This image is from Celebrate People’s History/Iraq Veterans Against the War: Ten Years of Fighting for Peace and Justice, a portfolio that celebrated IVAW’s first ten years and was produced by Justseeds, IVAW, Booklyn, Repetitive Press, and the Civilian Soldier Alliance.
(IVAW is now known as About Face: Veterans Against the War)
Jeremy Stainthorp Berggren is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Warrior Writers facilitator, artist, writer, poet, and activist living and working in Durham, NC.
A handwritten note from what looks like a page of a notebook, replete with drawings of skulls, and a hangman game. Some of the text states, “Say I shall die by suicide. Say I died from anxiety and depression. Say it was a health condition related to my time in the army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps. Please! File a wrongful death lawsuit against the federal government, and remember me, just like we remember any other folk from blue collar jobs. If you sad then pray you some god this be the last suicide note I ever wrote. If you mad then remember the rest, like me, like us, every day. Fuck a memorial! Fuck a holiday! Give me poetry and poets. Give me objectors and resisters! Give me friendships, think of them often, always, every day. And if we, shall die by suicide, remember me, a warrior, a fighter, a poet, a friend.”
