By Emma Kaplan
Eight of us from the We Are Not Your Soldiers Tour recently hit the first stop on the Warped Tour in Mountain View, CA. The Warped tour is a summer punk rock concert that draws thousands of youth. Our Crew included including five students who first heard the tour last Spring, and Robin Long, an Iraq war resister who spent a year in jail for refusing orders to go to Iraq .
Our booth was decorated with We Are Not Your Soldiers bandanas and graphic pictures that showed what the military is doing in the Middle East. We also had t-shirts reading “Military Recruiters: Get The Hell Away From Me”, and we put up an enlargement of the Crimes Are Crimes Statement, People stopped by the booth all day to read the statement. .
These youth went through the crowds leafletting and handing out orange ribbons. The ribbons were popular. At points you could see spatters of orange in the crowd.
Our booth was very controversial. People either hated or loved what we were doing. The majority of people we met would come up and just flat out tell us “This booth is awesome, I am so glad you guys are here because I really hate military recruiters and I am still against these wars” Some people who were active duty in the military who said we were misrepresenting what the military was about and some who were straight up hostile. We welcomed the debate.
We challenged them: why do they think these wars are waged, do they think these wars are immoral? It was almost sad to see how many of them didn’t know anything about these wars even though they wanted to fight in them. It really exposed the brainwashing and indoctrination that happens when people join the military. They lose almost all sense of critical thinking.
Some people thought Iraq had attacked the US on 9/11, and they didn’t know the difference between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. We asked them how Islamic Fundamentalists became a force in the world, and many of them would say that they have been around forever. They insisted that civilians being killed by the U.S is not the fault of the military but the result of “bad apples.”
Robin talked about his experience in boot camp, where people are TRAINED to kill civilians – and that is why he resisted. He gave examples of being taught to shoot civilians and degrade people, especially Middle Eastern people. People would bust through the crowd and jump into the conversation, saying that these wars were wrong and they were on our side and would sign up on the spot.
One group of youth with US flags painted on their faces. One of them had just joined the marines and told us that we were siding with the terrorists, that the Afghanistan people are retarded. He was suspicious of somebody at our table who was a person of color and asked if they were from Iraq. He told another person of color to go kick rocks in Mexico. This brought forward a lot of anger from people who were listening and would compel them to take a stand against it by joining We Are Not Your Soldiers.
His friends quickly distanced themselves from him, and one made a point to say that he was very much against the wars and agreed with what we were doing. He gave us his contact info and wants to bring the tour to his school..
Overall, it was a great day and a lot of people knew that We Are Not Your Soldiers was on the scene . Some of the students were shy in the beginning but by the end of the day they were very outspoken to anybody that would approach the table. They said they liked listening to Robin and other We Are Not Your Soldiers speakers because they said it gave them confidence to tell people the truth and stick to their principles.
It also had an impact to have students talking to other students about why they are a part of this campaign and why We Are Not Your Soldiers is exactly what people need to be participating in if they hate these wars that are being waged in their names. We have more stops planned in major cities like Chicago, NJ, L.A.. When fall hits, we want to hit the ground running and pack our schedule with as many classroom presentations and assemblies as possible.
We need money to keep this going for real. Unlike the military we don’t have billions of dollars of funds to get our message out to young people everywhere. We depend on people who see the importance of this movement to take responsibility for making it a reality. The cost for this stop on the Warped Tour alone was about $500. Whether you can join us in this movement or not, donating to this movement is a way of making this resistance real and reviving the anti-war movement in this country.
