this is a repost of my memoris of the DNC and RNC
My DNC/IVAWNC/RNC oddesy
My journey began on a Friday, directly preceding a trip to the VA vocational rehabilitation office. I had finally been approved for chapter 31 educational benefits several months after I had begun the application process. I decided to apply for voc rehab after being denied the GI bill for the second time. Ironically my discharge upgrade came in the mail a week after I applied and I was able to get the regular GI bill.
Immediately after dropping my papers off at home I shot down to Detroit to pick up another IVAW member from Michigan. She was a former army cook, who oddly had gone to airborne school. Much to my dismay she had brought a drum with her for what was expected to be a very long car trip.
Every attempt at conversation proved futile, as our views are so different they always turned to arguments. Not that I don't enjoy a good argument, we simply couldn't agree to a unified set of facts that govern reality so there was no way of proving the other wrong. After 5 hours in the car together I discovered that the only thing we had in common, outside of IVAW and a sculpture welding class we had coincidentally taken the previous semester, was a sense of amusement with hentai, Japanese animated porno.
Hentai combines science fiction and fantasy with highly perverted sexual fantasies. Oddly every hentai movie I've ever seen contains a princess being raped by a demon with penis tentacles and a ridicules plot line. I can never tell if hentai is intended to be erotic or mealy enjoyed as a novelty for its extreme depiction of deviant sexual behavior.
We spent the night in Chicago on the third story flat of IVAW member Patty and staff member Robert. I went immediately to bed after dinner while every one else stayed up and conversed with each other on the patio. We where supposed to leave at 7am. I woke up at 9:15 and I was the only one awake. It was another 2 hours before every one was awake.
We drove from the flat to a house in the suburbs that belonged to IVAW member "Pinky." He had been in the Coast guard and had actually deployed to Iraq. To look at him you would never tell he had been in the military aside from his tattoos. Our group decided to sit down and have a smoke before we picked up the rental van. I stripped down to my underwear and sat neck deep in his daughter's kiddy pool.
After I got out of the pool, I had completely air dried before we actually set out to pick up the van. We walked to the car rental place and got there 15 minuets before it closed at 1pm. It took about half an hour to fill out the forms and authorizations, and eventually we got a Haundi entourage. It was a fairly comfortable ride with lots room and space age features that Id only seen in car commercials. We decided to get lunch before picking up the rest of our crew.
I left my car at pinkies for the duration of the trip. We simply didn't need it. The van seats 7, and we where only bringing four people. I transferred my baggage from my Saturn to the entourage. I had packed light for this trip. Aside from food and clothing I brought a gasmask, a flak jacket, and a jock strap. I had no intention of taking a night stick to the testicles but I wasn't taking any chances.
We dropped off the people who weren't going with us and picked up the rest of our crew. Only me, the girl, Pinky, and Vinny would be driving from Chicago to Denver, how ever not all of us would arrive together. We began our trip approximately 10 hours behind schedule, and by 11:30 we wanted to stop and get a hotel, except for the girl. She threw a temper tantrum and steadfastly refuse to share a hotel with 3 guys out of fear of what it would do to her "reputation." We offered to place her in her own separate hotel but she stormed off and threatened to walk to Denver. She went so far as to walk up the freeway entrance ramp, bare foot, before being stopped by the cops.
Her little tantrum set us back an hour, and the only compromise we could agree to was that we would buy her a bus ticket to Denver. Oddly she felt perfectly fine waiting alone outside a closed bus station at 2am but not sharing adjacent hotels. It was right then that I decided she shouldn't have a cabinet position if we form a Michigan chapter of IVAW.
We stopped at a motel, and then the next morning we picked up a hitch hiker headed to Idaho. He was a former carnie who had just got fired from the farm he was working at. I liked him immensely more than our previous passenger we had dropped off the night before.
We arrived in Denver later that evening, approximately 12 hours behind schedule. The IVAW house in Denver was a second story office above a computer store. Their where two bathrooms and only one shower with no hot water. Air mattress and sleeping bags where scattered across the floor. It was hot with only box fans to circulate the air. I immediately began to feel claustrophobic; witch was odd as I was unaware that I was claustrophobic up until that time.
I looked up all the local hotels and desperately attempted to find one that still had vacancy. I managed to find one that was with in walking distance and only charge $40 a night. Upon arriving in my room I understood why. The inside temperature was over 90 degrees, and the only source of ventilation was the sliding door that I depended on for security. I frantically drove around town trying to find a store that was still open and sold fans. I eventually found one just minuets before it closed.
I extended an open invitation to IVAW members who needed more room to sleep to share my hotel room. Three took me up on the offer. I requested that any interested come to my room before 1AM, and in true IVAW fashion they arrived by 1:30. Secure with my frivolous luxury of more than 6 square feet of floor space, an electric fan, and hot showers I went to sleep to rest for the next day's activities.
That morning was mainly police interaction training. Getting arrested, not getting arrested, resisting arrest etc. This was all in preparation for our march to the Democratic National Convention and the very real fact that we might get our asses beaten for refusing to disperse.
That evening we all went to see "the eyes of Babylon" a one man play by Gay former Marine Jeff Key. Using simple props and lighting effects he reenacted his experiences in Iraq, along with personal struggles of being a sensitive gay man in a very (insert adjective for rednecks here) organization.
I was really dizzy that night after the show and even the next morning. I missed the required training for Operation first casualty, a guerilla street theater performance where we patrol in uniform to simulate occupation. This was redundant and completely unnecessary because there where all ready check points manned by armed men in body armor all over the city. I managed to meet up with every one after the event and we did interviews with press.
Our last mission at the DNC was a march from a free Rage against the Machine Show to the Pepsi center. The base was much to high and I couldn't hear the lyrics for most of the opening acts. This is unfortunate because I cant relay enjoy music unless I can connect with the lyrics at an emotional level. There where guest speakers in between acts. That guy from the dead Kennedy, the dude that Tom Cruse played in "born on the forth of July." I've never been good with names.
When Rage finally came on it didn't matter that I couldn't hear their lyrics, I knew most of them by heart. "The microphone explodes shattering the moldsomething something somethingthey rally round your family with a pocket full of shells" The last verse sounds like riot police rounding up people using riot shotguns, but what the hell is a "bull on parade?" The first time I meet Tom Morello I asked him just that. I bumped into him at Winter Soldier earlier that year.
"Tom Morello?...Wowwhat's a bull on parade?" Sadly he didn't know either. To this day I wonder if it's a reference to the bull market or something.
Unfortunately we couldn't see all of Rages set because we had to go change into our uniforms for the march. I was wearing a simple set of Marine Corps issued desert cammies I got during grass week of boot camp. I had to return the actual set of desert's I had worn on deployment to Supply before checking out of my unit. Both sets where utterly identical except that my boot camp issued set still had traces of fabric paint from when I painted the platoon range flag in boot camp.
It was odd seeing people I had only know outside of the military in uniform. This was especially true for "M." She was a very beautiful, shy, gentle woman, decked out in Marine Corps Issued service Alphas complete with Captains bars. It's hard to picture her barking orders to E-3s like me.
How do women even survive in the Marine Corps? It's the most insensitive, chauvinistic, macho organization in the world. Most men aren't tough enough to handle the daily physiological abuse, and we men are trained from childhood not to feel empathy, fallow the leader, take one for the team...more or less to be mindless drones that won't question orders or expect empathy. It's a mystery, like a flower growing in between train tracks. How does a delicate thing of beauty survive in such a dangerous place?
Marines use the term "bitch" and "woman" almost interchangeably. The logic is that if you can't handle this low level of physiological abuse, you shouldn't be in an organization where people are tying to kill you. But at the same time gay's are forbidden from serving because there incessant lustful sexual advances would hurt the moral of strait, god fearing Christian soldiers.
I was starting to experience chevron envy as most of the people around me had attained higher rank with only marginally more time in service. People who weren't older than me, and not necessarily smarter or more physically fit had achieved higher ranks in the Army and National Guard.
Sometimes I wonder how my life line would have been effected if I had joined the army instead of marines. In real life I was inadequately equipped, under appreciated, and it made sense that the people who ran the military could be wrong. But what if they kept giving me medals and reassuring me that I'm doing a good job? I could just as easily be a staff sergeant in Iraq wondering why any one cares about a few civilian deaths when we're doing such a good job kicking hadji's ass.
We held a small formation outside the stadium giving a final briefing on our rout to the Pepsi center. To my surprise the chef of police actually came out to give us support. He explained that he agreed with what we where doing and was worried about several members of his police department that where deployed in Iraq right now. He had a police escort for us all the way to the convention. We started with 40-50 IVAW members fallowed by 6000 rage fans, but by the end of the march we had close to 10,000 people fallowing us. Rage and the Flow bots fallowed us along with the marchers.
The police had selected a path that would send us directly to the freedom cadge, a barbed wired off parking lot outside of media attention. When we realized this we stopped the formation and tried to figure out what to do. We where given an order to disperse and we decide to march around to a much more strategically important location.
Once we got there we stopped 50 feet in front of a police line where storm troopers with grenade launchers and gas guns stood on cherry pickers waiting for the order to open fire.
Our spokesmen Jason Hurd used a bullhorn to explain that we where non violent and would not resist arrest and that we understood that the police were under orders and we would not hold it against them for fallowing them. This caused several of the officers to lower there weapon. That day a total of 5 police officers refused to lay hands on us.
At the Last minuet the Obama Camp cracked and we where able to send our representative Jeff Key to deliver our letter to Obama's Veterans rep. I was confused at first because victory is a completely alien concept to me. I only know disappointment and heart break and the fact that I had not been tear gassed confused me.
We stayed in Denver one more night then left for The Veterans for peace/IVAW national convention in Minneapolis Minnesota. It was an extremely long drive and the van got pulled over for speeding through Iowa. We tried to spin the fact that we where Iraq veterans going to the Republican national convention. When the officer finally found out we where Iraq veterans against the War we let us off with a warning.
We where all booked in the Holiday Inn select in Minneapolis. It was right down the street from the Mall of America. While we stayed in town, there seemed to be a ridiculous police presence all over the city. Several houses where raided and 4 people I know personally where detained. When I found out that electronics where being confiscated I deleted all the pictures of guns from my camera and cell phone as a precaution. I have several videos where I'm shooting at Kevlar vest with high powered pistols to evaluate there penetration.
That morning consisted of classes and work shops about GI resistance. During an intermission I made a feeble attempt at flirting with "M." She awkwardly rushed away in a hurry and I admitted to one of her friends "I really like her." He replied "I know, you make her really uncomfortable though." My embarrassment gave way to anguish, as I was haunted by memories of failed attempts at romance that plagued my teenage years.
Looking back, all my failed attempts at dating hastened my decision to join the military. I would either become a career driven, asexual, killing machine or at the very least the uniform would help me get girls. In practice I fallowed the prior much more than the later. For 2 years and 7 months I made no attempts to solicit relations with any female, either on duty or off duty.
Being a virgin in a grunt unit is like being a vegan at a steak house. No one understands you rational for not having sex. They may feel sympathy and attempt to set you up with the most vile creatures whose fornication would border on bestiality or statutory rape of the mentally enfeebled. When The 40 year old virgin came out it could have easily been a documentary, as that is the exact way that men act when they find out a member of there pack suffers for post pubesant involuntary chastity.
There is a fairly simple reason I've never had sex. All the girls I've ever liked wouldn't date me, all the girls who might have slept with me, I didn't like. This is a hard concept for most men to grasp. "You don't want to sleep with some one you feel no emotional attraction to? Like hell you say!"
I found a quiet place to greave for my romantic ineptitude when another IVAW member noticed me crying. He asked what was wrong and if there was anything he could do to help. I struggled to write a note and asked him to deliver it to "M." The note simply read "I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I have a hard time expressing my feelings ----Lars".
I continued crying for another half hour then decided to move on with the workshops. I passed "M" in the hall and tried to avoid eye contact with her. She pulled me aside and we had a heart to heart. She reassured me that the situation wasn't as bad as it had been made out to be. She gave me the typical "your great, but" speech that I had become so familiar with in high school.
This time was "your great butI'm not dating right now." Bullshit yes, but I ate it up. The thought that she wasn't dating any one right now gave me hope, like all I needed to do was wait her out and she would be mine. This was of course bullshit because she was already dating someone and didn't want to hurt my feelings. Mission accomplished, not in the literal sense, but in the Ironic, hanging a banner over an aircraft carrier sense.
I had only got 4 hours of sleep the previous night and by 10:30pm I was bugging out of my mind. I wanted to see a screening of "Body of War" but I was tripping balls with fear and paranoia that accompanies sleep deprivation for as long as I've been on anti depressants.
I lied in bed simultaneously exhausted and invigorated with paranoia and twitching muscles. The next day if felt ok in the morning, but after a few hours I couldn't walk strait from low blood sugar. I sat in the hallway and clutched my head to keep the world from spinning. Someone ordered me a pizza from room service. It was hard and dry but the carbohydrates hit the spot and in a half an hour I could walk again.
On Sunday we left the hotel and several of us put on our uniforms to pass out press releases in St. Paul, announcing Mondays march to the RNC. While walking around the convention area I was stopped by a retired Marine who tried to square me away. When he realized that I wasn't going to roll over and lick his balls he tried reporting us to the police, who refused to do anything because we weren't breaking the law.
While us where out and about I bumped into Jon Stewart walking down the street with a cup of coffee. He was very supportive and we gave him a press release in hopes that the daily show would cover our march. Jon looks and sounds different in person. His voice is much butcher and he has a 5'oclock shadow. I asked him "how can you call your self a fake news man? You're the only one of them who adjusts his posture every time you're about to bullshit us." He laughed and said "yeah, I do do that."
After the press releases where gone we meet the rest of IVAW in the park for a picnic and an award ceremony for IVAW members. When Selena was called up for an award I ran into the tree line and grabbed a handful of wild flowers and rolled them in a paper plate to form a bouquet, and presented them to her after she accepted her award. I did this several more times with other women who got awards.
That night we stayed in the basement of a church that had been arranged by retired first sergeant Wes Davey. There was a long discussion that night as to whether or not we would even go on with the march because of hurricane gustave. Some people thought we would get less press coverage and that we might be viewed as opportunistic for bashing the republicans while they raised money for hurricane victims. We even discussed sending our own contingent of IVAW members to Louisiana to help with the humanitarian effort.
I felt especially emotional that night because I felt marginalized by the squabbling over the idea of calling off the march and the fact that the base tour group was leaving the next morning. This wasn't especially sad in of itself, but was sad because they where leaving with the most wonderful girl I've ever meet, and the thought of never seeing her again was extremely distressing to me.
The next morning I was driven to the staging area, vomited 3 times, then went right back to the Church to sleep it off. I was upset that I missed the march that had gone of extremely well. We marched to the Center, the police where supportive, they ordered us to disperse and we all did except for Wes, who they refused to arrest out of respect for his service in the Army and the police department.
McCain wasn't even there at the time, and his staff refused to read our letter of "11 veteran's issues" that needed to be dealt with. We had the support of the Media, the police, and the people, just not the approval of the "pro military" political party.
The next day half our members had to leave and the rest of us where invited to a "taking back Labor day" concert by Tom Morello. It was boring at first, mainly bands I never heard of playing songs I couldn't relate to until "the night watchman" came out. I walked closer to the stage to see IVAW members in the VIP section right next to the stage. We got a representative to let us past security so we could join Tom on stage during his last song. I pulled out my cell phone and took a picture of Tom with an enormous crowd of people as a back drop; I emailed it to all my friends.
After his set we hung out with Tom back stage, I asked him "did you ever figure out what a bull on parade was yet?" He Laughed and said "I thought I recognized you from some where." We hung out back stage for the rest of the show.
We returned to the church and began packing. Most of us cleared out and went home the next day. A park bench outside had collapsed the previous night so I went to the hard wear store to buy some screws and washers to fix it. Some members of IVAW stayed behind to continue to protest the RNC.
The most notable of these was IVAW member Adam Kokesh. A Ron Paul delegate snuck him into McCain's acceptance speech. Live on CNN, MMSNBNC and CSPAN he waved a banner that read "McCain VOTES AGAINST VETSYOU CAN"T WIN AN OCCUPATION." The crowds of republican sheep started chanting "USAUSA" in hopes the awful man would go away.
On the trip from Michigan to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Denver I listened to a book on tape version of Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." One quote that stuck out in my mind because it seemed so relevant to our current situation.
"And that, I think, was the handle - -that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..."
My DNC/IVAWNC/RNC oddesy
My journey began on a Friday, directly preceding a trip to the VA vocational rehabilitation office. I had finally been approved for chapter 31 educational benefits several months after I had begun the application process. I decided to apply for voc rehab after being denied the GI bill for the second time. Ironically my discharge upgrade came in the mail a week after I applied and I was able to get the regular GI bill.
Immediately after dropping my papers off at home I shot down to Detroit to pick up another IVAW member from Michigan. She was a former army cook, who oddly had gone to airborne school. Much to my dismay she had brought a drum with her for what was expected to be a very long car trip.
Every attempt at conversation proved futile, as our views are so different they always turned to arguments. Not that I don't enjoy a good argument, we simply couldn't agree to a unified set of facts that govern reality so there was no way of proving the other wrong. After 5 hours in the car together I discovered that the only thing we had in common, outside of IVAW and a sculpture welding class we had coincidentally taken the previous semester, was a sense of amusement with hentai, Japanese animated porno.
Hentai combines science fiction and fantasy with highly perverted sexual fantasies. Oddly every hentai movie I've ever seen contains a princess being raped by a demon with penis tentacles and a ridicules plot line. I can never tell if hentai is intended to be erotic or mealy enjoyed as a novelty for its extreme depiction of deviant sexual behavior.
We spent the night in Chicago on the third story flat of IVAW member Patty and staff member Robert. I went immediately to bed after dinner while every one else stayed up and conversed with each other on the patio. We where supposed to leave at 7am. I woke up at 9:15 and I was the only one awake. It was another 2 hours before every one was awake.
We drove from the flat to a house in the suburbs that belonged to IVAW member "Pinky." He had been in the Coast guard and had actually deployed to Iraq. To look at him you would never tell he had been in the military aside from his tattoos. Our group decided to sit down and have a smoke before we picked up the rental van. I stripped down to my underwear and sat neck deep in his daughter's kiddy pool.
After I got out of the pool, I had completely air dried before we actually set out to pick up the van. We walked to the car rental place and got there 15 minuets before it closed at 1pm. It took about half an hour to fill out the forms and authorizations, and eventually we got a Haundi entourage. It was a fairly comfortable ride with lots room and space age features that Id only seen in car commercials. We decided to get lunch before picking up the rest of our crew.
I left my car at pinkies for the duration of the trip. We simply didn't need it. The van seats 7, and we where only bringing four people. I transferred my baggage from my Saturn to the entourage. I had packed light for this trip. Aside from food and clothing I brought a gasmask, a flak jacket, and a jock strap. I had no intention of taking a night stick to the testicles but I wasn't taking any chances.
We dropped off the people who weren't going with us and picked up the rest of our crew. Only me, the girl, Pinky, and Vinny would be driving from Chicago to Denver, how ever not all of us would arrive together. We began our trip approximately 10 hours behind schedule, and by 11:30 we wanted to stop and get a hotel, except for the girl. She threw a temper tantrum and steadfastly refuse to share a hotel with 3 guys out of fear of what it would do to her "reputation." We offered to place her in her own separate hotel but she stormed off and threatened to walk to Denver. She went so far as to walk up the freeway entrance ramp, bare foot, before being stopped by the cops.
Her little tantrum set us back an hour, and the only compromise we could agree to was that we would buy her a bus ticket to Denver. Oddly she felt perfectly fine waiting alone outside a closed bus station at 2am but not sharing adjacent hotels. It was right then that I decided she shouldn't have a cabinet position if we form a Michigan chapter of IVAW.
We stopped at a motel, and then the next morning we picked up a hitch hiker headed to Idaho. He was a former carnie who had just got fired from the farm he was working at. I liked him immensely more than our previous passenger we had dropped off the night before.
We arrived in Denver later that evening, approximately 12 hours behind schedule. The IVAW house in Denver was a second story office above a computer store. Their where two bathrooms and only one shower with no hot water. Air mattress and sleeping bags where scattered across the floor. It was hot with only box fans to circulate the air. I immediately began to feel claustrophobic; witch was odd as I was unaware that I was claustrophobic up until that time.
I looked up all the local hotels and desperately attempted to find one that still had vacancy. I managed to find one that was with in walking distance and only charge $40 a night. Upon arriving in my room I understood why. The inside temperature was over 90 degrees, and the only source of ventilation was the sliding door that I depended on for security. I frantically drove around town trying to find a store that was still open and sold fans. I eventually found one just minuets before it closed.
I extended an open invitation to IVAW members who needed more room to sleep to share my hotel room. Three took me up on the offer. I requested that any interested come to my room before 1AM, and in true IVAW fashion they arrived by 1:30. Secure with my frivolous luxury of more than 6 square feet of floor space, an electric fan, and hot showers I went to sleep to rest for the next day's activities.
That morning was mainly police interaction training. Getting arrested, not getting arrested, resisting arrest etc. This was all in preparation for our march to the Democratic National Convention and the very real fact that we might get our asses beaten for refusing to disperse.
That evening we all went to see "the eyes of Babylon" a one man play by Gay former Marine Jeff Key. Using simple props and lighting effects he reenacted his experiences in Iraq, along with personal struggles of being a sensitive gay man in a very (insert adjective for rednecks here) organization.
I was really dizzy that night after the show and even the next morning. I missed the required training for Operation first casualty, a guerilla street theater performance where we patrol in uniform to simulate occupation. This was redundant and completely unnecessary because there where all ready check points manned by armed men in body armor all over the city. I managed to meet up with every one after the event and we did interviews with press.
Our last mission at the DNC was a march from a free Rage against the Machine Show to the Pepsi center. The base was much to high and I couldn't hear the lyrics for most of the opening acts. This is unfortunate because I cant relay enjoy music unless I can connect with the lyrics at an emotional level. There where guest speakers in between acts. That guy from the dead Kennedy, the dude that Tom Cruse played in "born on the forth of July." I've never been good with names.
When Rage finally came on it didn't matter that I couldn't hear their lyrics, I knew most of them by heart. "The microphone explodes shattering the moldsomething something somethingthey rally round your family with a pocket full of shells" The last verse sounds like riot police rounding up people using riot shotguns, but what the hell is a "bull on parade?" The first time I meet Tom Morello I asked him just that. I bumped into him at Winter Soldier earlier that year.
"Tom Morello?...Wowwhat's a bull on parade?" Sadly he didn't know either. To this day I wonder if it's a reference to the bull market or something.
Unfortunately we couldn't see all of Rages set because we had to go change into our uniforms for the march. I was wearing a simple set of Marine Corps issued desert cammies I got during grass week of boot camp. I had to return the actual set of desert's I had worn on deployment to Supply before checking out of my unit. Both sets where utterly identical except that my boot camp issued set still had traces of fabric paint from when I painted the platoon range flag in boot camp.
It was odd seeing people I had only know outside of the military in uniform. This was especially true for "M." She was a very beautiful, shy, gentle woman, decked out in Marine Corps Issued service Alphas complete with Captains bars. It's hard to picture her barking orders to E-3s like me.
How do women even survive in the Marine Corps? It's the most insensitive, chauvinistic, macho organization in the world. Most men aren't tough enough to handle the daily physiological abuse, and we men are trained from childhood not to feel empathy, fallow the leader, take one for the team...more or less to be mindless drones that won't question orders or expect empathy. It's a mystery, like a flower growing in between train tracks. How does a delicate thing of beauty survive in such a dangerous place?
Marines use the term "bitch" and "woman" almost interchangeably. The logic is that if you can't handle this low level of physiological abuse, you shouldn't be in an organization where people are tying to kill you. But at the same time gay's are forbidden from serving because there incessant lustful sexual advances would hurt the moral of strait, god fearing Christian soldiers.
I was starting to experience chevron envy as most of the people around me had attained higher rank with only marginally more time in service. People who weren't older than me, and not necessarily smarter or more physically fit had achieved higher ranks in the Army and National Guard.
Sometimes I wonder how my life line would have been effected if I had joined the army instead of marines. In real life I was inadequately equipped, under appreciated, and it made sense that the people who ran the military could be wrong. But what if they kept giving me medals and reassuring me that I'm doing a good job? I could just as easily be a staff sergeant in Iraq wondering why any one cares about a few civilian deaths when we're doing such a good job kicking hadji's ass.
We held a small formation outside the stadium giving a final briefing on our rout to the Pepsi center. To my surprise the chef of police actually came out to give us support. He explained that he agreed with what we where doing and was worried about several members of his police department that where deployed in Iraq right now. He had a police escort for us all the way to the convention. We started with 40-50 IVAW members fallowed by 6000 rage fans, but by the end of the march we had close to 10,000 people fallowing us. Rage and the Flow bots fallowed us along with the marchers.
The police had selected a path that would send us directly to the freedom cadge, a barbed wired off parking lot outside of media attention. When we realized this we stopped the formation and tried to figure out what to do. We where given an order to disperse and we decide to march around to a much more strategically important location.
Once we got there we stopped 50 feet in front of a police line where storm troopers with grenade launchers and gas guns stood on cherry pickers waiting for the order to open fire.
Our spokesmen Jason Hurd used a bullhorn to explain that we where non violent and would not resist arrest and that we understood that the police were under orders and we would not hold it against them for fallowing them. This caused several of the officers to lower there weapon. That day a total of 5 police officers refused to lay hands on us.
At the Last minuet the Obama Camp cracked and we where able to send our representative Jeff Key to deliver our letter to Obama's Veterans rep. I was confused at first because victory is a completely alien concept to me. I only know disappointment and heart break and the fact that I had not been tear gassed confused me.
We stayed in Denver one more night then left for The Veterans for peace/IVAW national convention in Minneapolis Minnesota. It was an extremely long drive and the van got pulled over for speeding through Iowa. We tried to spin the fact that we where Iraq veterans going to the Republican national convention. When the officer finally found out we where Iraq veterans against the War we let us off with a warning.
We where all booked in the Holiday Inn select in Minneapolis. It was right down the street from the Mall of America. While we stayed in town, there seemed to be a ridiculous police presence all over the city. Several houses where raided and 4 people I know personally where detained. When I found out that electronics where being confiscated I deleted all the pictures of guns from my camera and cell phone as a precaution. I have several videos where I'm shooting at Kevlar vest with high powered pistols to evaluate there penetration.
That morning consisted of classes and work shops about GI resistance. During an intermission I made a feeble attempt at flirting with "M." She awkwardly rushed away in a hurry and I admitted to one of her friends "I really like her." He replied "I know, you make her really uncomfortable though." My embarrassment gave way to anguish, as I was haunted by memories of failed attempts at romance that plagued my teenage years.
Looking back, all my failed attempts at dating hastened my decision to join the military. I would either become a career driven, asexual, killing machine or at the very least the uniform would help me get girls. In practice I fallowed the prior much more than the later. For 2 years and 7 months I made no attempts to solicit relations with any female, either on duty or off duty.
Being a virgin in a grunt unit is like being a vegan at a steak house. No one understands you rational for not having sex. They may feel sympathy and attempt to set you up with the most vile creatures whose fornication would border on bestiality or statutory rape of the mentally enfeebled. When The 40 year old virgin came out it could have easily been a documentary, as that is the exact way that men act when they find out a member of there pack suffers for post pubesant involuntary chastity.
There is a fairly simple reason I've never had sex. All the girls I've ever liked wouldn't date me, all the girls who might have slept with me, I didn't like. This is a hard concept for most men to grasp. "You don't want to sleep with some one you feel no emotional attraction to? Like hell you say!"
I found a quiet place to greave for my romantic ineptitude when another IVAW member noticed me crying. He asked what was wrong and if there was anything he could do to help. I struggled to write a note and asked him to deliver it to "M." The note simply read "I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I have a hard time expressing my feelings ----Lars".
I continued crying for another half hour then decided to move on with the workshops. I passed "M" in the hall and tried to avoid eye contact with her. She pulled me aside and we had a heart to heart. She reassured me that the situation wasn't as bad as it had been made out to be. She gave me the typical "your great, but" speech that I had become so familiar with in high school.
This time was "your great butI'm not dating right now." Bullshit yes, but I ate it up. The thought that she wasn't dating any one right now gave me hope, like all I needed to do was wait her out and she would be mine. This was of course bullshit because she was already dating someone and didn't want to hurt my feelings. Mission accomplished, not in the literal sense, but in the Ironic, hanging a banner over an aircraft carrier sense.
I had only got 4 hours of sleep the previous night and by 10:30pm I was bugging out of my mind. I wanted to see a screening of "Body of War" but I was tripping balls with fear and paranoia that accompanies sleep deprivation for as long as I've been on anti depressants.
I lied in bed simultaneously exhausted and invigorated with paranoia and twitching muscles. The next day if felt ok in the morning, but after a few hours I couldn't walk strait from low blood sugar. I sat in the hallway and clutched my head to keep the world from spinning. Someone ordered me a pizza from room service. It was hard and dry but the carbohydrates hit the spot and in a half an hour I could walk again.
On Sunday we left the hotel and several of us put on our uniforms to pass out press releases in St. Paul, announcing Mondays march to the RNC. While walking around the convention area I was stopped by a retired Marine who tried to square me away. When he realized that I wasn't going to roll over and lick his balls he tried reporting us to the police, who refused to do anything because we weren't breaking the law.
While us where out and about I bumped into Jon Stewart walking down the street with a cup of coffee. He was very supportive and we gave him a press release in hopes that the daily show would cover our march. Jon looks and sounds different in person. His voice is much butcher and he has a 5'oclock shadow. I asked him "how can you call your self a fake news man? You're the only one of them who adjusts his posture every time you're about to bullshit us." He laughed and said "yeah, I do do that."
After the press releases where gone we meet the rest of IVAW in the park for a picnic and an award ceremony for IVAW members. When Selena was called up for an award I ran into the tree line and grabbed a handful of wild flowers and rolled them in a paper plate to form a bouquet, and presented them to her after she accepted her award. I did this several more times with other women who got awards.
That night we stayed in the basement of a church that had been arranged by retired first sergeant Wes Davey. There was a long discussion that night as to whether or not we would even go on with the march because of hurricane gustave. Some people thought we would get less press coverage and that we might be viewed as opportunistic for bashing the republicans while they raised money for hurricane victims. We even discussed sending our own contingent of IVAW members to Louisiana to help with the humanitarian effort.
I felt especially emotional that night because I felt marginalized by the squabbling over the idea of calling off the march and the fact that the base tour group was leaving the next morning. This wasn't especially sad in of itself, but was sad because they where leaving with the most wonderful girl I've ever meet, and the thought of never seeing her again was extremely distressing to me.
The next morning I was driven to the staging area, vomited 3 times, then went right back to the Church to sleep it off. I was upset that I missed the march that had gone of extremely well. We marched to the Center, the police where supportive, they ordered us to disperse and we all did except for Wes, who they refused to arrest out of respect for his service in the Army and the police department.
McCain wasn't even there at the time, and his staff refused to read our letter of "11 veteran's issues" that needed to be dealt with. We had the support of the Media, the police, and the people, just not the approval of the "pro military" political party.
The next day half our members had to leave and the rest of us where invited to a "taking back Labor day" concert by Tom Morello. It was boring at first, mainly bands I never heard of playing songs I couldn't relate to until "the night watchman" came out. I walked closer to the stage to see IVAW members in the VIP section right next to the stage. We got a representative to let us past security so we could join Tom on stage during his last song. I pulled out my cell phone and took a picture of Tom with an enormous crowd of people as a back drop; I emailed it to all my friends.
After his set we hung out with Tom back stage, I asked him "did you ever figure out what a bull on parade was yet?" He Laughed and said "I thought I recognized you from some where." We hung out back stage for the rest of the show.
We returned to the church and began packing. Most of us cleared out and went home the next day. A park bench outside had collapsed the previous night so I went to the hard wear store to buy some screws and washers to fix it. Some members of IVAW stayed behind to continue to protest the RNC.
The most notable of these was IVAW member Adam Kokesh. A Ron Paul delegate snuck him into McCain's acceptance speech. Live on CNN, MMSNBNC and CSPAN he waved a banner that read "McCain VOTES AGAINST VETSYOU CAN"T WIN AN OCCUPATION." The crowds of republican sheep started chanting "USAUSA" in hopes the awful man would go away.
On the trip from Michigan to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Denver I listened to a book on tape version of Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." One quote that stuck out in my mind because it seemed so relevant to our current situation.
"And that, I think, was the handle - -that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..."
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user0207231052:
You made my day and thank you for the wonderful gift
user0207231052:
I'm working on it!!!!!!