1971--Veterans occupied the Viet Consulate
Rallies in San Francisco often assemble in the plaza at Market & Powell. A cable car turns around there, and it's also right next to the Flood Building, a fairly old edifice which houses a lot of offices. Three decades ago, the U.S. sponsored government of South Vietnam had a consulate there, and on December 29, 1971, I was part of a veterans' antiwar group that decided to protest the war by occupying the consulate.
While this event was reported in by the establishment news media, the article which I published three months later in an underground newspaper told it from the viewpoint of a participant. Today I'd like to repost it.
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Occupying the Consulate of South Vietnam
29 December 1971
Christmas came and Nixon bombed North Vietnam. It’d been the heaviest bombing since ‘68, and it went on for nearly a week. In New York VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) occupied the Statue of Liberty; and then VVAW chapters from Seattle to Boston began seizing national monuments and draft boards. Here in San Francisco we called a meeting to discuss an action. I was a bit late, the meeting had started and I walked in just as someone suggested we occupy the South Vietnamese Consulate.
Discussion of that was short; somebody went down to check the place out and the rest of us set about other details. We decided to occupy it the next morning and spent the rest of the day getting ready. The biggest hassle was writing up the statement we’d use both as news release and leaflet. We sat there all afternoon and got nowhere on it, and finally we just went to somebody’s place for supper.
We sat there, eating and watching TV. It was like election time: Nixon and the "Peace" candidates all getting TV time and they were campaigning like all hell. About all it amounted to was: A "few" more American lives "well spent" on some spectacular military success, and Nixon might win the coming ‘72 elections; but too many GIs lost carelessly, and some other candidate might win. Big-time politicians had elections to win or lose and they were all on the tube saying their thing. GIs like us have their lives to lose and nothing to win, but the only way we just might get heard was to risk a whole shit-load of federal raps and create an international incident.
After supper, we went back to the VVAW office and sat up till 11 or 12 o’clock, still struggling with our statement. We all knew well enough what we wanted to communicate: like all of us were ex-GIs and most of us had been in Nam . . . the killed and the maimed weren’t just statistics to us; they were buddies we’d known and seen die and the people we’d been forced to help murder. We were talking about people who’d died in our arms or died by our hands. And as for the puppet dictatorship, well to us it wasn’t worth the life of a flea on a dog’s ass. And we just didn’t want any more lives squandered on it. But just how do you get something like that onto a sheet of paper? And with 10 or 15 authors it was like trying to double-time with 10 or 15 left legs.
I suppose what we finally got together maybe isn’t the most profound declaration ever; most of it’s been recognized fact for years now, and only the statistics change as they increase . . . Except for the opening line:
That isn’t said or done very often.
The next morning was December 29th. We met at the VVAW office, held a short discussion, and then at 9:30 we went to the consulate. We got there right on schedule, just as it was opening, and walked in and asked the staff to leave. They left peacefully, and we locked the doors and barricaded them with desks and file cabinets.
That done, everything suddenly went silent and there was nothing to do but wait, and we didn’t know for how long. The SFPD might come busting the doors down in 10 minutes, or it might take 2 days and a direct order from the White House to send the FBI.
A phone rang. I picked it up and answered, "Vietnam Veterans Against the War." Whoever it was phoning, he freaked out and hung up.
President Thieu’s portrait was hanging on the wall in practically every office; we turned them all up-side down. We also took the regime’s flag and laid it to rest in a waste-basket. And that was the only "damage" we did—if it can be called "damage".
We’d occupied the consulate for about an hour when the police finally came up with the building manager and said: "I’m asking you to vacate the offices and picket peacefully outside the building."
And we replied: "Is there any reason that Nixon can’t vacate Vietnam and picket peacefully?"
But the Vietnamese Consul General never once came himself and asked us to leave. He just sat the whole thing out down in the building manager’s office. Later, after our trial was over, the jury foreman told us that was one of the important factors that influenced them to find us not guilty of trespassing. There’s something about those puppet officials, they seem psychologically incapable of ever telling Americans to get out.
Finally, the police came and offered us something that sounded like amnesty if we’d just leave and warned that they’d arrest us for trespassing if we didn’t. We’d held the place for 2 hours by then and some people felt we’d already made our point and should go. Others were for staying and the discussion lasted for several minutes. Finally one guy said something like: "Some of us’ve got jobs to worry about. Well, I for one have a job and I phoned in sick this morning and took the day off to come here. If I get busted I might get fired—but I’m staying."
We stayed, and got arrested for "trespassing". The police escorted us out of the building one at a time, POW style with our hands on our heads. Up the hall, down an elevator, and out the door to paddy-wagons. A large crowd of people, both young and old, had assembled outside in the street and as we came out the door they clapped and cheered. Then they chanted something like: "Nixon set the date! Evacuate!"
As the police escorted us through the crowd, people on both sides were saying, "Right on! Brother, right on!" Near the wagon, an old lady stepped up to me and said, "God bless you!"
Daniel Borgström
March 1972
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Postscript
Our hope, in this and other actions by VVAW, was to show opposition to the war in Vietnam by G.I.s and veterans. That was our message, and we had some degree of success in getting it across. Nevertheless, during the years that followed, I often wondered what lasting effect, if any, we and the rest of the antiwar movement may have had on the world. What did we achieve?
Then one day in the early 1990's I read this account of our occupation of the consulate to my twelve-year-old son, Olaf. His eyes lit up, and he quoted a line from Shakespeare’s Henry V, a movie we had once watched together:
"This story will the good man teach his son."
When he said that to me, I understood, in a meaningful way, something I had not quite understood before--the value of having personally been there, standing up for what I believed in.
While this event was reported in by the establishment news media, the article which I published three months later in an underground newspaper told it from the viewpoint of a participant. Today I'd like to repost it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Occupying the Consulate of South Vietnam
29 December 1971
Christmas came and Nixon bombed North Vietnam. It’d been the heaviest bombing since ‘68, and it went on for nearly a week. In New York VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) occupied the Statue of Liberty; and then VVAW chapters from Seattle to Boston began seizing national monuments and draft boards. Here in San Francisco we called a meeting to discuss an action. I was a bit late, the meeting had started and I walked in just as someone suggested we occupy the South Vietnamese Consulate.
Discussion of that was short; somebody went down to check the place out and the rest of us set about other details. We decided to occupy it the next morning and spent the rest of the day getting ready. The biggest hassle was writing up the statement we’d use both as news release and leaflet. We sat there all afternoon and got nowhere on it, and finally we just went to somebody’s place for supper.
We sat there, eating and watching TV. It was like election time: Nixon and the "Peace" candidates all getting TV time and they were campaigning like all hell. About all it amounted to was: A "few" more American lives "well spent" on some spectacular military success, and Nixon might win the coming ‘72 elections; but too many GIs lost carelessly, and some other candidate might win. Big-time politicians had elections to win or lose and they were all on the tube saying their thing. GIs like us have their lives to lose and nothing to win, but the only way we just might get heard was to risk a whole shit-load of federal raps and create an international incident.
After supper, we went back to the VVAW office and sat up till 11 or 12 o’clock, still struggling with our statement. We all knew well enough what we wanted to communicate: like all of us were ex-GIs and most of us had been in Nam . . . the killed and the maimed weren’t just statistics to us; they were buddies we’d known and seen die and the people we’d been forced to help murder. We were talking about people who’d died in our arms or died by our hands. And as for the puppet dictatorship, well to us it wasn’t worth the life of a flea on a dog’s ass. And we just didn’t want any more lives squandered on it. But just how do you get something like that onto a sheet of paper? And with 10 or 15 authors it was like trying to double-time with 10 or 15 left legs.
I suppose what we finally got together maybe isn’t the most profound declaration ever; most of it’s been recognized fact for years now, and only the statistics change as they increase . . . Except for the opening line:
"Vietnam Veterans Against the War at 9:30 a.m. this morning
occupied the offices of the South Vietnamese Consulate at
870 Market St., San Francisco, California."
That isn’t said or done very often.
The next morning was December 29th. We met at the VVAW office, held a short discussion, and then at 9:30 we went to the consulate. We got there right on schedule, just as it was opening, and walked in and asked the staff to leave. They left peacefully, and we locked the doors and barricaded them with desks and file cabinets.
That done, everything suddenly went silent and there was nothing to do but wait, and we didn’t know for how long. The SFPD might come busting the doors down in 10 minutes, or it might take 2 days and a direct order from the White House to send the FBI.
A phone rang. I picked it up and answered, "Vietnam Veterans Against the War." Whoever it was phoning, he freaked out and hung up.
President Thieu’s portrait was hanging on the wall in practically every office; we turned them all up-side down. We also took the regime’s flag and laid it to rest in a waste-basket. And that was the only "damage" we did—if it can be called "damage".
We’d occupied the consulate for about an hour when the police finally came up with the building manager and said: "I’m asking you to vacate the offices and picket peacefully outside the building."
And we replied: "Is there any reason that Nixon can’t vacate Vietnam and picket peacefully?"
But the Vietnamese Consul General never once came himself and asked us to leave. He just sat the whole thing out down in the building manager’s office. Later, after our trial was over, the jury foreman told us that was one of the important factors that influenced them to find us not guilty of trespassing. There’s something about those puppet officials, they seem psychologically incapable of ever telling Americans to get out.
Finally, the police came and offered us something that sounded like amnesty if we’d just leave and warned that they’d arrest us for trespassing if we didn’t. We’d held the place for 2 hours by then and some people felt we’d already made our point and should go. Others were for staying and the discussion lasted for several minutes. Finally one guy said something like: "Some of us’ve got jobs to worry about. Well, I for one have a job and I phoned in sick this morning and took the day off to come here. If I get busted I might get fired—but I’m staying."
We stayed, and got arrested for "trespassing". The police escorted us out of the building one at a time, POW style with our hands on our heads. Up the hall, down an elevator, and out the door to paddy-wagons. A large crowd of people, both young and old, had assembled outside in the street and as we came out the door they clapped and cheered. Then they chanted something like: "Nixon set the date! Evacuate!"
As the police escorted us through the crowd, people on both sides were saying, "Right on! Brother, right on!" Near the wagon, an old lady stepped up to me and said, "God bless you!"
Daniel Borgström
March 1972
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Postscript
Our hope, in this and other actions by VVAW, was to show opposition to the war in Vietnam by G.I.s and veterans. That was our message, and we had some degree of success in getting it across. Nevertheless, during the years that followed, I often wondered what lasting effect, if any, we and the rest of the antiwar movement may have had on the world. What did we achieve?
Then one day in the early 1990's I read this account of our occupation of the consulate to my twelve-year-old son, Olaf. His eyes lit up, and he quoted a line from Shakespeare’s Henry V, a movie we had once watched together:
"This story will the good man teach his son."
When he said that to me, I understood, in a meaningful way, something I had not quite understood before--the value of having personally been there, standing up for what I believed in.
