A Few Words To Jump-Start 2011

January 7th, 2011  |   

Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road

Here in Appalachia it’s said that the only thing you’ll find in the middle of the road is a yellow line and a dead skunk.

I think of those words particularly when I hear politicians talking about pursuing a course of action between extremes that is neither liberal nor conservative.

I laugh when I hear that some Washington politicians have formed a group they call “No Label.” They want to march down the middle of the road for Middle America by reaching across the congressional aisle for bipartisan Kumbaya moments. West Virginia’s newly elected senator, Joe Manchin, is one of those No Label folks. Heck, that’s not news here in West Virginia. Joe was a Democrat-Republican crossbreed when he was governor. 

I like what Christopher Beam wrote in Slate last month. “Perhaps the greatest achievement of No Labels is to show why labels exist in the first place. They’re so busy talking about what they’re not—not Republican, not Independent, not conservative, and not liberal—you never get a handle on what they are. Labels are a useful shortcut for voters who want to know what a group is all about.”

I smell a dead skunk in the middle of the road when I see Joe take a walk on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell vote and the Start Treaty vote.  And don’t you think it smells a bit when politicians claim a label like No Party in order to say they want to ditch party labels? And just when did the word definition begin to frighten politicians along with some of the rest of us?

Traveling Toward A Burial Service On West Virginia Route 3

I think about yellow lines in the middle of the road as I drive along West Virginia Route 3 heading east. This winding two-lane road passes through Racine, Bloomingrose, Comfort, Seth, Orgas, Sylvester, and Whitesville. I stalk a series of school buses and slow-moving vehicles that are in no hurry to get to their destination.

I’d like to pass the car in front of me that’s moving at a snail’s pace. But the huge coal-bearing trucks zooming past me on the other side of the road cause me to hesitate. The yellow paint in the middle of the road, like a blinking yellow traffic light, signals caution.

I know very well that if I were to stray across that yellow line at the wrong moment, one of those behemoths with the loud air horn could blow me over into the next county.

My destination—Rock Creek—can’t be found on official West Virginia maps. I am headed there for a burial service for a woman who has been blown away by cancer—a strong and courageous woman who shunned the middle of the road. And who refused to compromise with coal companies destroying our beloved mountains.

Let me tell you about Judy Bonds.

Judy Bonds—Opening Her Eyes And Paying Attention

“I knew that something was very, very wrong,” said Judy Bonds. “So I began to open my eyes and pay attention.” That was a direct response to a question asked by her 6-year-old grandson. Standing in a creek full of dead fish, holding some in his hand, he had asked her, “What’s wrong with these fish?”

And boy-oh-boy did she pay attention. Paying attention, of course, is the first step toward making change happen when the powers-that-be want you to compromise your values in the name of some kind of unifying bipartisanship.

Judy, the daughter of a coal miner who died of black lung, was born and raised in a hollow (holler) in southern West Virginia. She loved this place, once telling a newspaper reporter that living in a holler is special. “You feel snuggled. You feel safe. It seems like God has his arms around you.”

Safe and secure, that is, until the A.T. Massey Coal Company began dynamiting and leveling the mountains and endangering the people, and a school at the base of the mining location. Montcoal, just down the road from where Judy lived, is the location of the Massey Upper Big Branch mine where back on April 9th 29 miners were killed.

This leveling process is called mountaintop removal. In order to get the coal, the mountains are destroyed, dust becomes a health hazard, and the water supply is polluted. Debris from this devastation has buried over 700 miles of streams in West Virginia.

There’s been a lot said about the large “carbon footprint” affecting the environment and contributing to global warming. The carbon footprint here in Appalachia is felt as Big Coal crushes the mountains and the people who live there. I always saw Judy as one of young King David’s daughters taking on Goliath—Big Coal.   

Judy was a real honest-to-God grassroots leader. Before founding Coal River Mountain Watch, she worked in a pizza shop, in restaurants and convenience stores.  Organizing people to fight the coal industry, Judy found her voice and her reason for living. Her passionate, spitfire speech evidenced at rallies and in trips to jail juiced all who knew her.

Mining coal is a dangerous and fearful occupation, but so is fighting coal companies over mountaintop removal. Judy Bonds was fearless, and if not totally fearless, she refused to submit to her fears. She refused to be intimidated by the powers-that-be, or the criticism that comes from being outspoken.

Officiating at the service alongside of her cloth-covered pine coffin and the freshly dug grave, with gathered family and friends, it seemed appropriate to offer words from the great feminist leader, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls” Judy spoke, not only with her lips but with her life, Her voice and her actions caused others to do likewise. And that will continue.

The Pat Tillman Story

By now most people who are paying attention will know about Pat Tillman. He was the professional football player who, after 9/11, left a lucrative career with the Arizona Cardinals to join the army. He was killed on a combat mission in Afghanistan in 2004.

The army capitalized off of Tillman’s heroism. They’d done the same with Pvt. Jessica Lynch, a native of a small, poor community in West Virginia. Her story in Iraq was a parcel of distortions and lies fabricated to garner public support and recruitment for the war. Tillman’s story was the same—lies and cover-ups.

The army covered-up the facts, lied to the public by saying that Tillman had been killed by enemy fire when, in fact, he was shot by his fellow Rangers. In other words, by “friendly fire.” John Krakauer tells the story in his book “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.”

According to an article in the Army Times, the recently released film, “The Pat Tillman Story,” cannot be shown in theaters on army bases. Chris Ward, a spokesman for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service says the film will not be shown because

“General audience acceptance drives movie selections…While the military mission is unique, its members represent a cross-section of society, and tastes in the military community generally parallel those of their civilian counterparts.”

In other words, if public opinion of a movie is favorable, a film can then be shown in an army theater. Box office receipts and five stars from movie critics dictate what troops may see. I don’t like Ward’s reasoning, but he’s right. If the public isn’t paying attention to the war, and doesn’t want to hear the truth about the war, and doesn’t want our troops to hear the nasty truth, the film won’t be shown. And if our kids want a steady diet of vampires, and not truth-telling films about war, give them vampires.

“The Expendables,” a big budget film starring Sylvester Stallone, was released in 3,270 theaters just four days before the Tillman film. It was approved for showing at army theaters.

Meanwhile, “The Pat Tillman Story” is now being shown in “selected “ theaters across the county—like New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

Driving along Route 3 through places like Seth, Comfort and Rock Creek, not even on the map—there are no selected theaters, no theaters at all. However, these communities, all across America—small, poor, and rural—are indeed selected places. Selected for the recruitment of our young people to fight in places like Afghanistan. It’s these kids who have become expendable.

Connecting the Dots With Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

I’ve been fascinated by the congressional debate and final vote on four important bills President Obama wanted passed before Christmas. In case you’ve forgotten, they were extending budgetary funding, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the Dream Act, and the Strategic Arms Treaty (START).

I see these items as connected. One deals with funding government expenses; the second overturns a discriminatory policy toward gays in the military; the third, The Dream Act, offers a way for illegal and deportable minors to work their way into permanent U.S. residency status; START ratifies a nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

A line from a Christmas song seems appropriate here—“Do you see what I see?” Do you see the connecting thread that lies beneath all four of these political concerns?

They all have military connections. Once again, militarism rears its ugly head. We live in a militaristic culture and the signs are as numerous as the stars in the heaven—the place where we look for light when it is dark.

The evidence at hand is anything but circumstantial.  Our budget is bloated with military expenditures ($2 billion a week for the war in Afghanistan); gays in the military and the Dream Act were both incorporated into the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011; and START is all about nuclear weapons still on the table for use despite an attempt to reduce the number of these evil demons.

I was curious to see which of these four items would get the most media attention. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell won hands down. I supported the repeal of this discriminatory policy but, in all honesty, its passage left a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

The sweetness: Now gays can be open about who they are without fear of discrimination.  The bitter taste: Now they can march off to be who they are openly and do the killing in Afghanistan, and possible in Pakistan and God knows where, alongside of their straight brothers and sisters.

Am I wishing we could go back to the old days when someone could avoid fighting in a war by admitting he was gay? Certainly not.  But I find it interesting that the phrase created for the army by a marketing firm to recruit more folks into the military—“be all that you can be”—could very well now, ironically, be manipulated to beef up the war machine that has unleashed inordinate firepower into Iraq and Afghanistan.

Be all that you can be, for gay folks, now means you can be all that you are, gay and out of the military closet—free to fight in a war Afghanistan that John Dower, in his book “Cultures of War” calls a “strategic imbecility.”

What I hope for are at least two things. One, that more and more gay and straight folks in uniform will refuse deployment to Afghanistan, and young people tempted to enlist for possible duty in Afghanistan (and perhaps Pakistan) will give that choice a second thought.

The second thing I hope for in this coming year is that Congress will expand the definition of conscientious objection to allow opposition to a particular war. (The present rule allows only for objection to all war). There is a coalition of religious, veterans and anti-war groups, the Truth Commission on Conscience in War that is working to make that change. This is a religious freedom issue, one that I will support.

If you would like to know more about this effort, please read (I hope you will) the November 10, 2010 The New York Times article by James Dao. (http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/war-and-conscience-expanding-the-definition-of-conscientious-objection/)

A Word On Six Geese-A-Laying And Gifts For Our Troops

The twelve days of Christmas are over. So are the weird gifts, and I don’t means that ugly tie your cousin gave you, or the piece of pottery you’d like to send back to China where it was made. I am talking about the Partridge in a Pear Tree, the 10 Lords-a-Leaping, the 6 Geese-a-Laying, and the 12 Drummers Drumming. Judy is my true love, but I am grateful she didn’t give me any of those gifts. So I shall not step in goose poop, wonder what to do about Leaping Lords, or flee the house because of noisy drums.

During the Christmas season I got a six-page letter asking me to donate money for a blanket that would be sent to one of our troops in Afghanistan. The request was from a group in Maryland calling itself Adopt a Platoon. The blanket, I was told, would help keep one of our Service Members, “America’s Heroes,” warm in places like Kabul.

The pronoun YOU was sprinkled throughout the letter. Give money and the “Hero” will know that “YOU are a caring person.” The blanket will be “YOUR personal gift.” The gift is a way “YOU can convey your admiration and respect” for our troops.

I went on line and checked this group out. I discovered that Adopt a Platoon does not meet nine of the Standards for Charity Accountability set up by the Better Business Bureau. Reviewing those violations, there is no way I would give money to this organization, no matter what good intentions it espouses.

I’ve never been in combat where temperatures can drop well below zero and snowfall levels hit 25 inches. The closest I ever got to cold weather was to sleep on Virginia snowy ground for a week playing Marine war games, and three weeks training on a mountaintop glacier in northern California. I certainly do care about our troops being cold. But two billion tax dollars sent weekly to Afghanistan should take care of our men and women. When asked to give a blanket, I feel, like saying I gave at the IRS.

A flag-draped casket, a highway named for a dead soldier, and a blanket sent overseas aren’t fitting gifts for our men and women in the military. We can do better than that.

Efforts like Adopt a Platoon merely reinforce our presence in Afghanistan. This kind of charitable giving may make us feel good but what these troops need is a President, a Congress, and a grassroots citizenry who will demand that our troops come home immediately. For home is the best place to keep safe and warm.

A Few Words To Jump-Start 2011

Over New Years I had a chance to catch up on some reading. Two quotes jumped out at me and I pass them on for your meditation and encouragement.

“No victory is irreversible, no defeat is definitive.” (Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski) These words are worth remembering when battles that seem over and won have to be fought again and again and again—like health care legislation, civil and human rights struggles, and environmental victories. There is no rest for the victorious and no ultimate despair for the defeated.

“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker than a germ.” (John Steinbeck) My advice: In 2011, keep washing your hands, eat healthy, and stay in shape, because your friends need you to stick around a while longer. But most of all, keep your soul fresh and alive. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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