This is Where We Take Our Stand

Now Available From Displaced Films

We Were Soldiers In The “War On Terror”
A new short film by Elsa Rassbach

Elsa Rassbach has gathered twenty minutes of the most powerful testimony at the Iraq Veterans Against the War’s Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan hearings in 2008. This is an excellent resource for classrooms, organizations, or anyone who can’t and won’t accept the endless war the world has been plunged into by our government.

Available as an extra DVD with This is Where We Take Our Stand – $18.00

Or as a stand-alone DVD – $5.00

Order in bulk

Available soon for digital download

Buy Now

From the film:

GARETT REPPENHAGEN
Germany, Kosovo, Iraq

“We were killing Iraqi people in horrible ways…”

JASON HURD
Iraq

“‘Oh my God, this is it! This is someone who is trying to hurt us!’”

MICHAEL LEDUC
Iraq

“…leveling houses before we even went in became pretty common place…”

BRYAN CASLER
Japan, Iraq, Afghanistan

“‘Er, kill babies.’ That’s motivating. That’s not meant to be funny.”

GEOFFRY MILLARD
Mexico, Qatar, Kuwait, Germany, Iraq

“Everyone that was not a U.S. force became a ‘Haji,’ not a person, not a name, but a ‘Haji.””

MIKE PRYSNER
Italy, Iraq

“We took the best thing from Muslims and made it into the worst thing.”

MATTHEW CHILDERS
Iraq

“Over this week, these guys were beaten relentlessly and humiliated.”

STEVE MORTILLO
Germany, Iraq

“We all just wanted everyone to come home alive.”

JABBAR MAGRUDER
Co-Chair IVAW
Kuwait, Iraq

“The problem is the occupation itself.”

Check out Vietnam Veteran Michael Wong’s post from In the Mind Field…

Since the start of the Bush era, soldiers and veterans have been a core part of resisting America’s wars for empire.

In 2004, Iraq Veterans Against the War began with seven members. IVAW now has hundreds of veterans and active duty members, chapters in all 50 states and overseas, and continues gaining members all the time. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are marching in peace demonstrations, speaking out at public events, giving media interviews, organizing active duty soldiers on military bases, and actively helping GI resisters. Anti-war Iraq veterans were featured in a documentary movie, The Ground Truth, and in several other movies about the war. During the Iraq war, over 2,000 active duty troops signed the “Appeal for Redress” calling on Congress to end the war. At the height of the war, the GI Rights Hotline received up to 3,000 calls a month from GIs wanting out of the wars and the military, and an estimated 200-plus soldiers went AWOL in Canada. Courage to Resist helped many service members publicly refuse military orders, including 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who never served a single day in jail. Now a young PFC, Bradley Manning, stands accused of telling the truth by leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents. All of this combined with the civilian peace movement turned the tide of American public opinion against the Iraq war, and eventually led to bringing the bulk of regular troops home. Thousands of mercenaries remain. Read the rest of this post →

With the drums of war beating louder and louder over Iran, the story of these courageous Iraq and Afghanistan veterans exposing and opposing those horrendous wars is more urgent than ever. Read the rest of this entry →

IF you are not a fan of endless war and occupation; and

IF you didn’t believe then, and don’t believe now, that these wars are about bringing democracy to oppressed people; and

IF you are sickened by the deafening silence where once there was at least outrage; and

IF you are horrified at the prospect of yet another invasion to find “weapons of mass destruction;”

THEN YOU NEED TO BUY, WATCH, AND SPREAD THIS FILM

This Is Where We Take Our Stand

• Director’s Cut

Buy now for $15

This Is Where We Take Our Stand – Box Set

• Director’s Cut
• Includes a copy of Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan – Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations

Buy now for $20

Buy in Bulk

5 Copies $60.00 USD 10 Copies $100.00 USD 20 Copies $160.00 USD

Check out the Beyond the Box interview with Producers Bestor Cram and David Zeiger.

American Warriors Up Close in This is Where We Take Our Stand

Currently airing on public television nationwide,This Is Where We Take Our Stand documents an unprecedented 2008 conference of veterans and active-duty soldiers called Winter Solider. Inspired by the 1971 conference of the same name, the four days of heartbreaking testimony revealed why many veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars concluded that their mission was unjust. ITVS’s Kate Sullivan Green spoke with Director/Producers David Zeiger and Bestor Cram about the film and its relevancy today. Read the rest of the interview →

More Broadcasts Scheduled

Still more broadcasts of This is Where We Take Our Stand are being scheduled, including:

WETA Washington, DC
January 29 @ 12:30 am

KERA Dallas
January 23 @ 10 pm

KUHT Houston
February 1 @ 10 pm

See the list below for the full schedule, and if you still don’t see a broadcast in your area please contact your local PBS station to urge them to show the film. Those emails and phone calls do indeed make a difference. Read the rest of this entry →

On February 1st in New York and February 2nd in Washington, DC, there will be screenings of This is Where We Take Our Stand to benefit Iraq Veterans Against the War. Read the rest of this entry →

With the support of the Independent Television Fund (ITVS) and Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the story of Winter Soldier/Iraq & Afghanistan is now an hour-long documentary airing on PBS stations nationwide. See the full list for an upcoming broadcast near you.

“This is Where We Take Our Stand” is the story of hundreds of veterans who risked everything to publicly tell their accounts of the horrors they witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March of 2008, two hundred and fifty veterans and active-duty soldiers marked the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by gathering in Washington, DC, to testify from their own experience about the nature of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. It was chilling, horrifying, and challenging for all who witnessed it.

Against tremendous odds, they brought the voices of the veterans themselves into the debate. “This is Where We Take Our Stand” is the inside story of those three days and the courageous men and women who testified-a story that’s as important to tell today as ever.

These brave soldiers and veterans are challenging a public silence that runs very deep, underscoring a willingness to accept unspeakable horrors-as long as we don’t know about them.

Dear friends,

We are happy to announce the initial scheduled PBS broadcasts of This is Where We Take Our Stand. This isn’t the final schedule. New broadcasts are announced every week, and the process of getting the film onto PBS stations is still very much alive.

This is Where We Take Our Stand is not an easy film for PBS, and we are very grateful to the stations that have decided to air it. In that context, please note that so far, a relatively small number of cities are showing the film on their “main” PBS station. Most of the broadcasts to date are scheduled for secondary digital stations that are often very hard to find. For example, in New York the film will be shown on WLIWDT3. Read the rest of this entry →