Vermont Against General Dynamics: Confronting the Military Industrial Complex

By Benjamin Dangl, November 16, 2008

On November 1st, in Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, one hundred activists gathered to protest against General Dynamics, a weapons manufacturer operating in the state. The diverse group of activists rallied in support of building a peace economy and movement beyond election day. Speaking to the crowd in front of the statehouse, VT-based filmmaker and writer Eugene Jarecki talked about the presidential election and activism. “There’s a moment of real crossroads here,” he said. “But it’s a crossroad for all of us not to be happy and go to bed but for all of us to be absolutely unrelenting and dissatisfied until real change happens.”

General Dynamics has profited more than any other defense contractor from the Iraq War; its revenues have tripled since 9/11 and in 2007 it earned $27 billion. In spite of this wealth, the company received $3.6 million in Vermont tax breaks in 2007. It’s not as though the state doesn’t need this money - bridges and roads are in disrepair, 2/3 of Vermonters can’t afford the median price of VT home, and 60,000 residents in the small state lack health insurance.

These realities underscored the November 1st rally. While the VT Food Not Bombs group spooned out lunch, and seasoned anti-GD activists mingled with children and college-aged activists, Jarecki and others spoke of the billions of dollars spent on US defense while unemployment soars and the funding for schools and healthcare is slashed.

I asked Jarecki, the producer of “Why We Fight” - a film which explores the roots and results of America’s military industrial complex - to comment on the irony of GD operating in VT, a state known for its liberal politics and green businesses. “It’s a stain on Vermont’s record,” he said. “Vermont is at its best when it strays from the widespread corruption that is a national affliction.”

On May 1st of this year, 10 activists committed civil disobedience by sitting in the lobby of the GD weapons plant in Burlington, VT demanding that “General Dynamics stop giving campaign contributions to the politicians responsible for regulating it, stop making Gatling guns, missiles and other weapons of mass destruction and give back the $3.6 million dollars in Vermont tax breaks General Dynamics received in 2007.” Later, in October, a panel was organized in Montpelier to share stories and strategies from VT activists who had been organizing against GD for decades.

At the November 1st rally, many spoke of the need to continue organizing in spite of Barack Obama’s imminent victory. Lea Wood, an “all around activist” from Montpelier, said, “we have to push Mr. Obama to make sure he’s heading in the right direction.” Wood, a veteran of World War II, said she is surprised when politicians talk about how long it will take to bring the troops home. “After World War II, people came home pretty quickly. Now they say it’s going to take years to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan - that’s ridiculous.”

Vermont State Senator Ann Cummings was also in the crowd. She agreed that GD was profiting from the wars, and receiving tax breaks in spite of the state’s limited budget. “But I’m here mostly to hear what my constituents are concerned about, I take that very seriously.” Cummings added that she would look into the tax breaks that GD receives and see what can be done.

Matt Howard, an Iraq War Veteran, spoke of why he attended the protest. “I happened to have witnessed the results of the kinds of weapons produced by General Dynamics. I’ve seen first hand what they look like on the ground when they come in contact with real human flesh. As a citizen of Vermont, and a former marine, I cannot in good conscience support our state tax dollars going to enrich the coffers of a company that is making a fortune off the misery and blood of others.”

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Benjamin Dangl is the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a VT-based progressive publication.

Vermont Peace Activists Occupy General Dynamics Weapons Plant

By Benjamin Dangl

Friday, 02 May 2008

On May 1st, International Workers’ Day, ten peace activists in Burlington, Vermont entered General Dynamics and locked themselves together in the main lobby of the building in protest against the company’s weapons manufacturing and war profiteering. University of Vermont student Benjamin Dube, one of the dozens of other activists present at the event, leaned out a window of the lobby, and pointed to the GD building, explaining, “This is the gas tank of the war machine, and we are the sugar.”

The demonstrators entered the lobby at around 3 pm, and proceeded to lock their arms together with PVC piping, duct tape and other materials. According to a press release put out by the group, the activists were demanding that “General Dynamics stop giving campaign contributions to the politicians responsible for regulating it, stop making Gatling guns, missiles and other weapons of mass destruction and give back the $3.6 million dollars in Vermont tax breaks General Dynamics received in 2007.”

While activists at GD chanted slogans such as, “Hey GD, what do you say, how many kids did you kill today” and “GD out of the Middle East, No Justice, No Peace,” banners against GD and the Iraq War were set up on three major streets and highways in the area. This anti-war action in Burlington took place at the same time thousands of dockworkers at 29 major ports across on the west coast refused to go to work in protest against the Iraq War. In March, Vermonters in Brattleboro and Marlboro passed a measure in town meetings to arrest George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for crimes against the constitution if they ever arrived in either town.

Rachel Ruggles was one of the activists locked down in the GD lobby. Wearing a green bandana and glasses, this 19 year old from Vergennes, VT, and student at the University of Vermont, said “we are participating in this non-violent direct action to get attention and make a statement against the Iraq War, to say we don’t support GD’s war profiteering… GD is not contributing to the peace economy. The money from their tax breaks should go back to the Vermont community.”

Hydra-70 rockets (Wikipedia)

General Dynamics is a national company whose branch in Burlington produces, among other things, Hydra-70 rockets and missile launchers. Mike Ives, a journalist with VT based Seven Days, wrote in March of this year that, according to General Dynamics company spokesperson Tim Haddock, GD employees in Burlington make the “Goalkeeper Close-In Weapon System,” a large gun used on ships that can fire 4,200 shots per minute of “missile-piercing” ammunition.

According to Time Magazine, St. Louis-based General Dynamics is the top defense contractor in the US. The Bush administration’s “War on Terror” has been good for GD business. In 2007, GD’s revenues were $7.8 billion, with $382 million in profits, an increase of 33% since 1983. GD also has a particularly close relationship with the Pentagon; 94% of its contracts come from the US government.

During 2007-2008, Vermont Democratic House Representative Peter Welch received $3,500 in donations from General Dynamics. An online petition in protest of this campaign contribution to Welch is available to sign here.

While holding a bag of bread and fruit for those inside the lobby, bearded, 20 year old activist, Dube said “it’s becoming clear that after five years people are against the war. And throughout New England there are weapons manufacturers making it possible for the US to subjugate the Iraqis.” He participated in the protest at GD in part because in spite of all the economic needs in the US, hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent in on the wars abroad. “Our government is not dealing with the problems in our economy and global warming, and at the same time we’re giving tax breaks to weapons manufacturers like GD.” Regarding the importance of the group’s tactics, Dube said, “We are trying to renew the focus of anti-war activism more on the complicity of our communities in war.”

Peace activist Jonathan Leavitt was quoted in the press release as saying, “While our state struggles with [Governor] Jim Douglas’ budget cuts and layoffs, gas prices, affordable housing and lack of health coverage, war profiteers like General Dynamics steal tax breaks from working families. We’re here today as Vermonters to say no more handouts for war profiteers.”

Dozens of activists remained in and around the GD lobby for over six hours, chanting slogans, waving signs and sharing food. The protesters in the lobby said they would not leave the building until their demands were met. However, officials from GD refused to speak with the activists. Burlington Lt. Emmet Helrich said “Nobody from General Dynamics is going to talk to you, that’s a fact.” The activists in the lobby were arrested at 8:45 pm when the police went in to cut them loose.

Meanwhile, GD continues to reap enormous profits on the Bush administration’s wars. On May 2, the national company was awarded a $51 million dollar Abrams Tank contract.

Alive in Baghdad: An Interview with Brian Conley

By Benjamin Dangl

Tuesday, 31 January 2006

Benjamin Dangl: How did you get involved in journalism and journalistic film making?

Brian Conley: Well, I initially intended to study history and political science in college. When I arrived there, however, I quickly decided that art and, particularly film, were very good ways to influence the public and to talk about important historical events that might not otherwise be learned or discussed in the public discourse.

After college I quickly recognized the desperate need for documentation of police misconduct at political demonstrations as well as the demonstrations themselves. As the Iraq war has transpired it increasingly became clear to me that this was the latest important topic for video coverage, but the media has consistently failed to provide in-depth nuanced coverage of Iraq. After my experience documenting the lives of migrant farm workers, another issue long-ignored by the media, I felt obliged to travel to Iraq.

BD: Why did you go to Iraq? How long were you there?

BC: Well, as I said previously, I went to Iraq because no one was there. And by no one, I mean no one who was producing independent media from Iraq and who was willing to talk to Iraqis themselves and provide a space to hear the perspectives and desires of Iraqis. I was in Iraq for three weeks and spent the bulk of my time doing face to face interviews with individual Iraqis, on video, in order to bring their images and words back to the United States and to make them available, via the internet, screening and speaking events, and eventually a feature-length documentary. I hope that by my trip to Iraq I am able to help others gain a better grasp of the situation in Iraq, to come to better understand what is happening there and what changes might be made in order to ease the conflict and enable the general withdrawal of the United States and its allies, troops, and the formation of a free and popular government in Iraq.

BD: What was your daily routine like while in Iraq? What were the challenges of working there?

BC: Well, there is certainly no such thing as a “daily routine.” However, on most days I rose early, examined news and emails, checked on the status of the “Alive in Baghdad” website, and prepared notes for the days interviews. I would then travel with my translator, Omar, to various neighborhoods in Baghdad, dependent on the specific schedule of the day. Traveling anywhere in Baghdad is immensely dangerous, but generally not from any direct forces. The indirect, unpredictable dangers are the worst and often the most present. You can easily make plans to avoid whatever neighborhood is engulfed in active conflict on a given day or week, but you can’t be sure about the less predictable dangers. It’s really impossible to know when you might run into a traffic jam around a U.S. patrol of tanks or Humvees, where at any moment a car bomb might explode, killing or maiming yourself as well as so-called “legitimate military targets.” Furthermore, simple criminal violence is an ongoing problem in Baghdad, as is kidnapping. For this reason, to travel in Baghdad it was necessary everyday to ensure that my appearance was as close to that of a local as possible, I adopted a short, very neat haircut, as well as a closely trimmed beard and a thick mustache to blend in. I purchased Iraqi style shoes and made sure always to dress in the general nature of Iraqis.

BD: Please talk a bit about how your “Alive in Baghdad” media project began? What are some of its objectives?

BC: Well the media project itself is set up to help increase dialogue and understanding of Iraq. I’m hoping, eventually, to incorporate something more informative about Iraq’s geography, weather, traditions, historical importance of landmarks, maps, etc. Unfortunately this hasn’t happened yet. So far, the main attempts have been to bring back photos of Baghdad and video interviews with Iraqis. The idea is that these images will help Americans and others to better identify with Iraqis. I feel that if people in the United States and other countries who are providing resources to the war begin to identify with Iraqis, to see themselves reflected in the struggles and desires and fears of Iraqis, this will be a good first step toward ending the conflict and repairing ties between our countries. If you see a young man on a video, and he reminds you of your brother, or son, or grandson, and then after the video ends, you realize you can’t be sure he is still alive, I hope you will say to yourself, “I don’t know if this person is still alive, and that is unacceptable.”

BD: On your website, it says, “Alive in Baghdad was formed with the intent of making the world, and particularly the United States, aware of the Iraqi experience.” How do think most mainstream media in the U.S. is doing in the area of making U.S. citizens aware of the “Iraqi experience”?

BC: In a word: failure. The mainstream media has essentially made no effort to make U.S. citizens really aware of the Iraqi experience. Otherwise, more people in the United States would recognize that security is the number one concern, freedom is not on the march, and democracy and goodwill are certainly not breaking out all over Iraq. More people would be aware that Iraqis have on average only 12 to14 hours of electricity a day and that has lately dropped significantly, some have claimed Iraqis in Baghdad at least are averaging as little as one or two hours of electricity a day in the past week. Iraqis are angry about the occupation and are choosing to resist, in large numbers. If the mainstream media had a better concept of the Iraqi experience and why Iraqis felt this way, they might begin referring to much of the anti-occupation activities going on in Iraq now as a resistance, rather than an insurgency. But then again, I don’t really believe the mainstream media can discuss the Iraqi experience because they refuse to travel the streets of Baghdad and to talk to Iraqis living and working on the streets of Baghdad everyday. Until the media can improve recruiting methods of Iraqi journalists, and giving them the free reign to cover important stories and provide them the full credit for their work, it is unlikely the mainstream media will be able to provide more than the slightest window of insight into the “Iraqi experience.”

BD: What was the general consensus among Iraqis you spoke with about the U.S. occupation? Did most Iraqis you met want the U.S. troops out immediately?

BC: The Iraqis I met were all opposed to the occupation. Every one of them told me they felt the United States should leave Iraq and that it was there illegally and engaged in an illegal war to overthrow Saddam. That is not, however, meant to imply that they were not opposed to Saddam. Most Iraqis I met were completely opposed to Saddam, and many initially even thought something good might come of the invasion. To be honest, the response of Iraqis was mixed. Their feelings about the occupation’s legality and the timing of its departure were contradictory at best. Iraqis certainly believed that resistance was legitimate and many even supported the resistance. There were others however who felt that because of the instability and the dangerous. in-roads Iran was making, if the United States left immediately, it might descend into civil war, or at the very least there would be a great deal of in-fighting and the possible dissolution of the country. Others told me that the state had already dissolved and it was mere ignorance to look at Iraq today as anything more than a failed state. Still others really seem to believe that, when the Americans leave, all those individuals who returned to Iraq with them, “on the American tanks” would leave on these same tanks and Iraqis would unite to form a truly national government. So as you can see, the opinions were very mixed.

BD: How has Bush’s dedication to the war on terror prevented him from adequately executing the Iraq reconstruction? How is this amounting to a kind of “cut and run”?

BC: In my opinion, Bush is most interested in “fighting the terrorists” and has himself caught up in some sort of idealistic moral crusade, rather than actually fighting a war in Iraq specifically for oil. Certainly this and “democratizing the Middle East” have played a part in directing and influencing the war, but I don’t believe they are at the core of Bush’s agenda. In fact, it seems like there are three factions in the war, Cheney and Rumsfeld make up one faction, which is concerned, generally, with U.S. power and imperial influence, specifically with oil income for major trans-national corporations. Elements in the intelligence community and more specifically the State Department make up another faction, which really appears to believe in the possibility of creating the “first Democracy in the Middle East.” The State Department has been most influential in the recent events around the election and the constitution referendum, and they are really working to bridge divides between Iraqis in order to create a stable, western-style, U.S.-friendly democracy in Iraq. Of course, they are doing this solely to increase U.S. power and influence in the area and protect the nations’ interests. As for Bush, I really feel like his desire to “fight the terrorists” is greatly hampering the reconstruction effort. The administration has basically done as little as possible, step by step, to fulfill their obligations under international law. Look at it this way, there are specific hallmarks, or goalposts even, to pass once you have invaded a country in order to leave it. These consist of ending major combat operations, setting up an occupation authority, a transitional government, and eventually that transitional government will arrange the process for a permanent government to take power. In Iraq we’ve seen the Bush administration hurriedly administer these steps, and in many cases it appears we’ve moved ahead much to quickly. However, if we are going to continue “fighting the terrorists” and also contend that they are not actually elements of a legitimate national army who we are still at war with, then all of these obligations must be met. I would say that in some ways this is amounting to a “cut and run” because President Bush is not looking to protect the Iraqi people and produce a stable government based on ensuring the liberty and equality of all citizens of Iraq. President Bush is in fact, doing what he can to both deal with the increasing political liability of Iraq and also better equip U.S. for continuing to fight his self-styled “war on terrorism.”

BD: Please discuss the role of the media and its complicity in the breakdown of Iraq’s stability.

BC: Well, first and foremost most of the Western media appears to have no idea what’s going on in Iraq or even a small amount of knowledge about the social and cultural traditions and history of Iraq. They continue to trumpet the idea of an “ethnic divide” between Sunnis and Shi’is. Shi’a and Sunna are not ethnicities, they are religious sects. Much like being born Jewish or Christian, Iraqis are initially born into one or the other sect. I have met Iraqis who were married to members of the other sect, in fact this is fairly common! In fact, even in the city of Fallujah, one of the muezzin, the men who make the call to prayer, is married to a Shi’a woman from the south of Iraq! So first thing, the Western media keeps saying, everyday, civil war, civil war. This makes it difficult for people in the west to identify with Iraqis, who increasingly are seeing Iraq like Afghanistan or other war-torn countries torn apart by warlords and sectarian divides. Furthermore, the media’s failure to do real investigative reporting and coverage in Iraq further alienates the public to the issues facing Iraqis. We hear in the news everyday about the death and destruction and war and terrorism happening in Iraq. It presents this image of a weak Iraqi public who are besieged by terrorists and the “enemies of freedom.” The western media is incapable of telling a different story however, because they lack any understanding of the lives of Iraqis. If they were talking to Iraqis they might be forced to consider that the massive enmity towards the United States could be understandable. Iraqis were mostly glad to be rid of Saddam and have the United States’ help in that process, however this quickly turned to intolerance, when the United States and its allies failed to get basic services operational and stem the tide of crime which broke out all over Iraq once the regime was destabilized. Lastly, the media’s failure to provide a balanced and nuanced view of Iraq has probably adversely affected the manner in which the occupation has been carried out and the war has been waged. If the Bush administration and military officers were forced to read about the basic concerns of Iraqis daily on the front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, on CNN and Fox News, chances are they would have taken steps slightly differently and with a greater measure of humility. This is why I went to Iraq, to try and provide insight into exactly what the Iraqis were thinking, and perhaps a better idea about why the resistance has been so intransigent.

BD: On your website you have an enormous list of blogs by Iraqis, and publish a number of blogs from Iraqis on your site.  What does the ability to write blogs mean for Iraqis in the midst of a war? What have been some of your experiences with fellow bloggers in Iraq that illustrate the potential of this new media tool?

BC: Well, part of the reason for syndicating all the Iraqi blogs was to provide an insight into the thinking of individual Iraqis themselves. I believe the ability of Iraqis to publish stories about their lives could provide a great deal to the body of knowledge and understanding of Iraq. Unfortunately, they seem to have been largely ignored as an asset in understanding the situation in Iraq. Also, just like in the United States there are blogs with in-depth political analysis, people such as Riverbend (riverbendblog.blogspot.com) and Khalid Jarrar (secretsinbaghdad.blogspot.com), but there are also many blogs that are just Iraqi kids talking about hanging out with their friends and what they did on their vacation. Certainly these are all important elements to understanding Iraq. One really strong example of potential for this new media can be found on Khalid Jarrar’s blog. He broke a story about torture and abuse by the Interior Ministry nearly six months before it came on the mainstream media’s radar. He was abducted by the Interior Ministry’s agents in mid-July and held for at least two weeks until being freed. He provides very specific details about the location of the prison as well as the torture and other things he saw inside. If even one intrepid reporter was reading these blogs regularly and had pitched this story to her editor, who knows how many Iraqis might have been saved a horrible fate. Keep in mind that this would never have happened in the current media climate in Iraq, however. Because western journalists refuse to go out on the streets and do in-depth reporting, and the media has generally failed to put a reasonable amount of faith in Iraqi journalists, this story would never have been capable of proper coverage.

BD: After you came back to the U.S. and spoke to Americans about the realities of the war in Iraq, what is the usual reaction from people?

BC: Well, I think people are first of all shocked that I was able to go to Baghdad and remain relatively safe, generally speaking. It seems almost inconceivable for Americans that Baghdad is nothing like Sarajevo, or Dresden, or the opening scenes to Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.” But at the same time, they are also shocked, and horrified, or sometimes dismayed, to hear about the continuing infrastructure problems in Iraq. We have to remember that Iraq is nothing like Afghanistan, and in fact, is not like most of the other nations in the Middle East. It was a well-developed, Western-looking nation even throughout it’s long war with Iran in the 80s. I think it is also hard for Americans to understand the deeply nuanced and often contradictory nature of the Iraqi mind. There has been such a great deal of trauma in Iraq’s last twenty or thirty years that they have a very specific way of striving for a desirable goal, yet also being realistic and making allowances that even seem often at odds with their expressed desires. A good example of this can be seen in a recent poll done in Iraq. The poll found that while 60% of Iraqis were completely opposed to the occupation, only 25% wanted a complete withdrawal of American forces. In the often black and white nature of American politics, whether you are a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Communist, or some other wing, I think this is an apparent contradiction that would be difficult to find. While most Iraqis are opposed to the occupation, there are many reasons for them to fear what might happen if the United States were to withdraw immediately.

BD: What message do you have for those who believe the U.S. should not withdraw its troops from Iraq immediately?

BC: Well, first of all, I’m not sure this is the right question to be asked. We should be talking about how the troop presence affects the ability to provide security and stabilize Iraq, and whether this is the best process. There are clarifications that have to be made. I don’t believe the United States should withdraw from Iraq immediately, I believe we have an obligation to provide reparations and services to the people of Iraq, and to repair much of the infrastructure we helped destroy during the war and subsequent occupation. I do, however, believe that the standard military practice is not working in Iraq. I would tell people that there is a difference between questioning the policy of large troop numbers and “show of force”-style deterrence, and suggesting we should just abandon our responsibilities in Iraq. To anyone who is calling for U.S. to immediately withdraw from Iraq, I would accuse them of the worst type of insular nationalism. However, the United States cannot possibly hope to repair the situation in Iraq by itself or by continuing its current policies. We do need to take a long look at how our military actions have affected our ability to help stabilize Iraq. We need to be certain we are talking to everyone involved from all of Iraq’s different tribes and groups, and we need to chart a course that best represents all of their various interests, and attempt to respect their specific needs and wants as best as possible. I would also say to anyone who believes this new approach of airpower combined with Iraqi boots on the ground will enable U.S. troop numbers to decrease, that they have obviously not read anything on counterinsurgency tactics written in at least the last thirty years. A unified, stable Iraq is going to be a long time coming. I think it will take at least a decade of self-less humble conflict resolution work and deal brokering. We need to remember we are still at war, and that we have obligations in regards to prisoners of war and that the international rules of war do still apply in much of the Iraq theatre and could be used to settle much of the conflict effectively. There are terrorists in Iraq and there are resistance fighters. Many of the resistance fighters are legitimate representatives of the previous regime and they should be dealt with as such. Saddam’s regime never surrendered, and until the United States comes to terms with the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq, it is unlikely we’ll have a peaceful resolution any time soon.
Brian Conley is a 25 year-old journalist and filmmaker. He is the founder of the Alive in Baghdad Project. During his first trip to Iraq, the Alive in Baghdad Project focused on interviewing Iraqis living in and outside Baghdad. At this point Brian is working on writing articles about the ongoing situation in Iraq and arranging the project’s second phase. It is the goal of the Alive in Baghdad Project to make Westerners, and particularly Americans, more aware of the Iraqi experience and to begin to understand the occupation from the Iraqi perspective.

The Vietnam War: Getting Behind the Spitting Image

Written by Benjamin Dangl, Transcribed by April Howard

Tuesday, 03 January 2006

Jerry Lembcke is the author of “The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam”. In 1969, he was assigned to the 41st Artillery Group in Vietnam as a Chaplain’s Assistant, and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War when he returned in 1970. As an associate professor of sociology at Holy Cross College during the Persian Gulf War, Lembcke began to research the origins of stories about Vietnam Veterans being spit on by female antiwar protesters. Not only did the stories conflict with Lembcke’s experiences as a veteran and member of the anti-war movement in the 1970’s, he could not find a single documented case of a veteran being spit on. It was in this research that Lembcke began to realize that the spitting myths also served the Nixon-Agnew administration as political tools with which to damage the image of the antiwar movement, and to bolster the injured masculinity of a country which had just lost its first war.

He also began to question the diagnosis of “post traumatic stress disorder,” which he now argues was an effective way for the administration to discredit the political opinions of veterans. His book was published by New York University Press in July of 1998. In this interview, Lembcke discusses the experiences that led him to write the book, his interpretation of the “spitting myths” as political tools, and applies those ideas to the war in Iraq and the current antiwar movement.

BD: Did your experiences in Vietnam politicize your life, and how?

JL: Most Definitely! I was not political at all before the war. I was drafted in 1968, I had been to college by that that time, had a BA in math, and after graduation in 1966 I took a job as a highschool math teacher in Iowa. Up to that point I had played baseball, basketball, had not been involved politically at all. The draft experience, for me, was kind of a wake-up call. I went to basic training in Washington, and at the end of basic training, I volunteered to go to chaplain’s assistant school. So off I went to Fort Hamilton in New York.

Fall and summer of 1968 was a very raucous time to be in New York City. That was my first exposure to the anti-war movement: meeting and being met by antiwar activists just off the coast of Fort Henry and in Manhattan. The first antiwar rally I witnessed was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th Ave., and I was standing a half a block away, watching and looking and realizing that hey, these people know something that I don’t know, and probably something that I am going to need to know.

Later, that experience in New York City in that summer became a part of how I knew that the stories about hostilities between antiwar activists and soldiers and veterans weren’t true. It was in that summer of 1968 when a lot of these stories (as rumor would have it) were taking place. I’ve had people tell me that directly: “I was in Manhattan in the summer of 1968, and I’ll tell you, soldiers were getting spat on left and right.” And I’ve even had some veterans tell me: “Well you weren’t there the summer of 1968, so you don’t know what it was like,” and of course I was there, and there was mostly mutual respect and supportiveness between the antiwar movement and the soldiers. I remember that we were offered sanctuary at churches in Brooklyn when we came off the posts at Fort Henry.

So, of course then I went to Vietnam, was sent to Vietnam on New Years day 1969, and stayed all of 1969 and the first few months of 1970 as a chaplain’s assistant, mostly in the central highlands of South Vietnam

BD: How were you received when you returned? You didn’t fly in to San Francisco and get spit on?

JL: (Laughs) No! Actually, at the time I came back in 1970, I came back looking for the antiwar movement because I wanted to join it - and I was disappointed! I went to Seattle Tacoma airport, and flew back to my home town, Sioux City, Iowa and didn’t meet antiwar activists at all. You see, the fall of ‘69 was the time period of the October and November Moratorium Days Against the War. There was a lot of support for the moratorium amongst the soldiers in Vietnam, and I remember quite clearly that, in those fall months of ’69, we heard a lot about the moratorium. So that’s what I was thinking- When I get home, I’m going to join the antiwar movement. Eventually I left my home in Iowa and went to Denver, and that’s where I hooked up with Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

BD: Who do you think started the spitting myth and why? Was the government complicit, the CIA, or was the media most at fault?

JL: I think the spark was made by the government, the Nixon administration, through vice president Spiro Agnew. Quite commonly, Agnew would say in speeches, “Our veterans are being treated badly by the anti war activists,” though he never used the exact expression “being spat on.” Actually, when I started working on tracking down these stories, that’s what I thought that I would find: a speech in April of 1971, in which Spiro Agnew said “The people are spitting on our veterans.” I’ve never found anything in the record referring to or alluding to spit, but plenty of references referring to Nixon or Agnew saying that “our soldiers are being greeted with hostility. I think that that sparked or primed people’s imaginations. I did hear about stories that circulated in Germany after World War I of soldiers being spit on, so it’s even possible that those stories somehow found their way to the United States after Vietnam, I don’t know.

Still, a more important clue for me came when I heard that so many of these stories have women or young girls as the spitters. For a while it didn’t really register in my mind, but then I started thinking “why so often is it girls, and why does the storyteller gender the identity of the spitter?” It seemed unusual. Later, when I was telling a psychologist friend about these stories, she asked me about the demographics of the spitters, and I said “it’s often times women or young girls.” Well, she smiled and said, well, it’s got to be a myth right? And I knew what she was going to say at that moment and I don’t know why it didn’t think of it before, but it brought it to consciousness for me, and she said “girls don’t spit, right?” And I smiled and I said “Yeah, I think you’re right. So what’s going on here?” So it was then in conversation with her the idea that it could be the wounded masculinity of soldiers who came home from Vietnam and had to face the stigma of having fought America’s first lost war that stimulated the imaginations of American people. Then, this sentiment of wounded pride came together with the stories of hostility that the Nixon Administration had been putting out on people, and they formed a kind of urban legend.

I didn’t originally use the term urban myth or urban legend, other people have used it, but that’s the way that urban myths start. The main characteristic of the origin of an urban myth is that it has no point of origin or time of origin, and that it is being told across a wide geographic area. So, the absence of any point of origin, suggests that the spitting stories are of the same nature as an urban legend.

To me, this means that the stories are reflecting something deeper about an anxiety in American culture; that they are an inarticulate expression of something that is really bothering people, which is “Why did we lose this war?” What the spitting stories help construct, then, is an answer to that question, which is “We lost the war because of betrayal at home. We did not lose the war to the Vietnamese; we lost the war to ourselves, were defeated by ourselves.”

BD: What impact did this myth of spat upon veterans have on the relationship between protesters and veterans in the 60’s and 70’s?

JL: The first effect it had was to discredit the voice of the Vietnam Veterans. The idea that the Nixon administration tried to put across to people was that “These people coming home are physically and emotionally wounded. They’re hurt, they’re damaged, they’re angry, but that doesn’t mean that we should listen to them as authorities on what the war is about, and how this war should be fought. We should be sympathetic to them, try to help them, but we shouldn’t be moved politically by what they’re trying to say.”

This message was a way of pathologizing the political behavior of Vietnam Veterans. When I came home for Vietnam in May of 1970, my view was that the Vietnam War had been a politicizing phase of my life, an empowering period of my life, and I think it was that way for a lot of guys. I think it was that political clarity that was a danger to the political establishment. By pathologizing the statements made by veterans, the administration could reduce the authenticity and credibility of them it in the eyes of the American people. And I think it was a pretty successful strategy.

BD: In your opinion, how has this myth effected American public opinion since its creation and in the present?

JL: The effect on American publics opinion in the early to mid 70’s was to establish a message that “We could have won the war in Vietnam if the American people had stayed solidly behind the mission,” and for a while that kept alive the idea that we could go back and re-start the fight. That’s the Hollywood scene of Rambo movies, the go back and do it right this time movies, which, of course, eventually faded out into the nineties.

But the myth also gives life to the idea that we could win wars like Vietnam someplace else, sometime in the future if the American people would just rally around the soldiers and rally around the mission. So it shouldn’t have been any surprise, though it took me a while to figure out what was going on, when in the run up to the Persian Gulf War of 1991 that stories about spat upon Veterans began to circulate in large numbers.

That’s really when I became interested in them; I had not heard these stories before 1990 (which is another clue that these stories are myths and legends). I should add that, if you go back to the late 60s and early 70’s and look for evidence that these things happened, not only don’t you find any evidence, but you don’t find anyone claiming that it was happening at that time. So again, that suggests something imaginative about these stories, because at later times there were thousands of people who claimed that they were spat on, but none of them were saying it at the time it was supposedly going on.

Around 1990 then, I first became interested in finding out where these stories came from and who first started telling them? My interest was sparked because in the fall of 1990, the stories were being used to leverage support for the looming war in Iraq, and to silence people who were opposing the war. They produced a narrative that ran “We don’t want to oppose the war in Iraq lest we do what we did to our solders and our vets during the Vietnam War, and we all know what that was about” (laughs). And that seemed to have been pretty persuasive.

I work at Holy cross college, and there was a large anti-war movement in the fall of 1990, but there were a few students who said to me “What about the people who are there fighting the war? I don’t support the war, but I don’t want to do any thing to hurt the people who were sent to fight.” So it definitely was put into people’s minds and worked, if not to actually quiet some antiwar voices, at least to intimidate them. So since these stories started in ‘90, ‘91 they really have not stopped; they just keep percolating through the cultural imagination.

In the spring of 2003, in the run up to the War in Iraq, these stories started circulating again. After a country-wide campaign of antiwar rallies in March, I started receiving phone calls about supposed attacks on Veterans. The first was a reporter from Burlington, VT, who asked if I had heard that a Vermont National Guardswoman had had stones thrown at her at a store in Burlington and that the stone throwers were highschool students who were protesting the war. I said that I hadn’t heard about it. And he said he was calling me because someone had told him about my book, and he thought that I might know something about this.

Later that same day, or maybe the next day, I got another phone call, a reported from Ashville north Carolina, and he said that there was a report going around there, in the local press, that two marines walking on the street had been spat on. And again, he said that he knew or had heard about my book, and so he was suspicious of the story, and he had started asking around, poking his nose around, and people who should have seen this happen if it really happened hadn’t seen anything, nobody could remember having seen two marines in uniform that day. And, as it turned out, the guy that was telling the story said that he was a Vietnam Veteran and that he had been spat on when he got home. So the reporter was suspicious of the stories.

Then he asked if I had heard about the “Support the Troops” rallies that were happening all across the south. And, at that time, it was early enough that I said didn’t know. Then he told me that a lot of the rallies were using people who say that they are Vietnam Veterans and say that they were spat on when they came back from the war. Well, within a few days, I was getting phone calls from all over the country.

What I found was that a lot of these “Support the Troops” rallies were organized or partially organized by radio stations in these medium-sized cities and towns across the country and it was specifically the Clear Channel stations that were helping to organize the rally, and then broadcasting it. So I was very interested and when, in a few weeks, there was a “Support the Troops” rally in Worcester, I went to it. And sure enough, it was the Clear Channel radio station that seemed to be behind it and, sure enough, there was a guy who spoke who said that he was a Vietnam vet, and that he was spat upon when he came home. I guess it was a kind of a script that they were using.

BD: Do you think it was a top-down thing that the higher-ups of the Clear Channel radio stations were doing?

JL: Well, you never know about these things. It could have been that one station did it, and then it kind of caught on, but at some point somebody at the top must have realized what was going on and said Go for it!

BD: Do you think that the stories have become a grassroots thing, perpetuated by people now, rather than the government or the media?

JL: Nowadays I think yes, it’s more organic than it was. I think that this myth is very much ingrained in society at this point that it is fed and kept alive both by the people and the government, when they find it useful. If you go back to March of ’03, there were these huge antiwar rallies; some estimated the largest in American history. Public opinion in this country was not supportive of the invasion of Iraq. But then, toward the end of March and early April, public opinion really turned around.

I think the chemistry of that change came from the fact that there are a lot of people who are still angry about the War in Vietnam, and that anger gets mustered at times like this. Some people supported the war in Iraq, as a way of flipping off the American anti-war movement. In a lot of people’s minds, the American antiwar movement is part of a greater package of grievances, and a lot of these are righteous grievances, though misdirected. People who are suffering job loss, insecurity about their futures, etc, at times use this package, which sometimes says “liberals” and sometimes “anti –war movement,” as an object to be fought against. And, in this light, the chance to go to war again is a way to say “in your face” to the antiwar movement, to “liberalism,” to everything that a lot of people are angry about. From this point of view, the story of the spat upon veteran rises up a kind of a “perfecting myth.”

BD: You mentioned in your book that support for the Gulf War focused on support for the troops, rather than the war itself. Can you relate that to the current war in Iraq?

JL: Yes, I think that supporting the troops rather than the war itself is a way of depoliticizing the war. Again, that was very true during the end of the war in Vietnam; people who knew nothing about the war supported the war because they supported the troops. And some of that had to do with the POW question, because the Nixon administration really exploited the fact that we had POWs still in Vietnam, and therefore had to stay there to get the POWs out, which was an endless process. So I think that the policy planners and strategists during Vietnam figured out that you don’t muster public opinion first, and then send the troops, no! You send the troops and then rally the people around the troops. It’s a kind of demagoguery; it erases reason and appeals to peoples’ emotions.

When you think about it, it’s pretty hard to oppose the war and still be supporting the troops. It collapses the means and ends of reason. Reasonably, the soldiers are the means of the war, but the war supposedly has its own end to be supported or not. But, if you make the means the ends, then really you have nothing left but emotions to act on, because the ends are disappeared, collapsed into the means, and the soldiers become the ends of the war themselves.

I don’t know how much that’s happened today. Certainly that’s what was going on in spring of 2003, and reasoning about the looming war was really stymied, long enough to get the troops there and the war underway. Now it’s kind of hard to read public opinion. We had a couple of years here in which the antiwar movement was kind of quiet. But now it’s beginning to find its voice again, and become more effective. And, because the end of the war in Iraq very much appears to be another defeat for the US, just now in the last few weeks, we are again beginning to hear accusations against the anti-war movement.

For example, about 6 weeks ago, at the national convention of the American Legion, the commander said that the American Legion will now oppose aggressively any organization that does not support the action in Iraq. He said “we have etched in our minds Jane Fonda spouting anti-American rhetoric and we have not forgotten.” Identifying Jane Fonda, of course, as another icon of betrayal and a way of remembering why and how it was that we lost the war in Vietnam. A couple of weeks ago, G Gordon Liddy, one of the Nixon plumbers and now a radio talk show guy referred to Cindy Sheehan, the woman whose son Casey died in Iraq, and who camped out in Crawford Texas at the Bush ranch, and said that she was whoring her son in support of the anti-war Movement.

There was also a big march and rally in DC a few weeks ago, and on the internet there circulated a story about one of the counter protesters who had been spat on by one of the anti-war people. I think as the anti-war movement begins to step out again, and as we inch closer and closer to a lost cause in Iraq, there will be more of a search for scapegoats at home as an explanation for why this turned out so badly.

BD: In light of this history, what would you say to a person now who was against the war, but was on the fence about speaking out because they didn’t want to seem unsupportive of the soldiers?

JL: Well, to the extent that the person would draw on the Vietnam experience, I would say that it’s a myth, it didn’t happen then and the truth about what happened then is that thousands of people came home from Vietnam opposed to the war and that thousands of veterans joined the anti-war movement, and that that is what’s forgotten when you believe that anti-war people spat on Vietnam veterans. It revises by 180 degrees the truth about what was going on in those years. In the present context today we need to inform ourselves better about what the soldiers in Iraq really think about the war and, just like in the Vietnam war years its very likely that there’s more dissent in Iraq than what we are hearing about. And in the case of Vietnam, we didn’t hear that much about it during the earlier years, it wasn’t until the war was over that we began to hear a little more, and then increasingly more as the years went along, and that’s probably going to be the case with Iraq too. So we need to find out more about that, and we need to be supportive of that when we hear that it’s happening. Those are the soldiers that need to be supported.

Buy a copy of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam from Amazon.

Benjamin Dangl is the editor of www.TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events. April Howard is a writer/translator and Spanish teacher in Vermont.

An Interview with Jonathan Schell

Conducted by Benjamin Dangl
3/23/04

This interview took place after a talk Schell gave at Bard College on March 12 regarding the future of the UN.  Schell’s is The Nation’s peace and disarmament correspondent, is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute and the author, most recently, of the The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People.  In this interview I spoke with him about the direction of the peace movement, the idea of immediately withdrawing troops from Iraq, and how to convince republicans not to vote for Bush.

BD: The main organizers of the March 20, 2004 peace demonstration in NYC have said their overarching demand at the protest will be to “Bring all the troops home now.”  Is withdrawing troops from Iraq immediately a realistic solution?

JS: To me the key is not so much to immediately withdraw the troops, as it is to end the occupation, in other words, to turn the political side of it over to the UN and people of Iraq.  And then to do what they want in regards to the troops and how quickly the withdrawal should come.  At some point in all of this someone who does represent the Iraqi people, or who are at least really indigenous and not just a creature of the occupation, such as al-Sistani, are going to step forward.  And then will they want our troops there or not?  That is going to be a real watershed.  But yes, they should come out, certainly.  What the time table is, that is hard to say.

BD: What do you think of the argument that the US troops are the only group that is keeping the country from civil war?

JS: I think that civil war is definitely possible, at least that is what people from Iraq say.  What is not clear to me is if the US is a force preventing that.  Maybe, in a certain way they are.  And maybe the US forces are coming to play a very unexpected role which would be a sort of stop gap before there is a civil war.  It is possible, but I do not think that they can be the long term solution to head off a civil war.  It is hard at a distance to champion one very specific policy over another, but in broad outlines I am very clear: the United States should not be negotiating with the people in Iraq, the UN should and eventually whoever it is in Iraq that is going to take over, whether they are good, bad or indifferent.  That is what has to happen, and sooner rather than later.

BD: As far as the peace movement is concerned, it had a lot of momentum before the Iraq war started.  Where should the movement go now and what should it focus its demands on?

JS: I think that the peace movement should become part of a broader movement of reform and resistance.  It is very important to get the democrat in, whoever that is, and it will be Kerry, rather than the republican.  But at the same time it is not going to solve every problem. So I think that the peace movement should be establishing a vital, strong movement in civil society for a real alternative to this imperialism, both with respect to domestic policies and international policies.  I like to say we should walk and chew gum at the same time, which means try to get the democrat in, in full awareness that that’s no solution, it is just on the way to a solution, and to create a vital culture and movement of opposition to these deeper tendencies.  I like the idea of what they are doing up in Boston, the social forum.  Together with the democratic convention, very nice idea, sort of saying, “We are the alternative; we have some ideas over here that you’re not going to hear over there.”  I wrote an article in The Nation calling for a thinking demonstration, and a working demonstration, like the social forums.  So - networking galore, ten thousand seminars and meetings and speeches and movies and tables with buttons and everything, the whole shooting match, not just a million people listening to a bad speech.

BD: Right now, there is a distinct polarization between the people who support Bush and the people who support anyone but Bush.  How do we move ahead towards elections trying to convince staunch republicans not to vote for Bush?

JS:  It is not simply a matter of going one on one with a republican and getting them to change their mind.  I think that what you try to do is champion what you really believe in to change the overall political atmosphere.  And already that has happened to a certain extent.  In other words, because there was a Dean and a Kucinich, neither of whom could win the nomination, the whole mood of the Democratic Party changed.  And that changed mood in the Democratic Party has put Kerry ahead of Bush in the polls, however long that lasts.  It is wrong to say that it is a waste of time to preach to the converted, the converted need to be fired up, because we’re in this society too and we have ten thousand connections, formal and informal with people and that radiates outward.

Anti-war protests climax with civil disobedience

By Benjamin Dangl and Brendan Coyne | Special to the Vermont Guardian

posted September 28, 2005

WASHINGTON — Capping three days of anti-war action in the nation’s capital — the largest anti-war protest since the Vietnam Era — law enforcement officers arrested hundreds of people who took part in nonviolent civil disobedience (CD) on Sept. 26 in front of the White House. U.S. Park Police said approximately 370 people were arrested for protesting without a permit. Activists put their freedom temporarily on the line to pressure the Bush administration into immediately withdrawing troops from Iraq.

CD participants had organized before the event through the anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), which asked people to sign up via their website in order to network with other activists and receive information on legal issues and nonviolence.

Many organized themselves into “affinity” groups to support each other behind bars and ensure a speedy and safe release. UFPJ contacted the police in advance to alert them about the CD plans and prevent any clashes. Sgt. Scott Fear of the U.S. Park Police told the Vermont Guardian that all those arrested would be released by evening.

Click here for the full text of this story in our subscriber’s area.

Staged Arrests Round Off Weekend of Anti-war Protests in DC

Diverse Anti-war Protests Largest in DC Since Vietnam

An Interview with Leslie Cagan

Conducted by Benjamin Dangl and Andrew Kennis

9/20/04

Upside Down World

Leslie Cagan is the national coordinator of the anti-war coalition United For Peace and Justice, (www.UnitedForPeace.org) which has been one of the main organizers of anti-war rallies since before the Iraq war began. We spoke with her on August 30th, the day after the UFPJ-organized march which drew an estimated 500,000 people to protest the Republican National Convention and the Bush agenda.

In the interview she talks about the August 29th UFPJ march, civil disobedience and where the peace movement might be headed if John Kerry is elected this November.

BD: What are your thoughts on yesterday’s protest?

We’re all thrilled by it. It was an outpouring of people to say no to the Bush agenda. People came from every neighborhood in the city, people came from cities and towns all around the country. Our estimate was at least 500,000 people marched past Madison Square Garden delivering their messages, obviously the Iraqi war and occupation was a major issue, but many other issues came out yesterday as we wanted them to. And through that all, the one clear and strong message, we believe, came through and this we say no to the Bush agenda.

BD: Were there any problems with the police once it got started?

Yesterday, I must say the police handled themselves very well. And I hope that’s true for the rest of the week from here on out. But my experience and the reports we got from different people was that the police actually behaved very well.

AK: What do you think about this march (Poor People’s Campaign for Economic Human Rights), considering them undertaking civil disobedience, as opposed to yesterday’s march, under your coalition, deciding not to do that and not protest the decision on central park?

Well we certainly did protest the decision around Central Park, we worked very hard on that issue. We decided not to do that yesterday. We support civil disobedience, there is a long and honored history in this country of civil disobedience, obviously Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement he led is obviously the strongest example that everybody knows. But many movements have used civil disobedience as a legitimate tactic and it’s still a legitimate tactic just as permitted marches or rallies are legitimate tactics. I think the issues with organizers are, what tactics are going to work for the message you are trying to deliver, are the people you are bringing ready to engage in that tactic. There are tactical considerations that go into deciding which vehicle you are going to use for your particular protest. But there is nothing inherently better or worse about any given tactic.

BD: As far as keeping the momentum going do you see the momentum after Kerry wins - he is not necessarily an anti-war president–do you see the same kind of momentum going after he is elected or do you see it dwindling?

I think probably right after the election, there could very well be either because Bush or Kerry wins, a little bit of falling off. If Bush wins people could feel demoralized, if Kerry wins some people will think our work is over. But I think very quickly people will regroup and realize certainly that if Bush wins our movement has to keep going. But also if Kerry wins I think people will realize that we have to keep pushing him, we would like to not have to organize a demonstration saying we say no to the Kerry agenda, but if we have to in a year or two or whatever down the road, if we need to organize that kind of demonstration we will. The point is we are a movement about the issues, and if the issues aren’t being resolved by one president or another one, we are going to be out there. This movement is alive, it’s strong, it’s dynamic, it’s creative and it’s not going away.

AK: Do you have a sense that after a year or two things might really change under Kerry, seems like you expect that they won’t

I clearly think there is a difference between Bush and Kerry on quite a number of issues, especially on quite a number of social issues here in this country. On the war, Kerry has not been good, so we have to push him. My feeling, personally, I am not speaking for the coalition now because we don’t have a position on this–we need to get rid of Bush, that’s the first thing we need to do, we just need to take him and his whole crowd of criminals - and the crimes are not only committed in Iraq, they are committed every day in this country when people go homeless, and people go hungry and people don’t have health care, those are crimes against humanity. So we need to get rid of that whole bunch, and then we need to put the pressure on the new bunch that comes in. Kerry is not automatically all of a sudden going to be an anti-war president; we have to push him to that.

AK: Do you think there is a little more danger that Kerry might have, in a kind of ironic twist, more cushion because of the support he has from the anti-war crowd and maybe in a weird turn of events–that could prolong the occupation?

I don’t have a crystal ball but I guess that could happen, but I just think that what yesterday showed again, is that how deep and widespread the anti-war sentiment is. And I don’t think that sentiment goes away overnight. People know that this war was based on a pack of lies. People know, better information isn’t going to beat that out of people’s heads. Our job of course as organizers is to help keep that momentum going. You know we call it a movement for a reason, it has its ebbs and flows, sometimes it was stronger sometimes it was weaker, we move in and out. So there may be a time when it looks like we are a little weaker. But I think we are not going away. The other thing is that when you get a big mobilization, you see the strength of the movement, but the work of this movement goes on every single day. People are having educational forums, people are having vigils, people are lobbying their elected officials, people are writing letters to the editor, people are organizing shipments of humanitarian aid to Iraq or whatever. People keep on doing all kinds of things every single day and it doesn’t always make it into the news. That’s what the heart and soul of the movement is and that’s not going to go away. We now have in UFPJ almost 900 groups, we have done virtually no outreach, no outreach encouraging people to join our coalition. People have found us and said, we’re a group in Atlanta, or we’re a group in Bangore, Maine or whatever, we want to be a part of a national movement, can we join the coalition. That’s phenomenal.

BD: Do you think a lot of the people that were at the march yesterday will go home now and be motivated to do more? Do you think they will keep on working beyond the march?

The energy, the spirit and commitment of yesterday–people are going to take that home with them. People are going to back into their neighborhoods, back to their workplaces, their schools, their religious centers, wherever, and they are going to keep doing that organizing. And that’s what’s most important, one of the most important things is of course on any demonstration you want to send a clear message, that happened. The second thing you want to do is re-energize and keep the movement going. And I think that has happened not only yesterday but through this week of activities.

Arrestees, Lawyers, Medics Condemn Conditions of RNC Protest Detention

by Benjamin Dangl

9/3/04

The NewStandard

Over the past week, police have arrested around 1,900 people in events related to demonstrations and direct actions against the Republican National Convention. The vast majority of those arrests were made during indiscriminate sweeps that literally netted protesters and bystanders alike.

Authorities have reportedly held the majority of the arrestees at Pier 57, an unsanitary, chemical-ridden automobile garage facility reorganized for use as a temporary detention center during the Convention.

Despite official police department claims that no one is being held at the facility for more than eight hours, many of the arrestees have been incarcerated there for over 40 hours, up to 24 hours of that at Pier 57, in conditions lawyers and medics have described as “unhealthy” and “inhumane.” In other cases, detainees have “disappeared” into the system altogether, their families and lawyers finding no trace of them for two days or more.

According to Bob Perry, the Legislative Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union: “Pier 57 is a warehouse building used to store industrial vehicles. Oil grease, transmission fluid and other toxic agents are all over the floors. People have had to sleep on the floors.”

Attorney Katya Kamisaruk has visited people held in the makeshift detention center, which she described in detail: “Pier 57 has a concrete floor with a layer of sediment that is an inch thick of compacted chemicals… We won’t know what [the substance] is until it is too late, or what the long term [health] effects are.”

First aid providers and arrestees report that exposure to substances in the facility has resulted in severe rashes and respiratory problems.

“A high number of people have respiratory disturbances, are congested, have had trouble breathing, sore throats, wheezing, and asthmatics that have been in respiratory distress,” said Sami Alloy, 22, a volunteer medic and certified wilderness first responder from Portland, Oregon, who has been providing arrestees with medical help as they are released. “They are coming out with chemical burns, rashes, covered in this stuff that is hard to remove.”

In a statement issued to the press, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly referred to claims of unsafe and unsanitary conditions at the Pier 57 facility as “exaggerated,” calling them “outright falsehoods.” He also said, “The longest anyone has been detained waiting further processing is 8 hours.” The statement pointed out that air quality had been tested during the week, but made no mention of the condition of the facility’s floors.

According to Alloy, some people in the detention center requiring medical attention have not been receiving it. “People have had a lot of head injuries from the police bashing their faces into the concrete, a lot of wrist injuries, and in one case broken bones. These are people that aren’t getting treatment [inside the holding facility].”

Alloy continued: “There are also people who are getting denied their medication… schizophrenics, people that have mental illnesses that have been going into disturbed states of psychosis because they haven’t been able to get access to their medication. We have also been seeing a high number of handcuff injuries — with nerve pain in their wrists, hands and fingers, people that have lost sensation in their fingers — being too tight and a lot of bruising and swelling of the wrists.”

The handcuffs most commonly in use by the police department this week are known as “flex cuffs.” They are made of heavy plastic and cinch down on the detainee’s wrists.

Ace Allen is a medic from Oneonta, NY who treated RNC arrestees as they were released and has researched aftercare procedures for handcuff injury patients. “These flex cuffs were really damaging people’s hands,” Allen said. “I’d love to see them outlawed. They cut off circulation. They dig into your hands, and [they] only lock one-way. They don’t become looser. They are used as a torture device.”

According to Kamisaruk, the arrestees have been penned in chain-link fences crested with razor wire. Various caged areas that are roughly ten by fifteen feet hold up to 40 people each. She and others are calling the arrangement “Guantanamo on the Hudson,” drawing a comparison between the conditions at Pier 57 and the infamous US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where hundreds of foreign prisoners have been held for over two years in restrictive lock-down, without access to lawyers.

Kamisaruk works with the National Lawyers Guild, a consortium of legal activists who take on social movements-related cases, and is a member of the Just Cause Law Collective in California, which specializes in cases of police misconduct.

Outside Central Booking, where most detainees were transferred for post-Pier 57 processing, several people who had been recently released spoke to The NewStandard about conditions inside the facility.

Sebastian Licht said he was out celebrating his 22nd birthday, not protesting, when police arrested him. While at Pier 57, his skin reacted heavily to the chemicals on the floor.

“I had welts all over me. My legs were swelling up and I had blisters on my feet and hands.” Licht said he had to plead to the police for hours before receiving any medical attention.

Andrew Gunn, 24, a radio engineer from New York, who has been involved in activism since 1999, said: “The ground had oil on it, my hands were filthy. There were not enough benches for everyone to sit. People had to sit down if they wanted to rest.” Gunn said some of his friends acquired rashes and welts from the chemicals on the floor.

Other arrestees spoke of the police moving them regularly to prevent anyone from being able to sleep. Others described being fed only two apples and one sandwich over a period of 24 hours. In order to procure sufficient water from police, some reported having to yell and shake the cages in which they were penned.

For others, the suffering began even before they arrived at Pier 57. Aden Cheney-Lynch, 22, is a student who has been involved in activism for two years and is a member of the peace activist organization in New Hampshire called the World Fellowship Organization. Like many others, he was held for over 40 hours.

When Lynch was arrested, he said, police forced him to the ground. While laying on his chest, waiting to be arrested, Lynch said he informed officers of a medical condition only to be struck by one in response. “I made it clear to the policeman that I was epileptic,” he said, “and that I was very sensitive, and he interrupted me by kicking me in the mouth.”

“And then there were metal batons being smacked on the ground next to my ear,” Lynch added.

“From there we stayed three hours in a bus while people next to me — I mean I felt lucky, because I still had my teeth,” Lynch continued. “There was a guy who was part of the press, just taking pictures — he got his face smacked to the ground, his camera broken. They broke his two front teeth. Another man was in there — his eyes were just covered with blood. His head had been smacked into the ground, and there was no medical attention being given whatsoever, even though we were asking for it.”

Lynch continued to describe cases he directly witnessed en route to and inside the detention center. “There was also a man throwing up in the back of the bus because he [had previously] had his large intestine removed and he was being dehydrated,” he said. “They gave him small bits of water. When he asked for medical attention, they didn’t give it to him, and he kept puking.”

Asked about the chemicals on the ground at Pier 57, Lynch said: “I needed sleep, we all needed sleep, but especially me because I could have a seizure. But I did everything I could to avoid putting my face and body on this floor. The smell was making my eyes burn, my skin was burning. I developed severe pounding headaches. It was in the air, it was all around us. It was horrible.”

Another National Lawyer’s Guild attorney, Simone Levine, said she had received reports from detainees who suffered from pre-existing conditions — including heart ailments and, in one case, a man whose intestine had been removed — as well as people with injuries ranging from knocked-out teeth to brain hemorrhages. “They were calling in complaining that they weren’t getting medical attention.”

Yetta Kurland, another attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, said the Legal Aid had brought a motion before State Supreme Court Judge, demanding the release of detainees held by police for over 24 hours. “The judge signed it immediately,” Kurland said, “but then the city appealed and we spent a good part of today fighting that in court.”

In the end, the city was ordered to release around 500 detainees by Thursday morning, or be fined $1000 per day, per detainee for contempt, based on a legal guideline that says anyone detained for a minor violation must be released or arraigned within 24 hours.

“When the city defied that initial order, the judge fined the city $1000 for each person that was not released by 5 p.m. on Thursday,” Levine said. “There were roughly 300 people that the city was charged for.”

For its part, the police department says the sheer volumes of arrests it made, including 1,100 on Tuesday alone, have congested the processing system. Critics point out that, in the weeks leading up to the Convention, the city and police department had repeatedly told the media they were “fully prepared” to accommodate and respond to demonstrations in an orderly fashion.

According to Kamisaruk, a group of at least 20 people engaged in a fast to protest the conditions of their detention and demanding to speak with a prosecutor. “They got what they wanted, everything came together at once; the [court order], the publicity… it was all very sudden. They started to be released [Thursday] afternoon. It worked out well.”

Most of the arrestees have been charged with crimes such as blocking traffic, disorderly conduct, marching without a permit and obstructing government administration. Kamisaruk said she expects most arrestees to see their cases adjourned.

Attorneys are quick to point out that, under other circumstances, it would be unlikely that detainees caught in this week’s sweeps would have served as much time in jail after conviction on such charges as they have already spent in pretrial detention.

Lawyers involved in defending protesters and bystanders caught in this week’s pre-emptive sweeps have vowed to pursue lawsuits and other legal action in the coming weeks and months.

However, legal initiatives taken in response to remarkably similar acts of preemptive repression over the past five years, in cities such as Washington, Philadelphia, Seattle and New York itself have been slow-moving, and after the past week’s events, protesters cannot help but question whether previous legal efforts caused law enforcement officials to so much as hesitate this time around.

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