The Soldier's Tale

Penny Allen's film, "The Soldiers Tale," will be showing at the Northwest Film Studies Center in Portland on December 29 at 7pm. Penny also created a photo essay called "War is Hell." Before you link to it, there are some pretty harsh photos on it.

Penny was interviewed on the "Joe and Abe" show on KBOO on Tuesday, December 18. In this interview many questions were asked in which I will try to give my opinion on in this little post.

I have a lot of respect for those who have been soldiers. I have known many of these folks, combat and non-combat. I have a lot more respect for these folks than I do the peace folks for the most part because these are the guys who live it. They are the tool of the state. The state is the enemy and the state has to change. Peace will never come until we DISMANTLE the empire.

So, to the pro war folks, if you are in support of the slaughter of Iraqi's, etc., by gum, go sign up. Don't give me that old football injury bullshit! If you can squeeze a trigger you can do your own killing because you are asking these folks to do your killing for you, to die if necessary for you, or to come back damaged and broken for you to ignore.

To the folks who hold the "Fuck the Troops" signs, I will tell you the same thing. You are asking the resistance in Iraq to do your killing for you. Sign up with those folks and go try to kill the soldiers yourselves because you, too, are asking others to do your killing for you, your dying for you, your getting broken and damaged for you.

Why I no longer participate in the alleged peace movement is that with the exception of the "Seriously Pissed Off Grannies," they are racist and sexist. When I called one of the alleged peace movements leaders, Peter Bergel, on his racism and sexism, he stated that "we are all a little sexist and racist, Eugene, even you." Talk about not dealing with your own shit and excusing it. Talk about not really wanting any unity unless he is king. But he is not the only one who behaves like a king in these movements and that we should follow these folks without question. Tom Hastings has published in one of his books that Indians should give up their notions of a Che style revolution and allow the rich to come in and help us. How he declared himself king of Indian autonomy and sovereignty, I don't know, but he seems to think he knows better what we Indians should do than say...we Indians.

I also get sick and tired of actions that don't do shit. The "Grannies" got some serious good publicity and that may or may not get folks to thinking and maybe doing. Who knows for sure. But they took a day to decide what their first action would be and a week to enact it. One of the most useless actions in my opinion is doing sit-ins in senators offices that aren't even there and getting arrested for such offenses. What use is that? Do you really believe the senator is gonna give a shit that some alleged peace folks got arrested in his office when he wasn't even there? Has said senator done anything to attempt to stop the war? The effectiveness of this maneuver, like having a discussion with his cardboard cutout, are in my opinion completely useless. If I truly believed that going after a senator would change anything, I would do something more effective, like find out when he is in his local office, and dog him every moment he shows up with protesters. Some of these actions have taken many many months to plan, unlike the Grannies actions which seem to happen almost on the spur of the moment.

Then there is the infighting between the various alleged peace groups. Some groups have some capital for marches and refuse to unite and share with others to create a presence to shake this city. The infighting is stupid. The alleged peace movement factions can't unite behind the one issue of ending the war in Iraq. It's fucking annoying. Then what do these actions do? I think that marches bring attention to the issue, but I believe folks are getting tired. And the U.S. government is getting much scarier.

Then there are folks who don't care for me because I won't declare myself to be non-violent. I won't lie. Most folks are indeed violent. This system is maintained by violence. Racism and Sexism are forms of violence. They happen within and around various movements with their complicity. That is violence. So I won't lie and say I'm non-violent. I am not into Gandhi who said he would kill himself before acting violently in self-defense. He would watch others die, and has, instead of fight in self-defense or the defense of others. To be complicit in violence, as that IS, is violence.

The system is also collapsing. It is hard to say what that means. Unsustainability, global warming, systematic violence, oppression, rape, genocide, etc., are all things that are happening all around us. Sitting in a senators office who isn't there isn't gonna do a damned thing to stop it. Marching in the streets without follow up actions will do nothing to stop it. Folks refuse to unite behind a single issue because of their single issues. Racism and sexism in these movements won't be addressed in order to create unity and most people of color see that if these folks get into power, they are still screwed.

When folks bring up racism and sexism in the alleged peace movements, they have to talk with the hand because they are allegedly doing the work to stop the war...uh, huh...and they don't need folks from ethnic and racial groups bringing up issues of racism or sexism to get in the way of their all important work, like sitting in senators offices who aren't there.

More than anything, I know that the collapse could take on many forms. What if the dollar was worthless tomorrow? What if we run out of oil soon? How will we eat? What kind of shelter will we have? How do we form communities? How do we survive and what kinds of situations will we have to endure in order to survive? How will we maintain our joy and happiness? How will we cloth ourselves? Will I get arrested? Will we get arrested? Will others get arrested? What then?

These are now the questions on my mind, questions relating to survival upon the collapse. What the collapse will look like we will have no idea until it happens. As Jim Craven said, some pockets will fair well because the U.S. economy is so huge, others won't. Invest in gold? You can't eat gold? You can't eat the paper you invested in? You can't find food with the stuff? You can't find shelter? So more than anything, I feel like I'm doing mental jumping jacks to get ready for pretty much ANY FUCKING THING to happen!

We will do nothing to unite to stop the U.S. empire, and working within the system will do nothing to stop it either. So now I just find myself surviving within the world that exists for me today, and full well knowing that it could all change tomorrow. As well, I do what I can. I speak out. I try to keep peoples heads up. I try to cheer folks on. We may never unite to stop the empire, but we will all have to survive the impending collapse and we can't do THAT without each other.