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.
