The War Never Left

I was asked to speak Veteran’s Day at an anti-war event by the Chicago Vietnam Veterans Memorial. While I would like to spend a bit more time refining this message as it feels like a run-on sentence. Here is the speech as penned. “My name is Edgar Gonzalez. I’m a teacher, a veteran, an artist, an immigrant, a latino, and I’m queer. With the president elect, I would be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t scared. I deployed to war Iraq in 2005, and came back home in 2006. Many would say that a war is coming. I say that the war never left. It’s always been there, in the corners of the TV screens, in social media posts, in newspaper stories, in the communities which have bad news reported with the matter-of-fact assumption that bad news always happens there, like the south or west sides of Chicago. The war is present in the way that churches are firebombed because the congregation is black. Or the way that we are told that we are told that we should be afraid of immigrants from “over there in the Middle East” because they might be terrorists while we ignore the terrorists in our own house. The war is present in how an armed militia of American men can occupy federal land, be peacefully negotiated with, and then later acquitted because of the color of their skin, while Native people are first ignored, then maced, spied on, tear-gassed and bulldozed by police forces using the same equipment I saw used in Iraq while the First Nations are defending their right to clean drinking water. The war is present in the military industrial complex which refuses to hire a transgender woman at a grocery store, or a restaurant, or a clinic; criminalizes the sex work she will turn to as a means of survival, but then lifts a ban on transgender people enlisting on the military because the quotas of enlistees from poor communities can no longer satisfy the military’s need for bodies to send to the front lines of conflicts so wide-spread and far-flung they are as difficult to keep track of as number of unarmed black people gunned down by police, the black women killed, or like Marissa Alexander, jailed because they are put in impossible positions, or the trans women of color with such disdain that if it weren’t for the activists mobilizing and imploring us to #SayHerName, we might never know about them at all. The war is present in how economic policy devastates our infrastructure, starves our education, leaves millions of people without jobs by downsizing any industry which does not have a direct tie to benefit of a war based economy and insists that there is no money to tend to the sick, without inflating big pharmaceuticals, or for education, which might rob the military of a pliable uncritical mind they could recruit, rebuild a crumbling infrastructure that might provide our families clean drinking water, safe roads to travel on, heat for our loved ones in the winter. The war has been here and is roosting in the hatred the Trump campaign has inspired and emboldened. The kind of racism, sexism, xenophobia, islamophobia, transphobia, and homophobia which the Trump campaign has legitimized. Against the war, it is important to remain educated, dedicated, and ready. The battles are in discussing uncomfortable topics outside of social media. In breaking of dinner table taboos and speaking out for what you believe in. Our battles are in the premise of being. Of being an immigrant, latinx, queer, a woman, trans, a veteran, a muslim, black, or any other race or religion. In doing what you do to carry yourself, your family, and your loved ones forward. In the backlash against our communities, existing is a battle in this war. In my opinion - being yourself fully, openly, aggressively loving is one of the battles you can win every day. Take care of yourselves Take care of each other Educate yourselves Support the people who organize by being present, or by making snacks for them to take to rallies and marches, or by being a check-in buddy for them, donating time or money, getting involved with political organizing, getting involved in local politics and running for school boards, and local positions. We can move forward de-militarizing police, properly funding education, providing healthcare, providing shelter for the homeless. We CAN confront this new assault of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia. Steadfast Shoulder to shoulder taking care of each other. “

An Arbitrary Anniversary

Eight years ago, I was fighting the flue and had missed a drill weekend which was part of my commitment to my contract with the United States Army Reserves. I actually agonized over whether or not I would go to drill that weekend because while I was sick and feeling rather miserable, I also had a misguided sense of duty combined with a diminished sense of self-care. I ended up doing what could be considered the responsible thing and stayed home with my sickness. It was February 13, 2005; a Sunday morning. My supervising NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) called my house asking to speak with me. She asked me how I was, and if I was recovering well, and if I was sitting down. I said I was, and she replied with "You're going to Baghdad". Whatever visceral emotional response I might have had, I will never know. Reflexively I was a clear minded professional calculating a thousand things which were contingent on my almost robotic reply: "What's my timeline?"

The next day was a series of phone calls, and e-mails to school. I was within a year of graduation of a series of classes which I had fought tooth and nail through a portfolio review to get into. It was imperative I knew I would have my place held or if I was going to have to resubmit my portfolio again. I had to notify work, and I had to let certain friends and family know I was leaving soon - really soon.

After a few farewells, and a few very encouraging metaphorical but well needed kicks in the ass, I was not sad when I was saying my farewells and good byes. I consequently found out I would have far more time than the "This Thursday" my NCO told me, as there was training I had to complete prior to heading overseas.

The deployment was a profoundly formative experience in my life, which I cannot say with any sort of confidence that I would be the person I am today were it not for that experience. There are people whom I would have never been put on a path to meet were it not for how my military service and actually deploying affected the way I think, and helped shape my values and beliefs. There are people like Marc-Anthony, or Cherie whom I would have never spoken too or been fortunate enough to befriend. The introduced me to Sacha Sacket, wonderful ideas, and unbridled kindness of strangers. A longer lasting kindness than the Bangor Troop Welcomers, who also are very deserving of my respect.I would have never met the other "nerdiest person in the batallion" Lysandwr, my deployment girlfriend! If I had not deployed to Baghdad I would not have taken an interest in foreign languages and cultures, nor would I have gotten involved with the Vet Art Project, and met Lisa, Jessa, Tim, and subsequently Aaron, Sabrina, Nicky, Vinny, Alejandro, Barry, Hans, or Iris. My friendship with Susheela would not have been as nurturing nor fulfilling. I would not make the kind of art which I am making now, nor would I explore the ideas and grapple with the issues which I grapple with now.

So today, I honor my eighth anniversary to my deployment to a war we should have never fought, but my involvement in has made me a more conscientiousness and engaged inhabitant of the world.

Project Brainstorms

I have been inordinately busy, and also blogging has not necessarily been at the forefront of my "things to do". I did feel impelled to write down a few ideas for some projects which I am tossing around in my head and working on intermittently.

The Penance Cycle
This project hinges on my fixation with Arabic calligraphy and the script itself being very beautiful, as well as a moment in my paltry understanding of the Arabic Language, I fixated on a phrase which had a series of "ye"s in consecutive order. Irhabiyeen is a gross transliteration of it. It means "terrorism", conjugated from the root word Irhabi or terrorist. One of the translators clarified the statement on the psychological operations poster hanging in the company area as a sample of a larger billboard which had gone up ion Baghdad asking the populous to not support terrorism. The message is now gone from my memory, but that word stuck. I'm a fan of language and how language works, I thought about my lessons in my 90 hour Arabic immersion course prior to my deployment and all the "I am, he is, she is, we are" exercises, and I thought "Ena Irhabi" or I'm a Terrorist. The phrase itself is very transgressive and confrontational, even if only written out. But to have "I'm a Terrorist" or "Ena Irhabi" written out in Arabic, with its beautiful undulating script becomes something else all together in a post-9/11 United States. I'm still playing with the idea, and what ways I can create images which are both inviting and also engaging for non-arabic speakers/readers.

Idol Worship/Idle Worship
Teaching High School, one of the teenage behaviors which has caught my attention is the fixation on certain celebrities. Students will tape photos onto lockers, or inside binders, and make up impossible fantasies of running away with said celebrity. This is largely a distinctly feminine phenomenon. The male students usually have a particular female celebrity which they objectify, and use as a base for their physical standards which is problematic in its own way. However students of both genders generally have someone which they fixate on. This is where I get my next idea for a possible series. While I do not devote nearly the amount of time or energy to celebrities, I do have a few individuals who I do fixate on either in the arts, performance or music. I was thinking of drawing parallels between the way people worship in various religions substituting celebrity icons for the religious iconography. In a sense this could be an excuse of drawing and painting images of celebrities I admire, but that might be too idiosyncratic.

Pictures with Veterans
I have met with and taken photos with several military veterans; one whose story I credit with giving me the cognitive push to endure my deployment with far more courage, grit, and preparation to accept any outcome regardless what would happen. I have met many more admirable veterans since separating from the Army, and have taken photos with most of them. I painted one photograph already, and have started a second one in the past 3 months. The work on these is sporadic, but I am pleased with the results. I do think if I keep going with this it can become a coherent series rather than a disjointed jump-start-stall of a body of work I normally do which has little coherence or reason.

One of the reason I articulate these ideas is basic ownership and a rudimentary effort to hold myself to some manner of accountability. Amongst the other things I am trying to nurture and grow, I figure something will come of this.

Shocking War Videos and the Forgotten Context of War

Recently there was a video of four United States Marine Fighters urinating on the corpses of alleged Taliban fighters. Rick Perry drew some criticism for comparing the video to the Daniel Pearl video as noted on the Daily Beast. Asra Nomani wrote a very compelling response to the concept which Perry brought up. Reflecting on my own experiences with the criticism of war videos and the criticism they will draw, I am compelled to reflect and respond to this. There have been numerous videos which have emerged from both sides of the ideological “War on Terrorism”. The “War on Terror” itself is problematic, and I am certain historians are busy writing their dissertations on the matter. Something that people forget, and Perry touches on this, as well as Nomani: War is one of the most destructive, devastating and catastrophic forces in the world. Part of the outrage which stems from the Marine video urinating on the corpses, as unfortunate as those actions are, is that in this ideological war, we idealize and elevate our fighting forces to a status comparable to paragons of virtue, defenders of all that is right and just in the world. They are representatives of American virtues and values. They represent everything that is purportedly good and wholesome about America. In the paradigm set forth by the ideological narrative of the “War on Terrorism” our enemies are subhuman. They represent everything that is wrong with that “other” culture, with their antiquated belief system (which ironically brought Europe out of the Dark Ages). They are barbaric murderous savages who embody all the vices which American Values abhor. The worst of the inhumanity is represented in the video where they butcher Daniel Pearl, and subsequently Nicholas Berg, and numerous other innocent casualties of war. This is an enemy who by the existence of these videos does not value human life, and is so ravenous and violent American forces are paragons of virtue fighting the forces of evil. Killing someone in such a manner and disseminating a video of the butchering can be nothing less than an inhuman act of people. We forget these people are in fact human. Nomani states that one of the men who killed Daniel Pearl retched and had to step out of the room when Pearl was being dismembered. However, both the Taliban forces just like the US Armed forces are at the end of the day human. I am not absolving the actions of either group. I am merely seeking to point out an important omnipresent fact: we forget the humanity of those we send to fight in war. Our society is probably all very jaded and so protected and removed from the realities of war that when a video such as the one the Marines have is shocking and appalling. The narrative and the reality of war is so far removed that it is a cold hard slap to the face when it is dropped on our news narrative again. The idealization and simplification of something as complex, brutal, and transformative as war seems only natural. War is so volatile that even the most virtuous people shed a bit of their humanity, and civilians do not and arguably cannot understand this. I deployed to Baghdad Iraq in 2005 through 2006 and I maintained a blog as a means of communication with some friends since I did not have all their e-mail addresses, and I could jot down my thoughts on a word document and paste it later. One of the discussion that emerged on a blog post not of my own involved a video which was at best a display of military power, at its most base and banal Neanthderthal-like, it is testosterone driven chest-thumping military cum shot. The person who posted this video was decrying how horrible it is and all the atrocities that military forces were raining down on Iraq & Afghanistan; a narrative of someone who clearly was unfamiliar with war, or deployment. In my deployment, I was a paper pusher. I worked logistics, so most of my time was either driving all over the Baghdad military bases or command complexes picking up and dropping off materials. I would hardly consider my deployment going to war, so videos such as the one this individual posted were common circulation as a means of passing the time, and entertaining ourselves because the time between missions, and a form of stress relief (albeit sophomoric, and juvenile, but stress relief nonetheless). I defended this video as such, and for daring to speak my opinion and the most memorable and insightful reply I received was “You are worse than Satan.” Now as the New Yorker Magazine cartoon once brilliantly stated “On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog.”, so to this armchair activist, it did not matter that I was a deployed troop/college student who had some insight into the thought processes behind why these videos are made. To them, I was probably some gun-toting hick from middle of nowhere southern United States who voted republican always and unapologetically. I too drew conclusions about this blogger and his comments. When I read Nomani’s editorial piece, I reflected on this. Maybe our culture has experienced War fatigue. Afghanistan is no longer a feature in the headlines because of the issues with the economy. Stories about troops coming home and going on post traumatic stress injury fueled fits of violence are seen as uncommon, or exceptions to the rule (which in some cases they are) I read this and I think…. A lot of people truly do not understand war. I include myself in that demographic. I think I have meandered beyond the main idea of what I wanted to get to. I do not think we should be all that surprised that for every terrorist posting a video of the butchering of a human being from the “other side”, we should not be surprised when our own fighting forces do something like piss on the corpses of their enemies. I say this without condoning or absolving the actions of either group, but with the intent of getting the few people who read this to think before they so quickly cast judgment.

Adventures in Teaching or Biting off more than I can chew.

I successfully completed my first week of teaching and have been busily coordinating and concocting some plans for the school year. I have no clue how I will be able to balance out working at Oak Forest High School while sponsoring Art Club, Teaching the Community Arts Sustaining Academics Program, and Co-leading and continuing programing for the Vet Art Project. Where there is a will, there is a way. I still have a month in which to set down as much of the groundwork for the Vet Art Project and balance out my schedule of staff, department, and programing meetings as all of this will play a part in how I am able to do my jobs.
At OFHS, taking full advantage of the fact that I am only teaching one section of art, I have compared notes on all my students and touched base with as many of the Social Studies and English teachers to basically get the gears turning on cooperative lessons bridging art and historical context in academics. I already have one teacher who would like to co-plan a lesson on the Reconstruction in post Civil War America, and the Fox Sisters basically purporting to be supernatural mediums, and pairing it with a black & white drawing lesson.
In my concerted efforts to go out and do things and not be such a hermit, Thursday, I had gone to a speaking event at the National Veterans Art Museum. There I met two very cool veterans, Brock & Jake and reconnected with other cool veterans I had met before (Barry & Sabrina). Brock & Jake have been traveling cross country talking about their visits back to Afghanistan and have so many striking, shocking, and beautiful stories about their experiences. I had dinner with all of them afterwards were we chatted and met up with another veteran who had recently come back from Afghanistan the evening before. After this encounter and dropping Brock off at Midway to catch his flight, I stopped by Atomic Sketch afterwards to check out the art and acquired some artwork for my personal collection as well as talking with some of the artists at Atomic Sketch about the possibility of having them come speak to either my class, or for Art Club. Altogether it was a rather busy evening.
This got my gears turning, in which in the most grandiose delusions, I could have a panel of veterans speaking about their experiences and discussing how a decade's worth of war has shaped our culture as is, as well as what is going on as well as giving a first person perspective on what military veterans have had to go through. At its most humble, having a few guest speakers either for my own classroom, or for art club to do demonstrations and share a little bit of their experiences. With everything I will have to do over the course of the school year, it is exciting and new, and at the same time I ask myself: Am I biting off more than I can chew?

Because this beckons some manner of reaction

Pretty much every news source, internet, televised, and broadcast has been flooded with the news that Osama Bin Laden has been killed by U.S. Military action. My reaction was at first skeptic, and now cautious. Killing or capturing Bin Laden has been a tantamount priority in the mission in Afghanistan. He and the Al-Qaeda have been an adversary and figurehead for radical perversion of Islam. On May 1, 2011, The news channels and President Barrack Obama have confirmed that Osama Bin Laden has been killed through U. S. Military Operation. I wonder, and question what effect this will have on Operation: Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. I wonder if troops will be brought home, or how much longer will they be deployed overseas? I wonder if Al-Qaeda will attempt some manner of retribution for the death of one of their public leaders. I wonder if there will be a a strain on Pakistani/U. S. relations. I stand, cautious and watchful, hoping that things will improve of only slightly.

in my nightmares I.....

With the very little I recall of some of the dreams that I have had in the past years, an ongoing trend I have noticed is whenever I have a dream which I can undeniably consider a nightmare because if the true childlike fear and helplessness they leave me with are dreams in which I am back in the service during a training exercise which involves the use of, or possession of a weapon. usually what ends up happening is either I lose said weapon, have a first time user's non-lethal, not-necessarily-dangerous-in-a-training-environment-but-potentially-harmful-in-a-non-training-environment incident, like swinging a weapon in such a way that I basically put someone in the business end of a rifle unintentionally, or the weapon I have is not the serial number which I was assigned. Misplaced or lost weapons are serious security risks, and they will shut down bases to recover unaccounted for weapons. But with this dream comes the same sense of helplessness of you have a career making meeting or something to get to, and you lost your keys. You cannot remember where you left them, you have turned the house upside down looking for them, and they are NOWHERE to be found. In my nightmare usually, I am usually retracing my steps, and checking every nook and cranie of my environment for my weapon, or at least the weapon which has my assigned serial number. I usually end up either getting caught not having my assigned weapon, or I wake up from the sheer palpable fright which is physically making my heart race like I just finished a Tabata set.

SHOCK & AWE: Senate actually passed legislation.

I have been absent from blogging for a while, but I have maintained a proverbial ear to the proverbial ground as far as what this Lame Duck Senate has been up to as of late. In the past few months I have grown increasingly disillusioned, disappointed, and disgusted with the obstructionist tactics the Republican Minority in Senate has taken to make sure nothing gets done. The idea that Congress is a "Law-making body" seems to cease as soon as anything arrives at Senate, while the House of Representatives has been moving through legislation at least more effectively, though far from perfectly. I had adapted to the idea that Senate was where legislation of any sort went to die, and Senators were not interested in any sort of governing, but rather looking out for their own best interests and those that would screw the populous for the sake of giving the prodigious middle digit to one Moderate Liberal President of a political party some people plain don't like. Imagine my surprise this morning when I read the news that the Repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Policy which keeps non-heterosexual individuals from serving openly, honestly, and with personal integrity (all values touted as paramount by the Armed Forces) out of the military. The Repeal of DADT is a piece of legislation which I keep near and dear to my heart because it affected me personally and made my deployment all that much more difficult to endure. I would have re-enlisted if it were not for DADT. Personal stories aside, In my jaded cynicism with the Senatorial section of the Legislative branch of government, the fact that ANYTHING got done was shocking. I'm happy the repeal got through, and is due to be signed into law. I am surprised that Senate did anything coherent in light of the established pattern of obstructing anything for the sake of political gain and getting nothing substantial accomplished. I think the later fact is far more surprising than the news that the repeal passed.

The wonders of snail-mail or the romanticism of a handwritten letter

I have a friend who recently shipped out for Marine Basic Training. I recently received a letter from him. I got immediately to reading in spite of all other "things-to-do" I had pending. He is doing well, and managing at staying out of the radar of bad things in training. He's a good Marine. I felt more connected and a greater sense of urgency and importance from that handwritten letter than I recall feeling from reading e-mails when I was over seas. A handwritten letter is far more substantial, literally, than a digital e-mail. He commented on how letters help "soothe the soul-burn" and to a degree being in the military does burn the soul. At least in Basic Training, it does. It makes you a harder person, and you are able to deal with more. I look forward to writing more letters to my friend. I am sure he will be happy to feel a little more connected to the world outside the garrison.