Back on Tuesday, December 26, 2006 I posted this VVAW Anniversary-Dec 26th 1971-Statue of Liberty, Liberation on my first blog, still in my infancy of blog posting but I had gotten better, like embedding links etc.. This action took place only months after I returned from Vietnam, my last year of my four, and getting discharged back into civilian life. I wasn’t with these brothers but I had already started down the path of activism against Wars of Choice and those that create them for profit and power. That post is below slightly refined and updated, had to find a link and embedded a document pdf player.
Back on December 26th 2006 I put together a post, for my site and a few others, in remembrance of an anniversary of a day my fellow Vietnam Veterans made a statement to our country, a statement of a Country in Distress, Our Country!
A shoutout about not only our War of Choice but what our society was going through, Civil Rights Movement, care of the returning Vets, civil disobedience for the many failed policies, and more, the statement wasn’t really taken seriously except by the minority, as is usually the case, the country itself just dug deeper into it’s apathy and never came to terms with our War and Occupation and still hasn’t!
December 26, 1971
Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War “liberated” the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam. They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.
If my math is right, which is doubtful, 8 years equals 2,920 days. After the 2000 (s)election the Supreme Court sentenced us to 1460 days ( 4 years) of George “the torturer” Bush and his nefarious henchmen. Thus begun the Republican reign of Terror. The apparently masochistic American people, in a majority just large enough to allow Rove’s Rat Fuckers carry the day, sentenced us to another 1460 days in november of 2004. Now like a prisoner scratching off the days on his cell wall, we are getting near the end of doing our time. Of being released from bondage. We are short timers now, about to be freed, but still with enough serious time left to not think about our day of deliverance too hard for fear of jinxing it somehow, for fear that our long awaited freedom will somehow, someway be denied.
80 days, “my friends,” 80 days until the election, 2 and a half months, less than a quarter of a year until the first milestone on our path to freedom. 80 days until we find out if we are finally paroled and then 78 more until we are truly free. That’s right 158 days until george Bush leaves office and rides into the sunset….hopefully hounded by not just his conscience, but by the Forces of Justice and the Hounds of Karma.
158 days….and at midnight tonight we are down to only 157!!! Five months and change. An eternity to wait while looking forward, but a mere sliver of time looking back over all the long dark minutes, hours, days, weeks months and years. There were times I thought the long dark days of madness would never end….but now finally, after all of the horrors of the Bush Eon,,,,,,we are within spitting distance of liberation. Of release. Of Freedom!
So though we most definitely DONT want to jinx it, (knock wood etc.) we all know that a really good party takes time to plan. And we have TWO parties to think about, one after election day….and then The Big One, Inauguration Day! It’s not too soon to start thinking about it, to start saving up the booze (and whatever) fund, think about ordering a cake and balloons, maybe even lay in some fireworks! But even that doesn’t seem like enough! What are your party plans? What can we do to really mark the end of an error, and celebrate VB Day?
December 26, 1971