Boston meeting
Solidarity with Marine war resister
By Phebe Eckfeldt
Cambridge, Mass.
"Support the Right to Refuse to Fight. Free
War Resister Stephen Eagle Funk." This was the focus of a
community forum co-sponsored by the Women's Fight Back Network
and Boston ANSWER on Jan. 24.
Stephen Funk is a 21-year-old gay Filipino in the U.S.
Marines. He took a heroic stand against the most powerful
military force in the world when he refused to fight in Iraq.
He was court-martialed and is serving a six-month sentence in a
military brig.
Funk is due to be released Feb. 4. He is the first known
member of the U.S. armed services to be jailed for refusing to
serve in Iraq.
The meeting's featured speaker was Gloria Pacis, Funk's
mother and an anti-war activist and artist. Dustin Langley, a
Navy veteran and lead organizer for the Support Network for an
Armed Forces Union, also spoke.
Pacis gave a chronological account of her son's
transformation from a young person looking for his way in life
into a GI resister and anti-war activist. The story of her
parallel journey as a mother supporting him every step of the
way, and the emotional and political challenges she faced, was
moving and uplifting.
"Yes, I am very proud of my son," said Pacis. "What he did
took a lot of courage. But I wish he wasn't the exception to
the rule but the average thing. ...
"To moms everywhere: We don't want military recruiters in
our schools. We send our children to school to become
independent thinkers, not to get their minds sucked out of
them.
"What can people do to help? They can learn the lesson of
what Stephen went through. Be selfish. Define who you are. If
this happened more there wouldn't be armies of people standing
behind George Bush. History is written by ordinary people."
Langley spoke of SNAFU's increasingly successful efforts to
educate and organize young people to resist the military, to
counter the lies of military recruiters and to help GIs get
out.
Langley told the audience that 90 percent of people join the
military for job training. But what they get is military
training for military jobs.
Only 6 percent of women and 12 percent of men use their
military training in civilian jobs. Military recruiters promise
$50,000 for college, but the maximum anyone gets is $34,200, or
about $4,000 per semester.
SNAFU receives emails every day from GIs who want to resist,
Langley reported. The group's website gets 500 hits a day with
many visitors asking how to get out of the military. SNAFU was
able to help secure 15 discharges within six months, he
said.
"The time is ripe now," said Langley. "We need to go out and
reach the youth and let them know there are alternatives to the
military, that they can get out if they are already in. We can
support U.S. soldiers in Iraq by continuing to demand: Bring
the troops home now!"
Reprinted from the Feb. 5, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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