Between issues , Sharlet worked wealthy liberal circles on both coasts for contributions to support production costs . Barbara Garson , author of '' MacBird '' , a widely performed anti-war play of the late 1960s , was an especially helpful West Coast contact . While traveling , Sharlet kept in touch with civilian activists running GI coffee houses outside major bases , including Judy Olasov at Ft. Leonard Wood , Missouri ; Larry Langowski at Fort Sill , Oklahoma ; and Donna Mickleson , national coordinator of the coffee house movement based in the San Francisco Bay area , as well as draft resistance groups which distributed '' Vietnam GI '' at induction centers , including CADRE ( Chicago Area Draft Resisters ) and the Boston Draft Resistance Group in New England , which not only helped by having the paper printed in Boston but also by shipping copies into Vietnam and distributing it throughout New England . In late 1968 Sharlet visited the Oleo Strut , the highly activist GI coffee house , and nearby Fort Hood in Killeen , Texas . Run by Josh Gould and Janet " Jay " Lockard , it was associated with the strike of the " Fort Hood 43 , " Black troops who refused riot duty at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago . Sharlet also represented the burgeoning GI anti-war movement at conferences in Japan and in Sweden where he worked with the theologians Harvey Cox , Michael Novak , and the late Richard John Neuhaus The success of '' Vietnam GI '' and the growing GI protest against the war led to national media coverage for Sharlet and the paper in '' Esquire '' , '' New York Times '' , and on NBC Nightly Television News as well as the AP and NEA newswire services . In early 1969 a problem first experienced in Vietnam resurfaced , and he underwent surgery for kidney cancer . As David Komatsu wrote in '' Vietnam GI '' , " From there it was steadily downhill all the way . At the end , he said he had many new ideas for our fight , but was just too exhausted to talk about them . " Sharlet died on June 16 , 1969 , age 27 . Sharlet 's work as a founder of the GI protest movement was eulogized in the underground press throughout the country , including '' The Movement '' , '' Veterans Stars & Stripes for Peace '' , '' Guardian '' , and '' The Old Mole '' of Cambridge , Massachusetts . David Dellinger with Barbara Webster published a long remembrance of Sharlet for the magazine '' Liberation '' . A new GI underground paper , '' Next Step '' , published in Heidelberg , then West Germany , was dedicated to him , while Fred Gardner , in the definitive account of the 1968 Presidio Mutiny 27 , '' The Unlawful Concert '' ( 1970 ) , dedicated his book to " Jeff Sharlet , founder of Vietnam GI , dead at 27 . " During past decades a number of scholars of the Vietnam anti-war movement have written about Sharlet and '' Vietnam GI '' in books and journals , including in recent years Andrew E. Hunt , '' The Turning : A History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War '' ( 1999 ) ; David Cortright , '' Soldiers in Revolt : GI Resistance During the Vietnam War '' ( reissued 2005 ) ; Bob Ostertag , '' People 's Movements/People 's Press '' ( 2006 ) ; and a new middle school text , '' The American Journey : Modern Times '' ( 2009 ) . Most recently , in 2012 , the '' Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award '' , the first literary prize for military veterans , was inaugurated at the University of Iowa
1968 Democratic National Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention
Jeff Sharlet (activist)