Last week I got to listen in as John Burns spoke via Zoom for the third time that day to college students in North Carolina, presenting for We Are Not Your Soldiers. Speaking to a classroom over Zoom isn’t that easy; the students were spread about a room, backlit, so we couldn’t see many faces. The professor opened with the video Collateral Murder, offering students a warning over the violence and a chance to leave the room. Three did, and the others watched in a hush, after the professor explained how the video had been released only because Chelsea Manning send it to Wikileaks; both she and Julian Assange did harsh prison terms as retribution from the U.S. for exposing war crimes.
John’s soft-spoken delivery is deceptive. He quietly devastates the practices of the U.S. military, speaking about his days of training when a comrade was left to die untreated from dehydration, and the drill sergeant told the recruits to toughen up and get over it. “People die.” John’s steady recount, based on a scrapbook of his military days, drew them in, and they began to ask questions about what the military promises recruits, about John’s own health and how he processed what he experienced while being deployed in the war of terror.
We look forward to the written reflections from this professors’ classes and will share.
Watch a clip from John’s presentation here.
Another video we suggest you watch has been made by our friends at the Guantanamo Survivors Fund which supports the Muslim men striving to rebuild their lives after being released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Please consider supporting this effort.
The massive country-wide protests, including in Washington DC, against the fascist Trump regime over the last two weeks brought back memories of the huge demonstrations in Washington in 1971 against Nixon and calling for an end to the war on Vietnam, especially as this is the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Vietnamese people marked by the “fall of Saigon” on April 30, 1975.
We’re sharing one more video today of Andy Zee at the Washington DC rally this past Saturday of RefuseFascism.org as he speaks about the dangers we all face right now and what that means in terms of our actions.
