I'll be very dogmatic about this: NEVER!. I don't ask that you agree nor do I condemn you if you want to be violent. I don't have to be that petty. If you chose violence you will be rewarded as you deserve in one way or another. There was a time during the sixties movement while I was faculty at SUNY Buffalo that I'll never forget> I was already an admirer, almost student, of Ghandi and certainly appreciated MLK's version of this. We were doing workshops on non-violent resistance and had chances to practice it at demonstrations when the police attacked us. This day was special. We had a partner University in St. Catherine's over the border. They helped us run our underground railroad getting young people who did not want to go to prison for resisting the draft over to Canada via the Peace Bridge (catch the irony there). One day one of their faculty contacted me and spoke of how intense this had been for all of us and suggested a party over there for our people and theirs to unwind. Read on below to see why this day was so special to me.
We had a wonderful night. Talked to the wee hours about the war and the attrocities our countries were committing on innocent people. We talked about the movement in Canada and about ours in the US. At one point a very articulate Canadian student looked me in the eye and asked me about violence in the US movement. Before I had a chance to answer, one of our students answered him rather belligerently:
Well, we have our freedom because we fought a violent revolution for it!
Without hesitation the Canadian replied:
Yes we are free too and we did not use violence to obtain ours
I was stunned! I never realized until that moment the whole pile of baggage that I was loaded with in school as I was taught how wonderful all that killing was.I knew there was a reason my mother went into a very emotional fit of sobbing when I told her that I was going to accept an NROTC scholarship to pay for the college education they could not afford. Now I knew what it was. I allowed my government to train me to murder other human beings for something I wanted very much. I actually learned to kill a number of very effective ways with my bare hands alone. My military experience was free of combat and I never used this stuff against another human directly. Yet the day I was free of it I let go a huge sigh of relief. I finished my obligation before Viet Nam so when I was a leader in the peace movement I had already "served".
Years later, when a senior faculty member at the Medical College of Virginia, I organized a one day seminar on poetry and science. Some of my friends from the National Institutes of Health came to join in. It was a great experience but again another level; of the violence issue was revealed. Someone read a gory poem about a tail gunner in a bomber during WWII. The aftermath in the group was stunned silence. Then I volunteered my feeling about having done my military service. My dear friend from the NIH looked me in the eye and said "Don no one forced you to do this". I was crushed. No one did. At least not directly.
Let's look at this a little more carefully. How did I end up doing college as a potential government trained killer? I was from a working class suburb ouitside of Chicago my last years of high school. My dad moved us there after purchasing his first house. Why? The tax base was the lowest he could find. The school served a number of adjacent suburbs and all the others were demographically far up on the socio-economic scale.
I was in the pre-college track and near the very top of my class. One day during my junior year other students from the more affluent suburbs were comparing their college scholarships. I was curious since my intention to go to college was made clear from day one (No one from my suburb had ever gone to college). They laughed at me. "You want to go to college?" they snickered. (I was a better scholar than any of them.) Before I slunk away I got them to tell me that I had to work with the Guidance Counselors to achieve this and it was far too late now.
Being me I didn't let it drop. I wanted this too much. I went to the Guidance counselor and endured the derision and snickers again. I finally turned to walk out in disgust when she said "Wait I have just the thing for you". And thus I was seduced into becoming a mercenary.
I tell this story to connect my own experiences with what seems clearly the nature of our country. We were born in violence and use violence to "solve problems" all to easily. During Vietnam the power elite learned a lesson and we who fought the draft helped them. It is easier to fuel the imperialist machine with "volunteers" than to conscript. There will always be volunteers if the class war is kept going.
So now we have a new Neocon. His name is Obama. We are killing again. The people we use we have created by economic exploitation and class war. Is this the kind of country you want? I certainly don't. I've waited but it is time now. I rip the Obama sticker from my car as a symbolic gesture. I have not finished.