BY BUSTER SOUTHERLY
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — On May 13 at the Rio Rancho High School — where, in response to the performance of an anti-war poem, the school's poetry club was disbanded and student poets were "investigated" and their poems "examined" by the administration for "profanity and incitement to violence" — the school's principal Gary Tripp and Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Morrell, RRHS military liaison officer, conducted a jingoistic flag-raising ceremony and read out a pro-imperialist, pro-military poem.
Dancing on the grave of free speech at RRHS, the poem was selected by Morrell, the school official who complained about students reading anti-war poetry over the school public address system. It is widely believed that this complaint led to the suspension and firing of RRHS teacher, poet and Green Left Weekly writer Bill Nevins, and to the disbanding of the
school's student poetry team.
The poem selected and read out by Morrell, "American Dream", was written by US Marine Corporal Aaron Gilbert, a RRHS graduate recruited by Morrell who took part in the US invasion of Iraq.
The poem included lines that attacked the anti-war movement, telling peace activists to "shut your face": "And, yes, peaceful solutions
Cannot always be found,
To free a trapped people
From the terror around.
So we fought in this war,
With resolve in our hearts.
To help Iraq's people
Have a new and free start.
So speak of your 'Peace',
And how war is so wrong,
But shut your face when we're called
To give out the freedom we've won.
For you did not fight,
And you did not die
For the American dream."
From Green Left Weekly, May 28, 2003.
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