which would have the Nixon
administration publicly announce the date by
which the withdrawal is to be completed.

PCPJ is still planning to engage in militant
disruptions in Washington during the Spring,
but the dates are yet uncertain.