Arab Spring on display to the world presented images of young minds creating a new world and a new way of being. In its' early beginning around 2005 there was a group of young, creative, committed, fierce and visionary like-minds who hold a great love for the island, culture and people of this place we call Guåhan, who came together to discuss the concerns raised regarding initial releases and leaks of the military buildup on the island. Moreover, the alarming presumptions and intoxicated euphoria locked any conversation or reference to the buildup into such deceivingly radiant terms. In this group were students, graduate students, healthcare professionals, musicians, poets, educators, community organizers, and artists. The San Diego conference was emotional and inspiring. Prior to this, many of us had no one to talk to about our concerns.
Ninety percent of the group has since returned home to take part in the discussions, provide the needed and relevant information, standing firm, challenging instruments of the state, protecting and defending home. This is the leadership we want for our island ~ ~ ~ ~
Pacific Daily News
June 25, 2011
Guam Needs Leadership on Buildup
Given last week's Sunday Forum topic, which focused on whether or not people should express their support of the military buildup, we eagerly await a future Sunday Forum that will ask the obvious next question as to whether or not people opposed to the buildup should speak out as well.
Last Sunday's topic coincided with the recent appearance of a new pro-buildup group Para Hita Todu, which is seeking to carve a place for itself in the buildup conversation.The tone of the topic made it seem as if the pro-buildup side of the debate, such as the leaders of Para Hita Todu, have been cowed into silence and become marginalized in the process. In addition to the lack of any semblance of objectivity, it is laughable to think that such captains of industry and influence, with their thousands of employees, millions of dollars and obvious power, who have dominated the discussion of the buildup since it was announced, have somehow been silenced and need to be given a special space to make their case.
For years, the people of Guam were fed a steady stream of fantasies and wishful thinking about the buildup. Before people even knew what it was, while it was just numbers in press releases, people made promises of billions of dollars, better futures and jobs for everyone, without any specifics. But those days are over and the people of Guam have come to a point where we don't crave promises or platitudes about the buildup, but want answers and solutions to either the problem it represents in and of itself, or the problems that will arise because of it.
This is the sign of a maturing community; one which does not want to be lied to, but wants to be informed and wants to be able to make their own decisions.
What Guam needs now is leadership on the buildup issue, and this is something that as of yet Para Hita Todu is not offering. Their recently released study showing 60 percent buildup support in the community is a perfect example of this. They refuse to address the valid concerns of our community. Instead they have polarized the issue, making it just about who does or does not support the buildup, and not about why our community is apprehensive in the first place.
Proponents of the buildup have long attempted to substitute support for the buildup with a judgment that the buildup is good for Guam. Polls conducted over the years have always showed various high levels of "support" for the buildup, but this bears no relation to whether or not it is a good thing for the island.
The EIS gave the people of Guam answers about what the buildup might bring and much of it was bad. Thus, if Para Hita Todu wishes to blow the kulo' of buildup awesomeness, it must be able to tackle the legitimate concerns that people have about everything from Pågat, traffic, public institution overcrowding, environmental damage, a higher cost of living, and the list goes on.
From what we have seen so far, they are unwilling or unable to do so and have rebuffed these concerns with whimsical remarks of such things "being taken care of." The concerns of the people of Guam were kept at bay with such language for years and it did us little good.
Now that the military has revealed its plans and we know the potential impact, it does us even less good to ignore them. We need to continue to take a serious look at the buildup plans and address the valid concerns our community raised during the draft EIS commenting period, many of which are still being avoided by those orchestrating the buildup.
Para Hita Todu's inability to make a solid argument for the buildup is not truly their fault, but most likely tied to the inherent fact that the buildup has always been a potential boon for some and a possible burden for most. There are those who may reap incredible rewards from the buildup. They are the ones who are already at the top of Guam's society and have the means to leverage their already abundant resources into possibly much more resources.
For the majority of Guam's people, however, the opportunities are mixed, to say the least. The EIS said as much, by indicating that the quality of life on Guam may take a significant hit and the responses to these cautions from the pro-buildup side always boil down to vague promises of more money to take care of everything.
Yet when asked what kinds of jobs will be offered, what wages people will receive, who will get the big buildup contracts, how the government will pay for the necessary infrastructure and public service upgrades, how our island's middle- and lower-class families will be able to afford the increasing cost of living because of the buildup, those saying the economy will simply improve have no concrete answers.
While we agree that all voices must be heard in every discussion of our future, these voices must be informed by facts and not false promises. The people of Guam should always consider whether or not groups that claim they represent all of us truly do.
With Para Hita Todu's emphasis on "supporting" the buildup rather than understanding it or analyzing it, they are leading the island away from making concrete plans for all our people, and instead are supporting the interests of the select few who will profit and will not be disproportionately affected by the buildup's negative impacts.
Maolekña na mafana'an siha "Para Siha Todu."
Michael Lujan Bevacqua, Ph.D., and Victoria-Lola Leon Guerrero, M.F.A., both teach at the University of Guam.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Beyond Pagat
Beyond Pagat
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
June 15, 2011
The Marianas Variety
OVER the past year, I have lost track of how many times I have visited the Pågat area in northeastern Guam. I have taken my students on several trips there. I took reporters from NHK in Japan, the Washington Post in the U.S., and even a crew from Guam’s own PNC News there. Earlier this year, I took a group of newly elected and re-elected senators down there. I’ve lead groups there twice through the Heritage Hikes I’ve organized for We Are Guåhan and will be leading people once again later this month.
Even though I can count visiting Pågat at least 15 times in the past year and a half, I have not gotten tired of traveling there. Even as I walk on limestone trails, which I swear I could hike with my eyes closed, I still know that there is more to see and more for me to discover.
One reason for this is because while most people think of Pågat as the trail which leads from the Back Road to a cave and then to some stunning cliffs, Pågat in my mind extends further north and further south from that point. That trail itself is a great way to spend an afternoon, since you get to tour through different ecosystems and see artifacts along the trails. For those who are afraid of heights, there is a dark freshwater cave to swim in; and for those afraid of the dark, there is a well-lit cliff to jump off of to swim in the ocean below. But Pågat is still so much more than this.
Earlier this year, there was a debate in the media and in the minds of the military and Guam’s people as to what exactly constitutes Pågat.
Many felt it was just the sliver of land that I mentioned above and nothing more. If this was the case, then the proposed firing ranges the military plans to put on the bluff above Pågat could be more palatable, since the cave and cliff area so many know would fall on the edge, rather than the center of the surface danger zones, or the areas where there is a chance a stray bullet may land.
In response to this assertion, I and members of the group Halomtåno’ explored the area north of the assumed location of Pågat to see what we could find. Further north we found more latte and more lusong, and other artifacts such as pottery. As we moved further up the coast, we found pieces of shell tools such as higam or adze heads and even an acho achuman, a very ingenious device that ancient Chamorros used to train fish, making them easier to be caught later.
At the furthest northern point of Pågat is an area aptly called Pågat Point, which is, in my mind, the most beautiful section of all in Pågat. In the jungle cliffs we found small caves with pottery shards. And when you reach the ocean cliffs at Pågat Point, you find a lamasa, a natural table-like walkway at the water’s edge. The lamasa extends for what seems like a mile, and is for the most part safe and flat, although it can be dangerous, as its low level can make it easy for a rogue wave to appear and sweep you down into the deep blue sea.
This is something we learned firsthand; so if you ever visit this area, please be careful when the lamasa narrows. Despite the danger, the view there is breathtaking. From the jagged limestone cliffs you can face north and the cliffs of Yigo will look particularly majestic.
If you would like to learn more about Pågat and the artifacts or cultural significance I’m describing, by all means, join us on our Heritage Hike on June 25. We’ll be meeting at the Pågat trailhead on the Back Road to Anderson at 9 a.m.
For more information, head to http://www.weareguahan.com/
##
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
June 15, 2011
The Marianas Variety
Even though I can count visiting Pågat at least 15 times in the past year and a half, I have not gotten tired of traveling there. Even as I walk on limestone trails, which I swear I could hike with my eyes closed, I still know that there is more to see and more for me to discover.
One reason for this is because while most people think of Pågat as the trail which leads from the Back Road to a cave and then to some stunning cliffs, Pågat in my mind extends further north and further south from that point. That trail itself is a great way to spend an afternoon, since you get to tour through different ecosystems and see artifacts along the trails. For those who are afraid of heights, there is a dark freshwater cave to swim in; and for those afraid of the dark, there is a well-lit cliff to jump off of to swim in the ocean below. But Pågat is still so much more than this.
Earlier this year, there was a debate in the media and in the minds of the military and Guam’s people as to what exactly constitutes Pågat.
Many felt it was just the sliver of land that I mentioned above and nothing more. If this was the case, then the proposed firing ranges the military plans to put on the bluff above Pågat could be more palatable, since the cave and cliff area so many know would fall on the edge, rather than the center of the surface danger zones, or the areas where there is a chance a stray bullet may land.
In response to this assertion, I and members of the group Halomtåno’ explored the area north of the assumed location of Pågat to see what we could find. Further north we found more latte and more lusong, and other artifacts such as pottery. As we moved further up the coast, we found pieces of shell tools such as higam or adze heads and even an acho achuman, a very ingenious device that ancient Chamorros used to train fish, making them easier to be caught later.
At the furthest northern point of Pågat is an area aptly called Pågat Point, which is, in my mind, the most beautiful section of all in Pågat. In the jungle cliffs we found small caves with pottery shards. And when you reach the ocean cliffs at Pågat Point, you find a lamasa, a natural table-like walkway at the water’s edge. The lamasa extends for what seems like a mile, and is for the most part safe and flat, although it can be dangerous, as its low level can make it easy for a rogue wave to appear and sweep you down into the deep blue sea.
This is something we learned firsthand; so if you ever visit this area, please be careful when the lamasa narrows. Despite the danger, the view there is breathtaking. From the jagged limestone cliffs you can face north and the cliffs of Yigo will look particularly majestic.
If you would like to learn more about Pågat and the artifacts or cultural significance I’m describing, by all means, join us on our Heritage Hike on June 25. We’ll be meeting at the Pågat trailhead on the Back Road to Anderson at 9 a.m.
For more information, head to http://www.weareguahan.com/
##
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Pågat 'Sweeteners' Discussed
Marianas Variety
Pågat 'Sweeteners' Discussed
Therese Hart
May 26, 2011
Local activists and many island residents continue to question the sincerity of military and federal officials who speak of the buildup, even after officials assured them that discussions and plans on the Pågat issue are aboveboard and transparent.
A September 2010 email correspondence obtained by Variety among former Joint Guam Program Office Executive Director David Bice, Joe Ludovici, who has since taken over Bice’s position, and Capt. John Scorby, executive assistant to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Energy Installations & Environment, gives a glimpse of the strategies and mindset of the military with regard to the Pågat issue.
Scorby emailed Ludovici on Sept. 27, requesting that Ludovici provide a brief of Pågat to include “sweeteners” the Undersecretary needed for a briefing.
“At the DON staff meeting today with the Under, he asked that JGPO develop a brief on possible ‘sweeteners’ to get us over the Pågat issue. He indicated that this was going to be briefed at the next GOC, currently scheduled for Oct. 21. I don’t have a due date, but he indicated he was looking for the brief ‘soon.’ I’ll get more fidelity on that one.”
Bice responded, stating he had a discussion with “Ms. P last week,” and believed a “successful Route 15 acquisition strategy will require elimination all impacts to Pågat historic village in the near term, and finding mutual accommodations with race trace until expiration of land use license; ‘book end’ COA.”
Bice further wrote, “We can get all of the land eventually, including an SDZ (surface danger zone) over Pågat; we have to be patient and build trust with the community first.
“Groups opposing Marine relocation are successfully seizing on Pågat as a means to gain legitimacy with the public – need to take the issue off the table to isolate them.
“Sweeteners will be needed to garner GovGuam/Legislature support to remove firing range restrictions on Rt. 15 properties and to obtain Legislature approval of Chamorro Land Trust lease of properties below the cliff-line. Some members of the Legislature will attempt to block all land acquisition until other issues with Fed Govt are resolved – need to give Legislature a deal they can’t refuse.”
Speaker’s reaction
When Variety shared the email with Speaker Judi Won Pat, her reaction was quick, pointed, heated and then, resigned:
“This shows how disingenuous they are, and it seems they are engaging in some type of covert activity. ... They say they are being honest and upfront with us, yet, here’s proof that they are conniving behind our backs.
“We respond to the DEIS and FEIS, because they asked us to. We play by their rules and this is what they do to us. It’s very hurtful. We’ve been very trusting. They tell us that they’re listening to us. Perhaps this is the problem. We’re so trusting, we’re so welcoming; and yet, this is what we get from them.”
The Speaker said she was reminded of a past incident when We Are Guåhan member Cara Flores Mays was having lunch at a local restaurant and overheard a conversation between military personnel and Guam residents, one of them, Lee Webber.
“They treat us like we are the enemy and we’re not. We want this to work for our people too. Is that too much to ask. I’m very upset about this,” said Won Pat.
Won Pat was referring to a November 2010 conversation that Mays overheard, which included then-Joint Guam Program Office Director of Communications for Washington D.C. and Guam Paula Conhain, Lee Webber, a former Marine, and Lt. Col. Aisha Bakkar of the Marine Force Pacific Public Affairs Office. Conhain has since been removed from this position.
http://mvguam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18256:pagat-sweeteners-discussed&catid=59:frontpagenews
Pågat 'Sweeteners' Discussed
Therese Hart
May 26, 2011
Local activists and many island residents continue to question the sincerity of military and federal officials who speak of the buildup, even after officials assured them that discussions and plans on the Pågat issue are aboveboard and transparent.
A September 2010 email correspondence obtained by Variety among former Joint Guam Program Office Executive Director David Bice, Joe Ludovici, who has since taken over Bice’s position, and Capt. John Scorby, executive assistant to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Energy Installations & Environment, gives a glimpse of the strategies and mindset of the military with regard to the Pågat issue.
Scorby emailed Ludovici on Sept. 27, requesting that Ludovici provide a brief of Pågat to include “sweeteners” the Undersecretary needed for a briefing.
“At the DON staff meeting today with the Under, he asked that JGPO develop a brief on possible ‘sweeteners’ to get us over the Pågat issue. He indicated that this was going to be briefed at the next GOC, currently scheduled for Oct. 21. I don’t have a due date, but he indicated he was looking for the brief ‘soon.’ I’ll get more fidelity on that one.”
Bice responded, stating he had a discussion with “Ms. P last week,” and believed a “successful Route 15 acquisition strategy will require elimination all impacts to Pågat historic village in the near term, and finding mutual accommodations with race trace until expiration of land use license; ‘book end’ COA.”
Bice further wrote, “We can get all of the land eventually, including an SDZ (surface danger zone) over Pågat; we have to be patient and build trust with the community first.
“Groups opposing Marine relocation are successfully seizing on Pågat as a means to gain legitimacy with the public – need to take the issue off the table to isolate them.
“Sweeteners will be needed to garner GovGuam/Legislature support to remove firing range restrictions on Rt. 15 properties and to obtain Legislature approval of Chamorro Land Trust lease of properties below the cliff-line. Some members of the Legislature will attempt to block all land acquisition until other issues with Fed Govt are resolved – need to give Legislature a deal they can’t refuse.”
Speaker’s reaction
When Variety shared the email with Speaker Judi Won Pat, her reaction was quick, pointed, heated and then, resigned:
“This shows how disingenuous they are, and it seems they are engaging in some type of covert activity. ... They say they are being honest and upfront with us, yet, here’s proof that they are conniving behind our backs.
“We respond to the DEIS and FEIS, because they asked us to. We play by their rules and this is what they do to us. It’s very hurtful. We’ve been very trusting. They tell us that they’re listening to us. Perhaps this is the problem. We’re so trusting, we’re so welcoming; and yet, this is what we get from them.”
The Speaker said she was reminded of a past incident when We Are Guåhan member Cara Flores Mays was having lunch at a local restaurant and overheard a conversation between military personnel and Guam residents, one of them, Lee Webber.
“They treat us like we are the enemy and we’re not. We want this to work for our people too. Is that too much to ask. I’m very upset about this,” said Won Pat.
Won Pat was referring to a November 2010 conversation that Mays overheard, which included then-Joint Guam Program Office Director of Communications for Washington D.C. and Guam Paula Conhain, Lee Webber, a former Marine, and Lt. Col. Aisha Bakkar of the Marine Force Pacific Public Affairs Office. Conhain has since been removed from this position.
http://mvguam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18256:pagat-sweeteners-discussed&catid=59:frontpagenews
Friday, May 20, 2011
Hurao Academy Day of Service
Day of Service at Hurao Academy
Sabrina Salas Mantanane
May 18, 2011
Guam - Dozens of employees and managers from various island companies took the day off to give back to the community. The Lina'la Hurao Sagan Kotturan Chamoru is a dream come true for Hurao Academy founder Ann Marie Arceo, who said, "We're moving we're going to accomplish it we're moving it we're doing it, Guam. Si yuus maase."
On nine acres of Chamorro Land Trust Commission property at Ypao Point close to 80 volunteers from Chugach, Home Depot, Behr Paints, Matson Imco, Pepsi, Baldyga International Group, Isla Paint and Coating, and Frontier Plumbing Supply participated in a day of service. "We're going to be painting, scraping digging anything that we need to get this going for the summer," Arceo noted.
That's the immediate goal: getting facilities ready for the Hurao Summer Camp, where students will apprentice here at least two to three times a week. The bigger picture, according to Hurao teacher and visual artist Rafael Unpingco is, "We plan on making it a cultural immersion center through the arts we have eight buildings and we want to break down the disciplines that way. Just to kind of get apprenticeship programs going do things fro the community and also teach the community the language and other cultural practices."
From painting, landscaping, fencing, water blasting cabinet work and other tasks. It's through Hurao and Linala's corporate partners that they're able to get the project off the ground and according to Home Depot general manager Rhett Garon and Chugach's Western Pacific regional manager Ray Llaneta they're happy to help. "I think its extremely important from a cultural standpoint as far as the perseveration with the move of the troops over to Guam we want to make sure that we help to establish a center where people can come and kind of learn the ways of the older Chamorro people as far as arts and the music and the language," Garon noted.
"This is about culture and this about the people of Guam," stated Llaneta. "We live here we're part of the community; the leaders in Chugach Alaska Corporation feel that its very important for us to give back to the community and I'm very proud and honored to be part of that."
If you'd like to help Hurao, according to Arceo they're always there on the weekends. Stop by if you'd like to volunteer.
http://www.kuam.com/story/14665853/2011/05/17/day-of-service-at-hurao-academy
Monday, April 25, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Demilitarization as Rehumanization
Demilitarization as Rehumanization
Left Turn: Notes from the Global Intifada
Clare Bayard
March 11, 2011
Demilitarization as Rehumanization
By: Clare Bayard
Date Published: March 11, 2011
The antiwar movement never died. The movement has shifted to the work of long-term, community-based organizing to mount a comprehensive challenge to US militarism. This work is growing inside grassroots movements led by veterans, immigrants, queers, and low-income communities of color. Everywhere domestic militarization burns to the bone, people are fighting for a different future. The mass street marches of 2003 sought to preemptively raise the political cost of the Iraq war. We always knew that beyond those marches we would have to confront the real human cost if the wars moved ahead.
•Outside Washington DC, CASA de Maryland fights the deportation of an undocumented woman who called the police to escape domestic violence and was turned over to ICE, Homeland Security's immigration wing.
•In Oakland, BAY-Peace's low-income youth of color win a two-year campaign developing a viral Youth Manifesto and passing the nation's toughest anti-recruitment resolution in their school district.
•Desert fatigues become paper for screenprints, or the canvas for their former wearer's Sharpied stories of trauma, where veterans' art-based transformational projects like Combat Paper and Fatigues Clothesline break isolation and culturally-enforced silences about the realities of war.
•In a grainy Wikileaked video, a soldier named Ethan McCord pulls children out of a massacre in Baghdad. Later, he and other veterans and allies write an Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi people and begin a reparations project.
•Oct 7th, the anniversary of the US war on Afghanistan: In New York, former Afghan Parliamentarian Malalai Joya, an Iraqi refugee organizer, a Latina youth organizer, a Muslim conscientious objector, an Imam from Harlem, and other speakers hold a press conference organized by the South Asia Solidarity Initiative, Iraq Veterans Against the War, War Resisters League, and other groups to connect the realities faced by Afghans with the realities of veterans and civilians in the US.
A few days later, in DC, One Nation Working Together marches for “Money for Jobs, Not for War” on the capitol. National efforts like the 25 Percent (reduction of the military budget) Campaign and Move the Money are gaining steam, demanding New Deal-style investment in social spending and de-funding the military.
These are snapshots along a continuum. People are organizing on every level, from federal legislation and military policy to survival programs that start with individuals and generate networks of grassroots resources and programs. Current work with the potential to drastically impact US militarism includes war economy and economic conversion campaigns, migrant justice, and GI resistance organizing.
There are many crucial questions about alternatives to military intervention, or the roles of armed struggle in peoples’ movements for self-determination. We take inspiration from people around the world confronting US militarism on their own territory, particularly in the anti-occupation and anti military base movements, currently finding their strongest expressions in North Africa, West Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. Here, I will touch on a few threads of domestic demilitarization, highlighting GI resistance.
Going deeper
The US is deeply shaped by militarism, from its origins as a settler nation taking its territory piecemeal and by force, to the uncloaked empire we live in today. Living in the US, particularly for those of us with citizenship, carries responsibility to end the spread of this empire, which we can’t dodge anymore than we can drop the struggles in our home communities. Nor is there always a clear separation between what we often refer to as “wars at home and abroad.” Attacks across the country on people read as Arab, Muslim, or South Asian, whether detentions by the state or street attacks, are entangled with the heightened level of militarism accepted by the US mainstream since post-9/11 policies of aggressive racism were implemented. Increased militarization of the US-Mexico border has led to horrific rates of rape of migrants on and around the border. Funds drop from anti-violence programs and are moved instead into the criminal justice system. Queer youth are bullied to death by peers who are taught militarized images of gender roles. These struggles for safety and health are part of resistance to domestic US militarism.
Anti-militarists build off analyses from women of color feminists about the need for community-based alternatives to dealing with violence. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and sister organizations provide us with a clear analysis of how anti-violence movements’ use of the criminal justice system perpetuated racist systems of criminalization and control, and encourage us to look beyond state structures to community-based transformative justice approaches. Anti-militarist activists need substantive answers to the questions and fears that arise for many in response to the idea of demobilizing the military, just as abolitionists have to answer the question of what we would do without prisons.
Demilitarization means structuring our society with different values. We build institutions that reflect the values we want to strengthen and help us navigate what we are trying to transform. Prison abolition struggles and transformative justice experiments contribute to demilitarizing society by developing different ways to handle real conflict and violence. We need functional strategies that are driven by commitment to cooperation and to community health, instead of the profit driven motives and divide-and-control tactics we see from Afghanistan to Louisiana.
Immigrant & Indigenous Leadership
Migrant justice organizers have no choice but to deal with militarism at every turn. The post-9/11 folding of immigration enforcement into the Department of Homeland Security aggravated an already dangerous situation. Heavily recruited, with promises of citizenship for youth considering military service, immigrant communities of color across the country are taking on militarization of their neighborhoods and of the border region. They are resisting racist immigration and “enforcement” laws and pushing for alternatives to militarized schools and streets.
Guerrero Azteca Peace Project, a Latino community-based peace and counter-recruitment effort formed by Fernando Suarez del Solar when his undocumented son Jesus Alberto was one of the first soldiers to die in Iraq, responded to Arizona's SB1070 racial harassment law in a letter signed by Latino military parents. The letter asks Obama to take action, and states: “Those on active duty supposedly are risking their lives for American ideals, but with this law they see clearly that if their families must face harassment, incarceration, and deportation these ideals are nothing but empty words.” The letter recalls Vietnam-era challenges by African Americans to racism and hypocrisy, summarized famously by Muhammed Ali: “No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over.”
Indigenous nations are the first resisters of US militarism, and veterans and nonmilitary leaders still apply traditional knowledge and visions for the future to the damages of militarism. Eli Painted Crow of the Yaqui Nation, an Army veteran and cofounder of Servicewomen's Action Network, initiated Turtle Women Rising, an annual transformational ceremony led by indigenous women. Painted Crow echoed Suarez del Solar's words in describing her path as “the defining moment for me [in Iraq, 2004], when I knew I had to get out of Iraq and the military, was when I fully realized that I was participating in the very same thing that my people had suffered and are still suffering in the United States.”
Members of the Ohlone Nation—the Bay Area's original inhabitants, displaced to Southern California—journeyed to San Francisco to hold a joint healing ceremony with the local Veterans For Peace Chapter on Veterans' Day. The ceremony recognized a young person lost to suicide after returning from combat, and honored these two communities, beginning an explicit long-term partnership on healing the wounds of war.
Withdrawing consent
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) uses a people power strategy of leveraging their power as workers the wars depend on, and as veterans who can deny the wars’ legitimacy. IVAW, which formed in 2005 and numbers several thousand members, is uniquely positioned to provide the vision and leadership for growing a mass GI resistance movement. They are applying lessons from the civil rights movement and previous generations of GI and veteran resistance, as well as seeking organizing wisdom from grassroots organizations including Domestic Workers United, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers/Student-Farmworker Alliance, and United Workers.
In October, IVAW launched their first campaign, Operation Recovery: Stop the Deployment of Traumatized Troops (OpRec). The underlying strategy is IVAW's basic model: organizing GIs to withdraw their consent from wars. Its success in stopping deployment of troops with severe trauma would incapacitate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq by knocking out 20 to 50 percent of the fighting force. It's a dilemma campaign. If we win, the wars are hamstrung. Or, if the military continues deploying wounded troops, this visible criminal negligence will hurt their legitimacy and ability to keep recruiting. Either way, we also improve our capacity to provide our own community-based care, which is needed far beyond just the veterans' community. An element of the campaign is developing survival programs, inspired by the Black Panthers, to address the needs of people whose ability to resist their command often depends on access to support.
Operation Recovery exposes the silenced crises of Military Sexual Trauma (MST), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). IVAW, partnered with the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, has a strategy to win on multiple fronts. Demanding the right to heal is a point of leverage to challenge the institution, as well as a survival need within this community. OpRec has begun targeting base commanders who have the power to make immediate decisions preventing deployments. Here, even “damage control” means fewer lives destroyed.
Amplifying the voices of traumatized troops deepens awareness of the scope of disaster in these wars. After last fall's media exposure of Afghanistan “kill teams,” IVAW member Ethan McCord responded, “You're taking soldiers who are on psychotropic drugs for PTSD or TBI, and you're putting a weapon in their hand and sending them right back to where they were traumatized and telling them to go kill Afghans. What did you think was going to happen when you place these soldiers in that same situation?”
After the incident depicted in the Collateral Murder video, when McCord sought mental health care, his sergeant told him to “Get the sand out of your vagina.” “He told me I was being a homo and needed to suck it up,” McCord said. OpRec testimonies bring back to the US public the realities of what is happening on the ground in Afghan and Iraqi neighborhoods; how soldiers struggling to stay sane and follow their conscience are treated by their command; and what happens when traumatized troops return, bringing instability and violence home.
Operation Recovery is currently focused on establishing consistent outreach at base towns around the country. In the last week of January, IVAW organizers at Fort Hood, Texas, alone collected a couple hundred pledges of support for Operation Recovery from active duty troops. Community support and participation for outreach, media work, fundraising, research, and compiling resources for healing is needed for their goal of activating thousands of GIs.
Veteran organizing
Veteran activists experience frequent obstacles to working partnerships with nonmilitary peace activists. They often report being either tokenized/valorized in a dehumanizing way, or ostracized by antiwar civilians who feel uncomfortable or disdainful of “soldiers with bloody hands.” Pain and anger at the US military's violence against Iraqi and Afghan civilians is real and just. It is also real that the carefully designed race and class makeup of the military plays a role in the friction between GI resistance and majority white and class-privileged peace movements. Many veterans bring fierce hunger to this struggle, including deep personal commitment to justice for the people they hurt, which everyone in the US needs to be taking responsibility for.
GI organizing offers complicated questions of fighting for veterans' needs within the larger context of challenging wars. One common issue is the vital difference between centralizing this community as “the most impacted” by US wars, versus “one of the most.” Another is the tricky balance of fighting for veterans’ legal rights to healthcare and benefits, while at the same time challenging military privilege and demanding these human rights for everyone so they will not be dependent on enlistment (or honorable discharges, which are often not accessible to resisters, and are disproportionately denied to soldiers of color). Our job is to move away from competitive frameworks towards cooperative models. Operation Recovery seeks to improve community provider networks that help re-integrate veterans, which could grow to provide care for people who have lost healthcare, jobs, or housing as a result of the military budget eating up our social spending.
Veteran communities, like other communities that experience high levels of violence and are forced to prioritize survival issues, have a lot to offer social movements on the importance of weaving community-building and healing work into campaigns, actions, organization-building. Revolutionaries must also ask questions of what different scenarios can play out in moments of uprising, with different types of relationships with active duty military personnel. The complicated role of the Egyptian military during this winter's revolution is only the latest reminder of the significance of the choices made by military personnel when called on to repress domestic dissent as well as fight wars of conquest. IVAW has discussed organizing a tour of the US-Mexico border to talk to National Guard troops stationed there and encourage them to stand on conscience.
IVAW members have initiated several reparations projects. One, along with US Labor Against War, primarily works with Iraqi trade union leaders on policy issues. Another project, born from the open letter, partners with Iraqi Health Now on direct aid. Guidance has come from Iraqi-Americans and Vietnam-era Veterans For Peace, who built a joint Agent Orange reparations campaign with Vietnamese organizations. Broad support for these initiatives could be transformative, engaging the US public with our responsibilities, which do not rest solely on veterans.
Healing From Inside
Demilitarization means untangling layers, from which institutions shape our society and address our needs, and decolonizing our minds, bodies, and organizing practices. Demilitarization practices are healing and wholeness strategies for our communities and cultures. Affirming everyone’s humanity and centering the importance of healing capsizes the logic of militarism. While we campaign to withdraw troops, defund the military, involve the public in reparations, and make racist fear and warmongering unacceptable, we must also be practicing individual and community behaviors that support the values we seek to implement as a society.
“Healing justice is being used as a framework that seeks to lift up resiliency and wellness practices as a transformative response to generational violence and trauma in our communities.” This footnote to principles developed at last summer's US Social Forum, by Cara Page of Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, explains the power of aligning different antimilitarist threads. We have no choice but to address the violence and trauma carried in so many of our bodies. We must reclaim traditions of wellness that use not the individual but relationships as the fundamental unit. This aligns us with values of community, right relation to the environment, and organizing as a process of building relationships that we set in motion to effect change. Demilitarization means hope for the future.
Clare Bayard has been involved in demilitarization organizing for over a decade, originally in immigrant justice work, and has been building the G.I. resistance movement since 2004. Clare has been working with IVAW and Civilian-Soldier Alliance in developing the Operation Recovery campaign, is an organizer with Catalyst Project and the War Resisters League, and is from a military family.
Left Turn: Notes from the Global Intifada
Clare Bayard
March 11, 2011
Demilitarization as Rehumanization
By: Clare Bayard
Date Published: March 11, 2011
The antiwar movement never died. The movement has shifted to the work of long-term, community-based organizing to mount a comprehensive challenge to US militarism. This work is growing inside grassroots movements led by veterans, immigrants, queers, and low-income communities of color. Everywhere domestic militarization burns to the bone, people are fighting for a different future. The mass street marches of 2003 sought to preemptively raise the political cost of the Iraq war. We always knew that beyond those marches we would have to confront the real human cost if the wars moved ahead.
•Outside Washington DC, CASA de Maryland fights the deportation of an undocumented woman who called the police to escape domestic violence and was turned over to ICE, Homeland Security's immigration wing.
•In Oakland, BAY-Peace's low-income youth of color win a two-year campaign developing a viral Youth Manifesto and passing the nation's toughest anti-recruitment resolution in their school district.
•Desert fatigues become paper for screenprints, or the canvas for their former wearer's Sharpied stories of trauma, where veterans' art-based transformational projects like Combat Paper and Fatigues Clothesline break isolation and culturally-enforced silences about the realities of war.
•In a grainy Wikileaked video, a soldier named Ethan McCord pulls children out of a massacre in Baghdad. Later, he and other veterans and allies write an Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi people and begin a reparations project.
•Oct 7th, the anniversary of the US war on Afghanistan: In New York, former Afghan Parliamentarian Malalai Joya, an Iraqi refugee organizer, a Latina youth organizer, a Muslim conscientious objector, an Imam from Harlem, and other speakers hold a press conference organized by the South Asia Solidarity Initiative, Iraq Veterans Against the War, War Resisters League, and other groups to connect the realities faced by Afghans with the realities of veterans and civilians in the US.
A few days later, in DC, One Nation Working Together marches for “Money for Jobs, Not for War” on the capitol. National efforts like the 25 Percent (reduction of the military budget) Campaign and Move the Money are gaining steam, demanding New Deal-style investment in social spending and de-funding the military.
These are snapshots along a continuum. People are organizing on every level, from federal legislation and military policy to survival programs that start with individuals and generate networks of grassroots resources and programs. Current work with the potential to drastically impact US militarism includes war economy and economic conversion campaigns, migrant justice, and GI resistance organizing.
There are many crucial questions about alternatives to military intervention, or the roles of armed struggle in peoples’ movements for self-determination. We take inspiration from people around the world confronting US militarism on their own territory, particularly in the anti-occupation and anti military base movements, currently finding their strongest expressions in North Africa, West Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. Here, I will touch on a few threads of domestic demilitarization, highlighting GI resistance.
Going deeper
The US is deeply shaped by militarism, from its origins as a settler nation taking its territory piecemeal and by force, to the uncloaked empire we live in today. Living in the US, particularly for those of us with citizenship, carries responsibility to end the spread of this empire, which we can’t dodge anymore than we can drop the struggles in our home communities. Nor is there always a clear separation between what we often refer to as “wars at home and abroad.” Attacks across the country on people read as Arab, Muslim, or South Asian, whether detentions by the state or street attacks, are entangled with the heightened level of militarism accepted by the US mainstream since post-9/11 policies of aggressive racism were implemented. Increased militarization of the US-Mexico border has led to horrific rates of rape of migrants on and around the border. Funds drop from anti-violence programs and are moved instead into the criminal justice system. Queer youth are bullied to death by peers who are taught militarized images of gender roles. These struggles for safety and health are part of resistance to domestic US militarism.
Anti-militarists build off analyses from women of color feminists about the need for community-based alternatives to dealing with violence. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and sister organizations provide us with a clear analysis of how anti-violence movements’ use of the criminal justice system perpetuated racist systems of criminalization and control, and encourage us to look beyond state structures to community-based transformative justice approaches. Anti-militarist activists need substantive answers to the questions and fears that arise for many in response to the idea of demobilizing the military, just as abolitionists have to answer the question of what we would do without prisons.
Demilitarization means structuring our society with different values. We build institutions that reflect the values we want to strengthen and help us navigate what we are trying to transform. Prison abolition struggles and transformative justice experiments contribute to demilitarizing society by developing different ways to handle real conflict and violence. We need functional strategies that are driven by commitment to cooperation and to community health, instead of the profit driven motives and divide-and-control tactics we see from Afghanistan to Louisiana.
Immigrant & Indigenous Leadership
Migrant justice organizers have no choice but to deal with militarism at every turn. The post-9/11 folding of immigration enforcement into the Department of Homeland Security aggravated an already dangerous situation. Heavily recruited, with promises of citizenship for youth considering military service, immigrant communities of color across the country are taking on militarization of their neighborhoods and of the border region. They are resisting racist immigration and “enforcement” laws and pushing for alternatives to militarized schools and streets.
Guerrero Azteca Peace Project, a Latino community-based peace and counter-recruitment effort formed by Fernando Suarez del Solar when his undocumented son Jesus Alberto was one of the first soldiers to die in Iraq, responded to Arizona's SB1070 racial harassment law in a letter signed by Latino military parents. The letter asks Obama to take action, and states: “Those on active duty supposedly are risking their lives for American ideals, but with this law they see clearly that if their families must face harassment, incarceration, and deportation these ideals are nothing but empty words.” The letter recalls Vietnam-era challenges by African Americans to racism and hypocrisy, summarized famously by Muhammed Ali: “No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over.”
Indigenous nations are the first resisters of US militarism, and veterans and nonmilitary leaders still apply traditional knowledge and visions for the future to the damages of militarism. Eli Painted Crow of the Yaqui Nation, an Army veteran and cofounder of Servicewomen's Action Network, initiated Turtle Women Rising, an annual transformational ceremony led by indigenous women. Painted Crow echoed Suarez del Solar's words in describing her path as “the defining moment for me [in Iraq, 2004], when I knew I had to get out of Iraq and the military, was when I fully realized that I was participating in the very same thing that my people had suffered and are still suffering in the United States.”
Members of the Ohlone Nation—the Bay Area's original inhabitants, displaced to Southern California—journeyed to San Francisco to hold a joint healing ceremony with the local Veterans For Peace Chapter on Veterans' Day. The ceremony recognized a young person lost to suicide after returning from combat, and honored these two communities, beginning an explicit long-term partnership on healing the wounds of war.
Withdrawing consent
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) uses a people power strategy of leveraging their power as workers the wars depend on, and as veterans who can deny the wars’ legitimacy. IVAW, which formed in 2005 and numbers several thousand members, is uniquely positioned to provide the vision and leadership for growing a mass GI resistance movement. They are applying lessons from the civil rights movement and previous generations of GI and veteran resistance, as well as seeking organizing wisdom from grassroots organizations including Domestic Workers United, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers/Student-Farmworker Alliance, and United Workers.
In October, IVAW launched their first campaign, Operation Recovery: Stop the Deployment of Traumatized Troops (OpRec). The underlying strategy is IVAW's basic model: organizing GIs to withdraw their consent from wars. Its success in stopping deployment of troops with severe trauma would incapacitate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq by knocking out 20 to 50 percent of the fighting force. It's a dilemma campaign. If we win, the wars are hamstrung. Or, if the military continues deploying wounded troops, this visible criminal negligence will hurt their legitimacy and ability to keep recruiting. Either way, we also improve our capacity to provide our own community-based care, which is needed far beyond just the veterans' community. An element of the campaign is developing survival programs, inspired by the Black Panthers, to address the needs of people whose ability to resist their command often depends on access to support.
Operation Recovery exposes the silenced crises of Military Sexual Trauma (MST), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). IVAW, partnered with the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, has a strategy to win on multiple fronts. Demanding the right to heal is a point of leverage to challenge the institution, as well as a survival need within this community. OpRec has begun targeting base commanders who have the power to make immediate decisions preventing deployments. Here, even “damage control” means fewer lives destroyed.
Amplifying the voices of traumatized troops deepens awareness of the scope of disaster in these wars. After last fall's media exposure of Afghanistan “kill teams,” IVAW member Ethan McCord responded, “You're taking soldiers who are on psychotropic drugs for PTSD or TBI, and you're putting a weapon in their hand and sending them right back to where they were traumatized and telling them to go kill Afghans. What did you think was going to happen when you place these soldiers in that same situation?”
After the incident depicted in the Collateral Murder video, when McCord sought mental health care, his sergeant told him to “Get the sand out of your vagina.” “He told me I was being a homo and needed to suck it up,” McCord said. OpRec testimonies bring back to the US public the realities of what is happening on the ground in Afghan and Iraqi neighborhoods; how soldiers struggling to stay sane and follow their conscience are treated by their command; and what happens when traumatized troops return, bringing instability and violence home.
Operation Recovery is currently focused on establishing consistent outreach at base towns around the country. In the last week of January, IVAW organizers at Fort Hood, Texas, alone collected a couple hundred pledges of support for Operation Recovery from active duty troops. Community support and participation for outreach, media work, fundraising, research, and compiling resources for healing is needed for their goal of activating thousands of GIs.
Veteran organizing
Veteran activists experience frequent obstacles to working partnerships with nonmilitary peace activists. They often report being either tokenized/valorized in a dehumanizing way, or ostracized by antiwar civilians who feel uncomfortable or disdainful of “soldiers with bloody hands.” Pain and anger at the US military's violence against Iraqi and Afghan civilians is real and just. It is also real that the carefully designed race and class makeup of the military plays a role in the friction between GI resistance and majority white and class-privileged peace movements. Many veterans bring fierce hunger to this struggle, including deep personal commitment to justice for the people they hurt, which everyone in the US needs to be taking responsibility for.
GI organizing offers complicated questions of fighting for veterans' needs within the larger context of challenging wars. One common issue is the vital difference between centralizing this community as “the most impacted” by US wars, versus “one of the most.” Another is the tricky balance of fighting for veterans’ legal rights to healthcare and benefits, while at the same time challenging military privilege and demanding these human rights for everyone so they will not be dependent on enlistment (or honorable discharges, which are often not accessible to resisters, and are disproportionately denied to soldiers of color). Our job is to move away from competitive frameworks towards cooperative models. Operation Recovery seeks to improve community provider networks that help re-integrate veterans, which could grow to provide care for people who have lost healthcare, jobs, or housing as a result of the military budget eating up our social spending.
Veteran communities, like other communities that experience high levels of violence and are forced to prioritize survival issues, have a lot to offer social movements on the importance of weaving community-building and healing work into campaigns, actions, organization-building. Revolutionaries must also ask questions of what different scenarios can play out in moments of uprising, with different types of relationships with active duty military personnel. The complicated role of the Egyptian military during this winter's revolution is only the latest reminder of the significance of the choices made by military personnel when called on to repress domestic dissent as well as fight wars of conquest. IVAW has discussed organizing a tour of the US-Mexico border to talk to National Guard troops stationed there and encourage them to stand on conscience.
IVAW members have initiated several reparations projects. One, along with US Labor Against War, primarily works with Iraqi trade union leaders on policy issues. Another project, born from the open letter, partners with Iraqi Health Now on direct aid. Guidance has come from Iraqi-Americans and Vietnam-era Veterans For Peace, who built a joint Agent Orange reparations campaign with Vietnamese organizations. Broad support for these initiatives could be transformative, engaging the US public with our responsibilities, which do not rest solely on veterans.
Healing From Inside
Demilitarization means untangling layers, from which institutions shape our society and address our needs, and decolonizing our minds, bodies, and organizing practices. Demilitarization practices are healing and wholeness strategies for our communities and cultures. Affirming everyone’s humanity and centering the importance of healing capsizes the logic of militarism. While we campaign to withdraw troops, defund the military, involve the public in reparations, and make racist fear and warmongering unacceptable, we must also be practicing individual and community behaviors that support the values we seek to implement as a society.
“Healing justice is being used as a framework that seeks to lift up resiliency and wellness practices as a transformative response to generational violence and trauma in our communities.” This footnote to principles developed at last summer's US Social Forum, by Cara Page of Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, explains the power of aligning different antimilitarist threads. We have no choice but to address the violence and trauma carried in so many of our bodies. We must reclaim traditions of wellness that use not the individual but relationships as the fundamental unit. This aligns us with values of community, right relation to the environment, and organizing as a process of building relationships that we set in motion to effect change. Demilitarization means hope for the future.
Clare Bayard has been involved in demilitarization organizing for over a decade, originally in immigrant justice work, and has been building the G.I. resistance movement since 2004. Clare has been working with IVAW and Civilian-Soldier Alliance in developing the Operation Recovery campaign, is an organizer with Catalyst Project and the War Resisters League, and is from a military family.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
