In freedom's way

I’ve been sending out Freedom of Information Requests for the past 18 months to find out how much and what kind of information the government is keeping on Iraq Veterans Against the War.  Having come of age in the Vietnam era, I assume surveillance, if only  as a matter of course.  I haven’t gotten much back, but I’ve learned a few things so far:

- Everything seems to be going through Homeland Security.  That’s where my requests to the Army, FBI, and Secret Service ended up or got cleared (or not) for release. 

- Govt agencies don’t give up much.  What I’ve gotten usually consists of multiple blacked-out pages – redacted is the official term – with one legible paragraph or a reprint of a news article.  I imagine some poor slob sitting in a tiny, windowless room, fingers permanently stained with black Magic Marker from scratching over line after line of type.  Talk about death of the soul.  But said poor slob is very good; I can’t read what’s been blacked out, even when I hold it up to the light. 

- It takes a long time.  Agencies are supposed to reply within 20 work days and they usually do send a letter telling you they're working on it within that time frame.  It takes a lot longer to get the info, however.  Then there's my request as a journalist for a fee waiver.  DHS denied it in July 2009.  I appealed a month later.  After I emailed them in Feb. 2010, asking for an update, I was informed that they take these things in the order received and I was #497 out of 551 appeals.  I’m still waiting.

- The most material came from what’s known as a fusion center in Maryland.  Fusion centers aren’t physical places; they’re systems for sharing information among law enforcement agencies which were put in place post 9/11, and they’re nigh unto impossible to crack.  My break came when someone put me in touch with a U.S. attorney, who, I think, wanted to prove to me that he really was a friend of the First Amendment.  I sent him a FOIA request and got back a fat packet, including a 42-page compilation of intelligence reports.  It was all redacted, except for a reprint of a WashPo story about an upcoming antiwar march (2 pages).

- Which brings me to perhaps the only surprise I’ve found: It’s possible that Homeland Security has a sense of humor.  The 42 pager, titled, Virtual Roll Call, features on its cover the quotation, “We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know.”  That's attributed to Unknown.

War Is Not a Game

Prologue to War Is Not a Game
forthcoming book by Nan Levinson

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

(Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy)

“We’re going over now. You ready?” A young veteran with a quicksilver smile and a soul patch asks a fellow vet grabbing a smoke outside the Holiday Inn in downtown St. Louis. They nod. The August heat wave, close to one-hundred degrees all week, has finally broken so that it’s no longer punishing to venture beyond air conditioning. The two veterans, one lanky, one solid as a door jamb, climb into a car where a few others wait and they all head down the street to the America’s Center and the Missouri Black Expo job fair, now in full swing.

The convention hall is big, echoing, over-lit and packed with job recruiters and seekers, but the clump of young men and women in black T-shirts with “Iraq Veterans Against the War” stenciled on the front are hard to miss as they make their way to a booth with “Go Army!” splayed across its canopy. Army recruiters and civilian employees stand behind a table laden with brochures and sign-up sheets, while teens and young men take turns playing America’s Army, a simulation game whose website proclaims it to be “The Only Game Based on the Experience of Real U.S. Army Soldiers.”

The buzz began the day before, when a handful of IVAW vets were hanging around the hotel lobby on a break from the panel sessions of their third annual meeting. There’s a job fair going on across the street, someone said, the Army’s got a recruiting booth, I saw them unloading a truck, we need to do something. They batted around ideas until someone, probably Steve Mortillo or Jabbar Magruder, suggested a sound off and it clicked. Quickly, the plan spread, a quiet signaling among the veterans. Now at the expo, they’re ready to act.

IVAW chapter profile: Los Angeles

IVAW Los Angeles

IVAW Chapter profile: Chicago

IVAW: Chicago

IVAW chapter profile: Colorado Springs

IVAW Colorado Springs

Beyond Bracelets: What Veterans Want

Unpublished op-ed by Liam Madden and Nan Levinson
29 September 2008

As both candidates demonstrated in last Friday’s debate, wearing a bracelet to commemorate a dead soldier is one way to show support for U.S. troops. Keeping promises to living soldiers and veterans would be a better one, especially if you intend to be president.

In August, 70 members of the nonpartisan Iraq Veterans Against the War marched to the Democratic and Republican national conventions to deliver letters and briefings to the campaigns of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.

In Denver, veterans in uniform led thousands of civilians on a four-mile march to the gates of the DNC, where IVAW petitioned the Democrats to discuss its main goals: immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq, full veterans benefits, and restored sovereignty and reparations for the Iraqi people. As hundreds of riot police faced off against them, the former soldiers and marines calmed the crowd by reaffirming their commitment to non-violence and their respect and sympathy for the police officers. Several police had tears streaming down their faces and one broke down, leaving his phalanx altogether.

The power in their pain

some cool veteran-artists