Note: I wrote the following as this year's introduction to my revised essay
from last year: "Why I Hate Thanksgiving." After I finished, I realized it
can stand alone. I added the action component near the end, and have
decided to cast this article to the winds and see where it gets carried ....


Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

by Mitchel Cohen
Brooklyn Greens/Green Party of NY


On Thanksgiving morning 2003, George W. Bush showed up in Iraq before
sunrise for a photo-op, wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by
soldiers. He cradled a platter with what appeared to be a golden-brown
turkey. Washington Post reporter Mike Allen wrote that “the bird looks
perfect, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman
Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous
parts of the world.”

As the world was soon to learn (but quickly forgot), the turkey platter was
a phony, a decoration, that Bush posed with for the cameras. Bush shook a
few hands, said a few “God Bless Americas,” and scurried back to his plane
as quickly as he had arrived.

Thus, in one fell swoop, the new Conquistador had tied in history’s bloody
bough the 511-year-old conquest of the “New World” -­ whose legions smote
the indigenous population in the name of Christ ­- with last year’s
bombardment and invasion of Iraq and the torture-detentions of prisoners of
war at U.S. military bases.

Since last Thanksgiving George Bush’s America has filled the Iraqi
landscape with depleted uranium armaments that have poisoned the
agriculture and water supply for thousands of years to come. As I write,
U.S. troops are blasting their way through the town of Fallujah, and
hundreds of dead civilians lie in the streets everywhere. The military
calls them “corpses” and “collateral damage” -­ and so too do the media.
U.S. and British journalists have fled the carnage and return only as
“embeds” ­- reporters planted in the safety of large army squandrons ­-
embellishing slightly on military press releases and fax their reports to
their editors as eyewitness “news”. It is only through the photos taken by
Arab journalists and independent media that we learn of the actual horror,
of the children’s bodies lying in the street alongside the tanks as
American soldiers satisfactorily survey the scene.

The NY Post ran a picture of one of these soldiers and captioned him the
“Marlboro Man,” the generic embodimment of what it means for them to be a
“man,” rugged, oil-smeared face dragging on a U.S. cigarette. It's not the
individual grunt's fault that the media needs to invent its heroes in such
caricatures, but forgive me if I look elsewhere -- perhaps to the
guerrillas, to the hundreds of military resisters, to the immigrants
rounded up for simply existing, to lawyers like Lynne Stewart who are
fighting against the USA Patriot Act and the decimation of the Bill of
Rights -- for reminding of what it means to be human in an era of robots.

Similarly, in Palestine where Israeli occupiers are building a huge wall -­
basically, a concentration camp ­- around and through Palestine, paid for
by U.S. tax dollars.

The mindset that created the first Thanksgiving in the 17th century on the
corpses of murdered Pequot Indians runs free today in the 21st century over
the corpses of murdered Iraqis, Afghanis, and Palestinians.

* * *

In November 2003, As George Bush's plane was landing in the pre-dawn hours
for his faux-dinner in Iraq, I wrote “Why I Hate Thanksgiving,” and it
ended up being published all over the place under various titles, such as
Counterpunch’s “Genocide? Pass the Turkey.” Much has transpired since then.
But, despite enormous antiwar protests that shook the world, the true
history of what Thanksgiving represents, as I discussed in my article, has
re-emerged without apology from the Shopping Malls of suburbia in the form
of the Night of the Living Dead. The elections were stolen, and ignorant
armies are clashing everywhere by night.

I received hundreds of letters responding to that article; I’ve included
many of them here. I’ve also corrected some historical errors thanks to new
information reader-activists sent to me, and made some other minor
adjustments. One of those additions was to include, in this year’s
printing, a section on “Thanksgiving Food.” Tempted as I am to print Aunt
Dora's secret recipe for her delicious turkey stuffing that I enjoyed so
much as a kid, I am actually referring to the annuall ritual slaughter of
tens of millions of turkeys, which most Americans feast on alongside vague
images of blown up Iraqi and Afghan children. William Kunstler, bless his
soul -- whirling as he is in his grave furiously enough to generate the
energy needed to power all the indymedia websites worldwide -- towards the
end of his life began to speak of the link between the mass slaughter of
animals, capital punishment and the history of colonization ... and, what
we'd need to do to begin to change things:

"Marjorie Spiegel, a neighbor of mine in Greenwich Village, has written a
most compelling book -- The Dreaded Comparison -- in which she details the
devastating similarities between animal and human slavery," Kunstler
argues. "Alice Walker, in her most eloquent foreword, states that 'The
animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for
humans any more than black people were made of whites or women for men.' ...

"We owe it to ourselves and the animal world as well to create, not merely
a body of rules and regulations to govern our conduct but a level of
sensibility that makes us care, deeply and constructively, about the entire
planet and all of its varied inhabitants. If we can accomplish this, then,
perhaps, in some far-off day, those who follow us down the track of the
generations will be able to dwell in relative harmony with all the
creatures of the earth, human and nonhuman."

Omitted from my essay last year was the animal rights dimension, and the
obvious argument for vegetarianism; it is also important to consider, in
examining “What’s wrong with this picture?,” the subjugation of animals
(and plants!) to genetic engineering, pesticides, and the swamp of
antibiotics used in animal feed that lead to conditions that not only
torture the animals but enter the U.S. diet and severely impact on human
health.

We are getting sicker as a nation physically, as well as mentally. The two
are related.

We know that we need to speak truth to power, and that justice will prevail
eventually; the question, though, is “How long is eventually? How many
people must be tortured and killed in the meantime?” And, “How can we stop
it? What do we need to do, NOW?”

After reading my essay, one writer wrote: “Good Lord, I'm so depressed! I
hope he doesn't write 'Why I Hate Christmas'! His family must really look
forward to his arrival on Thanksgiving Day. For my sanity's sake I think
I'll cling to the revisionist version!”

Another writer asked me: “I've been reading your posts for years and I
wonder, is there anything you celebrate and take joy in? We never hear
about those things, but only about what you find wrong with the world. What
do you find right?”

I can answer in one word: “Resistance.” Celebrate Resistance. That is what
I take joy in, Resistance in its political, artistic, social, and sexual forms.

*
* *

This Thanksgiving Day, I will get together with MY family ­ those of you
who believe in resistance ­ and FAST in front of U.S. Senator Chuck
Schumer’s house in Park Slope, Brooklyn, to protest his support for the war
against Iraq, the U.S. financing of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and
the detention and torture of immigrants and prisoners of war by the U.S.
government.

I will fast at Schumer’s in order to meditate upon the historical threads
that bind U.S. policy today to its colonial genocide of the Native people
of Turtle Island.

I will fast for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and all political
prisoners in the United States.

I will fast to better contemplate what new forms the resistance will take.

Please join me there, at 9 Prospect Park West, corner of Carroll Street,
beginning at 12 noon on Thursday, November 25, and continuing until 9 pm.
Then on Friday, November 26, I will join BUY NOTHING DAY in front of Macy’s
at Herald Square. DON’T SHOP ­- boycott the Amerikan konsumer kulture!
Let's organize a wave of massive Consumer Strikes against the war!

The effort in finding ways to turn despair into resistance is a happy one.
CREATE the alternative. BE the alternative. Don't let the system determine
for us how to experience its rituals and warfare, and the approved ways to
combat its terror. Be Creative. Resistance keeps you young, forever!