Operation Recovery Deployment

Week One May 17 2011

I am still arriving in many ways to the belly of the beast. Thinking of what is ahead of us. The work of taking on Gen. Campbell. The work of altering power at the heart of power. It all seems overwhelming, but all great social transformations have started off this way. With individuals wrenching themselves out of the comforts of everyday to take on power.

In a book titled SNCC Howard Zinn wrote, "How do you measure commitment? Is it the willingness to take a day out of life and sacrifice for history, to plunge for one morning or one afternoon into the unknown, to engage in one solitary act of defiance against all the arrayed of established society? ... Is commitment more then that - the willingness to wrench yourself out of your environment and begin anew, almost alone, in a social jungle which the most powerful forces in the nation have dared to penetrate? Then the number is reduced to 16: those 16 college youngsters who, in the fall of 1961, decided to drop everything - school and family and approved ambition - and move into the deep south to become the first guerrilla fighters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. "

Fifty years ago with just 16 organizers SNCC dove into the south not only to change the course of history over the next five years but to radically transform themselves. This history is one that I look back at am inspired by and thankful for the strategies left to learn from. 

Fifty years later we are still in battle against the "the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism" that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke so honestly about in his 1967 Beyond Vietnam speech. I try and take heed to these lessons and thats why I dove into the belly of the beast, Ft. Hood, to become one of the gorilla fighters of our movement for a better world. 

This first week has been one focused on preparing for the outreach drive by;

• - reordering the coffee shop so it was more suitable and welcoming to guests
• - clean, clean some more, and more cleaning
• - yard work
• - searching for cheep bunk beds, rugs, bedding, food, and other little things
• - talking and I mean just talking to other local businesses

Outreach, it is on everyones minds but seems at times so hard to get done. At other times it is just apart of our day. On Wednesday we passed fliers out at the PX for Fatigue Clothesline, a new women's veterans organization that Under the Hood is hosting on Sundays. On Saturday two pages of pledges where collected from Service Members outside of a local book store. 

Today and yesterday from 08:30 - 09:00 a new experiment in outreach began. FREE COFFEE from Under the Hood Cafe is begin passed out before morning formation at the east gate. I gesture of kindness that is received by the soldiers waiting to enter Ft. Hood. Of course we are passing out Under the Hood and GI Rights cards with the coffee. Just another way to get the conversation started.

Their is a drought of culture in this worn down military town. Every other Friday pulling from the depths of life a group of dedicated poets gather to Howl. For a moment these poets transform the desert town into words, textures, beats, dreams, pains, sensual  and crass feelings ... in to soul. Under the Hood attends as a group and this turn we howled on Kyle as he read three poems ... one titled appropriately Therapy. This is are therapy ...

Therapy

• In this town therapy is secondary
• To the needs of our cities' health and humanity
• The powers that decide our livelihood make another primary priority
• Deciding to fill up our bathroom cabinets instead of giving us therapy
• Its all good
• They like to prescribe medication to GIs
• Its easier to control them when they've made them dependent on a drug forming habit
• Forget about fixing combat stress
• Just hop us up on benzodizipines
• So we forget the past
• dulling our painful reality
• Of what war does to our mentality
• For some of us we may not have scars or limbs lost
• Its taboo in this town
• We all know war effects every solider not just physically 
• For the pill popping solider 
• Fort Hood makes it easier for us who suffer from over medication
• A normality in our health care society 
• Don't worry about it 
• If you get the shakes there's a new expressway lane for your quick fix
• It just open up for business
• Roll up in your ride to Thomas Moore clinic
• 10 mikes later you got your fill of dependency
• All thats left to do is grab a bottle of water to swallow down handicapped half-assed therapy
• So quick so easy, you'll make it back in time to your motor pool duties
• The military clearly would rather find their own quick fix to the mental health epidemic
• Where did the battle buddy system go?
• Anyone can be your battle buddy even General Campbell.
• It doesn't exist anymore
• A soldier is no better then an Afghan or Iragi
• Put their problems to the side and worry about it years later after they forgot about us
• Pills have there place but without therapy the veterans can't live this way forever
• For many the help won't come
• Suicides happen in regularity
• If they're lucky they will at least see the pearly gates
• The gates that big book we all know talks about. 

by Kyle Wesolowski