From Indigenous People's Day to Armistice Day
https://worldbeyondwar.org/from-indigenous-peoples-day-to-armistice-day/
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, October 17, 2020
Remarks by phone on October 17, 2020, to Indigenous People's Day event in
Washington, D.C., delayed from October 12.
There may be no more important place to mark Indigenous People's Day than
Washington, D.C., the center of global weapons dealing, base building, and
war making - the leading hub of nuclear weapons production and environmental
destruction, the seat of a national and imperial government that overseas
colonies of second-class citizens on Caribbean and Pacific islands as well
as in Washington DC itself, while keeping nearly 1,000 major military bases
in over 80 other countries, a government that continues to abuse the
remaining native people of North America, exploit the land to destroy the
sky and poison the water, in a city that after decades of protest is willing
to rename its professional concussion-inducing team as long as it can name
it for warmakers.
And why is there a C in Washington DC, anyway? Because Washington claims the
mantle of colonialism, empire, slavery, and genocide, and because it claims
ownership not only of the United States but of the two continents of
America, calling its people "Americans" and their single biggest public
project the "Defense" department.
The mini-U.S. suburban paradises sprinkled across the globe as military
bases are gated communities on steroids (and on Apartheid). Their residents
are often immune from criminal prosecution for their actions outside the
gates, while the locals are only admitted within to do the yard work and
cleaning.
Foreign U.S. bases were not invented in 1898 the way text books tell our
children. The United States had foreign bases prior to and built more during
its war of independence from foreign occupying troops who raped and
pillaged. The motto of the new nation was "Hey, that's our job."
Down here at the University of Virginia a giant statue celebrating George
Rogers Clark doesn't just honor genocide but depicts it approvingly in a
sculpted monument.
Every base built west of the mountains to advance the settler colonists was
a foreign base. Every war was a foreign war. If you think that's ancient
history, explain to me why every newspaper in the United States calls the
current war on Afghanistan the longest U.S. war. They could not do that if
they believed that Native Americans were human beings. Tell me why every
newspaper in the United States will tell you that the deadliest U.S. war
ever was the U.S. Civil War. They could not do that if they believed that
Native Americans and Filipinos and Koreans and Vietnamese and Laotians and
Iraqis and Afghans and the rest of humanity was human. They don't even
include the deaths of the Native Americans against whom the United States
was fighting wars during the U.S. Civil War.
Most teachers in the United States will tell you that the conquest of
territory is a thing of the past, but U.S. military bases are on land all
over the globe that it took by forcibly displacing people in Greenland,
Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Panama, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Korea, Okinawa, Guam,
Diego Garcia, the Philippines, and numerous Pacific Islands.
We need to raise up Indigenous People's Day as a celebration of sustainable
living and a movement toward a world beyond war. We also need to transform
the upcoming holiday that the U.S. government calls Veterans' Day but used
to call Armistice Day.
______________ _________________ ___________________
November 11, 2020, is Armistice Day 103 - which is 102 years since World War
I was ended at a scheduled moment (11 o'clock on the 11th day of the 11th
month in 1918 - killing an extra 11,000 people after the decision to end the
war had been reached early in the morning).
In many parts of the world this day is called Remembrance Day and should be
a day of mourning the dead and working to abolish war so as not to create
any more war dead. But the day is being militarized, and a strange alchemy
cooked up by the weapons companies is using the day to tell people that
unless they support killing more men, women, and children in war they will
dishonor those already killed.
For decades in the United States, as elsewhere, this day was called
Armistice Day, and was identified as a holiday of peace, including by the
U.S. government. It was a day of sad remembrance and joyful ending of war,
and of a commitment to preventing war in the future. The holiday's name was
changed in the United States after the U.S. war on Korea to "Veterans Day,"
a largely pro-war holiday on which some U.S. cities forbid Veterans For
Peace groups from marching in their parades, because the day has become
understood as a day to praise war - in contrast to how it began.
The story from the first Armistice Day of the last soldier killed in the
last major war in which most of the people killed were soldiers highlights
the stupidity of war. Henry Nicholas John Gunther had been born in
Baltimore, Maryland, to parents who had immigrated from Germany. In
September 1917 he had been drafted to help kill Germans. When he had written
home from Europe to describe how horrible the war was and to encourage
others to avoid being drafted, he had been demoted (and his letter
censored). After that, he had told his buddies that he would prove himself.
As the deadline of 11:00 a.m. approached on that final day in November,
Henry got up, against orders, and bravely charged with his bayonet toward
two German machine guns. The Germans were aware of the Armistice and tried
to wave him off. He kept approaching and shooting. When he got close, a
short burst of machine gun fire ended his life at 10:59 a.m. Henry was given
his rank back, but not his life.
