Dave Cline, former president of VFP (RIP)

[noamnety]

From a friend's blog:

Dave was former President of Veterans For Peace, founding leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and a founder of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign.

He was prominently featured in the film Sir, No Sir!, a film about GI resistance during the Vietnam occupation, reviewed recently by DeAnander on this site.

I met Dave when a handful of us began the Bring Them Home Now! campaign in 2003. He came across like a Jersey street person. He drank and smoked to excess, even though his health was under assault from a lifetime of hardship and ill health, beginning with disabling combat wounds from Vietnam. This first impression was deceptive. He had one of the sharpest political intuitions of anyone I’ve ever known. He was a mentor of the first order, and a patient, fearless revolutionary. ...

http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2007/09/15/dave-cline/

I knew him from the veterans and survivors gulf march, where he was fighting for the rights of people he didn't know. He had a gift for helping people see the connections between environmental destruction, the oppression of women, racism, and warfare.

I am sad he's gone, and angry that he didn't live to see the end of this mess.