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FREEDOMWAYS                          FIRST QUARTER 1972
pretenses of the Nixon Administration that it is "winding down" the war in Vietnam than the fact that the military budget has been recently increased to 83 billion dollars for this year while more intensive bombings of Vietnam are being visited on that devasted land. The moral responsibility goes even further to commit a substantial part of this nation's resources to rebuilding the hospitals, schools and agricultural areas that American military intervention has destroyed. This is an issue to be confronted at the ballot box this year.
These elections at every level must give a sense of hope and progressive future to the youth of the nation and provide a civilized alternative to their present choice of joblessness, jail and war. An indispensable part of this perspective is the granting of unconditional amnesty for all the young brothers who have refused to cooperate with the racist, military establishment and because of this are doing time in prisons and stockades or have had to flee into self-imposed exile abroad.

The mammoth network of military spies snooping on public personalities in the peace movement, civil rights, women's liberation and various elected officials has even alarmed such conservatives as Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina who heads the Senate Committee on Constitutional Rights. This is but the latest evidence of the systematic erosion of elementary citizenship rights which has been proceeding steadily since the era of McCarthyism started by the Truman Administration in the 1950's. The stage is set for a full blown police state in America. And that's a "set" which no person who cherished the right to be more than a slave can afford to be politically naive or apathetic about.

So the issues have not changed in any fundamental way. They remain the same--freedom, peace and economic well-being based upon a full employment, peacetime economy and more representative government being put in power. By a more representative government being put in power. By a more representative government is meant one which puts the need of 200 million working people and small businesses ahead of special interests of Lockheed, the war-profiteering corporations and the super-rich.

That's the still unfinished business which we must use the 1972 elections to move towards completing.
                                      The Editors
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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-16 11:06:01