Let me begin by saying to my sisters and brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan: You are not alone in your opposition to these illegal occupations. We must struggle together on every military base and in every combat zone and with every veteran to end the occupation. Let me be clear. We have the power to bring the troops home when soldiers throw down their weapons and refuse to fight.
When I joined the military in November 2004, the army and marines were engaged in the second invasion of Fallujah. During my tour in 2006, I was ambushed many times and struck by numerous roadside bombs as my unit fought the insurgency in the farmlands west of Baghdad. This experience radicalized me.
When I returned to Fort Drum in upstate New York I bought a film called The Ground Truth and watched it with Sergeant Matt Hrutkay, with whom I served in Iraq. The film inspired Matt to join Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) when he got out of the army. In March of 2007 Matt, along with Vermont veterans, the local Campus Anti-War Network, and members of the International Socialist Organization, put together an event at the Different Drummer Cafe in Watertown, New York. The Different Drummer is the first off-post coffeehouse for GIs since the Vietnam War. It was started by Tod Ensign of Citizen Soldier.
At Different Drummer I met others who articulated an opposition to the war that was in line with my experiences. Three other active-duty soldiers signed up for IVAW, and it gave me a framework for how to organize to end the war. After my rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, I organized a second event at the Different Drummer with former antiwar veterans and civilian activists. We signed up more veterans and built support for Eugene Cherry, a soldier at Fort Drum who went AWOL after returning from Iraq because he was not receiving proper medical treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
As a result of our activism, Eugene avoided a court-martial and was discharged without jail time. It was our first victory at Fort Drum and it built our confidence. If we organized the grass roots to support our struggle, then we could win. Eugene’s case also sent a message to the soldiers of Fort Drum that they were not alone.
I met Eli Wright, a combat veteran and medic who had transferred to Fort Drum after serving at Walter Reed and in Iraq. He found the Different Drummer Cafe while walking through Watertown. He had been a member of IVAW for almost two years before coming to Fort Drum. We supported each other in myriad initiatives, all of which were 100 percent legal for active-duty soldiers.
During that time IVAW organized a bus full of veterans to come to Fort Drum. They held barbeques and other social activities and again showed the troops on post that they were not alone. We signed up eight new members and had ninety people from the community come to show their support. This kind of turnout for an event organized by IVAW was a success beyond our wildest imagination.
We began building a model: showing that GI organizing could not be successful without the civilian antiwar movement. In order for soldiers to publicly oppose the occupation, they must have a movement behind them. That is the most important component to the work at Fort Drum. Through our networking with ally organizations we were able to raise money, host events, and make contacts on the base. We worked with every organization that supported our strategy of ending the war.
In the summer of 2007, other IVAW members and I organized a march and rally to publicly introduce our chapter to active-duty soldiers and help the community support war resisters. On September 29, 2007, the march brought over 2,500 people from upstate New York to Fort Drum, and more active-duty GIs became members of IVAW. Within a matter of months, our chapter went from three members to almost thirty.
Because of the high turnover rate within the military, we had to constantly train new leaders in the chapter. As soldiers left the military or changed duty stations, they took their experiences from Fort Drum and helped build other chapters around the country. Building a support network around the base of experienced organizers was the key to the survival of the chapter because outside organizations helped us develop leadership in our new IVAW members.
As I left the military in early 2008, I was confident in the Fort Drum chapter because we had been successful in building a civilian support network, providing outside mental health care for soldiers, and built leadership in the chapter that had a focus on base building and growing connections with outside groups in order to inspire soldiers to fight for the end of the occupation in Iraq. Fort Drum was the first active-duty chapter in IVAW and it can be a positive example for the movement.
The most important lesson I learned was that we didn’t need to water down our beliefs, nor did we need to shock people into action. GIs are ready for politics. Their experiences are moving them to want a better world, and our ability to articulate our principled opposition to the Iraq war is what gives us the power to end it.