A Celebration of Killing
Recently GRIID has been in correspondence with Amanda Stuart, a local parent who made contact with Stop Targeting Our Kids (STOK) after going with her child’s school to see The US Army’s Spirit of America performance at the Van Andel arena. GRIID had a chance to interview her about that experience.
Amanda, can you tell us about how the event you took your child to see was promoted? What did you expect it to be?
I volunteered to drive for the class field trip. It was promoted to the teacher as an educational event on U.S. history. I don’t think she realized it was U.S. Army sponsored. I didn’t know who the event sponsor was until we arrived. The only thing I saw ahead of time was a glimpse of a poster with the photo of someone in a revolutionary war uniform. It made me wonder if this would be a history of the U.S. through the history of war. Another parent and I spoke with the teacher about it ahead of time.
Describe some of the content of the event/show?
I was presented as a pep rally for the U.S. Army and its war history, complete with loud music, lights show, machine gun fire and soldiers in fatigues throwing free t-shirts to pump up the crowd.
What disturbed you most about the messages that the US military was sending, particularly to children?
I thought they might try to glorify the army and war and skim over the killing and dying. They did not skim over the killing and dying. They included the killing and dying and tried to glorify those aspects as well. There was a whole musical number about the U.S. flag being something worth killing and dying for. The narration said war is a way the nation reaches its goals without mentioning any of the peaceful ways goals are met. Soldiers playing WWII soldiers talked about planning to kill as many Germans as they could without bothering to examine the reasons. That specifically was probably the most disturbing because I was sitting beside a child whose mother was born in Germany and part of my own family comes from Germany. The crowd was in a cheering frenzy throughout much of the performance. It was nauseating.
Would you say that the event you attended was a form of propaganda? and do you feel like you were misled about what you were going to see?
This was definitely U.S. Army propaganda. In fact, one of the questions that I wrote down during the show as I was noting critical thinking questions for the class was: “What does the word propaganda mean and were there any aspects of propaganda in the show?” As the show began, the announcer read the names of the schools in attendance. I’m sure Army recruiters were scheduled for visits to those schools to follow-up on the excitement of the performance. If I were to describe the performance without assigning a place, someone might mistake it for a spectacle put on by a military dictatorship.
As a parent what lessons did you learn from this experience and what would you want other parents to think about when presented with this kind of information?
We teach children to solve their own problems with their words, not by hurting others. Peace begins there. War is not a backdrop for happiness. We have to expect the same peaceful resolution of conflict from adults that we try to teach to our children. Another parent in attendance told me that she thinks normal people should know the difference between military and civilian killing. I don’t see a difference. Killing is killing. Even if I were someone who says military murder is not really murder, too many civilians end up dying in the crossfire for any of it to be justified.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
John Brown was an important person who aided in the abolition of slavery. although he did not live to Hear the Emancipation Proclamation read, his actions set the stage for the ultimate abolition of slavery in the united states.
it says in the peoples history of the united states that, “it would take either a full-scale slave rebellion or a full-scale war to end such a deeply entrenched system. if a rebellion, it might get out of our hand and turn its ferocity beyond slavery to the most successful system of capitalist enrichment in the world. if a war, those who made the war would organize its consequences. hence, it was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, not John Brown. In 1859, John Brown was hanged, with federal complicity, for attempting to do by small scale violence what lincoln would do by large scale violence several years later- end slavery.” (pg. 171)
John brown’s violence does not even compare to the violence carried out in wars through out american history. also his killings were done in the actual name of freedom, where as the wars in the countries history have only been for power and money for the capitalist leaders.
and I’m not saying that killing necessary is the best way to fight for freedom, but with out justice, there is no peace. and justice is something you have to fight for. pacifists just dont know how to get shit done.
Im a bit out of the loop and it’s been a couple of days since this post, but is there an official “GRIID” response to this? A call for a boycott among “GRIID members” is a pretty drastic suggestion. Seems logistically that a boycott would be hard given that GRIID does classes at the Bloom. But maybe it is necessary. This seems a very serious issue.
Kate’s points bring up some interesting topics for debate. Did GRIID cover the forum in question? Seems more info is needed before we can really take a position.
Ok, it seems important to add my 2 cents to this discussion, especially since I was out of town for a few days.
First, if there are questions for the Bloom Collective then those questions should be directed at the Bloom Collective – specifically about their potluck on Direct Action. GRIID was not at that potluck and can not speak to the content of the discussion.
Second, GRIID has no official position on this topic, but I can tell you what I personally think about the issue. The debate about violence vs non-violence is in many ways a debate usually had by people with privilege. Most of us living in the US will most likely never be in a situation where we will even have to chose to use over violence as part of our actions. However, just because we don’t engage in direct acts of violence doesn’t mean we are not guilty of violence and/or complicit in violence. Most of us pay taxes and thus we pay for the US military to murder innocent civilians. In addition, our failure to act to stop the US wars of imperialism is a violation of International Law and the Nuremburg code, which states that any citizen of a country that is engaged in war crimes and does nothing to stop them is also complicit in war crimes. This was a direct result of what most Germans did not do in the face of Nazi crimes even though they were aware of them.
Third, I personally have great respect for the conviction and courage of John Brown. His decision to attack the a US military depot with former slaves for the purpose of obtaining more arms to free other slaves was based on his passionate desire to abolish slavery. I agree with Kate that the end of slavery came about with all kinds of tactics, but violence was one of those tactics that was ultimately necessary. There is no indication that slavery would have ended purely by non-violent means.
Fourth, having lived and worked in Central America and Mexico and often in contact with people who were actively involved in armed insurgency as well as those who supported them I can not stand in judgement when oppressed people decide to defend themselves…..even if that means that people will be killed. I don’t think that Indigenous people in what is now the continental US should be compared to US soldiers when they defended their communities and their land from the US Calvary. I do not think that Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto who rose up and Killed some of the Nazi soldiers can be compared to the SS soldiers. Violence is not on an even playing field. The kind of brutal violence that the US military engages in is on such a massive scale that it boggles the mind. It is cold, calculated and motivated by imperialist policies, greed, racism and a complete disregard for international law. In fact, international law supports civilians of a country who are being occupied by a foreign army the right to defend themselves, even with violence. If an Afghani decides to use violence against US soldiers it is because of the brutal US occupation that he or she is left with few options on how to deal with such oppressive violence. Equating Afghan civilians who fight back against the US occupation, an occupation that has killed their family members, destroyed their homes and displaced them from their communities with the behavior of US soldiers makes absolutely no sense to me. Therefore, I can not see how what John Brown and freed slaves did at Harpers Ferry as in any way comparable to what the US military does every day in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
Lastly, having said all of this it does not mean I celebrate violence. GRIID posted information about the potluck that the Bloom Collective was having as a way to encourage people to have an honest discussion about the importance of Direct Action. These kinds of conversations are necessary and important if we are ever to get beyond thinking that writing letters to members of Congress is ever going to stop war, end the destruction of eco-systems, dismantle White Supremacy or end male violence against women.
Y’all oughtta leave the comments up–even the ridiculously ignorant ones–so as to make it easy to understand what the hell’s going on in them. Getting rid of them turned this from a debate into a really confusing series of targetless rebuttals.
Also, I think that citing international war crimes laws is liberal and authoritarian and has no place in anti-war and anti-imperialist rhetoric.
But for real; unless the target of these rebuttals said something horribly prejudiced or offensive, you should really put their comments back up so this will make sense.