| | Resisting toxic militarism: Vieques versus the U.S. Navy.
by Deborah Berman Santana ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ACTIVISTS AND SCHOLARS HAVE FREQUENTLY CONdemned toxic capitalism's poisoning of communities of color as criminal in nature (Simon, 2000). However, rarely is their critique specifically directed at the United States military. Indeed, the military sees itself as the country's "oldest, largest, busiest, and most successful company," whose 588 "plants" (bases) and $270 billion in budget revenues during 1999--growing to $400 billion by 2003--dwarfed all other U.S. corporate giants (Department of Defense, 2000). Patricia Hynes (1999: 49) observed that "the Pentagon is the largest sole consumer of energy in the United States, and very likely, worldwide." By its own admission, the military burns enough gas per day to drive a car 13,000 times around the world, operates 550 public utilities, uses one-quarter of U.S. hydropower capacity, and generates most of the nuclear waste in the U.S. Moreover, the Defense Department's generation of over 750,000 tons of toxic waste per year dwarfs the combined toxic production of the top three chemical companies (St. Clair and Cockburn, 2001). It seems clear that the toxic legacy of this biggest of "big businesses" deserves much more attention. Although the U.S. government has attempted to sanction some polluters, its preferential treatment of the worst polluters--the largest and most powerful corporations--reveals Washington's complicity in toxic capitalism. The military, as the largest corporation and most egregious polluter, has been subject to less oversight, regulation, and sanction than any other toxic criminal has. Before 1980, the military was not subject to any environmental regulations and rarely documented toxic or hazardous waste disposal (Zito, 2002). Not until 1988, for example, was the military required to take into account how endangered species might be affected by its activities. In 1999, Congress shielded the military from requirements to pay fines for breaking environmental laws, but the Pentagon still complained that "encroachment"--the expanding protection of areas to benefit ecological or social health--was harming military readiness. Therefore, peace and justice activists were hardly surprised when the "war against terrorism was invoked to justify a proposed total military exemption from environmental laws. Among its many contradictions, the purported military mission to protect society is violated by its activities, which endanger human and environmental health. Moreover, as befits a rigidly hierarchical institution charged with assuring global dominance by the U.S. elite, these activities disproportionately threaten communities where peoples of color live and work: urban ghettoes, tribal lands, and colonized countries. If corporate criminals all too often get off with a mere slap on the wrist, the military is literally getting away with murder. By contrast, resistance to such criminal abuses is criminalized; activists engaging in peaceful civil disobedience to block threatening military activities are often punished with stiff fines and prison sentences. If those who try to stop abuse of colonized and oppressed peoples and lands are punished, while the criminals go free, then the legal system is facilitating toxic capitalism in its most lethal form: militarism. Anti-military movements among peoples of color, linked to struggles for environmental and social justice and self-determination, are growing stronger and building networks across the globe. The Pentagon has acknowledged its fear of a "domino" effect from such movements, which could restrict its hold on power--and corporate patrons' dollars. Challenging militarism should be central to any critique of "toxic capitalism." It is particularly helpful to study and support movements that articulate the criminal nature of U.S. military activities and the toxic nature of capitalism, while working toward community-controlled use and protection of resources. There is probably no clearer example than the grass-roots struggle to oblige the U.S. Navy to stop bombing Vieques, Puerto Rico, and clean up and return the lands for community directed, ecologically and socially sustainable use. A brief introduction to the land, the people, and the struggle illuminates militarism's key role in toxic capitalism, while offering guid elines to help replace such destructive "dominoes" with life-affirming alternatives. Vieques: The Land and the People The hilly island of Vieques, known affectionately as "isla nena" (little girl island), lies six miles off the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico and comprises some 33,000 acres. Its ecology is known for considerable diversity and its fertile soils have historically supported a wide variety of crops. Some of the earliest human remains found in the Caribbean--more than 4,000 years old--were discovered on Vieques. Although archaeologists believe that Vieques holds an important key to understanding Caribbean pre-Columbian history, the military occupation of the island has severely restricted its study (Rodriguez, ...
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