April 2004

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Anti-War Organizing in a Military Town

Lou Plummer was in the Army National Guard from 1983 to 1989. He is a member of Military Families Speak Out, www.mfso.org , and organizes for social justice in Fayetteville, NC. A version of this account appeared on www.antiwar.com. Photo © Chuck Fager.

On the day after his nineteenth birthday in 1966, my father received his commission as an officer in the same North Carolina National Guard unit that took his father to Europe in World War Two. By 1969, having left the Guard, Dad was in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division for the first of his two tours there. After he returned, our family moved into officer's quarters at Ft. Bragg, conveniently located near our hometown, Fayetteville, NC. I idolized my warrior father and told him that I wanted to be like him, camping out, eating C-rations, and killing Viet Cong, not an uncommon feeling among seven-year-old military kids.

In 1969, Dean Holland became the first soldier at Ft. Bragg to receive conscientious objector status after receiving help from North Carolina's Quaker community. With Holland's leadership on the ground in Fayetteville, Quaker congregations from across the state raised money to open a GI counseling center in Fayetteville.

The center, Quaker House (www.quakerhouse.org), was a catalyst for the growing GI resistance developing in the military at the time. With the help of angry young war veterans, the Quaker House staff helped organize a rally in a nearby park featuring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. The rally drew 4000 protesters, including over a 1000 GIs, many of whom attended wearing hats and wigs in an attempt to avoid detection by military police. Four days after the rally, Quaker House was fire bombed in a case that was never solved.

Undeterred, Quaker House reopened. It remains open to this day, a part of the GI Rights Network (www.girights.org). Over 50,000 members of the military have received counseling on discharge and other issues from its tireless workers.

In recent years, Quaker House has again become the hub of an antiwar movement in Fayetteville, driven by vets and members of military families.

The impact of antiwar organizing in a military town is hard to measure. Ft. Bragg is the home of the 82nd Airborne and the Army's Special Operations Command. Those institutions have loud voices and impact the community in many ways, economically and socially. In Fayetteville, a small grassroots peace group formed soon after September 11th. Rarely are more than a dozen organizers present at business meetings, although occasionally 50 to 100 people attend its various events. When the group conducted a series of vigils during the opening weeks of the invasion of Iraq, counter-demonstrators routinely outnumbered and out-shouted the peaceniks.

As time passed and the body count from Iraq grew steadily higher, the counter-demonstrations ceased. More and more passers by, including troops in uniform, began offering honks of support. More thumbs up signs were seen.

The wives and parents of service members began to appear. Several veterans made and held their own signs for the weekly one-hour vigils. My son, an active duty sailor assigned to the USS Dwight D, Eisenhower, was prosecuted for disloyalty by the Navy for speaking to a reporter at one of the demonstrations he attended while home on leave, a development that received national and international attention.

SP4 Jeremy Hinzman, a paratrooper assigned to the 82nd Airborne, attended meetings regularly, both before and after deploying to Afghanistan. In January, Hinzman left Fayetteville with his wife and son to apply for refugee status in Canada after his application for conscientious objector status was denied and his unit received orders for Iraq. Chuck Fager, the director of Quaker House, recently visited the Hinzman family in Toronto.

Connections were made with a broader network of peace activists, most significantly Military Families Speak Out and the Bring Them Home Now campaign. The support from these two groups was notable for their ability to redirect requests for help (usually in the form of email messages) from Ft. Bragg families back to activists on the ground in Fayetteville.

Newcomers to Ft. Bragg, and there is a steady stream of them, are often at a loss on how to make connections with local people. It is easier for them to find the web site of a national organization than it is for them to know how to contact smaller groups. One can't exactly look up the listings for "Peace and Justice" in the yellow pages.

As happened during the Vietnam War, Quakers and other peace activists partnered with vets and military families in Fayetteville and elsewhere to plan a rally in the same park where Fonda and Sutherland appeared 34 years ago. The March 20, 2004 rally drew over 1000 people.

Veterans from several states led the march, including former Marine Michael Hoffman, who last year was marching through Iraq during the invasion. Members of military families, including the wives and parents of soldiers from Ft. Bragg also helped guide the procession. Because of threats made on the archconservative website FreeRepublic.com, there was a significant police presence, especially as the crowd passed a small area where approximately 50 counter-demonstrators stood.

A visibly nervous Beth Pratt, whose husband is serving as a truck driver with a unit from Ft. Bragg stationed in Iraq brought many in the crowd to tears as she eloquently explained how she never watches the news or reads the newspaper for fear of reports on military casualties. "It's hard living without your best friend," Pratt said as she explained that after returning from Iraq, her husband was certain to be redeployed soon afterwards.

Other well known activists, including Nancy Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, and David Potorti, of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, spoke as well.

Cultural performers such as Fruit of Labor, Hip Hop Against Racist War, and Vietnam Veteran singer songwriter Ralph Baldwin offered entertaining respites from the heavy emotion conveyed by the speakers.

Elaine Johnson, from Cordova, SC, whose son Darius was killed in Iraq on November 2, 2003, gave an especially riveting description of her anguish near the end of the nearly three hour program.

Long-time activist Dennis O'Neil, a member of the national coordinating committee of the Bring Them Home Now! campaign, traveled from New York for the event. O' Neil said, "I've been doing this a long time and I've been to more marches than I can count, but today is one of the best and most inspiring events I've ever attended."

As the crowd left the park, organizers were already making plans for continued support of the movement in Fayetteville. It took a long time and a lot of senseless killing during Vietnam for elements of the left, members of the faith community, vets, and military families to combine their strengths.

Today, only a year after the invasion of Iraq, those groups are already working together. They are making an impact.

Their voices are being heard.

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