Podcast (GW-E06): Erik Larsen – Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience

"Wow, that was shocking. What is my response as a Christian to the US support of this sort of stuff?" Threatened with death penalty for refusing to kill.

The post Podcast (GW-E06): Erik Larsen – Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience appeared first on Courage to Resist.

Erik Larsen

by Courage to Resist

https://couragetoresist.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CourageToResist_Podcast_Erik_Larsen.mp3














Podcast (GW-E06): Erik Larsen – Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience

Erik Larsen was one of the most vocal war resisters of the Gulf War era, speaking out against the impending conflict months before he was activated for service in January of 1991. He was one of a handful of conscientious objectors threatened with the death penalty for “Desertion in Time of War”.

“I started to think about, “What the hell am I saying. Is this really who I am and what I want to do and be?” That’s really when things started changing for me. It’s like, “Maybe this isn’t the place for me, and I need to start looking for a way to get out.””

“For conscientious objectors, they want you to be this, I don’t know, have a certain more religious kind of beliefs and moral, ethical beliefs, and I certainly had that, but I was very political as well. And I think what they were prosecuting me for was the crime of speaking out in public.​”

Gulf War @ 30

This Courage to Resist podcast was produced to mark 30 years since the U.S. aimed its imperial sights squarely on the Middle East. These are the voices of veterans who’s lives were transformed by that ongoing war. Interview and edit by Matthew Breems. Production assistance by Stephanie Atkinson.  Executive producer: Jeff Paterson.

“It was like, “Oh my God, I didn’t know that this was going on.” We were funding training of militaries in Central America to torture people and priests were being killed. What is our foreign policy really about? I started to think, “Well, what if I were to get called up to go somewhere? What would I do?” And then I started thinking just more in a deeper level about my own training and then my own faith and my own upbringing in the Lutheran church.”

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Photos from left: Erik Larsen at an anti-war event, and his newsletter “GI’s for Peace”, both circa November 1990. Right: Erik with fellow Marine resister Tahan Jones as they both awaited court martial.











Transcript

Erik Larsen:

I remember Marine Corps training. We would do our morning runs and sing songs like, “Rape the town and kill the people, that’s the thing we love to do. Throw some napalm on the school house, watch the kiddies scream and shout. Devil dog, shock troops, blood-sucking war machines. Ready to fight, ready to kill, ready to die but we never will. Hoorah Marine Corps.” Is this really who I am and what I want to do and be?

Matthew Breems:

This is the Courage to Resist podcast. Since 2005, Courage to Resist has worked to support military resistance to illegal and unjust wars, counter recruitment, draft resistance, and the policies of empire. This episode features guests from the 30 years of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. Activist and community organizer Erik Larsen is the podcast guest today. Erik was a Marine reservist when his unit was ordered to begin training for the first Gulf War. Then, identifying as a conscientious objector, Erik could not allow himself to be part of a war for oil and refused his orders.

After eventually turning himself in, the Marines charged him with “desertion during a time of war”, which carried a maximum penalty of death. Erik, we’re really excited to have you on the podcast today and to hear your story of activism during the first Gulf War. With all of our guests, we like to get a little sense of who you are and your upbringing. So, why don’t you tell our listeners what transpired that led you to join the military?

Erik Larsen:

Well, I grew up in Hayward in the Castro Valley area here in California. My parents are Danish immigrants. They came here in 1958. My dad was a blacksmith and my mom was a hotel maid. And growing up, I was involved in Boy Scouts and became an Eagle Scout and was really involved in high school sports and backpacking and just did a lot. But around my senior year or junior year, I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do with myself after high school. And I ran into my old Cub Scout master and who was a Marine Corps recruiter, and I was going through a little bad time with my dad and fighting at home and stuff. And so, I just started meeting with him. Probably about six months later decided to join up and join the Marine Corps.

Matthew Breems:

So, it was purely as a next step for you after high school?

Erik Larsen:

Yeah, it wasn’t really something I put a whole lot of thought into. I wanted to get away from home. And in some ways, some ideas of patriotism and wanting to do my duty as an American. It was really to get away from home.

Matthew Breems:

So, what year did you end up enlisting then?

Erik Larsen:

I went in the Marine Corps in April of 1986, and I joined up to be a Hawk missile radar mechanic. I actually joined up for the Marine Corps Reserves and there was a reserve… there was a missile base right there in Hayward next to the Hayward Airport. So, the deal was to go through radar mechanic school and boot camp, and then get out and start doing my drills and training there right in my own hometown of Hayward.

Matthew Breems:

So, that’s pretty convenient. Most people don’t have the option to stay so close to their home or their home area.

Erik Larsen:

No, it was great. Allowed me to do my training. And then after I got with my reserve unit, I was able to go to school at a local community college.

Matthew Breems:

So, you’re in the reserves. You’re able to go to community college. What started to happen to change your mind about your decision to join the Marines?

Erik Larsen:

Well, community college played a big part of it. And also, I think also not being active duty, not being in the Marine Corps day in and day out I think was helpful in terms of making a shift in my own consciousness and thinking. Yeah, in 1988, there was a lot going on. Jesse Jackson was running for president. There was a student group at Chabot College that I got involved in. Met up with some old friends from high school and we took classes together.

And one of the classes I remember taking was on Central American history, learning a different sort of history about the United States. It was like, “Oh my God, I didn’t know that this was going on.” We were funding training of militaries in Central America to torture people and priests were being killed. What is our foreign policy really about? I started to think, “Well, what if I were to get called up to go somewhere? What would I do?” And then I started thinking just more in a deeper level about my own training and then my own faith and my own upbringing in the Lutheran church.

I remember Marine Corps training, we would do our morning runs as a platoon, and we would sing songs like, “Rape the town and kill the people, that’s the thing we love to do. Throw some napalm on the school house, watch the kiddies scream and shout,” or “Devil dog, shock troops, blood-sucking war machines. Ready to fight, ready to kill, ready to die but we never will. Hoorah Marine Corps”. I loved saying that shit. And I loved the training. It was very physical and challenging.

But yeah, I started to think about, “What the hell am I saying. Is this really who I am and what I want to do and be?” That’s really when things started changing for me. It’s like, “Maybe this isn’t the place for me, and I need to start looking for a way to get out.”

Matthew Breems:

And how long was this process taking place? Was this months or years?

Erik Larsen:

Yeah. Especially the student activism there at Chabot College, maybe a year or so of just really thinking about stuff. 1990 was a big moment for me starting to link up with activist groups in the Bay Area who were doing a lot of work around Central American resistance to wars in Central America. In fact, that was the group that I was introduced to, the Pledge of Resistance. It’s kind of a direct action civil disobedience group that pledged if the U.S. would invade Nicaragua, El Salvador, or any of these countries down there that there would be this resistance of civil disobedience on a mass scale. And around that time also in 1990, Earth First! Was starting to do their organizing around “Redwood Summer”, stopping the clear cutting of redwood trees in Northern California. And I was greatly affected by just a consciousness about the environment and politics.

Matthew Breems:

You mentioned earlier that your faith played a role in coming to this place of being opposed to the U.S. military’s adventures across the globe. That is somewhat of a rarity in the people that we interview. Why was that different for you or why would you feel that that was important to you?

Erik Larsen:

Well, I grew up in the Lutheran church, baptized, confirmed, very much involved in my church in Castro Valley. As I learned about what was going on in Central America and learning about the torture and assassinations of priests, it was like, “Wow, that was shocking. What is my response as a Christian to the U.S. support of this sort of stuff?” I really felt a great affinity to Archbishop Oscar Romero who was killed while giving communion and in San Salvador, reading about his story and certainly watching movies about his life and what are we called to do as human beings and people, to stand with the poor and the oppressed and working people. And so, that was in that mix, too, of what was tugging at my heart.

Matthew Breems:

So, it’s 1990 now. Iraq has invaded Kuwait. The U.S. military machine is ramping up to respond to that. At what point did you know that you were going to be called up to be involved in that?

Erik Larsen:

Well, that summer I was in Utah for a training for… We were shooting off missiles in the desert. We started to see news reports of what was happening there with Iraq and Kuwait. People are getting pumped up. We’re going. When I got back from that training exercise, that almost immediately reached out to my friends with the Pledge of Resistance and my friends at college and like, “Hey, I’m I ain’t going to this if I’m called up. And I also want to speak out about a war for oil in the Middle East.”

Matthew Breems:

And when did you finally receive orders that your unit was going to deploy over there?

Erik Larsen:

My orders came in I think in January. Like August, September of 1990, I was starting to speak out at protests and press conferences and teach-ins. And so, I had this period of six months before orders actually came. And orders actually came for me to go to desert training in I think it was Arizona. And by that time, I didn’t care whether I was going to go to Arizona or my unit was going to go to the Middle East. I just wasn’t going to go. I was going to go UA, unauthorized absence.

Matthew Breems:

So, you’re ordered to go to Arizona for training, and that’s when you went UA?

Erik Larsen:

Yep.

Matthew Breems:

For the listeners that don’t know exactly what that is, just walk us through it briefly.

Erik Larsen:

Well, unauthorized absence, missing a troop movement, is exactly that. You’ve refused orders to go with your unit somewhere and you’re absent. And for me, it was packing up my backpack and getting on a bus and going up to Northern California to hang out with my brother up in Humboldt County until I could think about what I was going to do next. It was also the sheriff coming to knock on my parents’ door looking for me, and there was an arrest warrant apparently out for my unauthorized absence.

Matthew Breems:

Are you were UA for about a month, is that correct?

Erik Larsen:

Yeah, about 30 days. So, if you go past 30 days, you get into some other legal issues of desertion. So, any kind of penalties that you have of leaving your unit for good and become that… they get harsher. So, I had an attorney at that time, name was Bob Rivkin. He was a military attorney in San Francisco. He counseled me, “Hey, if you’re going to go UA, do your thing, but you should really turn yourself in before that or just right around that 30-day mark.”

Matthew Breems:

So, you took his advice and you did turn yourself in eventually around 30 days?

Erik Larsen:

Yep. Turn myself in with my attorney at Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I was put in handcuffs and flown under guard in the middle of the night from San Francisco airport to North Carolina, driven around some other bases there in North Carolina, still with my handcuffs on, until reaching Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, almost 30 hours later. Told me what I was being charged with, which was, “Desertion in time of war”.

Matthew Breems:

One interesting fact that I learned while reading up on your story ahead of time was that there was 22 other Marine reservists just in the Marine reserves that also were at Camp LeJeune for desertion. I just didn’t think there was that large of a resistance movement during the Gulf War. Were you aware of these other desertions at the time?

Erik Larsen:

Yeah. I had read and met and talked with people like Jeff Paterson, for example. And then these other reservists were in other parts of the country. Camp LeJeune was to become that place where all these resisters would be funneled to to eventually stand trial. Now I was not the only reservist from my unit who also spoke out. There was a fellow by the name of Tahan Jones, who was in my unit, who did a similar sort of thing, going UA. We didn’t plan it. We basically refused orders at the same time.

Matthew Breems:

Okay, so you’re incarcerated for refusing orders. And is that when you learned that they slapped you with desertion?

Erik Larsen:

It was almost immediately is that I heard about the charges. We weren’t incarcerated. There was this unit of resisters and conscientious objectors. There’s about 30 of us, and we were all in the same squad bay and we were living there together, and we’d get sent out during the day to do work parties. And for me, it was probably about eight, nine months later is when my actual trial happened, and then I went to the brig.

Matthew Breems:

A desertion charge, it’s serious. Is there any greater charge that the military can throw at a soldier? I mean, desertion has the potential for death penalty.

Erik Larsen:

Yeah, and that was the deal. And Amnesty International came to my defense as well as many other organizations around the world and the U.S., and my own church adopted me as an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience. And I think the thing with the Marine Corps is they just wanted to scare me, I guess, and scare others in not resisting and not following orders to fight in a war for oil. But I was very public, and I had a good lawyer. We beat down those charges from death penalty to life to seven years and three years. And then I pled guilty to what I did, which was UA and missing a troop movement, and was sentenced to six months in the brig.

Matthew Breems:

Was that sentence commuted because of the time you had already been held or did you have to serve that afterwards?

Erik Larsen:

No, it was once the trial happened, then I served that six months.

Matthew Breems:

And how long did this trial go on?

Erik Larsen:

It was fairly short. My recollection was like a week or two. We had a lot of witnesses and character witnesses that flew out to North Carolina and supporters in the courtroom, and certainly a fair amount of media interest as well.

Matthew Breems:

Your first defense for your lawyer is that you were a conscientious objector, is that correct?

Erik Larsen:

Yeah.

Matthew Breems:

And why was that thrown out?

Erik Larsen:

There was a redo of my conscientious objector application. And that was a battle in and of itself was to try to get recognized as an actual conscientious objector because if we were to prove that, then the Marine Corps would be in this position of giving me an order of that, well, I couldn’t possibly follow through with because I was a conscientious objector. They threw that out because they said I was too political. And for conscientious objectors, they want you to be this, I don’t know, have a certain more religious kind of beliefs and moral, ethical beliefs, and I certainly had that, but I was very political as well. And I think what they were prosecuting me for was the crime of speaking out in public.

Matthew Breems:

Right, yeah, the tried and true method of becoming a CO is to have a longstanding religious objection to it within the faith tradition that you come from, and they were saying that that wasn’t true for you.

Erik Larsen:

Yeah. And in my defense, the Lutheran church and the bishop of my church all came down on my side saying, “Yeah, he is a conscientious objector, and he should be… Erik should be discharged as as a conscientious objector as well and receive an honorable discharge.”

Matthew Breems:

And the Marines didn’t buy that. They sentenced you to six months in the brig. You serve your sentence. What happens after that?

Erik Larsen:

Well, I did my time. Got out after about five-and-a-half months. And yeah, got my dishonorable discharge and reduction in rank to Private, and I went back home. And actually from the brig, I had actually applied to go to school at the University California Santa Cruz, and was accepted with a letter from prison. And so, I moved to Santa Cruz in the fall of 1992 and started my studies, and then got into the Community Studies program.

Matthew Breems:

So, you’ve gone through this whole ordeal, this trial, literally, that propels you into being an activist. What have been some of the ways that you’ve been an activist throughout the rest of your life?

Erik Larsen:

Well, in Santa Cruz, I linked up with a group called the Resource Center for Nonviolence, and it was there getting my feet wet as sort of organizing, whether it was neighborhood organizing or community organizing. And some early things that I did was work in schools about militarism and sharing my story with high school students about thinking about careers other than joining the military.

And also linking up with Gulf War veterans who had come back with Gulf War syndrome. They had been exposed to chemical weapons or the experimental drugs that would prevent you from reaction to chemical weapons. The oil well fires, the depleted uranium rounds that would fire into enemy tanks. And soldiers that were coming back were reporting health problems.

One of the early campaigns I was involved in in Santa Cruz was helping these soldiers as they were coming back and helping them get recognized for Gulf War syndrome. At one point, I really transitioned into neighborhood and community organizing, meeting people in their homes and organizing people for mass meetings to take care of basic stuff in their own neighborhoods. That activism has carried me forward into a career, a 20-year career labor and community organizing.

Matthew Breems:

Erik, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast. And we just commend your courage to stand for your principles both in the past and currently, so thank you so much.

Erik Larsen:

Hey, thank you.

Matthew Breems:

This podcast is a Courage to Resist production recorded and edited by Matthew Breems with special thanks to executive producer Jeff Paterson. Visit couragetoresist.org for more information and to offer your support.

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