Updated to add this link, in which Chelsea Manning spoke more clearly about her case than she felt able to do at Penn. (Forgive the deadname in Atlantic’s title; it was before she came out to the world as the assured young woman you see above. The photo above was taken on November 29, 2017,Continue reading “The day I finally met Chelsea Manning”
Category Archives: book
How could you run, when you know?
A journo friend of mine adapted the lyrics of the song above to mark last weekend’s explosion, as well as covering those events for Souciant. Like many who weren’t there, I feel the least i can do is reflect here/ As a super-late boomer (the Obama generation), I’ve spent much of my life feeling I missedContinue reading “How could you run, when you know?”
VIDEO: Millennials and conscience
Some video reminders why this book has to exist. A simple question, posed 6 years ago by a respected journalist to an author, was already being answered Chelsea Manning, soon to be echoed by the voices of the whistleblowers above. I discovered the first as I was reshaping – for the last time, I hope!Continue reading “VIDEO: Millennials and conscience”
Intro, continued
After that loooong deconstruction of the book’s title… The following pages offer an idiosyncratic path from the country’s beginnings to the 21st century. Our guides: a handful of soldier-dissenters, who nudged that arc of history toward something resembling peace and justice. In the 1990s, when I was on staff at the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, I used to half-joke that “ifContinue reading “Intro, continued”
this is joe from gainesville
On a Joe Haldeman kick, for reasons perhaps obvious to some of you. After all, there’s that subtitle on my book, the next stop on my introduction exploration: From the French and Indian War to the Forever War. That section of the title has been a shape-shifter. When I first proposed it in 2007 itContinue reading “this is joe from gainesville”
Dissentire via souldine: notes toward a new introduction
I find myself wishing I could defer to Ochs’ elegant summations: “The young land started growing, the young blood started flowing” for the War of 1812, or “the final mission to the Japanese sky…I saw the cities burning” for World War Two.
For all this powerful poetry, Ochs knew there was much more inside that iconic dissenter’s story. He knew from his own dad, who’d come home broken and abusive after World War II; he knew from the Vietnam veterans who jammed his concerts. He had no idea, of course, of the wars to come, or that his own music would be sung by that iconic soldier in the 21st century.
storytelling as dissent
Yesterday’s War Horse post only spotlit one small share of the vast number of veteran writers and artists, like the one pictured, charting the forever war. They’re musicians, they’re poets holding incredible slams, they’re winning Pulitzers and National Book Awards. The current bounty has me thinking about how the presence of such artists forms anContinue reading “storytelling as dissent”
when gender-dissent got serious
My book has a quiet backbeat of gender-dissent, separate from but not irrelevant to its years of conscientious objectors, mutinies and warrior writers. From the beginning, we had women dressing as men to fight, from the Revolution to the Civil War; we had women codebreakers and nurses during World War I and II, and anContinue reading “when gender-dissent got serious”
Dear Mr. Snowden
It felt irresponsible for me not to TRY to touch base with you before I finished writing narrative that includes you.
Saluting 4,000 vets on the White House lawn
No, not in 2003. Not in 1971. In 1932. The data caught up on me Friday, but May 29, 1932 was when the Bonus March arrived in Washington, D.C. — and laid the groundwork for how the U.S. currently pays veterans for their service in war. These were veterans of the ‘Great War’,World War I: from ourContinue reading “Saluting 4,000 vets on the White House lawn”
I Ain't Marching Anymore 