Spirit in Action

CV Draft and Military Counseling Network

Steve Wagener had a history of political activism, but he had to be jarred out of a period of dormant passions by the combination of his son's unwilling role in the military and Steve's reaction to the manipulations leading up to our invasion of Iraq. His early Catholic foundation serves him well as he has stepped to the front lines of anti-war activism in the Chippewa Valley.

Duration:: 1h 0m
Broadcast on:: 07 May 2006
Audio Format:: mp3

I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep I have no arms but yours with which to hold The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old I have no hands but yours with which to see To let my children know that I am up and up is everything I have no way to feed the hungry souls No clothes to give and make, the ragged and the morn So be my heart, my hand, my tongue Through you I will be done The enders have I none to help and doubt The tangled knots and twisted chains The strangled fearful minds Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmead. 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. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands Being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life I have no way to open people's eyes Except that you will show them how to trust the inner mind Steve Wagner is my guest today on Spirit in Action. Steve had history of political activism, but he had to be jarred out of a period of dormant passions By the combination of his son's unwilling role in the military and Steve's reaction to the manipulations leading up to our invasion of Iraq His early Catholic foundation serves him well as he has stepped to the front lines of anti-war activism in the Chippewa Valley Steve is active with Military Families Speak Out, the Chippewa Valley Draft and Military Counseling Network and is an associate member of the local Veterans for Peace group. He speaks his peace vibrantly in many forms, including via his website wagthedogproductions.com Welcome Steve to Spirit in Action. I really enjoyed the time with you this past Saturday, standing out at the corner of Bracket in 53 with about 100 people On a rainy day, I didn't think I'd enjoy a rainy day that much. I have to admit it was one of the best rainy day, spring days I've ever had to. I was really enthused by the spirit that was there Would you tell folks about the planning that led up to this commemoration? The date was April 29th, 2006 and it was commemorating the third anniversary of the mission not accomplished in Iraq. How did this come about? In early February, I attended my first Veterans for Peace meeting with at least 20 men, most of whom were veterans and we were talking about the anniversary of the war coming up and we needed to do something. After thinking in terms of, well, there's probably all kinds of activities for the actual date when we invaded Iraq, we decided it was more poignant to have something to commemorate the day when George W. Bush went on the aircraft carrier and announced mission accomplished. It soon transpired into where we were talking to several groups in the Chippewa Valley that all wanted to do something and everyone decided, yeah, let's do something and we use the term mission unaccomplished. We met at least three or four times between February and April 29th. There was representatives from the Women in Black, the Menominee Peace Initiative, a military family speak out, the Chippewa Valley draft and military counseling network, and just individuals, people who work and teach and practice throughout the Chippewa Valley from time to time would show up. Sometimes there'd be six or seven of us, sometimes there'd be 20. And we knew early on that we wanted to get a good turnout and I remember sitting in one meeting with a couple friends and this one guy, his name is Gaylord and I think he's been on your show before and Gaylord was looking at me and he said, you know, Steve, a year ago, I didn't even know you. He said, but I looked around the table and a year ago, I didn't know anybody sitting around this table. He said, but we're all here today and we're all here for the same purpose. And so I know, he said, I know this peace initiative that we're working on is growing because I'm meeting new people every day. There's no reason why we can't expect 100 people to show up on April 29th on the corner of Bracket and US Highway 53. He said, there's 10 people here. Each of us just need to bring 10 people. We got 100 people. And I thought, how simple, how genuine that thought was. You don't need mass mailings. You don't need TV, radio spots to announce something like this. To get 100 people together, you just need to talk. And that's what we did. And we accomplished it. Steve, this topic first came up at a Veterans for Peace meeting. You aren't a veteran, are you? No, I'm not, but I'm very much connected with the military. I'm a strong member. I was actually number 54 in a group called Military Families Speak Out. And it's not a really well-known organization, but there are some very well-known people that are a part of it. Cindy Sheehan. She became, she was like something like 100 and something when she joined Military Families Speak Out. Now we're talking nearly 10,000 people that belong to Military Families Speak Out. In January of 2001, my oldest son, Nicholas, joined the army. Mind you, that's several months before 9/11. Nick was looking for a way to college. And I told him that I'd help him through college, but he had to come up with something himself. I even told him I'd match what he came up with for college. Nick chose the military route. I was shocked. I would have never thought he was going to join the military, but I didn't try to dissuade him. He had made an adult decision, and I could support that. Well, as you know, 9/11 and everything, and I was chewing my fingernails many times, wondering, you know, when was my son going to be deployed. He went to Kosovo, and that was an awakening for Nick. His MO, you know, what he was trained in, was forward observer. So what he would do is actually look at targets, pick a target for heavy artillery to come in and destroy. Obviously, there wasn't too much call for that. In 2002, by the time he got to Kosovo, most of the bombing was done. All the bombing was done actually by that time, but he saw the end result of that. I remember after his 8-month tour in Kosovo, when he came home on leave, he made a really strange statement to me that I didn't know how to respond. He said, "Dad, I don't think I can make it." And I said, "What do you mean? The rest of my term?" I said, "Why?" He said, "I saw some things in Kosovo that I wasn't necessarily a party to, but I could have been. I'm not sure I can carry that out, that mission." I said, "Well, Nick, you only got a few months left." This was like in late 2002, early 2003, and he was going to be getting out in January of 2004. I said, "You know, I understand where you're coming from, but there's a good chance you might be able to serve the rest of your time in Germany." He said, "I know. That's what I'm tossing about." I said, "You're regardless. I can support wherever you're at and whatever you need to do. Just make sure you do it on the up and up. Don't just leave. There's counseling that you should be getting in touch with and things of that nature." Well, as the story went, he got his orders in October of 2003 that soldier, your last day in the Army, is January 5th of 2004. Start getting your stuff together. He was still in Germany at the time station in Ramsgate. When he got those orders, he had started packing this stuff up and he was going to ship it home. And he went to ship and an officer that was at that place that soldier, you're not going anywhere. Strict orders, nobody used to ship things home. There's an announcement coming in a week or two. Well, Nick pretty much knew what that announcement was going to be. He called me and we talked, and he talked about something I'd never heard of at that time, and it was stop loss. And for those that don't know, stop loss is what the military can do to any enlistee, anybody that's in the Army. When you sign up, you think that it's the term of what the time you set up for is your enlistment time of three years or two years. But there isn't a military contract that's less than eight years. So the difference between your three-year assignment and that eight years during that time at any time, you could be given stop loss orders that either require you to stay or will call you back in. So Nick was faced with that, and by November he received his orders and he was deployed to Iraq in February of 2004. By some coincidence, I don't know, it's a coincidence that I call of the heart. Everyone knew that Nick was going to be deployed, everyone in my family, and everything, we just didn't know when. The Army really doesn't give too much information in that respect, and that's understandable. But by some coincidence of the heart on the day that Nick was deployed to Iraq, I suffered a heart attack. Nick called me in the hospital the next day to tell me that he was in Kuwait, and I thought he was still in Germany. But on that same day that I had suffered my severe event, Nick took action, and he filed for conscientious objection while still being in the Army. And believe me, there's no braver man than a man that will speak to the world of his conscience, even in times when the repercussions of that speaking out could mean severe harm. And that was what Nick was faced with. In the Vietnam days, if there was a soldier or someone that was speaking out, not necessarily along the lines of the rest of the troops, they had a way of dealing with those types of guys, and they called it fragging. Sometimes they would just simply stab them with a knife and put them in the hospital for a time, letting them know to walk the line, make sure that you're following what your commanding officer does. And often people who filed for conscientious objection while in the military in Vietnam, that was their end result. They were either harmed or hurt in ways and definitely ostracized because that's not the American soldier's way. You fight your battles, you don't walk away from them. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] It's just another poor boy off to find a rich man's home. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Steve, you're my age, which puts you coming up on 52 this year. Had you ever entertained going into the military yourself, or are you an anti-military person from day one? Well, I can remember as a freshman in high school, I have a brother that's five years older than me, and I remember writing a letter to him when he was in Vietnam. My brother had enlisted and he was on a second tour in, um, as a Marine. And I remember writing a letter to him telling him how, as soon as I got out, I was going to sign up that I was so proud of my big brother. He chose to fight that war, and he was there, and he was protecting me. But I'll tell you, a few months later, or weeks anyway, I got a letter back from my brother. It was a life-changing moment for me. My brother's name is Pete, and Pete wrote back to me, and he essentially told me, "Do everything in your power to stop this war, and do everything in your power to stay out of the military." And I heated that advice, and I began quickly after that. I would say within several months I decided I needed to do what I could do on my part to stop the war, not to get my brother home, because by that time he was already home. But really because I was listening to a brother, a person who was there, and said it was wrong. How did you go about opposing the war at that time? Were you out in the streets carrying signs, or were you burning draft cards, or what were you doing? I did a little bit of everything, but not quite to the extreme of burning my draft card. I remember one of the first events that I did in really overt action that I took was somebody had given me a decal of the American flag, and it was one of those iron-on things. And I earned it on the back of my Army Fatigue jacket that everybody always wore around that time. I earned it on upside down. Now, I'm a local here. I graduated from Regis High School, and I think that a lot of my teachers, the older nuns and stuff, think that I just got my jacket mixed up when I put that decal on, but it was really my statement of the distress that this country was in. So I tried with that overt action to at least display my view. Starting about that same time, I chose politics and getting involved in elections, leaflet droppings, and I chose a candidate that I could get behind, and I worked for his campaign. That was Hubert Humphrey, and he came to Regis High School, and I mean, I felt like, you know, God had intervened here. The man I was supporting in the upcoming election was coming to my high school. He had a question and answer period, and someone selected me for my question. My question to him was, "What's your position on amnesty for the draft dodgers, the people who are going to Canada, et cetera?" Because clearly in my mind, I was not going to go to Vietnam. I had made that decision as a sophomore or junior after my brother had written that letter to me, and so I was going to take any measure I could not to go, and I was also going to work on stopping the war. Well, Hubert Humphrey's answer was, "Absolutely not. There will not be amnesty." And I changed my candidate on that day. Well, I didn't really change right away, but I dropped him like a hot rock because I figured, well, why should I support someone that would eventually may not support me? He hit me home. He hit me personally. Then I did my research and found a new candidate, and of course that was where the origination of a bumper sticker I put on years later was, "Don't blame me. I voted for George McGovern." [Music] There's something happening here, but what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to be where. I think it's time we stop, children watch that sound, everybody look what's going on. [Music] There's battle lines being wrong, nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Young people speak in their minds. I'm getting so much resistance from behind time we stop. Hey, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down? [Music] What a field day for the heat. A thousand people in the street, singing songs and a carry inside. Mostly safe, too, ready for our side. It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down? [Music] There are no yes tracks deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you're always afraid. Step out of line, the man come and take you away, we better stop. Hey, what's that sound, everybody look what's going down? [Music] You went to reach this high school, which is Catholic High School? Were you Catholic and were you a devout Catholic? Yes, I was actually from as most Catholics have large families, especially back in that time. My six sisters and two brothers, we all graduated from Regis High School. My mother and my father varied devout Catholics and I cherished my religious upbringing both in school and in church. Up to the point, even when I was a senior in high school, I strongly considered joining the priesthood. There were a couple, I think they were Franciscan priests or they could have been Jesuit priests down in Milwaukee, the Berrigan brothers. If I'm not mistaken, it was Daniel and Philip Berrigan. They were very active in trying to promote an end to the war and I thought, look at these guys. They have actually people come and they listen to them speak continuously and I felt I had a gift for speaking. I felt like I had enough faith that I could devote part of my life to that and so, yeah, I was very much a strong Catholic. What kept you from going into the priesthood? Well, it's the age-old thing. I was still a virgin. I was not going to be a priest and be a virgin, so I decided to go down that path first. So did you get straight, heavily involved in activism from there on? What kind of path did you go down campaigning from a govern and going out and ending the Vietnam War? Yeah, well, the political system suits me well. I feel like maybe it's part of my upbringing, but I feel like being involved in politics has always been one of my directions and that I could do something by that. So always involved in elections, either supporting a candidate or doing something in that nature. In my 20s, though, I began to do something that a lot of my friends were doing and that was started thinking in terms of what today is coined as intentional living. I like to use the word "deliberate living" where you make conscious decisions on what you consume, how you consume it. And I really thought in my 20s that the best way would be for me to get some property and be as self-sustaining as possible so that my impact on the planet was less. And I didn't have to be a part of some corporate machine that really, I mean, at that time, it was discovered during the war that really our motivation for being in Vietnam had very little to do with democracy. And a lot more to do with capitalism and what was required by big corporate American companies in order to achieve their goals. And that was land acquisition, having product to sell to different places on the planet. Globalization goes way back. It's not something new. What did you do for a living at that time? How did you channel your conscious living into livelihood? My livelihood at the time was, I was a bricklayer and I thoroughly enjoyed that profession. As a matter of fact, there's days like today where you just long to be able to go outside and yell at a laborer and tell them to get some materials on the scaffolding and build a wall. The rewarding nature of construction, especially something like bricklaying, is just phenomenal. Your day's work is done. You're tired as you walk away, you turn and you look and you see what you've done. That immediate reward of constructing something. And then I still drive by places that I worked on and say with a significant amount of pride that I helped build that. But I had two knee surgeries in three years and my orthopedic surgeon said, "Steve, did you ever look into another line of work?" I just kind of looked at him and said, "Well, based on your last invoice, are you hiring?" I've gotten to know you, Steve, as an activist here, as a peace activist, someone who's trying to get Americans here in the Chippewa Valley thinking about their choices with regard to war. How did this come about? Was it just a direct result of your son Nick's being in the military? No, I mean, it was definitely a connection there because anyone who's been a parent or knows a parent real well knows that there's this bond between you and your children that it just can't be broken. That transfers into when they're 25 years old and in the army and you notice that you have a warring president, you're going to try and protect your offspring there too. But I remember distinctly, Nick, like I said, joined the army before 9/11 and he was into it full-scale by the time we invaded Afghanistan. I was not really awakened by Afghanistan to the point where I know I would be today, but I realized by the time the Iraq war, the drums were beating for that war that I needed to become informed about our country and why we choose to do the things that we choose to do with our military. I guess one of the struggles I had was we had Sudan and even the early stages of Darfur at the time when we were deciding to move into Iraq, and I'm saying, but we don't just go after all bad guys, we choose which countries we decide to invade. You know, then you'll hear the arguments about, well, it's in our interest. I'm here to say it's in every American's interest to change the policies of our government from one of feeling that we achieve our goals through military means and think instead of achieving our goals and maybe trying to understand our goals a little bit better and achieving them with a less violent method that actually brings more people aboard the next time as opposed to, look at the situation we're in right now, we're on an island on this planet. There's no country that wants to stand with us. Some would say, well, look at Great Britain, they're with us. No, they're not. Tony Blair is with George Bush. Look at the population in Great Britain. They're not with us. Even here in America, I've seen a drastic change, and we are on the road to peace, but we can't let our guard down. We will get there, and we can't relax on anything that we've done to this point. You said, Steve, that your consciousness was not raised before we went into Afghanistan, that you didn't have a large reaction against that invasion. What's wrong with Iraq that maybe wasn't wrong with Afghanistan, or was Afghanistan wrong and you just weren't paying attention? What's wrong with war? I'm beyond a doubt, and this one I can say quite clearly. If I knew what I know now before we invaded Afghanistan, I would have been in the trenches for Afghanistan and against going into Afghanistan. I think I was awakened by the rhetoric I was hearing prior to the war, just wasn't adding up to me. The lies seemed to be mounting one on top of another, and I'm not talking about those news events that are now common knowledge. I'm talking about simple things, simple statements about, we need to get them now. You don't want to wait for the smoking gun. And I'm thinking, well, yeah, there'll be a smoking gun, all right? You just go into that country with your military. There'll be all kinds of smoking guns. Nothing seemed to add up with the logic and the reason that was given to the American people, yet I saw the people rallying around it, and it just wasn't making sense to me. And so I knew there was other people that felt similarly, and I went in a demonstration in February before we invaded over in Menominee, and there was, I would say, about 100 people, maybe not quite that many, and we did a little march. And I remember coming back that night and looking on the news, and there was millions of people across this planet that got together that day and did the same thing I did. And the hope that I discovered that day was that, yes, people will still assemble. People will still tell their governments that the government's action is wrong. But you know what? The next day, I remember watching the news blurbs, and I heard W say, I don't listen to focus groups. I want an insult to call them a focus group. If people only understood how difficult it is sometimes to get up and stand up and speak up when it's not the popular opinion, or it's not an opinion that you know is even going to carry 50% of the people in the room, that's difficult. To see that many people come forward and speak out was just amazing. I think I'm going to try and ask the question another way, is what's wrong with going in Tyrak simply that we were lied to to get there? Or would it have been wrong if he told the truth and we had decided to go? I'm beginning to get to a point in my life where I have not evaluated what I would call a just war. People would say, well, what about when we were attacked in World War II? I'm not a history buff, so I don't study everything in that respect. But I'm leaning much heavier towards there are other responses than simply more militarism. It was funny on Saturday, I was observing people that were there at the protest. And whenever you assemble a group of 100 people for a purpose, you're going to have a broad range of people and how they expect to carry that out. On Saturday when I watched and I saw some people simply stood there with their sign and smiled at cars going by, sometimes an occasional wave. Others were kind of seeking out the enemy, so to speak, and they were looking for the guy that would whip the bird or whatever and they would choose to respond in kind. Every time that I see a scenario where belligerence is met with belligerence or hate is met with hate or anger met with anger, it's always escalated to a point of worse. And that's why the belief where I'm definitely challenged to travel to is one of demilitarizing our country. I don't think that in today's world that we need to respond to everything that happens to our country with a military effort. I think there's much better ways. I just feel like we would end up with a world of more peace and definitely one where people choose to help as opposed to destroy. Are you saying, Steve, that were you of draft age at this point that you would go towards filing as a conscientious objector? Most certainly, and as a member of the Chippewa Valley Draft and Military Counseling Network, I've spoken with high school students just two weeks ago. We went to memorial and spoke at two different lunch breaks because the likelihood of me being drafted at the age of 51 is real slim, mind you, not totally out of the picture yet. I do feel like it's my responsibility to help others find their conscience if they have that conscience. You can't really help someone find their conscience, but you can definitely help them find within their own selves what it is that motivates them. I think if I would have had some help at the time when I was in high school other than that letter from my brother, I think I would have rather than thought in terms of running away because that was the only choice I thought I had. I thought I had to go to Canada. If I would have had some better counseling, I probably would have started my conscientious objector status while I was in high school. Like I believe today, if you have a son or a daughter or a brother or a sister or if you are in the draft age and I don't care if you're male or female, you seriously need to understand first what the laws are. And then secondly, decide where you stand as a human, as an individual, and if you feel you even have a slight inkling of conscientious objection where you say your own conscience will not allow you to partake in any military activity, whether it's cooking or firing a gun. You need to work on that today. The time to start on your conscientious objection filing is today, not after the President announces he's going to start the draft. You need to do it today. And there's some real positive and easy steps you need to take in order to do that. What would you recommend people do to start that preparation? And is that the only way that they can prepare for the eventual draft is by establishing themselves as COs? I would say the first thing to advise people in regards to where the draft is or where the draft will be when it starts. I'm convinced we're one event away. Our military is spread so thin right now, it would take just one single event to start the draft. My advice to people is, at this point in time, because the laws have changed so significantly from whatever we knew in regards to the draft from the time in the Vietnam War, that if you expect something with the Selective Service, there's a very good chance it's not there. For instance, college deferments. That was very, very popular in Vietnam War here. People would simply go to college in hopes that the war would end before they finished college. That's not going to work this time. So you need to be thinking in terms of what are my legal responsibilities? What are my legal alternatives? There are deferments. For instance, if I was a senior in high school and chose to be a priest, that is still a deferment. As long as you're in the seminary, that is a deferment you can get. And so that would keep you out of the army. But other than conscientious objection, the number of deferments or allowable pass-by's have significantly diminished. Your choices are going to be narrowed down to if you're medically okay and mentally okay. There's a good chance you're going to go if your number is up. Unless you have taken some action to prove that you are a conscientious objector. You mentioned again the possibility of being a priest. Are you still Catholic? Do you still have basically Catholic beliefs? I think I'll always have Catholic beliefs. You know, anything that you do for as long a time as I did as a Catholic, I think there's a great deal of Catholicism and how I think and how I breathe and how I eat. As far as a practicing Catholic, I do not attend church regularly. I was real disappointed in the last election in the Catholic church. I still have siblings who are very strong Catholics. What got me upset with the last election was how the Catholic church chose to use the abortion issue, which was kind of, by my own judgment, also a sideline to the gay rights issue, as the issues to vote for someone who has deceived the American public. Someone who has created a war atmosphere which the previous pope came out and said that this was not a just war. I just don't understand how they could have taken that. Even our own bishop, the bishop of this diocese that Eau Claire in the Chippewa Valley is in, said that if John Kerry came to this diocese, he should not be served communion. I'm sorry. That lies right in the face of my deep beliefs. There's no way that I can go to church under that scenario and say, "I openly accept the teachings of this body because I don't believe that." Clearly, you've got a lot of your formative beliefs from a very lively Catholicism as a young man, in your case. Where do you continue to replenish that supply? What continues to inspire you to the kind of activism you're showing now? Well, I know that in the last couple years, I've paid much more attention to what I would call my spiritual side. For a long period of my life, I would shun that or put it to the side, not really shun it, but just say, "Well, I don't really need to go there." Perhaps it was just a cop-out or an easy way of not having to go to church on Sunday morning or something of that nature, but what I realized in the last couple years is that there is this spiritualness that resides within me that needs to come out. I need to express it in my life with my family. I need to express it in my working day with the people I work with, that deep spiritual part that I truly believe we all have. Recently, I've attended a couple different places here in Chippewa Valley. Instead, I've always felt like my spiritualness has been such a self-thing that it's just me. Over the years, I've been a practicing Buddhist. In my early 20s, I practiced—it's called the Nishin Shoshu—and I actually converted two of my Catholic sisters. They're still practicing. Buddhism is a very easy religion to adopt. There's hardly anything controversial within the Buddhist religion, at least from what I studied. So part of my spiritualism came out in my 20s when I was a practicing Buddhist. The part that has always been an issue for me is hierarchical type, governmental type institutions that call themselves churches. There always seems to be those that are favored in those situations and those who are asked to be silent. The feminism issue in the Catholic Church is one that just—it bothered me when I was a kid, and it wasn't even popular to think in terms of women's rights when I was in my early teens. But I was so evident I could be an altar boy, but the girl I sat next to in class couldn't even walk up in the sacristry. Those divisions that institutions tend to pronounce really turned me off. I have no place for that in my life, and I see hypocrisy in those types of things. I think my Catholic spirituality would have been a lot different had I grown up either five years earlier or five years later, but most people don't remember that the Vatican II took place in the 60s at one of the most formative times in my life. And I had been taught up to a certain point that this was important, and this was important, and if you didn't do this, you would be damned to eternal damnation, or if you did do this, you could be damned. And all of a sudden, at about the time I was 12 years old, they said, "Just kidding," and they gave me a whole new set of rules. Well, I'm sorry. You can't tell me one thing one day and then say, "Never mind," and expect me to believe what you're telling me the next day. I think that happened to me in a lot of people my age within the Catholic Church. If you had to state some of your basic religious fundamental spiritual beliefs right now, what would they be? One that goes back to early childhood, I've always believed this, is God is love. It's a very simple statement, but when you're young, you understand love in a very singular type way. It's like what your parents do for you, or something of that nature. You try to equate it to that. As you get older, and for me, I had children, and I mean, I swear, you know, if you ever really want to discover what love is, it's a given that you will discover what love is, the day you become a parent. It's not necessary. You don't have to be a parent to learn what love is, but I'll guarantee you on that day. If you're involved, which you better be, you will discover what love is. So for me now, the best way for me to vocalize some of the things about my beliefs and what religion or what my spirit says to me, it is God is love. And that's the easiest and best way to put it. I think you've just originated a new website to try and get the message out. Can you tell us about that website you started, and where this fits in the picture of what your life is really about? Here again, we're talking about one of my core beliefs, and I discovered writing in high school. So I've been writing for a long time. In my activism, I've chosen to write in a lot of different ways. If you read the newspaper and you read the voice of the people, you've read me. I'll guarantee it. Neil Clark of the Year Telegram has featured me in their "It Seems to Me" article. I wrote a piece about my son Nick being an Iraq against his will. My website, by the way, for you that are listening, is "Wag the Dog Productions", all the same spelling as you would expect. "Wag the dog productions.com". And it's really my attempt to get my voice out there. You'll see a lot of events, things of that nature that are scheduled. I try to keep that up. But mostly I talk and I try to create a dialogue. It's still pretty much one way right now, where the dialogue is. Me saying something, you responding with emails or whatever, but it's really an attempt to write from the heart of how I feel. So if you really wanted to know how I feel about my activism, my belief, and peace, you'll discover it at that site. And give me an example of something you've posted the direction of one of your recent postings. I just did a piece called "Corporate Spies". I find it appalling how much our government is in bed with our corporations in taking away our civil liberties. I'll point out different stories or discover different things in the news media. And this happened to be about AT&T, where they actually allowed NSA to come into their facilities, set up shop, and monitor you and I. We don't have to get into the argument of whether the government should be able to do it. I happen to believe that what is taking place there is against the law. I was thrilled the day that Russ Feingold brought forward the idea about censure in the Senate, and then I was quickly appalled to see only two senators stand with him. Other things you see on the site, I talk a little bit about Nick. Nick's a very quiet individual, doesn't get out there and stand with me at the protest, but he believes very strongly in a similar way. One thing I was published this year in the USA Today, they had placed an article about how military families should have a good sense of humor. That will help them get through this trauma that we're in when our children are away at war. I tend to react when I get appalled at something, and I responded to the USA Today, and they chose to publish my letter. It was funny because this was in February, and for New Year's Eve, on the way to our New Year's Eve celebration, I asked my wife what her resolution was. She hadn't come up with it yet, but as most people know, the main reason why you ask somebody what their resolution is, is you want to tell them what yours is. Mine was to be published in a major publication. So here it is February, and I get published in the USA Today, and that's a pretty broad distributed piece of news, I guess you might call it at times. Not that I was aspiring to get in the USA Today, but I hit my goal, and it was February. Well, I had to set another resolution right away, but I was pretty proud of the fact. I even bought two issues of it and took it home. I still don't know what I did with those two issues, but I thought I'd better get a couple of them before everybody buys them up. And I get home, and I walk into my office, and there's a voicemail message. I was so thankful that night that I was the first one to come home, because the message was a voicemail for me, wishing that I would have died on the day that I had my heart attack the day my son was deployed. And another comment in regards to my son, how big of a coward he is and how he wished he had died, and I racked two. And I realized I didn't get angry, I got real sad. I just sat in my chair, and I looked down at the floor, and I thought, why would someone hate me so much for something that I believed in that is so peaceful? It'd be different if I would have said, all those guys that voted for George W. Bush should be over there in Iraq fighting the war. I happened to believe that, but I didn't say that. My letter was simple. It was, I couldn't find much humor while my son was in Iraq. As a matter of fact, I woke up each day, struggling to find the news, to see if he was into crit, to see if that name was even mentioned in the news, because I wanted to know. And like I said earlier, you know, you want to discover what love is, have a child. I had discovered much later, after having my children, was that you never stop worrying, you always care. Even at their worst moment, when they're being probably the most juvenile, doing some of the most inane things, you never stop caring. Steve, you've shared some great stories of your family, of your growing up, and of your actions going on today. I know that people can connect up with some of them by going to wagthedogproductions.com. Where else can they find out about things, like the local chapter of Veterans for Peace, or the military family speak out? How can they connect up with those kind of wider concerns? All of those that you just mentioned, military families speak out. That link is on my website. So is the Chippewa Valley Draft and Military Counseling Network. Just go to the page, label links. Veterans for Peace, we don't have anything local yet, that's published, but we're definitely going to get something up. You know, any Veterans are listening to this, or anybody, I'm a member of the associate, and anybody can join, you don't have to be a Veteran. It is a tremendously good group, and I can't express how good of a feeling, even if it's just a gathering of seven people. People of like mind who want to achieve similar goals. On Saturday, when we had a hundred of those like-minded people together at one time, I swear, there's not much that could have defeated those hundred people at that time. But one thing I can tell you is that there's a vigil up in Chippewa every Saturday, the corner of Bridge Street and Old Highway 29, just as you get in towards downtown after you cross the bridge. Eleven to noon, every Saturday, I'll guarantee you there'll be at least seven or eight people there, sometimes there's twenty-five. Just stand there, one hour, in one month, just to go there and discover. You don't even have to stand with them, sit in a parking lot and watch. It's got to be a ratio of ten to one, where people they're going by are giving me affirmative sign that they believe that peace is better than war. It's so encouraging, so for you that feel just how there's no hope, I ask you, get out there. Look, there is hope. [Music] I was walking down the street, only town was born. I would mean to be that I never fell with war. So I would blow my ass out to the wind. I saw you ridden across the sky, and the revenue she starts now. Yeah, the revenue she starts now. The revenue she starts now, and it hasn't been with you. The trail walls are landing now, and the revenue she starts to. The way you can be played, I'm reading what you're down. I thought you'd give me what you see, and the revenue she starts now. Yeah, the revenue she starts now. Yeah, the revenue she starts now. You're going backyard, you're going to town. The way you can be spinning around just by the heart. You never lose your starch now. [Music] That's not a dream. That's a world to turn around. And all hope to come to be. And we'll be together around. And the hour I will take a breath. And we'll battle it with a hat. I'll learn a little something. The revenue she starts now. Yeah, the revenue she starts now. And you're going backyard, you're going to town. So what you do is standing around just by the heart. You never lose your starch now. Yeah, the revenue she starts now. And you're going backyard, you're going hometown. And what you do is standing around just by the heart. You never lose your starch now. [Music] Thanks so much, Steve. Thanks for keeping up the good energy for peace here in the United States in the Chippewa Valley. Thanks for providing that kind of love to your son to bring him back, to inspire him, and to really make a difference as part of a military family that can speak knowledgeably about what we're at. Well, thank you, Mark. I think that the new media and WHYS here in the city of Eau Claire, this is great. We need more of this. I'm willing to help. I know there's some fundraisers coming up for WHYS, and I know that your program is instrumental in helping give a good, well-rounded programming. So I'm hoping to up that bandwidth because I live on the outskirts of town, so I got to actually ride my bike into town to listen to your program. Thanks, Ken, Steve. My guest today for Spirit in Action has been Steve Wagner. You can hear this program again via my website, northernspiritradio.org, where you can find links to this program and hear other programs as well. Music featured in this program has included "Rich Man's War" by Steve Earl, "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield, and "The Revolution Starts Now" by Steve Earl. The theme music for Spirit in Action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. I have no higher cause for you than this to love and serve your neighbor. Enjoying selflessness, to love and serve your neighbor. Enjoying selflessness. Music .