Rain Soaked Remembrances

"Everybody's going to a party, have a real good time.
Dancing in the desert, blowing up the sunshine.

You depend on our protection. Yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth.

Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor?"

lyrics by System of a Down.

Wednesday, March 19 marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. The sun was a no show-- MIA; a steady cold drizzle wept from gray skies the entire day.

A gathering organized by the Mohawk Valley Peace Coalition, and billed as a "remembrance" was held in a local church auditorium. It was solemn, dignified. No street theatre here. No civil disobedience in the streets. Flags lined the wall, each one lovingly hand crafted in honor of a service member who died in this war. The names of the 175 New York state residents who
had been killed in the Iraq war were read, five at a time, by some of those seated in the hall.

The next morning's news brought the number of New Yorkers killed in Iraq to 176.

Most of the attendees at this event were older; AARP eligible. All were sincere.

On each of the metal folding chairs was a program, and a fresh, long stemmed carnation. The auditorium was nearly full, approximately 100 people showed up. On the stage, poets and a local writer read from their work, but hands down, one man stole the evening.

His name is Derek Davie, and this was not his first appearance at an anti war gathering. He's the father of Shamus, a marine whose life was cut off at age 26 in Iraq.

Mr. Davie is a powerful man of some forty years, but when he stood behind the podium and began to tell the story of what happened to Shamus, his voice failed, and he stopped. Although some time has passed since he lost his son in the war, he still falls apart in the retelling of it, he explained.

His wife rose from her seat on the stage to stand beside him; set a steadying hand on his shoulder. Only then was he able to continue.

"His life was not a waste," said Mr. Davie of his son, "but his death in Iraq was."

He went on to speak about his three daughters--Shamus was his only son. But Shamus' comrades in Iraq were his brothers too--and by extension Davie's sons.

"All I can say now is 'peace,' " he concluded. "Peace is patriotic."

Websites:

Syracuse Peace Council: http://peacecouncil.net/

United for Peace and Justice: http://unitedforpeace.org/

Juan Cole: http://juancole.com/

Tom Englehart's commentary: http://tomdispatch.com/

National Priorities Project: http://nationalpriorities.org/

After Downing Street: http://afterdowningstreet.org/

Iraq Veterans Against the War: http://www.ivaw.org/

~~~

Another day: another young man, who didn't volunteer his name, made it back from Iraq alive-- but with a new set of problems. I met him on a bus, when he asked me about my army jacket, wanting to know if it was "mine." I like army clothing, I told him, so yes, it is mine, but I've never been in the military. He told me he'd been in Iraq and he told me about his janitorial job, in the mall-- that he recently lost.


Trying to be helpful, I suggested maybe WalMart had job openings. He told me he's already been fired by WalMart too, and others. PTSD crawled into my thoughts, I've heard and read so much about this afflicting Iraq vets--haven't we all? This young veteran had nothing obviously physically wrong...he was talkative, and quite personable to me-- and to the young woman who joined him on the bus a few minutes later.


I wondered what benefits he was promised when he signed on--job training, college? Why do they come back and have to work in dead end wage slave jobs, after all they've been through? These jobs are hard enough to stomach for those of us who haven't lived through roadside bombs and being shot at every day.

Maybe we can do better for our veterans. No maybes about it: we have to do better.

Too Tired to Blog(Honk if you Hate Halliburton)

Too tired and too sick to blog.

All my energy is sucked right outa me by the vampire economy we live in today. I work and yet I'm broke--how many of you can relate to that? A co worker, who once worked in manufacturing had a job that paid $15 an hour, until the plant got sold and the workers got sold out. And not too far from here, another group of workers went out on strike Thursday. United Auto Workers against Daimler-Chrysler in Whitestown, New York--one of the last union work sites still standing in our union busting nation.

And in Iraq, I learned recently about the e coli tainted water supplied to troops by KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old company, before he joined BUSHCO. Read about the spoiled meat and canned food a year past its expiration date that was served in mess halls cited for "blood all over the floor." Read about the greed and callousness of Halliburton, its minions and our new privatized corporatized government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations, but not for the people. Read the whole sordid story in September 6 Rolling Stone: The Great Iraq Swindle by Matt Taibbi.

I'm too tired to blog, and too sick, with no real access to health care because it's really wealth care. But as tired as I am, I'm tireder (is that a word?) still of the greed, the depravity, the heartlessness of the vampires running our country now, sucking the lifeblood out of the people. I'm more tired of seeing people get arrested for non-violent free speech. For exercising their constitutional rights--you know the rights those troops in Iraq are fighting to preserve. So I'm blogging anyway. For the Soldiers, and for the strikers.

I'm blogging to remind you--all five of you who read this--to wake the fuck up. Tell your friends to wake the fuck up. America is being turned into a third world country, block by block, city by city, low paid job by low paid job. Don't you see it--when you look at your paycheck, when you add up the monthly bills, when you buy food? When you buy shoes and they're all made in China. When you read about what happened to the Katrina victims, do you really think nothing like that could happen again? What about the bridge collapse? How fast that story disappeared from the news. The 15 year old girl who was dragged behind a truck in a Christian boot camp. What happened to that story? The miners who died in Utah for an non renewable energy source that produces huge profits for the companies that sell it to you the consumer, squeezing you financially, while it squeezed the life out of those miners in Utah and too many other miners in too many other states. Open up your eyes and ears and pay attention. The average CEO is making 270 times the workers' pay. Forty five million Americans have no health insurance and those who do have it can't always afford to use it because of the co payments and deductibles. The sick get sicker-- and poorer, and a lot of them wind up sleeping on subway trains, like Patrick (Social Insecurity, April) and the rich spit on our graves, and the collection agency scavengers pick at our bones for the unpaid medical bills and credit card bills we ran up because health care in this country is a commodity, like cable tv and light bulbs--not a basic human right-- and people who make starvation wages use credit cards to pay their electric bills and buy groceries. American workers are working more hours than ever for the same pay or less--and our volunteer troops are serving longer tours in Iraq, with no end in sight. WAKE UP!

The night before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King spoke to a group of striking sanitation workers in Memphis. He spoke against the Vietnam War and called for an end to the dying. And he said this: "Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent."

In his speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop, Dr. King spoke about developing a "dangerous unselfishness." "
He said: "When we have our march, you need to be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike.(or in Iraq) But either we go up together, or we go down together."

Put another way: "An injury to one is an injury to all."

A few years ago in Tampa, Florida, a black judge addressing ten striking Teamsters who were issued citations for "obstructing traffic"while walking a legal picket line, dismissed the charges--
saying the Teamsters "were exercising their constitutional rights." We all win when judges like this one protect and defend our constitution.

If YOU think this war is going nowhere and no way but the wrong way--then speak up! Exercise your free speech option. (And never, ever cross a picket line.) Click the button to learn more. BTW--to David --I agree w/you that race is or should be irrelevant. ID ing the good judge as "black" was merely a way to try to identify and give credit to him for his just decision, as I don't recall his name. I included the reference because it's a stellar example of the justice system protecting free speech rights, and it took place after 9/11. If I were a MSM reporter working a paid job my editor could strike this, but I'm not--I'm a free lance blog writer and I'm free to write whatever I want to...even propaganda :) Thanks for reading.