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.”