Tag Archives: national guard

The VT war economy has spoken

Note: The proposed basing of new F35 fighter jets at the Burlington, VT airport has been extremely controversial and hotly contested as many have uncovered the vast range of health, social and environmental impacts these earsplittingly loud and polluting jets will have on the surrounding community.

I used to live 9 miles from the Burlington airport, on the other side of some tall hills.  Every night from inside my home I heard the F15 fighter jets taking off.  The awful noise from those old jets is apparently nothing compared to the new ones.  Yet the entire Vermont Congressional delegation–Patrick Leahy, Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch–plus the Governor–all support this new horror.  So much for Vermont’s “quality of life.”

–Anne Petermann for the GJEP Team

By Thia Sands, October 30, 2013

On Monday night two resolutions to ban F35 military jets from being based at the Burlington airport were defeated by the Burlington (VT) City Council.  My family and I were there. The hall was filled to capacity on two levels. We were in the balcony.

Some 350 Guard members and their supporters, many bused in by the military, arrived more than an hour before the meeting and filled the level where the Council sat, and where the public had to approach the microphone, and also some of the seats upstairs. They signed up their people to speak.

New rules were then announced by the Council President as the meeting began. Burlington residents who had never before voiced an opinion on the issue to the Council would speak first. Participants had been sorted accordingly, and all of the F35 basing opponents who had spoken in the past were sidelined. For the two hours we were there, we heard from members of the Guard about why the public was indebted to their “service,” and about how the economy of the airport was dependent on them, and how a vote against the F35 was a vote against their families and all they had done for us.

Continue reading

Comments Off on The VT war economy has spoken

Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change

Remembering the Kent State shooting: 43 years later

By Dave Ross, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Will Miller Green Mountain Veterans for Peace, 4 May, 2013

Kent State Ohio, touched by history. Last night I met, and talked briefly with, Dean Kahler following a candlelight march to honor and remember the four students shot down in cold blood by the Ohio National Guard and the nine students they wounded. The students were shot down for protesting the war in Vietnam, my war, they were neither violent nor even threatening. Of the wounded who lived, Dean received the worst injuries and will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. In the candlelight, he still looked young; he is appreciative that people still remember what happened that day at Kent and Jackson state.

I was with my friends from Vietnam Veterans Against the War / Old School Sappers who are also members of Veterans for Peace. In my memory of pictures I have seen of the Guard shooting down on the students, the hill they are standing looks impressive. Actually, it’s just a little rise looking over a nondescript parking area – just nothing dramatic at all. The organizers had laid out four tiny “plots” where the students fell – these small, empty spaces are where we left our candles and America left its soul.

For GJEP Board Chair and co-founder Orin Langelle’s blog post about Kent State including his photo from the Kent State protest at the 1972 Republican National Convention, visit the Langelle Photography website

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young–Ohio

 

Comments Off on Remembering the Kent State shooting: 43 years later

Filed under Actions / Protest, Political Repression