Not A Veteran Of Veteran's Day

Veteran's day. A day when we are asked to pay respect to those Americans who have fought and died in our nation's various wars and conflicts...

I'm gonna restart this entry...

Writing about Veteran's day is not easy for me, but at 10:25 tonight I realized that I had barely given any thought to the meaning of the day this year.

No, that's not true... The truth is that growing up in New York City, and much of that time in Greenwich Village, the concepts of soldiering, military service, war, and patriotism (at least in the standard popular culture definition) were not present. So Veterans day was just another day off from school.

My parents were not what our last president would consider "Good Americans (something that I'm sure they would disagree with)." My mother was raised by a socialist and a communist, and while she was not as “extreme” in her political ideology, she was completely devoid of any desire to conform to the American social status quo. My father could never be proud of a nation that rarely showed any desire to consider him, a Black man, an equal citizen of that nation. They both would agree that being a good American is far less important than being a good human being.

And then there was me. A tough kid growing up, getting in fights, but being raised with artists and Neo-hippie pacifists around, my heart was not of violence. War was the enemy, and those who wanted to fight, the ignorant stooges of the powerful.

As I've grown older I have learned to differentiate between those who fight wars and those who create them. One of my closest friends, a true brother, is a veteran of the second Iraqi war, or "Invasion." I see how that experience has affected his life, and I pain for him and all of the other young men and women who, while no longer drafted, were in many cases duped or forced into enlistment, due to lack of access to resources and opportunity elsewhere.

Recently I have found pleasure in reading Conan the Barbarian comic books. There are times when Conan joins up with an army because there is opportunity to make money in war. Thus, for Conan, just as for many in our real world, the risk of ones life for the opportunity of money (or survival, ironic in its contradictory nature) is an acceptable risk. For many Americans it is the ONLY opportunity. Luckily for myself, it was never even an option.

Also recently, I was discussing my Uncle Sy's military service with my mom. I thought that he had served in Korea, but she responded that I had it wrong. While her twin Sy had served later, it was her older brother Carl who had served in Korea. I started contemplating how the concept of military service has changed since the Vietnam era.

Historically, throughout the world, being a soldier carried a great amount of honor with it. Yes, in most cases young men were forced into service, but in America, fighting for ones country was greatly respected. In fact, for much of our past, if you didn't serve in the armed forces in some way, you were looked down upon by much of society. But the catastrophe of Vietnam, or as the Vietnamese remember it, "The American War," changed the way Americans understood military service.

60,000 U.S. military deaths, of which 17,000 were draftees, combined with the millions of Vietnamese civilian deaths, scared America for decades. Presidents were less willing to send soldiers into conflict zones(not necessarily a bad thing), the draft was abolished, and Americans lost great trust in their leaders.

Anyone over forty, or anyone who has taken a freshman Modern American History class has heard or read this all before. For members of the post-Vietnam generations, it is far more common (though nowhere near common enough) to find people who were raised like me- with disdain for the concept of war and military service. Yes, many of us are less hardworking than our ancestors, and many of us have become less physical. Violence in society has become more of a taboo outside of the sports arena and especially since the mid 1990's, the opportunities available to the educated, coupled with the lack of a draft, make military service seem very unnecessary.

I accept that there are times when fighting is necessary. To liberate my ancestors from Concentration Camps, or my other set of ancestors from institutionalized slavery I would fight. To make my country the place it boasts of being, full of opportunity and equal access to healthy, prosperous and sustainable lives, I would fight. For the lives of my family and friends I would fight. But I believe that the true fight is against the concept of war itself.

We have soldiers because we have not yet evolved as a species to a more efficient style or form of communicating, and understanding that war is the true enemy. Unfortunately, this means that each time we send our soldiers into battle, we take one step further away from our evolution as a nation and a species.

I suppose Veteran's day to me is a weak holiday. Not because it is a waste of time to honor those who fought for America, but because we still do not live in a country that honors their sacrifice. Because we should honor them by spending today talking and working together to try to end conflicts in our societies and around the world. Because the only honor you can really give someone who has put their life on the line for their country, is making sure that future generations do not have to.

D.C.W.

10/11/2009

Sprite NBA Dunk Contest Commerical Audition Poem

Went to my first Audition in many months this evening. It was for the Sprite NBA Dunk Contest. I wrote a spoken word poem and performed it in front of the camera. Thought I would share... Also check out my new blog updates at www.wheresmygv.blogspot.com and the new Blog about my upcoming book at www.whatbarackobamameanstome.wordpress.com. Subscribe and Enjoy!

Sprite NBA Dunk Contest Commerical Audition Poem
11-10-09

Have you ever seen the top of the world?
Where the Shutter speeds of the Stars work to freeze elegance.
Frozen Moments in the solitude of silence with lights shining bright,
These Kings soar through the heavens.
We sip, they glide, and open our eyes with laughter and...
"Did you see that?!"

Did you see Dominique's cradles that curl brow lines, and Jordan's takeoffs from the foul line?
From birthday wish bandits to Carter's elbow in baskets.
Nate leap-frogs Goliath, cheer levels rise higher!
Some nights are made for the unbelievable, the magic of moments made possible by the greatness of Two...

A new decade now arises to witness great feats,
Of cunning and daring, of power and grace.
When the backyards and the playgrounds collide,
Where the Legends reside,
And the game of Five becomes one.

This is the NBA Dunk contest, this is the dream...
This is Sprite; Liquid magic, the tonic of Kings

Daisun Cohn-Williams

A Regal Kind of Comic: The Black Panther

About a year ago I fell into reading old issues of the "Black Panther" on my computer. For many, this title connotes a late 20th century Black civil revolutionist group, (or extremists depending on what your particular world view perceives). However, I am not referring to the “Black Panthers,” who were in fact an organization concerned with the education, safety, and prosperity of Black people in America (at times by any means necessary), nor the segregated, WW II, Black-American tank battalion.

The "Black Panther" was one of the first mainstream, Black comic book heroes. Premiering in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966), he by himself dismantled the team previously mentioned. Why, one may ask, is a comic book so important that it for a long time trumped my completion of The Audacity of Hope, written by our President , Barack Obama? The Black Panther was not simply a Black hero, an occurrence for the most part previously unheard of in the mainstream comic book industry, but he was a brilliant, wealthy, Black man- the antithesis of the popular image of Black people in America... And he was a King.

In the African realm of "Wakanda," the Black Panther, T'Challa, was the benevolent ruler of all. He had been educated in Europe and in America, but not because schooling in these western countries was in any way better than that of his own isolationist nation, but rather, to gain a greater understanding of the outside world. Wakanda, a small nation, was also one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nations in the world; A nation which had never been colonized by Europe. The ability for a young Black child to pick up a comic book and read about an African King--wealthy, intelligent, caring, proud, and peaceful, was an image that could inspire.

When I was younger there were other hero's of color, though most on television played out racial stereotypes, as did many in comic books. By the time I was really into collecting Comics in the early 90's, the Black Panther was without his own title. Now decades later, through the inventiveness of Fiber optics and Intel processors, I am able to find and read scanned comics online. I've been catching up on this revolutionary character and the legacy he continues to create in his more contemporary titles (a lot of comic book reading since it has been many years since I could afford to spend my allowance on comics each week!)

The new edition comic is still an aberration from most of the industry (though Marvel has always lead pop culture in pushing forth progressive idealism), consistently dealing with political and social issues, including African disunity and White Euro-American-centricity (towards Black people and the continent of Africa in general). It has also continued a more general commentary on the state of the Human reality in the real world. From the Bush Doctrine and big business greed, to the racial and economic injustices of the Katrina response, to religious extremism, the Black Panther continues to go where many of us refuse: To the truths of the many injustices that plague the majority of people and places on this planet. A good resource for such a geographically illiterate people we Americans are!

Plus, what a role model! A true icon and image of what a Black man can be. I suppose in no small way is it a coincidence that my discovery of this Hero paralleled the historical election season Americans completed last November. The ascendancy of Barack Obama, the first Black Man, or non-white man, to the presidency of the Unites States of America, creates a more tangible representation of possibilities and hope and of the greatness that everyone can aspire to than a comic book. Yet, T'Challa came first. And with him came the question that Black folk in the Americas and the rest of the world have asked themselves for hundreds of years: “What if the white people had never come to Africa..?”

D.C.W

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_(comics)