[lbo-talk] War Losses Mount for Small Towns

[Chuck]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> American recruits who are fighting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
> come from the America of small towns, in contrast to American leftists
> who tend to live in the most urban areas of America (or near college
> campuses if they live in small towns at all).  Social geography of
> America doesn't easily lend itself to an anti-war movement in the age
> of wars fought by an army of white working-class volunteers from small
> towns that have lost industrial jobs. -- Yoshie

The other day I was working a shift at our infoshop here in Kansas City. 
The infoshop is located on Troost Ave., which is widely known as the 
racial dividing line in Kansas City. In reality, most white people from 
the burbs avoid Troost entirely, thus turning it into a kind of racial pole.

I was taking a break and was in the Family Dollar store. The cashier was 
a young woman, as was the person ahead of me in line.

The cashier asked the woman in front of me if she had considered joining 
the military. The woman customer said that she had thought about it. The 
cashier related that she had been in the military and that she highly 
recommended it. The customer said that she would consider it and the 
cashier said that she could give the customer the number of the local 
recruiter.

I'm sure that I would rarely hear a conversation like this out in the burbs.

I still don't understand why the national anti-war coalitions aren't 
listening to points being made by people like Yoshie. Why aren't they 
busing people to towns in the Midwest for national mobilizations?

I guess that UFPJ and ANSWER are more interested in pursuing comfortable 
dissent.

Chuck