[Oct. 17 Seattle] report of Dahr Jamail event in Seattle 9/27/09

[ira jones]

The event was sponsored by a Seattle group that helps GIs resist in the
military (I forget its name) as a fundraiser for Coffee Strong, the GI
coffeehouse just outside the gates of Ft. Lewis (there is only one other GI
coffeehouse thus far in the country).  100 to 150 people attended, which the
organizers appeared to feel (and I too felt) was a disappointingly low
number.  In addition to the usual leftists, there were a hand-full of
serious student-type activists.  One woman, an Evergreener (~22 y.o.) to
whom I spoke after the event, was enthused to hear that O17 was happening
and she assured me that she and her pals would distribute the ~200 half
sheets I gave her.  I approached her because she asked an interesting
question after the talk: she knows it's important to demonstrate, but what
ELSE can we do (no hint of electoralism, but rather asked from the direction
of conciousness-raising).

DJ spoke, first briefly about his experience in Iraq in 2003-5 as an
unembedded journalist, an experience which left him not only severely
traumatized, but also profoundly angry at all members of the military for
raining such destruction.  Starting in 2005, though he started talking to
GIs and began to get their stories of how they avoided going on patrols.  He
described a whole series of "search and avoid" type of activities.  He also
described many examples of resistance in and out of the military.  One key
appeal he made is that communities need to be created to provide financial
support (medical benefits too, somehow) for the many GIs who enlisted
because they need to feed their families.  This would allow them to refuse
tours of duty thereby losing their military benefits (and being jailed).  DJ
was particularly laudatory of Erin Watada; he approves of Watada's
constitutional-type arguments for refusing to go to Iraq.

After ~1.5 hr of DJ talk, Seth Menzel of Coffee Strong spoke briefly.  Their
coffeehouse is having hard times lately, largely because Ft. Lewis is mostly
de-populated due to all the deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.  He also
announced an Oct 7 (7pm) meeting at Coffee Strong at which strategizing to
provide support for two GIs (AWOL? I'm not sure) who are currently in the
brig at Ft. Lewis.

Several interesting points came up in a long question period after the
talks.  First, DJ is quite firm that the US is in Afghanistan because of the
pipelines.  He says that the US bases there are adjacent to them.  Second,
there was some discussion of where the US is going to get >40,000 more
troops to send to Afghanistan.  He feels a good fraction of them will come
from a number of units that are comprised of various types of outcasts (AWOL
troops, etc.) from the normal units (I'm skeptical that there are enough of
such troops).

Someone please reply to this email that they got it since I'm no sure this
is the right address.  Thanks.   --Ira
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