Veterans Day. To many, it marks sales. To some, it marks a time for parades. Only too few remember now what it is and what it has been.
In the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the most brutal war the world had ever seen came to an end. A war so brutal and all encompassing that it was simply called "The World War". No one thought that there would ever be another. I've looked at my great-grandfather's census card, and he lists his status as a veteran, and simply "World War". No one then thought there would be the need to pencil in a Roman numeral after it.
Over 20 million people died in that war. I don't think our minds can adequately understand how many people that is. Roughly two and a half times the population of New York City is how I remember it. Imagine that every voice in that city was silenced, the place full only of corpses. It is not possible. I do not think any of us, no matter how long we live, will ever be able to imagine a place of that much death. I hope not, anyway.
Everyone sees the poppies everywhere, the VFW with them in their hands. Or maybe just everyone near military posts. But even the military too often forget why.
It's because of Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, who wrote this on a piece of paper, on the back of a friend during a lull in the bombing. Like so many, he did not survive to see the end of the war.
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
It was so ugly that it was called "The War To End All Wars". The war that was going to make us all talk to each other, end petty tyrannies and expansions and evil, end the idea that millions of people need to die because somebody shot the archduke Ferdinand.
Of course, it failed.
We know now that it failed, but the world will never dance and roar as loud as they did then, when they thought they had defeated it forever. Armistice Day was set as a day to remember this peace that would last.
Then the next war came, and it was devoted simply to veterans. The world had grown older, and knew that there would be many more wars to come. There were no superlatives after World War Two. Even now, we anticipate another one.
Today, I remember veterans and soldiers who gave themselves for something they believe in. But I also remember the ugliness of war-not just today, but what happens after. And I encourage everyone to remember those who have given everything not just today, not just in heroics, but every day.
To that end, I also give you "The Last of the Light Brigade", by Rudyard Kipling.
There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.
They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four !
They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."
They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.
They strove to stand to attention, to straighen the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.
The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an' we thought we'd call an' tell.
"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."
The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.
O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made - "
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
PTSD Is Not An Excuse
I've thought a lot about this, and have wanted to say something about this for a long time, but I was never really angry enough to break past the filmy barrier that's been preventing us from saying things about this for a long time. Do I care for my brothers who have PTSD? Absolutely. Do I understand that PTSD is debilitating? Absolutely. I have it myself and it's a really hard thing to live with. Can it even be disabling? Yes. If you've seen some of the people I have, you'd absolutely understand that.
But it is NOT A FUCKING EXCUSE.
I will admit here that I struggle with my anger every day. Every single day. I am number one for walking out on the job right now, because my leadership understands that walking out and cooling down is much more productive than yelling or hitting something. But once you know that you have PTSD, I think you have a responsibility as well to try to temper it. You try as hard as you possibly can to avoid situations that you know are going to tempt you. For example: I used to love going out by myself to strange bars and drinking with new friends. I don't do it anymore, after the time when I got myself involved in someone else's fight and spent the next hour limping, bleeding, and talking my way out of trouble with the MPs. Do I wish I had the control to be able to do it? Yes, you're damn right I do. But I acknowledge that it's a risk factor, and so I don't go out drinking unless I'm accompanied by someone I trust to get me out of Dodge if trouble looks like it's rising.
I'm sick and tired of people who claim that their PTSD is the excuse for them indulging in all sorts of bad behavior. It's an explanation, but it's not an excuse. If you had the opportunity to mitigate or avoid the situation but decided to stick it out anyway because you knew you could get away with it by claiming PTSD? You are not a victim, you are an asshole.
I'll put myself on blast here, and explain that my PTSD is 'noncombat', in that it does not directly relate to official combat with an official enemy. Instead it is domestic violence and sexual assault related, in that the combat involved me unarmed, facing an armed enemy who also happened to be my husband at the time. I still, to this day, am affected by it. Every day, I am quick to lose my temper, and god help me if you abuse women in my presence. I once got into a fistfight with a man a head and a half taller and two feet wider than myself over it. When someone deserves it, I am happy, genuinely happy, to wade into the fray even if I am going to take some serious damage. But when someone doesn't deserve it, I hold back.
I've had to deal with a lot of other people with PTSD in the line of work I involve myself in. Dealing with veterans, you see a lot of it. But what I also see, and I wish I didn't, is a pattern of using it as an excuse. Using combat PTSD as an excuse for why someone beats their wife, or raped a woman. Why they attempted to attack someone half their size for no apparent reason. Why it's okay to rip kids off bikes if you think they're doing something like you saw once in Iraq.
It's not fucking okay.
It is not fucking okay.
It is NOT FUCKING OKAY.
If you feel like you need to beat your wife? Maybe it's time to go in to counseling. Tell your wife what's going on. Start leaving the house when you start getting angry.
If you feel like you're incapable of getting physical without forcing your way to sex at the end because dammit, you somehow deserve to get what you want? You need to be away from women for a while. Seriously.
And here's another important one: if you want to get people to tiptoe lightly around your mental health issues, you need to tiptoe lightly around theirs. If you want people not to make loud noises around you, you need to listen to a woman's request that you give her a room with a lock on it. If you want people to try not to provoke your temper? You need to try not to provoke other people's, and be adult enough to walk away when you are.
I respect those whose sufferings in combat have caused them great pain that they are not able to fully recover from. But their mental health issues are not one bit more holy or sacrosanct than anyone else's. We all need to be respected, we all need to be treated as human and as brothers. /Especially/ as soldiers and veterans, and especially within veterans groups.
Images here are from the very excellent Men Can Stop Rape campaign, that my SARC showed me to.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Obama, Part I
I can remember my first sight of the man. I had never heard of him. I was sitting in the Legal Assistance office in Yongsan, Korea, preparing for my divorce. In the room, the Democratic National Convention was playing on a single corner TV screen. Small, tinny, the volume wavering. Yet I listened to this man I had never heard of speak, and I was touched.
It didn't apply to me at the time. It applies to me now. I know that what I am doing is right. I know that it is just and legal. But I fear, where I never did before, a sudden knock on the door. I know others who fear that same knock. And I know that it is wrong, and I am glad and grateful to have a President coming who may remember this, and remember us who believe that dissenting is in fact to be protected.
Yes. Oh, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Back then I had not grown into my strong opposition to the Iraq occupation, but even then I knew that our troops were not being treated fairly in exchange for what they were giving. That they were being sent out unprotected, unfinanced, unloved by the giants that set their actions in motion but would never risk themselves or their children. I can never know what started the process, but perhaps if the seed was already planted, this speech may have helped me on my way.
I grew up in a New York City so tolerant that I did not learn racism still existed until I joined the Army. I could not conceive of a world where people would be prejudiced against based on their race and their heritage. Where their rights would be taken away. This echoed more than most.
And this is what helped to give my heart hope during a difficult time. That things were not all black or all white. That somebody, somebody out there understood my own pain and difficulties of feeling stretched in the middle, as a fiscal conservative and social liberal. I was not all red or all blue and felt that I could not be alone. That the world could not be so divided into evil and good and I unable to tell which side was which except by looking to which party Bush was sitting in.
I hope dearly that our new president-elect will remember this. Will remember the speech that gave me and others hope. The speech that made me say in the room "Why isn't /that/ guy running for President?" And someone else say, "Someday."
Now it is that someday, and it has come a lot sooner than I expected.
America lived up to and beyond a thousand times my hope for it. It surpassed my already large expectations and dreams.
Now I only hope that he will not get shot, as Colin Powell's wife feared when talk was of him running for office.
"That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door."
It didn't apply to me at the time. It applies to me now. I know that what I am doing is right. I know that it is just and legal. But I fear, where I never did before, a sudden knock on the door. I know others who fear that same knock. And I know that it is wrong, and I am glad and grateful to have a President coming who may remember this, and remember us who believe that dissenting is in fact to be protected.
When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.
Yes. Oh, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Back then I had not grown into my strong opposition to the Iraq occupation, but even then I knew that our troops were not being treated fairly in exchange for what they were giving. That they were being sent out unprotected, unfinanced, unloved by the giants that set their actions in motion but would never risk themselves or their children. I can never know what started the process, but perhaps if the seed was already planted, this speech may have helped me on my way.
If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
I grew up in a New York City so tolerant that I did not learn racism still existed until I joined the Army. I could not conceive of a world where people would be prejudiced against based on their race and their heritage. Where their rights would be taken away. This echoed more than most.
Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too:
We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States.
We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
And this is what helped to give my heart hope during a difficult time. That things were not all black or all white. That somebody, somebody out there understood my own pain and difficulties of feeling stretched in the middle, as a fiscal conservative and social liberal. I was not all red or all blue and felt that I could not be alone. That the world could not be so divided into evil and good and I unable to tell which side was which except by looking to which party Bush was sitting in.
I hope dearly that our new president-elect will remember this. Will remember the speech that gave me and others hope. The speech that made me say in the room "Why isn't /that/ guy running for President?" And someone else say, "Someday."
Now it is that someday, and it has come a lot sooner than I expected.
America lived up to and beyond a thousand times my hope for it. It surpassed my already large expectations and dreams.
Now I only hope that he will not get shot, as Colin Powell's wife feared when talk was of him running for office.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Broken bones? Take a tylenol and drink water
Photos are credited to Bill Perry, who's also the Philly VSO-full pictures can be found here.
For those who were unaware, the police at the Hofstra debate action, in response to the civilian crowd surging forward, wheeled their horses, knocking Sergeant Nick Morgan to the ground, upon which one of the horses trampled him, leaving hoofprints on his ribs and also breaking his cheekbone in three places. He was very clearly on the sidewalk at the time he was first hit by the horse, as can be seen in various YouTube videos.
Man down.
Nick Morgan after initial medical treatment-motrin and a water. Maybe they wanted him to feel at home, like he was back in the Army.
Nick is doing a bit better-he has been seen in a VA hospital, and apparently the Philadelphia VA is a class act, far better than the civilian hospital he was first seen in. The Army Times story about the veterans arrested has also mentioned it here. All the best to Nick. Anyone wants to email me with wishes of support or wishes for a swift recovery to him, feel free to email me at sgtivaw@gmail.com and I will forward it on.
I'll let Nick tell you about his progress in his own words.
From Nick Morgan,
For those who were unaware, the police at the Hofstra debate action, in response to the civilian crowd surging forward, wheeled their horses, knocking Sergeant Nick Morgan to the ground, upon which one of the horses trampled him, leaving hoofprints on his ribs and also breaking his cheekbone in three places. He was very clearly on the sidewalk at the time he was first hit by the horse, as can be seen in various YouTube videos.
Man down.
Nick Morgan after initial medical treatment-motrin and a water. Maybe they wanted him to feel at home, like he was back in the Army.
Nick is doing a bit better-he has been seen in a VA hospital, and apparently the Philadelphia VA is a class act, far better than the civilian hospital he was first seen in. The Army Times story about the veterans arrested has also mentioned it here. All the best to Nick. Anyone wants to email me with wishes of support or wishes for a swift recovery to him, feel free to email me at sgtivaw@gmail.com and I will forward it on.
I'll let Nick tell you about his progress in his own words.
From Nick Morgan,
I have spent several hours at the VA in Philadelphia and will be having surgery on Thursday, Oct. 23rd to stop my eye from sinking into my sinus cavity. The lower orbital (cheekbone) on the right side of my face is broken in three places. My nose may be fractured but will heal by itself since it is not out of place. I also have scrapes, bruises, and significant pain in my ribs (the x-rays were negative).
Every day someone tells me how much better my face looks. The stitches are still in and look like they are ready to come out. The swelling has almost subsided but there is still a fair amount of blood around my eye. My vision is a little blurry sometimes but it should get better. I don’t have feeling in a portion of my upper lip, nose, and upper right set of teeth. The surgeons said the feeling might come back depending on what type of nerve damage occurred. It’s getting much easier to eat. I just have to make sure to stay away from crunchy things and to take small bites, as my mouth still won’t open completely. Sleeping isn’t exactly easy because I can only sleep on my back due to my injuries…but other than all that, life is good!
The surgery will be fairly straightforward (from what I can gather). They will go under my eyelid and possibly above my gums to insert a degradable reinforcement for my cheekbone. They will obviously be monitoring my eye closely for quite some time. I will do my best to keep everyone posted upon recovering from surgery. Again, thanks to everyone for your concern and support!
The March at the DNC
This post has been written in bits and pieces, and is so damn late as to be nearly irrelevant. But TSO called me out, so here it is. This will be periodically updated with videos, which is what the holdup was last time.
It’s (at the time) three days later, and it’s still hard for me to write about the march. It was such an amazing and emotional experience that I still can barely talk about it aloud calmly-and writing is just as bad.
Even the morning was incredible-watching everyone get up and shave and put their uniform on, one after the other, choked me up. I’ve always felt that my fellow IVAW members were in many ways my soldiers, but having it made more explicitly clear literally blew my mind. Walking around and brushing lint off Class As, straightening someone’s tie, pulling strings off someone else’s uniform…it was just like any other unit I’ve been in getting ready for inspection. Looking at Josh Earl in his dress blues, or Jeff Key and Liam Madden in their Marine dress uniforms, seeing them all smile and laugh and get ready…seeing the number of IVAW members who shaved entire beards off to put their dress uniforms on again…Hari Khalsa, who went from a scruffy comedian to a wise-cracking NCO again….everyone, too many to name. IVAW /was/ my unit, and I wished like hell I could have been with them in my own dress uniform. It pained me to be wearing civilian clothes and old black boots from my BDU days-the only part of an old uniform I could legally wear, which would help with the marching-and also with helping me march with one foot a mess of blisters from police liason the other day.
We rolled out in shifts to the Rage Against the Machine show, and I have to say that the consideration that the band gave us was amazing. Watching them salute the IVAW members in uniform from the stage, hearing the audience shouting for the troops to come home and seeing the wild, enthusiastic applause for IVAW and their points of unity was incredible. (Not to mention my amusement as the crowd chanted 'USA' for the IVAW members for probably the first time ever.)
I had given over my role as police liason to Robynn and Geoff Millard, as I was going to be marching and involved in the action. We had a good passdown and changeover, and were pleased to be met by Lieutenant Porter again, as well as the Chief of Police and Vice Chief of Police for Denver. The other two were stopping through, but had a good productive conversation with our liasons. Although we did not have a prior permit, they said that while they would prefer that we kept to the sidewalk, if there were too many people, they would block off a lane of traffic for us. We were also following a route previously suggested by them, for ease of flow and minimum traffic disruption.
The call to fall in was given, and we began to march out. I initially started the cadence calling, and I swelled almost to bursting at it. To call cadence that I had written for a platoon full of people that I loved was beyond intense.
Eventually my voice gave out and I had to turn it over to another of my brothers-in-arms, and contented myself with sounding off as loudly as possible so that the streets echoed with our sound.
There were some issues to marching in cadence with civilians following behind, though. I saw elsewhere on the internet that one of the civlians thought we were negotiating each time we stopped, but really, we were waiting for the civilians to catch up. The ones near the front of the formation were keeping up okay, but the ones near the middle and back were doing the accordion thing that happens at battalion runs, and my fellow IVAW members didn’t want to leave them behind. Marching is the way it is because the timing makes it a fairly efficient way to move troops at a good pace. Civilians, not so much. At one point we tried to 'rout step crawl', but troops, in uniform or out, don't make very good slow walkers, so we went back to marching and pausing.
Another thing occurred that I would not have expected-we had the devil of a time getting the media to respect formation integrity. So used, during our time in the military, to everyone honoring a formation, not going in front of a formation or through a formation, and giving it clear space on the sides, it had not occurred to us that the media and general civilians might not realize it was disrespectful. Some of them, who shall remain nameless, got quite upset about it, one of them even physically assaulting our media coordinator, Francesca LoBasso.
The support of the people of Denver, and the police themselves, was incredible. They lined the streets for us, parents bringing their children and people coming out on their balconies. For an unpermitted march, it was more like a parade, with even the police having somewhat of a festive atmosphere. Of course, they probably thought we were planning to go into the “Freedom Cage”-and yes, that really was its name. They even sent a golf-cart style vehicle ahead of us flashing ‘Welcome to Denver’.
(Below follows the more recent portion)
We had previously decided that no way, no how, were veterans and servicemembers who had served their country, many of them in combat, going to be forced into a 'Freedom Cage'. What purpose supposedly defending freedom abroad if there's no freedom here at home? Jeff Key says it better than I can in the below video.
Yet, as we marched, we found ourselves steered towards an elaborate cattle chute, designed to keep us out of the way, hidden from the delegates. In true herding fashion, there were no police at the front of the march that we could possibly have had any sort of confrontation with. I have to give the police of Denver their due. It was a brilliant move. Had they been dealing with any other protest group whatsoever, it would have worked. We would have been stopped, stalled, robbed of our energy, and eventually dispersed.
But military formations and commands were created for this. We simply passed the word back through the civilians that IVAW would be coming back through, and they parted like the red sea-allowing a simple about-face to place us in perfect position to march back through our following crowds, and find another point, closer to the Pepsi Center, and far better for negotiations.
We faced off at the gate. There were lines of riot police, riot police on cherry pickers, riot police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas. As we slowly began to move the formation forward, a few steps closer at a time, I have to say that there was a point when I fully expected to be shot. It's not that we were a threat to the police force, and we had already explained that when the arrestable IVAW members reached the front they fully were prepared to cooperate with police and go quietly without struggle. But I am nothing if not able to put myself in someone else's shoes, and I could easily put myself in the shoes of the Denver police at that moment. We were relatively new in that city to massive, disciplined actions. There was a military formation of highly disciplined troops who were not breaking formation, not shouting and yelling and showing lack of coordination, but taking orders from our platoon leader. They had a good relationship with us from the other day, but still-if I were a police officer, I would not want to confront a company size element of troops (if you include the nonarrestable contingent, who historically is known for switching to arrestable when seeing other IVAW members go down). I especially would not want to confront a company size element who managed to get a protest crowd of over 5,000-10,000 (depending on different crowd estimates) to follow direction. They had no way of knowing what the mob was there for.
For local media video, and also to see more IVAW thanking the police, this is a good video.
Deep credit once again goes to the liasons, both on our side and on the police side. But even more credit goes to Jason Hurd and Kris Goldsmith, who took the megaphone and addressed the police themselves. As we in formation saluted the police, Jason Hurd called out to them as fellows who had taken an oath to protect, as the fellow veterans that many of them were. The Denver PD, we learned the previous day, had a large contingent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. We addressed them as the brothers they were, as seen below, and explained that we did not want to hurt them, and would not resist even if they decided that their orders meant they had to hurt us. That many of us had been the men with the guns, the men facing a crowd, but that we had an easier task than they did. We had never been asked to act against American citizens. We had never been asked to act against brothers.
We knew the police did not want to arrest us-nor did they want our lines to meet. They had worked with us the previous day and knew who we were, and respected us. But we also knew that they had orders, and their orders (and the orders likely given by the Secret Service) required them to keep us back from any possibility of reaching inside.
Impartial observers reported that five veteran-police officers had to remove themselves from the line due to beginning to tear up and one actually crying so badly that he gave his riot control weapon to another police officer and walked off the line without asking for permission first. We were all brothers that day, and no one, no one, wanted to hurt each other.
Fortunately, when we were maybe five or ten feet away from the actual police line, the Obama campaign sent out orders to the police to allow two of our representatives inside, where they were met with the veterans affairs liason for the campaign, supposedly to talk about getting our letter read to the delegates.
Initially, we believed that it was a victory, and that Obama had agreed to this. Someone even shouted that he had agreed to endorse our three points of unity. This later proved to be bad intelligence, but at the time, we truly believed that we had won. That the person most likely (at least given polls) to be president of the United States had listened to us, and would continue our goals into policy. That the burden of what we had done and still had to do might possibly be lifted. That there was a chance-just a chance-that this struggle so many of us have devoted so much of our lives to might be over.
I am not ashamed to admit that as the order was given to fall out, I cried as I hugged more people than I ever had in a single day before, as the crowd of civilians behind us chanted "Yes we can". I was whirled up by brother after brother and was awash with more intense joy than I had felt in years. The belief that my brothers would be coming home. That the world would slowly begin to be put right again. That the military would begin to change back to what it was when soldiers took care of each other.
We fell out onto the grass, exhausted. Many of us had gone without sleep, and had marched in the blazing hot sun for quite some time. The slowness of the crowd meant that we were out for hours in the heat, and the water resupply had given out as soon as the cattlechute got tighter. Many of us had eaten very little or nothing all day. We collapsed in peace, in that exhausted peace that comes with having done your work well and completely. We told the crowd we had achieved victory, and they mingled with us for some time before leaving. Food Not Bombs took a quick count of our numbers and headed off, later to return with the most amazing chili I had tasted in quite some time. Hunger is always the best sauce. They came out at night when they didn't have to, just to feed us. We felt one with the city, one with the police. We mingled with them all, laughed with them, shook their hands and talked about our lives. Some of them tried to recruit us to the Denver police department. Some of us tried to recruit them to IVAW. Everyone was in good spirits. It's always a good day when you don't have to shoot anyone. It's always a good day when you don't have to be shot or arrested. It's always a good day when you can find common ground.
In the end, the letter was not read to the delegates. As a veteran tribute was taking place inside, veterans were essentially ignored by many delegates outside. However, it did make it to the veteran liason, who read it and promised to deliver it to Obama. I have no idea if he did or not. But still, it was an incredible action. I only wish more could go like that.
It’s (at the time) three days later, and it’s still hard for me to write about the march. It was such an amazing and emotional experience that I still can barely talk about it aloud calmly-and writing is just as bad.
Even the morning was incredible-watching everyone get up and shave and put their uniform on, one after the other, choked me up. I’ve always felt that my fellow IVAW members were in many ways my soldiers, but having it made more explicitly clear literally blew my mind. Walking around and brushing lint off Class As, straightening someone’s tie, pulling strings off someone else’s uniform…it was just like any other unit I’ve been in getting ready for inspection. Looking at Josh Earl in his dress blues, or Jeff Key and Liam Madden in their Marine dress uniforms, seeing them all smile and laugh and get ready…seeing the number of IVAW members who shaved entire beards off to put their dress uniforms on again…Hari Khalsa, who went from a scruffy comedian to a wise-cracking NCO again….everyone, too many to name. IVAW /was/ my unit, and I wished like hell I could have been with them in my own dress uniform. It pained me to be wearing civilian clothes and old black boots from my BDU days-the only part of an old uniform I could legally wear, which would help with the marching-and also with helping me march with one foot a mess of blisters from police liason the other day.
We rolled out in shifts to the Rage Against the Machine show, and I have to say that the consideration that the band gave us was amazing. Watching them salute the IVAW members in uniform from the stage, hearing the audience shouting for the troops to come home and seeing the wild, enthusiastic applause for IVAW and their points of unity was incredible. (Not to mention my amusement as the crowd chanted 'USA' for the IVAW members for probably the first time ever.)
I had given over my role as police liason to Robynn and Geoff Millard, as I was going to be marching and involved in the action. We had a good passdown and changeover, and were pleased to be met by Lieutenant Porter again, as well as the Chief of Police and Vice Chief of Police for Denver. The other two were stopping through, but had a good productive conversation with our liasons. Although we did not have a prior permit, they said that while they would prefer that we kept to the sidewalk, if there were too many people, they would block off a lane of traffic for us. We were also following a route previously suggested by them, for ease of flow and minimum traffic disruption.
The call to fall in was given, and we began to march out. I initially started the cadence calling, and I swelled almost to bursting at it. To call cadence that I had written for a platoon full of people that I loved was beyond intense.
Eventually my voice gave out and I had to turn it over to another of my brothers-in-arms, and contented myself with sounding off as loudly as possible so that the streets echoed with our sound.
There were some issues to marching in cadence with civilians following behind, though. I saw elsewhere on the internet that one of the civlians thought we were negotiating each time we stopped, but really, we were waiting for the civilians to catch up. The ones near the front of the formation were keeping up okay, but the ones near the middle and back were doing the accordion thing that happens at battalion runs, and my fellow IVAW members didn’t want to leave them behind. Marching is the way it is because the timing makes it a fairly efficient way to move troops at a good pace. Civilians, not so much. At one point we tried to 'rout step crawl', but troops, in uniform or out, don't make very good slow walkers, so we went back to marching and pausing.
Another thing occurred that I would not have expected-we had the devil of a time getting the media to respect formation integrity. So used, during our time in the military, to everyone honoring a formation, not going in front of a formation or through a formation, and giving it clear space on the sides, it had not occurred to us that the media and general civilians might not realize it was disrespectful. Some of them, who shall remain nameless, got quite upset about it, one of them even physically assaulting our media coordinator, Francesca LoBasso.
The support of the people of Denver, and the police themselves, was incredible. They lined the streets for us, parents bringing their children and people coming out on their balconies. For an unpermitted march, it was more like a parade, with even the police having somewhat of a festive atmosphere. Of course, they probably thought we were planning to go into the “Freedom Cage”-and yes, that really was its name. They even sent a golf-cart style vehicle ahead of us flashing ‘Welcome to Denver’.
(Below follows the more recent portion)
We had previously decided that no way, no how, were veterans and servicemembers who had served their country, many of them in combat, going to be forced into a 'Freedom Cage'. What purpose supposedly defending freedom abroad if there's no freedom here at home? Jeff Key says it better than I can in the below video.
Yet, as we marched, we found ourselves steered towards an elaborate cattle chute, designed to keep us out of the way, hidden from the delegates. In true herding fashion, there were no police at the front of the march that we could possibly have had any sort of confrontation with. I have to give the police of Denver their due. It was a brilliant move. Had they been dealing with any other protest group whatsoever, it would have worked. We would have been stopped, stalled, robbed of our energy, and eventually dispersed.
But military formations and commands were created for this. We simply passed the word back through the civilians that IVAW would be coming back through, and they parted like the red sea-allowing a simple about-face to place us in perfect position to march back through our following crowds, and find another point, closer to the Pepsi Center, and far better for negotiations.
We faced off at the gate. There were lines of riot police, riot police on cherry pickers, riot police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas. As we slowly began to move the formation forward, a few steps closer at a time, I have to say that there was a point when I fully expected to be shot. It's not that we were a threat to the police force, and we had already explained that when the arrestable IVAW members reached the front they fully were prepared to cooperate with police and go quietly without struggle. But I am nothing if not able to put myself in someone else's shoes, and I could easily put myself in the shoes of the Denver police at that moment. We were relatively new in that city to massive, disciplined actions. There was a military formation of highly disciplined troops who were not breaking formation, not shouting and yelling and showing lack of coordination, but taking orders from our platoon leader. They had a good relationship with us from the other day, but still-if I were a police officer, I would not want to confront a company size element of troops (if you include the nonarrestable contingent, who historically is known for switching to arrestable when seeing other IVAW members go down). I especially would not want to confront a company size element who managed to get a protest crowd of over 5,000-10,000 (depending on different crowd estimates) to follow direction. They had no way of knowing what the mob was there for.
For local media video, and also to see more IVAW thanking the police, this is a good video.
Deep credit once again goes to the liasons, both on our side and on the police side. But even more credit goes to Jason Hurd and Kris Goldsmith, who took the megaphone and addressed the police themselves. As we in formation saluted the police, Jason Hurd called out to them as fellows who had taken an oath to protect, as the fellow veterans that many of them were. The Denver PD, we learned the previous day, had a large contingent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. We addressed them as the brothers they were, as seen below, and explained that we did not want to hurt them, and would not resist even if they decided that their orders meant they had to hurt us. That many of us had been the men with the guns, the men facing a crowd, but that we had an easier task than they did. We had never been asked to act against American citizens. We had never been asked to act against brothers.
We knew the police did not want to arrest us-nor did they want our lines to meet. They had worked with us the previous day and knew who we were, and respected us. But we also knew that they had orders, and their orders (and the orders likely given by the Secret Service) required them to keep us back from any possibility of reaching inside.
Impartial observers reported that five veteran-police officers had to remove themselves from the line due to beginning to tear up and one actually crying so badly that he gave his riot control weapon to another police officer and walked off the line without asking for permission first. We were all brothers that day, and no one, no one, wanted to hurt each other.
Fortunately, when we were maybe five or ten feet away from the actual police line, the Obama campaign sent out orders to the police to allow two of our representatives inside, where they were met with the veterans affairs liason for the campaign, supposedly to talk about getting our letter read to the delegates.
Initially, we believed that it was a victory, and that Obama had agreed to this. Someone even shouted that he had agreed to endorse our three points of unity. This later proved to be bad intelligence, but at the time, we truly believed that we had won. That the person most likely (at least given polls) to be president of the United States had listened to us, and would continue our goals into policy. That the burden of what we had done and still had to do might possibly be lifted. That there was a chance-just a chance-that this struggle so many of us have devoted so much of our lives to might be over.
I am not ashamed to admit that as the order was given to fall out, I cried as I hugged more people than I ever had in a single day before, as the crowd of civilians behind us chanted "Yes we can". I was whirled up by brother after brother and was awash with more intense joy than I had felt in years. The belief that my brothers would be coming home. That the world would slowly begin to be put right again. That the military would begin to change back to what it was when soldiers took care of each other.
We fell out onto the grass, exhausted. Many of us had gone without sleep, and had marched in the blazing hot sun for quite some time. The slowness of the crowd meant that we were out for hours in the heat, and the water resupply had given out as soon as the cattlechute got tighter. Many of us had eaten very little or nothing all day. We collapsed in peace, in that exhausted peace that comes with having done your work well and completely. We told the crowd we had achieved victory, and they mingled with us for some time before leaving. Food Not Bombs took a quick count of our numbers and headed off, later to return with the most amazing chili I had tasted in quite some time. Hunger is always the best sauce. They came out at night when they didn't have to, just to feed us. We felt one with the city, one with the police. We mingled with them all, laughed with them, shook their hands and talked about our lives. Some of them tried to recruit us to the Denver police department. Some of us tried to recruit them to IVAW. Everyone was in good spirits. It's always a good day when you don't have to shoot anyone. It's always a good day when you don't have to be shot or arrested. It's always a good day when you can find common ground.
In the end, the letter was not read to the delegates. As a veteran tribute was taking place inside, veterans were essentially ignored by many delegates outside. However, it did make it to the veteran liason, who read it and promised to deliver it to Obama. I have no idea if he did or not. But still, it was an incredible action. I only wish more could go like that.
Totally For TSO: The Campaign Gets Ugly
Two posts in a row, what do you know? This one is more bringing the funny. I didn't write it, but apparently this thing has been floating around the internet. It's the political campaign, brought down to the level of...a roleplaying campaign. I don't even get all the references, but I know someone who will. Cough cough.
Full thing can be found here, and it's pretty hilarious. Yes, it makes fun of McCain (as WELL as others) and he is a veteran. Like I said, I didn't write it. It's still funny.
A couple excerpts, though you should really go read the whole thing, especially if you are a gamer...
My favorite was probably the one underneath...
Really, this whole visualization makes everything make sense.
Full thing can be found here, and it's pretty hilarious. Yes, it makes fun of McCain (as WELL as others) and he is a veteran. Like I said, I didn't write it. It's still funny.
A couple excerpts, though you should really go read the whole thing, especially if you are a gamer...
GM: OK, the bugbear attacks you. What do you do?
OBAMA: I send one of my 672 henchmen after it.
MCCAIN: OK, seriously. Why does he have so many henchmen? I'm a level 72 ranger and he's only a level 8 paladin.
OBAMA: Well, if you'd bought the Grassroots Organizing and Oratory/Colgate Smile proficiencies you could min max it so that you...
MCCAIN: Why is he even IN this campaign? I thought this was supposed to be a high level party.
OBAMA: Well, maybe some people got tired of the grim and squinty "Matterhorn, son of Marathon" shtick you keep doing. Dude, could you be any less original?
MCCAIN: Oh my god, I did not leave my left nut in a tiger cage in the Tomb of Horrors to spend my Friday nights mopping up after the new kid.
OBAMA: "My friends, I am a totally unoriginal grizzled character class stereotype. I should lead the party because I have more testicular damage than that one."
My favorite was probably the one underneath...
RON PAUL: I brought my Planescape character!
OBAMA: Dude, we're playing Forgotten Realms.
RON PAUL: I rift in from Sigil! I'm a Chaotic Neutral Tiefling Barbarian/Monk/Rogue!
MCCAIN: DUDE, that is not even LEGAL.
Really, this whole visualization makes everything make sense.
GM: You guys, seriously, if you don't knock it off with the bickering I'm going to start docking XP.
MCCAIN: You know what? Fuck it. I'm suspending the campaign.
GM: You can't do that! Only I can suspend the campaign! I didn't suspend it for the 1988 Mountain Dew shortage and I'm not going to suspend it now.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Coins and exhaustion
In other news, I still haven't finished my promised DNC post, expect it maybe...this weekend, maybe.
However, I did get the Installation Command Sergeant Major's coin for taking initiative on something. I wonder if he'll regret that after some time on the Google to find out that I'm an IVAW member?
The VFW post commander is tracking me down like a ninja. He called me out on the fact that I never came to a meeting, and got me to promise I'd be at the one next week. He also wants me to stop being a poor bastard and getting the yearly memberships when the lifetime membership is such a better deal. He did not buy that it was only a better deal if I planned on surviving the next twenty years.
End result of this: I think I'm getting a lifetime membership and hoping he will never use his fearsome mind powers for evil. But it sounds like a good post.
I would cheerfully trade this coin in for some real sleep, though.
However, I did get the Installation Command Sergeant Major's coin for taking initiative on something. I wonder if he'll regret that after some time on the Google to find out that I'm an IVAW member?
The VFW post commander is tracking me down like a ninja. He called me out on the fact that I never came to a meeting, and got me to promise I'd be at the one next week. He also wants me to stop being a poor bastard and getting the yearly memberships when the lifetime membership is such a better deal. He did not buy that it was only a better deal if I planned on surviving the next twenty years.
End result of this: I think I'm getting a lifetime membership and hoping he will never use his fearsome mind powers for evil. But it sounds like a good post.
I would cheerfully trade this coin in for some real sleep, though.
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