I got tired of being packaged up and sold to the military industrial congressional complex. First I was a student, then a soldier, then a veteran, and now I am an aging retiree. They loved me as a young kid awash in their textbooks and delusional world vision. A Midwestern privileged white male being packaged for full delivery to some corporation. But then the military wing stepped in front of the industrial lackeys — I was drafted and re-packaged to serve in their colonial war in Vietnam. When that package returned to these shores as a soiled, misshapen mess (i.e., a veteran), they didn’t quite know what to do with it. The delivery system was beginning to fall apart. No UPS drivers wanted to pick it up and drop it off at some doorstep (i.e., my family and friends). Certainly no corporations wanted it in their mailrooms.
Ah. It was at that moment in my life that I began my struggle out of the box that America wrapped around me and to emerge as my own person. I began to think for myself. What started as a long and torturous journey morphed into one of satisfaction and even joy as I raised a family and became a teacher. I went back into that system, into the belly of the beast if you will, and engaged with young people. I had a mission. I didn’t know it at that time, but I know it now — I was walking along the same trail that Daniel Ellsberg blazed — that of following truth despite the risks, while resisting all wars, but especially the nuclear threat hanging over our heads. He said, “Can humanity survive the nuclear era? We don’t know. I choose to act as if we have a chance.”
Now, as a retiree, I am standing at the precipice and wondering what legacy I might leave behind me that could possibly defy the aforementioned complex. Even when Ellsberg was in his last months, we could turn to him for inspiration. “I feel lucky and grateful about having a few months more to enjoy life with my wife and family, and in which to continue to pursue the urgent goal of working with others to avert nuclear war in Ukraine or Taiwan (or anywhere else).” He was very aware of the horror of war and especially concerned about the possibility of nuclear war. He wrote, “The current risk of nuclear war, over Ukraine, is as great as the world has ever seen,”
Along my own life’s trail I was blessed to join with others to form Veterans For Peace (VFP) in 1985. As one of five white males in the whitest state in the nation (Maine) contemplating how to use our veteran status to throw a monkey wrench into our government’s Central American wars, we never imagined that VFP would be a force in repatriating Hispanic veterans unjustly deported in the 21st century. Nor did we imagine we’d be joining with people of color fighting against hyper-militarized police forces. Or sitting at the feet of Indigenous elders learning from their struggle to live a life of decency and honor. We never imagined what a life of social activism could achieve. And that really is what Daniel Ellsberg was telling us through his words and his actions over these past 50 years.
Now, as the 38th national VFP convention comes to a close, we gather to honor Dan Ellsberg not just through words but through action. Please read the latest print issue of Peace & Planet News with that in mind — how can we best confront the looming and monstrous military industrial congressional complex with the vigor, compassion, and street smarts that he employed? How to help turn our children’s and grandchildren’s lives into love letters and not into packages?
Our editor-in-chief, Tarak Kauff wrote this about Dan. “He was a rare human being, truly a spiritual giant who loved and cared for others more than himself. Yet, he was always approachable, always one of us. He was a friend and a brother to everyone in Veterans For Peace. And he always signed his e-mails, ‘Love, Dan,’ as if you were family. He showed by example how to live, and as we all know, faced death with the same dignity, joy and love that he lived with.
Dear brother Daniel Ellsberg, we are still listening. Your life looms large in our lives. And in the lives of generations to come. Thank you.
Rawlings is a Vietnam veteran and the author of four collections of poems: Orion Rising, A G.I. Portrait, In the Shadow of the Annamese Mountains, and A Baker’s Dozen (children’s poems). He is a founding member and former poet laureate of Veterans For Peace.
