WHAT WE LEFT

Hearts and Minds, the Academy Award nning documentary about the American esence in Vietnam, is now playing in Clevend and should be seen by every American who s any doubts about why we were there and e results of our intrusion. According to your litical lights, Hearts and Minds is a candid d powerful portrayal of the physical and ychic damage caused to the Vietnamese ople and their land by the callous Ameri1s, or a biased and treacherous piece of ti-American propaganda; from either int of view, the movie is an undeniably ving piece of work, the emotional eft of which remains with one long after e has left the theater.

The movie is comprised of a series of erviews and vignettes, skillfully juxtased for maximum dramatic value. One the more famous scenes is of a small etnamese boy sobbing uncontrollablv er the coffin of his slain father, followed General Westmoreland, looking like an erstuffed eagle, saying that to the Vietmese, life is cheap and of little value. at this attitude was shared by most nericans in Vietnam is made clear oughout the movie. At one point, George Coker, a returned POW eaking to a class of 10-year olds, ponds to the question "What does

Sterilization

int, from page 7

Mexican American Women According to dr. Bernard Rosenfeld, who terviewed doctors about the practice of ushing" sterilizations at County-University Southern California (USC) Medical Center L.A., a doctor who had interned there ited: "What they did to minority group >men there, particularly Mexican-Americans, ally turned me off. They would get a young ɔman, maybe 19 or 20, who was having a by and start right in on her in the delivery om, urging that she have her tubes out. If e said no, they would all stand around her d every morning while on rounds and reatedly suggest that she have the operation. ey kept telling her it was simply a matter having your tubes tied, "and then you won't ve to hassle the pill any more." (Liberation ws Service)

Puerto Rico

Women in Puerto Rico have been subjected the most intensive sterilization program of /nation in the world, according to a report the United Nations last fall. Thirty-five 'cent of the island's women of child-bearing DNAPPING continued from page 2

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Vietnam look like?" by saying, "It's a beautiful country -except for the people". According to Coker, the Vietnamese are primitive and obviously inferior; the implication is that they are thus a fit subject for genocide.

But wait! It's not men who are

"'Shush, m'am-we're trying to conduct a secret war.''

Mauldin, Chicago Sun Times

age, or some 200,000, have been rendered permanently incapable of bearing children. Dr. Antonio Silva, the Puerto Rican government's Assistant Secretary of Health for Family Planning, announced that "free clinics" in Puerto Rico have been doing 1,000 sterilizations per month since February 1974.

"In no other country has this been done on such a scale," said Dr. Helen Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican doctor on the pediatric staff at Lincoln Hospital in New York City. She said that women on the island have no real alternative to sterilization if they desire some method of birth control.

Pills and the like are expensive and not widely available, she said. Sterilization is free, and since 1935 has been the means of birth control pushed by the U.S. Abortion, while it has always been available to rich women, is still illegal and unavailable to the masses of women except under unsanitary and dangerous conditions.

Ms. Rodriguez pointed out that while Puerto Rico must follow decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and "bow low to whatever comes from the U.S." the one decision the island has not implemented was the high court's January 1973 ruling striking down nearly all restrictions on abortion.

et no one thought enough of them to adopt them. We must take care of home first. There are so any children here, in and out of foster homes who sit hungry.'

Aisha Kwetae, of the Black Unity House: 'Adoption is beautiful but I do not like the high prices ey put on the children – making profits on them. Why don't they send the 'money over there for e hungry children there? It is racism to want to keep a few children here but do nothing for the many ore over there. We should provide for all the children everywhere.'

Here at WSW we feel that appropriate restorative action should taken immediately. Now that the war s ended and Vietnamese families are resettling and communications are being restored, immediate arches for the parents of these children should begin. Once found, all the children should be returned our expense with apologies. In addition, those responsible for this disgusting act of war should be ed in war tribunals to make clear that we intend to uphold the Geneva Conventions for ourselves as ell as for our adversaries.

For the sisters who feel such desperate motherhood urges we want to point out that there are many any ways to serve children. Serve as foster parents, work in institutions, in schools, set up day cares, e opportunities are endless.

A motherlove which is confined only to one's own legal property does not come from the love of ildren.

ge 10/What She Wants/June, 1975

BEHIND

responsible for the actions of American military men in Vietnam. Lt. Coker, this time speaking to a group of middle. aged women, has more words of wisdom for us: it's Mom who first instills respect for authority into her sons and makes them capable of being the fine disciplined killers they are. (The women listening to Coker, to their credit, looked rather embarrassed.) Another scene, shot in a Saigon brothel, is equally sexist: The American customers handle and joke about the women as if they were objects, although it is clear that the women understand English and despise their pimply-faced johns. One hopes that the soldiers' American girlfriends see the film.

Hearts and Minds portrays some physically violent moments, such as an ARVN general shooting a suspected Vietcong through the head, but the scenes which one remembers long afterward are principally those which illustrate the emotional damage done to Vietnamese and Americans alike by the war. There are two old Vietnamese sisters who lapse into a silence more eloquent than words, finally broken by one of them saying merely, "I am so sad" in a way which expresses a poignant and profound grief; there is the American pilot, aware at last of the horror of his actions, still too deeply affected by guilt even to cry; there is the woman ex-prisoner of the tiger cages, barely able to walk, telling almost impassively of the beatings and other tortures inflicted upon her; there is the father mourning the loss of his 8-year old daughter, killed by bombs while feeding the pigs, wanting to give his daughter's beautiful shirt to the cameramen so that they can take it back to the U.S. and "throw it in Nixon's face." Finally, and perhaps most horrifying in its implications, there is the self-professed "johnny-come-lately to war profiteering', rubbing his hands gleefully at the thought of hordes of rich American tourists to come after the end of the war. Is this, indeed, the final truth about the war and why we were there? One wonders if the profiteer is one of the refugees (from what? justice?) now in this country. If so, we deserve him.

ESIS

12200 EUCLID

VEGETARIAN COOKERY

M.-Th. 11-9:30

F.&S. 11-11

Sun, 11.6

PEACE HOUSE

10912 Magnolia (rear)

231-4245 and 231-4246 American Friend's Service Committee

Clergy and Laity Concerned

Indochina Peace Campaign

Project on National Priorities United Farmworkers

What She Wants

Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice