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MEMORIAL DAY IN THE TIME OF COVID BY William Larsen, Nevada City

Fifty one years ago I was in a Vietnam firefight where five of “our” guys were killed outright, and twenty seven wounded. “We” never knew how many ended up dying because “they” (our fearful leaders) never told “us”.

There was no way of knowing how many of “their” guys (the NVA) were killed or wounded. “WE” (“them” and “us”) never talked much.

The truth is, “we” never saw a soul in those fiery moments (only afterward when we found “their” dead and wounded). Just raging explosions blasting from the obscenely tangled jungle: AK-47 bursts, rocket propelled grenades, motor rounds followed by the thunderous explosions of “our” 155 millimeter artillery shells. Oh yeah, the “friendly fire”. Actually, not very friendly, and very, very indiscriminate, coming in so close because “we” were in direct combat with “them”, and then everybody got the shrapnel slicing through bodies, trees and limbs. In that moment  “WE” were one.

As the company medic, I tended to the wounded NVA soldiers after ”OUR” bloody affairs. This was done on the ground, where we found “them”, in the vast jungle hundreds of miles from the nearest village. It was the most primitive triage setting imaginable. Young guys, some obviously in their teens––as were “our” guys whose average age was 19––ripped up like their bodies had been put through a meat grinder. And “they” had the same look on their face as did “our” guys when “they” were the ones getting torn up. The same face, an old comrade told me a few years ago, that I had on mine when I got hit by three AK-47 rounds a few weeks later (no, I can’t find words to describe that look).

But it was that look, on many faces, which first made me realize WE are one. And it was the  loss of many friends––and “enemies––that made me understand how impossible it is to truly grieve for one without grieving for all. The heart, after all, is a vessel, and when the container is ruptured, the illusion that we control its content is shattered.

I grieve these losses in a way that is no longer voluntary, for their absence lives within me in a way it is not possible to deny. I grieve those on all sides who became trapped in the raging hell of all wars: dead soldiers, survivors and civilians; the wounded; those bereaved and those embittered. I grieve for those tortured in atrocities, and for those so damaged in their hearts they unleashed their agony upon others.

And now the entire environment is mounting an attack against US––a counter attack actually, against the war of relentless, human consumption against OUR world––and “we” continue to be in opposition to “them” in devising a unified response to OUR global pandemic. To so many, it would seem, the war waged between ourselves is more important than survival itself, and that “our” welfare can somehow be enhanced by inflicting suffering onto “others.” It is my fervent prayer that this premise is untrue

So I contemplate my losses this year with an especially heavy heart.  I am not nearly wise enough to truly understand humanity’s addiction to war, but I do believe the very notion of warfare itself originates with the delusion that we are separate. That there truly are entities such as “them” and “us”.  War has taken much from me, but much has also been given. I relish the core realization that came out of my war experience: the longer I live, the less able I am to discern one life as separate from all life. As we go forward in this mad, loving doomed dance that is both our plight and our salvation, I grieve for us all. 

While we are watching the fireworks tonight, let’s recall that one of the principal but seldom recalled causes of the American Revolution of 1776 was the Somerset Case in London in 1772.  The high court of England ruled slavery illegal in England.  American colonial planters panicked, fearing that this precedent would be applied to the 13 colonies as well.  Their enormous amassed wealth was primarily in African slaves.  Thus, slave-owning planters became the leaders of the American Revolution, as Dr. Gerald Horne, author of The Counterrevolution of 1776 observes.  It’s not hard to see why the African slaves and freedmen sided overwhelmingly with the British in the War of Independence and the War of 1812.  Indians felt the same way.  A century earlier, in Bacon’s Rebellion, white settlers of the frontier demanded more British support for their seizing and settling of Indian lands, a war which England was also losing its stomach for.  So would I be unpatriotic if I ask what the United States would be like if the War of Independence had gone the other way?  Well, I suppose the answer is, Canada.  Enjoy the fireworks!     Jeffrey Gottesman

Juneteenth commemorates the day the last slaves were set free by the Union army in 1865 to experience a decade of relative freedom before being sold into apartheid by Rutherford Hayes in order to win the presidency. Jeffrey

New Congressional Police Reform Bill. Too limited or worth supporting? Also, a more far-reaching proposal by https://8cantwait.org/

Sponsors Nadler, Booker, Harris seeking co-sponsors. Call Representatives to urge them to co-sponsor if you support the bill. Also consider promoting the https://8cantwait.org/ proposal at the local level. Both are less dramatic than the ensuing defunding of the Minneapolis Police Dept.

The Justice in Policing Act of 2020:

• Prohibits federal, state, and local law enforcement from racial, religious and discriminatory profiling, and mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement.
• Bans chokeholds, carotid holds and no-knock warrants at the federal level and limits the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement.
• Mandates the use of dashboard cameras and body cameras for federal offices and requires state and local law enforcement to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras.
• Establishes a National Police Misconduct Registry to prevent problematic officers who are fired or leave on agency from moving to another jurisdiction without any accountability.
• Amends federal criminal statute from “willfulness” to a “recklessness” standard to successfully identify and prosecute police misconduct.
• Reforms qualified immunity so that individuals are not barred from recovering damages when police violate their constitutional rights.
• Establishes public safety innovation grants for community-based organizations to create local commissions and task forces to help communities to re-imagine and develop concrete, just and equitable public safety approaches.
• Creates law enforcement development and training programs to develop best practices and requires the creation of law enforcement accreditation standard recommendations based on President Obama’s Taskforce on 21st Century policing.
• Requires state and local law enforcement agencies to report use of force data, disaggregated by race, sex, disability, religion, age.
• Improves the use of pattern and practice investigations at the federal level by granting the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power and creates a grant program for state attorneys general to develop authority to conduct independent investigations into problematic police departments.
• Establishes a Department of Justice task force to coordinate the investigation, prosecution and enforcement efforts of federal, state and local governments in cases related to law enforcement misconduct.

A group of civil rights leaders issued a statement on Monday noting their support of the bill. A few quotes from their statement:

• “We support Congress taking an important step toward police accountability by introducing the Justice in Policing Act. In the aftermath of the recent police killings of Black people, we sent Congress a strong police accountability framework that is reflected in this legislation.”
• “Many provisions in the bill reflect the insights of national and local civil rights organizations that have worked for years on these issues.”

 The following leaders signed the statement:

• Melanie L. Campbell, president and CEO, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Convener, Black Women’s Roundtable
• Kristen Clarke, president and executive director, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
• Vanita Gupta, president and CEO, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
• Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
• Derrick Johnson, president and CEO, NAACP
• Marc H. Morial, president and CEO, National Urban League
• Reverend Al Sharpton, president and founder, National Action Network