How did I go from this…

to this???

Well, it didn’t happen overnight. Here’s my story of how I went from a conservative-leaning 18-year-old gung-ho about serving in the Air Force to a blue-haired leftist who is anti-war.

First, some background

I grew up in rural Ohio. It was 99% white, nearly all Christian, mostly middle-class, and mostly straight-presenting. Everyone I interacted with looked like me and thought like me. But, what teenager even has an original thought? I know I really didn’t. I just regurgitated what friends and family said and thought about what they did politically.

While I was eco-ish in my high school days, I low-key thought global warming was a scam. I didn’t see it in Ohio, so it must not be true. But, I was passionate about the outdoors and I loved recycling.

It wasn’t until I joined the Air Force that my mind started to be opened to other ideas and ways of life.

On to Texas!

First stop, basic training. I truly just turned my brain off for two months. I can’t say I garnered much in terms of environmentalism here, but I remained in Texas for another 8 months or so for my technical training. Here, I got more passionate about recycling.

We were producing SO much waste on base and none of it was recycled. I knew there was something to be done about it. So, I gathered bins, trash bags, made signs, and recruited a few friends to help me on our weekend to sort recycling and drive it to the city’s recycling center. I had a lot of fun! Most 18 year old's get their first taste of freedom and party and I used my newfound freedom to recycle.

I also started to use a reusable water bottle religiously in Texas and began following a few eco creators on Instagram. But, I still ate meat, still consumed a lot of single-use materials, and was generally quite wasteful.

Moving another 7,000 miles

Then, the Air Force took me to Japan! Well, it took Dan to Japan who got there 1.5 years before me and since we were married (Did you do the math? Yup, we got married at 18!), they sent me right along. And boy, were my eyes opened!

Okinawa, Japan is a tiny island southwest of the mainland of Japan, directly East of Taiwan. An island in the Pacific Ocean means that a lot of waste will end up on shores. I quickly learned that much of my recycling efforts were in vain. Reduction is the key, not recycling.

So, I dove head first into swaps: coffee cup, grocery bags, making food from scratch, dryer balls, you name it. I tried a new swap every time I ran out of something wasteful. But, this was an extremely eye-opening time as well because of where I lived. At this time, I was bingeing Shelbizleee on YouTube and heavily followed other eco folk like Gittemary Johansen, Immy Lucas, and Kathryn Kellogg. They all shopped at the bulk store, walked, were hooking up solar panels on their homes, and composting. I couldn’t do any of that.

Could I live zero waste if I didn’t have access to a bulk store? Could I live zero waste if I have to drive every single day? Yes!

I created my own brand of zero waste: practical and simple eco living. Eco living for folks who don’t want to spend a lot of time, energy, or money on the lifestyle. So, I started making content online starting with YouTube and Instagram. I figured there were other people out there like me and there sure are. Thanks for being here :)

But that’s not all from Okinawa. This was where my activism started to kick off.

I began reading eco-themed books and following new people online and speaking to people in my real life. Remember how I grew up? Yeah, this was the first time in my life that I had friends of color, queer friends, friends who grew up impoverished, friends who experiences homelessness, and so much more. I got to hear about so many different walks of life and different worldviews that helped introduce me to intersectional environmentalism before I even knew what it was called.

And living in another country really started to break my brain a little bit in terms of propaganda. We’re taught in school that the US is the best country in the world and our job is to save everyone else. That’s why I was stationed in Japan, right? To save Japan from China or something?

But something felt off and rightfully so. Okinawa is the home of the Ryukyu peoples. They were colonized by Japan just before WWII. Their language and traditions were stripped. They were kicked off their ancestral lands. Sound familiar? But, we won WWII and saved them, right? Nope. Instead we made them speak English, drive on the US side of the road, operate US businesses, and so forth. Sure, it wasn’t quite as brutal as how they lived under imperial Japan, but it was not all sunshine and rainbows. How could it be when your culture and homeland is gone?

I really started to question everything. I started to feel like Zuko realizing that the Fire Nation may not be perfect. I could slander the US all day long, but I won’t. No country is perfect. But, you can be proud to be an American while also wishing better for your country. It’s naive to sit here and claim true patriotism when you don’t want to see your country progress.

But, at this point, these were all just vague ideas in my head. It wasn’t until I moved back to the US that I really started to get radicalized.

Reverse culture shock

I lived in Japan for 3 years. 3 very important years of my development from 19-22. Most people that age spend time in college just a short drive from home. I was in another country as a fully-realized adult.

So, coming back to my home country was truly shocking. Not to mention, I spent 1.5 years of COVID in Japan…a country that took the pandemic extremely seriously. We masked no questions. We ate outside no questions. We did travel bans no questions. And it was a success. Coming back to a country that was unmasked already and going about willy-nilly was weird.

The first thing I actually noticed when landing back in the US was all of the US flags. In Japan, it’s really only government buildings that fly flags. You almost never see one at a residence. You can say what you want about the flag, but this was just a weird observation.

The other big one was how unsafe I felt in the US, my home. In Japan, I never (NEVER) locked my house or car. I never felt the need to check over my shoulder. I never felt the desire to carry a knife of buy pepper spray. I slept with the windows open! Moving to Vegas of all places immediately after such safety was alarming.

I started to ask myself these questions: why are Americans obsessed with the flag? Why was crime so high? Why did I feel safer in a country where you couldn’t carry a gun? Why do the Japanese people care so much about their neighbors but seemingly Americans do not? Why is Japan so clean even though there are no public trashcans?

The dots were connecting. The intersectional environmentalism was building. I kept reading books, I kept making connections online, and I kept learning from diverse activists across the board, not just the environmentalists. I started to learn how race was connected to climate change and poverty and homelessness and gender and on and on and on. It’s all connected.

What I became very passionate about living in the desert was public lands and water rights. The desert southwest is in a 26-year-long drought. It’s bad. They’re still using water rights that were written 100 years ago when almost no one lived there. Now 10s of millions of people live there and this is the heartland of American agriculture. Wait, isn’t that the midwest where I was born and raised? Yes and no. The midwest grows crops to feed animals. The desert SW, in particular, California, grow food that we eat: lettuce, almonds, avocados, berries, etc.

And I’ve always loved the outdoors but I didn’t know much about our public lands until I lived among them. They’re so much more than the big 63 National Parks. It 400 other national park sites, it’s Bureau of Land Management land, it’s the forest service, it’s state parks, and so much more. They all aid in the fight for the climate and this was a huge area of focus for the Biden administration, too. Just before I moved to the desert, Trump, in his first term, shrunk two huge national monuments in Utah: Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Biden restored them and also created Avi Kwa Ame national monument; a huge deal to the indigenous peoples and the broader fight for climate change. I began to learn about ecosystems and birds and trees and got my passion for plants while living and hiking here.

Putting the pieces together

That was my last home while I was active duty but I’ve also live in Washington, Ohio again, Minnesota, and now Northern California. They have all taught me things about wildfires, public lands, climate change, climate education, and so much more.

While those were the major lessons I learned along the way while being an environmentalist in the Air Force, I did have some other epiphanies along the way:

If I can have free healthcare, why can’t other Americans?
If I can have free education, why can’t other Americans?
If I can get a universal basic income based on my rank, why can’t other career fields?
If I can get a clothing and housing allowance, why can’t other Americans?

All of this opened my eye to the greater issue of government spending. We don’t need to raise taxes in order to provide healthcare for all. We just need to reallocate our billions of dollars in taxes every year. A good chunk of that goes to the military. Sure, national security is important, but you’d be surprised at how much the money the military wastes due to “use it or lose it” funds. You can learn more about that in this video. Even after serving, I would rather this month go to the good of the general populace. What did I do to earn my migraine meds being paid for? What did I do that was so special that it earned me two free degrees and counting? Nothing. Yeah, I sacrificed my early 20s and my mental health along the way, but so do nurses and teachers and firefighters? If you’re so against a clerk earning a living wage and getting free healthcare, why are you so against other careers that save lives and protect people and ensure the success of our country from getting these benefits?

This was part of the propaganda I had to unlearn: that somehow military members earn this but our EMT personnel don’t. That somehow I get to live comfortably now after 6 years in the Air Force that was not that challenging and not risky at all, but teachers have to be scared for their lives every day and have nothing to show for it.

Getting politically involved

It wasn’t until I became a veteran that I continued to evaluate all of this as the veteran benefits rolled it. I was 24 when I got out of the military. Those 6 years changed me for the better. That’s not to say I didn’t hate it, I did. I don’t regret joining but I am forever grateful to be done. It is not a place for an anti-war leftist. It was emotionally taxing going to a job I disagreed with so hard.

But, I learned so much that kept me wanting to learn. I am now involved with Veterans for Peace and continue to learn about politics and share what I learn here, too.

It’s amazing how a little empathy and open-mindedness can change a person. It’s beautiful to think how easily this could change the world.

A few things I’ve learned on my journey:

We need more empathy in the world. No single person lives just the way you do. Even Dan and I are very different and we lived in the same 200 sq ft for 2 whole years. We basically morphed into one but we are still so different. Recognize that everyone is different from you and that is beautiful
We all need to work on ourselves. Hurt people hurt people. Heal your hurt. Do the work. It helps you to be kinder to others. In my late teens, I was also working through a lot of trauma and that compounded with my first assignment in the Air Force. It was a dark time but I worked on myself and worked through that trauma. It helped me to be kinder and more empathetic. And the more non-fiction books I read, I quickly realized that all of these evil men just need therapy and maybe they wouldn’t be so evil
Be kind and remember where you started. I hate when people on the left absolutely refuse to engage with people on the right or vice versa. I remember where I started and remember that I just needed access to some facts. I was ignorant and that’s okay. Ignorance is not bad, but it can be remedied easily. Have conversations. Don’t talk down or talk at people. Listen to them and their concerns
We are truly so much more alike than we think. Do much of my family voted way opposite of me, but they want similar things for themselves and the world: peace, happiness, health, friendship, community, and to take down the billionaire elites. This is why we need conversations. The more we realize how alike we are, the more we can band together to fight the real problem: up. So let’s stop fighting left and right.

At the end of the day, it’s still wild to me that my empathy is radical. That my desire to have a clean planet and my hope that everyone can have a roof over their head it radical. Meeting the basic needs of my fellow humans should not be a scary idea. It should be the bare minimum.

There you have it. My story about how the military gave me basic human empathy and therefore radicalized me. It’s still fascinating that some people join the military and become more hateful and bigoted and closed off. But, that’s their story.

What radicalized you?

As always, remember that your small actions make a big difference in the long run :)

Emma

Storytime: How the Military Transformed me from Conservative to a Leftist