G.I. Joe:
Lessons for the Coffeehouse Movement
http://www.warresisters.org/node/794
By Tod Ensign
Summer 2009
During the Vietnam War, the 20 or so G.I. projects, which operated
outside every important Army and Marine base, played an essential
role in fomenting antiwar opposition among rank-and-file soldiers.
This movement, along with the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese,
arguably forced the United States to withdraw from Vietnam. As the
recent military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq soured, it became
obvious that U.S. troops were going to be deployed in those countries
for years to come. Drawing on our Vietnam War experience, Citizen
Soldier decided to look into reviving a G.I. coffeehouse movement to
oppose the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
After considering several East Coast bases, we decided to launch our
new project near Ft. Drum in upstate New York. We chose this base
because it's the home of the 10th Mountain (Light) Division, which
endures the highest deployment rate of any division in the U.S. Army.
We rented a 1,500-square-foot space in a downtown shopping arcade in
Watertown, N.Y., where we opened the doors of our Different Drummer
Internet Cafe in October 2007. We immediately set out to spread the
word about activities and counseling services we were featuring at
the Drummer. We went online with our website to provide regular
updates on cafe events. We also hooked up three computers, which
passersby were invited to use free of charge.
Due to Watertown's heavy reliance on Ft. Drum as an economic engine,
we feared being blacked out by local media. These fears proved
unfounded as both the local daily newspaper and the base paper were
happy to accept our advertisements. The local TV news shows (as well
as the New York Times and the Syracuse Journal Standard) reported on
issues or soldiers' cases that we publicized at our cafe.
Many G.I. projects during the Vietnam War attracted civilian
volunteers who would commit six months or a year to living in the
base town and throwing themselves into the work with soldiers. While
we were able to recruit a few local volunteers, we had no luck
drawing in fulltime help.
In addition to weekend dances for which we hired popular local rock
bands to perform, we also scheduled a series of Saturday afternoon
film screenings, followed by public discussion. While the documentary
films we featured such as Sir! No Sir!, Iraq for Sale, and Body of
War were exciting, the turnout for these events was not. We were
lucky if one or two soldiers turned up for a film. Attempts to draw
the few G.I.s out on the issues raised by the films mostly fell flat,
with local peace activists dominating the discussion.
The small Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) chapter at Ft. Drum
attempted to hold regular membership meetings at the cafe, but they
were sporadic and poorly attended. We encouraged the national IVAW
leaders to commit organizing resources to Ft. Drum, but aside from a
couple of "bus tour" visits there was no sustained outreach. Some
individual IVAW members tried to recruit among their units. However,
the economic downturn has bolstered the Army's success at winning
re-enlistments. It's likely that soldiers who decided to stay in felt
that becoming a member of IVAW wasn't a wise career move. There was
also a problem with continuity of leadership because IVAW members who
were discharged from the base couldn't wait to leave the area.
We did register a few successes, such as co-sponsoring a picnic in a
Watertown park in June 2007, which welcomed an IVAW bus that was
touring military bases. Another success was turning the cafe into a
gallery to display Nina Berman's award-winning photography of wounded
veterans, Purple Hearts. This attracted some soldiers and their
families as well as sympathetic citizens and media attention. The
show was later transferred to the commissary at Ft. Drum, where it
hung for a few hours before an Army officer spotted it and had it taken down.
For me, an unavoidable truth presented itself when we organized our
Ft. Drum Spring Festival to mark Armed Forces Day in May 2009. This
event was organized in concert with several peace coalitions in
Syracuse, Ithaca, Rochester, and Buffalo. About 100 demonstrators
marched north to rally outside Ft. Drum to express opposition to the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to endorse health care for returning
veterans. Advance press coverage by local TV stations and newspapers
(including the New York Times) was extensive. We hired popular local
rock bands, which we publicized with thousands of leaflets and large
ads in both the local and base newspapers. That day, the Drummer
rocked with music, speeches, and a strong political vibe. Yet,
despite our best efforts, we had to acknowledge that we'd attracted
almost no new soldiers or family members from the base.
Two months before the Different Drummer closed, the G.I. Voice, an
organization of vets and peace activists, opened Coffee Strong, a new
G.I. coffeehouse just outside Ft. Lewis, near Seattle, Wash.
Seattle's large progressive, antiwar community is an important source
of staff and funding for the project. In addition to quality coffee,
computers, and free wi-fi , the cafe offers concerts, political
events, movie nights, and G.I. rights counseling. It also serves as a
meeting place for groups such as IVAW and Veterans for Peace. Coffee
Strong hopes to organize soldiers around post-deployment mental
trauma, ending Stop Loss (involuntary extension of enlistment
contracts), sexual assault and mistreatment of female soldiers, and
support for resistance to deployment.
More recently, a new G.I. project, Under the Hood, opened in Killeen,
Texas, adjacent to Ft. Hood, which is the largest Army base in the
United States. About 59,000 soldiers and another 90,000 family
members reside on or near the base. This project also benefits from
its relative proximity to Austin, 60 miles north. This community is
an important source of funding, volunteers, and staff for Under the Hood.
One Ft. Hood soldier, SPC Victor Agosto, who has been active with the
project, announced in May that he would refuse orders to deploy to
Afghanistan. "I have frequented Under the Hood since it opened in
March," he wrote on the cafe's website. "The cafe has become my
refuge from a closed-minded and dehumanizing military culture. I have
attained a sense of purpose that I've never had in my life…. Under
the Hood has changed my life forever."
http://underthehoodcafe.org/
--
Tod Ensign is a lawyer and the director of Citizen Soldier.
http://www.citizen-soldier.org/
.
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