For Sept. 28th
From ¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No!
“The climax of the ballad was: ‘Now should a man, should a man have to kill in order to live like a human being in this country?’...’You are dead,’ each member of Chicano Draft Help would watch jaws drop as they pointed directly to a young man in the audience who looked to be of draft age” (Oropeza 106).
Throughout the article, Lorena Oropeza highlights the anti-war stance many Chicanos/Chicanas took in regard to the Vietnam War. Oropeza frequently draws attention to the idea that most Chicanos/Chicanas identified more with the Vietnamese than Americans during the war, a telltale sign of the poor treatment they received in their home country. Oropeza also focuses on specific anti-war operations from within the Chicano community. For example, in order to spread their anti-war message, Lea Ybarra and Nina Genera founded the Chicano Draft Help organization in California and created theater performances to communicate the war’s atrocities. In one of their theatrical performances, a young Chicano male is killed in action in Vietnam and his body is left unclaimed. The production also involves young male audience members by declaring that if they had been drafted, they would most likely be dead. This approach puts the death and destruction into perspective for the civilian audience and aims to spread the anti-war sentiment. The climax of the ballad is striking to me, as it encapsulates the argument many Chicanos/Chicanas made during this period (and especially in this article): Why should I fight for a country that will only respect me when I murder another human being? How does the murder of a person a government deems an ‘enemy’ equate to patriotism? This article clearly demonstrates the significance of studying social issues such as race and domestic response to war when studying the military.
“For Bill Hunt, the graduate students in history, one of the most appealing sides of the Resistance was its association with “an indigenous, patriotic, American traditions of protest and dissent” In the end, few news outlets bought this line” (p 114 Confronting the War Machine)
ReplyDeleteI think this particular packet shows an interesting aspect of political protest. We’ve been discussing the inequality and exploitation of minorities in regards to military service. From other packets we’ve read, working class men acquiesced to the draft, believing that it would get them eventually, and understanding that they didn’t have a choice. In regards to the men turning in their draft cards, 82% qualified for deferments. What this handout highlights are the actions of those who are privileged, and how they utilize that privilege to not avoid service but make moral and political statements against it. These actions are commendable, but ultimately downplayed or warped by the media (feel free to use Colin Kaepernick taking a knee to conceptualize this in contemporary times). While ignoring the glaring similarities in American traditions in political protest, the media decided to publish the actions of the draft dissenters as “unpatriotic” or focus on individual beliefs that the dissenters should be “banished if they don’t want to fight for their country.” They did so because the dissenters went against the government’s intent to unify people behind the war effort. The coverage focused on burning draft cards and pinning an unwanted demographic on the movement, instead of explaining it’s realities. Similar to the idea brought up in the Oropeza piece, that “anyone who fights for his land and what belongs to him… is called a communist” (94). The media attempted to demonize the upper, and more privileged class of society that had valid reasons for being against the war in order to justify the current order.
“the resistance will result only in making martyrs out of some students who have great courage but little judgement” -Michael Foley, Confronting the War Machine 115
ReplyDeleteI live about a half an hour away from Kent State and a relatively large percent of my high school class are now college freshmen there. I don’t really know how much other schools cover the May 4th shooting, but it is something we have learned about annually since like seventh grade; like when schools talk about 9/11. And it has that same feeling as when you talk about 9/11, because you know that the people in the Twin Towers did not deserve to die and that the people at Kent did not deserve to die either. They were just kids being kids, throwing rocks at other kids, and then four people died. Then just like that these people were martyrs for the protesters, whether they were there to protest or not, and for the next almost 50 years people will talk about them in their history class just like they’ll talk about Cambodia and Reagan and Vietnam and the Cold War. No matter what point in time one looks at there will always be martyrs because people will always want to stand for something. Foley says, “Since most American war resisters did not express their protest by setting themselves on fire, destroying one's draft card in this way demonstrated ‘symbolic understanding and support’ for those who did." The reading really puts the people who resisted the draft in their place in history, while these people did not want to be full martyrs they still wanted to stand for something. And they were martyrs in some ways, like the 82 percent of the men who Foley describes who resisted in Boston that risked their deferments and the chance of being arrested to make a point. In my opinion, there really is not a resistance movement that does not have martyrs, and it doesn’t mean that these people have little judgement; it is just human nature to want to stand for something bigger than yourself.
“You will obey all orders. You must give one hundred percent of yourself at all times. You must do everything you are told to do, quickly and willingly. You must be completely honest in everything you do. It is a rigid code, bristling with values alien to many of these recruits.” (Ricks 56)
ReplyDeleteThe military equates human bodies to templates. Templates that are utilized and coded to become an “...Icon of masculinity and the ultimate embodiment of national beliefs.” (Kieran 218) The idea of striping a person of their normalities and reprogramming them into the mold of a United States soldier is quite scary. To be able take an eighteen year old person, put him through six months of training where he will endure mental, physical, and emotional stress to then transfer him to a tense environment sounds unrealistic unless you train them like a computer. It almost seems like a form of manipulation.