It doesn't take much to please Red Emma. Walking to the excellent talk today by labor rights & education journalist Liza Featherstone (Students Against Sweatshops), I saw coming my way a young woman student wearing a green "Stop Blackwater" t-shirt and got so very excited. Of course, Blackwater is the mercenary army outfit run by a crook named Erik Prince. It thrived under Bush. You will recall Prince and his paid killers (some were murdered on a bridge in Iraq, remember? - when they were not murdering civilians in Baghdad) from the excellent investigative reporting done by my hero, another terrific activist-journalist, Jeremy Scahill.
In fact, Scahill wrote a book (I read it) called Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. As it happens, Featherstone, who is lovely and charming and funny, writes for The Nation magazine, so you can see I was also having a Happy Nation Day. Or thought I was.
I stopped the young student to congratulate her on her t-shirt, a bright green deal exactly the same as the ones pictured above, at a San Diego-area protest against expansion of the professional Blackwater killer corps/corp. to northern SD county, as I recall, beyond its main "training" facility in North Carolina. In fact, that's Scahill, above, doing his righteous piece in front of cameras and other protesters.
"Your t-shirt," I exclaimed. "You were involved in the anti-Blackwater protests?" Damn, I was happy. I thought we'd talk, and I would make a new friend, a comrade. It could happen! But, alas, she responded with "I don't know. I'm just wearing this," and scurried away from me, clearly spooked by the friendly weirdo who is Red. Possibly the saddest two sentence I had heard in a while, hers.
Call me a kook, but if somebody had shown some interest in the slogan on your shirt and you didn't seem to know what it meant, wouldn't you at least ask them about it? If she had, I could have told her that Prince's outfit had changed its name - classic corporate PR move - and LOST the campaign to install itself in San Diego. Hoorah! That it had been investigated for criminal action in Iraq and New Orleans, avoided prosecution, changed its name to "Xe," then changed its name again, to the smart-sounding "Academi." I wonder if they include this photo in their recruitment brochures, of a dead Academic:
And I wonder if somebody would wear that on their shirt, and why. Why not? Why anything?
Of course, I am a wise guy who is puzzled by students wearing corporate logos on their chests, and always make a point of inquiring if they are perhaps stockholders or on the company's board of directors, or somehow benefit from their association by way of being a human billboard for commerce. Sigh. I wish more students would ask me about my own terrific t-shirts, including my current favorite, this one with the "Free Bradley Manning" slogan and image of the Army whistle blower and hero who is rotting in jail. But that's just me.
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