Dave Cline

“They had a GI coffeehouse at Fort Hood, a place called the Oleo Strut. ... The GI movement started at Fort Hood—the Fort Hood Three, three years before I got there, guys who refused to go to Vietnam. That began to plant the seed. The soil was fertile because the reality was that the government was lying to us. Most people are decent people. They don’t want to go kill people and engage in brutality.... I went down there and got involved in publishing an underground newspaper called the Fatigue Press. We were putting out literature against the war and against the military and for GI rights and against racism.”

—Dave Cline on organizing inside the U.S. Army, from the book “Winter Soldier: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War”

Dave Cline in 2005. WW photo: G. Dunkel

Dave Cline, an anti-war soldier and military veteran activist, trade unionist and anti-racist, died at his Jersey City home on Sept. 15—another hidden casualty of the Vietnam War. He had been quite ill for the last few months but continued to organize for veterans’ rights, against the Iraq War and on behalf of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange up until his death.

Dave grew up in a working class family in Buffalo, N.Y., and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967. Later that year, while serving with the 25th Infantry Division, he was wounded in a kill-or-be-killed situation near the Cambodian border and became permanently disabled. The incident affected him politically, physically and emotionally every day for the rest of his life.

In 1968 while on convalescent leave at home, Dave got involved with the Buffalo Draft Resistance Union and began speaking out publicly against the war. His political activism took off from there.

He helped run the Oleo Strut GI coffee house in Killeen, Texas, outside Fort Hood, which is still today a U.S. Army megabase. In 1970 he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and became one of its early leaders. In the 1980s he helped resurrect the organization.

In the 1970s he worked at the Jersey City bulk mail facility of the U.S. Postal Service. Cline led a number of wildcat strikes as an elected shop steward of the New York Metro Local of the American Postal Workers Union, which led to his being fired. He also led co-workers in a militant confrontation with a racist Klan-type organization that was terrorizing people of color in Jersey City.

In the 1980s Dave was a vice president of Transportation Workers Union Local 600 while employed by the New York-New Jersey Port Authority.

He was president of Veterans for Peace when 9/11 happened  and worked tirelessly against the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan that followed. He always pushed hard for diversity in the organization, especially encouraging African-American membership and leadership. Cline met with veterans of the current wars and assisted and encouraged them in their formation of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

In 2003 he led a delegation of military veterans to the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, supporting the local struggle in actions that resulted in the U.S. Navy closing down its bombing range there.

In 2006 he traveled to Vietnam and took part in the historic International Agent Orange Conference. When a delegation of Vietnamese Agent Orange victims toured the U.S. earlier this year as part of a legal campaign for reparations, Cline gave his Purple Heart medal to one of the delegation’s members during a public meeting in New York City.

He was motivated by the struggle for peace and justice. He will be missed by all who worked with him, as evidenced by the overflow crowd that attended his funeral.

Michael Kramer is a member of Veterans For Peace, Chapter 021, in Jersey City.