The People's Journey comes to Asheville

Salam Hassan

Josh Stieber

Conor Curran

At the presentation by “The Peoples Journey” on June 12, 2010 in Asheville, Conor Curran was the first to speak.  He said we need to break down barriers of ignorance and cultural prejudice.  Their tour will be joined by two girls from Gaza soon.  Conor talked about his transition from Marine to long haired hippy.  He said that he feels the common goal of humanity is to make a better world.  Even when operating from a fear based position, they have the underlying goal of trying to make a better world.

Conor said that he thought about and prepared for the worst and found himself in the middle of it all.  He was very fear based in searching an Iraqi home, but the Iraqi homeowner served him tea with compassion and love – and that day started to change him.  He recommended that we exercise our ‘compassion muscles’. 

Salam Hassan, an Iraqi who has moved to the US, was the next to speak.  He started by saying that he had polio at age one, which he mentioned because he uses crutches to walk.  Salam when to Baghdad University at age 16, and he said that Iraq was a military state.  But, if you did what you were supposed to do, then your life went okay.  Salam was kicked out of college because his father spoke out about Saddam.   He trained in engineering but he went into journalism after US invasion.  He reported for Pacifica Radio.  He explained Iraqi ideas of hospitality and said that some Iraqis still see the US military as guests, and they should therefore be treated as guests and in a hospitable manner.  He talked about meeting with Conor and Josh, and how they found they had so much in common.  He feels that peace is way more than the absence of violence – way more than that.

Josh Stieber spoke last, and he said he was motivated by 9/11 events to keep Americans safe.  He joined the military to “fix” Iraq.  He saw videos of bombings in basic training, and also saw celebration of this death and destruction.  He said that they were also subjected to “fear” development.  He talked about moving into a factory in Iraq and how the locals protested peacefully against this.  The US troops put up barricades and destroyed businesses and homes and things just got worse and worse.  And he spoke of how the violence just increased there in Iraq. 

They then played the WikiLeaks video, and Josh said it was a common event and the US troops sometimes did worse.  (Josh was a member of the unit on the ground in the WikiLeaks video, but he was not on scene when it happened.  He did write a letter of apology to the Iraqi people in response to the video.)  He felt more and more that he was being a hypocrite in Iraq and that the war had stopped making sense morally and strategically.  He became a conscientious objector.

After the talk was over, I asked Josh if he felt that the people running the war (who he said were not making sense strategically) were just dumb or if they were doing it on purpose.  Josh did not have an answer for that question.

They were not able to connect with the Afghan peace group on the evening of their presentation.  Their story is here.

And you can follow The Peoples Journey at this link.