VINCE EMANUELE

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I grew up in Chicago and Northwest Indiana in a working-class family; my father was a Union Ironworker and my mother was a stay at home Mom. I graduated high school in May '02 and thought I would try my luck with the United States Marine Corps. I came out of boot camp a hard chargin' Devil Dog. We then deployed to Al Qaim, Iraq in Aug '04. During our deployment we were constantly in convoys patrolling the streets, looking for snipers, IEDs, land mines, "insurgents" or anyone else that wanted to engage us. This along with shooting at innocent civilians, destroying their property and beating up prisoners along with the occasional guard time made up the majority of what I saw and did during my 8 month deployment to the "Sand Box".

As the deployment moved on, my way of bucking the system was to read the books and magazines my father and friends were sending me - Chomsky, Vidal, Hunter S. Thompson, Rolling Stone, The Nation. A few fellow Marines and I began to place much of what we were personally witnessing into a political/social context. I began to see what exactly the Iraq war was all about and what exactly I was participating in. It was apparent that we weren't spreading "Democracy" and "Peace" or winning "Hearts and Minds" of the ever increasingly hostile local population. Upon returning to the states I began to find local peace activists in the community and speak out against this immoral occupation of a sovereign country.

VINCE EMANUELE