VietLeft Power: Merle Presente!
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(February 17, 2024)
Merle Ratner – ¡Presente! in the Veteran, by Nadya Williams, Spring 2024
Merle Ratner – ¡Presente!
By Nadya Williams
For an American to be honored upon passing with an official memorial is quite rare in Vietnam. However, both respect and love were well-earned by Merle Ratner’s life-long devotion to the victims of the American War. She was only 13 in 1970 when she was first arrested in her native New York City for protesting the war. Unlike most Americans who demonstrated until the war’s end in April 1975—then dropped out—Merle’s commitment did not stop or waiver.
Had her death at 67 on Monday, February 5th, been a peaceful and natural one, there would surely have been sad remembrances in Ha Noi among the organizations she so faithfully supported. But death came suddenly and violently as she was walking in the early evening across an intersection near her home in lower Manhattan, bringing food to an elderly friend. She died instantly, struck by a large truck making a rapid turn. Her husband of 44 years, Ngo Thanh Nhan, was just a few blocks away in their apartment, awaiting her return.
The February 16th online memorial in Vietnam’s capital of Ha Noi was beautifully organized, principally by the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations—VUFO, and by VAVA—the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin. Merle Ratner’s global reach was such that within a few days, the link to attend the moving tribute to her virtually circled the globe. A large solemn room was filled with official representatives, with a raised platform at one end holding a large photo of her surrounded by flowers. Going to the podium on the side, each speaker bowed deeply in front of her shrine before and after delivering their eulogy. All Vietnamese spoke in English, and all were men, except for one woman who spoke close to tears. Her husband Nhan was the last to talk via Zoom from their home in New York. Speaking only in Vietnamese, his voice breaking, this writer felt and, strangely, “understood” every heart-rending word he uttered.
We in San Francisco’s Veterans For Peace chapter had met Merle and Nhan several times, starting in 2005 as they escorted small groups of Vietnamese whose lives had been severely damaged by Agent Orange/Dioxin. These delegations toured the country, stopped in Washington, DC, for meetings, and ended up in New York City to coincide with a 2004 lawsuit against the manufacturers and users of the deadly weapon of war.
Merle co-founded the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign, which fought to make both the US government and chemical corporations compensate people in Vietnam for the legacy of congenital disabilities and cancers caused by the toxic chemicals the US military used during the war. Not surprisingly, the suit was rejected in the New York Circuit Court, and an appeal to the Supreme Court was not accepted for a hearing. This spring, a major lawsuit against Monsanto, Dow, and others is on appeal in Paris, France. An estimated three million suffer today as gene-warping Dioxin continues to cause severe congenital disabilities in the Fourth Generation since the war. After many years of struggle, many American veterans now receive some compensation but nothing for their affected children or grandchildren.
More recently, Merle supported the development of a new generation of Vietnamese leftists in the US, organizing study groups, making trips to Vietnam, and developing strategies with VietLeft Power. Merle had served on the Brecht Forum/Marxist School board, a movement education center. She was most recently a board member of the Laundry Workers Center, a project that advocates on behalf of low-wage laundry and food service workers. Before her death, Merle was working as a New York City public school substitute teacher and was finishing up a master’s program in labor studies. “She loved her kids, the job, and the challenge,” Nhan said. “I’m greatly affected by this loss,” he added. “She helped me understand American politics and the lives of poor people.” So many owe a huge debt of gratitude to Merle Ratner. She was the last person that should have left us so soon.
Only three days before her death, the Vietnam News Agency published an interview with Merle: https://en.vietnamplus.vn/us-activist-cpv-stands-as-linchpin-behind-every-vietnams-success/279202.vnp
Nadya Williams is an Associate Member of VFP, San Francisco Ch. 69 and Director of Communication.
Merle Ratner ¡presente! by Paddy Colligan, Workers World, Feb 19, 2024
Home » Global » Asia & the Pacific » Merle Ratner ¡presente!
Merle Ratner ¡presente!
By Paddy Colligan posted on February 19, 2024
On Feb. 5, 2024, the U.S. movement lost longtime anti-war, community activist Merle Ratner. She was killed instantly when a tow truck struck her near her home in New York City’s East Village.
Merle Ratner supporting peace for Vietnam. Photo: vufo.org.vn
The daughter of leftist parents, Merle became involved in the movement against the war in Vietnam at 13 when she was arrested for the first time holding a banner supporting the National Liberation Front of Vietnam at the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. Her moral indignation and dedication grew as she saw scenes of the war on television and learned of the U.S. use of chemical warfare against the Vietnamese people.
Merle’s political trajectory mirrored that of many youth of the 1960s who were inspired by the resistance of the Vietnamese people and then made connections to struggles playing out at home. She became a socialist and a communist, continuing her involvement in the movement for peace, justice and a humane world until her death at 67.
Support for the Vietnamese people remained her anchor throughout her life. She described her political journey in a moving interview with the New York Historical Society’s oral history project about the U.S. anti-war movement. (tinyurl.com/mr6jbj9d)
Demanded reparations
After Vietnam’s victory over the U.S. in 1975, Merle turned to organizing to demand that the U.S. government live up to its unfulfilled promise of reparations, to normalizing relations between the two countries, and to ensuring that the people of the U.S. learned about the devastating and continuing effects of Agent Orange/dioxin that the Pentagon had spread across Vietnam.
Merle and Ngô Thanh Nhan, her life partner and husband of 44 years, co-founded the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign (VAORRC) in New York to ensure that the continuing horrors of Agent Orange/dioxin weapons were well understood.
Merle remained the link between the U.S. movement, the Vietnamese community, and the Vietnamese delegation to the United Nations. Together with Nhan, she worked to educate people about the terrible effects of the imperialist war through public meetings, house meetings, media campaigns, and multicity speaking tours. They brought people together from the Vietnamese community and the broader population to meet with and hear Vietnamese people speak about their lives under attack from the U.S.
Fought against Agent Orange
These powerful grassroots events included Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange poisoning, Vietnamese and U.S. veterans, survivors of the cruel and torturous CIA-run tiger cages, and anti-war and community activists. Merle arranged a U.S. tour for Phan Thị Kim Phúc, whose iconic photograph as a child fleeing from napalm being dropped on her village had so outraged the American public.
Over more than half a century of political work, Merle was deeply involved in many struggles. Besides Vietnam-related issues, she contributed her energy and organizing skills to the struggles for a free Palestine, for racial justice, and for the rights of low-wage workers. She served on the board of the Laundry Workers Center.
Merle worked at many jobs over the years, often for progressive law practices, and most recently as a substitute public school teacher. But her activism was her identity and through it she made an enormous contribution to the movement for a more just and fair world. Her untimely death is a great loss to all of her family, friends and political associates, but most of all to the political struggles to which she has given so much.
Merle’s solidarity was greatly respected and appreciated in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Communist Party sent condolences to her family. A moving memorial for her was held in Hanoi and virtually on Feb. 16 by the Viet Nam Union of Friendship Organizations. High level Vietnamese colleagues from the diplomatic community, the friendship associations, Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA), and her spouse Nhan remembered her work and love for Vietnam.
Merle received awards from the Vietnamese Women’s Association in 2010 and in 2013 for her work with Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange/dioxin. The Viet Nam Commemorative Medal for Peace and Friendship among Nations was awarded to her posthumously at this event.
Merle Ratner ¡presente!
Paddy Colligan worked with Merle Ratner for more than 40 years, representing Workers World Party in Vietnam solidarity work.