Iraq, Immigrants and Irritations

I’m sitting here in Denver, Colorado wondering what immediate cause we are focusing on. I read about the “imminent” threat of Iran being bombed, attacked or invaded by the U.S. and then see the somewhat knee-jerk reaction of the peace and justice communities.
Yeah, knee-jerk, because this just seems to be déjà vu all over again and again and we all seem to fall for the same tactic all over again.
As much as we despise the Bush regime we probably shouldn’t underestimate the intelligence and shrewdness of their actions. Keep in mind this is the administration that completed the coup d'état of the American democracy without a shot being fired.
Instead, in true Machiavellian and Orwellian tradition, Bush and his cronies created a constitutional crisis to win the 2000 election. They followed up by using 9/11 as the perfect tool to evoke fear and trembling in the masses who then called out for the patriarchal government to protect them from the nebulous of terrorism.
Few questioned why there would be anger enough against this nation that planes would be flown into the Twin Towers. The few who questioned did so at risk of being labeled traitors by the frightened new zealots of nationalistic vengeance. The Bush people led by Karl Rove savored the opportunity.
They fabricated the now infamous WMD defense to fight “terrorism” away from the shores of the homeland. They used the tactics of sheer terror and massive destruction against the most likely weakling available to demonstrate how they’d protect us against terrorism.
By the shock and awe of indiscriminate bombing and missile attack, the fight for peace was launched. An already devastated Afghanistan and Iraq took some more punishment as the American punching bags to extract revenge for 9/11 and open the door to the treasures of oil, black gold, Texas tea, Middle East money.
At home, the patriotism of the dissenters was battered and beleaguered. Those not strong enough went scurrying to the darkness of cowardly retreat. Their voices became quieted. For those too outspoken in exercising their freedom; judicial intimidation awaited.
It didn’t matter if local courts found some innocent on charges of civil disobedience; the federal government would find charges to stick. Think of the St. Patrick group in Ithaca. Or nuns, whose great crime was a symbolic break-in to spill their own blood on a nuclear missile site capable of ten times the destruction of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, were sent to federal prison as saboteurs.
Meanwhile, “smart-bombs’ and peace-keepers with the latest techno weapons were blowing up innocent Iraqis and Afghans along with the perceived enemy. Bomb blasts with one hundred yard kill zones seldom discriminate between an armed adult and an innocent mother and child.
Frightened soldiers and Marines looked upon every olive skinned man or woman as suicide bombers and with official wink and nod “blew them away” as they approached too close to checkpoints or were seen avoiding checkpoints. The civilian population was caught in the vice of opposing forces of deadly force.
War was peace-keeping and those who were truly trying to keep peace were traitorous. Each failing moment of the Bush policy was followed by increases in fear levels known as the color chart alert level…red, green, blue…yellow.
Rumors of Korean nukes exploding in Japan and South Korean cities were rampant. Rumors of Al Qaeda responsibility for insurgent rebellion, the common cold and the bird flu followed every investigation and inquiry into Team Bush corruption.
Every journalist who developed testes or courage was investigated and excoriated for their personal lives. Every congress person opposed to the tyranny crawled under rocks or went along as they read daily polls of the American masses fearing imminent terrorism on the shores of America.
They kept waiting for airplanes to fly into buildings again or sporting events to be disrupted by suicide bombers. They kept waiting for bio-chemical weapons in the air or the water. And as they waited they gave up more and more of the democratic freedoms they sought so much to save by allowing the true terrorists, the true “illegals” to steal away their country in the pretense of “protecting the homeland”.
Homeland security took on the life of a bestial and invasive disease that sucked the rights out of what was left of democracy. Torture wasn’t torture unless Alberto or Condi said it was. False imprisonment wasn’t false unless charges were brought and the charges were never brought.
The irony of the torture chamber and illegal imprisonment on Cuban soil was almost too much to contemplate. There, on the island nation so demonized and vile that embargoes remained forty years after any threat was gone, an American gulag was established and flaunted on the stolen land of a Marine base.
So, we have new and better reports Iran will be next. Seymour Hersh revisits his My Lai scoop and discovers American government hasn’t changed since that time. If Seymour says it, it must be fact. Too bad he and all the propagandist press didn’t have their facts straight before the carnage began.
I have problems accepting the propaganda machine’s “truths” even if they come from an acclaimed reporter who can’t get along with anybody who doesn’t agree with him. I have problems with any reports that have any hint of being “insider” information after hearing Rumsfeld has decided “disinformation” will be one of his new projects on the internet.
And then I sit here in Denver and hear the Colorado Progressive Coalition (aka the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party) and Catholic Church immigrant groups tell Latino, Hispanic and Chicano activists a one day walkout on May 1st would be too disruptive and divisive.
I wonder if they know the casinos in Mississippi hire undocumented workers from Latin America and Mexico for a month before they call INS to avoid paying them. I wonder if they care. Unions that work hard each day to get janitors and maids living wages and a scent of healthcare call for a walkout but the white led coalitions of Democrats and Catholics don’t want to upset anybody.
They fear a backlash against the “illegals” by the white leaders who are proposing legislation to outlaw humans who cross a man made imaginary line in the earth. On one side a human is a human but on the other side they’re disposable, they’re exploitable and they’re profitable.
These groups would have us believe they’re following the concepts of men like Gandhi and Christ but it’s likely both would scorn their passivity in the face of the outrageous oppression exhibited by the privileged class. The idea either Gandhi or Christ would fail to act directly against the oppressors is just wrong and deceitful on the part of groups posing as activists that are really more about maintaining the status quo.
While a Catholic, I can’t forget the history of Catholicism in third world nations. Impoverished peoples have long been under the yoke of religious oppressors feeding them homilies against birth control and for giving up much needed monies to remain sanctified in the eyes of God.
When families become far too large to feed adequately, the Church tells the masses to pray while their priests live mostly free of charge and have food always on their plate. When the patriarchs of the Church eschew the riches of the material world and do as Jesus truly instructed they might have more credibility.
Going out into the world with only the clothes upon your back and the trust that others will feed and house you must take incredible faith. Faith seems to be lacking in the overseers of the Church who hold onto the concept of maintaining the “treasures” of the Church. Unfortunately the treasures aren’t the laity as much as the gold.
I felt compelled to review the words of Gandhi the peace and justice groups are so fond of alluding to but which we seem to forget in the times direct action are called for.
“So long as I lived under a system of government based on force and voluntarily partook of the many facilities and privileges it created for me, I was bound to help that government to the extent of my ability when it was engaged in a war, unless I non-cooperated with that government and renounced to the utmost of my capacity the privileges it offered me.”
“One has to speak out and stand up for one’s convictions. Inaction at a time of conflagration is inexcusable.”
“The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything that is humiliating.”
Gandhi was not one to cooperate with authorities when they represented the oppressor. Jesus Christ was clearly not one to do so either as exhibited by his defiance of the Pharisees. The Son of God was known to defy tradition by hanging out with thieves, prostitutes and tax-collectors. He allowed women to be part of his following in defiance of traditional values, also. He chased the money-changers at the temple in clear defiance of the “arrangement” with the chief priests.
So, I rant into religious and philosophical ideology because my interpretations are two of the often mentioned practitioners of non-violence took direct and non-cooperative actions against the oppressors. I do so to try to bring another side of thought into the passivity I see from the religious and the believers of non-violence.
How can we truly think we’re going to change things if we keep trying to do things by the rules of the oppressor? I’m confident Jesus and Gandhi wouldn’t care about borders and nationality in the case of the men, women and children who cross over into a place of better life.
I’m also confident they’d be staunch supporters of demonstrating to the groups who feel they are the elite and powerful the power of the poor and oppressed and those who are in solidarity with them is much greater. I think they and Martin Luther King would be in the streets with those who say shut down the country for peace and justice that has been promised but never delivered.
It seems to me the use of the term “illegals” is misdirected. The illegals are the rich and powerful who impose wars upon nations. They’re the ones who legislate who is human and who is not in a country priding itself on being a free and open society.
The illegals are those who sit by as fellow humans suffer. Sit by and watch inane and irrelevant entertainment as children die and suffer. Sometimes it’s us, in the “movement”, who think we can separate one atrocity from another to focus on.
So, I sit here in Denver thinking about the connections of the rumors and disinformation that frighten so many about terrorism and the treatment of our brothers and sisters who come to this country to have a better life. I think of the connection of the war against a nation already decimated and beleaguered and the brothers and sisters of New Orleans left to fend for themselves.
I think of words from Gandhi I just read again; “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

Terry Leichner, RN
USMC Vietnam combat vet
VVAW

The Anti-War Movement - Response to Scott Ritter by Cindy Sheehan

The Anti-War Movement?

by Cindy Sheehan
April 6th, 2006

Being a so-called anti-war movement leader (at least to the MSM), brings much responsibility and so much love for the people and the groups who are working hard to end this insane occupation, but is this enough?

Recently, a blog written by an aquaintance, Scott Ritter, on AlterNet was called to my attention, where Scott, who is a self-proclaimed Republican, conservative who courageously opposed this war from the beginning, is predicting the eminent demise of the anti-war movement.

At first, I was highly offended and defensive at what I thought was Scottt's arrogant attack on the movement that I am so intimately and overwhelmingly involved in. But then after my knee-jerk reaction, I realized that for all of the wrong reasons, Scott was partially correct.

The anti-war movement is not on the "verge of collapse" because we are not organized, or because we don't take a "warriors" view of attacking the neocons and the war machine using the tactics of Napoleon, or Sun Tzu—but because the two-thirds of Americans who philosophically agree that the war is wrong, BushCo lied, and the troops should come home, will not get off of their collective, complacent, and comfortable behinds to demonstrate their dissent with our government. Some, like Casey and almost 2400 other Americans and their families give all, while some, like the people of Iraq, have everything stolen from them by unlawful war; some, like myself, give a lot; some give some, by writing letters, attending an occasional vigil or march; but the majority of Americans give nothing—except an occasional vote, which we all know counts practically for nothing with our electoral process being so corrupted and almost rendered meaningless by paperless voting machine, no instant run-offs, and exploitation of the religious right by such contrived issues as gay marriage and teaching evolution in our public schools.

I also agree with Scott that true progressives have many issues that we focus rightly on: a woman's right to have control over her own reproductive system and other human rights issues such as an end to the occupation of Palestine and the atrocities of Darfur and the Sudan. But unlike Scott, I think that these things are all interrelated and we have to expose the people in our government who exploit our young people and people of other countries, who are usually browner than the ruling class in America, for their own profit and imperial arrogance. Scott is definitely correct about this though: even while we are focusing our attentions on ending the occupation of Iraq, the fascist fanatics are planning on spreading their evils of Pax Americana to the next bogus threat of Iran, and who knows where else their fantasies of empire and fabulous ill-gotten booty will take them, and our children's precious lives to. Our anti-war movement must transform itself into a peace movement to resist this with all of our peaceful might!

We saw tens of thousands of young people take to the streets recently to protests against the proposed election year antics of Congress in their smokescreen of an immigration bill. The teens took to the streets because they have something at stake: the very lives of their families. If this bill passes, the families will be split up as their parents are deported back to their countries of origin. The immigrants rightly know that they are being conspired against and that the only way to stand up for your rights, is to get off of your butt and stand up!

The challenge of the peace movement, now that we have identified the problem so well, and have the vast majority of Americans on our side, is to convince each and every last American that he/she has a very intimate and personal stake in what we are allowing our government to do in Iraq and the world.

We are not just outsourcing our torture to other countries or paying private mercenary contractors to do it: by sitting on our duffs and allowing the torturing to continue: we are the torturers. We are the subhuman beings who put the black masks on our victims, water board them, or do other inhumane and despicable acts on fellow human beings.

By writing to our elected officials and complaining about this or that, but by not voting our consciences and allowing ourselves to panic and vote for a party when we know that both parties (except for a few notable exceptions in all parties) have been bobble-headed, rubberstamp tools for the Bush Regime. We are electing people who do not have our best interests at heart, but who vote to fund more money for war and killing and absolve themselves of the responsibility by saying that "they were tricked." We should vote for people who want war to end and did not vote against America by giving George the keys to operate the war machine when they knew he was irresponsible, no matter what party affiliation they claim.

When we see the burned beyond recognition bodies of innocent Iraqi civilians who were targeted with chemical weapons by the US military; when we see babies with their heads blown off and children screaming in pain and dying by the thousands because they don't have the proper medical care, equipment or medicines, and we don't go and figuratively, or literally throw ourselves as human monkey wrenches into the murderous war machine, we may as well be pushing the button ourselves to activate the weapons that immorally and unlawfully kill innocent people: our brothers and sisters, who, no matter what BushCo says, are just like us in every way. They are dark, light; rich, poor; Christian, Muslim; old, young; happy, sad; conservative, liberal; nice, mean; etc: you get the picture. The only difference they have from us is that they live within different artificial boundary lines then we do: but this is not enough to make the innocent people of Iraq the enemies of we the people of America.

I grew up in the 60's during the nuclear-scare era where we would regularly have to dive under our desks in drills to make sure that if a nuclear bomb was dropped on my town that I would be vaporized under my desk, and during the travesty of another misbegotten (aren't they all?) war, Vietnam. I grew up terrified of Communists, until, no thanks to Ronald Reagan, the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight of a failed economic system that poured its rubles and human treasure into a gigantically bloated war machine and pissing contest of an arms race with the USA, and another misguided decade long war in Afghanistan. If we can't learn the lessons of Vietnam, can we at least learn the lessons of the U.S.S.R.?

Looking back on my life up until Casey was killed in Iraq, on 04/04/04, I have tried to analyze over and over again what went wrong.I knew that our leaders were bought and paid for employees of the war machine, and yet, when Casey came of age, he put on the uniform and marched off to another senseless war to bring his employers that rich reward of money and power. The warning for American mothers and fathers is this: the war machine will get your children, if not now, then your grandchildren. It is a hard and steep price to pay for the certain knowledge that the people in power think of us, not as their employers and electorate whom they swear to serve, but as their tools to be used as cannon fodder whenever the impulse strikes them.

Do we need a mandatory forced conscription to get America out the door and rising up against this same war machine? I am adamantly opposed to a draft, but look what happened with the immigration issue. Democrats have proposed bills with mandatory service to the country to insure equality for the rich and the poor in military service, but no one pays any attention to them because they are proposed by Democrats. Congress should do the people of Iraq and our over-reached and over-worked and abused military a break by proposing a draft bill which would insure massive protests against this war.

With recent revelations that George Bush, himself, authorized the leaks that lead to the outing of Valerie Plame, in revenge for her husband, ex-ambassador Joe Wilson trying to expose the yellow-cake uranium lie, what more proof do we need that Iraq is wrong, not being fought incompetently (we also need to quit buying into the bull crap that there can be a "competent" war), but just wrong from the absolute get-go. What more proof do we need that we need leaders with the courage do finally do the right thing and say that BushCo lied and they need to be held accountable and the troops finally need to be brought home?

There are several opportunities for us to band together and show the illegitimate leaders of our country that we mean business.

This April 12th to the 16th, even though George and family won't be coming to Crawford to celebrate Easter for the first time in years, we will be. We will be gathering at Camp Casey in support of our troops by calling for them to be withdrawn and brought back to their families as healthy and wholly as possible. As usual, everyone is invited down to Camp Casey and can get more information at http://www.gsfp.org/

Also, on April 29th, UFPJ is calling for a massive gathering in NYC to protest the war. I am issuing an invitation to everyone who is personally affected by this war, which is every last person in this country, to come out and visibly show this administration that you don't want to be abused by them anymore.

Yes Scott, the anti-war movement is collapsing into a Peace movement. We won't use the tactics of Napoleon, or your hero, Sun Tzu, we will use the tactics of our heroes: Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nothing is gained by war, warlike tactics, or warriors, but destruction.

Nothing is gained by doing nothing, either. Do something.

Beyond New Orleans by Stan Goff

Walking Beyond New Orleans,
What are our next steps?
by Stan Goff

Territory: from terra, meaning soil or land.

They love it when we struggle over policy, because abstraction always works in their favor. They love it when we fight for an issue and not a program, because they can throw up more initiatives than we have to power to confront.

What they are doing in Iraq and the Gulf Coast is taking away other peoples’ territory… which is the geographic basis of sovereignty… and that sense we name “home.”

Home were the twin demands: Bring the troops HOME. Bring the survivors HOME. Bring us to our sense of place.

The basis of the struggle for social transformation is the struggle to assert POPULAR sovereignty against elite sovereignty.

Soldiers fight for territory, taking it from others, defending their own, or defending the territory of others. We just struck the first of many blows to defend the sovereignty of both Iraq and the residents of the Gulf Coast. We have adopted non-violence as a strategy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t understand that we are at war with war, that we seek to take the power of the powerful, or that we are coming off the defense and onto the offense. We have turned a corner, and now it is up to us to move forward on the other side of that turn.

We walked, and that is why we know the land, the homes — many shattered by wind and flood — that we are helping people defend. We have to understand the implications of this. We have become a Department of HOMEland Security for the oppressed, only we are talking about real homes and not some national-fascist fatherland abstraction.

This movement has struggled for some time with several questions. Why are we so white? Why do we have such minimal participation from black and brown? How do we reach out? How can we stop those in power from ignoring us?

We may have stumbled upon the answers to some of those questions by doing what we just did.

Those with some social privilege are always — historically — the people who have the educational, financial, socio-cultural, and organizational advantages available to them to be more effective when they are politically radicalized. When movements are organized around issues like the war and foreign policy, those in the best position to struggle around these global issues are those who are less preoccupied with more immediate issues of survival for themselves and their families. So the privileges of class, race-nationality, and gender are reflected in the very movements that have declared themelves against expolitative power.

In many cases, these movements also reflect a kind of myopia. We have missed the struggles that are going on all around us, precisely because we have a degree of citizenship… we are listened to and taken seriously by the establishment. The struggles we have missed are those that affect those who are treated as less-than-citizens… be they African Americans, Hispano-Latinas, or Indigenous Nations… women, LGBT, young people.

We must grasp the difference between a citizen and a subject, because this is the difference between colonizer and colonized. And that colonial status breaks down when the citizen converts the privileges of citizenship into resistance by placing that privilege in the service of the subjects... of the subjugated. We turn the class privilege into a weapon against class. We turn the privileges of men against male supremacy, and heterosexual normacy against oppressive sexual norms. We turn the privleges of whiteness against white supremacy. We turn the valorization of the military in a militarized society against militarism. We turn territorial privilege into a weapon to regain the lost territory of the subject... and we redefine citizenship in a new country, in liberated territory, figurative and literal.

We went to the Gulf Coast and we connected the war aborad with a war at home. Let’s think about what we mean when we say “war at home.” What does it look like, this war? Who is this war aimed against? How is it fought? These are the things we need to know in order to fight back.

In both Iraq and the Gulf Coast, brown, foreign, and poor people have been subjected to at least two perfectly similar assaults: the attempt to take their territory, and the attempt to impose control over them as a population.

In our trip across the Gulf Coast, we took a couple of important first steps to deal with the questions raised above. We went to the heart of the nation’s Black Belt. We accepted Black leadership, male and female. We shared resources with African American organizers on THEIR home bases. We met with and formed relationships with everyday Black, Native Nations, Hispano-Latina, Vietnamese, and poor white people in the region. We collaborated with Black folk through the only institution over which they still retain control — the Black church — which is also the locus of African American community organizing. We prioritized THEIR issue, and committed to follow through. And now we have the potential to contest with those in power, in solidarity with the people with whom we have met and to whom we have committed, to defend their homes against the encroachments of what promises to be the most massive gentirifcation project in American history.

We have positioned ourselves for a fight to defend the homes — the territory — of our allies. This could become a new kind of fight, and making the issues land, popular sovereignty, and the fight against militarized population control (especially against the prison-industrial complex and felony disfranchisement), we have taken on a new quality of struggle… and one that applies equally to the occupation of Iraq and the occupation of the Gulf Coast.

Not only does the fight against gentrification and lockdown in the Gulf Coast go straight to the heart of the oppression unmasked there by the hurricane and the government’s response, these two issues can be linked to the issue of the war nationwide, and thereby centralize the immediate and emergency concerns of black, brown, and poor people all over the country.

These are talking points that can be developed and popularized, linked to ongoing struggles around the country, and that we can carry as a battle standard to the Gulf Coast as follow up.

Some folks at IVAW already want to organize a 2006 Summer Reconstruction Collective for the Gulf Coast. We find the funds for them. They stay at Slidell. They work in one community to build strong local relationships there throughout the summer — June through August. Over one selected week, with a few days fore and aft to total a week, the same IVAW Summer Reconstruction Collective organizes and runs a weeklong reconstruction blitz, with Vets for Peace, especially Vietnam Vets, coming down to work a plan conceived BY IVAW.

Dave Cline and I were talking, and he is suggesting a parallel, two-step campaign… one I want to endorse in its general outlines. “Home by Christmas” as part of the Bring Them Home Now! campaign, that whips the living hell out of Congress — followed by a build up of marches similar to the one we just did, but across individual states, culminating in state capitols across the country. Detroit to Lansing. Fayetteville to Raleigh. Bay Area to Sacramento. Albuquerque to Santa Fe. Portland to Salem. Newark to Trenton. And on and on. Four or five day walks and caravans, camping again, landing each night in some community under assault by thuggish police, by gentrifiers, or economic crisis. Linking with African Americans, Hispano-Latinas, Native Nations. Joining their issues, accepting their leadership, and sharing our resources. Converging in state capitols on the fourth anniversary of the war, with our motley marchers, led by vets, especially Iraq vets, and our peace-train convoys of cars… a new popular democracy struggle on the move.

A program that is not trapped in policy, but tied to territory. A revolution that knows how to dance (we did that well, didn’t we, in the street and in the camps?). A movement that is coming off the defensive and taking it to them, one day’s march at a time. Let’s teach people how we learned to love and lose our fear.

Just a riff in my head. I’m still padding down Highway 90, drinking Grumble’s coffee, hearing your drums, huggin’ y’all goodnight.

Cross country, like a fuken justice army… still can’t believe we did it.

posted 26 march 2006

A Parent Sitting Up Late at Night (Aug 22 05)

I wrote this one during one of my frequent nights of being unable to sleep. Cindy Sheehan had just gone to Crawford, Texas to confront George W. Bush about the death of her son, Casey. Two days after I wrote this piece, I was in Camp Casey I.
Her story made me think, first as a parent of two sons, how it would be if they were in Iraq or Afghanistan in harm's way. It also made me think of how my parents looked when I returned from Vietnam.
I realized immediately upon seeing my parents for the first time in over thirteen months they'd been as much at war as I had been.
Only later in talking with my mom did I truly understand the inner turmoil that having a child go to war causes a parent. When I became a parent I had an even better understanding of what it means to have a child in harm's way.
Last evening I met a mother who had a son killed in Iraq. I listened to her compelling story near tears, with great sadness and with an overwhelming sense of rage.
As she talked, I saw in her the compassion and love I remember from my own mother. My mother was never the same after my tour of Vietnam and she was able to have me return alive if not entirely healthy.
Since I heard from many mothers about this article after I posted it, I felt it was something that does touch a parent in some way. I've decided maybe I should put it on top of my blog every so often as a remembrance of moms and dads who still grieve or still wait in horrible limbo.
With great love in my heart for all parents who face the grief or the constant unknown.
Terry Leichner, RN
Vietnam combat vet - USMC
Parent of two grown sons
Grandfather of three


Imagine (Written August 22 05)

Can you imagine what it would be like to see them come up to your door?
In uniforms and grim looks on their faces, and your child in the war.
Can you imagine how it must feel when they say those five words?
We regret to inform you…do you hear anything but those five words?
Can you imagine telling your husband or wife your child is gone?
Your child whose birth gave your greatest joy is gone.

I’m sitting here in the middle of the night wondering how someone could question a mother or father who lost a child to this war. How could someone in good conscience accuse a mother of politicizing the death of their child? Have we grown so disconnected with our humanity we can’t imagine the day a parent sees the dark colored car drive up to their street, up to their house and uniformed men emerge?
If you’re a parent, maybe you can imagine hearing those five words. It’s your greatest nightmare. You lie awake at night wondering where your child is at tonight.
You hate hearing the phone late at night. You hate seeing strange dark cars in your neighborhood. You can’t stand the newspaper or television news.
Then imagine the five words. Will you hear beyond them? Will you know before they say them?
Then there will be telling the rest of the family. You tell it over and over again…you child is gone. You want to scream out insanely. How can they be gone!!!!!?
Imagine the memories of your child first walking. The first words from their lips. The first worrisome cold. How can they be gone?
Imagine when you watched them swim, or skate or play baseball or football. Imagine playing basketball with them in the driveway in the fall as the leaves turned gold. Imagine the graduation and the joy in their face.
Imagine the day they leave your house to enter boot camp. The next time you see them their hair is short and they seem different and changed.
Imagine the last flight you see them off at the airport. The last phone call from the place of the war. The last letter.
Imagine the day when, with a broken heart and empty soul, you follow the dark hearse with your beloved child inside a casket. Imagine the numb feeling as you get out and see the burial plot where your child will be lowered into the earth. There will be words from the Bible, the Torah or Koran. They don’t bring your child alive.
There will be family all around you but you’ll be as lonely as you’ll ever be. They’ll hand you a triangle in red, white and blue like it will replace your child or there is something there to comfort you.
Imagine the final moments as the casket is lowered into the ground. The thought of your child leaving this earth before you rips at your heart. You hear over and over the words of sympathy and comfort and they are arrows that smash into your spirit in reminder of your child.
Then everybody leaves, you’re alone with only the terrible thoughts of the death of your child. You wonder how it really happened. You wonder if your child suffered. You wonder if they died alone. Death for you would be a welcome thing instead of these thoughts you have.
Imagine after the first month or so, everybody seems to think you’re able to be yourself again. They’ll never understand you’ll never be yourself again; you’ll never be whole again. Your child is gone and each day is a struggle to get up and each day the sorrow begins again.
Imagine returning to work and seeing the looks and the avoidance of some and the overbearing presence of others. They don’t know.
Imagine going to the grocery store and seeing a child with a smile like the smile of your child. You want to scream out your child is gone!! They’ll look the other way to avoid the sadness you hold in your heart.
Imagine the silence between you and other family members. You’re left to think of the moments of each day when your child would get up, go to school, return from school, go to a friends, eat dinner, go to practice, get ready for bed. Each moment so damn precious and you failed to recognize it at the time.
Imagine hearing a song and becoming tearful because it was your child’s favorite. Seeing a book and the memory of discussing the plot and characters with such joy.
That’s all I can do. Imagine it. My mom and dad feared it each day of 1968. They imagined it but they never heard those five words.
I imagined my sons being that dead child as I sat here this late, late night. My heart ached from just the thought of it. I had memories of them swimming and running. I remembered the day of each birth. I remembered reading Mark Twain or Watership Down to them.
All those memories of my children came flooding back to me and I couldn’t really imagine how gut wrenching awful it would be to hear those five fucking words!!!
“We regret to inform you….”

More Thoughts On Ritter's Art of War

There’s been a movement under way in the last three years to compartmentalize the illegal war and occupation in Iraq as a singular issue. Scott Ritter’s recent essay about the “Art of war” for the antiwar movement suggests the peace movement, while strong in ideals, is scaring away mainstream Americans because of fringe fanatics taking the stage with the antiwar message.
I totally agree with Ritter that chaos and division reigns within the peace movement and new tactics are called for.
I agree new ways other than rallies and feel good marches are called for. I will even go to the point of saying civil disobedience as practiced today by the peace movement is an exercise in futility.
I disagree with Ritter when he calls for the antiwar equivalent of Centcom to focus all the energy on the war while letting peripheral issues take a secondary role.
I see the neo-conservative movement being very organized with a consistency of staying on a simple message. The messages are generally pretty simple, too.
Get rid of most government taxation which gets rid of government handouts, keep homosexuals from having the same rights as heterosexuals, stop abortions and a woman’s right to choose and put only “Christians” into power.
It’s clear the neo-conservative movement has no tolerance for the poor. They have the general attitude the poor could have better lives if they weren’t so lazy and uneducated.
They also have little tolerance for mental illness, disabilities and the hungry. They prefer to leave the handouts to churches of their choice for charitable giveaways which are always tax deductible.
There’s many in the neo-conservative movement who feel the people flooded and chased into the Superdome when Katrina came had it coming because they failed to heed warnings to evacuate.
Of course all this is just codifying for racism. As I heard recently in a tour of the Gulf; “it’s looting when the blacks are taking food from the Wal-Mart but its survival when it’s the whites.”
Scott Ritter makes many valid points in his essay but his argument fails in a very large way. While he expresses a concern the left wing ideologues drive away the moderates and even concerned conservatives, he forgets to discuss the large community of the impoverished, the communities of color and the disaffected communities.
Ritter fails to point out this “antiwar movement” he speaks of is predominately white. He fails to address the movement lacks diversity. I mean true diversity in which black, Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, Asian-Pacific, Native American and mixed race brothers and sisters are included.
Ritter was in the Marines. Has he forgotten the ranks of the enlisted consisted of many of the aforementioned groups?
What Ritter proposes is a “laser-like” approach being nothing less or nothing more than an antiwar movement. He proposes studying the enemy, studying tactics of conflict and when able driving the pro-war crowd into the ground in complete and total victory.
On one hand Ritter derides the peace movement for it’s naiveté in far-reaching goals but then proposes a military type campaign to do what no one to this date has ever done – rid the world of war mongers. While we’re at it maybe we can also wish for a tooth fairy that can end all interpersonal conflict.
I have a great distaste for “military type” campaigns. Whether they are for good or evil they seem to always involve the people in power and the worker bees.
There’s always the “grunts” who will sacrifice themselves and the command group who will always be more than willing to accept credit but seldom responsibility for screw ups.
You see, all we’re really doing is playing toy-soldier again but allegedly this time it’ll be for peace. We need more than that. We need to literally and figuratively take the toy soldier out of the cribs of our children.
We need to look at the proliferation of hand guns and rifles obtained for no other reason than to kill another human.
We need to think about what we allow our children to be exposed to from all forms of media.
Go to a local Target or Kmart video section and see what the predominate video games are. Check out what the kids are playing on their X-Boxes. What are they watching on your DVD’s and VCR’s or cable?
Maybe Scott Ritter doesn’t see this as something to take on at this time but we’d better start doing so or we’ll keep producing generation after generation of new cannon fodder.
At the beginning of this war I told my small group of friends it would end when the American people started to feel it in the pocketbook. This is a capitalistic country that holds money and possessions as dear as it does God.
Well, the people are starting to realize the economic fallout of sending billions to the war and taking it from colleges and highways.
The middle class and rich of America don’t see the black faces outside their walled communities but they see the cost of their kid’s tuition going up in private schools and colleges.
The day of reckoning is coming, however. Soon the United States of America will be a country comprised of more non-white people than white. Soon the majority and most powerful demographic groups will be people of color.
As a capitalist nation, be assured the capitalist will attempt to cater to this group. It’s already happening.
It seems the antiwar movement might want to connect with this group of Americans. It seems if we’re to succeed in our hopes to end war, we should try being in solidarity with communities more likely to not want their children getting killed for senseless reasons.
The strategy of building coalitions with communities already wise to the failures of government might be a place the antiwar movement should go. Instead of the constant lip-service of wanting diversity, maybe actual meetings and negotiations with diverse groups should occur.
Or maybe if the antiwar movement goes to diversity the moderates and concerned conservatives would be alienated? So we should hold up until we get the rest of the white community aboard before we go there?

WM. Terry Leichner, RN
VVAW
USMC combat vet

Ritter's Argument Leaves Too Many Behind

NOTE: This was originally posted on a site for the participants of the Walkin’ To New Orleans march that included Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Mothers, Katrina survivors and community groups along the Mobile to New Orleans route.
The Veterans and Survivors Walkin' to New Orleans march took place March 14, 2006-March 19,2006 along a 150 mile course of the worst hit areas of the Gulf by Katrina. It ended in New Orleans at a rally commemorating the beginning of the 4th year of the illegal war in Iraq.
Scott Ritter’s “essay” about the “anti-war” movement was posted on that site for discussion, also.

Ritter’s Argument Leaves Too Many Behind

While I highly respect Scott Ritter for taking on the military establishment against the illegal war in Iraq, I don't agree with his argument of creating a one tune movement against the war.
Didn't we just go from Mobile to New Orleans to connect the war to the continued neglect of Katrina survivors? Didn't we connect the costs of war to the lack of social programs, the abuse of immigrants in the workforce, poor educational opportunities for marginalized communities and the continued oppression of these communities?
I do think the veteran, above all, knows the horrors of war in a foreign land but there's more to the story than just the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here in Denver there's cuts in mental health, drug and alcohol treatment programs, schools are closing, education in the black and Hispanic/Latino/Chicano communities is criminally lacking, poorly trained police have killed mentally disabled kids and on and on in an extensive laundry list of abuse and neglect.
The common denominator in this is lack of attention and funding. Billions of dollars are drained from "we the people" to perpetuate the meat grinders in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those billions take away from all the things Scott Ritter proposes we forget about while we just focus on the war with "laser like precision". This view seems not only limited in perspective but dangerous in the long run.
I think a lot about my friends lost in Vietnam. Probably a day doesn't pass I don't have some thought about them.
That said, I'm a father and grandfather who knows it doesn't matter if your son or daughter or grandkids are killed in combat or at the end of a syringe or a crack pipe. Who's to say that a mentally disabled kid shot by police is any less important than Casey Sheehan, for example?
I won't say it because whether killed in an insane war or by poorly trained cops or by untreated addictions, we've lost a part of our future. We've lost part of our greatest resources, our children.
I understand the single focus argument but won't endorse it. The people of this nation need to be told over and over again Katrina survivors are casualties of that fucking war going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They need to connect the damn dots that the costs of war aren't just some kids who voluntarily joined the military or the thousands of innocent Iraqi dead and wounded.
I have great love and respect for our young veterans but I can't forget the stories I heard from Katrina survivors. I can't forget the lost generations imprisoned for addiction and possession.
If we look at the peace movement, as Ritter did, we have to keep in mind the great majority of that movement is white European.
We've struggled to have the marginalized communities of poverty and color joins the peace movement.
With hungry children, two to three jobs or no jobs it's not high on the priority list to join a movement that seems to think holding a rally or march or being symbolically arrested is the way of effecting change.
When the young men of a community are constantly rousted each day, writing a letter to a congress person isn't high on their list.
When the same young men and their young female counterparts drop out of schools at almost a fifty percent rate, it's unlikely they'll focus in on the war as a cause to take up.
I think we fail as a movement if we don't continue the struggle to connect the military industrial complex to a nation addicted to violence and consumption of natural resources.
I think we fail if we don't connect the violence we've inflicted on nature and our planet with our perpetual warfare. What the hell is Agent Orange and depleted uranium if not environmental disasters?
Scott Ritter deserves respect for his willingness to speak up but I'm not persuaded to throw out all the sheet music just to hum one note.

WM. Terry Leichner, RN
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Denver, Co
USMC Vietnam combat veteran

The Art of War for the Anti-war Movement

Posted by Scott Ritter at 6:13 PM on March 31, 2006.
It's high time to recognize that we as a nation are engaged in a life-or-death struggle of competing ideologies with those who promote war as an American value and virtue.

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq by a US-led coalition, and for three years since, I have spent many hours speaking to numerous anti-war forums across the country and around the world. I have always been struck by the sincerity of the vast majority of those who call themselves anti-war, and impressed by their willingness to give so much of themselves in the service of such a noble cause.
Whether participating in demonstrations, organizing a vigil, conducting town-hall meetings, or writing letters to their elected officials and the media, the participants in the anti-war movement have exhibited an energy and integrity that would make anyone proud. For myself, I have been vociferous in my defense of the actions of the majority of the anti-war movement, noting that the expression of their views is not only consistent with their rights afforded by the Constitution of the United States, but also that their engagement in the process of citizenship is a stellar example of the ideals and values set forth in that document, and as such representative of the highest form of patriotism in keeping with service to a document that begins, "We the People."
Lately I have noticed a growing despondency among many of those who call themselves the anti-war movement. With the United States now entering its fourth year of illegal war in and illegitimate occupation of Iraq, and the pro-war movement moving inexorably towards yet another disastrous conflict with Iran, there is an increasing awareness that the cause of the anti-war movement, no matter how noble and worthy, is in fact a losing cause as currently executed. Despite all of the well-meaning and patriotic work of the millions of activists and citizens who comprise the anti-war movement, America still remains very much a nation not only engaged in waging and planning wars of aggression, but has also become a nation which increasingly identifies itself through its military and the wars it fights. This is a sad manifestation of the fact that the American people seem to be addicted to war and violence, rather than the ideals of human rights, individual liberty, and freedom and justice for all that should define our nation.
In short, the anti-war movement has come face to face with the reality that in the ongoing war of ideologies that is being waged in America today, their cause is not just losing, but is in fact on the verge of complete collapse. Many in the anti-war movement would take exception to such a characterization of the situation, given the fact that there seems to be a growing change in the mood among Americans against the ongoing war in Iraq. But one only has to scratch at the surface of this public discontent to realize how shallow and superficial it is. Americans aren't against the war in Iraq because it is wrong; they are against it because we are losing.
Take the example of Congressman Jack Murtha. A vocal supporter of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, last fall Mr. Murtha went public with his dramatic change of position, suddenly rejecting the war as un-winnable, and demanding the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. While laudable, I have serious problems with Jack Murtha's thought process here. At what point did the American invasion of Iraq become a bad war? When we suffered 2,000 dead? After two years of fruitless struggle? Once we spent $100 billion?
While vocalizing his current opposition against the Iraq War, Congressman Murtha and others who voted for the war but now question its merits have never retracted their original pro-war stance. Nor have they criticized their role in abrogating the Constitutional processes for bringing our country into conflict when they voted for a war before the President had publicly committed to going to war (we now know the President had committed to the invasion of Iraq by the summer of 2002, and that all his representations to the American people and Congress about 'war as a matter of last resort' and 'seeking a diplomatic solution' were bold face lies). The Iraq War was wrong the moment we started bombing Iraq. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein is no excuse, and does not pardon America's collective sin of brooking and tolerating an illegal war of aggression.
The reality is, had our military prevailed in this struggle, the American people for the most part would not even blink at the moral and legal arguments against this war. This underlying reality is reflected in the fact that despite our ongoing disaster in Iraq, America is propelled down a course of action that leads us toward conflict with Iran. President Bush recently re-affirmed his embrace of the principles of pre-emptive war when he signed off on the 2006 version of the National Security Strategy of the United States, which highlights Iran as a threat worthy of confrontation. This event has gone virtually unmentioned by the American mainstream media, un-remarked by a Congress that remains complicit in the war-mongering policies of the Bush administration, and un-noticed by the majority of Americans. America is pre-programmed for war, and unless the anti-war movement dramatically changes the manner in which it conducts its struggle, America will become a nation of war, for war, and defined by war, and as such a nation that will ultimately be consumed by war.
It is high time for the anti-war movement to take a collective look in the mirror, and be honest about what they see. A poorly organized, chaotic, and indeed often anarchic conglomeration of egos, pet projects and idealism that barely constitutes a "movement," let alone a winning cause. I have yet to observe an anti-war demonstration that has a focus on anti-war. It often seemed that every left-wing cause took advantage of the event to promote its own particular agenda, so that "No War in Iraq" shared the stage with the environment, ecology, animal rights, pro-choice, and numerous other causes which not only diluted the anti-war message which was supposed to be sent, but also guaranteed that the demonstration itself would be seen as something hijacked by the left, inclusive of only progressive ideologues, and exclusive of the vast majority of moderate (and even conservative) Americans who might have wanted to share the stage with their fellow Americans from the left when it comes to opposing war with Iraq (or even Iran), but do not want to be associated with any other theme.
The anti-war movement, first and foremost, needs to develop a laser-like focus on being nothing more or less than anti-war.
The anti-war movement lacks any notion of strategic thinking, operational planning, or sense of sound tactics. So much energy is wasted because of this failure to centrally plan and organize. As a result, when the anti-war movement does get it right (and on occasion it does), the success is frittered away by a failure to have planned effective follow-up efforts, failure to have implemented any supporting operations, an inability to recognize opportunities as they emerge and a lack of resources to exploit such opportunities if in fact they were recognized to begin with. In short, the anti-war movement is little more than a walk-on squad of high school football players drawing plays in the sand, taking on the National Football League Super Bowl Champions.
In order to even have a chance of prevailing with the American people, the anti-war movement is going to need much more than just good ideals and values. It needs to start thinking like a warrior would, in full recognition that we as a nation are engaged in a life-or-death struggle of competing ideologies with those who promote war as an American value and virtue.
The anti-war movement needs to study the philosophies of those who have mastered the art of conflict, from Caesar to Napoleon, from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz. It needs to study the "enemy" learning to understand the pro-war movement as well as it understands itself. It needs to comprehend the art of campaigning, of waging battles only when necessary, and having the ability to wage a struggle on several fronts simultaneously, synchronizing each struggle so that a synergy is created which maximizes whatever energy is being expended. The anti-war movement needs to understand the pro-war movement's center of gravity, and design measures to defeat this. It needs to grasp the pro-war movement's decision-making cycle, then undertake a comprehensive course of action that learns to pre-empt this cycle, getting 'inside' the pro-war system of making decisions, and thereby forcing the pro-war movement to react to the anti-war agenda, instead of vice versa.
There is an old adage in the military that “intelligence drives operations.” The anti-war movement needs to develop a centralized intelligence operation, not a spy organization, but rather a think-tank that produces sound analysis based upon fact that can be used to empower those who are waging the struggle against war. Far too often the anti-war movement dilutes its effectiveness by either being unable to produce facts during a debate, or when it does, producing facts that are inaccurate, incomplete, or both. The mainstream media treats the anti-war movement as a joke because many times that is exactly what the anti-war movement, through its lack of preparation and grasp of the facts, allows itself to become.
The anti-war movement lacks organization. There is no central leadership, or mechanism to effectively muster and control resources. The anti-war movement takes pride in its “democratic” composition, but in fact it operates as little more than controlled chaos, creating ample opportunity for the pro-war movement to effectively execute a “divide and conquer” strategy to minimize and nullify whatever good the anti-war movement achieves through its efforts. The anti-war movement would do well to take a page from the fire service and implement a version of the Incident Command System (ICS) that firefighters use when fighting complex fires involving the integration of several departments, organizations and jurisdictions. The anti-war movement needs to develop its own “ICS for the anti-war” that is universally applied throughout the movement, so that an anti-war effort in Seattle, Washington operates the same as an anti-war effort in New York City, and as such can be coordinated and controlled by an overall command staff operating from Denver, Colorado.
Complex problems, such as faced by the anti-war movement, require complex solutions, which in turn dictate a flexible control mechanism that can coordinate and synchronize every effort to achieve the desired result at a time and place of the anti-war movement's choosing, and then be prepared to follow up on successes as they occur and sustain the movement over an extended period of time. It is not enough to win a battle against the pro-war movement; the anti-war movement needs to win the war of ideologies. As such it must not only prepare to win a particular fight, but to exploit that victory, massing its forces against any developed weakness, and drive the pro-movement into the ground and off the American political map once and for all.
I have indicated my willingness to apply my training and experience as a warrior in a manner which helps teach the principles of the art of war to those who call themselves part of the anti-war movement. There seems to be not only a need for this sort of training, but also a desire among the myriad of individuals and groups who comprise the anti-war movement for an overall coordinated strategic direction, operational planning, and tactical execution of agreed upon mission objectives. One can be certain that the pro-war movement is conducting itself in full accordance with these very same organizational principles and methodologies. And let there be no doubt: the pro-war movement in America is prevailing. In order to gain the upper hand politically, and actually position itself to stop not only those wars already being fought (Iraq), but also prevent those being planned (Iran), the anti-war movement will need to re-examine in totality the way it does business. I for one am ready to assist. However, in writing this essay, I am constantly reminded of the old saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." One can only hope that the anti-war movement is thirsty.

And the Workers Shall Eat Their Own

I read the quotes of some of the people concerning the Denver RTD transit strike and find even my cynical view of life shocked at the outright stupidity of some.
One particular quote by a college student at Metro State was probably the worst. “Why should they get more money…all they do is sit on their butt all day”.
Yeah, sweetheart, and put up with moronic fools like you who give them attitude, threaten them and insult them. And then there’s a matter of dealing with the insanity of Denver traffic.
I remember a few years ago the Rocky Mountain News…the same newspaper now vilifying the drivers…wrote an article about a bus driver doing the Number 15 route along Colfax.
Among the many things the driver dealt with were drug dealers, mental health patients not taking medications, elderly needing assistance on and off the bus, blind passengers and the list went on. All the while the driver is supposed to maintain a professional attitude and deal with some of the worst congestion in a metropolitan area.
Now we have Bill Owens, always the compassionate conservative Governor, pouncing on his privatization band-wagon as quickly as he can. Of course Bill wants to privatize the bus lines just like he’s tried to privatize all of the public sector jobs.
Owens has always tried to disband unions and any other entity that might give the common workers a voice in their work life.
All we really need to do is look at the salary structures of the managers making more than 100,000 dollars and then look at the highest pay of a transit worker which tops out around 40,000 dollars each year.
RTD was amazingly voted the best transit system in the country recently. Here’s the question I always ask about such awards….are they the result of a workforce doing an excellent job or a management keeping the workers in line and oppressed?
A local mental health center ironically won an award honoring Martin Luther King at the very time it was ignoring a vote by its union workers to reject a contract offer. Ironic an organization would win an award honoring a man who gave his life fighting for a union in Memphis while they implemented their last offer despite a 94% vote against that offer.
I see men and women struggle to work at all hours of the day, haggard and depressed looking. They obviously aren’t happy about their jobs. Just go to a 7-Eleven or some retail store and gauge the overall attitude and affect of the workers.
I hear men and women complain about the long hours and the poor pay of their jobs. They voice anger toward their bosses who make far more than them and tend to never have a clue about the work their employees have to do to meet the quotas or standards of an organization that only cares about the bottom line. They complain about being taken advantage of by the “man”.
Then I hear the same folks berate a union employee standing up to employers who have taken huge pay raises and offer a bone of 1200 dollars a year to employees who’s pay has been frozen for the last three years.
The raise offered won’t even cover the inflationary costs of the past three years of a pay freeze but the employees are called greedy by other workers in the same situation.
What is it? Do low paid workers resent others getting ahead? Do other workers displace their anger toward the corporate thieves upon workers who try to rock the boat?
I’ve argued for years that unions are the reason wages are as high as they are in several areas of the work force. All I hear back is the unions take dues out of workers’ check each month.
Seldom do even the more intelligent workers calculate even with dues subtracted they’d still be making more than without a union.
Seldom is there any understanding unions dying won’t benefit workers; they will further enslave them and further increase the divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.
The notion hard work and loyalty will get the American worker ahead is a thing of the past. Companies now look at cost benefits versus cost liabilities of workers. The older the worker gets, the more likely they’ll have major illnesses which will increase insurance costs.
The longer an employee works at the same place the more the pay and pension costs. It’s less costly to have a reduction in force of the more senior workers and then hire less experienced and less paid employees.
If you’re an American worker and you think there’s going to be any loyalty toward you, think about the workers who have had an extended illness or injury keeping them off work for some time. How did management treat them? Are they still working for the company?
And still if a strike should inconvenience us or linger on it’s always the workers who are the bad guys. Even when other workers are told of the huge salaries of incompetent managers, the workers who challenge management are the ones who are smeared in the press and cursed by other workers.
Even as forced overtime and dangerous conditions increase in the workforce, a group of workers challenging management are the villains.
American labor remains divided and continues to eat their own while the rich continues to reap huge tax cuts and huge profits. American labor continues to fall for the slave master’s lies about other slaves of the military industrial complex.
Seriously, how much longer will we continue to tolerate the obscene profits and wealth earned from the sweat and bent backs of labor?

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
Former Pipefitter’s 208 member
Former SEIU 105 member

Unions Aren't the Villains

Unions Aren’t the Villains
Once again transit workers in a major city are striking for better wages and benefits. Once again they are portrayed as the villains because others have been inconvenienced.
While the average worker in America earns 200-300 times less than the best paid CEO’s of multinational corporations they still allow themselves to think management has their best interests in mind.
Management, along with big media, demonizes the worker simply trying to live a better life with a living wage whenever the worker challenges the status quo. Other workers, inconvenienced from taking a bus to the baseball game or work, curse and complain about unions being the villains.
They also bitch and moan about the ridiculous money baseball players receive as they pay the inflated prices for tickets, beer, food and soft drinks.
The same typical American worker goes to work day after day with little protection from being dismissed at the whim of the management.
They will find as they spend years at the same job they’ll become dispensable when they are nearer to retirement.
They’ll find their pensions thought to be a sure thing may be reduced or lost because management has broken the trust.
Healthcare benefits rise until many workers can no longer afford to stay enrolled. The worker becomes one major illness or accident from becoming destitute. Management is no where to be found when it happens.
Skilled workers with years of education lose employment to companies deciding the only way to “compete” is to outsource their work to a foreign land’s workers. Management always talks about competition but fails to mention the large profit made by paying the foreign worker half or less than they paid their loyal employees dismissed.
The question seems to always be why doesn’t America make anything anymore? Check the clothes racks, the shoe stores and even the good old traditional baseball used in the “national pastime” and see where the product is made.
Poor immigrants stream into this country to find work to simply better the life of their family. They take employment at far less than management would pay an American worker because even the lesser wage is much more than they could ever find in their homelands.
So, who does the typical American worker vilify in these cases of lost employment? They blame the poor workers of foreign lands or the immigrants for taking away their work.
They continuously miss the fact management manipulates them and abuses the poor to make larger profits.
They continuously fail to recognize that only when united workers challenge the greed of large and smaller corporations and public employers will the workers gain the comfort of a living wage with benefits.
Today we have a group of transit workers in Denver’s Regional Transportation District rejecting a contract offer of a yearly 60 cents a hour raise each year for three years, a one-time bonus of 250.00 and an undisclosed increase in health benefits.
The transit workers have had their wages frozen for the last 3 ½ years. During that same time RTD managers have given themselves an average raise of 25 percent. Some of the managers gave themselves a full 47 percent in one single raise.
The media doesn’t put those inequities in their headlines, however. Instead they headline the union “throws commuters, baseball into turmoil” and “Some riders have no easy alternative”.
Instead they list a “Strike survival guide” which isn’t about union members surviving without pay for the first three weeks they would be on strike. The survival guide is how to “survive” the inconvenience.
The media coverage begs the question of fair reporting and editing. Instead of a headline about the sacrifice and courage of workers challenging inequity and disparate pay for workers in comparison with managers, the media quotes a disgruntled union member accusing union leaders of having personal vendettas against the RTD.
Could the media do any better job to demonize and attempt to divide union members? Could their coverage be any more blatantly unfair?
And yet, the average American worker will turn against their peers in the American work force and believe the lies and manipulations of management.
They’ll look the other way when corporate executives lay off a third of their workforce, steal over a third of their pension and give themselves bonuses embarrassingly more than a worker could make in ten years.
These examples of greed and malicious disregard for workers have become common place in American life. And still it’s the unions working for better worker conditions, pay and benefits that are accused of villainous behaviors.
Until we realize those transit workers walking the picket lines today represent all the typical American employees, management will gloat and gleefully continue to exploit labor’s divisiveness.
Until we struggle to unite workers around the world to demand fairness, greedy managers will continue to get the rewards for the hard work of the average employees. They’ll continue to receive obscene bonuses while they steal from their workers’ future and hard-earned wages.

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Combat veteran – Vietnam 1967-69 (USMC)