Jeff Sharlet and 'Vietnam GI'

Jeff Sharlet was founding editor of Vietnam GI  and a leader of the GI protest movement against the Vietnam War. A major chronicler of the Vietnam GI antiwar movement, David Cortright, wrote, “Vietnam GI, the most influential early paper, surfaced at the end of 1967, distributed to tens of thousands of GIs, many in Vietnam, closed down after the death of founder Jeff Sharlet in June, 1969."

Jeff Sharlet, 1942-1969

Sharlet and his antiwar work were eulogized throughout the country in the underground press.  A long remembrance appeared in the magazine Liberation. A new GI underground paper, The Next Step, published in Heidelberg, West Germany, dedicated to him, while the definitive account of the ‘68 Presidio Mutiny 27, Fred Gardner’s The Unlawful Concert (1970), was dedicated to “Jeff Sharlet, founder of Vietnam GI, dead at 27.” 

The most dramatic tribute to Jeff Sharlet and Vietnam GI, was the award-winning documentary, Sir! No Sir! (2005) on the Vietnam GI antiwar movement. Co-dedicated to Sharlet for,  as director David Zeiger put it, "starting it all," film screened nationally and on Sundance Channel. To read more about Jeff Sharlet and Vietnam GI, see

http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sharlet_and_Vietnam_GI

New in 2012 is the annual 'Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans', a $1,000 prize, with publication, for writing in any genre on any subject by U.S. military veterans or active duty personnel.  It is being hosted by The Iowa Review and judged by Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his collection of short stories, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.  The 2012 deadline for submission is June 15.  If you are a vet or on active duty and a writer, please consider submitting your work.  If you have friends, family, co-workers, or students who are veterans or on active duty, please let them know about this contest that we believe is the first of its kind. Read more about the award at  http://iowareview.uiowa.edu/veteranswritingcontest.

Purpose of this Web site is to support a book-length memoir on Jeff Sharlet underway by his brother Bob Sharlet. Bob has spoken with several dozens of people who knew Jeff from prep school, Army Language School, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indiana University, and Chicago (from where he launched Vietnam GI), but he hasn’t been able to locate the individuals listed on these pages,  such as: Ralph W. Adams and Ken Yonowitz from Jeff’s Vietnam War tour; John Grove, Bob Grove, and Bob Johnson from his Indiana University Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) period; and Bob Brown, Dink McCarter, and Susan Rosenberg from the Chicago Vietnam GI days.