P.O. Box 81, Swarthmore, PA, 19081-- brandywine@juno.com (610) 544-1818

ANTI-WAR FEST - Celebrating 5 Years of Resisting the War - March 9, 2008

At March's Brandywine Peace Community potluck, people gathered in an ANTI-WAR FEST to celebrate 5 Years of War Resistance as we approach the 5th anniversary of U.S. war in Iraq. 

Caesar Chavez, founder and now deceased leader of the United Farmworkers Union use to say that since we have so few successes we had better celebrate all our actions for justice. We've yet to stop the war but we've lifted up the hope that it can and will be stopped.  So as we anticipate the 5th anniversary of war and plan for more protests and resistance, we came together as voices of resistance and hope. 

Tom Mullian & Friends (Wayne G Harvey and Dolores Magro) played and sang, R.W. Dennen and Bob Small (from the Poets & Prophets poetry group) as well as Lauries Pollock shared their poetry, Bernadette Cronin-Geller, read from the "Trial of Catonsville Nine", and Vietnam Veteran "Winter Soldier" testifier at the 1971 Vietnam War Crimes Hearings shared voices and memory. 

Below see the passage read from "The Trail of the Catonsville 9" and one of the pieces written and presented by Bob Small who summed it all up well in the introduction to his poem below:  Resistance needs to be both celebrated and remembered, whether it is us or the White Rose, Tom Mullian or Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs or Laurie Pollack, RW or any of the Winter Soldiers

War is like the Lover

War is like the lover you
keep keep
coming coming
back back
to to
War is like the lover you keep
coming back to
believing his lies
believing he will not abuse you
this time
Like he has evdry time
in the past 2,000 years.
War is the abusive obsessive lover
you run away from
who seeks you through the trees
who follows you
in the streets and haciendas
in the bars and the huts
in the alleys and the subways-
War seeks your scent
tells you you must go with him
That you can never form the words
No!-

2)  War is the booted lover
who seduced you with his films
and impressed you with his
brutal
strength
with his songs and guns
with his words and knives
with his tanks, bombs-
and one day
you realize that he is Juan Peron
but that is not so bad
for he calls you Evita
complicity
has it's rewards.


3)   War is the screeching harridan
who screams so loud
that you do what she says
losing knowledge of yourself
It was way past love yesterday
now it is only obedience
war is the women who
will now give themselves to you
war is the old men in bars
who will willingly buy you drinks
war is the children at the fourth of July parade
looking up at you
and all the old men and women
who still say thank you
thank you
thank you
war tells you this
you believe
because you are a man
and as a man
you want to believe
and as a man

you have to believe

4)  War will never change

war will never learn

we must change

we must learn

we must tell war no!

we must tell fight no!

when your hands yearn to rise

you  must tell them no

write

          paint

                    sing

when your feet seek to kick

you must have them

                      walk

               run

swim

when you feel your violence rise

you must gain victory over it

like any other ad dic tion

you fi nally

say no to

 

War will cry then

promise and tears

promise and tears

Do not listen

Let War die

Let War die

Let War Die

Let

War

Die

 

Bob Small,March 2003, revised 3-9-08

Originall published in the Philadelphia Poets issue of April 2003

 

 

 

On May 17th, 1968, Nine people, including Father Daniel Berrigan and his brother Father Philip Berrigan, entered a draft board and removed draft files of those who were about to be sent to Viet Nam.  They took these files outside and burned them with home-made napalm, a weapon commonly used on civilians by the U.S. forces.  They then awaited their arrest by authorities.  The following excerpts are from the mediation that Dan Berrigan read in court during their trial. 

 

"Our apologies  good friends

for the fracture of good order  the burning of paper

instead of children  the angering of the orderlies

in the front parlor of the charnel house

We could not  so help us God  do otherwise

For we are sick at heart   our hearts

give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children...

...All of us who act against the law

turn to the poor of the world  to the Vietnamese

to the victims  to the soldiers who kill and die

for the wrong reasons for no reason at all

because they were so ordered by the authorities

of that public order which is in effect

a massive institutionalized disorder

We say:  Killing is disorder

life and gentleness and community and unselfishness

is the only order we recognize

 

For the sake of that order

we risk our liberty   our good name

The time is past when good men may be silent

when obedience

can segregate men from public risk

when the poor can die without defense

How many indeed must die

before our voices are heard

how many must be tortured dislocated

starved maddened?

How long must the world's resources

be raped in the service of legalized murder?

When at what point will you say no to this war?

We have chosen to say

with the gift of our liberty

if necessary our lives:

the violence stops here

the death stops here

the suppression of the truth stops here

this war stops here..."