This Is Where We Take Our Stand

Displaced Films and Northern Light Productions present the trailer and four video installments for their web series, This is Where We Take Our Stand. These extraordinary testimonies come from two hundred and fifty veterans and active duty soldiers who gathered for three days in Washington DC in March 2008 to testify about their own experience about the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. You can visit the web series website as well as the Vimeo channel.

1. This Is Where We Take Our Stand – Trailer, followed by four installments

2. Rules of Engagement

As testimony continues, the question “What about the Iraqi people?” takes center stage. When you are part of an occupying army and most of them want to kill you, who do you blame? Clifton Hicks recounts a deadly assault his unit made on a civilian neighborhood while struggling with his inability to identify with their pain. Jason Hurd argues, though, that this war will never end until people know the suffering we have brought to the people there. For him, Winter Soldier is a way to apologize to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

3. Broken Soldier

Why are so many veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan psychologically damaged? Is it the natural trauma of war, or the product of military whose mission is to occupy and suppress the civilian population? Zollie Goodman recounts the racism against Iraqis imbued in his unit, while Kris Goldsmith reveals the hatred that finally made him a “broken soldier,” caught in the endless web of the Veterans Administration. And the parents of Jeffrey Lucey mourn their son, one of thousands who could no longer live with what he had become.

4. For Those That Would Judge Me

March 13, 2008: As hundreds of veterans and over a thousand supporters gather just outside Washington, DC for three days of testimony, the pressure is high and questions intense. How is the testimony verified? What will people think of veterans and soldiers for being here? What good will this do? Without hesitation Geoff Millard (US Army National Guard), Steve Mortillo (US Army), and Adam Kokesh (US Marine Corps) respond to “those who would judge me” with a clear purpose and their chilling stories.

5. Why We Fight

Flashback to January, three months before Winter Soldier. How do you bring hundreds of veterans to Washington DC, to tell their stories? An IVAW national planning meeting reveals sharp differences among the members. Is the point of Winter Soldier to show how these wars are hurting America, or the destruction America is bringing to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? Is the goal to strengthen the military, or weaken it? Despite the differences, a deep unity is built because, as Geoff Millard declares, the bottom line is “No one can hear our stories and still support this shit.”