The oath, 20 years on

Twenty years ago this day, May 15, I took the commissioning oath to become an officer in the US navy.  I took it to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.“  I took it  “…without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion….  So help me God.”   I had no purpose of evasion, but especially after the unjust invasion of Iraq the year prior, I admittedly had much mental reservation.  On the whole though, I still believed that the US military—and I in it—could be a force for good.

I no longer hold that view, to say the least.  

Constitutions are probably good things for states to have, but I no longer think that ours is some grand document worth supporting and defending, even though some good has been squeezed from it by people’s movements, in spite of its reactionary authors.  And, I no longer believe in oaths, for that matter.  Also, I am not sure I believe in a so-help-me god.      

Tangentially, I no longer believe in existent long arcs bending toward justice (MLK) although I wish they were true. 

At the same time, I don’t believe in long arcs bending toward injustice either.  That is, while this country was birthed through racialized-genocidal settler colonialism, none of us is pre-programmed by that history.  I don’t believe in essentialist “it’s in our DNA” or “original sin” narratives.  There are only human beings and choices.  We make our own history, even if not under the circumstances of our choosing (K. Marx).  “Timshel,” Steinbeck tells us at the end of East of Eden.  “Thou mayest,” but also, “Thou mayest not.”

“Do you love your country?”  What does it mean to love a country?  If by country, you mean its myths, anthems, violence, flags, and pageants, I do not.  But if you mean its soil, waterways, air, mountains, beaches, and its people--and their health, education, music, and art--then I do.

A year into the navy, I toyed with a conscientious objector application.  I did not submit it because I am not entirely a pacifist.  Under military law, a CO must prove they’re against all war.   I think war is always lamentable and horrible, but on some occasions, it may be justified.  That does not mean, though, we are to sit on our hands and let war happen.  I believe we have the duty to mitigate those conditions that cause war in the first place.  “If you want peace, work for justice” (Paul VI).

In the navy, I don’t believe I protected anyone’s freedom.  Looking at that long arc, it seems, with some notable exceptions, that the US military and its precursor Anglo settler militias have mostly intervened against peoples’ liberation, from the Powhatan to the Palestinians.  

Maybe some people in the military protected some other people’s freedom.  As for me, tied to the pier in Texas or doing circles in the Pacific, at most I think I protected the status quo.  At most, I protected the freedom of a handful of firms to accumulate ever more capital.  To the degree I helped protect the “American way of life”--and it is debatable that I did so--I protected the American way of subsidized mass consumption, entertainment and distraction, and amnesia.

I love the many friends and other shipmates from the navy, both those still in and those out.  Both the true believers and those just slugging through it to get their pensions.  I don’t like the military, and from a privileged position, I advise my students not to join it, but I love and support those who do, often out of economic necessity.  I think it’s an important distinction: “Be kind to people.  Be ruthless to systems” (Michael Brooks).  

At the end of “Assumed the Watch. Moored as Before.” (book plug, 15 years on), I tongue-in-cheek dreamed of a world without gray ships: no more ships that demanded sleepless watchstanding, flooding drills, and excel spreadsheets from me.  Now, I think in order for humanity to survive--to flourish and actually be free--we must really dismantle the gray ships.  

The US military is the largest institutional carbon emitter in the world.  It emits more CO2 than many entire countries.  Meanwhile, each year, our planet breaks record high temperatures.  Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice is melting rapidly.  Sea levels continue to rise.  Global ocean surface temperatures have been at record highs the past year.  Storms get worse and more frequent.  And yet, we continue to extract and consume.  

From Hawaii to Warminster PA, the military poisons the water.  From Vieques to the Marshall Islands, the military bombs entire habitats, for practice, and for some private firms, profit.  All in the name of “readiness.”  We sacrifice so much human and non-human life in the name of readiness and in the name of “security.”  

This empire must be dismantled, so that its people may live and flourish.  All empires must be dismantled, so that all people may live and flourish.  

The extreme contradictions of this political moment have unmasked the realities of the empire.  The campus protests and the absurd reactions to them, for one, illuminate the hypocrisy of the ruling class.  

When I was an ROTC student at Notre Dame, I was told that because I went to an elite (and Catholic) university that I would make better decisions in the murky morality of potential war.  I would be smarter and holier than my navy peers, and the navy needed that, apparently.  I believed that line of thought.  It made me feel good about myself and a little smug.  As if that Notre Dame aura--real or imagined-- would stick on me and just roll off of me and automatically lead us into the promised land: no hard choices required; maybe some minor ethical decisions to make; but never questioning the larger system of extraction and empire; just play your role.

That is the inertia these university trustees and presidents want.  They preach that their students will change the world, but the change they’re prepared to accept is severely limited.  They can’t imagine another world.  They can’t imagine not investing in weapons.  They try to convince the young people they’re bigoted, mentally unwell, or naive for suggesting to not invest in weapons.  This is the ecocidal inertia that drove Aaron Bushnell to self-immolation.  Afterwards, supporters of the empire called Bushnell unwell, unstable, mad.  I think that’s projection.  

The young people give me hope.  But there is no inevitability there.  They may be beaten down into submission and consumption and finally amnesia like the rest of us.  Or they may not.  There exist choices and many paths to take.  

“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?” —Dorothy Day 

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”  (Arundhati Roy) 

So help us god.

Letter to Notre Dame administration

 (Friday, May 3, 2024)

Dear Notre Dame Administration (and other friends in/at Notre Dame),

I stand in solidarity with the Notre Dame students arrested this week and with all those at the encampment protest because I stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine.  

I write as a 2004 Notre Dame graduate, as a former rector (of Duncan Hall) and thus a former colleague. I also write as a veteran of the US Navy; as a former Holy Cross lay volunteer in Uganda; as someone who has visited Palestine and witnessed settler-colonial apartheid firsthand; as a current neighbor to people who have lost family members in this US-supported genocide; and as a Catholic-Christian human being who is moved both by this injustice and the Beatitudes. 

That is why I am answering the call from these students to ask you, in your respective capacities, to:

• Divest. Divest from all weapons manufacturers including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. 

• Academic Boycott. Engage in an academic boycott from Tel Aviv University and publicly commit to the University of Notre Dame Tantur to uplifting Palestinians. 

• Protect Protestors. Dismantle the outdated 15-minute protest rule and set new protest guidelines centered on nonviolence, safety, and freedom of expression.

The question asked by Palestine, asked by people of good conscience, asked by the ND and other student encampments across the country, asked by the Gospel is...what is to be done?  What did you/we do to stop a genocide? 

The students who were arrested are asking Notre Dame to take material--not just rhetorical--steps to stop this war.  Palestinian civil society has been asking the rest of the world since 2005 to materially boycott and divest from apartheid Israel. Notre Dame is doing the opposite, for example with its recent expansion of the Tel Aviv University-Notre Dame collaboration grants.  The boycott movement is based on the same theory of change that helped end apartheid in South Africa (a racist imperialist system that the US government, businesses, and universities materially supported until the very end, only later canonizing Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu while whitewashing the history).

 

Congress and the White House are deaf to our calls to stop this genocide. The weapons keep flowing.  And so, we act where we have potential material leverage. Palestinians are asking us here in the imperial core, with the leverage to act, to do so.  University investments, especially in our over-financialized age, are one such material target.  Divest.

“Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could ever achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the strength to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death.  And decaying institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks, rendering themselves obsolete." (Chris Hedges)

Listen to the courageous students you are arresting.  More importantly, listen to the courageous people of Palestine fighting for their lives.

Thank you for your consideration.  

In solidarity, and with deep love.  Ave crux, Spes unica. 

Terry Fitzgibbons

p.s. some free reading if you're interested in learning more about Palestine: https://shorturl.at/aezG1 

p.p.s. Why boycott, why divest: 

https://bdsmovement.net/

Made, not begotten: A tribute to Father David Burrell, CSC

 

In July of 2011, I moved back to Notre Dame, to take a job as the rector of Duncan Hall.  As I was settling in, before the students arrived for the new school year, Father David Burrell invited me to Corby Hall for dinner.  I had met and befriended David while living and working in Uganda for a year and a half with Holy Cross's Overseas Lay Mission program.  He took credit for setting up me and fellow volunteer Whitney.

“David, I was expecting to see you on the flotilla,” said the much younger priest at our table, wearing black clerics, glass of wine in hand.  David didn’t make the connection and looked up puzzled, thumbing his impressive eyebrows.

“The flotilla to Gaza,” the young priest clarified. 

It was the summer of the second freedom flotilla, officially named “Freedom Flotilla II: Stay Human.”  It aimed to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza symbolically and, in a small way, materially.  The flotilla ultimately did not sail, but it remained a topic of discussion for a full news cycle.  The previous year, a different flotilla did set sail, but the Israeli military raided it and killed nine activists on board and turned it around before it could reach Gaza.  

“I would have if I could have,” David said sincerely, using the young priest’s name gently in response.  The young priest, it appeared, was trying to get a rise out of David.  It was not hard to get a rise out of David.  

In 2018, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories predicted that Gaza would be “unlivable” by 2020.

On the first of October this past year, 2023, David died.  Six days later, that predicted unlivability in Gaza exploded, as people like David warned us that it would.  "What happens to a dream deferred?"  Israel suffered heavy casualties that day, as the world knows.  Then Israel regrouped, and it has been making Gaza even less livable since, as most of the world knows and as some of the world tries to avoid knowing, fully.  

I wish David were still with us.  He could share his wisdom and his clear analysis.  David would have mourned those Israeli lives lost.  He had sympathy for all human beings.  Yet, David was no both-sideser.  He knew and saw too much.  After I had the privilege myself of moving through the checkpoints of occupied Jericho, easily with my US passport; after I walked down Hebron's al-Shuhada street; I understood David's intense feelings on this topic.      

In our last correspondence, a week or so before he died, we talked of attending the same zoom webinar to learn how, on earth, to build international solidarity, specifically in order to prevent war between the US and China.  David knew that there is nothing inevitable about that war, or any war.  He understood that we make our own history, even if not under circumstances we would choose.    

While I wish we could still correspond, at the same time I'm glad David hasn’t had to witness this latest installment of nakba.  This televised genocide of the Palestinians, bought and paid for in part by our tax dollars.  He probably would have resented his own growing helplessness in the situation, as he aged and neared the end.  He nevertheless might have tried to break out of Holy Cross House by now, to get on the next flotilla, stubbornly ignoring doctors’ and religious superiors’ orders.  

Near Lake Saka, at the Holy Cross novitiate for East Africa, at the top of this beautiful mountain crater lake, we turned around to see David stubbornly climbing up behind us.  With his foot and his back issues, he was supposed to stay in the car.  "My doctor said I sometimes have to act my age," he told us down there. When he reached the top, he cracked himself up, "I decided to act my age!"    

Before David returned to Notre Dame for his jubilee in 2009, he had a colorful Ugandan stole made in Jinja.  He wanted the colors to be loud, to stand out in the basilica.  “I’ve got a reputation to keep,” he told us.

David had many reputations, as we all do.  The one I wish to remember the most is his standing up for the victims of the occupied Jericho road and trying in his own small yet animated way to liberate the occupied Jericho road.  Like a good Samaritan.  

History is made, not begotten.  “Go and do likewise,” Jesus told the young scholar, at the end of the parable.  In other words, "Stay human."  We'll do that, David.

shielded

“It’s a shame,” Julianna thinks.  “Sad.”  She is reading the New York Times on her phone in the car, waiting for Greta’s dance class to end.

Thirty-five years ago, yesterday, she was born in Abington Hospital, north of Philadelphia.  

Julianna habitually reads the news, or at least habitually scrolls.  Some days she isn’t sure she likes reading the news.  Is she doing it out of a sense of obligation?  Because she should?  But often, she does enjoy it, or enjoys scrolling at least.  She manages to catch an episode of The Daily at least once a week, and she is pretty faithful to David Leonhardt’s The Morning.  

She grew up with Peter Jennings on the ABC evening news.  More so, she grew up with Jim Gardiner and the local Philly 6 ABC Action News, which preceded and followed the national broadcast.  The former gave her a sense of the world.  It implicitly warned her: be careful out there. The latter gave her a sense of the more local geography, particularly Philadelphia: be careful down there.  

She refuses to pay extra for the Times cooking section.

Thirty-five years ago, tomorrow, she came home for the first time, with her parents, to the house in Glenside.  There, she lived her first five years, with her parents Tammy and Pete and her older brother, also Pete.  Or Peter.  At five, right before she started kindergarten, they moved out to Doylestown township--a kind of exurb, outside the borough of Doylestown.  She went to Our Lady of Mount Carmel school for nine years, from kindergarten to eighth grade.  In the latter years there, she ran track, did dance, played softball, and after they let girls join, she became an altar server.  She got good grades.  She sang a solo for the May Procession.  She went to Gwynedd Mercy Academy, an all-girls prep school.  She had a not-serious boyfriend in 11th grade, who went to the all-boys prep school.  She ran varsity track and played varsity volleyball.  She studied faithfully, and she passed her AP tests, including calculus.  She volunteered, weekly, in a tutoring program in North Philly.  Her dad was proud of her kindness and service and her AP scores, but he wasn’t keen on her going to North Philly.  

Peter went to Villanova.  When she graduated, she went to Holy Cross, in Worcester.  They offered her some decent money, and Tammy and Pete were able to foot the rest of the bill.  They had a good financial advisor.  At Holy Cross, she majored in accounting and English.  She drank for the first time, but only on the weekends.  She studied in London spring of her junior year and relished traveling around Europe on relatively cheap flights.  After graduation, she joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and taught for two years at a small Catholic grade school in a blighted Chicago neighborhood on the south side.  Her dad was proud of her service, but he was not keen on the location.  

After the JVC, she took a job with Deloitte, in New York, which was always the plan, and she moved to Hoboken.  In Hoboken, she met and made an unserious and then later serious boyfriend: Bobby.  Bobby also worked at Deloitte but in a different department.  He was from Summit, New Jersey and had gone to NYU. Also, he was Catholic too.  They got married several years later, back at Mount Carmel, and they lived the fun young couple life for a few more years in Hoboken, drinking on the weekends.  

Before their first kid’s arrival, they bought a house in Rutherford.  Just last year, before their third kid, they moved to Summit, where they bought a bigger house.  Bobby’s parents were both retired, healthy and active, and available to help with childcare.  They had encouraged them to move out to Summit.  There’s a train from Summit to Manhattan.  

Julianna no longer works at Deloitte, but Bobby does, and he has done pretty well there.  She is a full-time mom, which is indeed a full-time job, even with the nearby grandparent help.  She is active on the elementary school PTA.  Greta is in first grade.  Julianna does some ad hoc editing for a friend, for pay, and accounting for the PTA and the church, as a volunteer.  

  

“If only Hamas wouldn’t use human shields,” she thinks, as she scrolls.  “If only the Palestinians hadn’t voted for Hamas in the first place,” in 2006, she learned a couple months ago.  She returned to that thought, as she did two days ago, while she scrolled in line at Whole Foods.  

“Israel has no other choice.  It’s tragic.”  And like two days ago, her thought process terminates.   

Greta emerges from the studio.  Julianna buckles her in the booster seat, and they drive home.  They listen to the Frozen soundtrack. They beat the rush hour home.

Honesty in education?

 Hi Mike, or Whom It May Concern

My name is Terry Fitzgibbons.  I'm an A/R in EA of Passaic, and I enjoyed your presentation this past week at our rep council.  Thank you for coming out and for all of the information you provided.  I agree with all the points you shared.  My wife is a state employee and in CWA, and we are seeing mailers targeting her to drop her union too. 

If I may, I would like to push further on the Honesty in Education front.  If not the elephant in the room, the elephant in my head the other night was, What about Palestine?  

Many rank and file educators here in Passaic, across the state, and across the nation are concerned that "the union" (however they perceive it: the local or the state/national affiliates) may or may not have our backs when it comes to teaching honestly about Palestine.  In NJ, this perception stems in part from President Sean Spiller's statements, which we view to be very one-sided, ahistorical, and politically convenient.  We are concerned, in part, because NJEA PAC backs candidates who, yes, are decent on public education but who are complicit in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.  This is true of almost the entire NJ congressional delegation, and it is also indirectly true for NJ state leaders.  For instance, NJ state legislators, both Dem and Rep, have criminalized the nonviolent BDS movement.  (See the Ben and Jerry's/New Jersey/Unilever story from a couple years ago as an example.)

Perhaps this is not in your purview.  It may be more of an academic freedom/legal question.  (And forgive my PAC tangent above--I share that as an example of why some teachers do not feel safe and feel that the Honesty in Education is circumscribed.  Perception for many folks is their reality.)  If so, could you please direct us toward NJEA resources and/or personnel on academic freedom?  The Council on American Islamic Relations has excellent resources, but we are looking for resources internal to the union, too.  While we don't expect the NJEA to make better public-facing statements and resolutions anytime soon (like the UAW or the postal workers have done), it would behoove members to have a flow-chart, for instance, for what to do if we're targeted or disciplined.  For in-the-classroom work and also for out-of-the-classroom advocacy.  If this already exists on the local level, I apologize for that lack of knowledge.  Or, if it's as simple as "keep detailed notes and call Frank," that will work too.

I have not heard of incidents yet in Passaic in recent months, fortunately, but we want to be prepared.  A couple years ago, a teacher in our district was smeared by an outside group as being anti-Semitic for her pro-Palestinian advocacy in and out of the classroom.  Thankfully, the union stood by her.  But she was tenured and well-respected in the district and union.  Not everyone has her "social capital."  And that was before the mass hysteria and McCarthyism that has enveloped us since October 7.  I do know of teachers in Montclair and Teaneck, for instance, who have been targeted by outside groups or by less informed colleagues and who have been disciplined by administrators.  I know of professional development workshops focusing on Palestine that have been cancelled by superintendents (e.g. Scotch Plains) and books that have been pulled from school libraries (e.g. Newark (not NJEA)).  

Thank you for listening and your consideration and any help in advance.  Thanks so much for your work and commitment.  

Solidarity!

-Terry Fitzgibbons

Sontag, cancelled.

Susan Sontag, September 16, 2001

The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word “cowardly” is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.

Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.

Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy—which entails disagreement, which promotes candor—has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. “Our country is strong,” we are told again and again. I for one don’t find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that’s not all America has to be.

MCQ

 Multiple choice question from today's AP US History class:

“. . . Because the way of conquering them [Native Americans] is much more easy then of civilizing them by fair means, for they are a rude, barbarous, and naked people, scattered in small companies, which are helps to Victory, but hindrances to Civility. Moreover, victory of them may be gained many ways; by force, by surprise, by famine in burning their Corn, by destroying and burning their Boats, Canoes, and Houses, by breaking their fishing Wares, by assailing them in their huntings, whereby they get the greatest part of their sustenance in Winter, by pursuing them and chasing them with our horses, and blood-Hounds to draw after them and Mastiffs to tear them, which take this naked, tanned, deformed Sausages, for no other than wild beasts, and are so fierce and fell upon them, that they fear them worse than their old Devil which they worship, supposed them to be a new and worse kind of Devils then their own. By these and sundry other ways, as by driving them (when they flee) upon their enemies, who are round about them, and by animating and abetting their enemies against them, may their ruin or subjection be soon effected.”

-- Records of the Virginia Company, 1622

12. What was the immediate effect of the emergence of the tobacco economy in the Chesapeake region on the Native Americans?

a. Depletion of the soil from tobacco cultivation.

b. Loss of land due to encroachments by tobacco farmers.

c. Arrival of more settlers for labor on tobacco farms.

d. Decreased military attacks by the English on Native settlements