Welcome to Amped Up. This is your host Ryan Knight, and our guest today is Erica Gordon, although you may know her as the white trash socialists on Twitter. Erica is an activist, an organizer, an anti-war veteran, and a member of Left Flank vets. Erica, welcome to Amped Up.

Thank you so much for having me Ryan. You know, I love your story because you know you are a veteran and happy

Veterans Day by the way or happy veterans week. But you know you're a veteran who

is now outspoken against the military industrial

complex and is now fighting to end these endless wars. Can you share with us a

little bit about your journey from serving in the military to being an activist who opposes

the US for-profit war machine and also talk a little bit about your work with

left flank vets. Vets. Absolutely.

Well, I mean, I never really had that sense of duty or anything to join the military that some people

might have.

I was poor my entire life. I'm usually very

outspoken about growing up in poverty and there's something called the poverty

draft which essentially means that your material conditions are bad enough that when you have something like the United States military that offers you guaranteed housing, guaranteed health care, you know, guaranteed meals.

When you're looking at someone who's who's unhoused,

who's skipping meals, who hasn't ever been to a dentist at 18, It's like a golden platter. And so when I joined the military and I go and I talk to a recruiter because I'm desperate, I specifically picked a job that I thought would do the least harm, which was a sonar technician, and signed a six-year contract and off I went. And that was in 2014. And during that time period I deployed once I did lots of underways which is just

time at sea doing different missions but I deployed to the Middle East one time, and it took that one deployment

to completely open my eyes that like, this isn't right.

None of this is right.

There's no reason for us to be here. And I served under both the Obama administration,

as well as the Trump administration, and war is a bipartisan effort.

It didn't get any worse under Trump

and it didn't get any better under Obama.

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