The Journey to Mobile - March 12 -13, 2006

The Journey to Mobile, Alabama

On March 12, 2006 a group of four Iraq veterans, one combat veteran of Vietnam, one chaplain veteran of Vietnam and one Unitarian chaplain set out from Colorado Springs, Colorado for Mobile, Alabama to join the Walkin’ to New Orleans march. This was a march of Vietnam veterans, Iraq veterans, Gulf War veterans, military families, parents of children killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and Katrina survivors. It was organized to bring attention to the lack of response to Katrina survivors and other national priorities while billions were spent on killing and destruction in the Middle East.
We marched to connect the dots of what the war was costing our nation while these billions were funneled to fight an illegal and immoral war.
Before I can tell the story of our march from Mobile, there is an important story of our journey to Mobile that March 12, 2006. The story is important for the tragedy of the first day that tested our resolve to be in Mobile.
We left in two cars. The Iraq vets went together in a van and the older folks left in my car. We had decided on the southern route going down through Raton and then across West Texas to Dallas where we would stop for the night.
Things went well until we got past Amarillo, Texas. Around sunset the wind picked up and made for two hands on the wheel.
Shortly after sunset we saw a red glow on the horizon to our north. At first we figured it was a town but soon realized it was fire leaping at least twenty feet in height.
Shortly after seeing the fire, traffic stopped along Highway 287 leading out of Amarillo going south. Semis and cars packed the highway as we crept forward.
At one point I got out of the car to ask a trucker if he heard anything on his radio.
The trucker told me the highway patrol was diverting traffic from US 40 down to 287 because of the fires.
We actually got through the slowdown rather quick….nothing like I 70 on the weekend going back to Denver from the mountains. Police were directing traffic at major intersections allowing south bound traffic to merge with the 287 traffic.
After getting back up to speed I started noticing a huge fireball to the south of us in the direction the wind was coming from. We drove for another ten miles before there was another traffic slowdown.
We now had glowing skies to our north and our south. And we were stopped on the road with a wind blowing toward us from the area of the southern fire.
At the same time our older vet, the Vietnam chaplain, was telling us he was having some problems with his kidneys.
Now we had an older man with a history of multiple medical problems having troubles and fires on two sides along the highway.
Finally traffic started again. As we drove slowly along the next five miles we saw trees and ground smoldering from fresh fires. A whole fruit grove next to a ranch home was charred and smoking. The home had been spared. People were inside watching television.
The fires’ trail led right to the edge of the road. We drove forward wondering what lay ahead. Traffic picked up normal speed and we breathed a sigh of relief for just a moment.
Our chaplain companion was now in some distress. I knew we didn’t have long until we would have a serious problem with him. As the other chaplain drove I asked questions of our companion. Suddenly I was acting in the role of RN.
Clearly we would need to stop to see if the chaplain could get some relief at the nearest restroom.
We stopped but the chaplain was unsuccessful and in much more distress and pain. We continued to drive toward Wichita Falls, Texas on Highway 287. I had decided if we couldn’t get the chaplain some relief by Wichita Falls we’d need to seriously consider an ER visit.
Meanwhile directly in front of us another red glow emerged on the horizon. It was bigger than all the others and we seemed to be driving right toward it. There was some discussion of diverting to another highway but it seemed better to stay on 287 since there wasn’t a roadblock or police in sight.
After a few more miles the road did turn to the north and away from the fires. We now had to focus on our companion who told me he felt sweaty and had some pain in his groin area.
As we approached Wichita Falls, I received a call on my cell from the driver of the van with the Iraq vets. The driver told me there was a large “roadkill” ahead in the left lane. I was told to avoid the activity of stopped cars in the right lane but not to swerve into the left lane.
Then in nervous voice the driver told me the “guys are telling me I ran over a human body” but didn’t believe that to be the case.
As we came upon the scene the van driver warned me about, traffic was being diverted to the frontage road off the highway. I told my companions we’d know if the “roadkill” had been a person if we saw an ambulance.
Almost immediately we did see an ambulance with lights flashing. The scene reminded me of a David Lynch movie.
Police were walking along the edge of the highway with flashlights shining down into the sloped shoulder and gully below. A young man was standing handcuffed with arms in back of him. The emergency lights created an eerie strobe effect as we slowly passed by and reentered the highway a mile past the scene.
We all knew the “roadkill” had been human by this time. Our Unitarian chaplain wondered if we should describe the scene to the driver of the van because all the vets were already dealing with PTSD following their war experience.
I was initially for not saying anything but the chaplain brought up the valid issue of a police report.
We called the van and asked their location. They were only a few exits ahead of us stopped at a truck stop for food and gas. We asked that they wait for us.
Three of the vets were outside smoking when we pulled up. The driver was inside sitting at a table next to the window. Our older chaplain was still deteriorating in his medical condition. He hurriedly went toward the restroom.
The driver now realized the “roadkill” had been human body parts. Later the driver told the chaplain they had all clearly seen the gruesome sight of body parts in the road. The driver said it was incomprehensible this had happened and they were in denial at first when they called me on my cell to warn me.
All the other vets had told the driver to “keep going, don’t stop”. An Iraq war response to an American highway event. The chaplain encouraged the driver to contact police to help with putting some closure on the incident. The driver preferred not to do this.
Meanwhile our other chaplain companion remained in distress. I told him we needed to take him to the ER immediately. He agreed.
We got directions to the nearest hospital. We spent three hours waiting while our companion was examined and treated. Finally he was released but he agreed he needed to return to Colorado Spring as soon as possible.
We drove into Dallas and secured rooms at 330 a.m... The Iraq vets had gotten there at midnight.
Later that morning our older chaplain companion made arrangements to fly to Colorado Springs. The rest of us packed up and continued on the way to Mobile. The Iraq vets left an hour ahead of the Unitarian chaplain and me.
The second day of the journey was without problem. We arrived in Mobile around 8 p.m. that evening. We came together with other participants at the Save Our Selves’ warehouse. Approximately fifty others had gathered at that time.
We were fed our first meal of the journey to New Orleans. Chicken. A staple of the region we found out.
The horror of the first day still lingers with me. I fear for the Iraq vets. What awful fate they of all the cars would happen upon such a horrific thing. They, who had just gone through such trauma, were once again painted with death and horror.
I found out when doing an internet search a 47 year old transient Mexican man had stepped out into a traffic lane on 287 near Wichita Falls. He had been hit by a woman driving alone. That was followed by a semi and two other vehicles. The police were quoted as saying no charges were likely to be filed.
I wrote an email to a friend describing this scene and talked about the horror of it from the perspective of the veterans. I realized later I failed to think of the other drivers and of the transient who died, his body parts scattered all along the highway.
I also discovered seven people had died in the fires we drove through. Almost at the same time we were nearby driving through.
Fate, karma, whatever it is plays no favorites. Death is indiscriminate and haphazard in its choices. Veterans come to realize that after combat. They question constantly why they weren’t killed and why friends and decent people died.
So often I see and hear people thinking they can forestall death somehow. I never have the heart to tell them death is a random event that each of us will face and none of us control.
As we walked through the area Hurricane Katrina had hit we would hear that over and over from the survivors. Death plays no favorites and can come without warning at any time.

Terry Leichner, RN

Walkin' to New Orleans - Stan Goff

Prelude:
Stan Goff was the engine and the soul of the Walkin' to New Orleans action. He showed compassion, understanding and determination to get it done.
My favorite of many anecdotes I have about Stan during this march was in Biloxi. The cops of Biloxi tried their damnedest to harass us with threats of arrest if we didn't keep off the side of the road or keep walking. Some in the group were grumbling and angry.
Well, with a group of Iraq war vets mixed with a group of Vietnam war vets there is possibility of anger turning ugly. Stan knew this all too well.
So, Stan took the megaphone he had attached to his body throughout and spoke to us. He reminded us our purpose was "peace" and we should act with love and peace in our hearts. He also reminded us that many of the cops we were grumbling about lost everything when Katrina hit and worked under incredibly difficult stress.
Instead of demonizing the cops as our enemies, Stan made them humans like all of us. Stan demonstrated for all of us what peace should be.
I was proud to walk those roads and towns with Stan Goff. I'm overjoyed I got to see the joy in his face when we walked into Congo Square. I made damn sure I shook Stan's hand and hugged him before I left.
Stan deserves the respect and admiration of a nation for being the winter soldier who didn't leave his country in the lurch during difficult times but stepped up in true patriotic love of country.
Hell just read his remarks that follow and you'll get an idea of the type of man he is. To Stan, Namaste'...I honor you.
Peace and solidarity
Terry Leichner, RN
USMC combat infantryman
Vietnam - December 31, 1967 to February 12, 1969
co-founder Denver chapter Vietnam Veterans Against the War

“Walkin’ to New Orleans” ...in Summation
As I begin, I am exhausted. The tops of my ears are peeling from sunburn. Sitting here at this keyboard, one wonders if it was real. We just did something along the Gulf Coast with this march we spent the last two months coordinating, but I haven't had time to reflect enough on it to see the different facets of what just happened. I just know something did. I hope others who participated, will read this and post comments to say what they think happened, because I wasn't alone in thinking that something did.
We did not suddenly catalyze anything, but we also did not engage in some kind of action where each person's responsbility was just to show up to enlarge a protest, then go home. Something with a longer lifespan than than has taken an embryonic form, and it feels tangible even when I haven't had time to sort out exactly what it is. I already miss the people who were there.
We came to life each morning like a flower opening to the sun, steadily and gradually. Grumble's cowboy-coffee container was a gravitational field that drew us in like particles from the multilucent peaks and domes of our tent-towns. With the first hot sips, people holding their bodies tightly against the chill shared their little experiences with fire ants, cold, heat, or something dislocative they might have seen the day before, and healed each other with laughter.
Then there was food and the resumption of conversations from the day before. More laughter. Occasionally, some tears, whereupon one, two, even three people might embrace. When one of the Iraq vets shed a tear, six, seven, or eight would fold around him… or her… as if their combined hearbeats and heat would drive out sadness and distress.
And the walking. There is nothing that compares to walking, in my opinion, for stimulating the circuits in one's head; something about spinning the earth along under your feet like a log roller that creates a kind of muscular background music and the scenery that goes past becomes a spiritual setting. After a while, when the blisters and sore metatarsals and general fatigue take form, anything gradiose that might have contaminated one's consciousness is trimmed away with the knowledge that in the end, it all comes down to bodies — to the limitations of bodies, the capacities of bodies, the caring for bodies, the recognition of bodies.
In a large group like this, from 120 to 300, pick your day — it fluctuated — one talks while s/he walks, listens, collects and offers little scraps of acquaintence that accumulate into nascent friendships… contextualized by that body-knowledge, by the rhythm of walking, by the rolling of the earth under our feet in the same direction, and by the steady stream of change that flows past us.
Even when that scenery is of loss and disorder.
Especially when that scenery is of loss and disorder.
And there was dancing. We danced down the Gulf Coast. Ask anyone who was there. We danced in Prichard. We danced along the highway during breaks when the Iraq vets would pull out their drums. We danced in a relief worker camp and in a soccer field. We danced down the streets of Slidell to drums, a tuba, and a tenor sax. We danced in Congo Square. We swayed and clapped to the sounds of church choirs.
We laid flowers below old photographs of the dead. We juggled. We ate gumbo and peanut-butter-jelly sandwiches. We talked to people with cameras and camcorders.
At one point, we had fifty vehicles in tandem, with two buses up front that made the queue look like a train. Each vehicle had its emergency flashers on, and other people passing in atomized cars would gawk and wave and honk horns and flash two-finger peace sings. Traffic management and preparation to simply move became monstrously complex.
But even that "glitch" suddenly revelaed itself as strength. I hated directing that traffic, but when I looked back down the shoulder of the road one day, and all those cars were lined up, it was apparent that we were showing our strength. We were a train, a peace train, and we started taking towns by simply moving in… cops were stunned and baffled, struggling to retain some semblence of control and authority, and we let them have it.
Did you get that? We LET them have it. Where was the power then, eh?
Every glitch, every last minute change, every late decision to follow some suggestion from a marcher, or a local survivor became something surprising and wonderful. We knoew where we wanted to begin and end, but the route was pure jazz… improvisation, with every marcher playing her or his part.
I haven't sorted this out yet, but I will say this as I prepare to close and rest. We scared people. We publicized this event in ways that caused people to decide NOT to come. We warned about contamination, about austerity and physical effort, about weather and insects, and we said it would last for six days.
So those that came were young and old and everything in between, and black and white and everything in between, and rural and urban and everything in between, and northern and southern and everything in between, and even male and female identified along multiple continua. But there was a common demographic… a personality demographic, or maybe a character demographic, held in common.
Everyone who came was willing to try something none of us completely understood. Everyone who came was willing to drop everything to do something they sensed might be important. Everyone who came was willing to accept risk. And everyone who came was willing to accept responsibility.
That's what none of us who organized this could see clearly until it happened, because the phenomenon we just experienced was a collective dynamic that was the qualitative offspring of the quantity of people who have this common character.
I don't know what we just did… except to put a couple hundred people outside their familiar surroundings, onto the margins of the grid, and move them cross country like a mechanized battalion through this incredibly strategic place.
I know this. We are not done yet.

Stan Goff
Veteran For Peace, Mitary Families Speak Out

Brother Shareef is All of Us !!

I read about Shareef Alim and find myself even more incensed at the continued assault on we the people.
I just returned from the Gulf and saw devastation that compares with that of bombs hitting Fallujah or Baghdad.
I see black brothers and sisters who still have not gotten help from this nation's governments. I see Vietnamese brothers and sisters who still have not received help. This all fits a systematic pattern of overt racism perpetrated by George W. Bush and his rogue government.
It's now clear these people not only could care less, they plan on a genocidal path of cleansing this nation of the impoverished and the poor. They don't like the poor except to fight their imperialistic wars of occupation and aggression. They scorn the poor as weak and without power.
It's time to stand up and the case of Brother Shareef Alim is the time to do so in this area. If we allow Shareef to be tossed aside by this governmental stooge of a judge, we allow our very souls to be tossed aside. We allow ourselves to be tossed aside.
I urge all who can do so to join Brother Shareef in his hunger strike. I begin to wonder when we will have enough of this abuse that we will begin to risk all that we have to fight back.
Shareef is us. His loss of freedom is our loss of freedom. His pain is our pain. I have heard of brothers and sisters all across this nation who have bravely stood up in opposition of the tyranny and they have been jailed, beaten and forgotten while we the people quiver in fear that we might be next.
The school teacher who called this President comparable to Hitler was right and he had to fight to defend his words even as a white man. Ward Churchill eloquently told us the chickens will come home to roost in this nation and he was right but he has to fight to keep his job.
Professors and teachers and concerned patriots like Shareef are being made examples of to keep us from standing up.
So when they came for Shareef and we say nothing and we do nothing will there be anybody left to speak out when they come for us?
Thoreau imprisoned for his defiance against the government tyranny in his day, asked Benjamin Franklin why he wasn't in the cell with him when Franklin asked why Thoreau was behind bars. I wonder why I'm not in the cell with Shareef.
I wonder why just protesting the arrest of our brother doesn't seem enough.
Peace and solidarity
Terry

March 24, 2006 Rocky Mountain News

The following article published in the Rocky Mountain News is about a brother of ours here in Denver who is black, works with the local Cop-Watch, speaks his mind and stands up for what he believes.
Shareef Alim runs up against the "new Amerika" every day of his life. I know him as a friend and a comrade who is one of the most peaceful men I've ever met. I've had the privilege to work with him on several projects over the last two years. I will comment on this story in a separate entry. Here's a column written today by a columnist who is often on the other side of peace and justice issues than Shareef but who clearly understands the implications of racism and the erosion of our basic freedoms.


Johnson: T-shirt brouhaha is downright baffling

Bill Johnson
email bio
March 24, 2006
Forty-five days.
I don't know why that number should appall me. Except that it confirms, in way too many ways, what we have become these days.
I had to read the story twice, just to make sure I hadn't missed something, such as the defendant throwing a fit and cursing the judge.
But that wasn't the case. Shareef Aleem got sentenced on Wednesday to a month-and-a-half in the slammer for wearing a T-shirt without a single bad word on it.
I can't even figure out what offense prosecutors and Adams County District Court Judge Katherine Delgado took to the shirt.
It bore a picture of executed Crips street gang co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams and the words "Should have been saved" and "Redemption."
I know of a few clergymen who wouldn't mind having one of the shirts in their closet. And would Shareef Aleem have been jailed if those same words had appeared with a photo of, say, Jesus, instead of ol' Tookie?
Forty-five days?
Shareef Aleem, you might know, is an outspoken activist and a harsh critic of law enforcement. He loudly proclaims that it treats minorities unfairly. Ironic, isn't it? So perhaps the contempt-of-court citation isn't about the T-shirt at all.
He was before Judge Delgado in the first place for allegedly assaulting a police officer who was escorting him from a University of Colorado Board of Regents meeting for yelling that he and others had a right to speak as the board discussed controversial CU professor Ward Churchill.
A jury earlier this month deadlocked on the assault charge, and a new trial has been set for May 8.
There is no question that Shareef Aleem is loud, impolitic and in-your-face confrontational - qualities that these days can get you surveilled and jailed.
The judge earlier had told him to remove another T-shirt. It depicted a lynching and the words "U.S. History 101."
You could argue the truth of that message, as well, but not even Shareef Aleem fought back when the judge told him to lose it.
But he refused to remove the Tookie shirt on First Amendment grounds. Maybe the judge, who is not talking, just didn't like the sass.
Forty-five days.
But not for now.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Shareef Aleem should be freed from jail until his sentence is officially appealed and it moves through the legal process. He could be released by the time you read this.
Mark Burton, Aleem's attorney, can barely disguise his astonishment at the length of the jail term.
"Those, last I looked, are common words in the dictionary," he said of what was written on the T-shirt. The 45 days, he added, weighing his words carefully, are "highly unusual for direct contempt. And I really don't understand the objection (to the shirt)."
A day after Shareef Aleem went to jail, dozens gathered Thursday on the steps of the Capitol to protest a different loudmouth, the Rev. Fred Phelps, of Topeka, Kan., whose congregation - composed mostly of his own offspring - has created a national stir by staging protests at the funerals of soldiers.
I won't dignify the reason they give for staging the protests by repeating it here. Yet in a response, Colorado legislators on Thursday were furiously mulling passing a state law to counter Phelps by outlawing demonstrations at military funerals.
That's silly, too.
This newspaper on Wednesday editorialized, quite correctly, that even wackos like Phelps have free speech protections - no matter how much we abhor the message.
This country, in fact, has a long history of protecting the free speech rights of even the most unsavory among us, said David Hudson, a research attorney with the Nashville, Tenn.-based First Amendment Center.
"I forget who originally said it, but it still rings true," David Hudson said: "One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric."
If it seems that more and more people are being arrested and going to jail over T-shirt slogans, it is only because they are, he said.
He cites the removal and arrest of anti-war Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan by Capitol police at last month's State of the Union Speech for wearing a T-shirt that read "2,225 Dead. How Many More?"
A congressman's wife was ejected, but not arrested, that same night for wearing a quite different "Support the Troops - Defending Our Freedom" T-shirt.
And then there were the legions who went to jail for wearing protest T-shirts and stickers at George W. Bush election rallies in 2004.
"There is an endless supply of speech that seems to offend these days," David Hudson said.
"So many of our current rights and freedoms have been advanced in the name of some not very nice people, such as Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine fame," he said. "It is the protection of those on the fringes that benefit the mainstream."
We often forget that fact, he says, in trying to slap down the Fred Phelpses of the world.
"There have been - what? - 26 legislatures that have passed or are about to pass laws to restrict him. And most of these laws wouldn't pass even a cursory court review," David Hudson said.
Indeed, for a nation founded on popular dissent, we seem these days to have forgotten everything about it.
Even Patrick Henry might have tired of those in power today and just kept his mouth shut.
I have an idea, though, what Katherine Delgado would have done with him if he hadn't:
Forty-five days.
Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail him at
johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com

Live from New Orleans

I've spent the last week or so here in the Gulf region where Katrina struck with a fury six months ago. I wish I could say there had been a furious relief effort undertaken by any government to help the survivors of Katrina in Misssissippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
A furious effort is being made currently to carry out massive bombing runs in Iraq with unseen and uncared for victims on the ground. Most are innocent and civilian.
Most here in the gulf are also unseen and uncared for...and innocent of all but being poor. Like the Spearhead song says..."it's a crime to be poor in America." And that truth is clearly evident in the many places I've traveled with the veterans and Katrina survivor's Marching to New Orleans action.
We started in Mobile, AL and have finally arrived in New Orleans. In every poor and mostly black community we entered we heard a similar story. They were left to fend for themselves far too long and are still doing so six months later in most cases.
Beautiful people willing to feed and shelter a mostly white coalition accepted us and gave us their stories. The gave us the extra gift of letting us join them in church services if we wanted. For those who took the invitation we heard the glorious voices of praise from young and old in song and in the "word".
People forgotten by so many and yet so generous and giving thanked us for coming into their towns and listening to their story. They didn't spew hate and anger. They voiced love and hurt even as they told us they knew they expected the government to abandon them. Now six months later and several crises later, most of America has forgotten them much as they've forgotten the young men and women being sent to the slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I see the thousand yard stare of the vets and the survivors much like I saw it in my fellow Vietnam vets back when I was young. I hear the same sadness in the voices.
Tomorrow we will gather in the center part of the city and, as one, call for the government of the people to hear the people. Tomorrow we will join millions to remember the third anniversary of the beginning of the illegal war, the anniversary of the killing of Rachel Corrie and the sixth month of criminal inaction for the people of this region who's biggest crime is poverty and skin color.
Hopefully the nation will hear the voices calling for responsibility and justice but if not we will continue marching to New Orleans. If not, we will march on the government and our forces will grow as will our diversity. The haves will hear from the have nots in a unified voice. And as Prince said in his song to "Mr Man"....we tired of y'all.
Much more to come about this journey but spread the word and join the march whereever and whenever you can. Let's make them responsible to all of the people!