The following thoughts first appeared as a blog written by an activist who works with Act Against Torture. We decided to post it as a public response to those who are offended by materials we have created when they are posted in public. Please feel free to respond to us by e-mailing ActAgainstTorture@riseup.net.

April 29, 2006

Today is the two-year anniversary of the release of the first torture photos from Abu Ghraib. To commemorate the awakening and remind people that the abuse and disappearances are ongoing, Act Against Torture produced a new set of posters.

They feature a few of the many many photos that are now available on the web taken by some of the soldiers involved, of the various kinds of humiliation and sadism inflicted on Iraqi men at the infamous prison, with the headline “Two Years, Still No Justice” pointing out that no high ranking military or civilian official has ever been tried in connection with the abuse cases. I wanted to put “no high ranking official has been held accountable,” but AAT comprises some very careful people, and someone pointed out that a few high officers have been demoted or denied promotions, so some people might feel that represents a form of accountability.

A lot of the abuse involved sexual sadism; in the Salon series accompanying them, there is an entire chapter called “Sexual exploitation.” None of the photos we used in our posters featured overt sexual acts, but one of them showed a naked man cuffed to a bed with women’s underwear on his head, which was apparently one of the favorite forms of humiliation this group of soldiers inflicted.

Apparently some people whom none of us know went out on Thursday night and posted some of these posters around on light posts and stuff in Oakland. On Friday, we got the following:

When I got this email, I stopped to think about it. I felt a little bad, because a lot of the people I know have kids, and their kids are very sensitive, and of course we worry just as everyone does about protecting them from things that might be damaging. I thought, maybe people shouldn’t put out this kind of graphic images in public. But then I thought about some other things:

1. The guy’s objection is to his kids seeing pictures of naked men. His kids are probably too young to even notice much about the photos, which are not great quality and it’s not like the genitals are so prominent that you would see them in passing, when they are much too high to be at eye level for a very small person. But certainly, they are too young to understand what is going on in the photo or that it is something the person didn’t choose. At 4 you probably don’t really know that many people don’t choose to wear underwear on their heads, and you won’t know that this particular man is Muslim and would consider contact with women’s underwear particularly offensive, unless your father decides to tell you. All you will know is that this person is naked, as you are in the bathtub, just as others you sometimes encounter in your daily life are, and if the kids have learned that there’s something shameful in being naked, it’s because your father taught you that. Moreover, right in the area he is talking about are a number of sex shops that feature pictures of nearly-naked women in humiliating positions, and while I am sure he doesn’t like that either, he presumably has already figured out either how to protect his kids from ever seeing them or what to tell them if they do. So it would seem that the real problem is that they might see men being exploited in ways that our society usually reserves for women.
   
   
2. The Iraqi men in the pictures also have children. How will they tell their kids, if they ever see them again, what was done to them by Americans with family values? Do we imagine that only Iraqi adults are subjected to humiliation and sexual threats from our soldiers? Iraqi mothers don’t have the luxury of protecting their children from unpleasant images, or from knowing about things they are too young to deal with. When my Oakland neighbor has to worry about avoiding our posters on his walk with his kids, maybe he can think of Iraqi women walking their kids to school trying to avoid the dead bodies in the road.

Of course I do not want the kids I care about to be upset. I don’t want them to have nightmares, or to know about the unspeakable horrors that so many people endure every day. But I am even more concerned that they not grow up complacent in a country that casually commits and condones such atrocities.

The writer says he “may” support our cause. He may, and then again, he may not. It is his choice whether to support us, or to support those who - what? Defend torture? He implies that people might decide they are against our message because they don’t like how they deliver it. What kind of logic is that?

The point of AAT, and the propaganda we put out, is to make sure that Americans cannot simply turn away from the atrocities we are allowing to continue. But, people say, I’m not allowing them. I don’t like them any better than you do. I would vote against them if I could, I would stop it if I could. But if you are turning away, if you are spending your time condemning us because your children have to see something unpleasant (although again, really, there is nothing inherently unpleasant in a picture of a naked man), you are enabling the atrocities to continue.

As I reflected on this email, I thought about the recent criticism that’s been lobbed at organizers of Monday’s “Day Without Immigrants.”

As momentum built for the first real general strike in at least half a decade, counterattack began. People like Barbara Boxer told immigrant communities that rallies are nice, but boycotts are mean. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “[a]s politicians like Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and church leaders suggested a less radical political approach - and as janitors and other low-wage workers feared that they might lose their jobs if they walked out - the movement shifted course. Even popular, nationally syndicated Spanish-language DJs urged listeners Tuesday to join peaceful after-work protests for fear that a walkout could trigger animosity from politicians and the public.”

There’s never been a better time to revive the old Malvina Reynolds song, “It Isn’t Nice”.

Americans feel it’s our right not to be inconvenienced by the social upheaval caused by our policies. Iraqis, Palestinians and Mexicans might feel it’s their right too, but it’s a right they don’t get to exercise. While they can’t avoid the impact, we shouldn’t either.

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