How A Marine Combat Veteran Spends His Days Marching for Peace
By Chance Meeting
How A Marine Combat Veteran Spends His Days Marching for Peace
By Chance Meeting
In the world we live in and amidst my consistent cynical view of it throughout the years, I never thought that in a time like this l'd have the opportunity to meet an overwhelming amount of wonderful people so quickly. People who care beyond their periphery. Who sacrifice for one another. Who trade their peace for discourse in a time where discourse is easily synonymous with danger. People who have ignited a hope within me I had long believed extinguished.
For the past year we've been traveling to protests, the majority of them in Washington DC, to capture the historic moments we are living through.
Throughout this journey, documenting this movement of dissent and the people that populate it, I have met those from all walks of life and all manner of maneuvering through it. None as righteously angry while simultaneously serene as Marine Combat Veteran Sgt.Eric Rhodes, a person that American Opposition Founder, Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos once described as: "A force of nature.
In the military, Sgt. Rhodes was an infantry fireteam leader before moving into the Surveillance Reconnaissance Intelligence Group. These days he marches at the front of protests, surrounded by fellow Veterans, advocating for human rights and demanding the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump and his entire administration.
I've interviewed him on camera a handful of times in the past year while on the ground in DC.
Whether it's walking through the halls of Congress to lobby representatives or protesting the Christian Nationalists outside of the Heritage Foundation, Rhodes is the definition of putting your boots to the ground.
Grabbing a quote from him during these moments is always an opportunity for insight, but this time I wanted to talk to him while he was at home in Florida, preparing for the upcoming Remove The Regime rally.
I asked him if he was pretty busy with organizing.
"From about the time I wake up, I get a half an hour, hour with my animals and the wife, and then it's getting to work," he tells me.
While I've known Sgt. Rhodes, I've seen him mitigate situations between crowds of protestors and police, I've seen him converse with counter protestors in a number of manners, but what prompted my call for an interview were two separate instances I was made aware of. One through word of mouth, and one in the form of a video through the other grapevine we call Instagram.
"I saw the de-escalation you had with a veteran by the Capitol building," I told him. "and then I also heard the story about you seemingly deprogramming someone in real time at Union Station? If you could tell me about those two instances, I'd love that."
He chose to speak of the instance at Union Station first. At the Remember Your Oath tent, where Veterans have a 24/7 presence at Union Station, a young man came by asking why they all hated America and wanted to burn it down.
"What do you mean?" he had replied "When did Iever say I hate America? What are we burning down?
He kind of spouted off some rhetoric. And that rhetoric was more about... all the stuff that we hear from, like, Portland being on fire and all this, right? So I just rebutted all of that. And he's like, no, I was there. I'm like... if you were there, you're blatantly lying to say it's on fire. It's not a war zone. That is why people are dressing up. They're doing the naked ride. They're doing the blow up costumes to show how ridiculous that comment was from the president."
Sgt. Rhodes told me that he talked to the young man for what felt like half an hour, only to find out after the conversation that they had been speaking for over an hour and a half.
"He's a 22-year-old intern for the House for the state of Utah. He was upset because he's a federal employee and he's not getting paid. But he's having to go to work. Which is kind of ironic because ICE is getting paid. The military is not, but ICE is getting paid.But I digress. He's an intern for a Republican in Utah.And for the first five minutes, there was a little bit of friction ... I wasn't going to step away from the conversation. His words were that he has a different experience growing up ... he grew up when he was 15 years old, Donald Trump was president. So he's like, all I know is what l've heard. He didn't grow up pre-Trump.Not where he would pay attention to anything political.He's a Christian so we questioned him a little bit about his Christianity. Not to pick it apart or anything, but we're like, can you really say that this is Christian behavior that's going on?"
Rhodes detailed his own Christian upbringing and the modern spirituality that emerged from that upbringing. His moniker on Instagram, Valhalla Overland, comes from a sentiment during his time in the military, exchanged between his brothers in arms.
"I'll see you in Valhalla," he says. "It means when warriors die in battle they go to Valhalla. So when we would go into combat we would say 'If I don't see you again. I'll see you in Valhalla."
He continued to tell me of how he found common ground with the young man. Bridging the gap by finding the trails paved before that they both may have traversed.
"I worked the point that, you know, you and I are so much more alike even with our age difference. We are so much more alike than the people who are pushing the rhetoric from the top on both sides. And i acknowledged that both sides are complicit in what's going on. I said one side I feel a lot stronger about, but both sides have their problems. Both sides have made mistakes. Once I got him to accept that we have a lot more similarities, I told him I grew up, my dad owned a small business, so he was Republican. I said, now my dad's 88 years old and has voted Democrat past couple of elections and wants to see a female get into the White House as the president. He looks at things differently because he's got a lot of wisdom and worldly experience. So that kind of l use that as a bridge. Like, there's my bridge. I was Republican and now I'm not.”…
“…And the reason I'm not is because I care about people. I talked to him like a normal person because that's what we are and that's what we used to be able to do. He started listening. The kid asked if I was on social media and I was like, yeah, why don't you follow me on Instagram? Reach out. I'll follow you back. He followed me on social media. So he's going to see stuff I start to post. But when we ended the conversation, he said,'well, when you come back on the 20th and you guys go to Congress, you should come up to my office where I work,' and I told him I would do that. I said, 'if your boss, the representative, isn't too busy, I would love to sit down and talk with her'."
I admired his willingness to speak and listen after being met with anger and even more, turning the moment into an opportunity. Not only was he able to bridge the gap with an individual, he was able to build a relationship that could be productive in the efforts he advocates for on a daily basis. On the day of that interaction he had taken part in his 57th protest of the year at the Lincoln Memorial.
"I get to talk to people sometimes," he says. "Not always. Sometimes I'm yelling at them. If they're going to yell at me, I will sometimes yell at them. I kind of got to feel it out. Some people need to be yelled at and called Nazis, but you got to really have the capacity to judge each situation."
After that story, I asked about the video I saw of him on social media that captured a moment of his deescalation tactics in real time.
"Had a guy come up and identitied himselt as a veteran, and he was upset the flag was upside down. It was being disrespected. One of the photographers was grabbing some solo shots of me, and I'm like, are you almost done? I got to get over there because Echo and him were getting pretty heated. So I walked over there and i'm like 'Hey brother l'm a veteran too, I get it,' and within 30 seconds, 60 seconds, I gave him a hug. I'm like, I'm your brother. And I gave him a hug. That's what dismantled it. We can still not agree on stuff, but that allowed him to listen to what I was saying. The de-escalation happened because I found common ground and I talked to him calmly. I showed him love and compassion that I can appreciate where he's coming from. Now, can you also appreciate where I'm coming from and where they are coming from?"
The state of our world seems dependent on the will of those who yell the loudest, but if we are to quell the dissonant clangs of our fractured culture, then our tactics can't always be trying to yell even louder. Anger should be directed towards power, not the people bent beneath it. Because only together can we rise to throw off such tyranny and provide new guards for our future security.
Sgt. Rhodes will be attending the Remove The Regime rally in Washington DC from November 20th _ November 22nd continuing his efforts advocating for a better, kinder world.
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Excellent commentary.
Wow!! This is incredible!! It is soo much what our country needs. I’m grateful for your example, for the love, dedication, patriotism and peace you embody and bring with you, Sir!