Make the treaty, Sir! . . . I know your country. I know all classes of people there. They want peace, Sir. They pant for it. … Instructions or no instructions, you are bound to do it.”
Category Archives: history
Conscientious objection is the thing with feathers.
The one common denominator is hope. Whether one defines hope as an emotion, an action or a muscle, people embark on conscientious objection to create a better future.
On Colin Powell
The first mention of Colin Powell in Ain’t Marching is about My Lai, about “the massacre’s initial whistleblowers [including]Thomas Glenton, who’d first tried the chain of command and been blown off by Major Colin Powell.”
50 years since veterans swamped the Capitol — but for democracy
They crossed the Potomac — some in wheelchairs or on crutches — to Arlington National Cemetery, where a former military chaplain led a funeral service for the war dead. They refused to stop sleeping on the Mall despite orders from the Supreme Court. The war they hoped to stop didn’t end until four years later, but its course and that of the nation was altered by their movement, many of whom are still fighting for change today.
And so it goes.
There’s the just-passed 30th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, about which I managed to write exactly nothing and for which I now defer to Kelly Kennedy’s plangent memoir at The War Horse, which ends with Gulf War Syndrome but not before conveying so much more. There’s the 50th anniversary of “The Pentagon Papers,” as the New York Times tagged Daniel Ellsberg’s leak about U.S. misconduct in Southeast Asia. 50th anniversaries are particularly frequent, since 50 years ago the movement against the Vietnam war was at its height.
Contagious Courage: Conscientious Objection Around the World
What might an international version of this book look like? Maybe, just maybe, it should focus on where this all began. When people ask me about my next book project, I say a lot of things — my MS memoir, a biography of the long-overlooked Lewis Douglass or Charles G. Bolte. But I also mentionContinue reading “Contagious Courage: Conscientious Objection Around the World”
In which “The Singing Journalist” Explains My Book
It felt right to end November with the song that helped me for so long, by the guy whose first album was entitled “All the News That’s Fit to Sing.”
As “Veterans Day” week closes, Honoring Veterans and their Work to End Systemic Racism
From William Apesss in 1813 to Jon Hutto and Aimee Allison in 2020, veterans have been fighting for racial justice as part of the oath they took to defend the Constiution.
It’s showtime, folks.
Join Chris Lombardi & Adam Hochschild for a conversation on writing narrative nonfiction & the history of dissent in the U.S. armed forces. And no doubt we’ll talk about current soldier-dissent, from the National Guard troops refusing domestic deployment to the veterans mobilized to protect Black lives.
Soldier-dissent in real time
!– wp:code –> I started this week staring at the #WallofVets. The video above bears re-watching: for its diversity of ages, for the military branches represented, for the solidarity among the protesters, the “walls” of mothers, dads and veterans converged to face federal agents sent to suppress their node of the George Floyd uprising. TheContinue reading “Soldier-dissent in real time”
I Ain't Marching Anymore 