Writing about the Vietnam War recently triggered a lot of emotions, reflection, prayer and questions. (See: Vietnam 50 years later).
I’ve been thinking of the lyrics of the song “Teach Your Children” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, written at the time of the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement.
Who is teaching our children? What are they being taught?
This is suddenly more important in these increasingly authoritarian times. When there are nearly daily escalations of serious consequences for speaking the truth. When there are massive efforts to suppress the truth and silence those speaking it.
Lifelong Learning
The foundation of our education at Scattergood Friends School was to prepare us to become lifelong learners.
Vietnam
The Vietnam War was raging at the time I was a student at Scattergood. Being a Quaker boarding high school, nonviolence and pacifism were some of the things we were taught. We learned about living a just life from the examples of our teachers at Scattergood. We learned not only in the classroom, but also as we worked with staff doing work to maintain the community. We rotated through the various work crews, such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, pruning in the orchard, working on the farm, etc. We learned to participate in the community decision process.
There were many examples of Quakers who agitated for justice throughout their lives. (Many were lifelong learners who had attended Scattergood).
As I struggled through the several year process of discerning what I was led to do about the Vietnam War, there were several things I learned, and that influenced my ultimate decision to be a draft resister.
One was “An Epistle to Friends Concerning Military Conscription” which was signed by several Quakers I knew, who were members of my Quaker yearly meeting. The Epistle calls out the conscientious objector classification as cooperation with the Selective Service System (the “draft”).
It matters little what men say they believe when their actions are inconsistent with their words.
An Epistle to Friends Concerning Military Conscription
Another source of lived examples of work for peace was a collection of stories my late Friend and mentor Don Laughlin collected from a number of Quaker men, Young Quaker Men Facing War and Conscription. These stories taught me many ways to live and work for peace and justice.
My mother collected Quaker stories, which are shared on the Quaker Stories website.
Palestine
Now this country is supporting Israel’s unconscionable genocide of Palestinian children, women and men in Gaza and the West Bank.
Where is the peace movement?
The peace movement in this country is being led by Palestinians and their supporters.
Are we teaching our children well today? Who is teaching them? What resources are available?
The repression is so great that you can be arrested and possibly deported from simply expressing support for humanitarian assistance for Palestinians. I feel it is only a matter of time before I’m arrested for doing so.
My efforts
I began writing nearly daily blog posts ten years ago. I began to realize this was a spiritual practice when I found myself getting up earlier than usual in order to have enough time to write the day’s blog post before leaving for work.
I hoped the posts could be useful for other people’s lifelong learning. Links to the various places I’ve published my writings can be found here: https://linktr.ee/jeffkisling
Also, similar to An Epistle to Friends Concerning Military Conscription, I was led to write An Epistle to Friends Regarding Community, Mutual Aid and LANDBACK about our situation today.
What will Friends do?
It matters little what people say they believe when their actions are inconsistent with their words. Thus, we Friends may say there should not be hunger and poverty, but as long as Friends continue to collaborate in a system that leaves many without basic necessities and violently enforces white supremacy, our example will fail to speak to mankind.
Let our lives speak for our convictions. Let our lives show that we oppose the capitalist system and white supremacy, and the damages that result. We can engage in efforts, such as Mutual Aid and LANDBACK, to build Beloved community. To reach out to our neighbors to join us.
We must begin by changing our own lives if we hope to make a real testimony for peace and justice.
An Epistle to Friends Regarding Community, Mutual Aid and LANDBACK
At the end of the 1960s, Gallup found “significantly more opposition to President Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policies” among students at public and private colleges than in “a parallel survey of the U.S. general public: 44 percent vs. 25 percent, respectively.” The same poll “showed 69 percent of students in favor of slowing down or halting the fighting in Vietnam, while only 20 percent favored escalation. This was a sharp change from 1967, when more students favored escalation (49 percent) than de-escalation (35 percent).”
Six decades later, it took much less time for young Americans to turn decisively against their government’s key role of arming Israel’s war on Gaza. By a wide margin, continuous huge shipments of weapons to the Israeli military swiftly convinced most young adults that the U.S. government was complicit in a relentless siege taking the lives of Palestinian civilians on a large scale.
The Vietnam and Gaza Wars Shattered Young Illusions About U.S. Leaders by Norman Solomon, ZNetwork, 4/30/2025
The Palestinian resistance has radicalized millions worldwide. The popular demand for a permanent ceasefire in Palestine is leading to a still larger project to cease the US-led imperialist order.
The overall consciousness of the resurgent peace movement reflects the normalization of anti-imperialism as a leading current; antiwar sentiment is becoming explicitly anti-imperialist.
THE NORTH AMERICAN PEACE MOVEMENT AT AN INFLECTION POINT By Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance, April 17, 2024
An Epistle to Friends Concerning Military Conscription
An Epistle to Friends Regarding Community, Mutual Aid and LANDBACK
Teach Your Children
You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good-bye.
Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.
And you, of tender years,
Can’t know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well,
Their children’s hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
unflinching 