Twenty year career veteran of the United States Air Force with a specialty in logistics, Natasha Erskine, having reached a rank of Senior NCO, speaks about her experience, the awards and advancements she received, her coming to terms with the institutional racism she encountered in her military career and how she had to fight to receive her retirement benefits after reporting the white nationalists, racist and bigots she found herself working with during her last deployment, just ahead of eligibility for retirement. She speaks of how the military regularly betrays minorities by rifting them out after doctoring their service records.
She speaks of the trauma to self and friends that the multiple foreign deployments, required for career advancement, in a culture that discourages seeking mental health counseling, that placed women at risk of rape by servicemen and contractors alike, on the U.S. bases where they were deployed once the US declared it's "War On Terror". Though always "behind the wire" she began to recognize her roll in the violence and killing as an enabler and the connection between the military and policing in the United States following the killing of Michael Brown. The same equipment she was shipping from the battle fields of Iraq as surplus ended up in Ferguson, Missouri and eventually in her own community on the South side of Chicago.
She now councils inner city Chicago high school students, whose career options have been narrowed by the racists efforts of Chicago's out going mayor Rahm Emanuel and other liberal Democrats who have pushed JROTC into certain schools, limiting career options and steering students toward the military; even instituting a program of "no diploma" unless one has enlisted in the military, has a job, is admitted to college or doing community service following graduation. The last question she answers address the campaign to demilitarize the Chicago Public Schools, demanding that it returns the skilled trades programs that it removed, programs and training that can provide realistic alternatives to the military.
2019 Chicago Peace Summit, Loyola University Chicago Area Peace Action Student Chapter
Natash Erskine, Chicago Veterans For Peace chivfp@gmail.com http://www.chicagovfp.org/drupal/
Recording starts as speaker is giving an over view of her presentation while projecting images of official awards and other documents of commendation to verify both the rank and her achievements during her 20 year career in the Air Force.
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