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Marine Benjamin “Benji” Lewis served two tours in Iraq and was honorably discharged in 2007. He is currently
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If you’re near Lakewood, WA, anytime soon, be sure and check in with our friends at the Coffee Strong coffee shop, just off Interstate 5, exit 122.
Coffee Strong is a coffeehouse owned and operated by G.I. Voice, a vets organization. In addition to coffee and computers they have resources for service members coping with deployment, PTSD, sexual assault, and other grievances.
Open Monday - Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., at 15109 Union Ave SW #2, Lakewood, WA |
the president of Oregon’s chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). He was interviewed by Alliance editor Melissa Chavez.
What got you involved in Iraq Veterans Against the War?
Last October I was involuntarily activated from the Individual Ready Reserves for a third tour in Iraq even though I was discharged two years ago honorable. Since that time I have become heavily involved in activism work, especially GI resistance, to try and make sure the travesty of war happens to other people less and less.
What are you working on right now?
IVAW Oregon is involved in a lot. We do counter-recruitment/truth in recruitment in high schools and colleges, we are involved in the Guard Home campaign, we are involved in the Portland Sanctuary city campaign for GI resisters, we work with Courage to Resist and Veterans For Peace as well as other activist groups in the area. Further, I am refusing my involuntary activation and will be holding a press conference on the day I am suppose to report for duty, so we are preparing for that action on May 18.
What are your top priorities for Oregon?
Right now we are focused on making sure that Guard members know their rights and have options instead of deploying to Iraq. Simply getting them information like the GIRightsHotline is immeasurable help for some. Also we are organizing several actions that are based around our May 18 action in order to generate media interest and engage the Oregon communities.
What are your goals for the future (especially if they differ from the national campaign)?
For the future we are trying to cast aside the myth that Afghanistan is a ‘good war,’ and expose it for what it is, another conquest of empire that harms the population and drains the resources of the non-capitalist class of Americans while a very few stand to make large sums of money through industry, manufacturing and the oil reserves sitting idly along the Caspian Sea.
With the president’s announcement to reduce combat troops, but not completely remove them, what do you see as the future for Iraq?
The future of Iraq doesn’t look good. The removal of our troops is more of a sham than anything. Though our troops are gone we have simply replaced them with contractors and armed mercenaries. This may well prove to be an even bigger drain on our tax dollars. As long as we have any sort of military presence in Iraq I think there will be resistance. The same as Americans would resist foreign arms in our own country.
A recent article we printed cast a spotlight on the number of veterans who are homeless. What is being done about this trend and what do you think would be the best way to combat it?
As the war on terror continues we will only start seeing more homeless vets. My chapter of Veterans For Peace volunteers at the homeless shelter here in Corvallis, as many of the residents are Vets, but I do not foresee any decrease in the homeless. The economy is continuing to crumble and the money resources that could help combat this problem is going to a fickle war in another hemisphere. As long as we are at war veterans will get Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, making it difficult for them to get or hold work and just as hard to get an education. I’m afraid the veteran homeless rates will only go up. The only way to combat the problem would be to stop making vets.
Is the organization encouraged by the First Lady and Mrs. Biden making troops their top priority, and what do you hope will be done by them?
Ever politician knows that they have to pretend troops are a priority if they hope to maintain their constituency. Just because troops have more phone minutes in Afghanistan and Iraq doesn’t mean that they are going to come home with less psychological trauma if they have seen or done the horrible things that war asks of us. Bush and Cheney liked to talk about how much they supported the troops, its good for a politicians images, and now look at the mess we have to clean up. It will be no different for the Obama/Biden administration.
As your organization also includes National Guard members, are you involved with the campaign to keep the Oregon National Guard in Oregon?
I am heavily involved in the Guard Home Campaign and have been since last fall. I think that it is a case of checks and balances against our national government. The media has been despicable in its coverage of the campaign, and like Biden, the Senaters and Representatives are hard to get involved because they don’t want to appear to ‘not support the troops.’ It is absolutely ridiculous to say that we do not support our troops if we do not send them to war.
However, the campaign has been a tremendous success in my opinion, in the fact that it has generated a large amount of discussion and brought this deployment into the public eye. Even if we cannot prevent this deployment we will push to get this Bill and Resolution passed.
Benjamin’s article he wrote for Z Magazine’s website, znet.org, is available at http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/635/106/.
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