Portside

Veterans know from first hand experience that you cannot bomb your way to peace. More bombing will ultimately mean more division, bloodshed, recruitment for extremist organizations, and a continual cycle of violent intervention.

Our predicament is substantially obscured by the frightening enthusiasm for war among leading pundits. As Stephen F. Cohen has observed about the Ukraine–Russia crisis, the US media are simply not telling the truth about the failure of our post–Cold War policy. They demonize the opponent and never acknowledge the rational alternatives that exist. America needs an antiwar movement of truth tellers to confront and shame the propagandists.

It is the complexity of the movement—so often missing—that is my chief complaint about much movement historiography—at least that found within textbooks. The story of the Freedom Movement is a story of resistance. The “non-nonviolent” Chinn was attracted to and willing to support the nonviolent CORE because he recognized and valued that it was an organization resisting white supremacy. This is more important, more fundamental, than the weapons he often carried.