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Right to Refuse: Rebuilding the GI Resistance Movement

By Aaron Hughes

In the midst of the current violent offensive by Elites and the far right, it is important to remember the powerful legacy of our movement and do everything we can to build a GI Resistance movement to meet this moment.

The history of GI resistance makes it profoundly clear that Elites depend on us, our complicity, support, and involvement. They depend on military members complying with their orders and our community members enlisting to fill their ranks. It is in their need for our consent that we have opportunities to mount a profoundly strategic and powerful counter-offensive.

This is why About Face: Veterans Against the War (AFVAW) launched the Right to Refuse campaign this summer. Reasserting that every military member has the right to refuse illegal, unjust, and immoral orders. We want every military member to know that they have rights and options. They have the right, and at times the duty, to refuse illegal orders. They have the right to appeal to their congressional representatives. They have a right to apply for conscientious objector status.

And for all those military members questioning their orders, we want them to know that they are not alone. From the GI Rights Hotline to the Military Law Task Force to About Face, they have a community of people ready to support them. We are building a movement with roots and a powerful history to support it. The spectrum of resisting military members and veterans need to know they are not alone. They are part of a tradition and a history in this country of people rising up and refusing the irrational violence of the State, its foreign adventures, and its domestic terrorism.

When About Face launched the campaign, we created a secure and confidential way for active military members to communicate with us through this encrypted form: BIT.LY/MILRIGHTS They can contact us to get support from veterans who understand. They can know they are not alone, that they have options, that they have rights.

Since the deployment of National Guard members to LA and DC, we have had outreach teams speaking to the troops on the ground. Listening to their many gripes and letting them know they have rights and options.

In September, when Trump was threatening to deploy National Guard to Chicago, the local About Face chapter organized with the Military Law Task Force and the National Lawyers Guild to host a rally letting deploying troops know they have a right to refuse illegal orders and calling Governor Pritzker to not only assert that Trump's deployment is illegal but to tell military members that the State of Illinois will support troops that do not comply with these illegal orders.

Governors coming out and suing the Trump Administration, saying that these deployments are illegal, and even winning these lawsuits, is only one side of what is needed. In this back-and-forth between political Elites, the troops on the ground are lost. We've been calling on the governors to refocus their attention on the actual military members. If they believe a deployment is illegal, they need to tell these military members that they will support them in not complying with those orders. And that they, the Governors, will use the vast powers of the State, all of its legal structures, to support these individuals.

Most recently, in a collaboration with Win Without War, we began putting up billboards outside military bases asking military members, "Is this what you signed up for?"

To rebuild the GI Resistance Movement, we want help from every sector to support resistance across the spectrum of ways people can resist, from appealing to Congress to outspoken resistance. And this is not just in the military but across the vast sprawling security state. We want everyone asking, How do we create space for people to resist? How do we support individuals who are resisting? How do we let people know they are not alone and there is a legacy for them to connect to and claim?

This is why we have been trying to raise awareness about the significant history of GI resistance. About Face Board Chair Arti Walker-Peddakotla and I gave a talk at the Socialism 2025 conference, putting GI resistance in relation to abolition and worker rights in the context of the history of state violence. We want activists, organizers, and scholars to see the overlaps between these projects and help rebuild this movement. The military is entrenched in all parts of our lives from our schools to entertainment and veterans are a part of every community and every struggle. It is time for progressive and radical abolitionists to support GI resistance. As war resister Ehren Watada noted, "If we want soldiers to choose the right but difficult path, they must know … beyond any shadow of a doubt that by refusing immoral and illegal orders they will be supported by the people not with mere words but by action."

Watada is reminding us that we need a spectrum of resistance. That's everything from the liberal establishment supporting and creating space for military members to resist these authoritarian orders from Trump to nonviolent action. We need every grassroots organization to do outreach and build relationships to support resistance.

We can look to the movement during the Vietnam Era for inspiration and guidance. Hundreds of military projects were fundamental to building up the GI Resistance Movement. There were over 300 anti-war newspapers on active duty bases around the world. We can look at all of the work during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the many GI Rights Coffee Houses started outside military bases around the country. That work and legacy are fundamentally important at this moment, and we are trying to build alliances to bring attention to this essential strategic and tactical leverage point.

The military, the security state, the advance of the Elites, and the far right in this moment still depend on people. That is their Achilles Heel and a place where we have a lot of power and the potential to organize. It is time to rebuild the GI Resistance Movement.

Aaron Hughes is an artist, curator, and anti-war veteran. He is a member of the Chicago Chapter of About Face: Veterans Against the War and cofounder of the emerging Veteran Art Movement.

Daniel Lakemacher of About Face speaking at Memorial Day, Chicago, May 26, 2025.