Sunday, August 04, 2019

From The Maine Peace Walk Archives-Listen To Mother Nature

From The Archives -“Stop the War$ on Mother Earth”  2016 Maine Peace Walk-Build The International Peace Front


By Fritz Taylor

[For several years some social and political activists in Maine have gathered together to sponsor peace walks throughout the state highlighting that state’s tight relationship with the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Particularly its relationship to notorious Portsmouth Naval Base and the infamous Bath Iron Works. These walks have lasted for a couple of weeks each fall and have highlighted a particular theme as the marchers walk down the highways and byways of that great and oversized state. Generally they are led by organizers from the Maine chapter of Veterans for Peace assisted by recruits from other chapters including Massachusetts.

Enter Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris who have coordinated the other chapters contingents and who apparently think nothing of hunkering up and down the Maine roads for the cause. One day they needed a ride up to Bath to help plan the two weeks’ events with the Maine folk and I volunteered since I was a little curious about the preparations and logistics of keeping a civilian caravan going for that period of time. What I learned that day was that these “mainiacs” had planned an almost two-hundred-mile trek starting in something called Rangeley where a military drone operation was located with the idea of heading south all the way the notorious Portsmouth Naval Base already mentioned above to hand the commander there a document outlining an environmentally-friendly alternative to the current use of building war ships. Peaceful conversion in other words so the workers would have some serious gainful employment to keep them busy. Along the route they would pass out leaflets explaining the terms of the march. Each evening after a communal supper as well there would be a program around some aspect of the theme in whatever town they were stopped.

Although the theme, stop the militarization of the seas, meaning using the long Maine coast as a dumping ground for waste, seemed interesting I told Sam and Ralph I would pass, thank you. That “pass” stemming from those days in Vietnam and elsewhere where I walked my ass off promising myself that I would avoid that situation again at all costs. Of course Ralph and Sam thought nothing of marching through Maine in all weathers, the fall being particularly unpredictable, for the good of the cause. They planned to start right in Rangeley even though when I asked neither could tell me where the place was. That did not stop them however from badgering me to walk some of the route. They eventually conned me into picking up the walk in Brunswick, up at Bowdoin College. And still conned me all the way to Kittery where the notorious Portsmouth base is located. Damn, my feet were sore.   


Recently in a short archive caption about the Bath Iron Works in Maine where many of the top-of-the line and billion-dollar expensive destroyers are built I mentioned, as a little background for knowing about the place that I am a Vietnam Veteran. I also mentioned in an earlier archive caption while I hate the NRA I favor my Second Amendment right to bear arm. But whatever vestiges I have of my growing up in Fulton County, Georgia I “got religion” on the questions of war and peace through the hellhole of Vietnam experience. Not right away, certainly not right away since I come from a long, a very long line of military people and not completely at first since I initially mistook being anti-war with pacificism which I was, am uncomfortable with. Now though I am comfortable with the twenty plus years I have spent screaming (if necessary) against the endless wars, the bloated military budgets and the glorification of the fog war creates in the public, and among soldiers and politicians.

Now I was strictly Army, Fourth Division so you know I saw some hellish action in Vietnam, particularly when we were sent to re-enforce up in the Central Highland and I can tell you plenty about that branch of the service, the waste and the like. You can always learn sometime new though in this struggle against war and endless budgets. I certainly did the year I went up to Maine to walk the walk Peace Walk then held annually about quiet Bath and its well-oiled shipbuilding capacity.  Each year they organizers, more about them in a minute, try to gather in a theme that speaks to the militarization of our country, of the world, the particular role Maine plays in that process and of course from our perspective some alternatives.

In 2016 that was around creating the environment for a sustainable future, very much more in doubt in the few years since that walk, which meant a serious frontal attack on the role the military plays in not making the future world sustainable. Sustainable may today mean livable, as in livable planet, from the dire news just in the headlines about the huge Artic and Greenland melts, record high temperatures in placed not know for some levels, more and more endangered species falling off the chart since they could not adapt to the dramatically changed environment fast enough and many more strange doing if you read a new book called Inhabitable Earth along with the attention to the bad news days. Meanwhile in the White House and places like Houston and the Dakotas they are drinking their champagnes out of fossil fuel container and secretly making sure they have their places many miles from the coasts and high above the projected water table lines.

I knew in Vietnam about the various defoliate programs to search out the so-called enemy most famously Agent Orange and about the incredible number of unexploded bombs that plague that country forty years later but I was unaware how much material the Navy (and maybe other branches as well) in their everyday functions spew into the world’s oceans including the coast of Maine. I knew of the climate change effect maybe ten years ago when I would go to Maine beaches and note that the new high tide marks were eating severely into the wetlands in places like Ogunquit. I should have mentioned before that leaflets are passed out with messages along that line of thought, along the military  waste  along the line of march, the sites selected like Bath Iron Works where things need to be changed and evening programs at the various nightly stopping points dealing with the overall theme message.

I noted in the last archival caption that I have been doing these walks for a few years even though I had my fill of marches in the Army. Moreover, I had my doubts whether such a walking program over a couple of weeks would do anything for the cause, still have some questions. Enter the great equalizers.  I started, kicking and screaming at first about doing this trek once my friends and fellow members Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris went up to Maine to help out in the annual Maine Peace Walk sponsored by the Maine chapter of Veterans for Peace and other local activist peace groups. Ralph and Sam pointed out that even a few VFP dove-encrusted flags on the march would ensure that some message was getting through. Having seen that flag business work a million times before I bought in -for part of the trek.  

Of course if you had read the previous caption you know that “helping out” entailed walking half the freaking state of Maine at least on the oceanside, the side where U.S. Route One slithers down the coast. Over a period of several days. I had started up in Brunswick, up at Bowdoin College where I met walkers who had started up I believe in Rangeley which I do not have a clue where that is except it is pretty far north in Maine with plenty left before you reach the Canadian border. (As it turned out Sam and Ralph who started their own treks there were clueless when I asked where the place was except the military has a tracking station there which links that nowhere Maine town with the American’s military’s globalization of their forces in many fields. I said good work brothers for starting there, yes, good work indeed.    

Ralph Morris and I are Vietnam veterans, Sam didn’t serve because he was the sole surviving son of a mother who had four young daughters to raise after Sam’s drunken father passed away of a heart attack in 1965. It took me a while, took me a while as it did to “get religion” on the issues of war and peace, and to get over the false division between anti-war activity and working with avowed pacifists to accept Sam as a brother. Hell as a winter soldier although I already knew from Ralph that as early as 1971 in Washington on May Day where they “met” after being arrested in Robert F. Kennedy football stadium where they had with their respective groups attempted to stop the war by stopping the government that Sam was some old righteous Puritan angel avenger out of the John Brown mold. Took a while but knew deep in my bones that this guy was for real, that when he said something you could depend on him. Yeah, now in 2019 we are in desperate need of winter soldiers. And if you don’t know, are not familiar with that term then think about that small band of stalwarts was held firm at Valley Forge come fight against the British and their hirelings. The defenders of the republican idea when that was very dicey indeed. Like now.        




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