Born on the Fourth of July in 1946, I grew up proud to be an American. I felt blessed to have entered the world on such a special day, as if it made me a real-life Yankee Doodle Dandy, a nephew of Uncle Sam. I wasn’t pretending to be a patriot. I was one from the start. When I was 9, I read the Marine Corps guidebook, a gift from my Uncle Jimmy, who had served as a Marine during the Korean War. I remember practicing for hours standing at attention and saluting in front of the mirror in my room. l was inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration speech — “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” — and couldn’t wait to serve my country. As soon as I turned 18, I joined the Marine Corps and volunteered for my first tour of duty in Vietnam. After a 13-month tour, I was troubled by the anti-war protests, but decided to set my own example of patriotism by volunteering to return to Vietnam for a second tour. On Jan. 20, 1968, while leading my men across an open area, I was shot and paralyzed from my mid-chest down and have been confined to a wheelchair ever since. After spending a year recuperating on the Bronx VA Hospital paraplegic ward, I began to question whether I and the others who had gone to that war had gone for nothing. Deeply affected by my hospital experience, as well as the killing of four students at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, by National Guardsmen, I decided to join the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and began to speak out. I felt more like a criminal than someone who had risked his life for his country. As an anti-war activist, I was arrested numerous times, had my life threatened and was called a traitor. As my political awakening continued, I began to discover an America far different than the one I had once believed in as a boy. Placed on trial, forced to spend days and nights in jail in my wheelchair, I felt more like a criminal than someone who had risked his life for his country. But I continued to speak.
More than half a century later, that same responsibility weighs heavy upon us all. The United States has a cruel and arrogant would-be dictator in the White House who reminds me of President George Washington’s farewell warning to the American people about the “impostures of pretended patriotism.” Washington was speaking to the citizens of his time and those of us yet to come. He understood how fragile and vulnerable our new democracy was and how easily it could be taken from us. With our democracy currently on life support, President Washington’s farewell letter speaks with a fresh urgency. Fear and intimidation now rule the land; a crackdown on our freedoms is underway, including frightening shades of Nazi Germany, as heavily armed National Guardsmen and Marines occupy our cities; and students are threatened with deportation for expressing their views, if not dragged from their classrooms. A United States senator attempting to speak is manhandled, thrown to the floor and handcuffed by police. Masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents infiltrate our neighborhoods hunting for immigrants, grabbing them in front of supermarkets, high schools, churches and even their children’s graduation ceremonies. Migrant farmworkers are hunted down like animals in the fields of Salinas, California, ripped from their families and disappeared to some awful prison never to be seen or heard from again. Many are afraid to leave their homes, wary the masked men will be waiting to abduct them and ship them off to cruel detention centers like Alligator Alcatraz and other frightening gulags in Louisiana, El Salvador and South Sudan. No phone call, no due process. Disappeared, lost and forgotten, forever. This is what America has become: brutal and cruel, vicious and unfeeling. I cannot help but sense this nightmare is just beginning. I think of Anne Frank and her family hiding in the Secret Annex, afraid of being rounded up by the Gestapo. I think of what that must have felt like and what these poor souls in our country must be going through right now, with ICE not just arresting criminals as they claim, but grabbing everyone, innocent and decent human beings, the hard-working immigrant families of our California economy. The cruel masked men must make their sickening quota. This is what America has become: brutal and cruel, vicious and unfeeling. Have we become so complacent, so cowardly and intimidated, that we have forgotten our own revolutionary birthright of rebellion and dissent? Have we become so paralyzed by fear that we would give up our liberty and freedom for the promise of a president who, by his every action and foolish utterance now threatens that very freedom? What will it take before we realize the true reality of this crisis? How many more must suffer and die before we awaken? How many senseless wars, flag-draped caskets, grieving mothers, paraplegics, amputees, stressed out sons and daughters before we, the people, finally break the silence of this shameful night? Let us open up our hearts and speak in a way we have never spoken before, knowing that lives now depend on it, and the very survival of our nation is now at stake. Let not our silence in this crucial moment betray us from our destiny. There comes a time when people can no longer wait. There comes a time when a person must act. Each day that passes another freedom is lost, each hour that goes by another right is taken from us. Bold, creative and decisive leadership is needed, and I do not believe there is a group more suited for that task than the good and decent people of these United States. Two hundred and fifty years ago, a brave and daring people rose up in rebellion against a king, and now, with tyranny at our doorstep, it becomes the solemn duty of every citizen to rise up again and through numerous bold and daring actions that may include massive street demonstrations boycotts, general strikes and other acts of nonviolent civil disobedience make clear to this president and his administration that tyrants and dictators will not be tolerated, and that any attempt to subvert our democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly will be resisted at every turn and with every ounce of our being. And just as our forefathers 250 years ago were willing to risk their lives, their fortunes and sacred honor so that this nation and democracy might be born, let us now be willing to risk again so that it might survive and long endure. I ask all of you in these difficult days ahead to bravely and with great dignity step over that line, and exert that powerful moral and spiritual force that you as citizens represent. Raise your voices and reclaim our country.
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