Gerry Condon's speech at Poor People's Campaign action
California State Capitol, Sacramento, June 18, 2018
Veterans For Peace is in the house! We are participating in Poor People's Campaign actions all over the country.
My name is Gerry Condon. I am the national president of Veterans For Peace.
I joined the Army when I was 19 years old, during the Vietnam War. I had serious doubts about the war, but not much real information. I didn't trust the pro-war politicians. And I didn't know what to think about the antiwar movement. Next thing I knew I was in uniform, with a rifle in my hands, running in formation yelling, "Kill the gooks. Kill the gooks."
A Chinese American friend of mine went through this same training. The drill sergeant pulled him out of the ranks and shouted to the other soldiers, "You want to know what a gook looks like. This is what a gook looks like." When our sergeants were unhappy with our training performance, they called us "cunts." I was really shocked by the blatant racism and sexism in my basic military training.
I went on to train as a Special Forces medic. The medic training alone took an entire year, so I had lots of time to think. I spoke with soldiers who were just returning from Vietnam. They told me they had witnessed U.S. GI's committing atrocities against Vietnamese civilians, including women. Some of them were bragging and some of them were ashamed. But they were all telling the same story. I decided I could not in good conscience participate in a war that was terrorizing the civilian population. I went to the newspapers and announced that I would refuse all military orders.
The Army kicked me out of Special Forces and ordered me to Vietnam. I refused. The Army court martialed me and sentenced me to ten years in prison. But I escaped and fled the country. I lived in Canada and Sweden for 6 years before returning to the U.S. to campaign for amnesty for all war resisters. I was very lucky. In the end, I never had to go to prison.
But the wars continue. Today the U.S. is at war in at least 7 countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Somalia. We are in a state of permanent war. The government tells us we must fight against terrorism, but actually we are fighting for oil and domination.
Poor and working class people are pushed into the military by the lack of decent civilian jobs, the lack of access to higher education and job training. So it is the poor in this country who are forced to fight and die for the 1%, the billionaire class who profit from war and global exploitation.
Too many of our hard-earned tax dollars are going to war and weapons of mass destruction. Instead of pursuing global nuclear disarmament, the U.S. is building a new generation of nuclear bombs.
The U.S. has 800 military bases in over 80 countries around the world. The 1% wants to dominate every region of the world. In the U.S., the rich are getting much richer, the poor are getting poorer, and even more people are being pushed into poverty.
I am proud to be a member of Veterans For Peace, and Veterans For Peace is proud to be part of the Poor People's Campaign. We are confronting the 3-headed monster that Martin Luther King identified – Racism, Militarism and Poverty. We are committed to ending the wars abroad, and ending the wars at home.
Power to the People!