Young Organizers Respond To My Open Letter

From Our Children's Trust: "Youth Climate Lawsuit -- Youth plaintiffs and their legal team stand outside the Federal Courthouse in Eugene after a case management conference in the landmark federal lawsuit brought by 21 young plaintiffs against the federal government. The lawsuit, brought by the non-profit legal firm of Our Children's Trust, is moving through the federal courts." (photo by Robin Loznak) 

Two young organizers in Maine were kind enough to meet with me this week during my school break. They contacted me to respond to my Open Letter To Young Organizers: I'm Against Imperial Wars, How About You? which had been making the rounds. 


In reporting some of what they said I will protect their anonymity (unless they want to out themselves) because they both are organizing in areas where the empire pushes back, hard. 


My favorite fortune cookie ever contained this wisdom: Failure is feedback, and feedback is the breakfast of champions. It is in this spirit that I reflect on the failure of older antiwar activists to work well with young activists.



Some of what I heard:

• My post seemed designed to annoy young people, and was condescending in tone.

• Peace advocacy and/or opposing wars is a white, middle class phenomenon. Young people in central Maine are generally either working class or wealthy. 

• Antiwar activists, at least in Maine, are quite old. This leads to several problems:
• They infantilize younger activists; for example, by exclaiming fondly when an activist shows up at an event they (the activist) helped organize.
• They often won't learn to using gendered pronouns no matter how many times they are reminded. 
• They need a lot of coaching in order to learn to use basic technology tools like online collaborative writing platforms i.e. Google docs.
• Communication styles exhibit a significant generation gap.

• Opposing wars doesn't have a clear location where activists can gather. To oppose the North Dakota Access Pipeline, one could go to Standing Rock. To push for divestment, one could go to a bank. 

• Young people have grown up in a nation perpetually at war. It is hard to perceive this because it is the air we breathe. Impacts like the environmental costs of war or the gigantic Pentagon budget are hidden from sight.

• Identity politics drives much of the activism young people engage in, and this approach does not apply well to antiwar organizing.

These are all good things for me to think about. I'll add them to my own perceptions of how often young people are silenced in group discussions where elders seem to dominate the air time. I saw this at a training I participated in recently as a learner around an issue that was not related to antiwar work; a retired white male college professor who wanted to talk a lot was allowed to speak multiple times while facilitators passed over a female high school student with her hand up.

Did older people marginalize our voices thus when we were young? Of course they did. Remember the 1960's aphorism: "Don't trust anyone over 30."

From USUncut: "Black Lives Matter activists protest police killings of black women"

Many of the strong and effective movements of our day are led by young people: Black Lives Matter, fossil fuel divestment, solidarity with Palestinian human rights via Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). 

From Yes! Magazine "the front lines of protesters blocking the Dakota Access pipeline" photo by Desiree Kane

A final thought I'll ponder is the contrast my young critics noted between the U.S. and cultures where multi-generational organizing is the norm rather than the exception. My perception of the dedicated water protectors at Standing Rock includes grandparents, parents and young people standing together. White culture in the U.S. lacks this element as it lacks so many other sources of depth, wisdom and understanding, so I accepted with pleasure an invitation to engage in mentoring that flows across generations.

I look forward to hearing what readers have to say about these ideas.

Open Letter To Young Organizers: I'm Against Imperial Wars, How About You?

Forward Together rally and march in Waterville, Maine on December 10. Photo by Michael G. Seamens, Morning Sentinel

Dear young organizers,
Thanks for inviting me to your marches. Congratulations on waking up to the dangers of corporate government threatening human rights and planetary health. It was easy to be lulled by its handsome, articulate face especially when you were still quite young and had almost no access to authentic information about the practices of your empire. It's not your fault that you never saw the babies and grandmothers President Obama burnt up with his hellfire missiles, or the mothers who bore deformed infants after being exposed to his weapons made with depleted uranium. Or the innocent people who were tortured with the taxes your parents paid.

The six big conglomerates who control corporate media made sure that you never saw these things.

Source: tapnewswire.com

Instead, they made sure you saw lots and lots and lots of patriotic, nationalistic flag waving in conjunction with lots of fear mongering about Muslim terrorists. And bullshit movies where torture was effective at getting information out of people (it's not).

The propaganda of corporate government has become quite sophisticated, especially in its distribution strategies, employing platforms like televised sports and permeating your schools in forms such as classroom magazines and book fairs. 

You've all gotten the message loud and clear that opposing U.S. wars and militarism makes you look unpatriotic. 

And most of you understandably failed to notice that, even though the health of the environment is a big concern for your generation, the Pentagon's enormous carbon footprint and other pollution were being deliberately rendered invisible. 

Great State of Maine Air Show, Brunswick, Maine September, 2008 (U.S. Navy photo accessed on Wikimedia Commons)

Even though air shows like the Blue Angels were churning out exhaust and burning napalm (the jellied gasoline that was used to burn jungles and people in Vietnam when I was your age) for your entertainment right under your nose all along. The grownups were cheering, so you did, too.

Don't feel bad -- propaganda works on everybody. That's why our corporate overlords rely on it so heavily.

Now that the demagogue with bad hair has been elected and started filling his cabinet posts with executives from the worst corporations on the planet, you're up in arms. You're ready to march for a long list of human rights that you consider crucial to quality of life, and you're organizing people to march with you. I'm receiving hundreds of invites to join you in the streets, in signing petitions, sending letters to CEOs, and lobbying our alleged representatives in Washington DC. 

And I'm thrilled. I'll join you when and where I can, and I'll gladly follow your lead. Young people are waking up and I feel privileged to witness this and to support your fresh and passionate movements.

I'm waiting breathlessly for the day that you collectively realize that withdrawing your labor -- especially, I believe, women withdrawing their labor -- en masse would be an extremely effective and nonviolent way to bring a corrupt system to its knees.

I won't be organizing this. But you, I predict, will when the time comes.

Here's what I want to ask you to consider today: don't overlook the human rights abuses of the U.S. military killing machine at work beyond our borders. Black lives matter here, and they matter over there, too. Muslim lives matter. People whose countries are on top of big fossil fuel reserves lives matter. People who find themselves in places where the Pentagon thinks they have the right to build one of its thousands of military bases outside the U.S. lives matter.

When you're making the list of human rights abuses you'll be marching against, don't forget the wars waged in your name all around the planet. They are the ultimate human rights abuse. Just ask someone who's experienced air strikes on their village.

If you want to and have the time, find out more about these wars. Look beyond the corporate "news" feed of Google and Yahoo! or the sites your friends share on social media. If the source is looking to turn a profit, be skeptical about their hidden bias.

I understand if you don't have time to research the current wars and you prefer to focus on other issues. It's hard to get by these days, and once we've attended to our own basic survival needs we all get to decide what we want to spend our free time working toward.

Just please don't let yourself be intimidated into silencing your dissent around imperial militarism. Opposing wars is patriotic.

I look forward to the day when you remember to include opposition to militarism on the lists of things you're marching for. I have faith in you and your ongoing education. Let's keep learning together.

With love, appreciation and respect,
Lisa

Source: Quotesgram.com

Militarized Policing, School Lockdowns And Our Culture Of Violence

Source: Debra J. Groom blogging on Syracuse.com. 
"School district officials wanted to alert district residents that there were no problems today at Oswego High School or Leighton Elementary School. Five state police vehicles were parked along Buccaneer Boulevard Friday, Nov. 3, but were there as the New York State Police Troop D canine units conducted training at the high school while providing a community service to the district."

Yesterday we stood in freezing rain outside of Bath Iron Works for an hour during the shift change. Aside from the ankle deep slush it was warming to be standing with the Smilin' Tree Disarmament Farm organizers of the annual Advent series of vigils outside the gates where weapons of mass destruction are made by hard-working Mainers.

Some of the workers were quite angry to see us while others exchanged friendly greetings with Bath resident Bruce Gagnon, a regular outside the gates when the shifts change. Hundreds walked or drove by Bruce's sign: "Zumwalt Provocative Expensive" referring to General Dynamics' (the corporation that owns BIW) latest product. One worker assured Bruce that "Ships protect the peace, ships keep us safe." Bruce politely disagreed, noting that the Zumwalt is a first strike weapon.

Maine's entire Congressional delegation paying homage at the launch of a $4 billion Zumwalt destroyer last April at BIW.

While standing I had time to connect with peaceworker Jane, who is 83 years old and can hold a sign for an hour in freezing rain without wearing gloves. Jane recently moved to Maine from Vermont, where she worked extensively in counter recruitment in the schools. Military recruiters in public schools use local, state and federal tax support to provide access to teenagers and sometimes even children younger than that. It's one of the ways education dollars are redirected to support the aims of our highly militarized and violent culture.

Another way came to light when we circled up at the end of the vigil. A vigiler who works at Rockland High School told us that she came out of her office this week to find the school was in lockdown mode. These are drills which are supposed to keep students and staff safe in the event of a school shooting. However, this drill went far beyond locking doors and closing window shades.

Every student was ordered to line up his or her backpack in the halls and then hide in a classroom while police moved through the packs with several police dogs trained to sniff out drugs. None were found, nor did the school have information that any would be found. Just a drill, folks. The dogs also sniffed the cars in the parking lot, including those of the adults who work there. A warrantless search that, again, found nothing. It seems clearly designed to scare people, and the woman who told us about it indeed reported that she found police dogs sweeping through the halls very intimidating.

At least one school board member has raised questions about the drill, as reported in the Bangor Daily News on Dec. 5:

Rockland police, assisted by canines and their handlers from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office and Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, took about 45 minutes to search for drugs, said Rockland police Detective Sgt. Chris Young. He said students were instructed to take their backpacks and leave them in the middle of the hallway outside their classrooms and then return to class. 

The dogs came through and sniffed the lockers and backpacks, he said. One of the dogs detected something in a backpack, which was opened, but no illegal substances were found...

The school-wide search was done at the request of principal Renee Thompson. Thompson said that there had not been problems with drugs at the school, but she wanted to be proactive and send the message to students and the community that there is a zero tolerance for drugs on campus.

Also zero tolerance for the Constitution, apparently. Hope the U.S. government students don't get those questions wrong on the AP exams they weren't studying for while helping police and sheriffs practice teaming up to intimidate an entire student body.

If, like me, you're keeping tabs on the creep of fascism in the USA, you could note that your rights are checked at the door when you enter a school run by the likes of Principal Thompson. Or Oswego High School in New York, or who knows how many others with militarized police and county sheriff's departments bringing in dogs for your "safety."

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If you're in Maine you can join  the Smilin' Trees Disarmament Farm's annual Advent peace vigils at Bath Iron Works (BIW) on December 13 and 20.  Folks meet from 11:30am on Washington Street in front of the BIW administrations building. 

Their Kids Go to Yale, Our Kids Go To The Army (Or Jail)

source: www.anonymousartofrevolution.com 

Memorial Day always produces a lot of treacly sentiment around "humble gratitude for those who sacrifice" et cetera. But this year, one of the most impactful essays I've read in a long time appeared on the New York Times Op-Ed page co-authored by Karl Eikenberry, who commanded the U.S. military in Afghanistan '05-'07. "Americans and Their Military, Drifting Apart" probably made such an impression on me because I live in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the union, surrounded by pumped up expressions of patriotism everywhere, and public schools crawling with veterans and recruiters.

In this context I was stunned by the news of how very, very small a portion of the U.S. population actually goes into the military these days. According to Eikenberry and co-author David Brooks, a Stanford history professor:

For nearly two generations, no American has been obligated to join up, and few do. Less than 0.5 percent of the population serves in the armed forces, compared with more than 12 percent during World War II. 

Stunned because I am surrounded every day of the year by in-school advertising for the military, front page "news" lavishing praise on anything vaguely military, and so-called progressive and moderate representatives in Congress that salivate visibly over opportunities to appear supporting the military.

So my perception of how steeped in militarism my culture has become is mostly the product of information management, and does not reflect reality.

Eikenberry and Brooks (who also writes U.S. history textbooks) point out how very unequal is the toll exacted by militarism, depending on your zip code.

Even fewer of the privileged and powerful shoulder arms. In 1975, 70 percent of members of Congress had some military service; today, just 20 percent do, and only a handful of their children are in uniform. 

In sharp contrast, so many officers have sons and daughters serving that they speak, with pride and anxiety, about war as a “family business.” 

Few have written more eloquently about the cost of doing this kind of business than Andrew Bacevich, another professor and career army officer, who lost his son to the war on Iraq. His recent essay on naming wars is especially worth reading.

Bacevich's experience supports the old adage that a commander-in-chief who has never seen combat is not one you want with his finger on the "send" button that deploys your sons and daughters to fight for fossil fuel access halfway around the planet.

Even -- or perhaps especially -- those devoted to the nation are concerned about the long term prospects for a standing military no longer answerable to we, the people. They are concerned about the distancing effects of killing by remote control, and they worry about

a self-perpetuating military caste, sharply segregated from the larger society and with its enlisted ranks disproportionately recruited from the disadvantaged. History suggests that such scenarios don’t end well.

History also suggests that you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, and so it is vitally important to keep churning out cheap patriotism symbols and press releases. And to shout down as unpatriotic those who speak up to object.

source: louminatti.blogspot.com 

Amy Goodman in her "Another Memorial Day In This Endless War" essay for Democracy Now! quoted one of the original thinkers of our revolt against the British empire and its taxing authority:

Thomas Paine wrote in the March 21, 1778, edition of his pamphlet The Crisis, “If there is a sin superior to every other, it is that of willful and offensive war ... he who is the author of a war, lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”

Quietly bleeds it, off stage, in the 21st century.

Militarized Children of the Empire

Photo credit: Mike Hastie, veteran. Taken at K-Mart in Portland, Oregon.

Easter, as you may know, is the spring time celebration of the return of life personified by the resurrection of Jesus. This holiday adopted many of the pre-Christian symbols associated with fertility such as eggs, early blossoming flowers, baby chicks and lambs. It is considered a much more important holiday in Christian tradition than is Christmas. 

In the U.S. this holiday used to be celebrated by everyone in the family getting new dress-up clothes. Easter traditions included coloring eggs, hiding them, and eating bunny-shaped chocolate. A basket was used to collect eggs found where the Easter bunny had allegedly hidden them. Over time the basket evolved into more of a Christmas stocking-type tradition, found by children when they woke up in the morning filled with rabbit-shaped chocolates and egg-shaped candy.

Health-minded mothers like me would often substitute gifts for candy. Baseball batting gloves were a favorite of my boys in the spring. Once when I sent them dress shirts and ties as teenagers they were mystified -- the dressing up tradition had fallen by the wayside in the years since my sisters and I wore scratchy new dresses and patent leather mary janes on Easter.

Now comes the 21st century with its militarization of children and its churches built by confused followers of an eminently peaceful teacher, Jesus of Nazareth.

This is the sign in front of a local church, the one my husband calls "The Church of the Concealed Carry." Its priorities are pretty clear.

Everyday when I go to school I see students and several staff members wearing t-shirts with large machine guns printed on them and slogans like "Machine Gun Mafia" and "God bless our troops." Some people have complained about the promotion of violence but the local farmer who operates a machine gun training course on his property has a lot of clout with school officials and they have made an exception to the general rule banning clothing that promotes violence.

This is entirely consistent with bringing in the National Guard to set up an obstacle course on "Wellness" day, and taking students to the armory so soldiers can help them wrap and deliver Christmas presents to low-income families.

My property taxes go to support the infrastructure that gives military recruiters access to youngsters in the guise of education. I complain about this to school administration, I contact my school board reps, and I write letters to the editor. But the militarization of U.S. children and their schools continues to grow.

We'll probably never know what motivated the Tsarnaev brothers set off homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon this year. Since at least one of them was in contact with the FBI -- years before the incident -- the story is likely to remain quite murky. Perhaps they were tools of the FBI, allowed to create a crisis useful to demonstrate "the Homeland as a Battlefield." Were the brothers angry about U.S. wars on Muslims as some allege? Or were they more like the Columbine High School or Sandy Hook Elementary School shooters, less political than simply crazed on a steady diet of hyperviolent digital games, "entertainment" and "news"? 

Violence sells, and children are just another market. Once war has become completely mechanized the empire won't even need cannon fodder anymore.

The now infamous Maisto drone toy, whose reader reviews on Amazon 

should have been read aloud at this week's Senate hearings on drone warfare. 

Codepink activist Tighe Barry was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for speaking out after the Senate hearing had concluded on April 23, 2013. He asked the question that no senator dared to or cared to ask: "What about the children that are being killed by so-called targeted drone strikes?"

The Things They Carry: Heroes And Their Medals

Another kid from Maine died in Afghanistan. 

Here's how my hometown paper reported it.

Humble hero from Maine honored for a final act of valor

My paper, along with the papers of record in the state capital Augusta and in our state's largest city, Portland, is owned by S. Donald Sussman, the husband of our representative on the House Armed Service Committee, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree.

Source: Chellie Pingree's facebook page. I think this photo needs a few more flags, don't you?

Here we see Chellie in a photo op this week with another Maine veteran, Ruth Moore. Moore took 23 years to receive VA benefits after she was twice violently sexually assaulted by an officer, and her name has been borrowed for the bill Pingree is sponsoring to fast track VA benefits for the 1 in 3 women attacked during tours of duty, if they turn out to need them. Never mind The Invisible War. See how much your government cares about women in the military?

This is the same week as we found out that joystick killers going for the "bugsplat" kill by drone were going to get a special medal of their own. This news was moderately absurd, sounding like an Onion article from a time when drones were just hovering into view of the general public.

The most incredible part was that the medal would outrank other military decorations for valor in actual combat. This pissed off a lot of veterans and I'm sure active duty people also but they are not supposed to speak about it.

The same way that a teacher is told she is not supposed to speak out about about schools allowing recruiters to use the infrastructure paid for by taxpayers to deliver a captive audience of teens with low economic prospects. (Believe me, I know.)

Here's the caption that ran under the photo of the 31 year old man from Maine who died:

Staff Sgt. Eric Shaw, here in his dress uniform, had planned to be a history teacher after graduating from the University of Southern Maine, but he couldn’t find work and joined the Army instead.

Here's the article's conclusion, provided by his widow:

"My oldest told me she wants to be in the Army," she said, "because she wants to be a hero, like Daddy."

See how equal women are now?

What I would like to see is a pie chart displaying data on how many messages this soldier's young daughter has seen glorifying being in the military as compared with how many messages she has seen glorifying teaching history. Would that slice of the pie even be visible?

The article devoted 2,700 words to the story of how the young Maine father was posthumously decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross after he died protecting Afghan soldiers from the fire of insurgents on the border with Pakistan. Yup, it was really called Operation Strong Eagle (no scent of Onion here).

An officer named Tangen was excited by the special medal explaining he believed:

... the award will help Shaw's story be retold. 

"Some soldier, someday will be just like him because of what he did," he said. (emphasis mine) "You can't ask for really much more than that." 

For now, Audrey Shaw said she's keeping the cross in a trunk with her husband's other medals. She'll put it on display once her daughters are old enough that they won't take it down or try to color it. 

At least one of them, however, has already grasped the significance.

She'd have to be pretty thick to miss the significance wouldn't you say?

Maine is the state with the highest per capita death rate in Afghanistan. Why? Because a lot of people are out of work, that's why.

Average U.S. cost in 2010 of educating a K-12 student: $10,050.

Cost of 2011 military recruitment and advertising budget per high school student: $112.26

Cost of 2,700 word puff piece on a hometown hero and his medals: Priceless.

U.S. Gov't Sez: Earn Your Rights By Killing People

Imagine you were a parent who couldn't feed your daughter, who crossed into the U.S. illegally to find work and put food on the table. Your daughter was a little girl then, "undocumented" as they say, but no less of a person for it. Now she's almost finished high school -- one of your dreams for her. But many doors are closed because she lacks either a green card or citizenship.

Applicants wait in Langley Park, MD to apply for the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals program. (Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo)  source: ABC News

You can't afford to put her through college. Maybe it's a blessing that she can't get a federal student loan -- at least she may escape the debt servitude of her generation among the working class.

Employers will be able to exploit her because of her legal status (how convenient for them). 

She can't visit her grandparents or cousins back in the place you both came from because of the risk that she might not be able to return to you.

How might you feel about the news that she can now "earn" a path to citizenship by enlisting in the military?

Pvt. Marleni Cruzcarranza of Sterling, Va., receives a hug from best friend Lauren Sanchez after receiving her U.S. citizenship during a naturalization ceremony Thursday morning at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island. Pvt. Cruzcarranza, formerly a citizen of Honduras, will graduate from Marine Corps bootcamp today (01/04/2013). - Sarah Welliver /ASSOCIATED PRESS  source: TheState.Com

How would you feel knowing that signing up for the Army is your daughter's best bet as a reliable fast track option for "earning" citizenship?

Now, as an enlistee she could also be expected to actually fight in combat (Falguni Sheth's blog post examining this as "progress" for women" is not to be missed). Your daughter might be required to kill people in Afghanistan, Yemen (or wherever may be the war du jour) as part of the much vaunted "path to citizenship."

How might you feel about recruiting ads aimed at her, some designed to play on family loyalty? A marketing strategy that counts on the fact that she's probably low-income, that unemployment is high? The poverty draft is blowing like a gale wind force through families like yours, and it is now pushing the daughters even more than the sons. The daughters who earn less for the same work done by men. The daughters who have a lower net worth for a lifetime than any man of any class or race whatsoever.
The daughters of color who disproportionately enlist in these crappy economic times.


How might you feel about Democrats are bragging about what they are offering your daughter?

Nancy Pelosi tweet: "House Dems support President’s principles of comprehensive #immigrationreform, promise of earned citizenship + keeping families together."

Rights are not earned, they are claimed. No government can bestow rights upon its people. Humans are born with them, whether or not they are able to realize this in their lifetime. The history of groups who were offered the chance to "earn" their rights in the past is not a particularly good one.

Africans and African American slaves were offered the chance to support combat troops for the North in the U.S. Civil War. They came home to lynching and the rise of the KKK, Jim Crow segregation laws, and voter suppression. Thanks, vets!

Japanese Americans who had been in the military still got put into illegal internment camps during WWII.

Native American veterans do no better economically or socially for having been in the military. In fact, they are more likely to end up addicted and/or homeless than the other members of their community. 

Actually, so are vets of any ethnic group. 

Apparently a right to quality health care if injured while on active duty is not one of the rights that can be earned -- although I'll bet you anything that's what recruiters told them was part of the package. "We'll take care of you AND your family if something happens to you," is what recruiters reportedly say. Ask the 900,000+ vets whose claims are backlogged at the VA right now if that claim turned out to be true.

And if you're one of the many who succumb to suicide while waiting to be helped with your PTSD or brain injury, your family gets nada.

In recent times, the Pentagon has shown its appreciation for families by having young mothers on active duty arrested, sometimes causing their children to be taken into protective services when the moms fail to report for duty due to childcare being unavailable. (Not like anybody in the patriarchal empire of the united bloody states thought there was ever any possibility of earning the right to universal high quality child care!)

Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old Army cook, appears in fatigues in the photo held by her mother and viewed by her baby. The baby was taken from her when Alexis was arrested for not deploying.

Warm and fuzzy soft recruiting tactics aimed at high schoolers sure don't make it seem like the military would be such a mean boss. From the Jobs for Maine's Graduate program newsletter on a service learning project providing gifts to needy families over the holidays:

"We partnered with the Army National Guard in Skowhegan to facilitate wrapping the gifts and delivering them to the distribution sites."

Partnered is such a cozy verb, isn't it?

Militarization is the poison pill in every liberal offering these days.

Corporate Media Does Heavy Lifting For Perpetual War

The news that the Pentagon plans to send women into combat dominated two consecutive front pages of my local newspaper the Waterville Morning Sentinel. The Sentinel is one of a group of papers bought last year by the billionaire husband of Rep. Chellie Pingree, who "serves" on the House Armed Services Committee. The group includes the paper of record in our state capital (Kennebec Journal) and of Maine's largest city (Portland Press Herald).

Day #1, above the fold:

Day #2, above the fold, three related headlines:

As if lifted straight from a Pentagon press release, further along in this article are the rocks of unexamined assumption upon which empires are built -- and eventually run aground:

The necessities of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, propelled women into jobs as medics, military police and intelligence officers that were sometimes attached -- but not formally assigned -- to battalions. So while a woman couldn't be assigned as an infantryman in a battalion going out on patrol, she could fly the helicopter supporting the unit, or move in to provide medical aid if troops were injured. 

And these conflicts, where battlefield lines are blurred and insurgents can lurk around every corner, have made it almost impossible to keep women clear of combat.

In the second story, the only veterans interviewed by the Sentinel's reporter were all in favor of the idea.

In the story that ran side by side with the one about veterans, the newspaper couldn't find one single college student who didn't think this was a good idea -- really?

The poverty draft is a big factor in the lives of young people in the areas served by these newspapers. Maine has the highest per capita deaths in Afghanistan of any state, because even kids that trained to be welders or dieticians are out of work, along with those that graduated from U Maine with 4.0 GPAs and cannot get a call back from chain restaurants where they put in job applications.

Lucinda Marshall writing in Common Dreams reported on how the poverty draft disproportionately affects women in Why Serving in Combat Does Not Serve Women (Or Anyone Else) Well:

The take away here should be that we need to take a good hard look at the ways in which we are failing these women in regard to job training and job availability in the civilian world because as it stands now, we are effectively asking the most disenfranchised among us to fight our wars, and this move only makes it more dangerous for them, regardless of rank and benefits. (Emphasis mine.)

Ms. Marshall was among the few journalists who connected the (rather obvious) dots between this story and the other leading story about women in combat these days: the epidemic of rape in the military.

It is also hugely ironic that Panetta’s announcement came the same day that Congress was holding yet another hearing on the intractable problem of sexual assault in the military.  The truth is that women are more likely to be attacked by other members of our military than by any enemy. The New York Times’ Gail Collins makes the unfortunate suggestion that having more women rise in the ranks might,

make things better because it will mean more women at the top of the military, and that, inevitably, will mean more attention to women’s issues.

Sexual assault in the military is not a woman’s issue.  It is an epidemic and a national disgrace that is a direct result of the misguided notion of militarism that posits that strength comes from asserting power over others.  (Emphasis the author's.)

And in fact the New York Times and the head of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff were marching to the same drummer on this one. As reported by Hayes Brown in ThinkProgress:

Instead of taking the stance of some commentators that adding women to combat units would diminish their effectiveness or “humiliate” the men serving alongside them, Dempsey rightly focused on the risk of assault that women in the armed services face. Approximately one in three military women have been sexually assaulted, about double the rate of those in civilian life.

With a compliant, corporate-controlled press in charge of the information provided to the vast majority of U.S. citizens, this relentless march to a fully militarized society isn't likely to end anytime soon.

Nor is it likely to end well.

Full report coming soon on the Feminist Values discussion I helped organize last Sunday in Augusta as the 19th Changing Maine Gathering. Suffice it to say for now that our collective attempt to sum up what we mean by feminist values in a sentence produced this gem: "Respect for the Earth, and for each other."

Bruce Gagnon at Portland No Tar Sands march Sat. Jan 26, 2013. Full story of the Pentagon's carbon footprint may be found in The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism by Barry Sanders.

#Invisible_War Invisible No More. Thanks, Academy!

Rape survivior Hannah Sewell with her father. Most of the women in the documentary came from families with a tradition of enlisting. Hannah was told by her command that they had lost all the evidence of an attack that damaged her back and took her virginity. She called Washington DC and found that all the evidence was right where it should be. But her attacker, like most of the rapists discussed in this film, was never held accountable.

I watched a film nominated for the Academy Award for best feature documentary last night on my Netflix instant play (I understand it's available on Hulu and still playing in some theaters, too): The Invisible War. A scathing indictment of the culture of rape that prevails in the U.S. military -- all branches -- and of the failure of command and oversight by those entrusted with the safety of what politicians love to call our brave men and women in uniform. Here's the trailer:


Several of the women who were brave enough to report their rape joined with other survivors in a lawsuit alleging that their command did nothing to pursue the criminal that attacked them. Au contraire, in several cases the command brought charges against the victim. For instance, if the attacker was married but raped a single woman, she would be charged with adultery. (I swear, I cannot make shit like this up.) The court found against the plaintiffs saying that the risk of rape is an employment condition of military service! Needless to say, the case has now been appealed.

Experts believe around 1 in 3 women are sexually assaulted while on active duty, far more than die in combat.  Their high rate of PTSD seems to stem as much from the assault on their trust from the way the case is handled as from the physical assault of the rape itself, which is often accompanied by beating and or drugging. By the way, many men are raped while on active duty, too. And as the film makes clear, the families of rape survivors suffer in their own ways. The heroes in this film are the spouses, parents and children who live with someone trying to live with PTSD.

The mother of a former student of mine told me this week that her daughter was thinking of enlisting, because the trade she went to school for was not in demand and the young woman had been laid off from her job. It's the type of trade that is useful in weapons manufacturing, but increasingly robots do that sort of work. No matter who does it, it is at the U.S. taxpayer's expense.

Ditto the all night drinking parties indulged in by officers from the Marine Barracks in Washington DC, the elite post which provides the soldiers who guard, among other things, the White House. Serial rapists continue to work and draw their government paycheck. Who knows how many of them are guarding Barack Obama's family right this minute?

One of the more disappointing performances in the film was by Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME). Yes, she met with a delegation of rape survivors and listened to their stories sympathetically. Then she delivered a treacly statement about how much she supports our brave men and women in uniform. What happened to the organic farmer and mom that Mainers sent to represent them in Washington? She got put on the House Armed Services Committee, she found a billionaire husband (who now owns most of the newspapers in Maine) and she started riding in the black limos that go to General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works for the launch of each new nuclear equipped Aegis destroyer, that's what.

I had been meaning to see The Invisible War for a while. Yesterday one of my kids who is friends with the editor, Derek Boonstra, brought my attention to the Academy nomination. Congratulations to all who worked on this film -- it is really excellent. The film's pacing is considerate of the audience as we grapple with the horrible truth of the epidemic of rape and its cover up at our expense.