What Would You Do If Your Country Was Committing Genocide?
Anti-imperialist resistance and a taste of incarceration in the US prison system.
My comrades and I were wrongfully detained for three days in the Otero County Detention Center for trying to stop our government from murdering people on the other side of the planet. 2026 marks the fourth year of the annual Shut Down Drone Warfare Week of Action at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Organized by activists with Veterans for Peace, Ban Killer Drones, and CODEPINK, this week brings together people from across the United States who refuse to accept the normalization of remote-control killing.
Holloman AFB is one of the largest training sites for drone warfare in the US. It is responsible for the training of the pilots, sensor operators, and support crews who operate unmanned aerial vehicles, particularly the MQ-9 reaper, and are then deployed into active combat operations around the world. These operations are coordinated with other bases, like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, and form a network of death that allows the US empire to maintain domination over countless countries at once without ever risking the life of a US soldier.
Drone warfare is often branded as “precise”, but this branding is inaccurate to the reality on the ground in places that are targeted by the US military. Drones and their AI identification systems do not solely target individuals, they are designed to map patterns of life. They follow people to their homes, their workplaces, their schools, their grocery stores, their families’ homes, and every single step. They rely on metadata and algorithmic predictions to determine who is considered a “threat”. This has led to the widespread use of signature strikes, where people are targeted because their behavior fits a pattern deemed suspicious, not because of confirmed identity. This enables the US death machine to murder entire groups of people, most often “military-aged males”—a term invented by the US military to manufacture consent for the slaughtering of young boys—but frequently women and girls as well.
Drone warfare and its systems blur any distinction between “combatant” and civilian. Communities live under the ceaseless presence of drones overhead accompanied by a loud buzzing that signals the possibility of death at any moment. Drone strikes frequently target weddings, funerals, homes, and marketplaces. Survivors are often too afraid to assist the wounded, knowing that follow up strikes known as double taps purposely target rescuers and first responders.
In the context of ongoing genocides and imperial violence, drone warfare plays a very specific role. It allows for continuous surveillance and enforcement of US domination without requiring large numbers of troops on the ground. It makes occupation less visible to the US public while intensifying control over targeted populations in secrecy. In places such as Palestine, Yemen, and Somalia, US funded drones are a crucial and catastrophic arm of the system of violence that maintains the conditions where populations are being systematically controlled and ethnically cleansed. This is what Holloman Air Force Base is training people to do, just 55 miles away from us in Las Cruces.
Just a little over two years ago, while in uniform, active duty US Air Force member, Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside of the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. while screaming “Free Palestine!” In a post he shared on Facebook before he self-immolated, he said:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
This is the truth that we all must sit with. Our government, using wealth from our tax dollars and the surplus value from our labor, is responsible for the deaths of millions of people and the total destruction of our planet. There will be no future for our children if we refuse to act. I can no longer live my life as if things are normal. I refuse to accept a reality in which my government can bribe my fellow countrymen into selling their soul to do the bidding of the ruling class. Voting is not enough and it will never be enough. We have to use our bodies in whatever ways we can to resist the US empire.
On the morning of Wednesday, April 8th, 2026, a group of around twenty anti-imperialist activists woke up before the sun and began the day at the west gate of Holloman AFB. We set up the vigil that we had used the previous two days, made up of several large banners that say “Refuse Illegal Orders,” “Drone Pilots Refuse to Fly,” and “You Don’t Have To Do This” with numerous smaller signs that list the atrocities that we are urging the servicemen not to commit. These atrocities include “Genocide”, “Regime Change”, “Assassination”, “Torture”, “Bombing Fishing Boats”, and about a dozen more—all lined along the highway for about a quarter mile. Our focus for the week of action this year was to interrupt business as usual, educate the public and military personnel, and encourage resistance within the armed forces. For those who may be unaware of this buried history, the Vietnam war came to an end due to “the collective resistance of the enlisted men and women in the US armed forces who mutinied, sabotaged, shirked, fragged, and smoked their way to a full withdrawal and an end to the conflict.” The documentary, Sir No Sir, details the almost entirely forgotten story of the people of the military who forced the US government to end the Vietnam War. This is what is required of those currently enlisted in the US military.
The morning traffic from both directions of the highway was never ending—half of Alamogordo and Las Cruces must work on this base. The reactions to our vigil from the servicemen varied. We received several middle fingers and a couple of solidarity fists, but the majority just pretended not to see us or our signs in the same way they pretend not to see the impact of the crimes they are aiding. No amount of pretending will ever prevent nor repair the damage done to their humanity with each passing day they participate in the death machine—and we are certain that their conscience will catch up to them.
After a while, my comrades and I, many of whom are veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars themselves, decided to block the gate into the base. We stood shoulder to shoulder as we held our banners and signs. Traffic began backing up immediately. It took about 30 seconds before the military police came up behind us, the state police pulled in front of us, and we were surrounded. When approached by the sheriff, my comrade wasted no time beginning our efforts to appeal to the officers’ morality. The sheriff told us that what we were doing was “illegal”, my comrade informed him that the crimes the US military are committing are illegal. His response was, “two wrongs don’t make a right.” What a cowardly pig.
While my comrade spoke to the sheriff, I turned around to speak to the military police with their canines posted up behind us. There is truly no more embarrassing human being than a military police officer. All of them looked younger than me and oozed with the un-earned self-importance that only the military can imbue. They wore their berets so low and slanted across their faces, there’s absolutely no way they can see out of their right eyes. Despite all of the rage and disgust that I felt when looking at them in their uniforms, with their weapons and their dogs, I began speaking to the human underneath it all. I told them that we love them, and we are protesting for them, not against them. I told them that we don’t want them to die for the oil profits of billionaires who couldn’t give a single fuck about them. Most of them stared at us with anger or impassiveness, but there was one soldier who stepped closer to us to hear what we had to say. By the time we decided to move away from the gate, he had thanked us several times.
We continued on with our plans and relocated to the main gate at Holloman. Our team immediately began setting up our vigil along the highway. I’m not sure what is legally safe to share at this time regarding this portion of the morning, so I am not going to divulge any details, yet. I will say that two of my comrades and I allegedly found ourselves in the middle of the road leading to the base.
While the cars were backed up from the road-block, two of the veterans in our team were handing out literature to the drivers who were willing to roll down their windows and accept it. One of the pieces of literature was a striking letter that our comrade wrote to the commander of the base, detailing the abhorrent impacts of drone warfare and asking them to reconsider their methods. Most of the drivers refused to accept the literature or even acknowledge my comrades.
The military police, particularly the female officer who was standing behind me, were significantly eager to arrest us. I could feel the anticipation radiating off of her while she hovered behind me. It was obvious that they had been waiting for this chance and had probably been looking forward to it since last year’s action. It was genuinely embarrassing to see—the reality that arresting peaceful protestors was the most important thing they had to do all day. I will admit that I struggled to find the MP’s intimidating at all, and was amused by how seriously they took themselves as they apprehended three people armed with only banners. These are our so-called brave warriors and protectors of the “Free Nation”, defending the ability to hide behind computer screens and kill innocent people without ever risking anything or encountering real danger, eager to imprison their veteran elders.
Four of the MPs took two of us around the back of the visitor’s center to a suspiciously concealed picnic table. They patted us down and took our ID’s before they sat us on the benches and began interrogating us for their paperwork. My comrade and I continued our efforts to sow division in the ranks. I was able to hold a halfway decent conversation with them as I asked them questions about where they were from and how they arrived here. I asked them if there were any orders they would ever refuse and where they would draw that line. I asked them why they didn’t draw the line at genocide. My comrade told them they should probably defect before we hold our version of the Nuremberg Trials.
The responses to our counter-interrogation were mixed, but a couple of them answered honestly. Their answers were often disappointing and unsurprising, of course, but our goal was to plant seeds. People don’t change their minds after just one conversation, but it’s important that they know there are people who do not support the US military or view them as heroes.
Before we were moved from the picnic table to the police van, I told them that there are hundreds of thousands of people who would defend and celebrate them if they chose to defect or leave the military. We gave them information about several organizations that would help them do this. My final words to them were that they, too, deserve to live long, happy lives and don’t need to die for the benefit of the pedophilic ruling class.
While we were being interrogated, without warning or due cause, the two veterans who were handing out literature were also arrested. They were brought to the van where the other three of us were being held, then we were all transported to Otero County Detention Center (OCDC).
Immediately upon arriving at the jail, we were separated by assumed gender. If I had known this would be the last time I would see my comrades for three days, I would have made a bigger effort to say goodbye. Upon separation, they took the two femme presenting people to a small room, handcuffed us to the bench, and proceeded with taking fingerprints and completing a health screening. After this tedious process, we were told we would receive a full body x-ray scan. My comrade, 71 years old, denied this scan for health purposes and was consequently ordered to 24 hours of solitary confinement as punishment. This was heartbreaking to hear, and I feared for what conditions she would be subjected to when she was alone. We knew—based on comments that they were making, such as, “we told you last year not to come back”— that they were planning on making an example out of us. We said our goodbyes and were immediately separated and forced to endure this journey divided.
I was taken to a small room with an officer, a short metal barrier between us, and instructed to remove all of my clothing and replace it with the jail uniforms. While I changed, I couldn’t help but notice the camera pointed directly at me from the corner above my head. [Pro tip: wear white underwear and undergarments, and the guards may let you keep them. We didn’t know this, and were given paper underwear and no socks.] After peeing in a cup for a mandatory pregnancy test, being injected with a liquid for a tuberculosis test, being screened for mental health purposes, filling out paperwork, having my mugshot taken, and being run through the full-body x-ray scanner, I was taken to my pod.
The experience of my first day in OCDC made it excruciatingly clear to me that every single aspect of the prison system is designed to be pure torture. The conditions are less than humane—treatment that I wouldn’t deem appropriate even for rats. I was issued a flimsy sleeping-pad, a thin, thread-bear sheet, a blanket that barely covered my body and was riddled with holes, a small paper cup, and a plastic spork that I was expected to use and reuse for each meal, a towel for showers that was the size of a kitchen hand towel, and a toothbrush and toothpaste.
I was taken to one of three pods that I saw in the women’s side of the facility. I was in A2, and next to us was A3, then A4. A2 was the pod intended for women with the lowest-level charges. I’m not sure how they differentiate, but I know that there were several women in pod A4 who were wearing red uniforms as opposed to our tan, which meant that they were allegedly involved in a homicide.
The pods were small rooms with bunk beds lined along the walls, with a picnic table taking up most of the floor space in the middle of the room, and the bathroom area towards the back wall. They crammed thirteen of us into A2, which only had enough beds for twelve people. This meant that I slept on the floor in a “boat,”—a makeshift floor cot that was mysteriously sticky and covered in dirty gunk. My podmates jokingly referred to it as my yacht for the duration of my stay.
The sleeping-pads we are given are so thin that you can feel the hard surface underneath, and you have to continuously rotate so as to not get bruises on your hipbones. The blankets are even thinner, which makes for unbearably cold nights, as the guards keep the air conditioner on while we sleep despite requests to turn it off. We are not issued pillows, which makes it even more impossible to get comfortable and causes neck and back pain. It is never dark; the lights are kept on 24/7. Breakfast is served at 5a.m., lunch at 11a.m., and dinner at 4p.m., making the last stretch of the day and the night difficult to endure due to hunger. The guards wake us up each morning at 4a.m. by yelling orders and slamming the heavy metal doors. After getting to know my podmates and learning their stories, I can only imagine how triggering these sounds must be for survivors of domestic abuse.
There is no such thing as privacy in jail. The bathrooms are completely exposed, which means all of your business is done within sight of twelve other people. Aside from inside the filthy shower itself, there is no place to change without the entire pod and the all-male guards outside the windows seeing you. This became intensely disturbing to me once my podmates told me that one of the guards on duty had been caught masturbating to the cameras in the control room just a few months prior. How this guard still has a job makes no sense to me, but it pales in comparison to other stories I heard from my podmates about their time in jail and prison.
One of my podmates had been in prison in Alabama and told a heartbreaking story about the conditions there, where guards were allowed full access to the women at any time they wanted. When the women tried to report one guard who was particularly relentless and rough in his sexual torment of the inmates, the warden did nothing because he was just as much of a creep as the guards. The conditions that women are subjected to under patriarchy, especially in prison, are deplorable. I am happy to share that the Alabama prison guard received his karma when a group of inmates caught him in the mop closet where the cameras didn’t reach.
A couple of the ladies in my pod started their periods in the morning, asked the guards for pads and toilet paper, and weren’t given any until the next day. They had to sit in blood-soaked paper underwear for an entire day. There is no urgency and no dignity.
Above my bed at OCDC are ceiling tiles that are disintegrating and stained with water damage and mold. Given how old the building is, one can only hope those tiles have been tested for asbestos. The vents in the ceiling are also covered in mold. The beds, the showers, and the sinks are covered in rust and sharp edges. The horrifically tasting, unfiltered water from the dirty bathroom sinks is our only access to water—or any drinkable fluids, for that matter. Some of our meals were served with a small package of Kool-Aid like powder to mask the distaste of the water, but further made it taste like cough medicine. I cannot even begin to describe the inedible food, which I doubt is meant for human consumption. In fact, one of the inmates actually told my comrade that he used to work in the jail kitchen and received blocks of “turkey product” that literally said “NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION.” The best word I can use to describe what is served to us three times a day is flavorless slop.
My comrade told me that, while in solitary confinement, she was intending to refuse food and water for the duration of her time in jail. After refusing the first two meals, the guard informed her that she would be placed on suicide watch and face even harsher conditions. She opted instead to flush her “food” down the toilet.
The women in the jail are not allowed any time outside. When I learned this after inquiring, I was shocked. They told me that the men have a small basketball court outside, but there is no outside area on the women’s side of the jail. When I first arrived, I saw on the schedule that “recreation time” was allotted from 7:45-8:30a.m. My podmates told me that they don’t even bother to wake up for rec time because it’s not worth it, so I demanded to see what was available to them. I am not joking when I say that the guards took me to a room not much bigger than our pod, completely empty and bare—aside from one measly, little, red rubber ball. This is the only opportunity for recreation or exercise that is offered to female inmates at OCDC.
Most of the women in my pod have been in for months, one of them for more than ten months, awaiting trial and sentencing. Can you imagine ten months without sunshine, fresh air, or exercise? Away from your babies, your bed, and clean water? The only ways to pass the time being sleeping and watching the clock tick the minutes away. Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day passing by as you miss your child’s first steps for a crime that you haven’t even been convicted of yet. Jail is pure torture and the fact that anyone is able to make it out without losing their sanity is nothing short of a miracle.
Despite surviving in the harshest conditions of capitalism, in sheer scarcity and the most minimal of resources, the collectivism of the human spirit shines through. I have never been more sure of the conviction that greed is not innate, but a sickness that is cultivated and rewarded by the capitalist system. In my short time here, I have witnessed the kind of camaraderie and care that is magnified when the realities of class warfare become as clear as imprisonment. Even the paper and pen I am using to write these words were kindly shared with me from another inmate who had purchased them with her commissary when she overheard me express that I wish I could write.
When I was first brought to the pod and given my boat, two of the ladies offered to make my bed for me. They set the mattress on the table that took up most of the space in the small room, and proceeded to fold the top over and tie it tight with the corners of the sheet into a makeshift pillow. It was obvious to everyone that this was my first time in jail, and they did their best to guide me through the experience and offered help whenever they saw I needed it.
The first night I was in the pod, I didn’t think to save any of my food from the dinner that was served at 4p.m. At around 10p.m. my grumbling stomach let me know not to make that mistake again. One of my podmates pulled out stashed bread, peanut butter, and jelly from breakfast, and began making sandwiches for a couple of the women. The other ladies noticed I didn’t have any food saved and began sharing what they had from their stashes—ramen noodles on a cracker, generic strawberry cookies, and Shabangs, a brand of potato chips that are produced exclusively for prisons.
A2’s nightly routine was to squeeze into all of the bottom bunks and share stories. Sex stories, drug stories, relationship stories, stories of severe trauma and childhood abuse. Most of the inmates knew each other, either from their time spent together in jail or from escapades on the outside, and I felt honored that they trusted me enough to invite me into these moments with them. I felt out of place, of course, but also welcomed and respected. While I would never describe jail as a pleasant experience, the women that I met absolutely made it bearable, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss the comfort of living communally, at least a little.
I’m aware that the way I am describing this experience is akin to a fun sleepover, so I want to make sure I am not misrepresenting the reality. In a tightly packed room of thirteen women who are unable to escape, there are bound to be arguments between clashing personalities—especially between women who know each other and have beef from before they arrived here. Several of the women had to be separated into the different pods due to fighting. Just a week before I arrived, two women had overdosed in A2. While there were plenty of shared jokes and laughs, there was an ever-present veil of anguish that weighed on us all. No matter how hard you try to distract yourself, you never forget that you are utterly helpless and at the total mercy of the system and whichever guards are on duty.
One thing that became clear in my time in jail is that scarcity alone does not create selfishness and greed, the system does. Even here, where the minimal resources are tightly controlled and intentionally limited, people resist this logic in their actions every day. They choose to share and protect each other despite it all. In doing so, they expose the human reality that cooperation is far more natural to us than competition, and that our values, despite everything, reflect the collective ethic that capitalism works tirelessly to suppress. This experience was deeply political and spiritual, and the emotions and realizations will always stay with me. My experience proves that when survival is on the line and stripped of illusion, we turn toward each other, not away. What I see here is a reminder that another way of living is not only possible, it already exists in the smallest acts and the refusal to let one another face our oppression alone.
I am sending the deepest love and solidarity to my podmates, and all who are incarcerated in the US prison system. Our country cages more people than any other nation in the world. Millions of people are ripped from their families and communities, and kept in conditions that are incompatible with living. Rather than meeting our needs, our system pours billions of dollars into policing and entrapment. Prisons are the place where the impacts of poverty and addiction are hidden from society’s view and punished. Black and brown communities are targeted and overrepresented here. Families are torn apart, children grow up without their parents, and the cycle repeats itself over and over. Hearing the stories of the ladies that I shared my time with, most of them mothers, was devastating. Every single one of them were victims of sexual and physical abuse, most of them from heartbreakingly early ages. I won’t share the details of their stories, but I will hold them close to my heart for the rest of my life.
There are corporations whose entire business model depends on people being locked in these cages and the beds being full. Incarceration is profitable, therefore there is no incentive to stop or lessen the amount of inmates. Even beyond the basic inhumane logic of imprisonment, there is constant extraction such as commissary, phone calls, and forced labor.
These realities exist at the same time the president of our nation is a 34-time convicted felon.
If you are part of the ruling class, you will never have to experience the failures of this system. Your wealth protects you from ever ending up in a place like this. Meanwhile, the working class and poor are locked up simply for being homeless or for doing what they need to do to survive. We cannot ignore this disparity, the prison system must be abolished. There is no version of this that can be fixed, abolition is the only path forward. As long as prisons exist, they will keep expanding and they will keep swallowing people who were failed by capitalism long before they ever arrived here.
The military police, state police, sheriffs, and court system punished me and my comrades for daring to dissent. They incarcerated us for three days for a petty-misdemeanor that should have been met with a citation and a $25 fine. They did this to intimidate us from ever protesting the US death machine again. What they don’t know is that our convictions are stronger than their’s could ever be. We have the truth on our side. The ruling class must never cease working to disguise their motives and conceal their crimes. They must deliberately and systematically infect the people with propaganda and fear to manufacture consent for their unnatural logics.
The anti-imperialist movement does not have this challenge, because our principles are based on material reality. We don’t need to conceal anything, our duty is to expose. We must expose the US military for what it is—our planet’s biggest polluter—a global instrument of capitalist domination built to crush resistance, enforce imperial plunder, and preserve the rule of the bourgeoisie through organized violence, with absolutely no regard for life. Never stop talking about it; resist the normalization of imperialist, colonial violence.
To my comrades—as much as our arrests and time in jail sucked, enduring it alongside you was an honor. You are all extraordinary human beings and I am eternally grateful to be in this struggle alongside you.
To the teams of Ban Killer Drones, Veterans for Peace, and CODEPINK—thank you for the countless hours of labor, love, and commitment that you pour into this work. You are all deeply inspiring and represent the future of collective struggle and solidarity.
To my best friend and moon, Jet—thank you for the beautiful photographs and for being the archivist of the movement. Your soul shines through the work you do and I can’t wait to see what you create.
The liberation of all from the US empire is impending and inevitable. Global capitalism is shattering under the weight of its own contradictions and the once concealed, blood-soaked realities are seeping through the cracks. The time for unwavering commitment to the struggle is now. Join us.
“For as much as we want peace, we are not afraid to struggle.” -Michael Parenti (1933-2026)
Eloquent and moving. Thanks for being there, Dylan, and for the report back.