Military Resistance 12C10
National Guard Armory Outreach
From: Alan S
To: Military Resistance Newsletter
Sent: March 10, 2014
Subject: 3/8 Outreach To New York National Guard
New York National Guard Armory Outreach (3/8/14)
What seemed to enliven the latest Military Resistance outreach to the Harlem National Guard Armory was our alerting headed-for-drill troops that our publications handout included a report on the killing of Guardsman Noel Polanco by a notorious NYC police detective in October, 2012.
An ordinary outreach perked up for those who remembered the incident of the fatal shooting on a NYC highway and those who never knew of it in the first place. A sergeant who’d just told us he knew of another unit headed for Afghanistan to depart from Texas mentioned Polanco’s mother received a “lot of money.”
The Daily News reprint reported the late guardsman’s mother’s compensation hardly mattered as her grief never lets up. She still insists the killer-detective be fired.
Otherwise, forming at 6:30 a.m. we passed out 70 handouts comprised of the special National Guard printout, our “Why We Are Here Statement,” the new edition of the GI Rights Pamphlet and the Military Resistance intro card [see below] plus 50 DVDs of “Authority & Expectations” - Iraq Vet Wray Harris’s riveting account of his combat experiences which include his anti-politician and anti-phony leftist views derived from the war he came to despise. [Wray Harris:
Of 68 snack bags approximately half were also given out, many rejecting (politely) them since it wasn’t compatible with their diet, a frequent turn-down.
As per usual our presence was met with courtesy by most and only one hostile muttering “get that shit out of my face” was encountered.
Troops began leaving for drill (we didn’t find out where) at 7:30 and we followed minutes later and ran into a few stragglers who then received what their comrades in arms had.
We figured the turn-down rate was about 50% this time, perhaps slightly more than usual.
And as has become custom we went for breakfast at a nearby restaurant to relax and compare notes re: the morning’s activities.
The next outreach will be 5/17/14.
P.S.
Four more of the handouts which included MR Newsletters were distributed at a commuter terminal this morning.
Recipients were young soldiers, none having seen me before, as many have, which now makes them aware of Military Resistance.
There are a few handouts left if anyone wants them.
MORE:
ACTION REPORTS WANTED:
FROM YOU!
An effective way to encourage others to support members of the armed forces organizing to resist the Imperial war is to report what you do.
If you’ve carried out organized contact with troops on active duty, at base gates, airports, or anywhere else, send a report in to Military Resistance for the Action Reports section.
Same for contact with National Guard and/or Reserve components.
They don’t have to be long. Just clear, and direct action reports about what work was done and how.
If there were favorable responses, say so.
If there were unfavorable responses or problems, don’t leave them out. Reporting what went wrong and/or got screwed up is especially important, so that others may learn from you what to expect, and how to avoid similar problems if possible.
If you are not planning or engaging in outreach to the troops, you have nothing to report.
NOTE WELL:
Do not make public any information that could compromise the work.
Identifying information – locations, personnel – will be omitted from the reports.
Whether you are serving in the armed forces or not, do not identify members of the armed forces organizing to stop the wars.
If accidentally included, that information will not be published.
The sole exception: occasions when a member of the armed services explicitly directs identifying information be published in reporting on the action.
MORE:
The Military Resistance Organization:
Military Resistance Mission Statement:
1. The mission of Military Resistance is to bring together in one organization members of the armed forces and civilians in order to give aid and comfort to members of the armed forces who are organizing to end the war of empire in Afghanistan. The long term objective is to assist in eliminating all wars of empire by eliminating all empires.
2. Military Resistance does not advocate individual disobedience to orders or desertion from the armed forces. The most effective resistance is organized by members of the armed forces working together.
However, Military Resistance respects and will assist in the defense of troops who see individual desertion or refusal of orders as the only course of action open to them for reasons of conscience.
3. Military Resistance stands for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and other occupation troops from Afghanistan.
Occupied nations have the right to independence and the right to resist Imperial invasion and occupation by force of arms.
4. Efforts to increase democratic rights in every society, organization, movement, and within the armed forces itself will receive encouragement and support.
Members of the armed forces, whether those of the United States or any other nation, have the right and duty to act against dictatorships commanding their services, and to assist civilian movements against dictatorship.
This applies whether a political dictatorship is imposed by force of arms or a political dictatorship is imposed by those in command of the resources of society using their wealth to purchase the political leadership.
5. Military Resistance uses organizational democracy.
This means control of the organization by the membership, through elected delegates to any coordinating bodies that may be formed, whether at local, regional, or national levels.
Any member may run for any job in the organization. All persons elected are subject to immediate recall, by majority vote of the membership.
Coordinating bodies report their actions, decisions and votes to the membership who elected them, and may be overruled by a majority of the membership.
6. It is not necessary for Military Resistance to be in political agreement with other organizations in order to work together towards specific common objectives.
It is productive for organizations working together on common projects to discuss differences about the best way forward for the movement.
Debate is necessary to arrive at the best course of action.
Membership Requirements:
7. It is a condition of membership that each member prioritize and participate in organized action to reach out to active duty armed forces, Reserve and/or National Guard units.
8. Military Resistance or individual members may choose to support candidates for elective office who are for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, but do not support a candidate opposed to immediate, unconditional withdrawal.
9. Members may not be active duty or drilling reserve commissioned officers, or employed in any capacity by any police or intelligence agency, local, state, or national.
10. I understand and am in agreement with the above statement. I pledge to defend my brothers and sisters, and the democratic rights of the citizens of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
------(Signed
(Date)
------(Application taken by)
Military Resistance:
Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657
888-711-2550
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You Can Take Action That Makes A Difference:
Join The Military Resistance Organization:
MILITARY RESISTANCE MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION
Name (please print): ______
Armed Forces? (Branch) ______
Veteran? Years: ______
Union: ______
Occupation: ______
Mailing address: ______
E-Mail:______
Phone (Landline):______
Phone (Cell):______
$ dues paid ______
(See next: Calendar year basis.)
Armed Forces Members / @ / Dues waivedCivilians / @ / $25
Students/Unemployed / @ / $10
Civilian/Military Prisoners / @ / Dues Waived
Comments:
NOTE: Civilian applicants will be interviewed, in person if possible, or by phone.
Military Resistance:
Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657
888-711-2550
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“People Need Not Be Helpless Before The Power Of Illegitimate Authority”
MILITARY RESISTANCE:
Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657
[Based on a statement by David Cortright, Vietnam Veteran and armed forces resistance organizer.]
In the final analysis the stationing of American forces abroad serves not the national interest but the class interest of the corporate and political elite.
The maintenance of a massive, interventionist-oriented military establishment is based on the need to protect multinational investment and preserve regimes friendly to American capital.
Imperialism is at the heart of the national-security system and is the force fundamentally responsible for the counterrevolutionary, repressive aims of U.S. policy.
Only if we confront this reality and challenge it throughout society and within the ranks can we restore democratic control of the military.
Of course nothing can be accomplished without citizen involvement and active political struggle.
During the Vietnam era enlisted servicemen created massive pressures for change, despite severe repression, and significantly altered the course of the war and subsequent military policy.
To sustain and strengthen this challenge we must continue to build political opposition to interventionism and support those within the armed services, including national guard and reserves, who defy the goals and program of Empire.
The central lesson of the GI movement is that people need not be helpless before the power of illegitimate authority, that by getting together and acting upon their convictions people can change society and, in effect, make their own history.
The Military Project
Military Resistance:
Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657
888-711-2550
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FORWARD OBSERVATIONS
“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.
“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
“We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.”
Frederick Douglass, 1852
People do not make revolutions eagerly any more than they do war. There is this difference, however, that in war compulsion plays the decisive role, in revolution there is no compulsion except that of circumstances.
A revolution takes place only when there is no other way out. And the insurrection, which rises above a revolution like a peak in the mountain chain of its events, can be no more evoked at will than the revolution as a whole. The masses advance and retreat several times before they make up their minds to the final assault.
-- Leon Trotsky; The History of the Russian Revolution
The Wall At The Wall
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C. Oct. 1986. Photo by Mike Hastie
From: Mike Hastie
To: Military Resistance Newsletter
Sent: March 10, 2014
Subject: The Wall at the Wall
The Wall at the Wall
Whenever the truth threatens one’s belief system,
there is a powerful instinct to deny its reality.
That is why historical facts and evidence are burned
at the stake.
That is why the message and the messenger are assassinated.
And... that is why history always repeats itself.
Mike Hastie
Army Medic Vietnam
March 10, 2014
Photo and caption from the portfolio of Mike Hastie, US Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71. (For more of his outstanding work, contact at: () T)
One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.
Mike Hastie
U.S. Army Medic
Vietnam 1970-71
December 13, 2004
“Nowhere Do ‘Politicians’ Form A More Separate And Powerful Section Of The Nation Than Precisely In North America”
“We Find Here Two Great Gangs Of Political Speculators, Who Alternately Take Possession Of The State Power And Exploit It By The Most Corrupt Means And For The Most Corrupt Ends”
[Corrected]
[In the previous Military Resistance Newsletter, part of this article at the end was omitted. That error is corrected now. T]
Excerpts from Introduction to The Civil War In France, by Friedrich Engels, March 18, 1891:
From the very outset the Commune [the revolutionary government set up by French workers and soldiers in Paris, 1871] was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment.
What had been the characteristic attribute of the former state?
Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labor.
But these organs, at whose head was the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the masters of society.
This can be seen, for example, not only in the hereditary monarchy, but equally so in the democratic republic.
Nowhere do “politicians” form a more separate and powerful section of the nation than precisely in North America.
There each of the two major parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions.
It is well known how the Americans have been trying for thirty years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and how in spite of it all they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption.
It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be. Here there exists no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions.
And nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends — and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.
Against this transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society into masters of society — an inevitable transformation in all previous states — the Commune made use of two infallible means.
In the first place, it filled all posts — administrative, judicial, and educational — by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors.
And, in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers.
In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion.
ANNIVERSARIES
Happy Anniversary:
March 12, 1912
Women Warriors Win Bread And Roses
IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn addresses a strike rally
Carl Bunin Peace History March 12-18
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) won the Lawrence, Massachusetts, “Bread & Roses” textile strike after 32,000 workers (mostly young female immigrants who spoke twenty-five different languages) stayed out for nine weeks.
They were striking for better pay, a 54-hour workweek and safer working conditions: the equipment was dangerous and the air quality caused lung disease in nearly one-third of the workers before the age of twenty-five.
“Bread and Roses,” by James Oppenheimer
As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lots gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses
For the people hear us singing: bread and roses, bread and roses.
As we go marching, marching, we battle, too, for men,
For they are women’s children and we march with them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well bodies; give us bread but give us roses.
As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew;
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses, too.
As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days;
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, 10 that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories: bread and roses, bread and roses.
Bread & Roses victory parade
January 18, 2002 By ELIZABETH SCHULTE, Socialist Worker