Spirit in Action
Voices for Peace 2008, Part 2 - Wheels of Justice, Bruce O'Brien, Speak for Peace
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives Of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, Creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots And produce sacred fruit in your own life. [music] Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be listening to part two of presentations Made on September 14th in Eau Claire for an event called Voices for Peace 2008 There were booths, food, workshops, and more, but there was especially a main stage With special speakers and musicians. Today we're going to listen to three of these presenters. That same weekend, by the way, there was an air show held in Eau Claire And from time to time, you'll hear military jets go screaming overhead And those on stage just have to raise their own volume As one participant announced, "The voices for peace will not be silenced By the thunder of war machines." And they weren't. In part one, you heard one of two main speakers from the Wheels of Justice campaign Today we'll listen to their second presenter, Henry Nor, And I'll let the Wheels of Justice coordinator introduce him. Then we'll go on to musician Bruce O'Brien And we'll end up with Eugene Cherry And Iraqi that with the Speak for Peace tour All guests on today's Spirit in Action Henry Nor, he is 62 years old and a semi-retired freelance writer and activist He used to be a technology columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle Until he was fired in 2003 for participating in an anti-war demonstration The day that Bush attacked Iraq And also for his involvement in Palestinian solidarity work Henry spent a total of six months in Palestine Two weeks in Gaza under the auspices of the international solidarity movement Five weeks with the ISM again in 2003 Two months in 2005 with the Palestine summer encounter program Mainly in Bates, Ahor, and Bethlehem While he was there, he was volunteering with the International Middle East Media Center And then he's also volunteered with the Telroom Media Project in Hebron in 2006 So he's got a lot of experience in Palestine And currently he is a member of the Bay Area Group Act Against Torture And he's on the board and program council for the radio station at KPFA in San Francisco So welcome Henry Nor Thanks Josh Hi You know, I noticed that this event is specifically refers to Iraq and Afghanistan Palestine is not on the list That's understandable Most of us don't think of Palestine as something that, you know, that we are directly involved with We think of it as sort of an age-old conflict And not something that we need to And frankly, most of us probably don't know very much about it I certainly didn't until after September 11, 2001 I started trying to step back and take a look at what's happening in this world And I quickly came to the conclusion that Palestine was at the center of the conflicts that we face I should say by way of background, aside from all the things that Josh said, I'm from a Jewish family You know, I was raised, I went to Temple and raised money for the plant trees in Israel And thought it was, you know, great stuff I was always a little, I confess, a little bit uneasy about the idea of taking away a country where other people were living On the justification that our ancestors supposedly lived there 2,000 years ago It seemed to me to be a pretty messy world If everybody thought they had a right to take back the land where they claim their ancestors were 2 or 3,000 years ago But I didn't ever do much about it, I wasn't actively involved, I didn't know very much about the issue Until, as I said, after September 11th In 2002, I was actually planning to go on a vacation in Greece Just two weeks, I've been wanting to go there for a long time And my wife, we bought the tickets and got the guide books and started mapping out the itinerary And that, if you remember, spring of 2002 was the time when the Israelis went on the offensive And invaded, re-invaded the West Bank area, they had conquered originally in 1967 But they had backed off a little bit, gave the Palestinians a little bit of autonomy in 2002 They crashed back in there very violently And so, I started reading about this and I thought, wow, you know, I'm going to go and travel I'm from California, whatever, it's 8,000 miles or whatever To go all around the GNC and look at ruins and stuff Meanwhile, another 500 miles further on, there's all this murder and mayhem going on And I got that idea planned in the back of my head and I couldn't quite live with that So, my wife and I, we decided to simulate the change of tickets We got another ticket to fly, we flew into Greece, got another ticket and flew on to Israel And went to work as human rights volunteers Was a life-changing experience, I can tell you that, if anybody, any of you ever have the opportunity to go there And try to see a little bit of the world from the Palestinian perspective recommended highly Since then, as Josh said, I've been back, total of six months And rather than trying to, you know, give you a lot of analysis or history or rhetoric or anything I just want to try to describe some of the places where I spent time during my visits to Palestine as a human rights worker You know, this is a great park and you're lucky to be able to have an event in such a nice place The downside is that I can't show you my slides, which I usually rely on Because it's great to see what it looks like most of us don't have much of an impression Because we never see anything on the media about what Palestine is really like And there's a picture of an explosion or military action or something But I want to talk if I have time here about three places One is a village that I spent five weeks in called Jaius It's only about eight or ten miles away from Tel Aviv, which is, you know, the biggest city in Israel It's on hills, the Tel Aviv is on the coast, most of the Israeli population is on the coast When you go a little bit inland, the hills rise up and that's where the Palestinians live They were chased out of coastal areas before Jaius is a village of about 3,000, used to be about 3,500 people, people left there It sits on the hillside, but their lands extend down onto the fertile plain below It's some of the richest agricultural land in the whole Middle East Traditionally, it's been very peaceful and prosperous They grow fruits and vegetables, oranges in particular and olives And all kinds of fruit and vegetables that they traditionally supplied Used to supply both the Israel and throughout the West Bank And when I went there, it was in November 2003 Israel had just built in that area what they called a separation barrier Sometimes called the wall, sometimes the defenders say it's only a fence What it is in Jaius, it's a huge gouge through the landscape It's like hundreds of feet wide, it's two double lane road An electronic high-tech fence through the middle ditches on both sides Oceans of razor wire rolled up all around it Plowed right through the people's farmland, it was confiscated from them to build this thing You know, from Jaius up on the hill, you can see what's called the Green Line The traditional, the internationally recognized border between Israel's territory And the Palestinian territory You know, if they had built a wall, they'd say, you know, to keep terrorists out Or suicide bombers, whatever If they had built a wall on their border, you know, you can say, well, that's not a good solution That's not the way to solve problems in the world is to build walls But at least it would have been understandable In fact, where they put the wall was right around the edge of the village Between the village and its land So the people left on one side, and the land that they've depended on And that they've owned for centuries, has cut off to them They tried to protest A lot of people say, well, how come the Palestinians are so violent? Why don't they try nonviolence? Where's the Palestinian Gandhi or Martin Luther King? Well, I can tell you, they have been waging a non-violent struggle for decades When I got there, just in the previous year, while that wall was under construction Just in this one village of 3,000 or so people, they had had 39 non-violent demonstrations To protest the confiscation of the land by this wall Most of them are repressed violently The standard Israeli tactic for crowd control, when it's a little different if the protesters are Israeli Jews But if they're Arabs, the standard technique, the first weapon is sound concussion grenades And tear gas And then if that doesn't work, they start with what they call rubber bullets It sounds kind of innocuous or rubber bullet What they actually are steel bullets for the rubber coating They're not quite as devastating as a standard bullet, but they can definitely be lethal And that's just routine, every time there's one of these non-violent demonstrations They open up with that kind of weaponry When I got there, one feature of life is that the soldiers come into the village Israeli soldiers come into the village Not every night, but three or four times a week in the middle of the night When everybody's asleep and they start setting off sound bombs To wake people up to scare people Shooting the air, and one of their favorite games is Over there, people, you know, the water delivery system isn't very good and water is scarce So almost everybody has a big tank on top of their house And when there's water through the pipes, they fill up the tank So then you have it in gravity, it delivers it, even if there's no water later on When you need it, it comes from the tank Well, the Israeli soldiers come in and shoot holes in the water tanks for sport And they like to provoke people And sometimes the young men particularly go out and they throw stones Against, you know, armored jeeps and tanks sometimes, usually just the jeeps The stones are really symbolic, I mean, you know, we could argue that throwing rocks is that violence Or what, but it's certainly not any threat But to the Israelis, it becomes grounds to grab these kids and throw them in jail Well, we could talk about the legal system, but I don't want to get into that Because of their protests, in addition to the demonstrations, they also got some lawyers And they do have a few allies in Israel They went to court, to the Israeli Supreme Court, to protest the wall They say that it was, there was no justification, nobody had accused them of any suicide bombing Or anything else, and there was no grounds for confiscating their land this way The court, Israel's a funny place, it has this veneer of legality So the court deliberated about this and said, "Okay, well, you can build a wall there and put the land on Israel's side But you have to have gates and you have to have a system of permits So that if people are well behaved, you're going to give them a permit to go work their land Well, I got there just after the permit system was first implemented It turned out that they did set up these gates and they did issue permits But the whole permit system was completely erratic, arbitrary Many people were denied permits for no reason, no justification provided Some people, like seven-year-olds, got permits, adults got no permits Grandfathers sometimes got permits, but their working-age sons didn't Nobody could get a permit for hired help, which they need at the peak seasons, the harvest season Was completely erratic, permits had to be renewed every three months and then they would get denied again So for a while the village tried to people met and they said, "Okay, well, this is not a viable system We're going to refuse to accept the permits, we're going to stand together" But it didn't work, their whole livelihood depends on access to the land And if they couldn't get to their crops, the crops would, you know, it's a hot country And if they couldn't get out there to irrigate them, these orange trees and all the trees would die So basically, the attempt at a boycott didn't work and the people who had permits went to work So that brings us to the issue of these gates And a lot of the time I spent there, what we were actually doing was what was called gatewatch We were taking those observations and actually the records that we kept were eventually entered into court case in Israel It's still going on about all this, but the gates were supposed to be open for half an hour in the morning Half an hour in midday and half an hour in the late afternoon to allow people to come back to the village It was so arbitrary and so infuriating You know, people ask, "How come they're so angry?" If you put yourself in their shoes, on any given day you never knew whether the gates were actually going to open or not Sometimes they were closed, shortly before I was there they had been closed for four weeks straight A lot of people lost their trees because they were not open at all during that time When I was there they would be open some days and not other days I would estimate that out of a five day week, maybe three times they would open them on time One time they would open them late anywhere from half hour to two hours late But one time they would open them half an hour early And the way they ran the system, they didn't leave them open for half an hour They would open them for the people who were there at the time Process them through, let some of them through, hassle some of them, harass them Deny some of them for inexplicable reasons And then they would lock the gate up again But you never knew which day was going to be the day they were going to open them early So you had to be there if you needed to get to your land, you had to be there early every day Because that might be the day they were going to come early, but most of the days they would come late So the routine is that all these farmers are lined up sitting out there in the sun Waiting, waiting, waiting for this completely arbitrary system that they have no control over Some things that I witnessed happening One time while they were waiting, some of the guys had tractors, some of them just came on foot Some of them, many of them had donkey carts So while they were waiting, so often as I said, it would last for hours They would let the donkey loose from the cart And the guys would be sprawled out on the ground waiting And one guy, Jamal, his donkey wandered off And he wandered close to the wall To the electronic fence that's in the middle of this whole thing I don't know, he was looking for food or something And he set off the electronic sensors And there's no signal back, no feedback to the people there, but the soldiers get the message So as jeep comes racing over the hill, they see the donkey there The donkey's not doing any harm to anything But they unlocked the gate They told the guy, Jamal, the donkey, to wait They processed through the other people, checked their paperwork, which they do every day Even though they know them perfectly well At the very end, they called Jamal over and they couldn't go through Because his donkey went too close to the wall They turned him down And told him to come back at lunch, if he came back at the midday opening They would let him through So he and I were left, I don't speak much Arabic, I didn't speak even less then But tried to chat a little bit and he would express a lot of frustration And told about how he needed to work his land and everything But anyway, he and I came back at lunchtime When they told him they would open it Soldiers came back in the jeep He's waiting there, I'm observing And they came, they opened it up, they talked to him And they lectured him about how his donkey went too close to the gate And so they weren't going to let him through I should say that this gate is like about 3/4 of a mile down the hill from the village So he had slept down there with this donkey to try to get through They turned him down again, they had to go back But before he did that, he turned around You could just see the frustration in his face and the despair This is an older guy, my age, 50 or 60 or something He pantomime to me that putting on a suicide belt and exploding himself You know, he wasn't going to do it, I'm not sure he's not going to do it But it's an expression of the frustration and the helplessness that people feel When they're subject to that kind of arbitraryness Well, lots more stories I could tell you, but I want to tell you about a couple of other places In 2005, I spent some time in an even smaller village, a place called Gawuis It has a population, it varies Some people are only there part of the time Basically four families, about six extended families, about 60 people at the most There's one house in Gawuis, everybody else lives in, they're called cave dwellers They live in these caves, it's in the south Hebron hills, if you even know the area It's in the West Bank populated, you know, forever by Palestinians But Jewish Israelis have come in and set up these settlements all through that area And these smaller places called outposts that are small settlements that are even The Israeli government considers illegal, but they don't do anything to stop them The settlers in that area are particularly fanatic So you look around on the horizon, around this village of 50 or 60 people On all the hillsides in the distance, you can see these Israeli settlements Usually they're just mobile homes kind of trailers with cell phone towers That's the first thing they build, it's a cell phone tower, so they can use their cell phones But the Gawuis villagers, their lives are really straight out of the Old Testament They just live by... Steve can drown them out, I'm not sure I can They live by sheep, they have sheep, flocks of sheep and goats That's what they do in a few olive trees And every day they're out, you know, five o'clock in the morning, six o'clock in the morning Grazing their sheep and goats, that's their lives They bring them back in the heat of the day and then they go out again in the afternoon And that's what life consists of Well the Israelis settlers come down, especially the young guys, they call them hilltop youth They're constantly harassing and threatening them They run through the village, one time when I was a couple of them came through on horseback Galloping right through the middle of this little community Threatening them and beating them, sometimes invading their caves The government informed people that the Israelis had decided said This was close to, it actually reminded me of this, it was close to an air force training area So people had to leave, the government said These people have been there forever Israelis tried to kick them out When I was there, the particular crisis was about water because the settlers had decreed There was no legal authority for this whatsoever They had decreed that the people couldn't come between the road and the village They had to stay 20 meters and keep their flag 20 meters away from the road Well that meant they couldn't get to their watering hole So to get water to their animals, they had to use the water that's in the little caves and little stone huts are And because of that, their water supply was depleted Cause all of a sudden you had all these hundreds of sheep and goats instead of just 50-60 people being out of it So they were running out of water So the International Committee for the Red Cross was trying to bring them tanks full of water to keep them alive Because nobody's willing to stand up to these settlers who are making up these arbitrary rules That they can't get the water off their own land Also the other thing that happened was that the military came in and claimed that their aerial photography had revealed That they were building without a permit Well as I said, there's only one house in this place What the building consisted of, they had put these little shelters They had built some piled up stones to make a walled in area to keep the sheep and goats And the Israelis said that was illegal and they issued a demolition order I don't have much time At the end of the story after I left Valentine's Day of 2007 The military came in with their bulldozers and just destroyed the place Knocked down all the pens and these little stone structures they had built Tashed their caves and drove the people out I'm not sure what's happened since then They retreated to another town nearby Where many of them had relatives Well there was a third place I wanted to tell you about Hebron But I guess I don't have time if anybody wants to chat privately afterwards But the point I want to make is that if we're serious about peace in the world We have to be serious about peace in the Middle East I think we all know that much If we're serious about peace in the Middle East We've got to think about peace in Palestine as well as these other as well as Iraq And Afghanistan and Lebanon and whatever because the conflict in Palestine is at the center of it And if you're serious about peace in Palestine You've got to think about justice You've got to look at it not just from the perspective that we get in the media Which is usually which is the you know more or less the Israeli perspective You've got to look at it how does the world look from the Palestinian perspective What it looks like to them is this is their land they've been there since time in memorial Christians in Europe were persecuting Jews in Europe Somehow it became their fault and they had to get kicked off their land because of that It doesn't make any sense to them and it doesn't make any sense to me And I don't think it should make any sense to you You know behind it is the American government which funds them Congressman John Dingello I believe is the longest serving congressman And he's from a district that has a lot of Arab Americans He boasted that in his time he had put through 300 billion dollars in aid U.S. government taxpayer dollars to aid Israel I don't think that's bringing us any closer to peace on the contrary So I would urge people I know it's not a front burner issue for most of us It becomes so for me but I don't expect everybody to share my perspective on it But I think if you are interested in peace you really do have an obligation to Take a look at that issue to try to look past the conventional wisdom that we get from the American media Thanks very much Thank you very much to Henry for your witness there I think it's a very powerful thing to get that look on the ground what's going on there And we're going to have just about five minutes for questions and answers If anybody has any questions for both of our speakers they could come up And while we do that I'm going to pass around our bucket This is the lovely wheels of justice bucket We're funded entirely by donations So if you think this is a valuable thing and you're moved to give please do be generous Sometimes we don't even know whether we're going to make it to the next town or not But I think it's a valuable thing for the American public to get this testimony So thanks again and we'll bring our speakers up Just raise your hand if you have a question and we'll relay it down How can we have a full state solution Where some Palestinian areas are so broken up Because if I didn't buy the Israeli cold areas and the goal is to settle How did you have to constantly think of the state? That's a long discussion I would say theoretically it's easy Israel should do what the UN Security Council decreed in 1967 That they had to do what international law requires Which is to go back to their own borders It's the pre-67 borders And you know have a Palestinian state side by side Palestinians would accept that But unfortunately the Israelis have shown no sign that they're willing to do that The Geneva Conventions and other international laws say very clearly In the case of military occupation It's unlawful to move your civilian population into the territory that you've occupied The Israelis there are about 450,000 people We're talking about an area that's tiny I mean the whole together there about the size of New Jersey or something By moving in 450,000 people Putting them on every hilltop building these interconnecting highways Which by the way are only for Israelis Palestinians can't use them at all And then they have buffers all around them Military forts all kinds of stuff They have made them as you suggest so Interpenetrated that theoretically the Israeli government could force those people out I mean they have the military power to do it But they don't have the political will to do it It's more and more clear that they've integrated the electrical grids The water system Except that Israelis get four-fifths of the water But in effect the Israelis have made it almost inconceivable that there couldn't be a two-state solution How do you cut these intertwined populations now into two? I don't know That means these more and more people to think that the only answer is the one that appeals to me And so on my place to decide for the people there how to settle it But the solution that makes sense in terms of American values Is a secular democracy where everybody has equal rights Whatever their religion the land is for the people who live there You can't say that it's illegal They threaten to throw these Arab representatives out of the Israeli parliament For saying it should be a state of all the people A democratic state for all the people that's illegal in Israel It's supposed to be a Jewish state Privilege the Jewish population I think you know the solution that feels right to me is a one-state solution Where everybody have equal rights and equal votes and so on Israelis are very Jewish Israelis are very threatened by that Because the Arab population will soon outnumber the Jewish population If there's one except that one state solution And they've made it impossible to have a two-state solution We've got a no solution So that's where it stands frankly I can't offer you a fix Well thanks very much Once again the wheels of justice folks Very nice job Just a couple of announcements We will have Bruce O'Brien playing here on the labyrinth here in a few minutes Another quick announcement is again our workshops The interfaith peace builders will be starting a workshop here in minutes In the very back corner of the pavilion I think that'll fall right in line with what Henry just spoke about And it would give you a lot of good information So we want you to check that out Also international law workshop will be happening here in a few minutes In workshop three Workshop two we have Dennis providing a workshop on the labyrinth And then also workshop one at 355 will have cultural intelligence So once again we'll have Bruce O'Brien here very shortly Thanks for coming out You were listening there to Henry Knorr of the wheels of justice tour My first spirit and action guest today I'm Mark Helpsmeet, host of this northern spirit radio program If you missed the first installment you can also hear it on my site northernspiritradio.org And please remember to drop us a comment about the show while you're there And please check out our other shows Lots of wonderful people doing powerful spiritual work for peace justice and care for creation Today's guests were presenters at Voices for Peace 2008 Held in Eau Claire on September 14th More details about that event and the sponsors at voicesforpeaceinstitute.org Next up is musician Bruce O'Brien with a range of songs about peace on many levels Back to Voices for Peace 2008, Bruce O'Brien, next up You know this language that I speak is part German, part Latin, and part Greek With Celtic and Arabic all in the heap Well augmented by the folks in the street Choctaw gave us the word okay Vamos is the word from Mexico way Which is just a hint I suspect Oh what comes next? I think that this whole world Soon mama my whole life world Soon mama my whole world Soon gonna be get mixed up Soon gonna be get mixed up I like Polish sausage I like Spanish rice Pizza pie is also nice Corn and beans from the Indians here Washed down with some German beer Marco Polo traveled by cannibal and pony Brought to Italy the first macaroni and you and I As well as were able Put it on the table I think that this whole world Soon mama my whole life world Soon mama my whole world Soon gonna be get mixed up There were no red-headed Irishmen Until the Danes landed in Ireland How many Romans had dark curly hair Till they brought slaves from Africa No race of men is completely pure Or is anyone's mind and that's for sure The winds mixed the dust of every land And so do women and men I think that this whole world Soon mama my whole life world Soon mama my whole world Soon gonna be get mixed up Now this doesn't mean we may all be the same We'll have different faces and different names And long live many different kinds of races And differences of opinion That's what makes horse races Just remember the rule about rules Brother what's right with one is wrong With another and take a tip from La Belle France Leave a lot different I think that this whole world Soon mama my whole life world Soon mama my whole world Soon gonna be get mixed up Soon mama my whole world Soon mama my whole life world Soon mama my whole world Soon gonna be get mixed up Thank you, it's a Pete Seager song Song by Bob Blue wrote Courage Our thing once happened at school That brought us a question for me And caused me to think Of ways that it pays to be cool Roxanne is a girl that I know She's strange like she doesn't belong I don't mean to say that that's wrong We don't like to be with her though And so when we all made a plan To have this big party at Sues Most kids in the school got the news But no one invited Roxanne The thing about Taft Junior High's secrets don't last very long I acted like nothing was wrong When I saw Roxanne start to cry It doesn't make me very proud It's sad but you have to at school You can't pick the friends you prefer You fill it fit in as best as you can I couldn't be friends with Roxanne 'Cause then they would treat me like her At one class at Taft Junior High we study what people have done With gas, chamber, bomber, and gun At Auschwitz, Japan, and wounded me I don't understand all I learn Sometimes I just sit there and cry The whole world stood idly by And watched while the innocent burned Like robots obeying some rule They all went along with the crowd And what was it for? Was it cool? The world was aware of this hell But how many cried out in shame What heroes and her who were to blame A secret that no one dared tell I promised to do what I can And not let it happen again To care for all women and men I'll start by inviting Roxanne Thank you How many people here saw the Osprey Fishing out here over the river? Wasn't that great? There's no F-16 in the world that can beat them That's pretty nice flying out there Every year we've got crowds of Right over here in downtown Eau Claire We've got clouds of chimney swifts It doesn't cost anything to go To go watch them every summer This is sung by Stuart Statz of Madison, Wisconsin And it's called "One Crane" And it refers to the story of Sadako Hiroshima's survivor who was affected by As millions were affected by the radiation And she developed leukemia And she was following the ancient Japanese practice Of folding paper cranes for good luck She only, the legend was to fold a thousand paper cranes But she only got to 600 or something Before she died But the rest of the world heard this story And into her hometown came Thousands of paper cranes from all around the world One crane, two cranes, three cranes four We can make an end to war Five cranes, six cranes, seven cranes, eight We can change, it's not too late Circle of the cranes around the world From every boy and every girl Circle of the cranes from hand to hand In every home, in every land This is what we call a zipper song You zip out one word and you zip in another word It's always different, depending on who's singing it So crane is the zipper word, let's zip in song One song, two songs, three songs four We can make an end to war Five cranes, six cranes, seven cranes, eight We can change, it's not too late Circle of the cranes around the world In every home, from every girl Circle of the cranes around the world In every home, in every land One friend, two cranes, three cranes four We can make an end to war Five cranes, six cranes, seven cranes, eight We can change, it's not too late Circle of the cranes around the world From every boy and every girl Circle of the cranes from hand to hand In every home, in every land One dream, two dreams, three dreams four We can make an end to war Five dreams, six dreams, seven cranes, eight We can change, it's not too late Circle of the cranes around the world From every boy and every girl Circle of the cranes from hand to hand In every home, from every land Let's go back to cranes One cranes, two cranes, three cranes four We can make an end to war Five cranes, six cranes, seven cranes, eight We can change, it's not too late Circle of the cranes around the world From every boy and every girl Circle of the cranes from hand to hand In every home, from every land Thank you, Stuart Statz Alright, well I'm going to sing one more here They say the world would be a better place if we could walk In each other's shoes I wanna walk a mile in your shoes Walk a mile in your shoes I wanna know what you're doing, what you're thinking I really wanna walk a mile in your shoes Remember the fight that we had Why do we both have to lose? Because we both walked away mad Instead of walking a mile in each other's shoes I wanna walk a mile in your shoes Walk a mile in your shoes I wanna know what you're thinking, what you're feeling Is I really wanna walk a mile in your shoes You see how the world is a mess Every time you turn on the news Everybody could have happiness If we try walking a mile in each other's shoes I wanna walk a mile in your shoes Walk a mile in your shoes I wanna know what you're thinking, what you're feeling Is I really wanna walk a mile in your shoes Tempers start to cool down The frown turns into a smile Anger cannot be found When you're wearing those shoes I'm walking that mile I wanna walk a mile in your shoes Walk a mile in your shoes I wanna know what you're thinking, what you're feeling Is I really wanna walk a mile in your shoes I wanna walk a mile in your shoes Walk a mile in your shoes I wanna know what you're thinking, what you're feeling Is I really wanna walk a mile in your shoes Thank you, keep up the work you're doing That was folk musician, Bruce O'Brien, a worker for peace On many levels, through his music, his work as a nurse And through lots of political activism We're going to listen to one more main speaker this week, Eugene Cherry He's with the Speak for Peace tour And it was a prime example of what Quakers call "way opening" That the tour joined us in Eau Claire for this event As a representative of the local Quaker meeting I received an email and phone call from the tour organizer, Jessica Flores Offering the possibility of a visit by the Speak for Peace tour Sometime in September Almost simultaneously, I was contacted by the organizers of the Voices for Peace Institute Inviting Quakers to take part in the September 14th event Way opened and the Eau Claire Friends meeting sponsored Two members of the Speak for Peace tour to come to Eau Claire I introduced the AFSC staff organizer, Jessica Flores And she'll introduce to you Eugene Cherry Thank you Mark, thank you everyone for coming out A special thanks to Mark and for everyone else who put this wonderful event together As Mark mentioned, my name is Jessica Flores, I am from Chicago I'm from the American Friends Service Committee office We're a 91 year old Quaker nonprofit organization We work for peace and for human rights We kind of started this Speak for Peace tour earlier this year We started in February, our first stop was in Michigan Since then, we've been to over 10 different cities and towns across the Midwest And so this is like our third leg of the tour The reason we did this tour is to kind of bring to light stories about the war in Iraq That we don't really, unfortunately, get to hear about through our mainstream media Specifically stories from Iraqi people, stories from US veterans So today we have two speakers, Eugene Cherry, who is from Chicago, Illinois He was a medic with the US Army He was stationed in Baghdad from 2004 through 2005 And then we also have Raya Jarar, who is an Iraqi from Baghdad He has a master's degree in architecture and post-war reconstruction And he left Iraq in 2004 So I leave you with both speakers, thank you so much for coming up Thank you Jessica, as Jessica would say, I am a Iraq war veteran My name is Eugene Cherry and I enlisted in the Army in 2002 And was discharged from the military in 2007 And I served as a medic in Baghdad with the 10th Mount Division for Drum New York from 2003 to 2007 I deployed tire rack in 2004 through 2005 And just to tell you a little bit about my experience I was actually in college when I enlisted in the military I kind of want to debunk the myth that veterans that you meet all join the military Because they want to be patriots, they want to do something great for that country In most cases, that's not true It's usually guys are joining because they are looking for a way out of the economic situation Or looking for a way to fund their way through college Those same kind of ideas apply to myself as well And just to give you a little brief experience about what it was like for me in the military was that When I enlisted, like I said, I enlisted out of college and I had this hope of going to medical school And ultimately, I think that was the major thing that really attracted me to the military Was this belief that I would go to medical school And complete my college education while I was in the military Obviously, I'm sitting here before you now to tell you that that didn't happen But when I deployed tire rack in 2004 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 2.5 I spent roughly about 3.5 weeks in Kuwait during convoy life training Then I drove from Kuwait into Iraq And keep in mind, during this time, this was before the military had got all the armored vehicles That you see the service members riding around in now So we actually had what we call in the military salt shell vehicles Meaning that they were in armor These vehicles that we got were actually handing me down from another unit That was actually leaving Iraq to redeploy back to the US We got these vehicles and they were all beat down, beat up They had leaks, very serious leaks Some of them just didn't work at all So we were given a week to get everything together And do a quick fix you upward to get the vehicles ready for tripped into Iraq We drove into Iraq, took about 4 days Well, the trip almost killed about half of us along the way Because either the vehicles caught on fire Some just completely broke down or various other hazards Anyhow, I got to Iraq and by the time we got there, the vehicles were done They were trashed and most of them had to be replaced And the ones that didn't have to be replaced They were completely just out of action for about a month and a half And they were sent to get repaired and also have armored placed on them as well And during that month and a half, well, for me it was more like 2 months I was actually sent to go do work for KBR Kellogg, Brown and Root, subsidiary of Halliburton So I ended up doing a little bit of contracting work without the lucrative contract pay And so I did everything from doing what they call local national watch Meaning that we watch Iraqis, we watch Romanian nationals We watch Pakistani nationals, Filipino nationals And I imagine that many of you here have followed the stories in Iraq About how KBR has hired many nationals from what is considered third world countries And they literally pay them pennies on a dollar Most of the contractors that I met From these so-called third world countries Were actually being paid roughly about $600 a month, US I did this for about a month and a half, close to 2 months And then later I went on to do on combat patrols I did combat patrols because actually a lot of guys in my unit were sent And to Fallujah in November 2004 to participate in the Fallujah assault So I was one of the ones that stayed back and I ended up having to go out With the infantry guys and do combat patrols That when I went out there with them, I did everything from quarter on search Chasing surgeons through villages and cities in Iraq Did a variety of things, treated Iraqis, such stuff like that I did this until I went on R&R the middle of December of 2004 And when I returned right after the new year 2005 We got a special mission request They needed two medics to be a part of what is known as a PSD team PSD team means personal security detachment And this personal security detachment was in charge of providing security For what is known as EOD, explosive ordnance Explosive ordnance and their civilian equivalent is the bomb squad So these guys will go out and go find IEDs Go find car bombs, weapon caches, whatever they get called out to That was of an explosive or weapons nature And it was their job to deal with it I did this, I didn't really volunteer for this mission, I got picked for Because keeping in mind, it has been about six months by that time Since I had been in Iraq, about 70% of my unit was still forced It was continually being forced to do work for KBR So we didn't even have service members that were actually available to do the missions What happened was that I ended up doing this mission That was one mission I did with them in particular It was in April of 2005 We got caught up to a residential area Around 8 o'clock in the evening for a suspected car bomb Now we get out here, it takes about five hours for the EOD And finally they decide what they wanted to do We'll have to suspect the car bomb And then they say well we're just going to blow it But they say well before we blow it And keep in mind, this is a residential neighborhood That's now five hours from 8 o'clock So it makes it one o'clock in the morning That they want to blow this car bomb And so they say well we have to evacuate the neighborhood And so they say well we're going to coordinate with the Iraqi police In Iraq and the National Guard to get the residents out So they come back about 30 minutes late and say everyone is out of the neighborhood And they blow this car bomb And the dust didn't even settle before people began to run out of their homes And there were lots of casualties And at the time we weren't even supposed to respond to this call Because it was out of our AOI area of operation And so since we were only unit on scene I was the only medical personnel there It became a situation of a mass casualty And so my first casualty that I treated Was a young Iraqi boy, about nine years old He had fragments of glass and rock in his own face From the shockwave of the explosion And as I was treating him, my platoon sergeant tells me That they need me to go down the street And go to the actual site of the actual explosion To deal with the casualties there And so as I went down there I ended up walking into the apartment building Because the car bomb itself was actually part on the side of an apartment building So when they blew it, pretty much destroyed most of this building And I ended up walking into the living room Of somewhere I don't know who But there were three casualties, two men, one woman The men were moving around and were moaning But the woman wasn't So as I go over to check the woman I tap her on the show to ask her, "Is she okay? Can she hear me?" And she moans a little bit But as I go to turn it over Health of her face is blown off And she also has what is known as an eye avulsion Meaning that her eye was actually out of his orbital And as I go down, she has this huge wound in her chest So she's actually having blood that's being forced into her lungs So she's kind of aspirated on her own blood And as I go further down, she actually has a partial amputation of her right foot And as I start to treat her, and as I start to treat her There's an Iraqi who shows up who lives in the neighborhood And he's a surgeon, and he helps me give this woman treatment And as we're treating her, my platoon leader comes up to me and tells me "Specialist Cherry, do you need a medivac?" I say, "Yes, we need one for her" And so, he said, "I'll be back in three minutes, I'm going to call in a medivac" But he comes back about three minutes later And says, "No, the medivac is canceled" And there's an ambulance on the way to get to his woman The ambulance shows up about five minutes later And they just kind of start throwing bodies on his ambulance real nonchalantly And she was one of the bodies that get thrown on it And after they put on the ambulance and kind of drive away, I never see this woman again In fact, I don't even know what happened to her But, um, unfortunately, it says that we have to get out of here Because we're not supposed to be here, and so we kind of make a beeline back to the file we were on I was actually, at that time, I was in Camp Victory, Baghdad It's been called many things through the years, but I don't know what it's called now We go back, and after that, I actually start to have, like, nightmares And, um, start to lose some weight, stuff like that And some friends told me that I should go see someone And so, I went to go see a psychologist and talk to him about what, talk to her about it I told what's going on, they prescribed the usual in the military Give you some, um, antidepressants and sleep meds and kind of send you on your way Shortly after that, I, um, redeployed back to the U.S. And, um, June of 2000, well, late June of 2005 When I returned, I tried to follow up with the mental health treatment that I was getting in Iraq But, actually, ran into some problems from my chain of command And, damn, installing, well, putting in new policies and such That wouldn't allow me to actually go see the people that I need to go see In November of 2005, I actually ended up going AWOL for a while I actually went AWOL for about 16 months Now, the funny thing about my AWOL was that They didn't know that, um, I was actually AWOL for 16 months Which is kind of interesting because, you know, the military liked to prize itself on being very efficient But, in this case, they weren't And so, I actually continued to see, um, psychologists and on the civilian side, not the military side, while I was AWOL And then, eventually, they convinced me that I need to turn myself back in So, I turned myself back in and marched to 2007 And they had me wait around for about a month and a half And then, they finally decided, wanted to give me, uh, what is known as a special, bad conduct, discharge, court module And so, before I actually turned myself back in, my mother actually initiated this plan Where she would get Barack Obama's office involved And she found this congressional inquiry through Barack Obama's office And it turned into a congressional investigation And to make a long story short, 'cause I'm a little pressed for time here, sorry They actually released me in the early part of July of last year With honorable discharge, and I came back here and I started working with FSC And I also volunteered to do veterans counseling and stuff like that Through this VA program that they have at the Chicago VA And so, I'm gonna turn this over to Riot now and let him give you his perspective as an Iraqi So, thank you for your time [applause] That was Eugene Cherry of the Speak for Peace tour organized by the American Friends Service Committee AFSC for short You can find a link to them on my northernspiritradio.org site As well as a link to the Voices for Peace Institute Please listen in next week for a personal interview with Eugene Cherry And the final main speaker of the event Riot Girard Riot is one of the most compelling, cogent, and convincing advocates I've ever heard Of a change to US war policy in Iraq Riot Girard is an Iraqi-born US resident And Iraq consultant to the AFSC Listen to Riot and more from Eugene Cherry Next week on Spirit in Action The theme music for this program is Turning of the World performed by Sarah Thompson This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is Spirit in Action With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing (upbeat music)