COLONEL ANN WRIGHT ARRESTED ON THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE

[Zlatko Waterman]

Note:

This post is for Jimbo and Veterans for Peace and against the War in Iraq.

Colonel Ann Wright ( I am a fan of hers) served for 29 years in the U.S. Army and did additional service in the diplomatic corps of the U.S. in Latin America.

Here is a swatch of her story about being arrested while peacefully walking the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to protest the 3,000th member of the armed forces to die in BUSHKO's criminally unnecessary war:

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It was ironic that I, as a retired US Army Colonel, was arrested on the Golden Gate Bridge in sight of the Presidio of San Francisco, a former US Army base. The Presidio was my first assignment in the Army almost forty years ago. I served at the Presidio during the Vietnam War when anti-war protesters rocked the city of San Francisco and the nation when hundreds of thousands marched from the Bay to the Ocean. Thousands of GIs went AWOL from the Vietnam War and lived in the Haight Asbury area of San Francisco. When they were picked up by military police in the city, they were taken to the notorious Presidio Stockade. In 1968, twenty seven of these imprisoned soldiers protested the shotgun killing of a mentally disturbed prisoner by a guard. They sat in the prison courtyard, sang “We Shall Overcome,” and were charged and tried for “mutiny” which carried a possible death sentence. The image of GIs facing the electric chair for singing "We Shall Overcome" caused a national uproar and after the first several mutineers to be tried got 14, 15, and 16 years each, disillusionment about the military and the war grew in the civilian community and especially within the ranks of the military. Many historians consider the Presidio 27 incident as one of the first major GI resistance actions of the Vietnam War.

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Colonel Wright's full story can be read here:


http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0102-50.htm




--Z