Dangerous Grounds: Antiwar Coffeehouses and Military Dissent in the Vietnam Era by David L. Parsons (review)

David L. Parsons's Dangerous Grounds: Antiwar Coffeehouses and Military Dissent in the Vietnam Era is a very good book that delves into an unexplored aspect of the Vietnam War: the relationship between a particular grassroots civilian antiwar project, and young servicemen who were questioning the purpose and morality of the American conflict in Southeast Asia. The gi coffeehouses, which are the focus of the book, were civilianowned and operated "counterculture themed hang-outs" located near military bases (2). Parsons argues that the coffeehouses "played a critical role in the larger gi movement"—the body of military personnel that resisted American involvement in the Vietnam War through activities ranging from public protest to the outright refusal to deploy to Southeast Asia. The coffeehouses offered a safe space to "organize demonstrations, distribute literature, produce underground newspapers and hold meetings," which was essential in conferring "a degree of legitimacy to the actions of antiwar soldiers" and "establishing them as important components of a multipronged national effort to end the war" (11).

Parsons contends that the network of coffeehouses that spanned the United States was very much a part of "the wider social, cultural, and political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s" (4). He examines how the coffeehouse project was caught up in the race, class, and gender politics of the era. Race is the most prominent theme of the three. Parsons demonstrates how the coffeehouses launched publicity campaigns in support of Black gis who were being persecuted by the military for protesting the racism that pervaded the armed forces, offered legal support to Black soldiers who refused to obey orders to deploy to Chicago for riot control during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and attempted to promote racial peace within the ranks at a time when Black-white animosity was reaching the breaking point on military bases. As the war dragged on, Parsons argues that the divisions that split both the civil rights and antiwar movements in the late 1960s proved too great to overcome and efforts to promote racial unity supported by the coffeehouses faltered.

In terms of class, the working-class nature of the United States army is an implicit theme running throughout the book. Parsons shows how class served as both a source and avenue for protest picked up on by the coffeehouses. In one particular example, he discusses how a speaker at an event sponsored by the Shelter Half coffeehouse in Tacoma, Washington, drew parallels between the "poor agricultural laborers" and the "exploited 'grunts"' of the military. The speaker's aim was to call for a "union model of labor organization" to "ameliorate these shared injustices" (79). As for gender, this is the least-developed aspect of the book. The author argues the coffeehouses were locales for women to offer a pointed critique of the military's hyper-masculinity that linked sexism to "racism and imperialism" (5). Unfortunately, he fails to elaborate on this connection throughout the text and does not explore the coffeehouses in the context of second-wave feminism.

Of particular note to some readers who may be interested in the tactics of the Vietnam antiwar movement, Parsons's book offers some very entertaining explorations of "guerrilla theatre" as a form of protest. Demonstrators employed "public satire" as a means to highlight the absurdity of the American war in Vietnam and the coffeehouses were often used to organize and publicize these events (77). These include "The Aquatic Invasion of Fort Lewis," which saw student protestors from a number of left-wing and New Left organizations stage a mock invasion of the shores of the military base in Tacoma, Washington (61–62); and the touring fta (Free the Army or Fuck the Army) revue, featuring Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and Dick Gregory.

As these examples indicate, Parsons's book is immensely readable. It is written in an easily accessible style...