A flyer/ad directed at troops concerned they’ll be deployed against protests in the wake of George Floyd. Of the 3 orgs in the caption, two are my former employers (sorta).
Last year, I joined the board of the Center on Conscience And War, feeling the need to help the last org standing after the death of my former employer, the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. I had no idea the org would soon need to respond to the first CONUS deployment against US citizens in a half-decade. Or that this year would turn out to so closely resemble the last time that happened. A year when so many were saying “Enough! No more!” in response to police killings of Black women and men.
In this fraught time, I’ve felt compelled to leave soldier-dissent behind and use my small talents on behalf of Black lives and to uplift Black voices and stories, but soldiers (in the broadest possible sense) keep dragging me back here. In the past week alone:
- Two long-overdue responses to the epidemic of military white supremacy, from the Pentagon and from Germany, the latter dissolving an entire SOF company so riddled with Nazis it can’t be saved.
- In the Washington Post, Greg Jaffewrites about the triply-betrayed platoon whose commander, Clint Lorance, was pardoned by Trump after/for his unspeakable crimes.
- And speaking of triply betrayed, the death of PFC Vanessa Guillen at Fort Hood calls forth the ghosts of LaVa Johnson and other women left for dead by the military machine. I keep thinking about a father of one of is them passing out photos of his uniformed daughter, from before she ended up dying under suspicious circumstances. The fact that noticing this still counts as dissent is gutting.
Not to mention the media clinging to generals who stood up to Trump. Fred Kaplan as the expert on this at Slate? We can do better than that.
And the post title? From the quote I’ve used as an avatar for decades, from the great John Berryman:
— It takes me so long to read the ‘paper,
said to me one day a novelist hot as a firecracker,
because I have to identify myself with everyone in it,
including the corpses, pal.’
Photo: A flyer/ad developed for outreach to troops subject to CONUS deployment during the protest,
I Ain't Marching Anymore 