multiculturalism paper
Bill Ayers
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to str ictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow ve,y lively debate within
that spectrum-even encourage the more critical and dissident views.
That gives people the sense that theres free thinking going on, while
all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by
the limits put on the range of the debate.
In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence, one word of tnith
sounds like a pistol shot.
- Noam Chomsky
-Czeslaw Milosz
I was invited to give a talk at an "international anarchi st convention" in Greece in 2011, and while I had a lovely correspondence with the rebels
who'd organized the event, and they' d assured me that they would cove r my
airfare and put me up for a few days at one of their squats, I was skeptical-
they were anarchists after all. But once I'd cleared customs and two skinny
kids- frighteningly pierced and wildly tattooed, neon-colored hair flying
haphazardly from their skulls- rushed me wearing vibrant rags and big wel-
coming smiles, I thought , Whatever. l was happy to be there. We jump ed on a bus and headed for one of the dicey district s of Athens,
and they broke out a thermos of thick black coffee and a bag of Arab food ,
grease darkening the paper sack in a delicate Rorschach, and we dived
eagerly in. They offered portions to our dubiou s fellow travelers- "We' re
anarchists!" they proclaimed-and we chatter ed happily about plans for the
week as they pointed out the ancient sights along the way.
"An anarchist convention," I said, as we rolled through the city streets.
"Isn't that a contradiction in terms, like jumbo shrimp or Justice Roberts?"
17
Demand the Impossible!
And a keynote speech seemed so unnecessarily hierarchical. "Are you sure
you're anarchists?" I teased. "Don 't be fooled," one of them kidded back. "This is all a front for chaos and confusion. You're one of our many props!"
The squat was beautiful-open windows and unlocked doors, assorted
chairs in all manner of disrepair in the large commons area, pirated electric-
ity and Internet , big pots of black beans and lentils bubbling away on a small
black stove, and a huge salvaged wooden table overflowing with black bread, apple s and cheese, olives, tomatoe s, and hard-boiled eggs. Later that
night I spoke to a large gathering at an arts college about our shared values
of peace and popular ju stice, human agency and mass mobili zation from
below, and the importance of refusing to bow down to either gods or mas- ters. I noted Mikhail Bakunin's insight that freedom without socialism is a
license for privilege and injustice, while socialism without freedom can
become slavery and brutality, and I ended by saluting the great participator y
tradition in Greece stretching back centuries and sustained by subsequent generations of Greek youth . Carry it on!
All of this was prelude to an encount er that is as vivid for me today as the
moment it occurred, a story I' ve retold and relived many times since . Ear ly the next morning I caught the fast boat from Piraeu s to the faraway island of
Paros where I was to spend the day with the legendary Manolis Glezos. We
were introduc ed by mutual friends , and while you may not recognize the
name, Manolis was the most respected ( or reviled) man in all of Greece, and
well known throughout Europe for a dazzling illegal act he committed in
1941. When he was still a teenager, Manolis had climbed the Acropolis with
a friend and torn down and destroyed the Nazi flag that had flown over
Athens since German occupation forces marched into the city a month earli-
er. This symbolic action (an act of terror according to the fascists) was mag- nified many times when the Nazis, determined to nip all opposition in the
bud lest the virus of resistance spread, sentenced Manoli s to death in absen-
tia. When he was captured severa l months later, he was thrown into prison
and tortured.
18
Bill Ayers
Manolis was ninety years old when we met up, a veteran of over seventy
years of struggle for peace and justice-he'd been imprisoned by the Ger- man occupiers, the Italians , the Greek collaborators, and the Regime of the
Colonels, adding up to more than a decade behind bars. He had been sen-
tenced to death multiple times, charged with espionage, treason, and sabo-
tage, and escaped prison more than once. He'd been the focus of widespread
internation al protests and "Free Glezos!" campaigns on several occasions over the years, which surely explained why Manolis was still alive and
standing at the dock waving happily when I arrived.
His broad smile emerged from his bushy white mustache and drove a
deeper crease across his already-wrinkled face. He was wearing a loosely fitted coarse cotton shirt with pants to match , a beige scarf, and a light sports
coat buttoned to the top. We embraced for a long moment, then turned and
walked arm in arm to a cafe in the plaza.
Our walk was slow, for every person we passed-every one, no except ion -greeted Manolis and presented a kiss or a handshake or a hug, and he
offered an embrac e or a word to each in return; it became the customary
practice of our day together, and I assumed of his life all the time: he was a flesh-and-blood human being, to be sure, but he was simultaneously larger
than life, a symbol and an icon. He bore the responsibility gracefully without
being in its thrall, responding warmly to everyo ne he met but remaining as
ordinary and earthbound and humble as anyone I' ve known.
I asked him about his time in the Greek Parliament and he said that each
time he ran and particularly when he was elected it was always as part of a
larger strategy, a useful tactic for him and his comrades at specific times but
never an end in itse lf. 'Tm interested in people collectively discovering their
own power," he said. "That' s an entirely different thing from an individual or
a party in power."
Manolis told me about the years when he was the elected president of the
Community Council in Aperathu, an experiment in far-reaching participatory
democracy. "We governed by consensus," he said, "in a local assembly with
forums reminiscent of the period of radical democracy in ancient Greece."
19
Demand the Impossible!
They abolished all privileges for elected officials, developed a written con-
stitution, and challenged the idea that "experts" or professional politicians and self-proclaimed leaders were better at running the town's affairs than
ordinary people. "Every cook can govern!" was a kind of theme and watch-
word.
Manolis put his face close to mine and said with conspiratorial convic-
tion, "The biggest obstacle to revolution here- and I'll bet it's true in your country as well-is a serious and often unrecognized lack of confidence." I
thought he made sense. "We spend our lives in the presence of mayors and
governors and presidents and chiefs of police," Manolis continued, "and then
we lose our power of self-reliance , and we doubt that we could live without those authorities. We worship them in spite of ourselves, we may not mean
to but we do, and soon enough we embrace our own passivity and become
enslaved to a culture of obedience. That's a core of our weakness. That's
something you and I must challenge and change." We must unleash our most radical imaginations and push ourselves to break the straitjackets of conven-
tional thinking. Yes! We must demand the impossible.
Manolis has been arrested by riot police in front of the Parliament build- ing each year since our meeting , still living the activist life, still battling the
murderou s system of oppression and exploitation, still opening spaces for
more participatory democracy, more peace, and more justice. I can see him
in my mind 's eye now, waving cheerfully from the dock as I left later in the
day-filled with energy and hope. Still demanding the impossible.
*** What if? That humble question might be the single spark that can ignite a
massive prairie fire, pro voking us to leap beyond personal speculation and
into the vortex of political strugg le and social action. This is how it's always
been; this is the world as we've always known it. But why is it so? Who ben-
efits and who suffers? How did we get here and where do we want to go?
What if we took a radically different angle of regard and questioned the
insistent dogma of common sense? What if we unleashed our wildest imagi-
20
Bill Ayers
nations? The "what if' question might then blow open the spectrum of
acceptable possibilitie s and take us down a rabbit hole or up into orbit-onto one of life's restless and relentless journe ys, exploring and experimenting,
orbiting and spinning , inventing and adapting, struggling toward knowledge
and enlightenment, freedom and liberat ion, fighting to know more in order to
do more.
What if) Copernicus and Galileo challenged the dogma of their day as they reimagined the movements of the heavenly bodies and the revolution s
of the sun and the Earth. Virginia Woolf breathed in a revo lutionary wave of
women's freedom and imagined a room of her own, signaling in lyr ical
words that everything henceforth would be new, and everything old immedi-
ately put on trial. John Coltrane heard free ja zz- devout and large- inside
his head before it burst like a shot through his horn and into our collective
consciousness, and Lin-Manuel Miranda upended the Broadway stage as he
reimagin ed the Founding Fathers as young Black and Latino revolutionarie s, casting a bright light on the nation 's beginnings as well as a new perspective
on contemporary struggles for self-determination and freedom. Each of these
propulsive pioneer s questioned the expected, changed the frame, and opened a space of possibility; each rose up in the company of others; each began
with a revolutionary 's dream that pushed beyond the obvious and the sett led,
and evoked an alternative universe. And each reminds us that standing next
to the world as it is, the world we might mistakenly take as immutabl e, we
can discover or search out a wider range of possible worlds, that is, alterna-
tives that could be or should be. Our common task is to face one another
authentically and without masks, to tell our complex and various stories can-
didly, to break the suffocat ing strangl ehold of common sense . "What would
happen if one woman told the truth about her life?" asked the poet Muriel
Rukeyser. "The wor ld would split open." This is a call to go to the root , to
question and seek evidence and to find alternatives, to speak our truths and
to join together in the business of splitting the world wide open once more.
When "What if?" is taken up collectively it can be forged into a powerful
tool with the potential to crack open the given world and provide previously
21
Demand the Impossible!
unthinkable alternatives: "What wou ld happen if we abolished slavery?"
Boom! The runaways, the abolitioni sts, Denmark Vesey, Frederick Dougla ss, John Brown , and Harriet Tubman stoked a revolution , organizing and
unleashing the agency of enslaved people everyw here and challenging the
slaveocracy at its base-picture General Tubman with her laser-like focus
and that small , discreet pistol in her pocket , lead ing the troops toward free-
dom. "Wha t if we took the next step in the Black freedom movement?" Barn! Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Joanne Robin son, Septima Clark, and
their comrades in the 1960s conceived of a revolution that could create-
from a wor ld of toil and trouble-a beloved community where Black people
would be free and all of us could become equals before one another and the law. Today's freedom fighters dare to proclaim once more that Black Lives
Matter as they open a fresh space to join the unfini shed revolution right here,
right now.
*** Here, then, is a partial diagram of the known world, a rough sketch of what
is, but certainly not a picture of what could be or should be:
*
*
*
An empire unapolo getically resurrected in a cauldron of deliberately
constructed fear, and in the name of renewed patriotic nationali sm.
Unprecedented mili ta1y expansion, a state of perman ent war and the
creation of a war culture, a gulag that stretche s the length and breadth
of the country, where mass incarceration is a defining characteristic in
the "land of the free," and white supremacy reigns triumphant in the
"home of the brave."
Militarized police forces acting as aggressive occupying armies in
poor communities , and the never-ending serial shootings of Black
citizens.
* The identification of opaque and ill-defined enemies-" illegal" immi- grants, border violators, Mus lims, Arabs , foreigners, queers, Black
peop le, independent women, terrorists-as a uni fying cause.
22
Bill Ayers
unthinkable alternatives: "What would happen if we abolished slavery?"
Boom! The runaways , the abolitionists, Denmark Vesey, Frederick Douglass , John Brown, and Harriet Tubman stoked a revolution, organizing and
unleashing the agency of enslaved people everywhere and challenging the
slaveocracy at its base-picture General Tubman with her laser-like focus
and that small, discreet pistol in her pocket , leading the troops toward free-
dom. "W hat if we took the next step in the Black freedom movement ?" Barn! Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Joanne Robinson, Septima Clark, and
their comrades in the 1960s conceived of a revolution that could create-
from a world of toil and trouble-a beloved community where Black people
would be free and all of us could become equals before one another and the law. Today's freedom fighters dare to proclaim once more that Black Lives
Matter as they open a fresh space to join the unfinished revolution right here,
right now.
*** Here, then, is a partial diagram of the known world, a rough sketch of what
is, but certainly not a picture of what could be or should be:
*
*
An empire unapologetically resurrected in a cauldron of deliberately
constructed fear, and in the name of renewed patriotic nationalism.
Unprecedented military expansion, a state of permanent war and the
creation of a war culture, a gulag that stretche s the length and breadth
of the country, where mass incarcerat ion is a defining characteristic in
the "land of the free," and white supremacy reigns triumphant in the
"home of the brave."
* Militarized police forces acting as aggressive occupying armies in poor communities, and the never-end ing serial shootings of Black
citizens.
* The identification of opaque and ill-defined enemies-"illegal" immi- grants, border violators, Muslims, Arabs, foreigners, queers, Black
people, independent women, terrorists-as a unifying cause.
22
Demand the Impossible!
* A panopticon-like existence in which we are all aware of being und er constant surveillance - cameras everywhere, mountain s of data from
our purchase and travel pattern s to reading and informa tion prefer-
ences accumulating in some dark basement or shiny supercomputer- but have been forbidden from watching them watching us. We're
assured by the state and the media (as well as by our families and
friends and neighbor s on occasion) that if we aren't doing anything
wrong, we have nothing to hide, and should, then, have no objection to standing naked under the bright lights and ceaseless scrutiny of the
state.
* Ritual searches, ID checks, and pat downs ("Assume the position!") at airports , train stations, and athletic events, which do little or nothing
to enhance safety or security but serve a serious purpose nonethele ss,
functioning as metaphor and theater, a reminder that we are always at war, always at risk, and always observed-the threat level for many years a never-changing if ill-defined and meaningless "orange"-a nd
as dress rehearsal for police and military actions that can override lib-
ert ies and rights without constraint or objection.
* The eclipse of the public, the frantic pace of privatization and the fire sa le of the public square-t he public schools and public hous ing, pris-
ons and the military, and in Chicago , the bridges and parking meters-
all of which represent the triumph of corporate power and a kind of
fatal entangling of corporations with the state, leading to a thieves'
paradise in government with the arid ideology of capital and the "ma r-
ket" promoted as the truest express ion of authentic participatory
democracy.
* Galloping disparities between the haves and the have-nots- the meta- phoric 1 percent and everyone else- both at home and on a global sca le.
* A steady drumbeat of "public secrets"-obvious lies issued by the powerful like, "We don 't torture" or "We don't spy on Americans" or
23
Bill Ayers
"We shot him becau se he was a clear threat to the officer" or "We
don 't bomb civilians," whose purpose is both future deniability and evidence of power' s arrogant ability to have its way regardless of truth
or evidence, law or popular will.
* Disdain for the arts, for intellectual life, for reason and evidence, and deep contempt for the necessary back and forth of serious argum ent or
discussion in favor of a nasty dialogue of the deaf.
* Formation of "popular " movements in the streets , apparently sponta- neous but in reality we ll funded and highly organized, based on big- otry, intolerance, and the threat of violence, all of it fueled by the
demoni zation of targeted, distinct racial , religiou s, or gendered vulner-
able population s and the creation of convenient sacrificial scapegoats .
* Cataclys mic human-mad e climate change-hurricanes, melting ice caps, raging wildfires and deforestat ion, rising oceans , the shredding of the Earth's protect ive shield, and more-dri ven by unchecked
extrac tion, reckless acquisitiveness, and the everyday operations of
predatory capitalism.
Countless contradictions abound: appalling poverty and unprecede nted
wealth , acts of war and words of peace, liveliness and chronic social depres-
sion, hope and despair. Reality TV and then reality itself. It's a land of wild
diversity, extremes and opposites, conflict and contestation , moments of per-
sona l joy, happine ss, and ecstasy against times of collective rage and
angu ish.
Still, the bullet points above-and I use the term deliberately- are pistol
shots that represent a bright thread that is recognizable and knowable. The
US jug gernaut is headed for catastrophe , either a new and sophisticated-
dare we say it?-form of friendly looking and familiar fascism, or some
other fmm of extreme social disintegrat ion. Another world is surely coming
- greater equality, socialism, participatory democracy, and peace are all
within our reach, but nuclear war, work camps, and slavery are also possibil-
24
Demand the Impossible!
ities. There are still choices and options , and nothing is guaranteed. Where
do we go from here? A season of light or a season of darkne ss? Chaos or community? Barbari sm or socialism?
*** What if we initiated a bold truth-and-reconciliation process that reached
back to the start- to the theft of Nat ive lands and the mass destruction of First Nations peoples, to the horrors and the continuing afterlife of s lavery, to
the accumulation of wea lth based on conquest and exploitation-and faced
reality in the interest of repairing historical wrongs?
What if we broke from the dogma of militarism-rejecting the anemic
and seemingly endless debates about whether the United States should bomb
this country or instead boycott some other country on the State Department' s
or Pentagon 's list of targets-an d organized an irres istible social uph eaval
strong enough to stop US invasions and conquest. What if we occupied bases, blocked munition s shipments and private militia s, boycotted ann s
dealers, sabotaged survei llance operations and drone manufacturers-a nd
forced the US government to disarm and close all foreign military bases within a year? Is that unthinkable? Why? Or what if we built a colossal
transnational movement that organized shadow elections (initially), inviting
any resident of a country with a US military presence within its borders to
vote in US national elect ions?
What if we stopped tinkering with the business of caging people and
abolished the prisons altogether? Seriously. What else wou ld have to change
to make prison abolition conceivable? And why is it eas ier to imagine the
end of the world (in movies and comics and nove ls) than it is to imagine the
end of prisons? Or the end of capitalism? What if we converted the American financial industry into a public utili-
ty, community owned and popularl y managed? What if we demilitarized and
disarmed the police forces and reorganized them under elected and transpar-
ent communi ty boards? What if we linked arms with National Nurses United
and allied health workers, took over hospitals and clinics, and barricaded the
25
Bill Ayers
insuranc e and pharmaceutical profiteers in their offices as we built a power-
ful popular movement to create free universal health care for all? What if
teachers, students , parents, families , and community member s built one big
union and seized the public schools in order to teach freedom, directing our
efforts to the full deve lopment of each and all? What if we organized our-
selves to create free, public neighborhood/community schools designed for
the many, not the few- the privileged or the lucky or the elite- and took as
a reasonable standard of support the generous average cost it took to educate
the children of the last five US president s? What if we successfu lly block-
aded every fossil fuel drilling and fracking site? Or what if we took control
of the top five energy corporations and placed them under popular control?
Questions like these might inspire quixotic daydreaming or curious con-
jecture , but what if instead they stin-ed us to create alternatives , to reach for
the spectacular, and to get busy with projects of reframing and repair, move-
ment-making, agitating, educating, community organizing, and action.
Plunging into the debri s we see all around us, swimming as hard as we' re
able toward a distant and indistinct shore with courage and hope and love,
overcoming difficultie s and reimagining life 's possibilities along the way-
this is the spirit these questions might unlea sh in each and all of us. The
questions then grow into calls to action: Disarm! Aboli sh the prisons! Seize
big pharma and big oil! Stop the cops! Smash white supremacy! Occupy the
schools !
With a similarl y provocat ive spirit , we might consider even more cosmic
question s:
* What does it mean to be human right now, today?
* How can we act ethically in our hun-ied, off-balance, and bewildering world?
* How did we get here, and where do we want to go?
*
*
What is our map of the known world, and how might it look if we
rethought it from top to bottom and redrew all the lines?
What is our responsibility as world citizens to one another and to
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Demand the Impossible!
future generations?
* What kind of society do we want to inhabit? * What is the relation ship of democracy to economics? * Who do we want to be as people? What can we become? * What gives mean ing to our lives?
*** "A ll 's we ll," says the town crier making rounds through the village and
lighting lamps for the night. Perhaps it's simply a reassuring thought for the
townspeople, or perhaps there's a more malevolent message , the toxic propa-
ganda that the status quo is inevitable and that there is no alternative to the
way things are. The dissident , the artist, the agitator, the dreamer , and the
activist respond , "No , all is not we ll." The cun-ent mom ent is neither
immutable nor inescapable, and its imperfections are cause for general alarm
-for the exploited and the oppressed the status quo is itself an ongoing act
of violence.
Activists announce through their lives and their work that a new world is
in the making. We can create a community of agitators and transform this
corner of the world into a place that we want to inhabi t. We can identify our-
selves as citizens of a country that does not yet exist and has no map , and
become that new nation 's pion eers and cartographers - and through our com-
mon actions bring a more assertive and vibrant public into being.
Each of us is immer sed in what is, the world as such. In order to link
arms and rise up we need a combination of somethings: seeds, surely; desire,
perhaps; a vision of communi ty and po ssibility ; necess ity and even, at times ,
desperation; willful enthusiasm and an acceptanc e that there are no guara n-
tees whatsoeve r.
Imagination is indispensab le in these efforts and pursuits because it " ig-
nites the slow fuse of possibility," as Emily Dickinson wrote. More process
than product , more stance than conclusion , engaging the imagination
27
Bill Ayers
involve s the dynamic work of igniting that fuse , mapping the world as it
really is, and then purposely stepping outside and leaning toward a possible world.
We may accept our lot in life as inevitable for decades , generations , even
centuries , but when fresh and startling winds begin to blow and revolution is
in the air, when a lovelier life comes into view for masses of people and a
possible world becomes vaguely and then acutely visible- glimpses of which fill the pages that follow-at that moment, the status quo become s
suddenly, shockingly unendurable. This is the moment when we reject the
fixed and the stable and begin to reach for alternatives. The imagination
erupts. And nouri shing our radical imagination s means traveling to the root of things , seeking causes and connections , while simultan eously struggling
in the here and now for relatively more peace and equality, comparatively
more joy and ju stice, an expanded field of hope.
Hope and fierce collective determination are choices; confidence is a pol- itics. We don't want to minimize the horror, but neither do we want to be
sucked into its thrall. Hope is an antidote to cynicism and despair; it's the
capacity to notice or invent alternatives; it' s nourishing the preciou s sense that standing directly against the world as such is a world that could be, or
should be. Whatever is the case stands side by side with what could be or
should be the case. Without that vital sense of possibility, doors close , cur-
tains drop, and we become stuck: we cannot adequately oppose injustice; we
cannot act freely; we cannot inhabit the most vigorous moral spaces. We are
never freer, all of us and each of us, than when we refuse the situations
before us as sett led and certain and determined-the absolu te end of the mat-
ter-and break the chains that entangl e us, launching ourselves toward the
imaginabl e.
*** We need to make a distinction between personal virtues- be honest , do your
work, and show up on time-and social or community ethics. Personal virtue
is surely good, but we would be hard pressed to say that a slave owner who
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Demand the Impossible!
paid the bills on time and was loyal or kind to the children was an ethical
person-the blithe indifference to the larger social context allows the rotten system itself to thrive. We need to think about how we act customarily and
collectively , how our society functions , how the contexts of politics and cul-
ture and economics, for example, interact with what we hold to be good , and
how an ethical society allows more of us more of the time to act ethically.
Most of us , after all, mostly follow the prevailing conventions of our time and place-mo st Spartans acted like Spartans; most Athenians, like Atheni-
ans; and most North Americans , even those in quite different economic and
social circumstances, and for better and for worse, act most often like North
Americans. To be an ethical actor and a person of moral character in an unju st social order requires something more: to work in common to change
that soc iety, to rewrite its rules and its narrative, to come together with others
in order to rise up and resist. It requires activists and agitator s and artists and
dissidents willing to take risks on behalf of something better. It's obvious now (even if it was obscure to many people then) that the good people and
the moral actors in the days of American slavery were the runaways who
exercised their agency in courageous and surprising acts of self- liberation and the abolitionists who joined the cause. When the system of slavery was
legally abolished, a new moral norm was established , and everyone , acting
normally, was freed to discove r the better angels of themselves.
What if we took another leap forward , and agreed that predation and
exploitation were unacceptable ? What if the vast majority of people mobi-
lized to abolish the system of private profit and wage slavery altogether?
What if the horizon of our moral univer se stretched that far? What could we
imagine then, and what might we build together?
Human beings are driven by a long and continuou s "I don't know, and I'd
like to find out." It' s not the known that propel s us out of bed and out the
door, it's not the status quo that prods us up the next hill or onto the next
challenge, nor is it "received wisdom" that pushes and pull s us along. Rather ,
the deep motivation at the core of our humanit y, the powerful force pushing
29
Bill Ayers
toward enlightenment and liberation, is the hop e that we will once again cre-
ate and invent, plant and build, challenge and overcome.
This is a call to resist the insistent pull of tradition or dogma, the easy
acquie scence to the orthodox opinion of the moment. It' s an argument
aga inst the cynical shrug that says, "That' s ju st the way things are," and the
wor ld-weary sigh that implie s that nothing can be done. This is a manife sto
against passivity and defeat, and in favor of action as an antidote to despair.
This is an invitation to gather together in an expanding public square , hand
in hand , shoulder to should er, in order to fight for something radically differ-
ent and dramati cally better.
History has surprised us before , and history can surely surprise us again.
What if?
This eBook is licensed to Victoria Agunod, vagunod @depaul.edu on 12/10/2018
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One
Military-Industrial Complex Index
Year the United States established what would become a standing army : 1940
Rank of United States in military spending worldwide: I Percent of world's total military budget: 34
Percent increase in US mili tary spending between 1998 and 20 11 (in constant 2011 dollars): 88
Total US military spending annually (in 2014): $609 ,914,000,000 Minimum number of US military bases in foreign countr ies: 587 Number of foreign military installations based on US territory: 0 Amount of money to private defense corporations in FY 2015:
$272,79 0,578,374 Percent to top five contract ors in 20 15: 27
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Bill Ayers
Rank of Un ited States as a global arms dealer (2015): l
A pervasive and frantically promot ed proposition that runs loose in the land is that being a military powerhouse makes the United States (and people
everywhere) safe, protects freedoms, and is a force for peace and democracy in a threatening, dangerou s, and hostile world. It's not true- not even close
-but it has a huge and sticky hold on our imagination s.
When a random US politician tells antiwar protesters picketing a town
hall meeting , "It' s because of the sacrifices our troops are making in [fill in the blank: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya , the "Middle East," Korea ,
Panama , or wherever turns out to be next] that you have the freedom to stand
here and speak out," s/he is tapping into that stuttering cliche. When a retired
general speaks confidently at a televised congressional hearing , explaining to
the credulous audience that the "enemy can be defeated" if only the Pen-
tagon would be granted more funds to purchase more weapons, and then
given greater leeway in their deployment and use, he 's issuing the same unexamined and banal truism. When a talking head tells us it's unfortunate
that US economic strength rides on oil , a resource that "happens to come
from a nasty neighborhood ," but it 's "a blessing" we have the power to
police that part of the world, s/he's doing the same thing. And when folks
across the political spectru m express public gratitude and support for "our
fighting men and women oversea s," while refusing to send their own chil-
dren into those same wars or harboring serious private doubts about the wis-
dom, purpose, and execution of whatever US adventure is cmTently in play,
they too are situated in that wide open field of received wisdom and dimin-
ishing options.
What if we challenged these instances of hypocr isy and defensive dogma ,
and insisted that there are more honest and straightforward ways to support
US military men and women? What if we demanded their immediate decom-
mission and return home, and insisted that they be provided excellent med-
ical and psychological care, good jobs , affordable housing, and the best
available educational opportunities-the things every human being
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Demand the Impossible!
deserves? What if we spoke up in the face of that woolly politician and
asked him to draw a straight line between free speech and the specific inva- sion he' s now supporting and explicitly (or at least implicitly) defending?
What if we locked arms as we built a growing wave of peace advocates ,
anticipating and opposing the next aggression, and the next?
Dramatically rethinking the manufactured rationale for war, reframing it,
and turning it upside-down brings us closer to the truth: The massive US military-indu strial powerhouse and increasingly privatized war machine
makes North Americans (and everyone else) unsafe in the world, undermine s
human security and hard-won rights and freedoms, and is the greatest pur-
veyor of violence on Earth.
*** The history of US military actions is a history of conquest and genocide
from the start and chaos and catastrophe ever since: invading and occupying Vietnam and then intentionally expanding that war into neighboring Laos
and Cambodia as retribution for the US defeat , a disaster that cost the lives
of six thousand people every week for ten years; unleashing a massive shock-and-awe attack on Iraq in 2003 that led to the breakup of that nation
and the rise of severa l reactionary fundamentali st and terrorist fonnations
including ISIS; orchestrating a fifty-year campaign to destabilize and topple
the Cuban government; propping up nasty regimes from medieval Saudi
Arabia to apartheid South Africa; overthrowing elected presidents in Iran in
1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973; instigating constant civil unrest
in Venezuela, for fourteen years including a successfu l if short-lived coup in
2002; supporting the communist purge and the genocide that followed in
Indonesia in the mid- I 960s; participating in the murd ers of the African free-
dom fighter Patrice Lumumba in Congo in 1961, the Moroccan anti-imperi-
alist Mehdi Ben Barka in Pari s in 1965, the internationalist Che Guevara in
Bolivia in 1967, and the anticolonial leader Amilcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau
in 1973; exporting billions of dollars in arms to Israel, Turkey , and Saudi
Arabia , and reactionary regimes and right-wing subver sives the world
33
Bill Ayers
around. As busy and ambitious as this looks, it' s only the tip of a menacing
mega-iceberg , an emblematic list as opposed to an exhaustive survey. My list so far doesn 't include the "war on terror" launched in 2001, the
subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq , the bombing campaigns that
followed in Yemen, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan , and Libya, the creation of
robot warriors and a unique modem evil called drone warfare as a preferred
tactic for delivering massive violence abroad while muting objections at home, the steady spread of offensive US military power in all direction s-
this never-ending turmoil raises troubling questions: Are the architects of
this madness crazy or are they stupid? Are they banal or evil? Is the real
goal, in spite of whatever lofty rhetoric about democracy and freedom is on offer, to break things up and smash cities and states to smithereen s intention-
ally? Mayb e pandemonium and extensive wreckage are not unintended con-
sequenc es but represent, instead, "mission accomplished." Maybe the
masters of war expect that at the end of the day there will be no opposing organized armed forces left, lots of rebuilding contracts to give away to their
billionaire pals, and plentiful oil or other resources there for the taking.
In any case, the swirling vortex of ruin obscures for many North Ameri- cans a central source and seed of this overwhelming mael strom of hostility
and bloodshed: the indefensible relationship between the United States and
its chief client, Israel. Israe l, as everyo ne knows , was established in 1948 by
a peopl e who had experienced the lash of ant i-Semiti sm for centuries and the
immediate colossal horror s of the Holocau st in Europe. What's often conve-
niently understated or downplayed in the United States, however , is that
while understandably wanting to create a refuge for themse lves, the founders
of the state of Israel dislodged the indigenous inhabitant s and destroyed their
society, forcing them to become displaced persons and refugees or second- class citizens in their own land ever since.
With generous and unwavering support from the United States, its protec-
tor, enabler, and big brother, Israe l has flouted UN resolution s and
internation al law-including nuclear agreements, the Geneva conventions ,
and the "laws of war"- se ized Palestinian land and zea lously supported the
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Demand the Impossible!
settler movement in the occupied territories with infrastructure and violent
force. Israel would stand completely alone in the world if not for the dys- functional relationship it clings to with the United States-from which it
gains billions of dollars in military aid alone.
The Palestinian s have the ongoing misfortune of being the victims of the
twentieth century's most notable victims-whose exceptional suffering at the
hands of the Nazis is consistently trotted out to justify Israel' s own crimes against humanity. Reactionaries who dream of a Greater Israel , a Promi sed
Land stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, plot and organize the elimi-
nation of all Palestinians one way or another. Under the banner of agony and
pain, Israel unleashes murderou s military attacks and conduct s massive eth- nic cleansing campaigns. And yet the reality on the ground is that the Pales-
tinians and the Israeli Jews are so intertwined that there is no separatio n
between them except for the separation of apartheid-two populations living
in one land , unequal today, but not necessarily forever. The appalling codependency between the United States and Israel is one
root cause of the world's suffering, and another is the deployment of its
"global basing strategy" in which the United States maintain s nuclear war-
heads in the air at all times , hides CIA agents in every embassy and behind
every tree, spies on everyone everywhere all the time, and sends hundreds of
thousands of "fighting men and women overseas" as today's Spartans. That
strategy leads to no lasting solutions. On the contrary, the rise of this domi-
neerin g nexus creates a culture of fear and social paranoia, encourages
deception, dishonesty, and militarism , places the economy in the precarious
position of adjunct and subsidiary to the Pentagon, undermines the moral
landscape, and enriches a few as it devastates the lives of million s.
*** What if seeing this deadly display allows us to discus s war and military
might on an entirely different terrain? Could we then come closer to match-
ing our reality with our predicament ? What if we echoed Iraq Veterans
Against the War: not another drop of blood or another wasted dollar on the
35
Bill Ayers
"war on terror" or the imperial dreams of the 1 percent? Endless war only
deepens the catastrophe and suspends or destroys the possibility of reimagin- ing and rebuilding the United States as a more peaceful , joyous , just, partici-
patory, and cooperative place.
This reimagining taps into plain sense: we want to be good and peaceful
people , to be kind and generous and neighborly , to do unto others as we
would have them do unto us. The Warrior is not the only American arche- type; there is also the Hard Worker, the Good Farmer , the Peace Lover, and
the Free Thinker. Two histories, two aspects of the American experience ,
two spirit s in our collective psyche: fighter/peacemaker, trooper/bridge-
builder, soldier-at-arms /pacifist. When we reframe the discussion this way, we can dive headfirst into the contradictions, fully engaging that deeply con-
tested space.
Veterans for Peace has thousands of members in chapters from coast to
coast and around the globe who call in one unified and rising voice for an end to war: "We, having dutifully served our nation , do hereby affinn our
greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace."
Their message is spare and unadorned: abolish war as an instrument of internation al policy; end the arms race and eliminate nuclear weapons;
restrain the government from intervening in the affairs of other nations; sup-
port universal principl es of nonintervention and se lf-determination; work for
human security not national security; increase public awareness of the vari-
ous and sundry costs of war. In other words, abrogate the military contract in
favor of a moral social contract.
Antiwar vets bring a laser-like clarity to war's perverse and seductive
qualities, its myths versus its monstrous reality, and to the ambivalence and
conflicted responses return ing vets face at home . Like Odysseus , literature' s
most famous returnin g veteran, both war and the journey home are marked
by obstacle s and challenges, and most often characterized by brutal remem-
brances of things lost. Lost comrades, lost time, and lost childhoods; loss of
a family one once knew; loss of a sturdy sense of well-being; loss of the
sweet dreams of youth when everything seemed possible. Veterans can easi ly
36
Demand the Impossible!
feel like dislocated strangers in their own lands: no one and nothing remains
quite the same. And like every generation of fighters since Odysseus 2,800 years ago they know too well the emotional trauma and mental shards that
travel home with them. Suffering with what was once called "shell shock" or
"battle fatigue" (or less generously " irritabl e heart" and "malingering "),
today's veterans have experienced up close that univer sal creature whose
name has morphed into a sanitized, technologically appointed, and contem- porary medical condition , irritable heart with a scientific shine: post-trau-
matic stress syndrome.
In 2004 a group of young people founded Iraq Veterans Against the War
(IVAW), and a month later mustered a small but spirited contingent to march in New York City at the Republican National Convention. Their name
emblazoned on a banner brought wild applause and cheering wherever they
went in those few days. By the end of the summer their membership had
swelled to fifty. Its number s have exploded since then. Search for a chapter in your neigh-
borhood ; seek out a member. You will likely find-as I have again and again
- a person whose rhetoric is strictly no-bull shit and whose message is punc- tuated with passion and urgency. These are multiracial , multi-ethnic women
and men of every creed and every age and background whose stance echoes
perhaps the best line from the film Avatar: "I didn't sign up for this shit."
Each wants to share with the rest of us the difficult and necessary lessons
they've learned-there 's no time to waste with frothy rhetoric. They intend ,
as well, to shoulder what they take to be a sacred duty: representing their
fallen comrades who believed-incorrectly it turns out-that their sacrifices
would advance toward peace. Their zeal is forged in the furnaces of war;
their fire is tempered with experiences of pain and loss, self-sacrifice and
loyalty, endurance and courage. They demand to be heard .
*** The memb ers of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) were brave and
lucid in their quest for peace in the 1970s. They told the truth about the real-
37
Bill Ayers
ity of invasion and occupation, about war crimes committed daily by US air
strikes and bombardments and ground troops, about the big lies that led to and then perpetuated the war. They also recognized immediately that the US
defeat in Vietnam was not all bad-which is worse for the world, after all, an
aggressive, imperial army triumphant or an invading army defeated? The
defeat was humbling but at the same time humanizing for the troops and for
society as a whole at a certain moment - it provided a space of clarity and grace.
Imagine the force that we would unleash if hundreds of thousands of
young people gave up their weapons of war and redeployed their intelligence
and their energy to build bridges, repair roads, improve the housing stock across the country; to work with youth in athletic and arts programs; to care
for the elderly and the very young; to staff emergency rooms; to create urban
farms and rural performance spaces. Imagine who we could become if the
Warrior transformed into the Teacher and the Caregiver and the Farmer. The masters of the Pentagon, insisting that the United States didn't "lose
Vietnam," but rather chickened out, learned a different set of lessons, of
course , and came to a different set of conclusions: First, a citizen army is not feasible for a country bent on permanent war because citizens have the irri-
tating habit of occasionally thinking for themselves , saying or doing the
most outrageous things like collectively resisting illegal and immoral
actions. Second, a free press- which may act as a public relations arm of
nationali stic war-mongering much of the time, but in an era of defeat may
ask inconvenient questions and uncover damning truths-must never be
allowed unfetter ed access to a US battlefield. Lo and behold: A citizen army
becomes a relic of the past, replaced by a profe ssional (with many features
of a mercenary) army; the old selective service system is replaced with an
"economic draft"; and since 1975 no establishment, for-profit media con-
glomerate has sent reporter s to a US war zone without a military minder.
I remember a young, war-weary John Kerry testifying in front of the Sen-
ate upon his return from war saying that the US military committed war
crimes in Vietnam every day, not as a matter of choice but as a matter of pol-
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Demand the Impossible!
icy. An older John Kerry, secretary of state in the second term of a war-hun-
gry administration, denounced Russia's intervention in Crimea, saying in effect that it's inappropriate to invade another country in order to force your
will on people at the end of a barrel of a gun. Though the mainstream media
failed to point out the breathtaking hypocrisy of this scolding from a high US
official, Stephen Colbert gave Secretary Kerry a congratulatory "t ip of the
hat" when he played the full clip, gestured sternly, and said, "Starting now!" In the empire of lies, every truth-teller is a traitor; in the United States of
Amnesia, memory is the first casualty.
*** Justice and democracy do not belong to war; on the contrary, each is easily
injured and quickly exterminated in its furnaces. John Dewe y observed that
"A ll nations , even those professedly the most democratic ," are compelled in
war "to tum authoritarian and totalitarian." 1 We can see the wreckage all around us: omnivorous national security and surveillance; the abrogation of
privacy and civil liberties; the wide use of mass incarceration; the banality of
torture, dome stically and internationally; and the undermining of tolerance everywhere. Historically , law and rights yield in the face of war: Abraham
Lincoln's famous suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War; the
Palmer Raids following World War I; the mass arrests and incarceration of
Japanese Americans during World War II; illegal imprisonment as policy
today. These moves are all defended by the war-makers as necessary during
wartime.
Since 9111 the United States has entered new territory, for we are in our
fifteenth year of a government-proclaimed state of permanent war, an abso-
lute war against "terrorism" or "evil." While there are indeed dreadful and
desperate tactics being deployed everywhere - suicide bombings, hijacking s,
beheadings , random killings- the enemy remains vague and the target elu-
sive: terrorists and "evildoers ," insurgents and radicals, the "worst of the
worst" or the "bad actors." Practically every politician in Washington notes
casually that we are at war; it' s completely normali zed. George W. Bush
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Bill Ayers
proudly called himself a "war president"; Barack Obama too chose to claim
the mantle of the warrior. Whoever sits on the throne of American Empire wears the garment s of the warmonger- unless and until we bring the power
of a popular movement to bear down and end imperialism altogether.
Imagin e if every "known terrorist" were dead or in prison. Now try to
imagine the state announcing an end to airport searches and phone taps. It' s
inconcei vable. Ask one of our careless politician s how we will know if any given war is
won, or what the benchmark s of succe ss or failure might be, and they
become speechless. For these are perpetua l wars, wars without borders, with-
out obvious or easily defined enemies, and without concrete objecti ves; we can only know they are over when our Dear Leaders tell us they' re over.
Until then-and don ' t hold your breath- your rights to free speech and asso-
ciation are suspended because the rulers want to keep you safe, and these
measures, they assure us, are an unfortunat e necess ity of war.
*** Private Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) is a US soldier who was isolated in a military dungeon at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Vir-
ginia for the crime of truth-telling. She was denied exercise, given no pillow
or sheets for the bed, and, while on "su icide watc h," fed antidepressants by
military doctors as government agents tried to erase her mind , destroy her
spirit, and obliterate any sense of agency. It 's remini scent of the heartless tor-
turer in 1984 who explains to Winston what will happen to him: "Neve r
aga in will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be
dead inside you. Neve r again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or
jo y of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be
hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with
ourselves."
The US government fell over itself to demonize and misdirect , portrayin g
Private Manning as a nut and a repressed homosexual. It labeled Julian
Assange , WikiLeaks founder and public face, a terrorist, enemy combatant,
40
Demand the Impossible!
and irresponsible saboteur, and threatened everything from assassination to
charges of espionage and high treason. When anyone is in the crosshairs of the most powerful empire on Earth, everything said about them should be
taken with a truckload of sa lt.
The United States never answers the question of why, in a putative
democracy, all the WikiLeaks material was classified to begin with. Nor does
it address the content of the document s, the dark and dirty secrets of the war- makers, the cozy "don 't ask, don 't tell" relationships with the nastiest dicta-
tors on Earth, the stunning violence and the cold rationalizations, or the mur-
derousness followed by lies, deception , and cover-ups. The US government
never faces the most obvious and damning truth of the whole affair: we live
in a barricaded , secret society, a garrison state that support s and is supported
by a powerfully developed culture of war.
Umberto Eco who, after noting that the Orwellian prophecy is realized
once power can monitor with a watc hful eye the total movement of every cit- izen, raised a cheer for the secrecy pirate s and the hackers of WikiLeaks
because "the surveillance ceases to work only one way" and "the citizens'
self-appointed avenger" can open the crypts of state secrets.2
When in 2014 a federal judge sentenced Jeremy Hammond to ten years in
prison for his work with the hacking network Anonymous, she referenced
the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg (a Jeremy
supporter who exposed the lies that were used to prop up support for the war
in Vietnam in the 1960s) as she scolded from the bench. "You're no Daniel
Ellsberg," she intoned, forgetting that Daniel Ellsberg was no "Daniel Ells-
berg" when he was in fact Daniel Ellsberg; back then he was demonized,
systematically harassed, threatened, arrested, charged under the Espionage
Act, and put on trial, facing 115 years in prison.
Edward Snowden, the latest avenger of the people, offered secret classi-
fied document s taken from the National Secur ity Agency to journali sts
working at mainstream news organizat ions; severa l, including the New York
Times, the Guardian, and Der Speigel, chose to publish parts of those docu-
ments over severa l months. Snowden fled the country to Hong Kong , and
41
Bill Ayers
later Moscow, as he was denounced in Congress from all sides, put on trial
by the corporate media, and called a traitor, a spy, a lowlife. Perhaps he was no Daniel Ellsberg either, but his courageous actions put him well on his
way to becoming as iconic and important now as Ellsberg was then.
*** As a little blue-sky exercise, imagine any bit of the war culture transformed into a peace-and-love culture: the Super Bowl opening with thousands of
local school kids rushing through the stands distributing their poetry, and
then everyone singing "This Land Is Your Land" or "G ive Peace a Chance,"
or "We Shall Overcome"; an airlines or bus terminal clerk saying, "We want
to invite any teachers or nurses in the gate area to board first, and we thank
you for your service"; urban high schools eliminating ROTC and banning
military recruiters in favor of school-wide assemblies for peace recruiters
featuring Code Pink , and after-school programs led by Black Youth Project 100 and the American Friends Service Committee.
Like every culture or subcultur e, the war culture hangs together with a
complex set of shared meanings, webs of significanc e and common assump- tions woven in such a way that memb ers of the cultur e can communicate
with and recognize one another. The war culture promot es a pervasive and
growing common sense of American vio lence unleashed.
The United States spends more than a trillion dollars a year on war and
preparation for war, more than the rest of the world combined. The war cul-
ture accepts that as a des ire for peace. The United States has military bases
stretching across the globe, including a base in the Italian Alps, and yet there
are no Italian air bases in the Catskills, for example. The war culture sees
that as sensible and necessary. The war culture is everyw here, simply taken
for granted, always lurking in the shadows and occasionally bursting forth
and on full display.
I remember a trailer for a film I saw in a theater severa l years ago-- it
looked dreadful, so I never saw the film, but it could well have been Mars
Attacks or The Day the Earth Stood Still- in which the repeating trope was
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Demand the Impossible!
an alien confronting a group of start led Earthlings, saymg m an eerily
mechanical voice, "We come in peace"- ju st before blasting them into small pieces. It takes a minute for reality to catch up to these hapless Earthlings ,
but eventually they get it. Like the challenge of the wandering spouse caught
in the arms of a lover, the aliens hold to the classic defense, "Who are you
going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?"
This is precisely the situation the United States finds itself in all over the world: We come in peace . We always come in peace . But let us ask the youth
in the streets of Cairo or Tunis facing US arms in the hands of American-
financed dictators, or the women servicing the US military bases stretching
across their landscapes, or the farmers and workers all over Latin America, Africa, and Asia whose repressive police forces and militia s are trained and
supplied by US aid, or any people anywhere who find themselves in the
sights of an American-made rocket or a US drone: What are you going to
believe? Your own lying eyes? In our stuttering mechanical message we announce to ourselves and to
everyone else that we are a peacefu l people, our intentions always righteous
and ju st. It's comforting, and it 's a deeply held self-description , so com- pelling that it rises quickly to the status of common sense, requiring no
invest igation, no fact-checking, no external validation whatsoever. All right-
thinking people believe it; everyone simply knows that it's true.
On any given week you can read or hear the words of a surprised soldier
in a US-occ upied land saying, "We came to help , but a lot of people don 't
seem to like us," or, "The hardest thing is figuring out who our friends are
and who the enemy is among the locals-t hey smile at you one minute , and
toss a bomb the next." There's a kind of willful innocence and self-infli cted
or forced blindn ess at work here, for these are the exact words of the British
colonial militiaman in India or the French soldier in occupied Algeria or
Indochina , the theme song of the troops in every conquering army since time
began. See the pictures of US troops searchin g a home looking for "bad
guys" or " insurgents" or "terrorists" in any recent theater of war; take the
43
Bill Ayers
per spective for a moment of the women watching from the comer, huddled
with their terrorized children. "We come in peace ," but wherever the United States puts down the boot ,
it brings more war, wider war, and a deeper commitment to war as the way.
Marine Corps major general Smedley Butler, two-time winner of the Con-
gressional Medal of Honor , said in 193 5 that "War is a racket." That was the
title of a popular pamphlet he wrote, and a theme he elaborated in speeches throughout the country over many years: " It always has been. It is possibly
the oldest, easily the most profitabl e, surely the most vicious .... It is the
only one in which the profit s are reckoned in dollar s and the losses in lives."3
Butler consistently urged citizens to demand the impossible and support three radical proposals: strictly limit all military forces to a defen sive pos-
ture ; hold a referendum of those who would be on the front lines before any
military action is undertaken; and take the profit out of war by, among other
measures, conscripting the captains of industry and finance as the foot sol- diers in any impending fight.
Years later, in his farewell address to the nation , President Dwight D.
Eisenhower, a career soldier and supreme Allied commander during World War II, warned of the ''unwarranted influence , whether sought or unsought,"
of a vorac ious and dangerou s "military-industrial complex," and "a perma-
nent armaments industry of vast proportion s" capable of undermining the
institution s and culture of democracy. The "conjunction of an immense mili-
tary establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experi-
ence," he said, and its "total influence-economic , political, even spiritual-
is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal govern-
ment." He predicted "the disastrous rise of misplaced power" unless Ameri-
cans refused and resisted it, and committed themselves instead to working "in the interests of world peace and human betterment. "4
Fifty years after this most-famou s cautionary message the permanent war
economy is we ll established and interwoven with all other aspects of our
lives. Eisenhower's speculation concerning a shadowy agenda promot ed by
an all-powerful, corporatized military has been realized: torture at Abu
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Demand the Impossible!
Ghraib and Guantanamo; "black sites" for CIA special rendition cases; war-
rantle ss wiretaps; multiyear military detention s without due process; sur- veillance camera s everywhere; and growing banks of fingerprint s, eye scans,
and DNA samples. This is a description of what is. This is here; it is us.
*** To hope for a world at peace and in balance , powered by love, joy, and ju s- tice, to insist that the citizens and residents of the United State s become a
people among people (not a superior or a chosen people) and that the country
becomes a nation among nations (not some kind of crypto-fascist
ubemation) is to resist the logic and the reality of war, and to see, as well, the war culture itse lf as a site of resistance and transformation. It's to break
with the frame that acts as if war is natural and inevitabl e. It' s to do the hard
work of making a vibrant and robust peace movement-conn ecting with the
environmental activists, the immigrant rights forces, the Black Lives Matter upsurge, feminis ts, and the queer movement-organi zing to close all US
military bases abroad and to bring all troops home now, leav ing no US mili-
tary or paid mercenaries behind; compelling our governmen t to sign all pending international treatie s on nuclear disarmament ; mobili zing to cut mil-
itary spending by 10 percent a year for the next ten years, dedicating the sav-
ings to education and health; rallying to suspend and then abrogate all
contracts between the US government and Halliburton , Lockheed Martin,
and Northrop Grumman.
We come together , then, to unleash our wild and free imagination s---our
art and humor and creative energies-to defeat the plodding, murderou s, and
instrumentalist logic of war. Theirs is a calculus of conquest and pain . Ours
offers a measure of healing and possibility.
This eBook is licensed to Victoria Agunod, vagunod @depaul.edu on 12/ 10/2018
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