Tuesday, January 24, 2012

MarchForward.org


The new-to-me organization MarchForward.org has a good poster with the words, WAR IS BUSINESS.  (One might add, POLITICS IS ENTERTAINMENT, hoping that "government" might become something more than entertainment.)  Above, on 18 January 1991, stocks soar with the beginning of the first Persian Gulf War (so one ought to mark the sequence of wars in that area as one war in that area, lasting 20 years.
Now the citizens do not see the wartime atrocities as they did during the American War in Vietnam (although one may see those horrors on the Internet, printed in European periodicals).  Most Americans may not know that more G.I.s die from suicide than in battle, which I see as those who unconsciously want to dissent but don't have a community where they could find guidance for how to do that.
I recently attended intelligent presentations by two young veterans, Mike Prysner and Kevin Baker, from a group called MarchForward.org -- If you meet a depressed veteran or one who is still in service and utterly disillusioned, send him to that website!  As an older member of the organization, Bill Hackwell, said:  There is no longer a draft, but almost the same, there is an economic draft.  An Army full of young men who cannot find jobs.  Recalling the veteran rebellions of the American War in Vietname, described in the documentary YES SIR NO SIR, these young service men of today related stories about how soldiers and veterans are acquiring some political sophistication, whole units finding ways to refuse to be sent to battlefields in absurd wars waged for the benefit for them, the 99%.   Describing this new resistance, their political analysis was great, of the sacrifice of one class in society for the greedy interests of another class.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love what you've written here, Jim.
I too was very impressed with the speakers from MarchForward.org.
One minor correction:
The anti-war film about resistance within the military during the Vietnam War is: SIR NO SIR
(not YES SIR NO SIR)
It is well worth watching.