conscience

for my brothers and sisters to the north
and for all who wonder why I cannot close my eyes

I have heard from frightened mothers who learned about the whisper of the draft headed our way. I listen to home-schoolers who want to put information on the group and the newsletter about how to file for conscientious objector status when their children reach 18 and must go to the Post Office to sign up for the selective service.

There are the scared calls, the frightened letters. "I can't go back." "I gave my story to a local newspaper and now they are sending me to Fort ____." And the worried ones that have read about the gender-specific language being changed in the new legislation that will require daughters and sons to sign up.

How can this happen so quickly? The draft was a thing of the past, wasn't it?

Bush continues his empirical directive from G-d and we are scurrying around down here in the states, knowing that he will need new cannon fodder. Already, those who listened to the new ads for "An Army of One" (many of those ads directed by our own Spike Lee) or to the quick flashy spot about "join the Guard, protect your community and get your college tuition paid!" find themselves in a war that was not supposed to go on this long. Was not supposed to be so bloody. Was not supposed to...

We have a new Viet Nam here and this time, the National Guard and the Reserves aren't just protecting the college campuses (Kent State May 5, 1970) or the voter registration drives in the south. For the first time in history, the Bush family has deployed the Guard to foreign soil. The face of the military men is now the face of mothers with children, fathers and sons, aunts and uncles, those who thought they could do a good thing for their country -- and finding themselves doing and thinking the unimaginable things.

Suicides are at their highest rate in Iraq. Deserters have been estimated at almost 2000. Youngsters who are AWOL are being chased by their local police to end up crashing their pick-ups at 90 MPH into fields -- this macabre scene from Hollywood -- this impossible injustice in the land of the "free." And more and more of middle America is getting called up to "serve."

9/11 patriots are coming out of the woodwork showing their ability to learn terror from the Commander in Chief's words of fear and racism. "They" are the enemy and "He" is the answer. "He" will be the great savior to the masses who stared in fright as one plane... no, TWO planes crashed through buildings and changed the face of the USA forever.

It's like we are the first and only people to have terrorists. It's a new thing to these 9/11 patriots, these liberals who changed their colors when the flames began to burn in their back yard. The silence of the screens on March 16th, the flashing lime-green scenes of sites targeted and then -- in shock and awe -- destroyed, came flickering into our living rooms. And they stay in our minds to bring up the fear again when that alert color changes.

A democratic congressman from Harlem thinks the draft will balance out the number and color of casualties, yet The New York Times tells us "The military is better integrated today and more of a melting pot than it was 30 years ago."(1)

So we are helping the men women children sons mothers daughters husbands wives aunts uncles who wear camouflage to find alternatives to "deployment." duckdaotsu is the site, a website started as a meditation toward peace that has grown into a source of freedom and information for those seeking individual peace.

That peace may come in the form of starting lives over in Canada. We pray that you will accept us again, just as in 1966 when I first heard of something called "the underground" and helped a young man (one of many) on his way to the border. That was in the Black Hills of South Dakota, I was barely 14.

I am now married to a man who was drafted in the '60s. He was to be a surveyor -- the front of the lines. He hated the military, hated that his freedom had been destroyed by a letter in the mail. He found a way to stay in the states but only by doing the bravest act I have ever imagined. The unkindest crack of a bone. The strongest test of will. The last act of a desperate man.

We face those decisions again today. There is no question of my action, there could never be. I have no choice. I cannot choose to turn away, to not act. My meditation toward peace include this act of passion against that machine that continues to churn out more and more hatred, racism, sick patriotism and stealth conscription.

I choose to be a worker of conscience. I am a pacifist, with "FIST" in the air.

lisbeth west
daoist hermit
side of mountain, colorado
december 29, 2003

1 Denver Post (from New York Times) "War's casualties draw comparison to Vietnam"
Sunday November 2, 2003

"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." - John F. Kennedy

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

-George Orwell

---

"How fucking orwellian," she thought. she didn't realize that she has spoken it aloud.
"well, it has to come out some time, and so now is the better time as later, or future,
for we mustn't put things off too awfully long, or they will become short little memories
that die in the dust -- like old eyelashes and bits of sweaters washed too often."
And so, she did.

And nothing was ever washed too often again, as the colors were finally exposed to the sunlight and they bounced off truth like jelly beans! ( '?