The People Make the Peace Lessons from the Vietnam Antiwar Movement

As young adults in the 1960s and 1970s, the nine people featured in this book—including co-editor Frank Joyce, Rennie Davis, Judy Gumbo, Alex Hing, and others—worked to end the U.S. war in Vietnam. Independently of each other, while the United States was still at war, nearly all of them travelled to North Vietnam, risking physical harm and charges of treason back home.

In 2013, they all revisited Vietnam in a trip organized by the editors of this book. The People Make the Peace presents their reflections on those experiences, providing thoughtful and well informed reflections on a war and an era that deeply affected the United States and the world.

Karín Aguilar-San Juan is an associate professor of American Studies at Macalester College. Her book Little Saigons: Staying Vietnamese in America examined the role of place for Vietnamese Americans. In a 1994 edited volume, she gave visibility to Asian-American activism for that generation. Frank Joyce, a lifelong political activist, heads the board of a media production nonprofit supporting the anti-hate movement Not In Our Town (NIOT). He and his wife divide their time between Detroit and Paso Robles, Calif. He is a longtime board member for the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR).