Hey, Who Made Caitlyn Jenner The Trans-Poster Person Flavor Of The Month Anyway-Free Chelsea Manning Now!
From The Pen of Ralph Morris
Hey, I don’t normally write anything on my own although I have plenty of ideas to give to my old-time political associate, Sam Eaton. Sam and I met on the of floor of RFK Stadium in Washington on May Day 1971 when I along with a contingent of Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) and he along with a motley crew of Cambridge radicals and revolutionaries (his description) were being held for trying to as the slogan went “shut down the government if it did not shut down the Vietnam War” and got the bastinado for our efforts. That meeting started for a whole bunch of reasons mainly around our common working class backgrounds from Troy, New York and Carver, Massachusetts respectively a now life-long attempt to stop the endless wars that the American imperium has saddled us with. Particularly to support the efforts of military resisters and other anti-war political dissenters.
Lately those efforts have centered on the struggle to free Chelsea Manning, the heroic Army soldier who is currently serving a stiff thirty-five year sentence for basically telling us, the American people and the world, about the military atrocities committed by its soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, most infamously the “Collateral Murder” video which anybody now, if you have the stomach for it, can access on YouTube. In addition she revealed plenty of other nefarious doings of the American government maybe not as directly shocking as the revelations made by the heroic NSA whistle-blower-in-exile Edward Snowden but bad enough to make even the plentiful hardened “my country, right or wrong” devotees winch.
And that is why I am pissed off enough to write this little piece. See before Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce for the three people in the world who don’t know each and every detail of her transition) this year became the “official” media darling transgender poster person for the current politically correct flavor of the month oppressed identity grouping now that same-sex marriage has become passe, become just another bourgeois yesterday’s story Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley for the many who don’t know before she identified herself to the world as Chelsea immediately after her brutal 35 year sentence by a military judge down at Fort Meade in August 2013) had some traction as a worthy poster person for the cause of transgender transition and birth misidentification. But as usual once the rich, famous, and in this case Republican put themselves out front for any reason the air get sucked out of the political atmosphere for everybody else, for all those others who are struggling less publically to “be what they are.”
I will get to the specific reason that I am pissed off at Ms. Jenner in a minute although even with the rich, famous and Republican I (and Sam) obviously can appreciate the troubles any person who is struggling with race, sex, ethnic, religious, and gender discrimination has to go through to survive in this wicked old world with a little dignity. Not that such sympathy was always true in my growing up days in Troy where I was as capable as the next guy in my corner boy world around Nick’s Variety Store in the Tappan section where we would mercilessly fag/dyke/transvestite bait anybody who seemed slightly “light on their feet” (an actual expression we used). Sam and I have had more than a few laughs lately when we meet in Cambridge when I go to that city to see him and we toss a few drinks at Jack’s while we cut up old touches and we think back to those days when if you weren’t Irish Catholic and straight you would be at our respective vicious baiting mercies. What gives us the biggest laugh, given our backgrounds, is how improbably it is that two 60-something guys would be desperately busting their asses to get freedom for a transgender soldier, heroic whistle-blower or not in the year 2015 (and have been since 2010 when we first heard about then-Bradley’s plight through Veterans for Peace , VFP an organization we both support and Courage to Resist out in Oakland who support military resisters including the legal and fund-raising efforts for Chelsea Manning).
But even old codgers can learn something in this wicked old world as well. See I served in the Central Highlands in Vietnam for eighteen months between 1968 and 1970 (the last six months by extending my tour to get out of my enlistment a little earlier for no other reason than to get out earlier). That extension really brought the craziness of the war home to me about the American government forcing me and my buddies to become nothing but animals toward people who we had no personal quarrel with. I do not do thing number one about my anti-war feelings though until I got out of the Army. I got along because I went along to my eternal sorrow. That is why over forty years later I support a person who stepped forward despite all the hell she has gone through to do some “penance” for my sin of omission. Sam, deferred from military service because he was the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters after his drunken ass father had a massive heart attack in 1965 did not get anti-war “religion” until his closest corner boy friend Jeff Mullins was killed in Vietnam in 1968 and in letters back home had made Sam promise to let everybody know what a hell-hole place Vietnam was if he did not make it back to do so himself. H has supported Chelsea as an extension of that promise to Jeff. That is the background to why we would almost inevitably meet in D.C. in 1971.
But enough of cutting up old touches because this is about Chelsea and about a recent event that has not gotten nearly enough attention since the world must breathlessly await the latest news from Caitlyn whether it about some proposed date she is deciding to go on, or not, or slightly more seriously whether she will have to go to court over a misdemeanor manslaughter charge from an accident in early 2015. Strangely the latest Chelsea Manning legal problem can partially be laid at Caitlyn’s door. When I was in the Army one of the things that kept us in line was the refrain from the First Sergeant or some such figure that we had better not do wrong thing number one or we would wind up in Leavenworth, the toughest Army prison then, and while reconstructed in recent years still a place you don’t want to find yourself in (and I won’t even speak to the problem of being a woman in an all-male facility).
Chelsea recently as will occur from time to time had her quarters inspected for “contraband” (a long list of things that a prisoner cannot have whether the reason for not having the items is reasonable or not). Among the improper items found in her quarters was a copy of Vanity Fair, the issue which had Annie Leibowitz’s photograph of Caitlyn as she transitioned on the cover. Obviously a subject of interest to Chelsea for lots of reasons. Here is where as I told Sam the Army really got “chicken shit” since they wanted to put Chelsea up on charges for these infractions and put her in the “hole” (solitary confinement). They actually brought such charges this week which an Army board “convicted” her on. Fortunately an Internet petition campaign which gathered over 100,000 on-line signatures probably helped to let Chelsea avoid the bastinado. Chicken shit, pure chicken shit but still those convictions have meaning going forward since they affect good time, clemency, and other possible reductions of sentence.
So you wonder why I am pissed. And you wonder why I question why the media has anointed Caitlyn the trans poster person flavor of the month and left our sister Chelsea behind. Hell Sam and I are wise to the ways of the world so we know the deal is done, the air is sucked out of the rest of the transgender universe for now. But couldn’t Caitlyn at least wear a Free Chelsea button or sign the Amnesty International on-line petition asking for a pardon for her from President Obama. Free Chelsea Manning –we will not leave our sister behind.
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