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Operation Recovery Updates

By Aaron Hughes

This past week it rained in Killeen, Texas breaking the historic drought and burning heat that has plagued this military town. With the breaking of the drought comes the conclusion to the Operation Recovery summer long organizing drive.

The organizing drive was an experiment based on the strategies of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on how to build power in the belly of the beast. In 1961 for SNCC the "belly" was Mississippi and the "beast" was racism. For IVAW the "belly" is Ft. Hood and the "beast" is militarism.

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 power 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 sixteen organizers SNCC dove into the south not only to change the course of history, but also to also radically transform themselves. Fifty years later we are still in battle against the "giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism" that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke so powerfully about in his 1967 Beyond Vietnam speech. Heeding the lessons of Dr. King and the door to door organizing strategies of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, IVAW choose to dive into the belly of the beast of the US Army, Ft. Hood, to become the guerrilla fighters of our movement for a better world.

For the fourteen organizers who wrenched themselves out of their daily lives at different points throughout this past summer the experiment proved successful. The organizing drive did not meet all of its objectives but it did identify new emerging active duty leaders and build a community of dignity and respect counter to the culture of militarism, materialism, racism and patriarchy of the US military.

The Ft. Hood organizing drive original objective was to collect 500 to 600 contacts, conduct 50 to 60 successful house visits, collect 15 to 20 testimonies, and identify one to two emerging active duty leaders that will get involved with the next phase of the campaign. The organizing drive did not achieve all its goals for contacts, house visits and testimonies. However, through the organizing drive and daily outreach four emerging active duty leaders have been identified and they are getting involved with building the next phase of the campaign.

The Organizing drive also functioned as a training institute for resident and guest organizers. The experience of doing intentional and consolidated daily outreach and follow-ups is new to IVAW. These experiences are now being applied to local chapters and the organizing drive initiated a culture shift to organizing that is not common to the anti-war movement.

At the end of July members of the organizing drive hit the road for Operation Recovery's Right to Heal tour in order to share what was learned over the first two months of the organizing drive and get more chapters and supporters involved with the campaign. The tour stopped in Dallas, Albuquerque, Colorado Springs (Ft. Carson), San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Joint Base Lewis McCord (Ft. Lewis). Now there are organizing efforts at Ft. Carson, San Francisco and Joint Base Lewis McCord.

The campaign is picking up momentum, building to scale, and preparing to fight on our terms, overpower our local target General Campbell, win, and take our fight to the national level next year. The lessons we have learned this past summer during the organizing drive will be applied to building something larger and more powerful next year.

Aaron Hughes is the Field Organizing Team Leader for Iraq Veterans Against the War.