GI's Against Fascism
GI's Against Fascism was a small but formative organization formed within the United States Navy during the years of conscription and the Vietnam War. The group developed in mid-1969 out of a number of sailors requesting adequate quarters, but coalesced into a formal organization with a wider agenda: a more generalized opposition to the war and to perceived institutional racism within the U.S. Navy. Although there had been earlier antiwar and GI resistance groups within the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era, GI's Against Fascism was the first such group in the U.S. Navy. The group published an underground newspaper called Duck Power as a means of spreading its views.
By late 1969 they merged with a group of marines at Camp Pendleton to form the Movement for a Democratic Military and continued publishing their newspaper until the middle of 1970. Although short-lived, because they were pioneers within the U.S. Navy and helped found the influential MDM, they had an important impact on later expressions of dissent within the U.S. military and the overall anti-Vietnam War movement.
Organizational history
Background
In April 1969, some of the enlisted men of VS-41 stationed at Naval Air [Station North Island|North Island Naval Air Station] in San Diego found their barracks in terrible condition. The paint was peeling, the toilets and sinks were clogged up, most showers didn't work, and the place was infested with cockroaches. "Quite simply, our living conditions were intolerable", later wrote Robert Mahoney, an African American enlisted man, who had been picked as spokesman by 5 or 10 other enlisted men to explain their grievances. Mahoney raised their complaints to an inspecting officer. This led to rapid improvements of the quarters: the building was cleaned up and painted, the bathrooms and showers were repaired, and a cubicle was converted to a reading or study room. But it also led, according to Mahoney, to unwanted attention for the group—and Mahoney in particular—as "troublemakers".Racism in the military
Within VS-41 and across North Island, sailors, especially African Americans, experienced selective discrimination as personal posters of respected African Americans of the time, like Huey Newton and Malcolm X, were confiscated and destroyed, while white sailors’ posters of anti-establishment people like Bob Dylan or of nude women remained untouched. When confronted, a Chief Petty Officer who had destroyed some posters said "Yeah, I did it, because it was commie literature." In addition, when a senior officer was told of racial incidents involving white sailors calling other whites "n___ lovers" for hanging out with blacks, the officer demanded to know why the white sailor would want to hang out with blacks. All of this convinced Mahoney and two other enlisted men of the need to fight back and to educate their fellow sailors.''Duck Power''
Mahoney, Tom Csekey and Andy Carlson, started smuggling copies of radical and antiwar newspapers onto the Navy base. They knew it could be a violation of military regulations to distribute literature of this kind on a military installation, but felt it was worth the risk and were willing to go to jail if caught. This activity created a furor among the Navy officers and lifers and convinced the three they were doing something important.With the help and encouragement from the staff of the San Diego Free Press, a local underground newspaper, they decided to start their own newspaper. In August 1969 they published the first issue of Duck Power, which they named by combining a well-known radical expression of the times, "Power to the People", with Duck, a Navy slang word for an enlisted sailor. They called themselves "GI's Against Fascism" because they believed the treatment they had received in the military resembled fascism more than democracy. In all, 15 issues of Duck Power were published, with the last one appearing in July 1970.