AEC Farewell

BRANDYWINE PEACE COMMUNITY WITH OUR PARTNERS IN THE UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE – DELAWARE VALLEY NETWORK CELEBRATES CLOSING OF ARMY EXPERIENCE CENTER AT FRANKLIN MILLS MALL IN NORTHEAST PHILA., JUNE 19, 2010

Since the Army Experience Center opened in August 2008, the high-tech military recruitment center located in the Franklin Mills Mall that boasted computer and interactive war games and combat simulations with full-scale attack helicopters and humvees, has been the focus of a regional campaign organized by peace activist and veterans groups, coordinated by the Brandywine Peace Community, the Coalition for Peace Action, and the United for Peace & Justice – Delaware Valley Network. The Army Experience Center has announced that it will close by July 31.

The celebration, held directly in front of the Army Experience Center within the Mall, featured: a litany (see below) written and lead by Bob Smith, Brandywine staff; Brandywine co-founder, Beth Centz, sharing Daniel Berrigan’s poem SOME; John Jordon, former president of Bucks County NAACP; songs of Tom Mullian; and amidst noisemakers and whistles, and impromptu conclusion lead by Rev. Bob Moore, executive director of the Coalition for Peace Action, of the classic sixties tune: NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA HEY HEY HEY GOODBYE !

Today, we stand again before the Army Experience Center, celebrating its closing over the coming days. We will continue to lift up our voices for justice, for our suffering communities and economy, and for an environment, poisoned and ablaze, sacrificed on the altar of war and militarism.

All: Today, we celebrate all the groups and individuals who brought their voices and actions to the fore and demanded the closing of the Army Experience Center.

We give thanks for all the young people who refused to sign-up and be recruited into the military mission of violence and war, and in so doing put the Army Experience Center Out of Business!

All: We will continue in the works of justice and peace so that our youth and their tomorrows may be saved from the enticements and pressures of war, militarism, and military recruitment

We will continue to work for the day when our nation will reject empire and war, choosing instead the path of justice, peaceful conflict resolution, reconciliation, and peace.

All: Today, we celebrate the closing of the Army Experience Center and re-dedicate ourselves to the struggle for peace.

A small group of dedicated activists who had worked to close the Army Experience Center took a couple hours Saturday June 19 to gather and wish the purveyor of war porn a robust and joyful "Goodbye!" The group gathered in the Franklin Mills Mall in NE Philadelphia in front of the AEC, which was closed up and dark. There were a few speeches, and then, throwing sobriety to the wind, it all ended with a rousing rendition of the famous Steam classic.

The reason the AEC is closing is certainly a mixture of things, not least of which is it was apparently not very successful and not worth the money to sustain it. True, it was an "experiment" installed in a struggling working class mall with sluggish traffic. They must have learned something as they seduced boys as young as 13 with violent video games and simulators. They will, unfortunately, take some of that knowledge to two new recruitment centers to be opened in the area. Recruitment centers around the country are reportedly fighting over who gets the simulators. As for those gigantic, walk-in arcade machines, the best account is from my friend Dave Lindorff who went there with his son. They signed up for a humvee-simulator "patrol," which entailed shooting people who popped out from behind walls in the mock village on screen. When the patrol was over, Dave and his son were disappointed that they had a 25% civilian kill ratio. "No," they were told by a recruiter, "That's great!"

Anti-AEC activists should take credit for the AEC's leaving, since it could not be good for them to have regular gangs of angry citizens standing around the mall accusing them of seducing young boys into a violent military lifestyle -- especially when the war in Afghanistan is a ever-worsening disaster and Iraq remains politically unglued at the seams with violence on the rise.