Patriots for Peace

Kannapolis, N.C. — Beth Seymour had never spoken into a microphone before. She stuttered and cried a bit as she clutched her three-month-old daughter Alexandria and addressed the crowd of workers and military families gathered in the shadow of the smokestacks at the Fieldcrest-Cannon mill.

Her husband, Jack, had never seen their baby girl. Before Alexandria was born, he had been shipped off to Saudi Arabia with the 82nd Airborne Division to fight in the Persian Gulf.

“I look at the baby,” Seymour said. “She’s starting to crawl and grow teeth. How much is Jack going to miss? The rest of her life? Who’s going to explain to her why, why her father had to die for oil?

“Can you explain?” she sobbed. “Can you?”

 

Blue-Collar Bonus

In the days after President Bush ordered the bombing of Baghdad, unleashing the heaviest aerial bombardment in history, millions of Southerners like Beth Seymour began to question the war in the Gulf. Construction workers, students, hairdressers, truck drivers, the husbands and wives and children of soldiers — all groped for an explanation of why their friends and relatives were being sent to die in the oil fields of the Middle East.

Even before American tanks rumbled into Kuwait on February 23, it became apparent that Southern resistance to the war was much more widespread than news reports indicated. Much of the dissent came from blue-collar families — and from within the ranks of the military itself.

Southerners fought the war at home in part because so many of their own were fighting it in the Gulf. Although men and women from the region make up a third of all reserve and National Guard forces, they represent over half of those sent to Saudi Arabia.

According to a survey of all civilian forces activated for duty, Mississippi sacrificed a greater share of its sons and daughters to the Gulf than any other state in the nation. When the war started, 281 of every 100,000 Mississippians were under fire in the Middle East — almost six times higher than the national average (see sidebar).

Blacks also shouldered more than their share of the military burden in Operation Desert Storm. Although African-Americans make up only 12 percent of the overall population, the U.S. General Accounting Office reported that they comprised nearly 21 percent of the “all-volunteer” army. Other reports indicated that as many as 50 percent of front-line troops were black.

Such figures suggest that race and poverty — not patriotism — account for the disproportionate number of Southerners facing combat. The region endures higher unemployment and a lower per capita income than the rest of the nation, forcing many Southerners to turn to the military just to make a living.

Some recruits simply never thought “Be All That You Can Be” might mean being on the front lines in a war. “When you’re sitting down with this recruiter, and you sign this paper, the thought of going to war never hits you,” said one National Guardsman enrolled at North Carolina Central University. “You think you’re signing up to try to gain some extra money for school, some independence. The thought never crosses your mind that you can be taken out of school to go fight somebody else’s war.”

The Guardsman, who signed up when a recruiter visited his high school in 1989, said he jumped at the chance to make some extra money. Joining the military enabled him to leave a job at Burger King and enter college.

“The reason the front lines are 60 percent African-American is because when they recruit, they tell you about a bonus you can get — like $2,000 — for going into the infantry. The recruiters also tell African-Americans that they only scored high enough on the entrance test for a gunner or tanker or some other combat job.”

Like many other teenage recruits, the student said he opposed the war — and was thinking about resisting his role in it. “If I had to go to war right now,” he said, “I don’t even know if I would go.”

 

Weekend Warriors

If the Guardsman refused to go to war, he would be in good company. According to Michael Marsh of the War Resisters League, 1,500 soldiers declared their conscientious objection to the war between August and January. Once the bombing began, Marsh said, the group was swamped with phone calls from anxious soldiers looking for ways to resist the war. The majority of calls came from North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Florida.

In the early days of fighting, hundreds of soldiers and reservists across the South left their bases without permission or demanded to be reassigned as conscientious objectors:

▼ Officials at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina reported that 30 soldiers went AWOL and another 20 applied for CO status in the first month of the war.

▼ Nine Marine reservists refused to report for duty when their unit was called up at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. The “Fox Company resisters,” as they became known, later turned themselves in and were granted CO status, but were thrown in the brig to await court martial for what the Marines called their “unexcused absence.”

▼ More than 150 soldiers and National Guardsmen at Fort Hood, Texas failed to return after a one-day leave in mid-February, saying they were overworked and inadequately trained for combat. The “weekend warriors” complained that they were given substandard clothing and meals, and one reported that he was denied medical attention when he thought he had frostbite.

“We were just stressed out working 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said one Guardsman. “Morale was real low. I don’t know if we made the right choice — I think we did. We’re standing for what we believe in.”

Some peace activists who counsel soldiers seeking CO status say early resistance was so widespread that a virtual “underground railroad” was established to shelter those who opposed the war.

Before the war, Langdon Bristol used to get about nine calls a month from conscientious objectors. By January, she was on the phone 12 hours a day, seven days a week, counseling 15 soldiers a day from her home in Virginia Beach.

“One young reservist didn’t report for duty when his unit was called,” Bristol recalled. “His parents were so proud that he went into the military, but after his unexcused absence his father invited him to their home — with the full intention of turning him in.”

Bristol remembered another soldier who was forced into hiding. “There was one case where the MPs were knocking on the front door, and the young man was going out the back door,” she said. “This man will turn himself in. He just wants time to articulate his feelings.”

Paul Dotson was a reservist stationed in Roanoke, Virginia when he decided he could no longer put on his uniform without going against his conscience. “I decided I didn’t agree with the military’s solutions to international problems in 1987,” he said. “But I felt I could live with going one weekend a month because I had to.”

Then, after the Gulf war began, Dotson heard about Jeff Paterson, a Marine who was jailed after he refused to go to the Middle East. Dotson got in touch with the War Resisters League and spent a month and a half filing his CO claim.

“It was a tough decision,” he recalled. “I would have been out in four months with a regular discharge. It came down to going to the Gulf and betraying my conscience for an unethical war, or following my personal beliefs.”

Dotson and others are following a deep-rooted tradition of war resistance in the South. From the Civil War to the Vietnam War, tens of thousands of Southerners from Texas to West Virginia have defied orders and refused to take up arms.

Chuck Eppinette grew up in a military family on the Marine Corps air base at Cherry Point, North Carolina. Almost everyone he knew was connected to the military. Yet when the Vietnam War began, he returned his draft card to the Selective Service.

Eppinette sympathizes with present-day resisters. “It’s a long, lonely fight,” he said. “This war is far more popular than the Vietnam War — it’s been hyped up by the media, by the government, and by advertisers using American blood to

make a sale. There’s a long tradition of military service in the South — but there is also a long tradition of resistance.”

 

Baghdad Jane

For the most part, however, news reports have focused on the region’s tradition of militarism and have ignored its tradition of pacifism. Citing poll after poll, newspapers and television networks have reported overwhelming public support for the Bush administration stance against Iraq.

But a closer look at the polls reveals a region deeply divided along racial and gender lines. According to a survey by The Atlanta Constitution, 90 percent of all white men in Georgia supported the use of force in the Gulf. That support, however, fell to 75 percent among white women, 54 percent among black men, and only 18 percent among black women. “I’ve never seen such a stark difference in attitudes,” said Merle Black, professor of political science at Emory University.

Many black communities across the South have united in opposition to the war. Last August, as members of the Gulf Coast Tenant Organization began a 1,000- mile caravan through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to highlight tenant rights, they quickly expanded their focus to protest skyrocketing gas prices.

“By the time we got to Mississippi, we found that people were really being hurt by the soaring prices, and they were upset,” said Janice Dickerson, a tenant leader in Baton Rouge. The group organized pickets at gas stations across the region, blocking gas pumps to protest price gouging by the big oil companies. In Baton Rouge, 16 people were arrested, including Louisiana State Representative Avery Alexander.

Many white communities and military families have also voiced their opposition to the war, struggling to support their loved ones in the armed forces while condemning U.S. aggression. In North Carolina, a multiracial coalition called the Piedmont Peace Project has worked with the Military Family Support Network to unite those with relatives in the Gulf.

Dorothy Brooks, a student in Bunnlevel, North Carolina, joined the Support Network after her husband’s National Guard unit was dispatched to Saudi Arabia. “It had never occurred to me that Mike would be called to active duty. It’s amazing how when you’re directly affected, it spurs you to act.”

Brooks said she continued to oppose the war even when people in her community began to call her unpatriotic. “Being patriotic, I have the right to question the policies of this war and to work to stop it. As citizens, we have the obligation to voice our conscience.”

Resisters with loved ones in the Gulf often find their lives torn by conflicting loyalties. When soldiers on the front lines learned that Beth Seymour was speaking out against the war, they dubbed her “the next Jane Fonda” and pressured her husband to silence her. She responded by signing “Jane” on all her letters to her husband — and by continuing to call on President Bush to bring the troops home.

 

Picnic Protests

In many Southern communities, early opposition to the war drew community support. Marilyn Harrison, owner of the Sweet Meadow Cafe in Salisbury, North Carolina, discovered that her customers backed her when she called for the safe return of her son, an Army paratrooper in the Middle East. A leader of the Military Family Support Network, Harrison said she supports the troops but not the war.

“Waving flags and yellow ribbons just works for a little while,” she said. “People are making all the preparations in the world to welcome our troops home with parades. We need to make preparations to welcome casualties — dead or alive.”

Residents in nearby Yancey County typify the profile of poor, white conservatives. The majority earn only $10,000 a year, vote for Jesse Helms, and have family members or friends in the Gulf. Yet extensive interviews with 150 residents conducted by Rural Southern Voices for Peace (RSVP) revealed that two-thirds of those surveyed opposed going to war in January.

“People don’t have strong support for the war,” explained Herb Walters of RSVP, “but they don’t know how else to support the troops.” To offer alternatives, the Yancey County Gulf Crisis Committee encouraged children to write letters asking George Bush and Saddam Hussein to stop the fighting, and organized a blood drive for the troops.

As grassroots opposition spread, many Southern communities witnessed war protests that looked more like church picnics than Woodstock. Every Saturday afternoon, Lois Crum joined 10 of her neighbors outside the local shopping mall in Johnson City, Tennessee. The 66-year-old retired credit union manager has three children, including a son in the Air Force. She described herself and her fellow protesters as “mountaineers.”

“I don’t believe in ‘My country, right or wrong,’” she said. “It’s just like how I feel about myself. I like me as a person, but I can always stand some improvement.”

One Saturday, Crum skipped the demonstration, disheartened by the response the week before. “People come by and give us the finger and shout four-letter words at us.” A week later, she was back on the picket line.

“I had questioned if what I was doing was true,” she said. “But I’m for peace. Who can be against peace?”

At the Piedmont Peace Project vigil outside the textile mill in Kannapolis, Beth Seymour also kept up the struggle for peace. She scrawled her husband’s name and thumbtacked his photo to a “Desert Shield Memorial Wall” made from sheets from the mill. Looking around at her fellow protesters, she saw others who had loved ones in the Gulf, but had found the courage to oppose the war.

“We weren’t screaming and yelling and banging drums and burning flags,” Seymour said. “If anyone supports the troops, it’s us. They’re our families and we love them. We don’t want to lose them.”