Members of the IVAW and Veterans for Peace who were involved in the Gulf March and in Katrina Relief efforts owe a special debt of gratitude to the baptist churches.
These are excerpts from our journals:
Every time my sole slaps blacktop I am reminded that the boots I am wearing are the same ones that saw 13 months in Iraq. I call them my combat boots because I would only were them in combat. The rhetoric of that statement is beginning to turn into reality on the faces of IVAW members who are seeing again the devastations of war. This time however we are seeing it on the America we call home, poor America. This time however the local people are glad to have us as the honks of support with matching peace signs being flashed at us are far outnumbering the middle fingers and "God Bless W" signs. This time we are not coming as liberator but as friends and family in turn this time the reaction has been truly that of welcome. Sitting down at a BBQ dinner served at the Macedonia Baptist Church we are surrounded by love. Hardy the stereotype of the tree huggers, we the veterans of this war and the survivors of this disaster are finding love in those with whom they now break bread. Despite the obvious role race played (and continues to play) in the recovery and reconstruction of both Iraq and the gulf all shades of fingers were at this meal being licked clean of the most soulful BBQ this soldiers has ever tasted. My fear of seeing a hometown combat zone in America is only overshadowed by the hope which a multiracial, multicultural, and multigenerational march is producing as it is walkin' to New Orleans.
Thursday night the members of the Mt. Pilgrim Baptist Church in Long Beach MS so graciously welcomed us, fed us with their good home cooking, and we camped around their church. This is in one of the most devastated areas of Mississippi, we had walked and driven through destruction all day. The Vietnam vets on the march remarked how much it reminded them of villages in Vietnam after the U.S. military finished them. The Iraq vets said it reminded them of Iraq that the U.S. military had devastated. Since the media does not seem to show this, think Afghanistan, it looks like Afghanistan. And people are living here. As people in Iraq have been living in devastation, as our soldiers iin Iraq and Afghanistan have been living in and creating devastation, American survivors of Katrina have been living the same. And too many Americans would rather forget. Just in case anyone cannot see the purpose of this march, the very real connection between Katrina and the war in Iraq, this is it.
Our visit to Mt. Pilgrim coincided with an important anniversary for their church and they were holding special service to commemorate both the march and their anniversary. Since I noticed a few of the members duck out when the preaching got long, I figured I could do so without being too disrespectful, and went out front and talked with a few of the sisters from the church. I was glad, so glad, it is why I came on this march, to talk to the people along the way. As Cesar Chavez proved to the world, and I mention this also to note Fernando's march this week in California to Cesar's grave, movements are built person to person. Media attention is great, but it is not a movement. If people, all the small unimportant folk like us, are not at the center, it is not really a movement. So ducking out of a church service and hanging around the front of the church talking is not wasting time, it is the building blocks of the movement. I may never see those church sisters again in my life, although I wish I could, but standing there chatting, what some might call wasting time, we were adding another building block to the movement. We have added alot of bricks along this march, and it brings tears to my eyes, it is hope, it is a step in the right direction at a time when we are hopeless and devestated, the vets of all wars, the Iraq and Afghanistan vets, the mothers and fathers of those young vets, and the survivors of Katrina.
At the Macedonia Mission Baptist Church, people affected by Katrina came up to the microphone, one by one, and talked about what they had lost. In some cases, they rode out the storm, moving up the levels of their houses until they were able to escape by boat or by swimming. In some cases, they went to their churches to ride it out, watching out the window as their cars floated past, then keeping their congregation calm as sections of the roof began caving in. In other cases they lost everything they had, left with only the steps to their houses, with no insurance to cover it because they weren't in a "flood plain." It was the church organizations which first moved in with supplies, when the government failed.
This morning, when three of us from New York and Baltimore showed up at the warehouse where the Saving Our Selves from the Stone Street Baptist Church has been storing goods for relief distribution, there were maybe a dozen people here. Tonight after a rousing sermon and choir performance, 150 veterans, military family members and supporters tucked into a soul food dinner.
Night after night, we are able to camp, due to the hospitality of the black churches, which were the foundation of the rescue efforts within these communities. Night after night, we attend their church services, sitting side by side with those people that the police advised our groups not to send relief supplies to. These are the people – "THOSE people" as the police told Vivian, when she tried to deliver food and water to neighborhoods in Gulfport – who were so dangerous that relief workers were warned not to even enter their neighborhoods, and if they did, keep their cars locked at all times.
These are the people who lost everything, who were left to drown in their attics, who are donating food and cooking dinner for us, in preparation for our visits. Tonight we were given chicken, pork, peas, cabbage, cornbread, beans, key lime pie, cakes, and a place to rest our heads. Tonight we were invited to join their services, to listen to their music and their preaching, and they listened while our walkers talked about the frustration of sitting at Fort Hood in a National Guard unit, not being allowed to provide help to the Gulf area, even though 40% of the National Guard units – as well as their equipment – were overseas in Iraq. They listened to the frustration of watching guard units being used in New Orleans to guard warehouses of Mardi Gras beads against looters, instead of providing relief to "those people." They listened to a father talk about his son, who had stood next to National Guard members filling sandbags as their own town's river had flooded, and was inspired by them to join the guard. And then was killed in Iraq, rather than staying in the US protecting our own communities. When it was time for the offering, I realized my wallet was in my other pants, in my car. The woman next to me had two dollars in her hand for the plate. She pressed them into mine, for me to add to the plate, and gave me a huge hug.
It's a humbling experience to accept money from a person who has lost so much.
http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/stand/speak.html
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