Afghans for Peace Shut Down Army Recruitment Center

Today Afghans for Peace, Occupy Fremont, Iraq Veterans Against the War and a handful of other organizations held a Rally to End the War in Fremont, CA. What’s really amazing about that is that Fremont is a suburb of a suburb of a suburb of San Francisco. It’s a town where the only thing open after 9pm is FoodMaxx, and the main attraction downtown is a historic train depot. This is a town so quiet that when Occupy Fremont started I pitched a tent in the Veterans Memorial Park right in front of the Fremont Hall of Justice and it sat there unmolested whether I slept in it or not for three weeks before the landscaper finally took it down. But Fremont also happens to be the home to the largest Afghan American community in the US.

The Rally was at the Fremont Army Recruitment Center and was attended by a crowd of about 150 people, mostly young. I went in my Rebel “End The Fed” vest, a V mask and my black and gold AnCap flag, which attracted sneers from the AnSoc kids as usual. A number of activists had made appointments with recruiting officers but for some reason when we got there the office was closed, and there were six motorcycle cops lined up to oversee the rally.

So it was a victory before it even started. They obviously knew we were coming and couldn’t face the scrutiny. If only we had the numbers to shut them down every day. The rally became a string a megaphone speeches by speakers from the various orgs, and they opened up the mic to the crowd. Whenever this offer is made at rallies I immediately begin crafting an impromptu speech in my head. It’s practically an autonomic response. Usually I don’t find the nerve to actually grab the mic. This time I found the nerve but missed the opportunity. By the time I got to the front it was time to start the march, which the cops shut down of course. But I thought I should at least write it down.

The pretense of this war, the War on Terror, is that there is supposedly this ideological group over there somewhere that is violent, organized, and willing to kill the people you love. Well I’m here to tell you that there is such a group, right here in Fremont, and they are recruiting right here in this building (the military recruitment office). They are violent, organized and willing to kill the people you love. That may sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. There is no one in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pakistan or Iran or anywhere that scares me more, that terrifies me more than the recruitment officer in this building, and I’ll tell you why.

There is a reason that Afghanistan has earned the name “The Graveyard of Empires.” It’s because every empire from the Romans to the Soviets that has tried to conquer Afghanistan has collapsed trying. Afghanistan is like a porcupine. The empire may be bigger than them, or stronger than them, but if you tread on them you’ll get the quills. These Empires didn’t collapse from military defeat. It was an economic collapse brought on by the unsustainability of ongoing asymmetrical warfare.

When the collapse happens here… I’ve stopped saying “if” and you would all be wise to reorient your thinking to “when” the collapse happens… because when it does movements like this are going to grow, and be joined by other populist movements. Eventually we’re going to overwhelm these jokers (the motorcycle cops who had gathered around the rally), and when that happens it’s going to be the young men and women recruited in this office that are going to be ordered to disperse the crowd, and they won’t be doing it with rubber bullets and tear gas.

It’s the young men and women recruited here that will be ordered to disarm Americans, to check our travel documents at checkpoints, and if necessary to remove us from our homes. And it’s these men and women who will be ordered to shoot Americans who resist. We know this will happen because it has happened so many times before.

But they will not call you Americans when this happens. They will call you “domestic extremists” and “anarchists” and “sovereign citizens” but in the end they will call you terrorists. Because at the end of the day the War on Terror is a war on dissent.

And don’t forget to visit our official website to learn more about the Silver Circle Movie:http://SilverCircleMovie.com