Tuesday, October 5, 2010 — It took a couple of days for this news item to reach us. We thank Will Thomas, New Hampshire’s Acting Coordinator for Veterans for Peace, for alerting us to it. The story, lifted by us from the Common Dreams newswire, follows the video.
Much of the video and text revolves around the deployment of an obscenity, which seems appropriate. Some things are more obscene than others. The question, “How’s that war economy working for you?” has plenty of merit, too.
Banner-Drop on Pennsylvania Avenue:
“Mr. Obama: End These Fucking Wars! War is the Obscenity”
Veterans’ 25 x 17 Banner Tells it Straight to Obama
Opposed to the wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, the vets’ message said loud and clear: “MR. OBAMA: END THESE FUCKING WARS! WAR IS THE OBSCENITY.”
WASHINGTON, October 1 — Today at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, U.S. military veterans hung an enormous banner on the front of the Newseum, wrapping their message around the First Amendment chiseled in five stories of limestone.
Several veterans dropped the banner down the front of the Newseum, while others distributed special edition copies of the War Crimes Times, explaining the action and what they considered obscene.
“The American public should be shocked that we are still killing and crippling thousands of innocent people in these countries as well as our own soldiers — that’s what’s truly obscene,” said Mike Ferner, 59 who served as a navy corpsman during Vietnam. “Blowing people’s arms and legs off, burning, paralyzing them, causing sewage to run through their streets, polluting the water that kills and sickens children, terrorizing and bombing people and their livestock with flying robots — that defines obscenity. If this banner shocks and offends a single person who hasn’t been shocked and offended by what’s being done in our name, we’ve accomplished our misson.”
Veterans and activists taking part in the event include Ken Mayers, Kim Carlyle, Mike Ferner, Bruce Berry, Debbie Tolson, Nic Abramson, Tarak Kauff, Mike Hearington, Will Covert and Elliott Adams of Veterans For Peace.
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Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985. It is structured around a national office in Saint Louis, MO and comprised of members across the country organized in chapters or as at-large members. The organization includes men and women veterans of all eras and duty stations including from the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf and current Iraq wars as well as other conflicts. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary.