Fuck Yeah Marxism-Leninism

By Deirdre Griswold

When Youth Against War & Fascism set up a picket line in midtown Manhattan on Aug. 2, 1962, we hoped to alert the progressive forces to the danger of the government sending military “advisers” to Vietnam. They were not supposed to be there in any combat role — there had been no vote in Congress to authorize a military action. But U.S. soldiers were already dying in Vietnam.

What we didn’t fully realize at the time was that this was the first protest against the Vietnam War to take place in the U.S. We only got the full measure of what we had accomplished when we read a message, printed in the National Guardian, from Ho Chi Minh, the leader of Vietnam’s long liberation struggle and president of the Socialist Republic of North Vietnam.

He thanked YAWF by name for the demonstration and urged us to continue the struggle. That gave us an even greater sense of responsibility.