Remembering and Reflecting on Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day, historically designated to honor those killed defending the United States in military battle.  Originally “Decoration Day,” the intention of the national holiday was to decorate the graves of fallen warriors. 

I remember as a child my parents, both non-combat Navy veterans, displaying the American flag religiously, following proper flag etiquette—raising the flag at sunrise, lowering it at sunset, taking care not to let it touch the ground.  We always watched the president display the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery on the nightly news.  

At school I learned about “patriotism,” mostly indirectly by learning patriotic songs:  The National Anthem, This is My Country, America the Beautiful, I’m a Yankee-doodle Dandy, The Marine Hymn (“…we will fight our country’s battles on the air and land and sea. First to fight for right and freedom…”), My Country Tis of Thee, the goal being to instill deep pride in the United States, if not a sense of blind trust in obedience to “my” country.

Then came the 1960s and Vietnam, war protest and criticism of U.S. policy and action around the world as well as at home.  Soldiers returning from Vietnam, and those killed or wounded there, not only were not honored, they were often derided to their faces—no hero’s welcome for them, and certainly no patriot’s pride.  After 9/11, when the U.S. undertook its “War on Terrorism,” the old-time patriotic fervor was revived, flags everywhere—and not just on Memorial Day—with a determination to never again dishonor our service personnel, in this case those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. 

I wholly appreciate the willingness of those individuals who sacrifice their livelihoods and daily lives, putting their lives on the line in service to their—our—nation. But I no longer blindly sing the patriotic anthems and hymns to a grand if not infallible nation.  I no longer silently, obediently accept the necessity of putting the lives of our young men and women on the line “over there,” without question.  

On this Memorial Day, I wonder how we honor the extreme sacrifice of U.S. service personnel without at the same time glorifying the bloodletting of war, too often waged for questionable reasons that underlie the public rhetoric of “national security” or “freedom and democracy.”  Writing about Veteran’s Day, Vietnam veteran David Harris agreed in 2010 that: 

“in commemorating historical events it is good that we celebrate courage and sacrifice whatever the circumstances that evoked them.  But there is a risk of convincing ourselves and younger generations coming up that the events themselves were glorious and triumphant, a risk of promoting the repetition of tragedy.”

He explains the role of war in his life, lamenting the fulfillment of his fear that the tragedies of war would in fact be repeated: 

 “I grew up during that second world war, went to college during the Korean War, and proudly enlisted as a young surgeon for two years in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War, but I will not celebrate those years.

“The Korean War was a tragic stalemate in which over 50,000 GIs and uncounted Korean and Chinese soldiers died, leaving a country still divided today.

“The Vietnam War, as I came to realize, was an unjustified war that killed 57,000 young Americans and over 2,000,000 Vietnamese.

“Wars continue.”  

Harris then itemizes wars and military actions that’ve followed us into the 21^st century, identifying the costs to all of us:  “Whatever one thinks of war — just or unjust, for freedom or for oppression — the cost to the United States of maintaining an empire overseas and the cost to the American people of corporate globalization has meant an uncertain future in which national security means ever-shrinking personal security, in which wealth and power for those on top brings anger and frustration for the common person.”

We wave flags, we attend speeches and patriotic concerts, and we remember those men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for a grateful nation.  But if we’re true patriots, we refuse to send our children into harm’s way without question.  We demand a clear, accurate accounting of “defense spending” (we follow the money!) and a sound, ethical rationale for decisions that send our military into war to defend U.S. interests and inflict deadly violence on those “enemies” who challenge our causes.  

That is, we protect the interests of our community members and loved ones.  As former Senator George McGovern once chided his Senate colleagues:  “This chamber reeks of blood… it does not take any courage at all for a Congressman or a Senator or a President to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Viet Nam, because it is not our blood that is being shed.”

Source: Office of Management and Budget, Graph: Dylan Matthews (Washington Post 7 Jan, 2013)

He also defined a true patriot:  “The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy,” he declared, “but a love of one’s country deep enough to call her to a higher standard.”  Today calls on us to reflect upon the past, to honor and celebrate our service men and women killed in action, and I think we must teach such honor to our children.  But the best honor we can give our fallen heroes is to heed McGovern’s call to move our nation to a higher standard, one, hopefully, that focuses its energies on peace, engaging in war only as the very last resort.

http://nation.time.com/2012/10/21/the-american-quixote-the-death-of-george-mcgovern-1922-2012/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9526547

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts/

As Imperfect Advocates, We Keep Moving Forward

I just posted part of today’s blog on the Facebook page of one of my elected representatives to the Tennessee legislature.  The representative, along with some of his followers, recently criticized me for my vegan lifestyle and animal advocacy, in rather insulting terms.  One of them, Phillip, challenged me in such a way that I had to go back into student mode and do some studying.  I’ve been thinking about Phillip’s challenges and my responses the last few days.

I remembered a book I’ve used in my 1st-year writng classes, Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times, by Paul Rogat Loeb.  He has a chapter early in the book, “We Don’t Have to Be Saints.”  The point of the chapter is that we often think we must be a Gandhi/Martin Luther King/Rosa Parks/Mother Teresa to become actively involved in our world…but we don’t.  Even Gandhi et al. weren’t the super-human super-heroes we’ve created; they had their limitations.    Loeb writes that among our reasons for not taking a stand, lending a hand, working for change, fulfilling our responsibilities in our communities is that we’ve constructed a perfect standard that we think we must reach before we can be effective.

In my posting, I quoted Loeb:  “whatever the issue,…we never feel we have enough knowledge or standing.  If we do speak out, someone might challenge us, might find an error in our thinking or an inconsistency—what they might call a hypocrisy—in our lives….the perfect standard leaves us with a permanent insufficiency of knowledge—and a convenient way to dismiss anyone who dares take a public stand” (47).  I confessed in the post that Loeb describes me perfectly:  for a chunk of my younger life, I would never speak out, especially if my moral code or standpoint seemed to be different from that of the people in my sphere.

Even if I seemed in sync with my familiars, I’d keep silent because my expression of my beliefs/understanding might be incomprehensible or misinformed.  If I got involved in any kind of advocacy or service, it was in stealth mode, and I hid in the back to be as invisible as possible.  I wholly expected to be insufficient and thus dismissed…so I was best off just keeping quiet.  Loeb quotes spiritual writer Marianne Williamson:  “‘we have insidiously convinced ourselves that our wisdom is not wisdom, our common sense is not common sense, and our conscience is not conscience’” (47).  She’s right, at least about me.   

I also posted a more encouraging thought of Loeb’s:  “social change always proceeds one way or another…as long as people are willing to follow their convictions, to act despite their doubts, and to speak even at the risk of making mistakes,” and I used Loeb’s quote of philosopher/poet Rabindranath Tagore:  “‘If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out’” (49).  I think the point is that we’re all still on the journey; none of us is advocating or serving from that point of perfect wisdom, perfect knowledge, perfect consistency in all we say and do. 

We ARE going to screw it up, we ARE going to be challenged—sometimes, if not many times, rightfully so—we ARE going to be wrong in the facts, the interpretation, the details, the history, the reality… But if we’re not willing to be even dead wrong, then we’ll never move closer to Truth.  If we wait to speak, act, or serve until we’re perfect or perfectly ready to “go public,” we’ll remain indefinitely mute and inert.

Phillip’s challenge forced me to learn, then think seriously about what I was learning, to open myself to letting additional information revise my understanding, if not my standpoint.   Now Loeb warns that our quest for perfection can lead us to information overload:  “It’s also tempting to lose ourselves in endless information.  We can spend our lives trying to gather ever more facts and arguments from every conceivable Web site, blog, Facebook posting, or twenty-our-hour cable news source….As everything that can be known continues to increase, the effort to know everything grows increasingly doomed” (47). 

My Facebook post was a response to one of my representative’s supporters who posted that I should be unfriended for my liberal, Democratic, peace and pro-animal commentary, which generally runs counter to the standpoints and policies this conservative, Republican representative advocates.  But the point of my post had nothing to do with the divide separating us; I wanted to assure him that in fact I will likely be wrong, that my knowledge will always be partial…biased, and that because I’m still on my journey, I’ll likely never get it perfectly right. But regardless of our personal, invested standpoints, we have to keep learning and keep moving forward.

Yes, we must educate ourselves and be willing to continue learning, to acknowledge the holes in what we know or understand.  But we can’t beat ourselves up for our shortcomings.  We can’t withhold ourselves from speaking what we believe to be true or acting in the world according to our convictions, waiting until we feel informed enough or worthy enough.  And when the Phillips of our lives challenge us, rather than hitting our mute button, we need to actually be thankful for the opportunity to focus our continued learning and then using our new knowledge and understanding in productive ways.  

Art v. Guns in Schools: What We Can Learn From Our Children about Living Well

The City of Boston Web site describes Roxbury Massachusetts as a former farming community that has become the “heart of Black Culture in Boston.”  The Web site adds that Roxbury is experiencing a “renaissance,” and it would appear that in at least one Roxbury school, a rebirth is having a positive impact on the youngest of Roxbury’s residents.

Someone on the Peace and Justice Studies listserv, of which I’m a member, posted the most inspiring story of a drastic renewal of educational philosophy at the Roxbury elementary school, Orchard Gardens.  Katy Tur, an NBC News correspondent reported the story on The NBC Nightly News and it ended up online.  Tur’s report sets the context for the story, an elementary school known more for its violence, total lack of faculty/administration control, and low student test scores.   The story begins three years ago, with the new principal, Andrew Bott, who, Tur points out, is the sixth principal at Orchard Gardens—a new school in 2003—in seven years.  

Tur notes that when the school was built, it was furnished w/ lovely spaces for teaching the arts.  Yet the arts never became a part of the curriculum….until Bott arrived.  At the time of his arrival, Bott made the bold move to remove the school’s security guards and use the money saved to instill an arts program, a fruitless risk according to his many naysayers.

Tur brings her report current:  

"But now, three years later, the school is almost unrecognizable. Brightly colored paintings, essays of achievement, and motivational posters line the halls. The dance studio has been resurrected, along with the band room, and an artists’ studio.

"The end result? Orchard Gardens has one of the fastest student improvement rates statewide. And the students — once described as loud and unruly, have found their focus."

As Bott acknowledges, the school’s journey is not over, and they still have problems to confront.  But he points to the students themselves as evidence that his radical decision is paying off.

 

I was so inspired when I read the story.  In the context of an ongoing debate about guns, with pro-gun advocates insisting that the only way to keep our children secure is with armed guards at their schools if not armed teachers and administrators,  and budget cuts to education, the story was a breath of much needed fresh air.  The Orchard Gardens transformation is anecdotal evidence, I know.  But it’s the sprout of that first crocus as winter transforms into spring, a sign of hope, evidence of the possibilities for a new way of being in the world, a new way of educating our children.

Guns may be an answer to the problem of gun violence in our schools.  But guns absolutely do not have to be the only answer, and I will continue to argue that guns are not even the best answer, because of what their chronic presence in the hallways if not classrooms of children’s schools teaches those children about the world around them without anyone having to say a word.  Fear is one of the underlying seeds of violence, and security guards with very obvious weaponry invokes fear.  

In Roxbury, music, dance, painting, creative writing transformed not only the atmosphere of a school, but transformed the students as well as their engagement with education.  It sure is a model I would love to see followed right here in Tennessee, and around the nation.   

You know, I love word puzzles, and one recent puzzle I worked on resulted in an adage about light:  There are two ways to bring light:  to be the candle or to be the mirror reflecting it.  These transformed children have become both candles of their own light and mirrors reflecting the light around them.  Isn’t that the most awesome story you’ve heard today??!!

http://dailynightly.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/01/18005192-principal-fires-security-guards-to-hire-art-teachers-and-transforms-elementary-school#.UYriZRMyoWA.facebook