From within and outside the war machine there is a long history of GIs rebelling against US militarism. Through an abolitionist framework, this zine highlights the legacy and revolutionary power of GI resistance against the backdrop of military mobilizations to violently suppress people’s movements.
State Violence, Abolition, and GI Resistance could not be more timely and urgent.
The text, cowrote by Aaron Hughes & Arti Walker-Peddakotla is full of important insights and lessons from navigating the contradictions and tension inherent to organizing the people enmeshed in systems of state violence. About the work Bill Areas notes, "This work dances a difficult dialectic as it embraces a fundamental contradiction: confronting and resisting the real harm erupting from the war-makers, and providing paths for radical reorientation for people who (like all of us) can be both perpetrators of harm and victims of a racial capitalist system."
The design is rich with clippings from historic anti-war GI newspapers and the archive of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Iraq Veterans Against the War, now About Face: veterans Against the War. Of note, a number of graphics from the two powerful Justseeds portfolios, War is Trauma and Celebrate People's History: Iraq Veterans Against the War, are included. These materials paired with original drawings and compelling page layouts by Aaron Hughes simultaneously invite further observation, contemplation, research and action.
Quote from State Violence, Abolition, and GI Resistance
... counter insurgency strategies, from the Frontier Wars to today, depend on the military targeting and recruiting the same people. The military has used this dual targeting and recruiting to fracture and divide people, confounding efforts to build solidarity.
This is precisely why GI resistance is such a threat to imperialism and so important for liberation movements. GI resistance breaks down divisions perpetuated by militarism, upending the binaries of oppressed and oppressor. Instead, GI resistance proposes new alignments rooted in people’s shared experience of oppression, and their shared struggle for liberation. It is a radical turn and an expression of solidarity.
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Grounded in the belief that people can change, abolitionist organizers teach us that no one is the worst thing they’ve done.
Veterans who have seen the cost of war, have had a hand in inflicting violence, and profoundly understand the ramifications of militarism—if they can radically reorient themselves inside the military machine to fight against it— then it provides a framework for others to do the same.
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There are five principles that capture the organizing praxis of the GI resistance movement:
Radical Reorientation: Veterans have seen the cost of war, have inflicted the trauma of war. If veterans can radically reorient themselves inside this imperialist system to fight against it, then it provides a framework for others to do so as well.
Accountability for Harm (both enacted and endured): Having endured the trauma of the military industrial complex does not exempt military members from being accountable for the harm we have enact on others.
Right to Refuse: Active military members, and those of us on the outside have a right to refuse unlawful and immoral orders. We must refuse to bend a knee to fascist, dictators, and oligarchs. We must refuse to obey in advance.
Spectrum of Resistance: We must resist whenever, wherever, and however we can. Any and all resistance, from protesting in your community to work slowdowns to blocking weapons shipments is necessary. Resistance is our way of withdrawing our consent from the war machine. Literally removing its gears forcing it to malfunction and collapse.
You Are Not Alone: For people to turn away from militarism towards solidarity, for military members to resist in mass they need to know they are not alone. We must build a movement to support and celebrate war resistance in all its manifestations.
