Norfolk-based sailor uses Web to channel opposition to war (Halp me Jon Carry!)

The Virginian-Pilot ^ | 11-5-06 | Louis Hansen

[SlowBoat407]

Norfolk-based sailor uses Web to channel opposition to war

By LOUIS HANSEN, The Virginian-Pilot
© November 5, 2006

NORFOLK - Jonathan Hutto graduated from Howard University with a degree in political science and a résumé of social activism.

He worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International after college. He whipped up grass-roots protests against police departments and college administrators.

One day in 2003, broke and seeking direction, Hutto enlisted in the Navy.

The Navy couldn't have known it then, but they know it now: They had signed up a sailor strongly opposed to the Iraq war.

Seaman Hutto pleated his uniform, memorized naval history and won sailor of the quarter among his junior enlisted shipmates.

Then he appeared on CNN, the BBC and in the pages of The Washington Post and The Navy Times.

But he wasn't reciting the Sailor's Creed.

Hutto was organizing again. This time, against the U.S. involvement in Iraq.

"We're not trying to embarrass the military," Hutto said during an interview last week at a local restaurant. "At the same time, we live in a democracy."

Hutto, 29, lives and works aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. When he enlisted, the Navy trained him as a photographer. He writes for the ship newspaper and anchored its shipwide television broadcast.

Off-duty, he shifts between the campus of Old Dominion University and the cafés and bookstores in Ghent. Armed with a laptop and cell phone, Hutto leads a group of volunteers in an online campaign against the war.

Supported by antiwar military family and veterans organizations, Hutto and a handful of other service members created a Web site called An Appeal for Redress. Activated in October, it allows active-duty and reserve troops to e-mail their representatives in Congress for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Their message: "Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home."

Hutto said the site has attracted about 1,200 responses. Volunteers have verified messages from about 700 service members, he said, from the lowest ranks up to O-6 - Navy captain or full colonel in the other services. Soldiers have been the most vocal, followed by the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Hutto and Marine Sgt. Liam Madden, a campaign co-founder, said response has been mostly positive, although some e-mailers accuse them of being anti-American.

Rodney Green, an economics professor at Howard University in Washington, mentored Hutto when he was elected student body president as a junior in 1997.

Hutto fought and beat the administration's effort to close off a public street in the middle of campus, he said.

Green, who protested the Vietnam War while serving in the Army, was at first surprised Hutto enlisted. But on the other hand, he said, "He's a leader."

Hutto declined to apply for officer candidate school, and enlisted instead.

From boot camp to the ship, Hutto said, "It's been drilled into you - you don't have any rights." Or, as he said one veteran sailor told him, "The only right you have is to get to work and get fed."

"I never really accepted that," Hutto said.

Hutto believed the service would teach him focus and discipline and would help him pay back his student loans. He opposed the war when he joined the Navy, but kept it private.

In June, Hutto organized a lecture at the Norfolk YWCA by University of Notre Dame professor David Cortright, an antiwar activist and author of "Soldiers in Revolt."

A few active-duty service members then met for a late-night discussion at a Norfolk home. Cortright, Hutto, Madden and about 10 other service members talked about the war.

In the quiet confidence of a private home, dressed in civilian clothes, the group came to a painful but certain consensus: Iraq was bad and getting worse.

They wanted to know what else they could do.

Although the men worried about their careers, paychecks and families, Hutto and Madden were willing to become the public face of troop dissent.

"Nothing will really happen until people speak up," said Madden, a 22-year-old stationed at Quantico who served one tour in Iraq. Madden opposed the war before and during his deployment, but kept his feelings to himself.

Cmdr. Chris Sims, spokesman for Atlantic Fleet Naval Air Force, said Hutto has not violated Department of Defense or Navy regulations. Sailors may freely speak with the media when off duty, he said.

Others are angry.

The terrorists "love this attention," said Tom Miller, a Navy veteran and Michigan resident whose son, Army Capt. Tom Miller II, was killed in August 2005 by small arms fire in Iraq.

"My son was so patriotic," he said. "Where are we going to fight these people, these terrorists?"

After the Web site was publicized two weeks ago, Hutto's supervisor pulled him aside and laid out the Navy's ground rules: The campaign had to be done on personal time, out of uniform and off base.

Hutto, who studied military rules and consulted lawyers before launching the campaign, agreed.

Said Green, "He's always been clever that way."

Hutto is a finalist again for sailor of the year, yet he still raises some eyebrows with the photos of Malcolm X, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Che Guevara at his desk aboard ship.

The campaign has "struck a good nerve," Hutto said. "Democracy, to me, has to be across the society."

[TigersEye]

I simply don't understand why seemingly intelligent people go for it.

Intelligence is no buffer to insanity.

[kcvl]

In 2001, Hutto was a speaker at The Fight against Police Violence: from Cincinnati to PG County, Maryland. Hutto's co-speaker at the event was Glova Scott of the Socialist Workers Party. The speech was posted on The Militant website. Hutto’s article, Rebuilding the GI Movement, appeared in Thomas Barton’s GI Special on the alBasrah Iraqi Resistance website.

Hutto described the military as “an institutional culture laced with discriminatory behavior based on race, gender, sexual orientation and geography.” He lauds “the movement of soldiers and sailors against the occupation of Vietnam was pivotal in ending U.S. Imperialist aggression against the Vietnamese people.”

Jonathan Hutto and the members of VFP, MFSO and IVAW certainly have the right to speak out. But WE have the right to know what their underlying agenda is. After reading up on the backgrounds of the organizations and Mr. Hutto, it is hard to swallow the media’s portrayal of a simple non-partisan grassroots movement. The country deserves to hear the truth about the anti-American agenda of the so called “peace groups”.

UPDATE: The NY Sun is reporting on some other nasty little connections that this group has to other anti-American agenda driven organizations...

A staff member at Fenton Communications who requested anonymity said his company was approached last week by a longtime peace activist and former director of the anti-nuclear proliferation front known as SANE/Freeze, David Cortright, to publicize Appeal for Redress. Mr. Cortright is now president of an Indiana-based nonprofit group, the Fourth Freedom Forum, and his biography on the organization's Web site says he helped raise "more than $300,000 for the Win Without War coalition to avert a preemptive attack on Iraq in 2002–03."

Still, the counsel retained by Appeal for Redress, J.E. McNeil, runs the Center for Conscience and War, an organization whose mission is to defend the rights of conscientious objectors.

Ms. McNeil said yesterday that she first got in touch with some of the soldiers in Appeal for Redress through a military hotline the Center for Conscience and War runs for active-duty servicemen to find out what rights they have. According to the center's Web site, the group's lobbyist is Pat Elder, a co-founder of the D.C. Area Anti-War Network, which has organized civil disobedience demonstrations against military recruitment offices in shopping malls.

The Sun also has this little statement from Jonathan "Amnesty International" Hutto...
Seaman Hutto said none of the members of Appeal for Redress were "pacifists, conscientious objectors, or anything that would go against the military contract." He does not discuss the new organization when he is on his base or in uniform, he added.

Seeing as the supporting organizations are VFP and IVAW which have been exposed above as including conscientious objectors and activists, I find Hutto's claims about as hard to believe as his non-partisan, non-agenda stance. The Appeal for Redress signers are not posted on the website so in the interest of full disclosure, I call on the organization to make the names public. They want to speak the truth - let's see if they can handle the truth. Release the names.


More here...


http://tinyurl.com/y38orh

[usmcobra]

I hear The Navy needs photographers in Iraq.

[kcvl]

MORE MEDIA LIES...

According to Navy regulations, Jonathan Hutto is allowed to run his antiwar campaign, but it must be done on personal time, out of uniform and off base.

Hutto himself has a history of liberal activism. In 1996, Hutto enrolled in Howard University, choosing political science as his major. He quickly became close friends with a controversial classmate, Sinclair Skinner, who admits to being expelled from Tuskegee University for his activism. Together, they helped organize the Million Man March.

Along with his civil rights activism, Lawrence Guyot has compared the GOP to "Nazis" on national talk programs. Guyot himself has been an anti-war activist since the 1960s.

When Hutto graduated from Howard, he worked for the ACLU and then for Amnesty International. Hutto has expressed disdain for President Bush, stating "[Bush's] agenda is not only anti African/African American, but anti-labor, anti-woman, anti-environment and anti-human rights", has called the Iraq war "illegal" and the United States "imperialist".

[kcvl]

Worker's World (Socialist organization) is supporting him...

Catalinotto was a civilian organizer with the American Servicemen’s Union, an anti-war GI group, from 1967 to 1971.

Press Here

If these people hate this country this much why not just get the hell out?!!!

[kcvl]

What the Media Forgot to Tell Us About the Group "Appeals for Redress"


A group of active duty soldiers, called a "grassroots group" by some in the media, is speaking out against the war in Iraq and calling on Congress to bring the troops home. Fine with me - they have every right to speak their mind (I know nothing about the military rules - I'm speaking in the realm of First Amendment rights). Having the freedom to speak out is one of the great benefits of living in the United States of America.

BUT it is disconcerting and disingenuous to report this group as a simple grassroots group trying to get their voices heard. The "Appeal for Redress" group is sponsored by three of the most virulent anti-war groups that use their "desire for peace" as a cover for their blatant anti-Americanism. You've heard of these groups - Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and Iraq Veterans Against the War. Whenever you see Cindy Sheehan or any of her comrades, you will see members of these organizations.


http://newsbusters.org/node/8606

[kcvl]

GRASSROOTS MY *SS!!!


Grass-Roots Group of Troops Petitions Congress for Pullout From Iraq

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 25, 2006; Page A13

[lastchance]

Why is it not treason?

[Mad_as_heck]

One day in 2003, broke and seeking direction, Hutto enlisted in the Navy.

In 2003? He knows exactly what he is up to. This looser signed up specifically to disrupt the war effort and set himself up as some sort of liberal martyr.

I remember reading somewhere about a left wing activist from England who emigrated to Israel and enlisted specifically so that he could then make a stink about refusing to serve in the "occupied territories."

Ship him off to the nastiest more remote posting imaginable and let him rot till his enlistment is over. Keeping him away from the cameras he craves is the best punishment.

[Citizen Soldier]

I'm sure a navy photoghaper knows the horrors of war from a coffee shop in Norfolk!

[goldstategop]

A liberal joining the Navy? He's rarer than a beak on a hen's tooth, simply because of the psychological makeup of these people. They loathe carrying arms, hate fighting wars, and look down upon soldiers, sailors and airmen in uniform as dummies easily commanded and led to their deaths. Liberals abhor patriotism.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus

[DouglasKC]

After the Web site was publicized two weeks ago, Hutto's supervisor pulled him aside and laid out the Navy's ground rules: The campaign had to be done on personal time, out of uniform and off base.
Hutto, who studied military rules and consulted lawyers before launching the campaign, agreed.

I was taught in the Air Force that any kind of protests against the government in uniform or out of uniform was grounds for discharge.

[goldstategop]

Must be a different set of rules for liberals.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus

[Coldwater Creek]

Cost about a million dollars to search for a sailor that is overboard. In this case money well spent!!!!!!!!

[Coldwater Creek]

You can thank Bill Clinton for this kind of acceptable behavior.

[piasa]

Another product of the red diaper doper baby bunch emerges to take his John Kerry plunge.

[SlowBoat407]

"...the cafés and bookstores in Ghent"

Don't ask, don't tell....

I can't imagine anyone who spends his time in those spots (and I know those spots in Ghent) even considering a stint in the military.

[usmcobra]

That should be illegal under the UCMJ.

[maine-iac7]

He's not just against the war, he is against the military as an organization, in any form it may take.

Correction: he's against the AMERICAN military. He'd hand our military over to the UN in a heart beat - he's with their goal to control the world with all countries handling over their sovereign control of military to the UN -

[maine-iac7]

WHY is this not illegal for active duty men (or women) to do this?

The same rule applies to anyone employed by any agency that is supported with tax payer monies - even, say, your local CAP agencies - why teachers aren't called on it, I don't know (well, we all do = but...)