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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 19, 2011)
Street roots Aug. 19, 2011 > I . Ki VETS, f ron page 8 we facilitated the military coup but take no notice of death squad murders of democracy activists. The Welcome, released in April of this year, is making the rounds of festivals and will soon be available for purchase: http:// www.thewelcomethemovie.com/. ong-term activist Mike Dedrick is in Portland for thè convention, and I ask him how he got into the military. “I was working in construction, putting myself through school,” says Dedrick. “But I was fucking around» playing pool. I flunked out of the University of Washington twice and lost my student deferment and got drafted, which would have been two years. So I enlisted for three years ‘cause I didn’t want to go to Vietnam.” Whereupon he was trained as an intelligence analyst and interrogator, and sent to Vietnam. It was 1967 and Dedrick was 21 years old. After discharge, he went to Seattle Central Junior College for a few quarters, earning As and Bs. “When I’d dragged my GPA up, I got back into U.W,” Dedrick says. “By the time I’d earned my B.A. in European Medieval History, I was already in Vietnam Veterans Against the War (WAW).” After a stint in a factory and two years learning to be an offset printer, he went back to the building trades. Meanwhile, Dedrick had begun his activism in 1971 as, the WAW Regional Coordinator for Washington and Alaska, working on counter-recruiting and running deserters and soldiers gone AWOL across the border to Canada. Like other vets I talk to, Dedrick regrets ever having let his guard down. “But you become fed up or burnt out, frustrated, depressed. It doesn’t seem )ikc its wooing.” _ The one victoryheremembers fromthose years came on August 4/1974. “I was in the Century Tavern, on University Way, when Nixon resigned, and the owner broke out a case of champagne. That was a good moment but, finally, I just couldn’t do it anymore. “So there’s a long history of this [activism], going back to the sixties, only a lot of people, including myself, didn’t follow through. “In ’91, the Gulf War really hit me quite hard. I really didn’t think this country would do what they did on the so-called Highway of Death, butchering all those Iraqis,” he says, speaking of the night raid on Feb. 26, when American aircraft attacked Iraqi military personnel retreating along Highway 80, which runs from Kuwait to Iraq. The first Gulf War saw the longest strike mission in the history of aerial warfare, and those strikes were televised, giviqg many of the older vets fresh nightmares. “We got a group of people together, and it was after that that I got involved in the GI Rights Hotline.” But it was the invasion of Afghanistan that roused them to action. In 2002 Dedrick helped organize Seattle’s VFP Chapter 92 and served as its first president. Today it has 150 members and is one of six chapters in the state of Washington. The Seattle chapter has a pool of half a dozen members who do tabling at state conventions of school officials - counselors, superintendents, principals - where they talk about a key provision of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act where, every faU, students can “opt out” of the requirement that the school give the student’s name and contact information to the military. “I see a potential for some structural institution changes with this approach,” Dedrick says. - The approach, which is only two or three years old, was developed with Washington Truth in Recruiting, where Dedrick serves on the board. “We pay for a.table and make our spiel, Dedrick says.” Of course, Dedrick and his VFP colleagues continue to go out to schools to talk to kids directly, describing what a war looks like, what it feels like to be in a war, ■ Joe Murphy, left, and Mike Dedrick presented a caucus on counter-recruiting in highschools and advocating for model school district policies at the Veterans for Peace/Veterans Against the War National Conference. Among the major leverage points is the “opt out” option on having your children’s information automatically sent to the military. “The military has been treating our schools as a pressgang operation, ” Dedrick says. military life, the economics of war. “Go to a school board meeting/ Dedrick “Once I was telling some students about advises. “Write a letter asking if the district some prisoners who were tortured and has a public policy in place.” seeing kids that were killed, and one student In New York, Murphy and his colleagues said, ‘I can’t believe they let you come in give presentations in the South Bronx and here and say that’ But, generally, it’s Washington Heights, places where the throwing a pebble into a pond: you never “poverty draft” is vigorously at work, that is, know who that ripple is going to reach,” the military’s campaign to target low-income Dedrick observes, then adds philosophically, neighborhoods with promises - very “It’s a short life and you’ve got a limited questionable promises - of education and amount of resources. My priority is to jobs; educate kids about war and militarism.” “You ask an African-American adolescent Dedrick had hoped to make a presentation in NY high school: How do you feel about on counter-recruiting, but by the time he / the term ‘sand nigger.’ You can see you’re contacted convention planners, one Jim getting a rise out of him. ‘Well, that’s what Murphy from Ithaca, New York, had already you’re going to hear every day if you sign made that request “So I called him up and up,’ I tell him, ‘And you’re going to accept piggy backed,” Dedrick says. When the two that. And that’s when you know they own men met for the first time in Portland, they- you.’ We make sure, the kids know that basic recognized they’d had parallel lives. training is an experience in racism.” Joanne Luchini is in the audience with , Jim Murphy served on temporary duty in Vietnam in 1966, and again in 1968 as an Air hand-outs to distribute at this workshop. The stepped-up Force radioman. recruitment effort Seven years ago, he under the NCLB Act retired as dean of a got more civilians NYC public high involved, and Luchini school, a career of 23 "Once I was telling some works through a years. An anti-war students about some Portland organization activist since 1971» “ Murphy is currently prisoners who were tortured called Recruiter Watch- PDX. Her volunteer with the Veterans and seeing kids that were work is a conspicuous Fellowship of killed, and one Student said, example of how Reconciliation civilians can partner chapter in Ithaca, and 'I can't believe they let you with veterans to do he co-founded New come in here and say that/ this work, though she York Veterans Speak But, generally, it's throwing is quick to point out Out which does a pebble into a pond: you that, when it comes to truth-in-recruiting telling the truth about presentations in NYC never know who that ripple war or military and around the state. is going to reach." culture, it’s the , On Friday morning, — MIKE DEDRICK Dedrick begins their COUNTER-RECRUITMENT SPECIALIST veterans who have the credibility. workshop, “Military Recruiters in Public Schools: Counter recruiting in High s one of the many thousands of people Schools and Advocating for Model School who support Bradley Manning, the District Policies,” with a characteristically young Army intelligence analyst accused of blunt statement leaking to Wikileaks a video showing a US “The military has been treating our Apache helicopter crew killing two Reuters , schools as a press-gang operation,” he says, journalists and other civilians in Iraq, I then goes on to describe the success of the arrive early for the Friday afternoon panel, Washington strategy of targeting school Campaign to Free Bradley Manning and All administrators. ♦ GI Resisters. Dedrick points out that the No Child Left The presenter is Jeff Paterson, a young Behind provision is not the whole problem. Christopher Walken look-alike who was the “For years before (NCLB), many schools first public resister to the 1991 Gulf War. He were already giving the military carte blanch founded Courage to Resist, which raised the information on students,” he says. “And I * money to get Manning a civilian attorney and don’t trust Facebook and Monster.com not pressured the government to get Manning to be turning all the information they collect moved from Quantico to the joint Regional over to the military. So it may be that opt Corrections Facility at Fort Leavenworth. out is riot so meaningful anymore. But it Since the move, Courage to Resist reports, . does get us into the schools.” Manning’s overall mood has improved, he is When approaching superintendents and regularly in touch with his new defense principals, he advises his audience, don’t team, and is allowed visits from his family. talk in political terms, but rather politely “We are reclaiming the path of point out that their job as educators is to transparency and holding our government honor students’ rights to information, accountable,” Paterson states with evident including balanced information on pride. controversial issues. a This year, the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is holding its own convention jointly with VFP, though because of dual membership (two Iraq vets serve on the national VFP board) and the inter- generational camaraderie, there’s no sense of separation. • According to Daniel Shea, IVAW has modeled themselves on the film “Sir! No Sir!” by opening GI coffee houses. Jorge González is on the Resisters panel to briefly describe his work at Coffee Strong, an Internet café within "blocks of Tacoma’s Fort Lewis. The café provides a safe place for active duty soldiers, military families and veterans to discuss war, deployment, PTSD and the hardships of life in the military. Movie nights and concerts attract soldiers who live on base and are looking for a hangout; once there, they can make connections to the GI Rights Hotline, National Lawyers Guild, Soldiers Project NW, Women Organizing Women, and Pack Parachute r- that is, organizations that provide informatioft and services. “Vets and civilians have a role in helping them make connections,” Gonzalez cautions, “but it has to be soldiers doing it themselves.” Sarah Bjorknas has come down from Vancouver, B.C. to talk about their policy, now in its seventh year, of welcoming war resisters at the Catholic Worker House on East Pender Street. She explains their program of advising about legal status, offering hospitality and social support, while trying to persuade the Canadian government to get on the side of sheltering war resisters. She is dismayed that the government, which has now turned right, is not inclined to repeat the generosity of 1966-72, when 16,000 U.S. male immigrants (considered a solid estimate and probably low) crossed the border, largely congregating in Toronto’s Yorktown and in Vancouver. Kathy Gilbert is on the program briefly, talking about the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyer’s Guild, which has provided legal support to vets since Vietnam The session ends with facilitator Gerry Condon reminding us that President Carter campaigned on the issue of draft-resister amnesty, and that it was his first act as president, in January 1977. He made it possible for AWOL soldiers to return to a U.S. base and be processed. “It was not an automatic amnesty,” Condon says, “but it was in the spirit of leniency.” t is late Friday afternoon, and the auditorium is filling with people ready to hear S. Brian Willson talk about “Going AWOL from the American Way of Life.” Willson, who has a lifetime of protests, was in the national spotlight in 1987 when he lay in the path of a munitions train that accelerated and took off his legs. I don’t go into the auditorium. Though I plan to read Willson’s new book, “Blood on the Tracks,” I can’t absorb one more word. Rather, I want time to think about all the passion and anger, energy and resolve, determination and hope of these two days. As we come up on the 10-year anniversary of the so-called War on Terror, I believe there is no more important task than to encourage and support resistance inside the military, and VFP are pointing to a variety of ways we can all contribute. But also, I want to listen to the haunting voice of Melissa Steinman, still with me from “The Welcome,” where she is seen reading her poem about Viet Nam vets reaching out to the GIs in Iraq: I “... we’re most of the way up the hill, but we saw you coming, so we ran all the way back to get you. Don’t get me wrong. The path is narrow and uphill in all directions, but we have cleared most of the brush before you, and as long as it takes, we will walk it with you.”
